Never Trumper Bill Kristol, like others of his ilk, has had an epiphany. In today’s Bulwark he discusses Trump’s hastily put together event at Mar-a-lago yesterday (it can’t be called a press conference) in which he said of his Madison Square Garden rally:
The love in that room, it was breathtaking. There’s never been an event that beautiful. It was a love fest. It was love for our country.
Gak. Kristol notes that this has a disturbing parallel with Orwell’s 1984 in which the repressive Interior Ministry of Oceania “the place where submission to Big Brother is ultimately enforced” is called The Ministry of Love. That sounds about right.
He’s not a Trump fan, that much is clear. Which means he’s not insane or a coward as so many Republicans are. But I did not expect this:
Yesterday, between Trump’s remarks at Mar-a-Lago and Harris’s speech at the Ellipse, I voted here in Virginia. Watching Harris’s speech later on, I wasn’t merely comfortable with my vote for her. I’ve got to say that I was proud to be a Harris voter. I’m sure she’ll disappoint me if she wins. They always do. But she’s risen to the occasion in this campaign in a way that speaks to much that is admirable about today’s America, the America that Trump and Miller and Bannon hate, but that many of us do love.
I never thought I’d see something like that from a conservative movement warrior like Kristol. Good for him. Let’s hope there are more like him out there.
In front of an enormous crowd of 75,000 people last night, Vice President Kamala Harris gave what was billed as her “closing argument” on the Ellipse, site of Donald Trump’s infamous insurrection incitement speech on January 6th. There were no insult comedians or crude radio talk show hosts or ancient wrestling stars ripping off their shirts. It was just her, standing before that massive crowd laying out the stakes in the election and offering her vision for the future.
Much of her speech was familiar to those of us who have followed the campaign closely. Her indictment of Donald Trump was crisp and direct and her list of policy objectives was meticulous and thorough. But she was also obviously making a pitch to any swing voters who are still on the fence. She said:
I will always listen to you even if you don’t vote for me, I will always tell you the truth, even if it is difficult to hear. I will work every day to build consensus and reach compromise to get things done.
She went on to promise to listen to people who disagree with her and, unlike Trump who considers them an enemy, she will offer them a seat at her table. She pledged to be a president for all Americans and always put country before party or self.
That kind of rhetoric always sets off alarms in a liberal Democrat like me, having suffered through way too many years of Blue Dog Dems and centrist sellouts who couldn’t get over losing all those Reagan Democrats back in the 1980s and always ended up empowering the GOP. But I think this is different. This is about the Harris Republicans and just as those Reagan Democrats defected 40 years ago because they felt their party had abandoned them, the Harris Republicans are in the same position today.
We don’t know exactly what Harris means by giving them a place at her table beyond promising a cabinet position to a Republican, but I’ve seen little evidence that she’s prepared to offer up corporate tax cuts or waffle on abortion or gay rights any more than Reagan adjusted his agenda in the slightest. She’s treating them respectfully and thanking them for joining the cause which is the right thing to do. We can anticipate that the people invited to sit at the table will be within the boundaries of what we used to call mainstream American politics.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Donald Trump. Over the last few days we’ve learned some new information about who he’s inviting to his table and it’s more than a little bit disturbing.
For instance, on Sunday 60 Minutes interviewed the man Trump has said he plans to make his border czar, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first term (and author of Project 2025’s immigration agenda.) He has made it plain that he is champing at the bit to oversee Trump’s massive deportation plan. And he made some news:
Cecilia Vega asks: “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?”
That’s right, they plan to deport the American children of undocumented workers. If they don’t like it, they can stay, of course — without their parents. Sorry kids, you picked the wrong family.
Another person Trump has given a seat at his table is Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the man who offered himself up to the highest bidder and Trump took him up on it. At his Madison Square Garden hatefest over the weekend, Trump told his rabid crowd that while he wasn’t going to go along with Kennedy’s environmental agenda, “I’m going to let him go wild on health, I’m going to let him go wild on the food, I’m going to let him go wild on medicines.”
Kennedy has subsequently explained that what Trump meant by that was that he would get “control” of all the health agencies:
BREAKING: RFK Jr. says Donald Trump has promised him "control of the public health agencies."
