October 26, 2024

Saturday, October 26, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

Are these ads 👇 equal to LBJ’s “Daisy” ad which sank Barry Goldwater?

Harris uses John Kelly's words against Trump in ad campaign.

A Harris ad campaign is using audio of former White House chief of staff John Kelly calling former President Trump a "fascist" and claiming the Republican presidential nominee said "Hitler did some good things."

Why it matters: The 30- and 60-second ads that were first obtained by the New York Times are part of a wider push by Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign to seek to portray Trump as a grave threat to the U.S. if re-elected next month.

The Democratic presidential candidate has stepped up her attacks on Trump this week and said she believes Trump is a fascist.

The big picture: Both Harris campaign ads open with the words "An unprecedented warning... from Trump's former chief of staff, a four-star Marine general" before cutting to excerpts from Kelly's interview with NYT reporter Michael Schmidt.

The other side: "I can't even believe it. But she did call me a fascist," Trump said during an interview with Fox News' Bill Melugin on Thursday. "And everyone knows that's not true. They call me everything until something sticks."

Trump said he "fired" Kelly, his longest-serving White House chief of staff.

"He was a bad guy and he ended up being a weak guy, because all bullies end up being weak," Trump added. "He made a statement that I'm like Hitler. It just couldn't be further from the truth. It's just the opposite, actually."

Go deeper: Trump calls John Kelly a "lowlife" after Hitler praise revelations. (Axios)

30 second version.

60 second version.

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Once journalism’s leader at normalizing Trump, the New York Times suddenly has become the nation’s protector against him.

DONALD TRUMP SAYS HE WILL

PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES

USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS

ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS

PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS

ABANDON ALLIES.

BELIEVE HIM.

Donald Trump has described at length the dangerous and disturbing actions he says he will take if he wins the presidency.

His rallies offer a steady stream of such promises and threats — things like prosecuting political opponents and using the military against U.S. citizens. These statements are so outrageous and outlandish, so openly in conflict with the norms and values of American democracy that many find them hard to regard as anything but empty bluster.

We have two words for American voters: Believe him.

The record shows that Mr. Trump often pursues his stated goals, regardless of how plainly they lack legal or moral grounding. The record further shows that many of his most reckless efforts in his first administration were stymied only because of others in his administration who blocked, delayed or watered down his aims to ensure that he could not put himself above the law or the country. Mr. Trump has learned from that experience to surround himself with supplicants who would instead obey his wishes and bring his words and ideas to life even if they contradict facts, the public interest or the Constitution.

For this reason, Americans would be wise to see this language as a genuine threat, not simply Mr. Trump on a tangent. We should take the painful step of imagining America were his plans and promises to come to pass, to imagine the impacts to our culture, to our economy, to our security, to our shared commitment to the rule of law.

The promises Mr. Trump made during his first presidential campaign, in 2016, turned out to be a pretty good road map of the policies and priorities he pursued as president. Today he says he is ready to deploy the military against his political opponents. He says that he will instruct the Justice Department to prosecute critics. He says that he will mobilize the National Guard to deport immigrants, that he is ready to blow Iranian cities to smithereens, that he will allow vigilante violence as a solution to crime in America.

Americans should believe him.

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL USE THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO PUNISH PEOPLE HE DOESN’T LIKE.

BELIEVE HIM.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
“Wouldn’t it be terrible to throw the president’s wife and the former secretary of state, think of it, the former secretary of state, but the president’s wife, into jail? Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing? But they want to do it. It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to. And it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”

After his conviction on 34 felony charges in New York in May, Mr. Trump, in an interview with Newsmax, escalated his threats to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies.

WHY YOU SHOULD BELIEVE HIM

As president, Mr. Trump repeatedly sought to use the power of government to punish his political opponents. He was open about trying to get other countries to do his bidding — his attempt to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden led to his first impeachment in 2019. Behind the scenes, he was relentless in trying to get his attorneys general and the I.R.S. to investigate people he thought had wronged him, including Hillary Clinton, his former rival; John Kerry, a former secretary of state; his former F.B.I. director, James Comey; and Andrew McCabe, Mr. Comey’s deputy. None of these efforts led to any charges being filed, but if he is re-elected, Mr. Trump will continue trying to use the Justice Department to harass his enemies.

After the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, the Justice Department established policies aimed at insulating its decision making from White House pressure, and during Mr. Trump’s presidency, many senior Justice officials honored that policy and resisted his demands. But rules can be rewritten, and Mr. Trump has made clear that he intends to pick officials who will take orders from the Oval Office. According to NPR, during the current campaign, Mr. Trump has made more than 100 specific threats “to investigate, prosecute, jail or otherwise punish” people he regards as enemies, including Mr. Biden, Kamala Harris, members of Congress, judges and prosecutors.

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL ROUND UP AND DEPORT MILLIONS OF IMMIGRANTS. BELIEVE HIM.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
With your vote, we will seal the border, stop the invasion and launch the largest deportation effort in American history.”

Standing on a dirt road along the Mexican border in Arizona in August, Mr. Trump offered a version of the promise that has become the signature of his third presidential campaign.

WHY YOU SHOULD BELIEVE HIM
Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that he would move quickly to deport millions of people who are living in the United States without legal permission. A key aide, Stephen Miller, said last year that militarized detention camps — “large-scale staging grounds” near the border — would be constructed. Mr. Trump would have broad authority to pursue such a plan, though he’d need Congress to provide a lot of money. The estimated cost of mass deportations runs into the tens of billions of dollars. Such a campaign would tear apart families, disrupt communities and create a host of economic problems.

Mr. Trump similarly promised mass deportations during his 2016 presidential campaign, but over the following four years, his administration deported only about 326,000 people; he was stopped from executing a much broader sweep by a lack of funding, as well as legal challenges and resistance from federal, state and local officials. Mr. Trump’s advisers on immigration policy say that they have learned from that experience and that this time they will be ready to mobilize the government’s resources and to withstand legal challenges. One idea is to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that could be used to deport legal immigrants, too.

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL DEPLOY
THE AMERICAN MILITARY AGAINST
U.S. CITIZENS. BELIEVE HIM.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. Not even the people that have come in and destroying our country — by the way, totally destroying our country, the towns, the villages, they’re being inundated — but I don’t think they’re the problem in terms of Election Day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

In a Fox News interview on Oct. 13, Mr. Trump said he was primarily concerned about election interference by his domestic political opponents rather than foreign nationals.

WHY YOU SHOULD BELIEVE HIM
Mr. Trump has shown his willingness to target people who oppose him and to subject or expose them to violence to suit his ends. After refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election, he incited rioters to sack the Capitol, and several people died as a result. Four years later, he remains insistent that elections are legitimate only if he wins. His power to cause problems after voting ends on Nov. 5 is more limited than it was the last time, because he is not in power. But he could still try to foment violence — