It’s happening right before our eyes.
- How Trump’s 2020 Playbook is being put into action;
- Trump simulates oral sex in public;
- Jonathan M. Katz on what Trump’s team will do following the election;
- Robert Reich reminds us of 101 terrible things Trump has done;
NY Times, Jim Rutenberg and Alan Feuer, 2 Nov 2024: Trump, Preparing to Challenge the Results, Puts His 2020 Playbook Into Action, subtitled “Step by step, Donald J. Trump and his allies are following the strategies that caused chaos four years ago. Election officials say they are ready this time.” [gift link]
Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are rolling out a late-stage campaign strategy that borrows heavily from the subversive playbook he used to challenge his loss four years ago.
This time, however, he is counting on reinforcements from outside groups built on the false notion of a stolen election.
With Election Day only three days away, Mr. Trump is already claiming the Democrats are “a bunch of cheats,” as his allies in battleground states spread distorted reports of mishaps at the polls to push a narrative of widespread fraud.
Mr. Trump and his most prominent supporters have pointed to partisan polling and betting markets to claim that he is heading for a “crushing victory,” as his top surrogate Elon Musk recently put it. The expectation helps set the stage for disbelief and outrage among his supporters should he lose.
Summary: Claim Victory; Sow Doubt; Disrupt.
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Just when you think Trump can’t any worse…
The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 2 Nov 2024: Trump Needs Help, subtitled “Last night he simulated oral sex in public.”
I do not know how to put this gently or tastefully, so I will factually describe what happened last night in Milwaukee: A former president of the United States held a rally, during which he used a microphone holder on his podium to pantomime the act of giving fellatio.
I could have put it differently. I might have said that “a cognitively impaired man, who has long been showing signs of serious emotional instability and has a history of sexism and racism, engaged in crude behavior in front of a large audience.” But that wouldn’t capture an important reality:
This deeply impaired man is tied in the race to become the next president and could be holding the codes to the U.S. nuclear arsenal in less than three months.
And his fans do not care.
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The Week, 2 Nov 2024: Saturday Wrap
A section of this page quotes Jonathan M. Katz in his Substack column:
Victory at all costs
“Trump supporters and far-right accelerationists are going to try to intimidate, cancel, purge, and in some cases burn the votes of potential Harris supporters in an attempt to grab a winning margin on election night. If that doesn’t work, Trump will declare victory anyway. His team will cite the closeness of the pre-election polls, and their own stewed-brain, racism-informed images of Kamala Harris to demand she concede the election, or that the presidency be handed to Trump anyway, whether by the Roberts Court, a Republican Congress, or some other means. These claims will be boosted by the large pro-Trump media universe, which now includes the former Twitter.”
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Robert Reich reminds of all worst things Trump has done. This relates to that piece about voters in their 20s who don’t remember the things that made his reputation.
Robert Reich, 1 Nov 2024: The 101 worst things about Trump’s shambolic presidency, subtitled “No one should forget”
I’ll quote the beginning.
Friends,
Some people seem to have forgotten how bad a president Trump was, so I made a list of the worst things about the Trump presidency, in no particular order. Please share and add anything I missed.
- Trump fueled division and sparked a record uptick in hate crimes.
- Murder went way up under Trump. He presided over the largest ever single-year increase in homicides in 2020. A number of factors might have contributed to that, but a big one is …
- Gun sales broke records under Trump, who has bragged about how he “did nothing” to restrict guns as president in spite of how …
- Under Trump, America suffered more than 1,700 mass shootings.
- When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump delayed $20 billion of aid and allowed Puerto Rico to be without power for 181 days.
And a few more bizarre items:
- Trump repeatedly lied about the danger of Covid, saying it was “no worse” than the flu and that it would go away on its own.
- Trump profited off the presidency, pocketing an estimated $160 million from foreign countries while he was president.
- Trump separated more than 5,000 children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, with no plan to ever reunite them — putting babies in cages.
- Trump said he’d “drain the Washington swamp.” But he appointed more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls to his administration than any administration in history.
- Trump promised that the average American family would get a $4,000 pay raise because of his tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy and big corporations. Average American families did not get a $4,000 raise. America’s billionaires, however, doubled their wealth.
- Trump said he would fix America’s infrastructure, but it never happened. He announced so many failed “infrastructure weeks” they became a running joke.
- Trump called climate change a “hoax.”
- Trump seriously discussed the idea of nuking a hurricane.
- Trump tried to buy Greenland.
- Trump referred to fallen U.S. service members as “losers” and “suckers.” This has been confirmed by multiple sources, including Trump’s former chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly.
- Trump constantly lied. He made 30,573 false or misleading claims while president — an average of 21 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checkers.
- He was literally the laughingstock of the world, prompting guffaws from the UN General Assembly and mockery from world leaders.
Any serious understanding of human nature has to account for how so many people admire a person who’s done all these things. The basic answer: ancient tribalism. Behavior that is inappropriate in the modern world, and conflicts with the ideals of democracy and our Constitution.
