Following up on Tom’s post below. Note Trump’s contribution:
And half of the voters want more of this. Apparently, they love it.
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Watering N.C. with the blood of rescuers. Or something.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell warned that disinformation spread about Hurricane Helene relief in North Carolina would spawn threats against government workers and impede rescue and relief efforts. She was right (Washington Post):
LAKE LURE, N.C. — Federal emergency response personnel on Saturday had employees operating in hard-hit Rutherford County, N.C., stop working and move to a different area because of concerns over “armed militia” threatening government workers in the region, according to an email sent to federal agencies helping with response in the state.
Around 1 p.m. Saturday, an official with the U.S. Forest Service, which is supporting recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sent an urgent message to numerous federal agencies warning that “FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately. The message stated that National Guard troops ‘had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA.’”
“The IMTs [incident management teams] have been notified and are coordinating the evacuation of all assigned personnel in that county,” the email added.
Two federal officials confirmed the authenticity of the email, though it was unclear whether the quoted threat was seen as credible. The National Guard referred questions to FEMA when asked about the incident. One Forest Service official coordinating the Helene recovery said responders moved to a “safe area” and at least some work in that area — which included clearing trees off dozens of damaged and blocked roads to help search-and-rescue crews, as well as groups delivering supplies — was paused.
While unclear if the threat was credible, teams tasked with clearing trees and repairing damaged and blocked roads were evacuated to a “safe area” for the day. They returned to Rutherford County on Sunday afternoon. An anonymous source familiar with the relief work said, “FEMA has made some operational adjustments” for safety reasons.
Relief workers have heard yelled, “We don’t want your help here” and “We don’t want the government here.” People who need and are entitled to federal and state disaster aid are refusing it. Or else not signing up because of the rumors and conspiracy fantasies circulated by idiots.
Earlier Saturday, a resident came to a supplies distribution center, now largely run by relief group the Cajun Navy with the help of a Baptist Church organization, and threatened FEMA personnel who were also stationed there in a trailer, according to two Cajun Navy volunteers. Lake Lure Police and Rutherford County Sheriff’s offices confirmed the incident.
Sgt. Herbie Martin with the Spindale Police Department, located about 25 miles outside Lake Lure, was circling the parking lot Sunday afternoon. He also confirmed the incident, saying “he hoped FEMA would come back.”
Last night I ran into old friends who live in a cove three miles from here by road. They are still without, water, power, or cell service over two weeks after Helene hit this area. And they live inside Asheville city limits. There is a lot that needs fixing. Idiots with guns playing soldier are not helping.
It’s quite windy today and the power just went out.
Update: The Post added new reporting to its story. Authorities with the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office have made one arrest.
Capt. Jamie Keever, the spokesman, said the charge is going armed to the terror of the public, a misdemeanor, and the man will be identified later Monday in a news release.
The threats were made at a gas station on Route 9 in neighboring Polk County, prompting an attendant there to share concerns with active-duty U.S. soldiers who visited, Keever said. The Army reported the incident to law enforcement authorities, who arrested the man Saturday night.
Keever said while there have been unconfirmed reports of “truckloads of militia men” in the area, the details in this case do not bear that out. “This was a lone individual,” Keever said. “We’re trying to get the word out about that.”
So, only one idiot. And the power’s back on.
There are already Trump AR-15s
Politico reporters watched 20 Trump rallies and, to their credit, reported what they heard. Donald Trump is still preaching the dark “weird shit” of American carnage eight years after his inaugural speech. Rapists and murderers are everywhere, and “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.” The monsters are due on Maple Street.
Trump is one Grade A paranoiac, and he’s likely getting a lot of this from Discount Goebbels.
Haitians, Venezuelans, Mexicans, and Chinese immigrants are targets. And you too, Dear Reader (Heather Cox Richardson):
And on Sunday, October 13, Trump made the full leap to authoritarianism, calling for using the federal government not only against immigrants, but also against his political opponents. After weeks of complaining about the “enemy within,” Trump suggested that those who oppose him in the 2024 election are the nation’s most serious problem.
He told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that even more troubling for the forthcoming election than immigrants “is the enemy from within…we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics…. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
“Efforts to blame outsiders, a politically voiceless group, which Trump is an expert at doing, has led to atrocities in the United States — everything from Japanese internment to Operation Wetback,” said Ediberto Román, a Florida International University law professor who studies xenophobia and immigration.
Vivid imagery, such as telling crowds of rally attendees that migrants will “cut your throat,” are now a staple of Trump’s speeches. He cites cases of U.S. women and girls allegedly murdered by immigrants in the country illegally, even as studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.
