if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay Read on Substack (Language NSFW, as always with Jeff Tiedrich’s writing)
the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media utterly failed us during the 2024 campaign season.
New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn came right out and said it: defending democracy is a ‘partisan act,’ and we won’t do it — and, fuck us all, the press kept their word, and didn’t do it. they enthusiastically put their fingers on the scale for Donny Convict.
arguably, the media’s worst transgression was the sanewashing — the cleaning-up of Donny’s incomprehensible blitherings, to hide his obvious cognitive disintegration and make him sound coherent.
a minutes-long disjointed word-salad about how tariffs on Chinese goods were going to lower the cost of childcare became “a major economic speech.”
Donny’s inability to keep his increasingly-demented mind on the topic at hand — his crazypants pinballing from they’re eating the dawgs to Hannibal Lecter wants to have you for dinner to would you rather be eaten by a shark or electrocuted — was explained away by Donny as his brilliant “weave.”
[Wishcasting is] the act of interpreting information or a situation in a way that casts it as favorable or desired, despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a conclusion; a wishful forecast.
sure enough, the media has now gone into overdrive, churning out piece after piece in which they promise us that if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay.
not twelve hours after the election had been called for Donny, the Times wasted no time in assuring us that the election of a vindictive fascist is an amazing opportunity for vindictive fascism not to happen.
what kind of magical, everybody-gets-a-pony thinking is this? just fucking stop it.
did Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat both experience some kind of recent head trauma that has caused them to forget the years 2017 through 2020? Donny’s first presidency was a dumpster fire of corruption, mismanagement and mass death — but somehow now, given a second chance to fuck shit up worse, Donny’s going to bring us an “American renewal”?
anything’s possible, right? overnight, Donny Convict could magically become a wise and fair statesman — also, technicolor pigs could fly out of my ass.
oh my god, the media never stops imagining that Donny is going to somehow become presidential. during his first term — over and over — every time Donny stopped short of taking out his dick and pissing on the floor, the press would fall all the fuck over itself in a mad dash to proclaim him presidential.
spoiler alert: Donny never became presidential. not from the the first time he threw a ketchup-hurling tantrum in the White House, to the moment he absconded back to his Florida golf motel, taking with him boxes of stolen classified documents.
the premise here is that if we’re respectful to Donny — if we fucking kowtow to him, and stop opposing him — he’ll be nice to us in return. he’ll become — dare I say it? — presidential.
Stop indulging the fantasy that outrage, social stigma, language policing, a special counsel, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or impeachment will disappear him. And stop talking as if normal political opposition is capitulation.
Everyone should normalize Trump. If he does something good, praise him. Trump is remarkably susceptible to flattery.
okay, I will grant that Newsweek may be half right. Lisa Murkowski seems to genuinely loathe Donny, and we can probably count on her to vote against the worst of his fuckery — but Susan Collins? the credulous naïf who assured us over and over again that Donny had learned his lesson, and would never transgress again?
now, let’s bask under some rays of hope from people who aren’t just blindly wishcasting, but are actually offering reasoned arguments.
in the middle of a fairly clear-eyed assessment of the Trumpian horrors to come, the Guardian gives us this:
Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “For him to expand presidential power, Congress has to give up power and they’re not in the mood to do that. They’ve never done that. There are plenty of institutionalists in Congress.”
Kamarck also expressed faith in the federal courts, noting that judges appointed by Trump only constitute 11% of the total placed on the bench by former presidents. A Trump dictatorship is “not going to happen,” she added. “Now, there might be things that the president wants to do that people don’t like that the Republican Congress goes along with him on but that’s politics. That’s not a dictatorship.”
Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.
Americans cannot vote themselves into a dictatorship any more than you as an individual can sell yourself into slavery. The restraints of the Constitution protect the American people from the unscrupulous designs of whatever lawless people might take the reins of their government, and that does not change simply because Trump believes that those restraints need not be respected by him. The Constitution does not allow a president to be a “dictator on day one,” or on any other day. The presidency will give Trump and his cronies the power to do many awful things. But that power does not make them moral or correct.
