Bob Woodward’s book “War”:
Steady and purposeful. That’s what we all signed on for in 2020 and for the most part we got it. (Israel-Gaza remains a conundrum…)
Biden’s legacy is secure, especially considering his Washingtonian exit. He did well under very difficult circumstances.
For weeks the press was obsessed with Biden’s “age problem,” examining everything from the shoes he wears to his sleeping habits. They demanded that his doctors appear before the media and take questions even after they testified to his good health. They pored over white house logs to determine if a specialist was secretly visiting him. Ok, fair enough. His performance at the debate in June validated the idea that he was no longer the man he once was and that another four years was probably too much.
Then the younger Kamala Harris replaced him and they have dogged her mercilessly for failing to give enough interviews feeding the Trump campaign’s theme that she’s avoiding the press because she’s incapable of doing them. Now she’s talking to anyone who will listen, even Fox news tomorrow and possibly Joe Rogan’s podcast. They still don’t seem satisfied.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump sounds like an addled old man after having one too many down at the pub, rambling on about the old days and yelling about all the foreigners eating the pets, (and he doesn’t even drink.) He’s holding rallies in places he can’t win and last night stopped his town hall for some medical emergencies in the crowd and never started up again, instead opting to play his (very weird) DJ playlist and bob around on the stage for 39 minutes. He’s cancelling one interview after another. Just today he abruptly backed out of one with CNBC’s Joe Kernen,
I’m just not seeing the same emphasis in the media put on Trump’s bizarre behavior as the press put on Biden and Harris. He’s not behaving normally, even for him.The reporting suggests that everything’s going as planned but it’s hard to imagine they actually believe that. Something is off and it sure looks like it’s Trump.
The race is tied and this man could be elected president again in three short weeks. He’s 78 years old and if there’s something going on with him, we should know it. Why is there not the kind of full court press on his medical records that there was on Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Biden last summer? Why aren’t they asking every Republican and every surrogate to explain why he’s acting so strangely? I realize they will lie but the media knows very well that it’s te asking of the question that draws attention to the problem.
If he wins it will be a nightmare. And sadly, if he doesn’t make it, a bizarre, virtually unknown chameleon by the name of JD Vance will be president. The media owes it to the country to sound the alarm. Trump isn’t right, even by his standards and it’s getting worse.
Here’s a hunched over, tired Trump looking like he slept in his make-up and just decided to trowel on more doing a “beautiful” job on Bartiromo:
That’s the one that got him in trouble saying that he was going to all out the military on “radical leftists.”
Then yesterday he held a “town hall” Pennsylvania in an overheated venue, with puppy killer Kristi Noem asking the questions. He took a few and then some people fainted from the heat and they never went back to the questions. The Washington Post wrote this up:
The town hall, moderated by South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), began with questions from preselected attendees for the former president. Donald Trump offered meandering answers for how he’d address housing affordability and help small businesses. But it took a sudden turn after two attendees required medical attention.
And so Trump, after jokingly asking the crowd if “anybody else would like to faint,” took a different approach. “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said.
For 39 minutes, Trump swayed, bopped — sometimes stopping to speak — as he turned the event into almost a living-room listening session of his favorite songs from his self-curated rally playlist. He played nine tracks. He danced. He shook hands with people onstage. He pointed to the crowd. Noem stood beside him, nodding with her hands clasped. Trump stayed in place onstage, slowly moving back and forth. He was done answering questions for the night.
[…]
Some in the crowd began to leave. Some looked around, wondering if he was done speaking for the night and how much longer the dance — or sway — session would last. Many stayed holding their cameras and watched as Trump took the music in, at times looking over at a screen beside him that showed videos of James Brown singing “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’sWorld” and Sinéad O’Connor performing “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
The evening began to take a different trajectory when a man appeared to faint in the crowd. Trump paused his remarks. Attendees fanned the man and began to sing “God Bless America.” As the man waited for medical help, Trump mused: “While we’re waiting. So we had a beautiful evening. And I don’t know if they could get this song up quickly, but if they could work really quickly backstage while we’re waiting. ‘Ave Maria.’” The song began to play.