But Trump says they are — because they are inherently worse people. He’s told nearly all-white crowds in the past that they have “good genes,” even before his explicit suggestion this week that non-white immigrants are genetically inferior — when he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that migrants have “bad genes.”
Read: eugenics.
“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, the author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” and a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric. “Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”
We don’t even have to look beyond the last decade of the 20th century. The Rwandan genocide and the Srebrenica massacre were a mere 30 years ago. Trump is performing Radio Rwanda for white people in preparation for a pogrom. The world watched Trump incite a mob to violence once. He’s doing it again. When Trump told his Aurora rally, “We have to live with these animals, but we won’t live with them for long,” someone shouted, “Kill them!”
Notice, Trump is spending precious days not campaigning in key swing states. Because he’s not planning to win at the ballot box. He’s moved on to Plan B. For that he needs control of Congress.
The backup to Trump’s 2020 Plan B was mob violence. He’s clearly preparing that contingency again.
Trump campaigned over the last week in Aurora, Colorado where, despite local authorities’ and GOP officials’ denials, Trump proclaimed the city a “war zone” occupied by Venzuelan gangs. A Right Side Broadcasting host proclaimed: “These people, they are so evil. They are not your run-of-the-mill criminal. They are people that are Satanic. They are involved in human sacrifice. They are raping men, women, and children—especially underaged children.”
Trump spoke in Coachella, California where he has no hope of winning that state. He has plans for a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, evoking comparisons to the American Nazi rally held there in 1939.
Threats of MAGA violence are all over social media. There are already Trump knives and Trump AR-15s. Can Trump machetes be far behind?
This is what it looks like when fascism comes to America. Not just wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross, but echoing rhetoric that led to the worst atrocities of the 20th century. Take this seriously. Get busy beating MAGA soundly at the polls, people.
It’s time for this message:
I listened to the Pod Save America interview with David Plouffe who’s working on the Harris campaign and he says they have found in their qualitative research that this message resonates. I don’t know if that’s meaningful, but I hope it is because it would mean that the batshit crazy cult worship is confined to a minority and the Democrats may win.
Think about it. Here’s you have Trump acting like a lunatic on the stump and Republicans like Cheney and Pence along with most of his cabinet saying he’s unfit. If most people don’t find that disturbing we’re in bigger trouble than I realized.
I’m reminded of Obama’s righteous indignation at his speech last week. “When did this become ok?”
A lot of us are looking at our mail-in ballots this week-end and have some questions. Bolts.com is featuring another interesting and useful “Ask the Experts” about the election:
November is fast approaching, and with it a myriad of state and local elections. We published a guide last week to more than 500 races, and why they matter, to help you navigate it.
But we also wanted to hear from you. For “Ask Bolts,” our ongoing series in which we tackle reader questions, we asked you what you wanted to know about these upcoming elections.
As always, you came through with many thoughtful questions. Today I tackle six of them—a fun opportunity to introduce you to our team’s elections reporting and research in a new way.
Navigate to the question that most interests you here, or scroll down to explore them all at your leisure:
What are the interesting referenda in November?
Jump to our answer.What is a state auditor, and why should I care?
Jump to our answer.What’s the best way to find out about nonpartisan judges? So many people tell me they have no idea and leave the ballot blank.
Jump to our answer.I have a lot of friends who say, “I live in D.C., it’s not like my vote matters that much.” What downballot races can I advocate for?
Jump to our answer.What’s the most unusual office that’s having elections?
Jump to our answer.Where can people get involved as poll monitors? I can travel.
Jump to our answer.Stay tuned for more before election day. And if you have a question, it’s not too late to share it!
I’m sure you remember those two NYT headlines from the other day. I wrote about it, along with just about everyone else.
Margartet Sullivan, former ombudsman for the Times, weighs in on it and I think it’s fascinating that one of her former colleagues at the paper professed ignorance about why people were criticizing the paper for it:
Commenting on the second headline, the author Stuart Stevens, who writes about how democracies turn into autocracies, suggested: “These two headlines should be studied in journalism classes for decades.”
After I responded, “Not a bad idea,” a prominent voice from the New York Times chimed in. Michael Barbaro, who hosts The Daily podcast, posed a challenge to me: “Care to explain what the issue is with these headlines?”
Barbaro, whom I know from my days as public editor of the Times, is a smart guy, so I’m pretty sure he knows what the issue might be.