I sure hope to fuck they’re right.
This is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means disengaging with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
Ron started talking moving to Canada right after the election was called. I explained to him all the reasons we couldn’t do it. We are at the point now where unless we win the lottery we are going to die in Florida. On the forums I read the feelings are the same, many want to leave but only those well off can afford to do so. Those of us under $50,000 a year are stuck where ever we are. Hugs
A young person waits with their families belongings after getting off a bus and waiting for a taxi to cross into Canada at Roxham Road, an unofficial crossing point from New York State to Quebec, in Plattsburgh, New York, U.S. March 25, 2023. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Canadian police and migrant aid groups are bracing for an influx of asylum-seekers fleeing President-elect Donald Trump’s United States at the same time Canada deals with record numbers of refugee claimants and is trying to bring in fewer immigrants.
Canadian police have been preparing for months, said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Charles Poirier on Thursday.
“We knew a few months ago that we had to start prepping a contingency plan because if he comes into power, which now he will in a few months, it could drive illegal migration and irregular migration into (the province of) Quebec and into Canada,” he told Reuters.
“Worst-case scenario would be people crossing in large numbers everywhere on the territory. … Let’s say we had 100 people per day entering across the border, then it’s going to be hard because our officers will basically have to cover huge distances in order to arrest everyone.”
When Trump first came to power in 2017, thousands of asylum-seekers crossed into Canada between formal border crossings to file refugee claims – overwhelmingly at Roxham Road, near the Quebec-New York border.
Roxham Road is no longer an option: Canada and the U.S. expanded a bilateral agreement so that now asylum-seekers trying to cross anywhere along the 4,000-mile border, instead of only at formal crossings, are turned back unless they meet a narrow exemption.
This means people crossing from the U.S. to file claims must sneak across undetected and hide out for two weeks before seeking asylum – a potentially dangerous prospect, immigrant advocates say.
But they add people are already doing it.
“When you don’t create legitimate pathways, or when you only create pathways where people have to do the impossible to receive safety, you know, unfortunately, people are going to try to do the impossible,” said Abdulla Daoud, director of The Refugee Centre in Montreal, which provides services.
And those numbers are expected to increase.
Police are on “high alert,” Poirier said, prepared to deploy additional resources to patrol the border. Depending what happens that could mean hundreds more officers. It could also mean more cruisers, chartering buses, building trailers and renting land.
“All eyes are on the border right now. … We were on high alert, I can tell you, a few days before the election, and we’ll probably remain on alert for the next coming weeks.”
RECORD CLAIMS
Canada is already dealing with record numbers of refugee claimants: In July, almost 20,000 people filed refugee claims, according to Immigration and Refugee Board data – the highest monthly total on record and driven by global displacement, advocates and experts told Reuters.
The number has since dipped, to about 16,400 in September, but remains historically high. There are more than 250,000 claims pending, according to the board.
Toronto’s FCJ Refugee Centre already serves dozens of new asylum-seekers a week, its founder Loly Rico told Reuters.
Trump’s election is “going to impact Canada,” she said. “We will start seeing more people crossing the border, appearing in cities and looking for support.”
She worries about what will happen in the winter. In 2022, a family of four froze to death trying to cross the border near Emerson, Manitoba.
“It’s going to be a challenge for any refugee in the United States to feel that they belong, and that’s why they will start looking what other countries can start giving them protection.”
Canada’s attempts to tighten its borders have been a boon to smugglers: People used to pay for help getting to the United States and make their way to Canada on their own, Rico said; now they pay extra to come to Canada overland or by air.
Daoud added that ahead of a likely influx, now is the time for Canada to invest in its asylum infrastructure to better support and process people who make refugee claims there.
