Tag: Donald Trump

Joe pardoned Hunter and I don’t care

Kash Patel at the FBI?

Joe pardoned Hunter, and I don’t care.

Gavin Newsom: “With everything the president and his family have been through, I completely understand the instinct to protect Hunter. But I took the president at his word. So, by definition, I’m disappointed and can’t support the decision.”

A Republican senator said that he understood why Joe executed the pardon and admitted that he would likely pardon his own child in similar circumstances but that the problem is that Joe lied. 

The editorial in my local newspaper, the Albany Times Union, suggested that the pardon has ” provided a measure of bipartisan cover for [djt] to use his pardon power to exonerate anyone in his immediate sphere – family, friends, political donors, alleged co-conspirators  – on the stated basis that their investigation or prosecution was ‘political persecution’ or the more current ‘lawfare,'” as though they hadn’t 45 hadn’t already done that. This is disingenuous. 

On his way out of office in 2021, djt “displayed both nepotism and vengeance. Amid dozens of dubious (and worse) acts of clemency in those final days, he pardoned his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, who had been convicted of 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. (Last week, Mr. Trump announced he plans to nominate Mr. Kushner as ambassador to France.)”

The other guy

Joe’s predecessor and successor posted on social media that the pardon was  “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” He mentioned the rioters from Jan. 6, 2021, some of whom he has suggested could be pardoned when he takes office. This is what he had said long before Joe’s pardon of Hunter.

Cory Doctorow wrote, in a different context: “Remember the 2016 debate where [Hillary] Clinton accused Trump of cheating on his taxes, and he admitted to it, saying, ‘That makes me smart’? Trumpism is the movement of ‘that makes me smart’ life, where if you get scammed, that’s your own damned fault. Sorry, loser, you lost.”

The comparison between Joe’s “sin” and the wealth of distortions told by 45 is not even in the same ballpark. According to the Washington Post, during 45’s four-year term, his false or misleading claims totaled 30,573.

This time around, his insistence that he knew nothing about Project 2025 and then appointed people who wrote the document is classic. He… what is the word I’m looking for? Oh, yeah… lied. (And polling suggests that 1) his voters know he’s lying, but 2) they either don’t mind or actively appreciate it, which hurts my head.)

Retribution

But sometimes, he does tell the truth. His nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel, is being very open about how he’ll persecute MAGA’s enemies. A shrewd observer of autocracy explains how far he’ll be able to get—and why there’s cause for serious worry.

From ABC News This Week for 1 Dec 2024:

KASH PATEL, DONALD TRUMP’S NOMINEE FOR FBI DIRECTOR: I am going to go on a government gangster’s manhunt in Washington, D.C., for our great president. Who’s coming with me?

JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: The president-elect names Kash Patel to serve as FBI director. A loyalist who said Trump’s political opponents should be very afraid. And may be the toughest confirmation battle yet.

If there was any doubt that President-elect Donald Trump intends to follow through with his promises of radical change and retribution, both here at home and abroad, those doubts have been erased… 

Unqualified

“Patel is so controversial that when President Trump talked about making him the deputy FBI director in 2020, then-Attorney General Bill Barr said it would happen, quote, ‘over my dead body,’ according to his memoir, adding, quote, ‘Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency. The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.’”

[h/t Paul Rapp] “Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch notes that Biden’s pardon came after [djt’s announcement of Patel]… Filipkowski studies right-wing media and points out that Patel’s many appearances there suggest he is obsessed with Hunter Biden, especially the story of his laptop, which Patel insists shows that Hunter and Joe Biden engaged in crimes with Ukraine and China.
“As legal commentator Asha Rangappa noted: ‘People criticizing the Hunter Biden pardon need to recognize: For the 1st time, the FBI and Justice Department could literally fabricate evidence, or collaborate with a foreign government to ‘find’ evidence of a ‘crime,’ with zero accountability. That’s why the pardon goes back to 2014.'”
Context
Having watched Joe Biden for half a century, I don’t think he intended to lie at all. When he made his initial comment that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter, it was with the thought that he would be President and wouldn’t take action to subvert his own Justice Department. Similarly, when Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic nominee, he didn’t worry about retribution from the Department of Justice.
But with Kash Patel potentially heading the FBI, all bets were off. Moreover, I think that Jill Biden had an outsized hand in this. When asked about how she felt about the pardon at a Christmas event, she said, “Of course, I wanted a pardon for my son.” 
More pardons!

