The New York Times(?) provides readers needed comic relief:
On Tuesday night, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris spent 90 minutes trading blows in a fierce debate. Out of duty to a weary electorate eager for change, we enlisted the musical talents of the Gregory Brothers and a special guest, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, to provide the debate recap you didn’t know you needed.
Take it in, friends. We’ve got a long way yet to go and more work to do.
Just yesterday, I argued that “so much of what Donald Trump does and says is not strategy so much as pathology. And feral instinct. His fanboys handle strategy.” That’s still true this morning. Among the reasons the press and some of the left’s own have trouble coming to grips with his lunacy is, as children of the Enlightenment, we put so much stock in reason. Unreason does not compute.* We all want to make a steak out of hash.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is perhaps the quickest and sharpest Democrats have to carry its message. Yet, here he is attempting to paint Donald Trump’s unhinged cats-and-dogs rant during this week’s debate as a distraction strategy. It may be instinct. Distraction may be someone else’s strategy. But it’s not Trump’s. He doesn’t think with his atrophied frontal lobes.
Piers Morgan’s guests did the same this week, offering what Trump needs to do differently and how he needs to reconfigure his campaign. He needs to fire his advisors and get new ones who will help him present himself as more presidential in coming days.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R) of Texas argued that the debate was easy for Trump to win, offering Republican counterfactuals that Trump should have (but didn’t) use to his advantage. Convincing independent’s “is very easy to do,” Crenshaw declared in Trumpian fashion. Trump just missed opportunities. Crenshaw might as easily have spun straw into gold as spin madness into rationality.
Podcaster Brian Taylor Cohen was having none of it.
“I’ve sat here listening to everyone say that Trump has to fire his advisors who steered him wrong on the debate stage. Does anybody ACTUALLY think that Trump took the advice of his advisors? He’s so easy to bait, you could dangle a cookie in front of a 4-year-old and they would have more discipline than Trump. This notion that his ADVISORS are responsible for what happened on that debate stage is a joke.”
Trump has never been more than what he is: a seven year-old in a 70-something body. If the press presented him as he is, if they reported what he said unfiltered, it would make their reporting and their reporters appear incoherent. It’s their job to make sense of the news. What do they do when there’s no sense to be made? You’re watching it live.
* When the New Age movement was in its heyday here, it was head-scratching to watch believers throw around terms like quantum and energies and frequencies to dress up magical thinking and medieval alchemy as cutting-edge science for the late 20th century.
That woman has been travelling around with Trump on his campaign plane. She was with him for the debate on Tuesday and accompanied him to NY for the 9/11 ceremonies (even though she has said that the attacks were an inside job.)
Here are a few more of her comments on Harris, some of which she’s obviously been sharing with Trump who can’t help but use them on the campaign trail. From Media Matters:
Loomer called Harris, Fani Willis, and District Attorney Letitia James “ghetto Black women” and “3 angry Black women who are clearly targeting successful white men.” Loomer’s guest, Peter Brimelow of the white nationalist group VDare, said, “There’s a lot of angry Black women out there in positions of authority. And there’s a real question for whether they can be trusted.” [Rumble, Loomer Unleashed, 3/28/24]
Loomer called Harris “a brain-dead bimbo who sucked so much c**k in order to get to the political position that she’s in today.” Loomer then falsely claimed that “nowhere does she ever identify as a woman of color until, right, until she is then selected as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick, and she wants to drive home this idea that she’s a Black woman.” [Rumble, Loomer Unleashed, 7/23/24]
Loomer used a photo of Harris’ birth certificate to claim that Harris “is NOT black and never has been,” a false claim which was reposted by Trump. Even though the certificate clearly showed that Harris’ father is from Jamaica, Loomer attempted to fault Harris by arguing that she is “the descendent of slave owners.” The Washington Post had previously reported that Harris’ great-grandmother “is thought to be both a descendant of [enslaver Hamilton] Brown and enslaved Jamaicans,” according to The Washington Post. [Twitter/X, 7/31/24; Truth Social, 8/2/24; The Washington Post, 1/17/21]
Loomer: “If Kamala Harris makes it to the White House, Ebonics will replace English as the language of our land.” [Twitter/X, 7/31/24]
Those are just a few of the Kamala Harris quotes. If you click over to Media Matters you will see the full list of sociopathic utterings by this personincluding her latest which claimed that the White House would smell like curry if she wins the election among other things.. She is certifiably evil.