“Unfortunately, until the government policy shifts in how they look at this particular issue, there’s going to be more of the same. We’re not going to be prepared, and it’s going to be politicized all over again.”
Immigration Minister Marc Miller has said his government has a plan for an asylum-seeker influx but would not give details.
Canada’s immigration department “will continue to prepare and anticipate all possible scenarios, any approach taken will be first and foremost in the best interest of Canada and all those who live here,” Miller’s office wrote in a statement.
Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Aurora Ellis
Republicans love third party candidates and ghost candidates when it helps them. They get Jill Stein to run in every swing state every presidential election. And only during the presidential election. But like all republicans they end up whining when things don’t go their way. Democrats stood up and admitted their loss and conceded with grace. I know people will suffer, but I hope the republicans so over play their hand that even their base turn against them … but it could be like the 1930s Germany all over again. I have a doctor’s appointment today so will not be on the computer until later in the morning. Hugs
Republicans would never use a fraudulent candidate for the purpose of siphoning votes.
Is this the country the maga cult wants? Yes? but what about all the rest who wouldn’t vote for a black woman? Those who claimed that they wouldn’t vote for Harris because she did not say the right words on Gaza? Well Israel now has no restraints, good choice you made for them, right? The brownshirts, the people who want to act like kids in gangs, want to have rule by thugs, that believe might makes right are going to find out it take far more than pretend bravado to keep a country this size running. The movie Idiocracy was not a how to do it show, but a warning. Right now we have moved a lot closer to the movie. Hugs
They always claim to be joking but their intention is to “move the Overton Window” so that when executions do happen, the public is well used to the prospect.
Wallnau cures Rush Limbaugh’s terminal cancer in the name of Jesus. Wallnau claims there are “high levels of angelic activity” at Trump’s DC hotel. Wallnau claims the MAGAbomber was possessed by Satan to make Trump look bad. Wallnau claims the Charlottesville Nazis were “paid actors” because right wing white supremacists do not exist. Wallnau declares that God killed Antonin Scalia to “wake up America” on how much they needed Trump. Wallnau “takes authority” over Hurricane Maria in the name of Jesus, orders it not to hit Puerto Rico. Wallnau claims Hurricane Irma bypassed Mar-A-Lago because Trump is under God’s protection. Wallnau releases the “Jezebel spirit” on Robert Mueller. Wallnau prays to protect Trump from “witches, jinxes, and demons that jump into dogs.” Wallnau prays for God to “unleash his holy sword” and smite Trump’s enemies. Wallnau claims angels literally dusted his face with gold flakes as a reward for loving Trump. Wallnau prays away obstruction of justice charges against Trump in the name of Jesus. Wallnau claims a gay bar owner was “cured of homosexuality” after eating a slice of anointed cake.
DeSantis is the first Florida governor to threaten TV broadcasters with criminal charges unless they stopped running ads he didn’t like. He’s the first governor to send his election police to knock on the doors of Amendment 4 supporters and the first to employ a last-ditch “investigation” of signatures gathered to get that amendment on the ballot. And credit, too, DeSantis for hiring just the right kind of election police.
Read the full editorial. As the paper points out, both measures passed with majority support and DeSantis “only had to shave off a few points” from the required 60% margin.
Why is it only the southern border that the right is concerned with? Most undocumented people in the US are here on visas and flew into the country legally. They just never then went home when the visa ended. Why is it only some country the right whines about immigrating to the US? Racism and bigotry is the answer. Think about it. The right is terrified that white people will be replaced by non-white people. Elon Musk is always claiming white people need to have more babies. But only white people. Also the right fails to understand that Puerto Rico is part of the US and the Puerto Ricoian people are US citizens. But remember how tRump wanted to sell the island because it was full of … those brown people. Hugs
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In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Trump talked about his campaign promise to carry out the largest mass deportation of immigrants in U.S. history.
