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Lost track of how many “very fine people” already

Seriously, does anyone really need to keep track besides the Justice Department, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and … okay, maybe it’s good people are keeping track.

Via TMZ:

The “60 Minutes” interview President Trump cut short over what he felt was unfair questioning from Lesley Stahl has left her, and her family, in a dangerous situation … TMZ has learned.

Multiple sources tell us … CBS is now providing Stahl with around-the-clock security due to a death threat made to the home of one of her immediate family members on the west coast.

[…]

Law enforcement sources tell us the death threat call was reported to LAPD around 9 AM Thursday, October 22. We’re told the caller directed the threat toward Lesley and her family, and also said something about neo-Nazis.

Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) operating out of the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame are also keeping track, The Guardian reports:

The Republican party has become dramatically more illiberal in the past two decades and now more closely resembles ruling parties in autocratic societies than its former centre-right equivalents in Europe, according to a new international study.

In a significant shift since 2000, the GOP has taken to demonising and encouraging violence against its opponents, adopting attitudes and tactics comparable to ruling nationalist parties in Hungary, India, Poland and Turkey.

The shift has both led to and been driven by the rise of Donald Trump.

V-Dem’s ‘illiberalism index’ “shows Republican party has retreated from upholding democratic norms.” You hadn’t noticed, had you?

Bloomberg notices that before the “illiberal right” led by Trump gets around to dealing with its enemies, it is experimenting with eliminating its friends. Trump is holding a flurry of superspreader rallies that seem to be accomplishing nothing except stroking his ego:

“The rapid-fire Trump rallies, while clearly well-received by the base, have done nothing to tip the scale in President Trump’s direction,” said Tim Malloy, a pollster from Quinnipiac University.

Trump has held five rallies each in Florida and Pennsylvania since his recovery from the coronavirus, more than any other states, along with repeat stops in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Arizona. Democrat Joe Biden has kept a limited travel schedule, holding two events since last Thursday’s debate. And when he does, they are sparsely attended by design, often staged as drive-in rallies, to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

[…]

Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University professor who studied Trump’s rally impact in the 2016 and 2018 cycles, found they didn’t move the needle in the states where they were held. He expects the same in 2020.

“It doesn’t seem like you’re getting any additional benefit,” he said.

But additional COVID-19 cases? He’ll get those.

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