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.
When I was growing up in WI, I was asked in all seriousness if I had horns. This is how well-worn this absurd claim about Jews was to a bunch of kids from Superior.
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.
I asked Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump's top advisors, what is the evidence for saying that Caracas and Venezuela are safer than the United States. He began by answering that it is the government's numbers. I asked him if he trusted Maduro's numbers. And this was his… pic.twitter.com/qkXTNiGmt0
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.
New story about the Haitians in Springfield, OH, where the cat hoax originated. CEO of McGregor Metal: “I wish I had 30 more. Our Haitians come to work every day. They don’t have a drug problem. They’ll stay at their machine. That’s a stark difference from what we’re used to.” pic.twitter.com/JWjK1lpO0n
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 whosays 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.
(I am re-posting this piece from 2016, in commemoration of 9/11)
No Words
(Originally posted at Den of Cinema on September 11, 2016)
I don’t get out much. In 60 years, I’ve yet to travel anywhere more exotic than Canada. That’s me…born to be mild. Oddly enough, however, I was “out of the country” on September 11, 2001.
OK, it was Canada. I was enjoying a 3-day getaway at Harrison Hot Springs, a beautiful Alpine setting in British Columbia. I was booked to check out of the hotel on Tuesday, September 11th.
I woke up around 9am that morning, figuring I had enough time to grab breakfast and one more refreshing soak in one of the resort’s natural springs-fed outdoor pools before hitting the road for the 3-hour drive back to Seattle. I was feeling relaxed and rejuvenated.
Then I switched on CNN.
Holy fuck. Was this really happening? I actually did not understand what I was watching for several minutes. It was surreal. It was especially discombobulating to be out-of-country at the very moment the United States of America appeared to be under attack.
My first impulse was just to get back to the U.S.A. I was overcome with a sense of urgency that I had to “do” something (realistically, of course…what could I do to help those poor souls in the towers?).
I went to the front desk to check out, and was advised by the clerk that there were reports that the U.S./Canada border checkpoints were closed (to this day, I’m not sure if that was just a rumor-I can’t track down any historical annotations).
I was also hearing from fellow guests that lines of vehicles were miles long at the checkpoints. At any rate, they were offering American guests with a September 11 checkout a reduced rate if they preferred to try their luck on Wednesday.
With all the uncertainty and fear in the air, I decided to take them up on the offer and leave Wednesday morning instead (for all I knew, I could be returning to some kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape anyway). I was less than 200 miles from home geographically, but spiritually I might as well have been Matt Damon in The Martian.
As I didn’t own a cell phone or a laptop (yes, I know they existed in 2001…but I was a late adapter), CNN became my lifeline for the remainder of that horrible day. I’ll never forget Aaron Brown’s marathon reportage. As awful as the situation was, he maintained the perfect tone. This may sound corny, but he was not only a level-headed source of information, but also my friend that day. And apparently, I’m not alone in that assessment:
That, my friends, is what a good journalist does. Remember them?
The share price of Trump Media plunged more than 13% on Wednesday, a day after majority shareholder Donald Trump gave a widely panned presidential debate performance against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The company’s stock price was at its lowest intraday level since the Truth Social app owner began publicly trading as DJT on the Nasdaq in late March.
Investing in Trump Media stock is often seen as a way to bet on the political fortunes of Trump, the former president and current Republican nominee.
Trump Media has said its business hinges at least partly on Trump’s popularity, and analysts say the company’s value will rise or fall based on his electoral prospects.
He’s going to cash out in a few days with at least a billion dollars. It will destroy his investors but he doesn’t care about that. At this point he’s got to cramble to grift as much as he possibly can before the whole thing comes crashing down.
Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country.
Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.
I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.
I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make. I also want to say, especially to first time voters: Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered! I also find it’s much easier to vote early. I’ll link where to register and find early voting dates and info in my story.
With love and hope,
Taylor Swift Childless Cat Lady
Her timing was puuuuurfect. Will it make a difference? Yes:
As my friend @taylorswift13 so eloquently stated, now is the time to research and choose the candidate that speaks to you and your beliefs. Only 54 days left until the election. Make sure you are registered to vote! Your vote in this election may be one of the most important… pic.twitter.com/hN9OaBfH2Z
Kamala Harris: Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people, so let's be clear about that and clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that pic.twitter.com/3uk6VIccf1
At every moment in this short, intense campaign Kamala Harris has risen to the occasion. During the weeks of agony as President Biden and the party debated whether he could continue his campaign, she kept her head down giving him space to make his decision. But when he endorsed her moments after announcing his withdrawal from the race, she hit the ground running. Her rollout, including the choice of Tim Walz as her running mate, is widely accepted as one of the best in American political history. Her speech at the DNC was flawless. The debate last night was a home run.