President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News on Thursday that one of his first priorities upon taking office in January would be to make the border “strong and powerful.” When questioned about his campaign promise of mass deportations, Trump said his administration would have “no choice” but to carry them out.
“We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful and, and we have to — at the same time, we want people to come into our country,” he said. “And you know, I’m not somebody that says, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in.”
As a candidate, Trump had repeatedly vowed to carry out the “largest deportation effort in American history.” Asked about the cost of his plan, he said, “It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
It’s unclear how many undocumented immigrants there are in the U.S., but acting ICE Director Patrick J. Lechleitner told NBC News in July that a mass deportation effort would be a huge logistical and financial challenge. Two former Trump administration officials involved in immigration during his first term told NBC News that the effort would require cooperation among a number of federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the Pentagon.
In Thursday’s phone interview, he partially credited his message on immigration as a reason he won the race, saying, “They want to have borders, and they like people coming in, but they have to come in with love for the country. They have to come in legally.”
“I started to see realignment could happen because the Democrats are not in line with the thinking of the country,” the president-elect said. “You can’t have defund the police, these kind of things. They don’t want to give up and they don’t work, and the people understand that.”
Trump also spoke about his phone calls with Harris and President Joe Biden since the election.
“Very nice calls, very respectful both ways,” Trump said, describing the conversations, adding that Harris “talked about transition, and she said she’d like it to be smooth as can be, which I agree with, of course.”
In her concession speech at Howard University on Wednesday, Harris said she told Trump, “We will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.”
Biden, addressing the nation in remarks from the White House on Thursday morning, urged voters to “accept the choice the country made” in re-electing Trump.
Trump also said that he and Biden on the phone agreed to have lunch together “very shortly.”
He also said he’s spoken to “probably” 70 world leaders since Wednesday morning, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which the president-elect described as “a very good talk.”
Trump also said that he spoken with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but didn’t divulge details about that conversation.
He added that he had not yet spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but “I think we’ll speak.”
Over the course of the campaign, Trump promised to end Russia’s war with Ukraine if elected, saying in September that he would negotiate a deal “that’s good for both sides.“
“There has to be as many traitors executed as he has days in office,” urged another Gab post. “Build the gallows, restore the REPUBLIC.” “Many many many executions are warranted,” someone wrote on Truth Social. One viral meme that was shared widely across platforms on Wednesday had the caption “RELEASE THE PROJECT 2025 HANDMAIDS TALE RAPE SQUADS.”
Read the full article. Other posts and memes call for executing Nancy Pelosi, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Kamala Harris. A Proud Boys account depicts Harris as “Whore Of The Year.” Hit the link for more.
In a follow-up post, Davis said the following: “Here’s my current mood: I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)”
In August 2024, Davis appeared here when he threatened to sue any publication or social media user who referred to Trump as a “convicted felon.”
In April 2024, he appeared here when he vowed to imprison Trump’s critics and prosecute Barack Obama for murder.
In February 2024, we heard from him when he declared, “What’s so bad about Christian nationalism?”
His first appearance here came last year when he threatened to “arrest and deport” journalist Mehdi Hasan and throw gay reporter Tim Miller in a women’s prison.
And he could be the nation’s next Attorney General.
Special counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks about an unsealed indictment against former President Donald Trump on Aug. 1, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Donald Trump started this year fighting two federal prosecutions that threatened to send him to prison. But he will end it free and clear of his most significant criminal legal problems.
With his resounding victory at the polls, and a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president, the key question is not if, but when, prosecutors move to dismiss or delay his federal election interference case in Washington, D.C.
Trump recently said he would fire special counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds” after he returned to the White House. Now, that won’t be necessary to bring his federal criminal troubles to an end.
Smith is taking steps to end both federal cases against Trump before the president-elect takes office, according to a source familiar with the Justice Department deliberations.