This is a man who, even aside from the worm in his brain and his propensity for collecting roadkill, is one of the biggest conspiracy theorists in the country. To even suggest that he could be put in charge of public health or the USDA is beyond crazy. Whether Trump would actually do such a thing is unknown. He often makes promises he doesn’t keep. But the mere fact that he believes that telling his followers that he will do it is something they want to hear is disconcerting. Remember there will be no guardrails. If Trump wants to let Bobby go wild, his henchmen will find a way to circumvent any impediments.
And then there’s the Big Kahuna, Elon Musk, the man to whom he’s outsourced much of his campaign and who he has promised to name to head a new “Department of Government Efficiency.” At the big hatefest on Sunday, Trump’s transition chief Howard Lutkin asked Musk how much he thought could be cut from the budget of 6.5 trillion and he said about 2 trillion give or take.
Elon Musk says he thinks when he's serving in the Trump administration that he can cut nearly 1/3 of the federal budget pic.twitter.com/c4ZaIYPZSf
Slashing the budget that steeply would require decimating an array of government services, including food, health care and housing aid — and it could erode funding for programs that lawmakers in both parties say they want to protect, from defense to Social Security.
The thing is that Musk understands exactly what that would mean even if Trump’s starry-eyed cult following is clueless. The billionaires will be fine. The rest of us not so much. Here is an X user reacting to Musk’s plans online and Musks’ response:
When asked about “tackling the nation’s debt,” he mentioned changing the tax code, and then went on to say there would be some financial difficulty imposed on some Americans. “Most importantly, we have to reduce spending to live within our means,” he said, adding that these efforts will “involve some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
Later on, Musk said that he would “balance the budget immediately,” adding: “Obviously, a lot of people who are taking advantage of government are going to be upset about that. I’ll probably need a lot of security, but it’s got to be done. And if it’s not done, we’ll just go bankrupt,” he said, adding that these efforts will “involve some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
You have to love that America is going to be so great that he’s assuming there will be massive violence in the streets. Luckily he can afford a lot of security so that’s good.
The total 2024 discretionary federal budget including military spending which excludes interest payments, Medicare, Social Security and other mandatory programs was $1.6 trillion in 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office. You do the math. Clearly Musk has not.
Again, will any of this come to pass? Who knows? But if there’s one person Trump owes big time it’s Musk and he’s already thoroughly entrenched in the national security apparatus as a major defense contractor. He might very well want to give him free rein too and, if so, who’s going to stop him? Don Jr?
Those are just three of the big marquee names that Trump is promising to give a seat at his table. I think it’s fair to say that it’s just a little bit more alarming than if Kamala Harris makes Adam Kinsinger the VA Secretary or invites Liz Cheney to give her opinion on Ukraine. These three are certified fascists and/or nutcases who should not be let within a hundred miles of the White House. Harris’s bipartisan outreach to the small group of Republican apostates is downright quaint by comparison.
Vice president Kamala Harris is trying to win the 2024 presidential election by appealing to Americans’ hearts and minds. Donald Trump is campaiging in blue states he cannot win, as he did again on Sunday, to draw press attention to himself, not voters. Trump is not even trying to win the election. He means to monkeywrench the post-election. That contrast ought to get more press than it does.
I’ve mentioned before the 2013 “election integrity” boot camp I sat in on sponsored by a North Carolina True the Vote spinoff. Much of it was sad. All of it was conspiratorial. None of it was about increasing voter participation. Trump’s campaign is no different, just better funded. All defense. No offense. Okay, plenty of offense, just not the game-winning kind.
Harris last night at The Ellipse in the nation’s capitol, contrasted her to-do list with Trump’s enemies list.
“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities on what I will get done for the American people.”
Trump is running on vengeance, on making himself dictator, and on staying out of jail. That ought to get more press too.
He’s also got a lot of help with propaganda sponsored by billionaires and foreign agents. Perhaps you’ve noticed?
“Polymarket is a foreign information operation against Harris,” tweeted Simon Rosenberg last night.
Huh. I somehow hadn't thought about this. Why is Polymarket advertising to Americans, who can't legally use its services? https://t.co/iBMA6WlImD
When I obtain a copy of some state Democratic Party’s county chair’s manual, they are often heavy on party administration and light on electing Democrats. Trump’s campaign is light on doing anything to make the country a better place. That’s because the country and his supporters are not Trump’s primary interests. That ought to get more press.