She. Is. Good. Very, very good. It’s clear that she not only has good instincts, she learns from her mistakes and moves forward with confidence. She is a mature, experienced politician with a warm and engaging personality. That’s rare.
Vice President Harris: Why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor, and what you think is a friendship with a dictator who would eat you for lunch? pic.twitter.com/TzTDTh7i0n
According to the New York Times/Sienna poll released over the weekend, about 28% of people said they needed to learn more about Vice President Kamala Harris,” while only 9% said the same about Donald Trump with the race pretty much tied within the margin of error. Consequently, the conventional wisdom going into last night’s debate was that Harris had much more to lose — and gain — than Trump who is thought to have a pretty solid 46% no matter what while Harris could conceivably go up or down pretty substantially. The debate was therefore seen as make or break for her while for him it would probably change nothing. Could she rise to the occasion?
Oh yes indeed she could and she did. That 28% of people who needed to learn more, learned that Kamala Harris is quick witted, highly qualified, confident and very well prepared. Yes, she has a very winning smile and exudes a joyful radiance, but she has a spine of steel which she demonstrated for a solid hour and a half as she dominated poor, spent Donald Trump. It was hardly a fair fight.
I would imagine that even that 9% who’ve been in a coma for the past decade and needed more information about Donald Trump came away knowing everything they needed to know about him. He’s an angry, delusional man who obviously spends way too much time on Truth Social and watching Fox News. He may not know much about health care or the constitution but he’s an expert on right wing conspiracy theories which he seems to believe are absolutely true.
His favorite conspiracy theory is one which he has personally propagated: immigrants are coming to kill us all in our beds which seems to be the only thing he was really interested in talking about. In his very first answer about the economy, he said:
You see what’s happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio. You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they’re destroying our country. They’re dangerous. They’re at the highest level of criminality. And we have to get them out. We have to get them out fast.
The next question was on tariffs and there was more of the same: criminal migrants pouring across the border and “she’s destroyed the country with a policy that you’d say they have to hate our country.”
A couple of questions later,after defending his crowd sizes he let fly with this:
And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.
Moderator David Muir fact-checked that one saying that ABC had checked with the city of Springfield and there were no reports of immigrants eating pets. Trump said he’d seen someone on TV say that it had happened.
Omg Trump takes the bait and starts rambling about crowd sizes and repeats baseless claims about immigrants eating pets and gets fact checked
You read that right. Trump actually repeated a ridiculous internet conspiracy theory, advanced yesterday by his weird VP nominee JD Vance, that Haitian immigrants are eating residents of Springfield, Ohio’s pets. The memes had been flying all over social media and on right wing cable and apparently, like the most gullible QAnon believer, Trump took it seriously.
Some right wing commentators like Erick Erickson were not amused. He blamed the people spreading the racist meme, not Trump, who apparently has no agency at all:
It may have been the weirdest thing he said all night but it was hardly the stupidest. He also regurgitated one of his favorite conspiracy theories saying that Democrats, specifically Gov. Tim Walz, believe in executing infants after they’re born and in six states it’s legal to do so. Moderator Linsey Davis set him straight on that, not that he’ll ever stop saying it.
When asked whether he had any regrets about his behavior on January 6th, he pushed another conspiracy theory about former speaker Nancy Pelosi being responsible, which is also nonsense. The Speaker had no power to stop the insurrection that Trump incited and then sat in his office watching unfold on his big screen TV. He clearly has no regrets and went on to spew more conspiracies about Ashli Babbit, the young woman who was shot as she breached the doorway, threatening the members of congress — after which he started braying about immigrants invading the country again saying they are killing many people, “unlike J6.”
And,of course, he once more proclaimed that he didn’t lose the 2020 election, repeating the Big Lie at length. And yes, it led to immigration:
Our elections are bad. And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote. They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.
Donald Trump’s team had been bragging all week that he didn’t need to prepare for debates the way the allegedly stupid Kamala Harris did. Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard was giving him some pointers on how to beat her and he was having some policy chats with various advisers, but that was all he needed. Well, that didn’t work out too well.
That debate was a total debacle for Donald Trump and his surrogates knew it.
In fact, he had so little trust in their ability to spin his disastrous performance that he personally went into the spin room afterwards to boldly lie to the news media and proclaim he actually won the debate, quoting silly twitter polls as proof. If it had been anyone but Trump it might have even been a little bit sad.