1. What are the outstanding cases the federal government has lodged against Trump?
A grand jury in Washington indicted Trump this year on four felony charges in connection with his effort to cling to power in 2020, culminating in the violent siege on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Judge Tanya Chutkan had set a trial date for March 2024, but that date came and went, after the Supreme Court accepted the case and ultimately handed Trump significant immunity from prosecution for official actions he took in the White House.
The judge is just now beginning to consider what parts of the prosecution’s case amount to official acts, and which are private conduct of a person seeking rather than holding office.
The Justice Department has appealed in a separate criminal case against Trump that accuses the former president of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and refusing to the return them to the FBI.
Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, dismissed the documents case on July 15, the first day of the Republican National Convention this year, reasoning that the way the special counsel had been appointed violates the Constitution. The Justice Department has been seeking review by a higher court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
2. What does Trump’s election victory mean for these cases?
They’re on life support and likely to end even before the inauguration in January.
On the campaign trial, now President-elect Trump has vowed to fire the special counsel, Jack Smith, on his first day in office. But Trump would not need to dismiss Smith or order any new DOJ officials to fire Smith in order to end the criminal prosecutions.
President-elect Donald Trump delivers remarks during the Georgia state GOP convention in June 2023 after a grand jury indicted him on 37 felony counts in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents probe.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
In 2000, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the federal government on its powers and boundaries, concluded that a sitting president could not be indicted or prosecuted because that “would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.”
Administrations led by Republicans and Democrats have adopted the DOJ policy against prosecuting presidents.
The Florida case involving classified documents is a bit more complicated. DOJ could file notice with the appeals court that it is abandoning the appeal. But that case involves two other defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira.
Dismissing the appeal outright would also mean walking away from cases that prosecutors built against those two defendants, Trump’s personal aide and the property manager at Mar-a-Lago.
What’s more, the federal government may have a broader interest, because Cannon’s reasoning could upend the way special prosecutors have been appointed for decades.
But one DOJ veteran who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly told NPR that Cannon’s ruling would not be considered binding precedent, so the stakes could be lower.
Former Attorney General William Barr says voters have evaluated the allegations against Trump—and decisively rendered their own verdict.
“Further maneuvering on these cases in the weeks ahead would serve no legitimate purpose and only distract the country and the incoming administration from the task at hand,” Barr said in a written statement first reported by the Guardian.
3. What happens to the special counsel, Jack Smith?
Special counsels are obligated to file a report on their actions with the Attorney General when they finish their work. The current attorney general, Merrick Garland, has pledged to make most of those reports public.
If Smith’s written report is not complete by Inauguration Day, it will be up to new DOJ leaders to decide its fate.
Mike Davis, a Trump ally, told a conservative interviewer this week that the attorney general “is probably President Trump’s most important appointment.”
Davis told the interviewer that Smith’s entire office should be fired and said, “After today, Jack Smith, you’re going to be the hunted: legally, politically and financially. So lawyer up, buddy.”
4. Trump also faced criminal charges in two states, New York and Georgia. How will the election reshape those cases?
A jury in New York this year convicted Trump on 34 criminal charges related to bookkeeping for an alleged hush money payment to an adult film actress shortly before the 2016 election.
Justice Juan Merchan scheduled a hearing for Nov. 12 to assess how the Supreme Court’s immunity decision might affect that case. It’s not clear whether the criminal sentencing for Trump set for Thanksgiving week will occur. Trump’s lawyers may seek to stop it given the election results.
The case against Trump in Fulton County, Ga., over alleged election interference, has been on pause for months while a higher court considers possible conflicts of interest involving District Attorney Fani Willis. There’s a hearing scheduled in that appeal Dec. 5.
It, too, could be overtaken by events — and a strategy of delay and deflection by Trump’s lawyers that appears to have succeeded beyond imagination.