I’m sure there’ll be many more pardons in the coming weeks. One group he should pardon is most, if not all, of the folks on this list of Patel “enemies,” including  Lloyd Austin, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Stephanie Grisham, Kamala Harris,  Gina Haspel, Fiona Hill, Eric Holder, Cassidy Hutchinson, Lisa Monaco, Robert Mueller, Jake Sullivan,  Alexander Vindman, Christopher Wray, and Sally Yates.

Do you know who else is on the list? Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Can Joe Biden pardon himself? This is an interesting question. The former /next guy has indicated that he might pardon himself, so why the heck not?

Satirist Andy Borowitz notes that JRB would give “his dog Commander a sweeping pardon in exchange for biting South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.”

American Kakistocracy on steroids

stunningly unqualified

Back in 2017, Norm Ornstein wrote about the American Kakistocracy for The Atlantic. “There’s a case to be made that the United States is governed by the least scrupulous of its citizens.” And now we are an American Kakistocracy on steroids.
2017: “Kakistocracy is a term that was first used in the 17th century; derived from a Greek word, it means, literally, government by the worst and most unscrupulous people among us. More broadly, it can mean the most inept and cringeworthy kind of government. The term fell into disuse over the past century or more, and most highly informed people have never heard it before (but to kids familiar with the word “kaka” it might resonate).”

“As I wrote my new book with E.J. Dionne and Tom Mann, One Nation Under Trump, I kept returning to the term. Kakistocracy is back, and we are experiencing it firsthand in America. The unscrupulous element has come into sharp focus in recent weeks as a string of Trump Cabinet members and White House staffers have been caught spending staggering sums of taxpayer dollars to charter jets, at times to go small distances where cheap commercial transportation was readily available, at times to conveniently visit home areas or have lunch with family members.”

I use the term “on steroids” intentionally. This is a term that djt used to describe the embarrassing failed North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. He was “like Martin Luther King on steroids.” This is an insult to both Martin Luther King and steroids.

What’s happening now, and it’s changing so rapidly that it’s difficult to encapsulate, is that any sense of guardrails or normalcy is out the window. As I used to say too often, though it’s still accurate, The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.

Another appropriate word for right now is ‘recrudescence’ (17th century): “the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.”

Elon

Undoubtedly, you’ve heard how the Dems ran too far to the left or too far to the center or were too “woke,” or whatever. What I think is mostly true is that the Republicans were better able to define the Democrats than the Dems.

“Muslims in Michigan began seeing pro-Israel ads this fall praising Vice President Kamala Harris for marrying a Jewish man and backing the Jewish state. Jews in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, saw ads from the same group with the opposite message: Harris wanted to stop U.S. arms shipments to Israel.

“Another group promoted ‘Kamala’s bold progressive agenda’ to conservative-leaning Donald Trump voters, while a third filled the phones of young liberals with videos about how Harris had abandoned the progressive dream. Black voters in North Carolina were told Democrats wanted to take away their menthol cigarettes, while working-class White men in the Midwest were warned that Harris would support quotas for minorities and deny them Zyn nicotine pouches.

“What voters had no way of knowing at the time was that all of the ads were part of a single $45 million effort created by political advisers to Tesla founder Elon Musk.”

It doesn’t feel like just another election. The Hollywood Reporter, of all things, notes: “The results came as a shock to large swaths of the nation who had hoped that the election of… Harris would protect the United States from the kind of fascism sweeping across the world. But for some — communities of color and queer and trans people, for example— Trump’s re-election only reaffirmed nightmares about a country whose major civil rights gains are young when compared to its oppressive history.”

Cabinet

It appears there are two types of his Cabinet appointments: the totally unqualified and the merely unfortunate.

47 selected, for his Attorney General, a person who Ben Domenech, a “big noise in conservative circles [who is] a co-founder of The RedState group blog and The Federalist,” despises. The headline of his article, posted to Substack, left no doubt as to the tenor of the piece: “Matt Gaetz is a Vile Sex Pest, and Any Senator Who Votes For Him Owns That.” His selection triggers audible gasps from some Republicans.

Tom Homan

Pete Hegseth is a Fox News TV host who is way out of his league to run an operation as vast as the Defense Department. He had a role in djt’s controversial pardons of men accused of war crimes. He also is waging a war on “woke.”

Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, was picked as an ambassador to the United Nations but not because of her international expertise.

As governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem has no background in Homeland Security.
The Atlantic called Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress from Hawaii, “stunningly unqualified for almost any Cabinet post (as are some of Trump’s other picks), but especially for ODNI. She has no qualifications as an intelligence professional—literally none….  She has no significant experience directing or managing much of anything.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s message on vaccines is a medical crisis waiting to happen. And then he says stuff even nuttier.
(Off-topic, but LinkedIn wanted to know if I wanted to follow Vivek Ramaswamy, the “efficiency guy with Musk. “STAND for truth.” No, thank you. )
Here are observations by Common Dreams.
Day 1
Worse than that, Orange is Plotting To Skip The Senate Confirmation Process. He was serious when he said he’d be dictator only on Day 1. This involves the Senate allowing “him to make recess appointments that would skip the otherwise Constitutionally mandated Senate confirmation process.” Reportedly, he “is coordinating with House Speaker Johnson to allow [djt] to force Congress to adjourn under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution so that he can freely make the recess appointments he wants.” 
The Senate could block this if it takes its role of ‘advise and consent’ seriously—otherwise, the extremely tenuous Senate integrity is shot altogether.

Meanwhile, per Red State: “Several conservative groups are currently in a campaign to identify federal employees who are partisan or possibly resistant to enacting Trump’s agenda, according to a CNN report. These groups include the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project and the American Accountability Foundation.

“The organizations have flooded federal agencies with tens of thousands of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests demanding access to emails, personnel records, and other communications between government employees. The effort is part of a comprehensive strategy to lay the groundwork for mass firings of civil servants under Trump’s Schedule F executive order issued in 2020, which was later revoked under President Joe Biden.” I wrote about Schedule F here. 

So, am I optimistic? Not really. But one needs to fight the fight anyway. I’m just not sure what that looks like yet.

November rambling: Hatred is Not the Norm

Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game

Love thy neighbor“Hatred is Not the Norm”: For a 1964 Multi-Faith Civil Rights Rally, Rod Serling Pens “A MostNon-Political Speech” – delivered by Dick Van Dyke

A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas ERs

Lee Greenwood: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Trudeau announces sharp cuts to Canada’s immigration targets

Sorry, world. The toxic Rep. Elise Stefanik, the next UN ambassador

Landmines

What Now? with Trevor Noah: Have We Missed The Message? Bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates joins Trevor and Christiana to discuss his new book about how the stories we tell, and the ones we don’t, shape our realities. They also unpack the jaw-dropping CBS interview that followed the book’s release, and our elusive search as a people to see the humanity in others.

CSICON: Island of Reason in a Sea of Madness

Magic Johnson’s new achievement

Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey Dancer of ‘Power and Radiance,’ Dies at 81

The Capital Region of New York State will become home to a national semiconductor research center, a major part of the federal government’s effort to boost the semiconductor industry in the United States.

I see your pawn and raise you a queen.

NAICS Changes Will Begin to Be Reflected in the Census Bureau’s Economic Surveys and Programs. Impact of Changes to the North American Industry Classification System. You may be amazed at how interested I am in this particular geeky subject.

Intimacy Coordinators Unanimously Vote to Join SAG-AFTRA

The Copyright Office frees the McFlurry machine.

Tobacco To School and Nightmare on Sesame Street and The Batman of Baltimore
I GOT NOTHING

I have written very little about the topic of the election because I have nothing fresh to say. I’ve read seemingly every single analysis of who’s to blame and what the what is the turning point, blah blah blah. It’s kind of overwhelming and, frankly, a little exhausting.

It’s also true that I’m having difficulty writing anything else, even putting together a links post. Most of the items I’ve posted of late were previously created. I have five blog posts in some form of draft, which is terrible for me because I can’t finish anything. It’s not that I don’t know what I want to write; I just can’t find the energy. I am dumfungled.

I’m sad about the passing of Nancy Frank, our church’s organist emeritus. A group of us will be honored to sing at her funeral on Saturday at 2 p.m. I’ll certainly write about her afterward; writing obit-like pieces should be limited to once a week. 