The usual right wing suspects are all angry at the moderators for fact checking Trump which they did three times But they could have spent hours doing that. CNN’s Daniel Dale fact checked the debate in real time and found that Trump had lied 33 times and Harris lied once. The moderators allowed Trump to jump in and speak at the end of Harris’ answers resulting in his getting five more minutes than she did. He ended up speaking 39 times while she only spoke 23 times. The problem wasn’t the moderators it was Trump’s big mouth.
Trump relentlessly hammered on migrants which will probably play well with his base, along with all the other lies and conspiracy theories, but to anyone else he sounded like a lunatic, surly, rude and out of his depth. His laziness and inability/unwillingness to learn anything new caught up with him last night. He lost this debate, as he would say, bigly.
Salon
Update:
It wuz rigged!
Donald Trump, without evidence, suggests that Kamala Harris had the questions before the debate: “They had a rigged show with somebody that maybe even had the answers…I watched her talk, and I said, you know, she seems awfully familiar with the questions.” pic.twitter.com/P3SNSBskl4
Kamala Harris is hardly the first person to observe that Donald Trump is easily manipulated with flattery. Particularly, flattery from autocrats and dictators he admires and whose respect he craves. They belong to an exclusive club he desperately wants to join, a strongman club that wouldn’t have an infant like him for a member.
He’s trying to again divide and distract from the reality, which is it is very well known that Donald Trump is weak and wrong on national security and foreign policy. It is well known that he admires dictators, wants to be a dictator on day one according to himself. It is well known that he said of Putin that he can do whatever the hell he wants and go into Ukraine. It is well known when that he said when Russia went into Ukraine it was brilliant. It is well known he exchanged love letters with Kim Jong un. And it is absolutely well known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they’re so clear, they can manipulate you with flattery and favors.
But flattery and favors are not the only ways Trump is easily manipulated. Time and again in last night’s 90 minutes, Harris baited traps for Trump, and he walked straight into them.
Over the course of almost two hours Tuesday night, the Vice President effectively needled the former President on his deepest insecurities while painting a clear choice for voters. Trump in response repeatedly took the bait and doubled down, leading him to go on wild tangents, engage in angry outbursts, and relitigate old battles. It was a striking dichotomy for voters to take in from two figures who share so little when it comes to political instinct, personalities, and even personal discipline. Harris leveraged Trump’s total lack of that last element to set the agenda for the evening.
When Trump boasted about receiving 75 million votes in 2020 and complained about alleged irregularities in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Harris pounced.:
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. So, let’s be clear about that. And clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that.” World leaders, Harris said, “are laughing at Donald Trump.”
Trump responded by citing Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán as a character reference.
Harris invited people to attend Trump’s rallies and watch him babble about
…. fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your, your desires. And I’ll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will.
Trump took the bait again (Time again):
Then he puffed up his political chest: “People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.” The dispute was completely immaterial for undecided voters and would win him zero new votes, but Harris understood exactly what she had done: in inviting Trump’s ego to overtake actual issues, she was showing his pettiness in full display. And, for millions of voters watching Harris in such an environment for the first time, it’s impossible to imagine a better first showing.
What Harris showed (after a shaky first few minutes) was that she was in control in that space and Trump was not. Trump charged that Democrats threw Biden out of the campaign “like a dog.” Harris led Trump around like Pavlov’s. And she didn’t do it with flattery like Trump’s dictator pals. She pressed his buttons and he salivated.
There was only one leader on the stage last night.
You can’t unsee it. Donald Trump last night bested Joe Biden with a Grandpa Simpsonesque debate performance even more unsettling against Vice President Kamala Harris. If Trump’s goal was to be best of the worst, congratulations, Donald, you did it.
Trump made at least 33 false claims during the debate, fact-checker Daniel Dale told CNN viewers Tuesday night. But that’s not the point anymore. Facts have never mattered to Trump, nor to his MAGA cult. As Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
How did they feel about seeing Trump afraid even to look at Harris?
How did Americans feel about Harris pledging to fight for them, all of them, while Trump whined about his crowd size?
How did they feel about Trump citing Viktor Orbán, the autocratic prime minister of Hungary, as a character reference?
There were too many memorable moments to review. Too many Harris zingers and Trump belly flops. But I’m reminded of Gov. Tim Walz telling an audience: Who is asking for for the agenda Trump and Republicans advocate? For more tax cuts for the rich? To shred the social safety net and take away more of our freedoms, etc.?
More to the point after last night, who is asking for four more years of Trumpism? Who is asking for four more years of race-baiting? Who is asking for four more years of this kind of insanity? How did they feel about this?
This is the moment when Trump left ZERO doubt that his mind is in a state of rapid deterioration: "In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there." pic.twitter.com/5T5oKxxyZz
Shortly after the debate, a famous “childless cat lady” who sings endorsed Harris in a cogent Instagram statement while urging Americans to register and vote.