Semafor reported on Loomer’s close association with Trump:
Laura Loomer, the right-wing agitator known for egging on Donald Trump’s most inflammatory instincts, has been regularly popping up around the former president. After a debate in which Trump shouted about false viral rumors of pet-eating Haitians in an Ohio town, her potential influence is drawing more scrutiny from both parties.
One person close to the Trump campaign said they were “100%” concerned about her exacerbating Trump’s weaknesses. “Regardless of any guardrails the Trump campaign has put on her, I don’t think it’s working,” the person said.
Loomer has long been a presence in Trump’s orbit, much to the chagrin of some of his allies inside and outside the campaign. Last year, the New York Times reported Trump ordered his staff to give her a formal campaign role — only to drop the idea urry fierce pushback from Republicans.
[…]
Loomer earned her prominence in the MAGA movement by confronting Democrats on camera with aggressive questions that they usually refused to answer — she called it being “Loomered.” After ambushing several Muslim candidates in Michigan and Minnesota, including longtime target llhan Omar, Democrats began recognizing her and keeping her out of events.
But she’s also proved an extremely polarizing figure among Republicans by using the same tactics against them if she thinks they’re crossing Trump. Loomer traveled to Iowa before this year’s caucuses, confronting Ron DeSantis at the hotel where his campaign team was staying, calling him an “absentee governor” who’d “betrayed President Trump” by running against him. “DeSanctimonious’s soul literally left his cowardly body when he saw me,” she posted on X.
She also has feuded with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who she’s called a “traitor.” On Wednesday, Greene called Loomer’s comments mocking Harris’ Indian heritage “appalling and extremely racist,” adding that it “does not represent President Trump” and that “this type of behavior should not be tolerated ever.”
That’s rich coming from her. In any case, Marge needs to take it up with Trump who has Loomer traveling with him.
If you’re wondering, they’ve been fighting for some time:
She seems so nice. You can see why Trump wants her with him on the campaign trail. They are two peas in a pod. It was only a matter of time before a toxic monster like Greene was usurped by someone even worse than she is. There is no bottom for MAGA.
Donald Trump loves this person so she’s accepted by most of the GOP establishment even though they all know she is monster. The X account of the National Republican Senate Committee promoted one of her videos on 9/11. She is an insider.
Update:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is urging Donald Trump to stay away from far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who was spotted traveling with the former president on his plane on Wednesday.
“We have policy disagreements but the history of this person is just really toxic,” Graham told HuffPost on Thursday. “I mean, she actually called for Kellyanne Conway’s daughter to hang herself. I don’t know how this all happened, but, no, I don’t think it’s helpful. I don’t think it’s helpful at all.” […]
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is right. I don’t say that a lot,” Graham said.
“I think what [Loomer] said about Kamala Harris and the White House is abhorrent, but it’s deeper than that,” he added. “I mean, you know, some of the things she’s said about Republicans and others is disturbing. I mean, to call for someone’s daughter to hang themselves. Yeah, no, I think that the president would serve himself well to make sure this doesn’t become a bigger story.”
Loomer responded with this:
So I thought he was evil but he wasn’t stupid. Now I’m not so sure. This is very dumb:
The loathing for America among the leaders of the Republican Party continues to be stunning. As long as I can remember, they were the “love it or leave it” crowd, insisting that it was the greatest country in the history of the world and pretty much perfect in every way. Now that they’ve joined a dystopian cult led by a man who clearly hates everything America stands for they’ve all decided that we are little more than poor third world outpost because of all the immigrants. (Also, hippies, gays, feminazis and Black people …)
James Fallows had this to say about Vance’s comments:
Because immigration *is* the centuries-long US path to prosperity (and innovation, and rejuvenation, and “soft power” through connections around the world, and most powerful global culture), the US is by far the most productive and wealthy and innovative country.
Inability to handle immigration a major limit for Japan, most of Europe, China as well. A major US strength. Just ask any American who, unlike Vance, has spent a lot of time outside the country. Of the crystal-clear dividing lines in the campaign—hope-vs-resentment, “us” vs “them,” forward vs backward—visceral view on immigration is near the top.
Does it grow and expand the pie? Or divide the pie? US history suggests: GROW.
I always thought that the US had a tremendous advantage in the world because of our immigrant experience and that everyone on some level understood that. Boy was I wrong. Racism and xenophobia remain so strong among a certain group that an opportunistic demagogue like Trump can crank it up to 11 very easily.
