We won’t move on!
“Get out and vote just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore,” Donald Trump told The Believers’ Summit, hosted by Turning Point Action on Friday in West Palm Beach, Fla. “Four more years it will be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore…In four years you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good your not gonna have to vote.”
Democrats piled on Donald Trump’s comments to the Christian nationalists (no, not conservative Christians) on Friday:
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is running for Senate, shared the clip of Trump’s speech on X, writing, “This year democracy is on the ballot, and if we are to save it, we must vote against authoritarianism. Here Trump helpfully reminds us that the alternative is never having the chance to vote again.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called Trump’s comments “terrifying.” And Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said, “The only way ‘you won’t have to vote anymore’ is if Donald Trump becomes a dictator.”
Naturally, the Trump campaign tried to explain away what he meant. No, no, no, the 2020 election denier didn’t mean what you thought you heard, a spokesman corrected. Trump “was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt.”
If shamelessness is conservatives’ superpower, Trump supplements it with plausible deniability which, Jason Statler argues, comes “from Trump’s constant blather, digressions, and weirdness…. Even his fiercest critics feed that power by assuming there must be some harmless explanation for his laser focus on dividing and conquering America. There’s not.”
On the left, our thirst for freshness and novelty, while an asset, is also a weakness. There will be a reflex to let these statements from Trump disappear down the memory hole, buried quickly by his next nonsensical boast or tirade or outrageous lie. Don’t move on. Don’t let this one go. Or Project 2025 either.
The Harris campaign should latch onto these statements like Jack Russell terrier with a knotted rope and not let go. Her campaign has for now called Trump’s statements “a vow to end democracy.” The Washington Post reports:
“When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it,” Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a news release on Saturday. “Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump: After the last election Trump lost, he sent a mob to overturn the results. This campaign, he has promised violence if he loses, the end of our elections if he wins, and the termination of the Constitution to empower him to be a dictator to enact his dangerous Project 2025 agenda on America.”
Trump, his Christian nationalist and think tank allies have taken out a contract on America. They mean to terminate the freedoms of non- MAGA Americans — yours — with extreme prejudice in a second Trump term. Roe is just the beginning.
“[T]he press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally,” Salena Zito wrote in The Atlantic in 2016. Believe him. He’s January 6th serious. Christian nationalists are Gilead serious. Heritage is 900 pages worth of serious. They have rejected democracy, as David Frum belatedly predicted.
Your job is not to move on, not to be distracted by the next gibberish Trump spouts at the next rally. The press will move on. The left must not from the latest proof that he means to be a dictator. Not this time.
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