Trump then resumed. Minutes later, another attendee needed medical attention. Trump stopped again: “Take your time, doctor.” “Ave Maria” began to play again. Trump then quipped to the crowd: “Would anybody else like to faint? Please raise your hand. Let’s do it now.”
Trump then referred to a chart with immigration statistics that he credits with saving his life: “My all-time favorite chart. And let’s listen to Pavarotti sing ‘Ave Maria.’ They gave me the ‘Ave Maria’ with no voice.” He then pointed to a Gold Star couple whose son was lost in battle, saying: “That’s for your boy, stand up.”
He briefly returned to talking about the election and the importance of winning Pennsylvania. After Noem gave Trump the option of closing “with a specific song” or taking “two more fast questions,” he addressed one of his aides: “So Justin, how about a couple really beauties and we’ll sit down and relax.”
It was time to listen to Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye.” After listening to James Brown, Trump began to speak again, as if remembering that he was still at an event that was billed as a town hall. “This is the most important election in the history of our country,” Trump said, once again accusing Democrats of weaponizing elections. But then he went back to his music.
“Those two people that went down are patriots and we love them and because of them we ended upwith some good music, right?” he asked. “So play ‘YMCA!’ Go ahead, let’s go nice and loud!”“Here we go, everybody,” Noem interjected.
The crowd cheered and danced to the Village People song from the 1970s, which celebrates gay cruising culture. Noem put her hands up in the shape of a “Y.” As the song began to end, Trump mouthed the words: “Nobody’s leaving.”
“Nobody’s leaving, what’s going on? There’s nobody leaving. Keep going,” he said, as Rufus Wainwright’s version of “Hallelujah” played next. “All right, turn that music up! Turn that up. Great song!” Then it was “Nobody Compares 2 U” by Sinéad O’Connor. “An American Trilogy” by Elvis Presley. “Rich Men North of Richmond” by Oliver Anthony. Trump stood and swayed.
As “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses played, he walked off the stage. He spoke toattendees on his way out,as “Memory” from “Cats” the musical played in the background.
Trump is said to enjoy DJing at Mar-a-lago and it seems he just wanted to do it at this event, no matter what. But this is abnormal, even for him. What’s going on?
Some highights:
One word: Weird.
Drugs?
Dementia?
JIMMY KIMMEL: “Just a former presidency suggesting he’ll use the military against his fellow citizens for exercising their freedom of speech. Nothing to worry about, folks. Seriously, when is he going to grow that little mustache already? Because there’s only three weeks left, you gotta get started. You can’t — it doesn’t just appear.”
From the video’s description:
We are three weeks away from the election and it was a messy weekend for Donald, he bragged about not using a teleprompter while reading from a teleprompter, he was in Aurora, Colorado where the MAGA-faithful assembled to bask in the glow of their dear misleader, Trump said that if elected he will invoke The Alien Enemies Act of 1978, VP Kamala Harris released her medical information over the weekend and Trump has yet to do so, he has called for Kamala to pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility, over the weekend he reportedly used the “r” word to describe her in front of his bigliest donors, for whatever reason Trump has doubled his support among Black American men and couldn’t wait to tell all the white people who came to his rally about it, no one mispronounces words better than Donald, and after his rally in Coachella on Saturday we spoke to Trump supporters there about the issues that seems to have them so upset.
And. They. Vote.
Do some phone banking for swing states if you’re not living in one. Hand out Democratic sample ballots at early voting, willya?
Rachel Maddow last night put the lie to oligarch nonsense about their support for Trump being a business decision. Um, no. Think Elon Musk’s decision to buy Twitter was a sound business decsision?
“In the history of modern economics America’s three-decade outperformance is remarkable,” declares The Economist. Why would “business” types hand it over to a felon whose entire economic plan is 19th-century tariffs?
Remember those “Nine out of ten doctors prefer” ads for personal care products back when color TV was young? Well, The Wall Street Journal finds that “65% of economists see Trump’s proposed policies putting more upward pressure on the federal deficit” and “68% said prices would rise faster under Trump than under Harris.”