Still, I will recommend Jon Stewart on djt’s win and What’s Next w/ Heather Cox Richardson | The Weekly Show, specifically: 18:14 – Comparison to Steve Bannon’s takeover of Breitbart 21:20 – Groups of voters, motives, and strategies; and 40:40 – Reactionary Movements 41:53 – Propaganda vs. Reality. “Hero is somebody who keeps trying to do the right thing, even when they know the walls are closing in… we can all do that.” Oh, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver for 11/10/2024.

BILL KENNEDY

Probably the highlight of the month thus far was participating in the 2nd Annual William Kennedy Marathon Reading on November 7, starting at 11 a.m. at the Albany Distilling Co. The reading was of the 1978 novel Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, “an odyssey through the speakeasies and pool halls of Albany’s grimy and glittering underworld.” 

I got to see Mike Huber and Paul Grondahl from the New York State Writers Institute. Bill Kennedy came during the fourth speaker and sat up front. He seemed to appreciate the readings by the 5th (me) and 6th (Frank S. Robinson) readers. 

MUSIC

The entirety of Stevie Wonder’s Original Musiquarium I, featuring the hits plus four then-new songs

Subways Of Your Mind – FEX. A mystery solved.

Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists: The Specials

Le Rappel des Oiseaux by Jean-Philippe Rameau

Everybody Wants To Rule The World – Tears For Fears. HQ. Ultimate 12-inch extended mix

Coverville 1508: The Yes Cover Story II and 1509: Covers of Daryl Hall, Low, and Ween and 1510: The Quincy Jones Tribute

Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run) by Billy Ocean

Spooky music

When Do We Stop Finding New Music? A Statistical Analysis

A ‘Jezebel spirit’?

djt – “an impetuous child”

I saw this AP story, “What’s a ‘Jezebel spirit’? Some Christians use the term to paint Kamala Harris with a demonic brush.” And you wonder why many people steer clear of “some Christians.”

“Christian nationalist leaders are telling followers that Vice President Kamala Harris is under the influence of a ‘Jezebel spirit,’ using a term with deeply racist and misogynistic roots that is setting off alarm bells for religious and political scholars.

“The concept is inspired by the biblical story of the evil Queen Jezebel, who persecuted prophets and was punished with a horrible death. The word ‘Jezebel’ was used during slavery and throughout U.S. history to describe Black women, casting them as overtly sexual and untrustworthy.”

Never underestimate the power of misogynoir.

“In the context of ‘Jezebel spirit,’ the term has sinister connotations, suggesting the person is under the influence of demons in a spiritual battle between good and evil. People who have studied the Jan. 6 insurrection warn that similar rhetoric on spiritual warfare drove many to the U.S. Capitol that day.”

If you want to hear more about The Dangerous Reality of White Christian Nationalism, watch Kat Abu here.

djt keeps prompting Christians to go out and vote. I’m planning to do so THIS week (not for him), in the unlikely event that by doing so, I will stop feeling anxious about the contest.

Arnold Palmer and Mickey D’s

Of course, the election is a dead heat, despite rational reasons not to vote for the guy, not just over policy. The Weekly Sift guy has the right attitude, which I wish I could replicate. “I can’t help but learn from headlines that the race is still close. How much more do I need to know? I know who I’m voting for, and I’ve already written my check to the Harris campaign. I could spend all day fretting about whether the likelihood of Harris winning is 55% or 45%, but what’s the point?”

He also notes about djt, “Father Time is undefeated, and he gets us all eventually. What we’re seeing here is exactly how dementia works: It takes our little quirks and exaggerates them until they become serious dysfunctions.” He needs to release his medical records. 

From A Word A Day: “Whenever [djt] trains his blunderbuss…it’s difficult to decipher whether he’s deadly serious, merely trying to generate instant outrage, or just heading off on a senescent ramble.” – Irish Times (Dublin); Aug 9, 2024.

(The number of people who’ve told me that JD Vance and the cabinet are going to 25th amendment djt is astonishing. Even they believe that Orange is not up to the task.) 

Turn the entire machinery of the government to his whims.

But Ezra Klein takes a different view in the New York Times; djt is not diminished, just more himself. “It is Trump’s absence of inhibition that makes him a great entertainer. [Entertainer? Meh.] It is Trump’s absence of inhibition that makes him feel, to so many, like not a politician — the fact that he was already the U.S. president notwithstanding. It is why the people who want to be like him — the mini-Trumps… — can’t pull it off. What makes Trump Trump isn’t his views on immigration, though they are part of it. It’s the manic charisma born of his disinhibition.