But sure, I’ll explain: The Kamala Harris headline is unnecessarily negative, over a story that probably doesn’t need to exist. Politicians, if they are skilled, do this all the time. They answer questions by trying to stay on message. They stay away from specifics that don’t serve their purpose.[…]
Sullivan points out that the Harris headline is really a reflection of the hysteria among the elite press that Harris hasn’t been giving them the direct attention to which they believe they are entitled. Boo hoo.
So, it’s a negative headline over a dubious story. By itself, it’s not really a huge deal. Another example of Big Journalism trying to find fault with Harris. More of an eye-roll, perhaps, than a journalistic mortal sin.
But juxtapose it with the Trump headline, which takes a hate-filled trope and treats it like some sort of lofty intellectual interest.
That headline, wrote Stevens, “could apply to an article about a Nobel prize winner in genetic studies.” […]
She notes that deep in the article itself they do address the fact that Trump is evoking “the ideology of eugenics promulgated by Nazis in Germany and white supremacists in the United States.” To me that’s the big story and it’s one that’s been out there since Trump came down the escalator in 2015. He really believes in this stuff and it’s never been fully explored even as he’s now not only talking about his own “good German blood” as he used to do but saying that migrants have inferior genes. This is right out of the Nazi playbook and aI would think that if the media made as big a del about this as they did Hillary Clinton’s emails, some Hispanic and Black Americans who think he’s good for the economy might wonder if maybe he’s talking about them — which he is.
But they don’t do that. Sullivan writes:
This is vile stuff. Cleaning it up so it sounds like an academic white paper is really not a responsible way to present what’s happening. What’s more, the adjacency of these stories suggests equivalence between a traditional democracy-supporting candidate and a would-be autocrat who stirs up grievance as a political ploy.[…]
She asked her graduate journalism students at Columbia to comment on the headlines. Without prompting, they didn’t have any problem understanding what the problem was.
She concludes:
In parting, I’ll share with you a post from historian and author Kevin Kruse about Trump.
Historians: He’s a fascist. Political scientists: He’s a fascist. His own aides: He’s a fascist. The NYT: He shows a wistful longing for a bygone era of global politics.
That, in essence, is the issue with these headlines.
Here’s a little reminder of the NY Times coverage of an earlier fascist:
On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article about Adolf Hitler. It’s an incredible read — especially its assertion that “Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded.” This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes among the German masses.
But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs on anti-Semitism. Brown acknowledges Hitler’s vicious anti-Semitism as the core of Hitler’s appeal — and notes the terrified Jewish community was fleeing from him — but goes on to dismiss it as a play to satiate the rubes (bolding mine):
He is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism. He probably does not know himself just what he wants to accomplish. The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are nicknamed the “Hakenkreuzler.” So violent are Hitler’s fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew’s night.
But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.
A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: “You can’t expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them.”
Now, Brown’s sources in all likelihood did tell him that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was for show. That was a popular opinion during Nazism’s early days. But that speaks to how unprepared polite German society was for a movement as sincerely, radically violent as Hitler’s to take power.
Ten years later:
How’d that work out for us?
Ugh:
Ezra Klein says to ignore the polls and as you know I feel the same — if only I could. Having said that, it you are refreshing on 538 several times a day anyway, this can help you keep perspective:
Back in 2016, Harry Enten, then at FiveThirtyEight, calculated the final polling error in every presidential election between 1968 and 2012. On average, the polls missed by two percentage points. In 2016, an American Association for Public Opinion Research postmortem found that the average error of the national polls was 2.2 points, but the polls of individual states were off by 5.1 points. In 2020, the national polls were off by 4.5 points and the state-level polls missed, again, by 5.1 points.
You could imagine a world in which these errors are random and cancel one another out. Perhaps Donald Trump’s support is undercounted by three points in Michigan but overcounted by three points in Wisconsin. But errors often systematically favor one candidate or the other. In both 2016 and 2020, for instance, state-level polls tended to undercount Trump supporters. The polls overestimated Hillary Clinton’s margin by three points in 2016 and Joe Biden’s margin by 4.3 points in 2020.
In a blowout election, an error of a few points in one direction or another is meaningless. In the California Senate race, for example, Adam Schiff, a Democrat, is leading Steve Garvey, a Republican, by between 17 and 33 points, depending on the poll. Even a polling error of 10 points wouldn’t matter to the outcome of the race.
But that’s not where the presidential election sits. As of Oct. 10, The New York Times’s polling average had Kamala Harris leading Trump by three points nationally. That’s tight, but the seven swing states are tighter: Neither candidate is leading by more than two points in any of them.