No. Oligarchs want to be oligarchs. Their support of Trump is not based on economics, per se. The ruling class wants to rule. As a fringe benefit, writes Brian Klass about billionaires in politics, “Politics is the most straightforward way to get rich in autocracies. When the state controls the spoils, the way to get the spoils is to become part of the leadership of the state.?) They understand backing an autocrat as an investment in their own power and expanded wealth. Backing Trump is a twofer.
The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust (The Economist)
After a shaky start, America delivered a strong response to the global financial crisis of 2007-09, acting decisively to clean up bank balance-sheets, and making aggressive use of monetary policy to support growth. The government’s response to the covid slowdown was yet more extraordinary, with a suite of fiscal stimulus packages that left other countries in the dust. Indeed, officials overdid it in their pursuit of a recovery, contributing to the global rise in inflation. But it is impossible to explain America’s mighty economic engine without acknowledging the government’s willingness to step on the accelerator pedal when it has sputtered.
Please. Spare us the “you’ll like his policies” BS.
You should…
That’s right. The RCP average at the end of October in 2012 was a virtual tie between Obama and Romney.
I’ve been saying for a while that I think this election is more like 2012 than 2020 or 2016. We’ll see. But I thought it might be worth looking at where we were in October in a recent election the Democrats won handily.
Weirdo billionaire Trumper Bill Ackman responded to Stevens by daring him to respond to his full post, point by point —- and Stevens did it. I think it’s worth sharing with all of you here:
Bill, saying you support the candidate who has promised to cut taxes for billionaires vs. the candidate who will raise taxes on billionaires, but you don’t really support the tax cuts is a bit like the old “I read Playboy for the articles.” But fine, let’s assume you are convinced that all the benefits of a Trump presidency compensate for the burden of having your taxes cut. Let’s look at your 33 reasons.
But first, let’s dispense with the misty-eyed absurdity that you can vote for an openly racist Trump, but you’d like it known that you don’t support racism. The ballot box isn’t a cafeteria where you can go down the line and pick and choose what you like. If you vote for Trump, you are voting for a criminal out on bail who describes non-white immigrants with the same language as National Socialism described Jews.
Don’t pretend that by voting for Trump you get some pass because you insist that’s not who you are. It may well not be who you are, but it is very much who Donald Trump is.
(1)open the borders to millions of immigrants who were not screened for their risk to the country, dumping them into communities where the new immigrants overwhelm existing communities and the infrastructure to support the new entrants, at the expense of the historic residents Historic residents?
What are you talking about here, Bill? The “historic residents” like my paternal grandfather’s family that came to America in the 1700s or the “historic residents” like my maternal grandfather’s family, who were Irish immigrants. Are you talking about the ‘historic residents” of New York City before Ellis Island opened in 1892? Curious: How long have the Ackmans been “historic residents.”
Perhaps you don’t realize how referring to “historic residents” is the language of white supremist. Perhaps you are choosing to ignore that it was Donald Trump who killed the most aggressive border security reform in history. Perhaps you are unaware that Barack Obama deported more undocumented immigrants than Donald Trump. And perhaps you have missed that the current border crossings are lower than at the same point in 2020 under Donald Trump.
(2)introduce economic policies and massively increase spending without regard to their impact on inflation and the consequences for low-income Americans and the increase in our deficit and national debt
Perhaps you are unaware that the national debt increased more under Donald Trump than any non-wartime president in US history. Perhaps you do not realize that President Biden cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion in the first two years, the largest cut in US history. Perhaps you have not read the multiple projections of how much another Trump presidency will increase the deficit. Here’s a good start: https://washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/07/trump-harris-national-debt/…
(3)withdraw from Afghanistan, abandoning our local partners and the civilians who worked alongside us in an unprepared, overnight withdrawal that led to American casualties and destroyed the lives of Afghani women and girls for generations, against the strong advice of our military leadership, and thereafter not showing appropriate respect for their loss at a memorial ceremony in their honor,
It’s accurate that President Biden honored the deal Donald Trump made with the Taliban. It’s also accurate that more Americans died in Afghanistan under Trump than Biden. It’s odd that you see Donald Trump as some positive alternative for the women of Afghanistan, as Trump insists that he has always opposed American efforts to fight the Taliban.