“It is his great strength. It is also his terrible flaw…

“Trump’s disinhibition is yoked to a malignancy at his core. I do believe he’s a narcissist… Trump does not see beyond himself, what he thinks, what he wants, and how he’s feeling. He does not listen to other people. He does not take correction or direction. Wisdom is the ability to learn from experience, to learn from others. Donald Trump doesn’t really learn. He once told a biographer, ‘When I look at myself in the first grade, and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.”

Hit the brakes
Endorsements, or lack of the same
ITEM: Washington Post Says It Won’t Endorse Anyone for President. Will Lewis, the company’s chief executive, said the paper was “returning to our roots” of not endorsing presidential candidates. The Post has endorsed presidential candidates since 1976, when it gave its stamp of approval to Jimmy Carter, although it did endorse Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

Robert Kagan, “editor-at-large of the Washington Post and a persistent neoconservative critic of [djt]… Members of the Post’s editorial board were surprised Friday when they learned about the decision not to endorse from top opinion editor David Shipley, Semafor reported. The board drafted an endorsement of Harris earlier this month, which was sent to the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who reportedly pressured publisher and CEO Will Lewis to not give an endorsement.”

The Borowitz Report, a satire column, noted: “Urging Prime customers not to miss out, on Friday Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offered to sell the Washington Post’s integrity as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime Black Friday Deal.’ Calling the Post’s integrity ‘a signature feature that made this former newspaper great,’ the product page for the item listed it at $4.99 with free shipping… Customers shopping for Bezos’s spine, soul, and human decency got an ‘Uh oh, something went wrong’ error message, indicating that the products did not exist.”

Also
ITEM : The Los Angeles Times opted not to endorse anyone for President. Per Columbia Journalism Review: “Mariel Garza, the editorials editor…, resigned on Wednesday after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse… Harris for president. ‘I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.'” Two of its writers subsequently quit. “On October 11, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper for $500 million in 2018, informed the paper’s editorial board that the Times would not be making an endorsement for president. The message was conveyed to Garza by Terry Tang, the paper’s editor.”
ITEM: The New York Times supported “The Only Patriotic Choice for President.” 
ITEM:  “Scientific American, the 179-year-old bedrock of American scientific publication, has endorsed Harris for President, only the second such endorsement in its long history.” Cory Doctorow notes, “Some institutions are getting over their discomfort with norm-breaking and standing up for democracy.”
FINALLY…
Expat Cole Haddon wrote on Medium: “All I can think about is the polls that continue to show Kamala Harris, a typically flawed Democratic candidate, polling neck-and-neck with a convicted felon, rapist, and accused insurrectionist currently running on throwing out the U.S. Constitution, punishing political enemies and whomever else he feels like, and mass-arresting and deporting millions of those he deems to be foreigners — and half of voters think this sounds like a great idea for their country’s future. In other words, nearly half of U.S. voters would prefer fascism over sharing what they perceive to be ‘their country.'”

Fear an orange win

xenophobia

I fear an Orange win. While it’s been brewing in my mind for a few weeks, it is epitomized in observations made by commenters on ABC This Week on October 13.

RACHAEL BADE, ABC NEWS CONTRIBUTING POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT:  ‘We’ve been talking about women this entire election, how they’re running away from Trump. Childless cat lady comments, abortion, just Trump’s temperament in general. But… in the final weeks of this election, we are really starting to see that Donald Trump has been very successful with turning out men or at least getting them excited to vote for him.

“And not just conservative men, but men who consider themselves to be…pro-abortion rights, socially liberal men, black men, Latino men. And, you know, I was interviewing one of the more famous focus group analysts, Sarah Longwell, at “The Bulwark,” and she was talking about why, and it sounds like a lot of these men, they don’t view Donald Trump as extreme.

“You might disagree with that. They like him. They think he’s somebody that they would want to hang out with, and he has just been sort of successful and leaning into the strongman mentality that right now, with, you know, all the chaos in the Middle East, with the issues with the hurricanes, she’s hearing more and more in focus groups not just from men but also some women who are reaching for that sort of strongman mentality and starting to second-guess Harris.”

Not extreme?