Trump has a very small vocabulary for a supposedly educated person and speaks at a 4th grade level according to experts. There’s nothing new in that. And repeating himself is part of his strategy to convince people his lies are the truth. The sheer audacity of lying constantly even in the face of absolute proof seems to be seen by many people as proof that you’re not lying. (I can’t understand it either…)
His “cognitive tests” (which he says he “aced” like nobody’s ever aced them before) notwithstanding, he is getting worse. He can’t seem to keep a single train of thought and that’s actually new. He’s calling this rambling “the weave” and says his English professor friends call it brilliant. (He has no English professor friends.)
Psychiatrist Richard Friedman in the Atlantic says it’s concerning:
The speech Trump excuses as the “weave” is one of many tics that are starting to look less strategic and more uncontrollable. Last week, David A. Graham wrote in The Atlantic that the former president has a penchant for describing objects and events as being “like nobody has ever seen before.” At the debate, true to form, Trump repeatedly fell back on the superlative. Of the economy under his presidency: “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.” Of inflation under the Biden administration: “I’ve never seen a worse period of time.” Of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan: “That was one of the most incompetently handled situations anybody has ever seen.” Harris, for her part, also showed some verbal tics and leaned on tired formulations. For instance, she invited viewers more than 15 times to “understand” things. But Trump’s turns of phrase are so disjointed, so unusual, and so frequently uttered that they’re difficult to pass off as normal speech.
Trump’s speech during the debate was repetitive not only in form but also in content. Politicians regularly return during debates to their strongest topics—that’s just good strategy. Harris twice mentioned Project 2025, which voters widely disapproved of in recent polling, and insisted three times that Americans want to “move forward” or “chart a new way forward.” Trump likewise expounded at every opportunity on immigration, a weak issue for Harris. But plenty of the former president’s repetitions seemed compulsive, not strategic. After praising the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, Trump spoke unprompted, at length, and without clarity about gas pipelines in the United States and Europe, an issue unlikely to connect with many voters. A few minutes later, he brought up the pipelines again. The moderators cut him off for a commercial break. Even in cases where Trump could have reasonably defended himself, he was unable to articulate basic exculpatory evidence. When Harris raised his infamous “very fine people on both sides” remark regarding the 2017 white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump could have pointed out that even at the time, he had specified, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists—because they should be condemned totally.” But he did not.
In psychiatry, the tendency to conspicuously and rigidly repeat a thought beyond the point of relevance, called “perseverance,” is known to be correlated with a variety of clinical disorders, including those involving a loss of cognitive reserve. People tend to stick to familiar topics over and over when they experience an impairment in cognitive functioning—for instance, in short-term memory. Short-term memory is essentially your mental sketch pad: how many different thoughts you can juggle in your mind, keep track of, and use at the same time. Given the complexity of being president, short-term memory is a vital skill.
He says that if he had a patient with the “verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech” that Trump shows, he would definitely refer him for a thorough neuropsychiatric evaluation. Also, those characteristics make him completely unqualified to be president of the United States.
I’m not a psychiatrist but would just add that he’s also a puerile, self-centered asshole who only cares about himself which is also disqualifying.
I’ve written enough words about this over the past nine years. So I’ll let Jon Stewart say it for me today:
A Statement From Linda Ronstadt
Sept. 11, 2024
San Francisco
Donald Trump is holding a rally on Thursday in a rented hall in my hometown, Tucson. I would prefer to ignore that sad fact. But since the building has my name on it, I need to say something.
It saddens me to see the former President bring his hate show to Tucson, a town with deep Mexican-American roots and a joyful, tolerant spirit.
I don’t just deplore his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty and ignorance — although there’s that.
For me it comes down to this: In Nogales and across the southern border, the Trump Administration systematically ripped apart migrant families seeking asylum. Family separation made orphans of thousands of little children and babies, and brutalized their desperate mothers and fathers. It remains a humanitarian catastrophe that Physicians for Human Rights said met the criteria for torture.
There is no forgiving or forgetting the heartbreak he caused.
Trump first ran for President warning about rapists coming in from Mexico. I’m worried about keeping the rapist out of the White House.
Linda Ronstadt
P.S. to J.D. Vance:
I raised two adopted children in Tucson as a single mom. They are both grown and living in their own houses. I live with a cat. Am I half a childless cat lady because I’m unmarried and didn’t give birth to my kids? Call me what you want, but this cat lady will be voting proudly in November for @kamalaharris and @timwalz .
She’s the best.
When in 1619 settlers on this continent imported the first abducted Africans, they thought they were creating an enslaved labor force, cheap farm hands and house servants. They were creating something else centuries before we had a term for it: a social safety net.
For white people.