(4) introduce thousands of new and unnecessary regulations in light of the existing regulatory regime that interferes with our businesses’ ability to compete, restraining the development of desperately needed housing, infrastructure, and energy production with the associated inflationary effects,
Republicans have used this line for years. But somehow, despite all these regulations that hurt business, the stock market is at record highs, and more Americans are working today than ever before. Perhaps you are unaware that Donald Trump is the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than when he was inaugurated.
(5) modify the bail system so that violent criminals are released without bail,
Bill, I didn’t make the Willie Horton ads, but I have made many ads accusing Democrats of being weak on crime. But if you trust FBI statistics – though you may agree with Donald Trump that they are just an arm of the Deep State – murders increased by 5,795, from 16,619 in 2019 to 22,414 in 2020. The number of murders had never increased by more than 2,000 in a year, meaning that 2020’s increase was nearly triple the previous record. Under Biden, murders and other violent crimes have decreased.
(6) destroy our street retailers and communities and promote lawlessness by making shoplifting (except above large thresholds) no longer a criminal offense,
What in the world are you talking about, Bill? Can you find a quote from VP Harris advocating decriminalizing shoplifting? Perhaps you are confusing California, where a referendum passed in 2014 that reduced jail sentences for shoplifting under $950, with Texas, where the limit is $2,500.
(7) limit and/or attempt to limit or ban fracking and LNG so that U.S. energy costs increase substantially, and the U.S. loses its energy independence,
VP Harris has stated she is not opposed to fracking. But if you want to point to the Biden-Harris administration record, as Donald Trump likes to do, oil production is higher today than at any point in US history. We are now the largest oil exporter in the world.
(8) promote DEI ideologies that award jobs, awards, and university admissions on the basis of race, sexual identity and gender criteria, and teach our students and citizens that the world can only be understood as an unfair battle between oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressors are only successful due to structural racism or a rigged system and the oppressed are simply victims of an unfair system and world
While a case can be made for the sort of diversity and equity approach that enabled J.D. Vance to be selected at Yale as a disadvantaged applicant, this idea that a Harris Administration will usher in a DEI Dark Ages is best left to the pages of the Daily Stormer, where the case is frequently articulated. ,
(9) educate our elementary children that gender is fluid, something to be chosen by a child, and promote hormone blockers and gender reassignment surgeries to our youth without regard to the longer-term consequences to their mental and physical health, and allow biological boys and men to compete in girls and women’s sports, depriving girls and women of scholarships, awards, and other opportunities that they would have rightly earned otherwise,
Bill, relax, no one is coming for your gender identity under a Harris presidency. You are confusing policies adopted by states and different educational institutions with a national policy. As Republicans, we called this Federalism and considered it a good thing.
(10) encourage and celebrate massive protests and riots that lead to the burning and destruction of local retail and business establishments while at the same time requiring schools to be shuttered because of the risk of Covid-19 spreading during large gatherings,
It is so odd that you cite protests and riots as a reason for supporting Donald Trump since it was under Trump that America had the most recent incidents of large-scale protests following the murder of George Floyd. Trump’s solution was to attempt to issue illegal orders to the military and walk into Lafayette Park holding a Bible.
(11) encourage and celebrate anti-American and anti-Israel protests and flag burning on campuses around the country with no consequences for the protesters who violate laws or university codes and policies,
This is confusing. On the one hand, many on the left attack Biden-Harris for the Administration’s record-breaking level of support for Israel, military and economic. As for disrespecting the flag, it’s Donald Trump who is often photographed holding onto an American flag on stage grotesquely and disrespectfully.