When he loses next week (I’m hopeful), he’ll take once again to the courts and attempt to litigate a win. He doesn’t see the law as a process for finding the truth and working out justice. It’s a tool for gaming democracy and bleeding dry his opponents.
Trump uses litigation as a tool to create a grievance structure that will allow him to claim he is a victim when he loses fair and square. He will lie about the outcome, but it won't change the results.
Like Lewis Carroll’s oysters, election conspiracy theories are coming “thick and fast,” and “more, and more, and more.”
A voter engagement group yet unnamed by Pennsylvania law enforcement submitted batches of voter registration applications suspected of being fraudulent both in York and Lancaster counties. Or about 60 percent of those examined in Lancaster.
“It is not uncommon, especially in presidential election years, for paid workers of such groups to turn in fabricated applications,” explains Katie Bernard of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
It won’t matter who is paying the group. Donald Trump will use the episode to declare the election invalid when he loses Pennsylvania next week.
Lancaster County was not “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person,” as former President Donald Trump claimed on Truth Social Monday night.
Trump, who has a long history of spreading false information about Pennsylvania elections, took aim at Lancaster and York Counties, both of which have reported encountering voter registration applications that showed signs of fraud.
But Trump’s post drastically overcounted the affected documents, and went beyond reality to falsely claim that Lancaster County had encountered “Fake Ballots.”
“No actual ballots have been deemed fraudulent,” reports WGAL Harrisburg. Nevertheless, Trump is priming his base for Insurrection 2.0.
Federal officials are on alert for election conspiracy-inspired violence between now and the presidential inauguration, reports NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny:
U.S. intelligence agencies have identified domestic extremists with grievances rooted in election-related conspiracy theories, including beliefs in widespread voter fraud and animosity toward perceived political opponents, as the most likely threat of violence in the coming election.
In a Joint Intelligence Bulletin that was not distributed publicly but was reviewed by NBC News, agents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warn state and local law enforcement agencies that domestic violent extremists seeking to terrorize and disrupt the vote are a threat to the election and throughout Inauguration Day.
The report identified the potential targets as candidates, elected officials, election workers, members of the media and judges involved in election cases. The potential threats include physical attacks and violence at polling places, ballot drop boxes, voter registration locations and rallies and campaign events.
The documents obtained by Property of the People, a nonprofit government transparency group, “are unmistakably a product of a radically heightened threat environment,” said Ryan Shapiro, executive director.
FKA Twitter under Elon Musk has become a constant vector for spreading “super-nova viral lies” and disinformation about elections and stolen votes, Chris Hayes said Tuesday in introducing Zadrozny’s reporting.
The reports follow others released in recent weeks that warn of an increase in online chatter about an impending civil war, as well as several incidents of violence or thwarted attacks before the election. Agents wrote that some extremists were “reacting to the 2024 election season and prominent policy issues by engaging in illegal preparatory or violent activity that they link to the narrative of an impending civil war.”
A separate October bulletin from Colorado’s state threat assessment center highlighted threats posed by people who dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election results. The report underscored the problem of “insider threats,” in which people with authorized access to the election process might attempt to derail it. It also noted a “continued dialogue amongst individuals on extremist discussion groups and forums that the results of the 2020 elections were inaccurate.”
Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peters was sentenced on Oct. 3 to nine years in jail for distributing screenshots of election software in 2020. The Colorado bulletin suggests other potential conspirators are not deterred by her conviction.
Hayes asked how seriously we should take these warnings.
“Incredibly seriously,” Zadrozny replied. On Jan. 5, 2021, people wrote about chatter that reactionaries were headed to the Capitol, bringing guns, and “all hell’s going to break loose,” she said. Yet there wasn’t any joint intelligence bulletin released to local law enforcement. There was instead concern over trampling free speech protections. Yet this bulletin mentioned “two thwarted attempts and three actual attacks” based on election lies. Elections offices have invested in increased security for 2024.
“Maricopa County looks like a war zone, with snipers on the roof and panic buttons,” Zadrozny said.
Trump is running to stay out of jail over federal prosecutions and, like a cornered animal, will do anything to escape the trap. He’s devious, but not clever. He’s planning to run the same election schemes that failed him in 2020 in 2024, including capitalizing again on the “Red Mirage” to allege election theft and preemptively declare vistory.