African slaves were laborers, yes, but their presence in the colonies represented a social floor below which no white man or woman could fall, not matter the lowliness of their family’s status or emptiness of their pockets. Slavery wasn’t sold that way, but having a caste of untouchables was a fringe benefit even non-slave owners would fight a civil war to protect. Skin color simply made the untouchables easy to identify in a crowd so everyone knew who was whom and who was better than whom.
Settlers did not trade in human flesh to create that informal safety net, but they created it nonetheless. By the 19th century, it was simply a cultural understanding. Six years after Brown v. Board, Sen. Lyndon Johnson explained why whites across the South were so upset to see holes poked in the safety net to which they’d grown up entitled.
If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you. — Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas to Bill Moyers (1960)
Then came the civil rights legislation under Johnson’s presidency. The Southern Strategy followed. With the election of the country’s first Black president, the backlash against America’s ideal of equality has strengthened. With the election of an openly racist and misogynist president, white supremacists had a new champion for the 21st century and a campaign slogan not so far removed from “old times there are not forgotten.”
Hatred of non-whites and immigrants, and the propagation of dehumanizing memes about Mexicans and Somalis and Muslims and Indians by the MAGA “legion of doom” is racially tinged, sure, but it’s ultimately about power. Voter suppression laws and fantastic rumors about non-citizens voting are less about race than about power. About which of us has it and which does not. About status anxiety. About the loss of a social safety net that provided even the lowest white people the comforting warmth that no matter how low they fall, at least they’re not one of those people. The insistence that women’s worth lies solely in being baby factories is not about race but about men losing their power to dominate them.
Donald Trump’s comments about immigrants taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs,” and his Tuesday rant about Haitians eating pets is more of the same. Now he faces defeat at the hands of a powerful Black-Asian woman. In the words of Stephen Stills, he and his MAGA cult are scared shitless.
It’s a cliché to hear American politicians proclaim after some outrage that America is “better than that.” We have yet to live up to that boast.
So much of what Donald Trump does and says is not strategy so much as pathology. And feral instinct. His fanboys handle strategy.
The emergence of the Haitians eating animals story this week was serendipitous. (Was it?) But J.D. Vance promoting it is creepy as hell. Everyone non-MAGA (especially the media) is treating Trump repeating the Haitians eating pets tale as a crude, racist smear, and more evidence of Trump’s mental decline. It is. But it’s also worse, isn’t it?
“I know it feels like all fun and games with the eat dogs comment,” my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio tweeted. It’s not.
The Washington Post offers “Anatomy of a racist smear” to explain where and how this vicious meme about Haitian immigrants spread:
Kathleen Belew, a historian of U.S. white-supremacist movements, wrote on X on Tuesday that such demonization campaigns are an old tactic that should be taken seriously. The debunked claims about Haitian refugees aren’t “just nonsense,” Belew warned: “The people spreading this rhetoric either know exactly what they’re doing, or they should know. But violence follows. Every time.”
The online right went nuts with the cats and ducks memes. It’s hard to read how many of the “crank” & file think they’re simply trolling the left, how many actually believe the propaganda, how many are going Radio Rwanda in preparation for a Trump 2.0 pogrom against immigrants (or anyone else Trump designates as his enemy), and how many are going Radio Rwanda without being fully conscious that’s what they’re doing.
If it’s Stephen Miller doing it, sure. I can’t look at the guy without picturing him in a black SS uniform with a death’s head on his cap. He’d go Radio Rwanda in a skinny minute.
But I don’t have a read on where the broader MAGA cult is at on this.
JV Last at the Bulwark asks the right question:
What will it say about America if Trump’s numbers don’t drop over the next week?
We have had every chance to reject Donald Trump.
We saw him mishandle a crisis, resulting in an economic collapse and hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.
We saw him attempt a violent coup.
When voters said, “I don’t love Trump, but that other candidate is super old . . .” Democrats went and swapped out Joe Biden for Kamala Harris.
Harris has been a good candidate. She has run as a rock-solid moderate. She just curb-stomped Trump in front of tens of millions of voters.
What else do people want?
I’m serious about this: What else could Harris possibly do? Because it looks to me like she’s an above-average candidate, running in a good economic environment, playing near-perfect baseball against a guy who says he wants to be a dictator.
And the response of the American people is: Harris +1.1.
What happens if, a week after last night’s demonstration, this race is still a toss-up? What does that tell us about the long-term viability of American democracy?
It tells us that the battle will not be over on election day. Whatever comes next is not going to be Mitt Romney or even Ronald Reagan. We’re in for a long siege.
Still, we have to win one battle at a time so …