(12) allow antisemitism to explode with no serious efforts from the Administration to quell this hatred
Bill, Bill. Haven’t you read that Trump says if he doesn’t win, it will be the fault of the Jews? Are you really longing for a “blame the Jews” new movement in America?
(13) mandate vaccines that have not been adequately tested nor have their risks been properly considered compared with the potential benefits adjusted for the age and health of the individual, censoring the contrary advice of top scientists around the world,
There is a clear choice on medical issues across the board between Harris and Trump, from women’s health rights to vaccines. Harris supports school vaccinations, as has been US policy for the last century. Trump and Vance oppose ALL school vaccinations, which means no measles or polio vaccinations. Perhaps there is a “let’s bring back polio, measles, and whooping cough” argument to be made. Please feel free.
(14) shut down free speech in media and on social media platforms that is inconsistent with government policies and objectives, I
t‘s Donald Trump who has threatened to sue and shut down CNN, ABC, NBC Sixty Minutes, The Washingon Post and the New York Times, among others. Live in reality, Bill. It’s not as frightening as your imaginary world.
(15) use the U.S., state, and local legal systems to attack and attempt to jail, take off the campaign trail, and/or massively fine candidates for the presidency without regard to the merits or precedential issues of the case,
Have you seriously forgotten that Donald Trump was elected to chants of “Lock her up?” I work with the Lincoln Project, and Donald Trump demanded his Department of Justice shut down the Lincoln Project. If you think the unanimous jury in New York who convicted Donald Trump on 34 counts was politically motivated, including the juror who listed “Truth Social” as his main information source, that’s your prerogative. But if you are taking up the cause of unjust prosecution, it would be better to start with those who cannot afford competent representation rather than the Billionaire who spends millions on lawyers (though he does call his own lawyers incompetent.)
(16) seek to defund the police and promote anti-police rhetoric causing a loss of confidence in those who are charged with protecting us,
I will buy you a new Tesla of your choice if you can demonstrate that a Harris Administration would support defunding the police.
(17) use government funds to subsidize auto companies and internet providers with vastly more expensive, dated and/or lower-quality technology when greatly superior and cheaper alternatives are available from companies that are owned and/or managed by individuals not favored by the current Administration,
Bill, this might be helpful: https://latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html… Your issue is with Elon Musk. Take it up with him.
(18) mandate in legislation and otherwise government solutions to problems when the private sector can do a vastly better, faster, and cheaper job,
What exactly do you want to privatize, Bill? We have private prisons, private roads, private hospitals, private schools, private delivery services, etc. What’s on your wish list to privatize?
(19) seek to ban gas-powered cars and stoves without regard to the economic and practical consequences of doing so,
Your Wolf gas stove is safe, Bill. Just as is my Landcruiser.
(20) take no serious actions when 45 American citizens are killed by terrorists and 12 are taken hostage
What is it that you want the US military to do in Gaza that is not being done? What’s your plan? ,
(21) hold back armaments and weaponry from our most important ally in the Middle East in the midst of their hostage negotiations, hostages who include American citizens who have now been held for more than one year,
More military aid has been spent on Israel under Biden-Harris than any US president.
(22) eliminate sanctions on one of our most dangerous enemies enabling them to generate $150 billion+ of cash reserves from oil sales, which they can then use to fund terrorist proxy organizations who attack us and our allies. Exchange five American hostages held by Iran for five Iranians plus $6 billion of cash in the worst hostage negotiation in history setting a disastrous and dangerous precedent,
This number 22 is sort of a dog’s breakfast of ill-informed grievances. Why is it that military leaders who served with Trump overwhelmingly oppose him? Because they want America to be less safe? Is that really your view, Bill?
(23) remove known terrorist organizations from the terrorist list so we can provide aid to their people, and allow them to shoot rockets at U.S. assets and military bases with little if any military response from us,
What in the world are you talking about, Bill?
(24) lie to the American people about the cognitive health of the president and accuse those who provide video evidence of his decline of sharing doctored videos and being right wing conspirators,
Bill, you seem concerned that another Trump presidency would result in his palace guard, like his campaign, trying to hide and deny his cognitive decline. I agree, that is a very serious concern.