SUSAN GLASSER, THE NEW YORKER STAFF WRITER: “I think this conversation we’re having, it’s really a question of who, in the end is the election about, and if people’s gaze is focused on Donald Trump, his escalatory rhetoric, I mean, some of the things we’ve seen this week are the most nakedly racist and xenophobic things I’ve ever seen from a national candidate, and that includes Donald Trump in his previous two outings.”

The notion that djt is not an extreme candidate suggests that Americans are more ahistorical people than I had already feared.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is quoted in Bob Woodward’s new book, War. The general approaches the writer “in a state of panic about the prospect of a Trump revival. ‘No one has ever been as dangerous to this country,’ the general exclaimed. ‘I glimpsed it when I talked to you … for Peril [Woodward’s previous book], but I now know it, I now know it. … We have got to stop him! You have got to stop him! … He’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country! … A fascist to the core!’”

Intuition

REP. MIKE JOHNSON, (R) SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.

“Intuitively.”  The Speaker was on CBS’ Face The Nation. He must  “intuitively” know the 2020 election was “rigged” because he played a leading role in Trump’s legal effort to overturn it. He “has made statements in recent weeks suggesting that the certification of the election results is conditional.” 

How Harris Can Finish Strong

Meanwhile, New York Times columnist David Brooks notes that “Undecided voters in a Times Opinion focus group were recently asked to describe Kamala Harris’ efforts. They responded with phrases like: ‘honeymoon’s over,’ the paint is wearing off,’ ‘uninspired,’ ‘absent,’ and ‘scared to talk directly to the American people.’ Researchers who have been surveying voter sentiment as the campaign progresses found that there’s been a decline in how voters think about Harris, while sentiment toward Donald Trump has rebounded slightly since the September debate…

“The playwright David Mamet once wrote a memo to a group of fellow writers in which he reminded them that audiences ‘will not tune in to watch information.’ They will ‘only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama.’ What is drama? Mamet says it ‘is the quest of the hero to overcome those things which prevent him from achieving a specific, acute goal.’ The screenwriter Aaron Sorkin builds on that definition. He says that strong drama is built around intention and obstacle. The hero has to be seized by a strong, specific desire, and she needs to face a really big obstacle.”

Passion

“That suggests that Harris needs to show the American people her strongest, most acute, and controlling desire, the ruling passion of her soul. I know what Trump wants. He wants to dismantle the elites who he thinks have betrayed regular Americans. It’s unclear what Harris wants most deeply, other than the vague chance to do good and to be president…Candidates who are not driven by a single, specific, compelling desire become reactive. “

This aligns with what people, even those who are going to vote for her, have been saying to me about how they don’t know what she really thinks, believes, or values.

Yet she’s always working at a disadvantage. Harris’ responses to her battery of recent interviews are being scrutinized,  while djt ducked the 60 Minutes interview altogether. He hasn’t released his health records, as she has. Moreover, his supporters stand with him by ‘sussing out rhetoric from reality.’ In other words, many of his loyal fans don’t believe he’ll do what he says he’ll do. 

“What’s extraordinary… is the dire and graphic nature of his language.”

More to the point, as an opinion piece in the Boston Globe says: “He’s running a closing-days campaign fueled by falsehood – and it could work. After all, as he demonstrated with his Big Lie about the 2020 election, even his most far-fetched claims can race to the far corners of the country before fact-checkers are able to set off in persuasive pursuit.

“From last week’s assertion that Aurora, Colorado, and other towns have been ‘invaded and conquered’ by ‘vicious and bloodthirsty criminals‘ to his recent description of illegal immigrants as ‘savages,’ ‘predators,’ and ‘animals’ who want to ‘rape, pillage, thieve, plunder, and kill’ Americans, to his ominous warning that migrants ‘grab young girls and slice them up right in front of their parents…,’ it’s trademark Trump, a dark, roiling, racially-tinged rhetorical torrent, unlike anything we’ve seen in any presidential campaign in modern American history.

“That dystopian rhetoric is an obvious attempt to create fear sufficient to move voters beyond his enormous character faults and his well-documented assault on democracy and get them to conclude that however unsavory they find him, he’s the strongman the country needs to solve its supposed problems.”

For reasons involving his cult of personality, 45 is graded on a curve, and he could win in November—probably not the popular vote, but quite possibly the Electoral College. I’d SO love to be wrong.

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