(Honestly, the entire Don-Madison Square Garden “event” idea sickened me, but I didn’t think his campaign could afford to do it. Anyway, it happened, and the fact that there was any crowd at all nauseates me. One of my great grandfathers immigrated to the US before the 1st World War, earning his citizenship in part by fighting for the US and allies in that war. The other side of the family immigrated between the wars, as they could see what may have been coming, and did. I’m fairly certain all their spirits, including each and every US veteran in my family living or dead, are also nauseated and maybe angry about this “event.” I’m happy there are people like Heather Cox Richardson, who put sensible light onto historic events. So everybody do all you can to Get Out The Vote! The facts are all on our side. -A)
I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way.
It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight.
There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.
Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.
Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024.
On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump.
Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.
Meanwhile, the decision of the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post not to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have sparked a backlash. As Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.”
Early on October 26, the Washington Post itself went after Trump backer billionaire Elon Musk with a major story highlighting the information that Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, had worked illegally when he started his career in the U.S. Musk “did not have the legal right to work” in the U.S. when he started his first successful company. As part of the Trump campaign, Musk has emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigrants.
The New York Times has tended to downplay Trump’s outrageous statements, but on Saturday it ran a round-up of Trump’s threats in the center of the front page, above the fold. It noted that Trump has vowed to expand presidential power, prosecute his political opponents, and crack down on immigration with mass deportations and detention camps. It went on to list his determination to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), use the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels “in potential violation of international law,” and use federal troops against U.S. citizens. It added that he plans to “upend trade” with sweeping new tariffs that will raise consumer prices, and to rein in regulatory agencies.
“To help achieve these and other goals,” the paper concluded, “his advisers are vetting lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.”
On Sunday the front page of the New York Times opinion section read, in giant capital letters: “DONALD TRUMP/ SAYS HE WILL PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES/ ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS/ USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS/ ABANDON ALLIES/ PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS/ BELIEVE HIM.” And then, inside the section, the paper provided the receipts: Trump’s own words outlining his fascist plans. “BELIEVE HIM,” the paper said.
On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, host Jake Tapper refused to permit Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, to gaslight viewers. Vance angrily denied that Trump has repeatedly called for using the U.S. military against Americans, but Tapper came with receipts that proved the very things Vance denied.
Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden began in the early afternoon. The hateful performances of the early participants set the tone for the rally. Early on, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, delivered a steamingly racist set. He said, for example: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” He went on: “And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.” Hinchcliffe also talked about Black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins.
The speakers who followed Hinchcliffe called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” They called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a b*tch,” and they railed against “f*cking illegals.” They insulted Latinos generally, Black Americans, Palestinians and Jews. Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that “Germany is for Germans and Germans only.”
Trump took the stage about two hours late, prompting people to stream toward the exits before he finished speaking. He hit his usual highlights, notably undermining Vance’s argument from earlier in the day by saying that, indeed, he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”
But Trump perhaps gave away the game with his inflammatory language and with an aside, seemingly aimed at House speaker Johnson. “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said.
It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote.
Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan.
But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him. Tonight’s rally badly hurt that plan.
As Hinchcliffe was talking about Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris was at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia talking about her plan to spread her opportunity economy to Puerto Rico. She has called for strengthening Puerto Rico’s energy grid and making it easier to get permits to build there.
After the “floating island of garbage” comment, Puerto Rican superstar musician Bad Bunny, who has more than 45 million followers on Instagram, posted Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico, and his spokesperson said he is endorsing Harris.
Puerto Rican singer and actor Ricky Martin shared a clip from Hinchcliffe’s set with his 16 million followers. His caption read: “This is what they think of us.” Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who has 250 million Instagram followers, posted Harris’s plan. Later, singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande posted that she had voted for Harris. Grande has 376 million followers on Instagram. Singer Luis Fonsi, who has 16 million followers, also called out the “constant hate.”
The headlines were brutal. “MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump’s MSG rally,” read Axios. Politico wrote: “Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks.” “Racist Remarks and Insults Mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally,” the New York Times announced. “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults,” read CNN.