(25) do nothing about the deteriorating health of our citizens driven by the food industrial complex, the fraudulent USDA food pyramid, and the inclusion of ingredients in our food that are banned by other countries around the world which are more protective of their citizens,
Bill, I’m not sure backing the obese president, who is a walking advertisement for super-sizing every fast food portion, is the most credible way to pursue this argument.
(26) do nothing about the proliferation of new vaccines that are not properly analyzed for their risk versus the potential benefit for healthy children who are mandated to receive them,
This sounds like something you heard from RFK, jr. while falconing. America has the safest drug system in the world.
(27) do nothing about the continued exemption from liability for the pharma industry that has led to a proliferation of mandatory vaccines for children without considering the potential cumulative effects of the now mandated 72-shot regime,
See number 26 above.
(28) convince our minority youth that they are victims of a rigged system and that the American dream is not available to them,
Let me get this straight. One candidate is the daughter of immigrants, raised by a single mom, who worked her way through college and rose to become Vice President vs. a candidate who inherited $443 million with a trust fund that made him a millionaire in high school. Which one do you think is better proof that the American dream is alive?
(29) fail to provide adequate Secret Service protection for alternative presidential candidates,
Unlike you, Bill, I’ve spent a fair amount of time around the Secret Service working for presidential candidates. They do an extraordinary job under the most difficult situation. Was it Ronald Reagan’s lack of support of the Secret Service that resulted in him being shot? Or the two assassination attempts against President Ford? No one is arguing for less funding for the Secret Service. Quit attacking law enforcement and start laying the blame on those who break the law.
(30) litigate to prevent alternative candidates from getting on the ballot, and take other anti-competitive steps, including threatening political consultants who wish to work for alternative candidates for the presidency, and limit the potential media access for other candidates by threatening the networks’ future access to the Administration and access to ‘scoops’ if they platform an alternative candidate,
I was a political consultant at the highest levels for 30 years, and let me reassure you that business is just fine for political consultants, though I appreciate your concern.
(31) select the Democratic nominee for president in a backroom process by undisclosed party leaders without allowing Americans to choose between candidates in an open primary,
I’d refer you to the Constitution. There is no mention of political parties. Political parties are no more than bowling clubs, private organizations that can make any rules they so choose. You were free to announce your candidacy against President Biden in the primary or after he decided not to accept the nomination. Just as Donald Trump turned the RNC into a family held scam, political parties are free to govern themselves
(32) choose an inferior candidate for the presidency when other much more qualified candidates are available and interested to serve Is this more of your “Jamie Dimon should be president” trope? , (33) litigate to make it illegal for states to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and/or residence in order to vote at a time when many Americans have lost confidence in the accuracy and trustworthiness of our voting system.
The problem we have in America is getting people to vote when it is legal, not illegal voting. By refusing to accept his crushing defeat in 2020, Donald Trump has done more to weaken faith in American democracy than almost a century of attacks from the Communist Party of the USSR. It’s disgraceful, and supporting a candidate for president and vice-president who will not state that America has a legal president is shameful. Hope this helps
I need a cigarette.
Same boat parade:
Eric and Lara forgot to put life jackets on their small kids which is bad enough. And they had their children on a boat with a huge Trump head with blood all over it which was, at one time, considered to be so outrageous that they destroyed Kathy Griffin’s career over it. But that’s just the Trump family.
You would think, however, that someone would have said something about the Nazis in the boat parade and maybe told them to leave or at least said something about it today. But no, like his father, Eric obviously believes there were very find people on both sides.
I think everyone reading this already knows that Trump is planning to purge the nation of millions of non-citizens. Most people think he’s just going to round up undocumented immigrants (of color, he certainly won’t target any Swedes or Brits who’ve overstayed their visas and are working illegally.) This past weekend he amended that to say that he’s going to deport Haitians who are in the country legally so I think we can assume that he’s not going to stick to any of those pesky legal niceties. He plans to deport millions and millions of foreigners from the “shithole countries” he loathes so much.