Robert Reich explains how the “Red Mirage” and “Blue Shift” feed into conspiracists’ stolen election narrative (and potential 2024 election violence). “But if you know what they are, you won’t be fooled by them,” Reich naively advises.
Trump’s dirty election night trick doesn’t work if you know it’s coming. Let me explain. pic.twitter.com/hTRilkPqus
But MAGA is a movement that luxuriates in spreading misinformation in pursuit of dominating the majority of us by hook or by crook, which, in MAGAstan is all that matters. They know it’s wrong and they don’t care.
"He called it 'a day of love' … the American people are exhausted with his gaslighting. Enough. We are ready to turn the page. We're done." — Harris highlights Trump's comments about January 6 during his Univision town hall pic.twitter.com/rW6LWEdwvF
Trump held a hastily arranged “press conference” in which he took no questions and basically droned on for a while as per usual. Clearly, they felt they needed to address the raging scandal over his MSG rally but he couldn’t bring himself to apologize or even say that he didn’t agree with the comments. Instead he just lied and said it was a lovefest and told voters once again that they can believe him or they can believe their lying eyes.
They are nervous. Their rally didn’t go as planned and now Harris is holding a huge event on the Ellipse where they expect about 50 thousand people. I doubt there’s going to be a bunch of speakers crudely insulting half the country.
Woman at Trump rally NC today says she is retired because the stock market is booming but Trump says it’s going to crash any day now so she may have to go back to work if Harris wins. She says Harris is a communist & people only support her because she’s black. pic.twitter.com/G2Di86pEJd
Police arrested an 18-year-old wielding a machete with an 18-inch blade outside a polling station in Florida on Tuesday, who was part of a group of teenagers accused of intimidating Democratic supporters.
The teenager, Caleb James Williams, was arrested after 4 p.m. when officers were called to the Beaches Branch Library in Neptune Beach.
Williams was arrested on charges of aggravated assault for allegedly brandishing his weapon at two unidentified women, ages 71 and 54, and improper exhibition of a weapon, Neptune Beach Police Department said.
He and his bros were waving Trump flags.
It's astounding how Trump cultists can believe this stuff when Trump was actually president for four years and did literally none of it pic.twitter.com/0sHFMoJB4b
New Trump closing ad begins: “Kamala backed Biden on everything.” Ends with: “Remember, Kamala broke it. president Trump will fix it” pic.twitter.com/kRfAq6LP4K
On Friday, we published an article about how former President Donald Trump’s campaign has made a habit of deceptively using quotations in television ads attacking Vice President Kamala Harris.
Then, just days later, the campaign released perhaps the most egregious example yet.
A new minute-long ad revives two of the quote distortions from previous Trump ads – and sprinkles in two more for good measure. Here is a fact check.
Cutting out key words about Harris and taxes
The new ad cuts out critical words from a news article about Harris’ tax proposals.
The ad, like a previous Trump ad, features the following on-screen text attributed to an August article in The New York Times: “Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes.” But as the Times itself has noted, this is a misleading snip. What the Times article actually said was this: “Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxeson the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.”
That’s a big difference.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article. For the Friday article on the campaign’s misleading use of quotations, the campaign declined to address any of the specific examples we raised; instead, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “President Trump has the hardest-hitting, most well produced ads in the business.”
Cutting out a key word about Harris and the border
The new ad also deletes a crucial word from a news article about immigration policy.
The ad features the following on-screen text the ad attributes to a CBS News piece in September: “Harris vows to keep Biden’s border.” The text is accompanied by a narrator saying, falsely, that “Kamala was in charge of his open-border policies.”
But what the CBS News article’s headline actually said was this: “Harris vows to keep Biden’s border crackdown: ‘The United States is a sovereign nation.’” The article began: “During a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to keep President Biden’s asylum crackdown in place if elected, solidifying Democrats’ embrace of more stringent immigration rules.”
Taking an immigration quote out of context
The ad features on-screen text that says, “welfare for illegals,” attributing those words to an NBC News article from 2018.