But the biggest sign of the damage the rally did was the frantic backpedaling from Republicans in tight elections, who distanced themselves as fast as they could from the insults against Puerto Ricans, especially. The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters.
As the clips spread like wildfire, political writer Charlotte Clymer pointed out that almost 6 million Puerto Ricans live in the states—about a million in Florida, half a million in Pennsylvania, 100,000 in Georgia, 100,000 in Michigan, 100,000 in North Carolina, 45,000 in Arizona, and 40,000 in Nevada—and that over half of them voted in 2020.
In 1939, as about 18,000 American Nazis rallied inside Madison Square Garden, newspapers reported that a crowd of about 100,000 anti-Nazis gathered outside to protest. It took 1,700 police officers, the largest number of officers ever before detailed for a single event, to hold them back from storming the venue.
As a poll worker, I have been harassed and threatened by Trumpers wearing Trump gear simply for enforcing the law. The fact that Vance is encouraging harassment and threats of poll workers is disgusting. Ugly shit by ugly people, and I hate them. pic.twitter.com/1abY4vv7ch
If the situation were reversed and she was just as crude and gross but voting for Harris, obviously Vance wouldn’t call her a patriot, he’d do his usual demagogic horseshit.
But voting for Trump (and JD) is the only requirement for patriotism according to him. https://t.co/qda1r2aUtU
Just the other day, a guy from Alabama was arrested for threatening to kill volunteer poll workers, calling them 'traitors'. Now, Vance calls this woman a patriot for harassing poll workers. These losers deliberately sow chaos and division, they thrive on it, laugh about it. pic.twitter.com/hbnW6gZHuf
Executives at a major Bezos-owned company seeking federal contracts met with Donald Trump on Friday, the same day The Post announced it would not make a presidential endorsement. pic.twitter.com/XZNFphQQRP
Constitutional sheriffs are duly elected lawmen who believe they answer only to god. They've spent the last six months preparing to stop a "stolen" election—by any means necessary, @daithaigilbert reports.
October 27, 1659 William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, two Quakers (formally, members of the Society of Friends) who came from England in 1656 to escape religious persecution, were executed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for their religious beliefs. The two had violated a law, passed by the Massachusetts General Court the year before, banning Quakers from the colony under penalty of death. Quakers opposed central church authority, preferring to seek spiritual insight and consensus through egalitarian Quaker meetings. They advocated sexual equality and became some of the most outspoken opponents of slavery in early America.
October 27, 1967 Phillip Berrigan, artist Tom Lewis, poet David Eberhardt, and United Church of Christ minister James Mengel, members of the Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission, entered the draft board at the United States Customs House and poured duck’s blood on several hundred draft records. Phillip Berrigan pouring blood on draft files The Baltimore Four, as they became known, were arrested and later tried and convicted for the action which they saw as a symbolic act of civil disobedience — a nonviolent attack on the machinery of war. This day later became known as Plowshare Action Remembrance Day. Berrigan in his jail cell drawning by Tom Lewis Read more about Phillip Berrigan
October 27, 1967 120,000 marched against the Vietnam War in London. Violence erupted when a 6,000-strong Maoist splinter group broke away and charged the police outside the United States Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Read more
October 27, 1969 Ralph Nader set up a consumer organization with young lawyers and researchers (often called “Nader’s Raiders”) who produced systematic exposés of industrial hazards, pollution, unsafe products, and governmental neglect of consumer safety laws. Ralph Nader (center) Nader is widely recognized as the founder of the consumer rights movement. He played a key role in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Freedom of Information Act, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Read more
October 27, 2002 Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil in a runoff, becoming the country’s first elected leftist leader. Read more
Phillip Berrigan pouring blood on draft files
Berrigan in his jail cell drawning by Tom Lewis
Ralph Nader (center) 
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
Scottie's Playtime 