Imagine the polls perform better in 2024 than they did in either 2016 or 2020: They’re off, remarkably, by merely two points in the swing states. Huzzah! That would be consistent with Harris winning every swing state. It would also be consistent with Trump winning every swing state. This is not some outlandish scenario. According to Nate Silver’s election model, the most likely electoral outcome “is Harris sweeping all seven swing states. And the next most likely is Trump sweeping all seven.”
Which is all to say: The polls can’t tell you the way in which they’re going to be wrong, nor by how much. But that’s what matters now.
This morning there were a slew of polls showing the race is tightening, some of them straining credulity. I decided to just ignore them all. I’m also finding that my tolerance for Democratic bed wetting is very thin right now, with everyone and their their grandmother having sage advice for Harris and the Democrats. It’s enervating and counterproductive to have this discussion in public especially since Trump is deploying the Bandwagon Effect and strutting around like he’s 10 points ahead. It’s just not helpful
We’re all still suffering from the horrific 2016 result and stressed out about a possible repeat. We can’t believe that orange monster is even close. I don’t know about you but I’m stressed out beyond belief knowing that so many of my fellow Americans are enthusiastic about putting this freak back in the White House and some, to be generous, just think it doesn’t matter that he’s a fascist because they just want their tax cuts, don’t want a woman in the White House or simply hate Democrats/ desire power so much that they are willing to overlook it. I don’t know how I can unsee that, regardless of the outcome of the election.
But that’s a problem for another day.
If you’re a political junkie there are lots of stories and plenty of information out there to keep you interested. The horserace stuff just isn’t one of them. It’s close. That’s all we need to know.
It is 100% accurate to call Donald Trump a facist
Trump on police: “They’re gonna end our crime problem very quickly. All we have to do is give them the word. They’re ready to go … they’re not allowed to do the job … we’re gonna indemnify them against any problems they have.” pic.twitter.com/EEVlHfg8wV
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2024
Trump on police: “They’re gonna end our crime problem very quickly. All we have to do is give them the word. They’re ready to go … they’re not allowed to do the job … we’re gonna indemnify them against any problems they have.”
Politico, of all places, published this little article this weekend to little fanfare, with this headline:
Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.
Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”
He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.
In his lengthy speech Friday, Trump delivered a broadside against the thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora. And he declared that he would use the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to authorize rounding up or removing people who are from enemy countries in times of war, to pursue migrant gangs and criminal networks.
“Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said.
His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.
“He’s been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them … step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who writes about authoritarianism and fascism and has been outspoken about the dangers of a second Trump administration.
“So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us,” she continued. “That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”
[…]
Vivid imagery, such as telling crowds of rally attendees that migrants will “cut your throat,” are now a staple of Trump’s speeches. He cites cases of U.S. women and girls allegedly murdered by immigrants in the country illegally, even as studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.
But Trump says they are — because they are inherently worse people. He’s told nearly all-white crowds in the past that they have “good genes,” even before his explicit suggestion this week that non-white immigrants are genetically inferior — when he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that migrants have “bad genes.”
“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, the author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” and a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric. “Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”
Trump is certainly demonizing immigrants as the greatest threat to America. But his list of the “the enemy within’ is quite long too. And I suspect they are the ones he personally hates:
He’s been saying this for the last year:
I don’t think he’s kidding.
H/T to JV Last for flagging Alsobrooks’s excellent critique of the mealy mouthed Larry Hogan’s refusal to vote for Kamala Harris:
I think the decision not to vote in a presidential election, for a senator, is a disqualifier. This job requires votes. Tough votes. That you have to make a decision. And for a person who says he can see a bipartisan way forward, but was unable to do the most bipartisan thing ever, in an election where he said he despises their nominee, but cannot bring himself to even vote for Vice President Harris, and in fact will have forfeited the chance to vote in three different elections rather than stand up and do the right thing, choose a tough vote, and vote for a Democrat? He voted for deceased individuals and said he will do so again in this election. And I think it is instructive of the way he would operate as a senator.
It’s a disqualifier for anyone who knows Trump is unfit but refuses to vote for Harris. It’s especially disqualifying for a Senator who is basing his entire campaign on his willingness and ability to be bipartisan.
It has happened repeatedly, 1932 being another great example. Clinton also inherited a recession, left a booming economy which Bush promptly slowed down by pushing through a bunch of tax cuts and deregulation.
They take credit for the economy they inherited and then immediately screw it up. Let’s not let that happen this time. The consequences will be worse than usual because Trump’s trade war and deportation schemes are bound to cause major disruption and if we have a crisis we already know that he is totally incapable of handling it. He proved that last time.