But as we noted when a previous Trump ad featured similar on-screen text, that NBC News article did not even mention Biden or Harris, whose administration did not begin until 2021. And the article used the phrase “welfare for illegal immigrants” only in passing – in a totally different context than the Trump ad uses it.
The article criticized occupational licensing rules that were preventing immigrants enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program from working in certain jobs. It said: “It’s a complete travesty that otherwise qualified individuals can’t get the government’s permission to cut hair. Regardless of one’s position on welfare for illegal immigrants, a license is clearly different from food stamps and other government safety nets.”
Taking a quote about national security out of context
The new ad features giant on-screen text with the words “global war,” attributing them to a July article by the media outlet Axios, as the ad’s narrator says, “Their weakness invited wars.”
But the Axios article did not claim there is “global war” under the Biden administration. The article was headlined, “U.S. not ready for global war, commission warns”; it was about a bipartisan commission’s findings about the country’s preparedness for hypothetical future conflict, not about the present situation.
Luckily most people don’t actually watch TV ads anymore. But online, the comments to this ad are “wow, they’re using Kamala’s own words against her.”
There have always been misleading and hysterical ads in political campaigns and it isn’t confined to the Republicans (although they’ve made a fetish of it.) But with Trump it’s just “anything goes” and there’s very little blowback because everyone knows he’s a pathological liar and that’s just par for the course. I suspect all the other Republicans are watching and learning that the key is to lie so flagrantly that it shocks people and never admit you are wrong.
This isn’t going to go away when Trump finally shuffles off to Mar-a-lago for the last time (whenever that will be.) It’s the new ethosewhich, combined with organized disinformation, is going to make politics a lethal minefield for a long time to come.
Many don’t realize that the first people Hitler sent to his concentration camps weren’t everyday Jewish citizens, but his political opponents. So, when Trump rants about retribution, locking up his opponents, and giving them “very long sentences,” I can’t help but take him… pic.twitter.com/Wu6rnUg72K
This is something that has driven me crazy for years. Here in California it’s an ongoing problem. Even this year we have a couple of these things on the ballot. Bolts.com took a look at one of them on the Ohio ballot and it’s an incredible story of political gamesmanshipt and special interest influence. It’s a gerrymandering initiative and it could affect all of us:
When Songgu Kwon went to the polls earlier this month, he was eager to help Ohio adopt an independent redistricting commission. The comic book writer and illustrator, who lives near Athens, dislikes the process with which politicians have carved up Ohio into congressional and legislative districts that favor them, enabling Republicans to lock in large majorities. So he was pleased that voting rights groups had placed Issue 1, a proposal meant to create fairer maps, on the Ohio ballot this fall.
“I’m in support of any measures that make the process more fair to reflect the will of the people, instead of letting the politicians decide how to gerrymander,” says Kwon.
In the voting booth, he reviewed the text in front of him. His ballot read that voting ‘yes’ would set up a panel “required to gerrymander the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts,” and that it would “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering.”
So Kwon voted ‘no’ on the measure—given what he’d just read, he thought, that had to be the way to signal support for independent redistricting. He’d gone in planning to vote ‘yes,’ but he was thrown off by this language he saw; he guessed that he must have been wrong or missed some recent development. “The language seemed really specific that if you vote ‘yes’, you’re for gerrymandering,” he now recalls in frustration.
But when he left the polling station and compared notes with his wife, he quickly figured out that he’d made a mistake: He had just voted to preserve the status quo. To bring about the new independent process and remove redistricting from elected officials, as was his intention, he would have had to vote ‘yes.’
Kwon says he got confused by the language that was crafted and placed on the ballot by Republican Ohio officials. The official most directly responsible for this language, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, had a direct hand in drawing the gerrymandered maps that Kwon opposes and that the reform would unwind.
“I didn’t think that they would go so far as to just straight up lie and use a word that means one thing to describe something else,” Kwon told me. “They are using the term gerrymandering to describe an attempt to actually fix the gerrymandering.”
As I said, I’ve been there. And when you add in the misleading ads and social media disinformation you end up feeling like throwing up your hands and not bothering. That’s one reason why a site like Bolts is so helpful. Hardly anyone follows these local and state stories in depth.
Here is the link to their Election Cheat Sheet which is really thorough. Whether you’re looking for some help with your own ballot or just want to know what’s going on around the country, it’s invaluable.