But as Philip Bump points out in this piece, and I’ve been writing here non-stop for months, on the stump he’s more and more often targeting “the enemy within” by which he means his political enemies:
“You know, I always say: We have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say Kim Jong Un, you can say — but that’s — it’s going to be fine. If you have a smart president, no problem,” he said at a rally in Aurora, Colo., that itself was predicated on exaggerated claims about the dangers of immigrants. The bigger problem is “the enemy from within,” he continued. “All the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia.”
He reinforced that point in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, perhaps the single most credulously pro-Trump voice in American media.
“We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries, because if you have a smart president, he can handle them pretty easily,” Trump said. He insisted that he had done so when in office previously.
“But the thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff,” he said of the California congressman and Senate candidate. He called Schiff “a total sleazebag” and then, explicitly, “the enemy from within.”
Importantly, this came soon after Bartiromo had asked Trump about the risk of violence emerging around the election. She reminded Trump about the purported threat posed by immigrants from China and debunked claims about murderers crossing the border. She mused that “these outside agitators [might] start up on Election Day.”
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroyed our country, by the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages, they’re being inundated. But I don’t think they’re the problem in terms of Election Day,” Trump said. “I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical-left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Trump is not going to be the president on election day so he has no power to call out the National Guard or the Military to quell this imaginary leftist uprising. So no, he’s not talking about that. He’s talking about what he plans to do after the election if he wins. Something like this:
“The president was enraged,” Esper recalled. “He thought that the protests made the country look weak, made us look weak and ‘us’ meant him. And he wanted to do something about it.
“We reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly at [Joint Chiefs of Staff] Gen. [Mark] Milley and said, ‘Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?’ … It was a suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that moment as this issue just hung very heavily in the air.”
A little reminder of what happened to political enemies in a previous fascist regime:
Given the Nazis’ public aims of destroying the “Marxist” threat in Germany and tearing up the Versailles Treaty, aims that were shared by a majority of the German population, Hitler’s political opponents were the first victims of systematic Nazi persecution.
Various German authorities established the first concentration camps in Germany soon after Adolf Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The SS, SA (Storm Troopers), the police and civilian authorities set up hundreds of makeshift “camps” in empty warehouses, factories, and other locations across Germany. The camps served as “temporary” detention centers for political opponents who were incarcerated without trial and under conditions of great cruelty.
The Storm Troopers (SA) established the Oranienburg camp near Berlin in March 1933. The first prisoners were German political prisoners, primarily Communists and Social Democrats. Oranienburg became known for the maltreatment of inmates. Here, the Nazis attempt to undermine the charges of brutality by showing the “normal” prisoner routine. Oranienburg was gradually deactivated, closing by 1935. Most of the other early camps were also closed, to be replaced with larger camps run by the SS.
Ok, ok, it’s ridiculous to compare the two countries. Something like that could never happen here. Of course, people thought it could never happen in Germany either.
It always pays to remember that Hitler was legitimately elected and formed a government with the political establishment which thought it could control him. Yeah.
Here’s JD trying to clean it up but basically endorsing Trump’s call to go after the “far left” and his political enemies.
Chris Wallace was on TV promoting his new book about the 1960 election and they featured this quote from Nixon after he presided over the counting of the electoral votes as VP after his razor thin loss to Kennedy:
“I don’t think we can have a more striking and eloquent example of the stability of our Constitutional system and of the proud tradition of the American people of developing and respecting and honoring institutions of self-government”
I hadn’t heard that before. Nixon was famously bitter about that loss and there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious about it. But he didn’t whine like a little baby and throw a tantrum. Even he had more dignity than that.
Here’s Al Gore, in the same position, presiding over the same process in 2000, when he and the Democrats had a much better case for objecting to the results than Nixon in 1960 or Trump did in 2020. (He won the popular vote and the election was decided in a 5-4 partisan decision of the Supreme Court …)
That’s how it used to be done. Even if the candidate felt the result of a close election was unfair (which Trump’s was not) they’d take the L and move on for the good of the country. Not anymore.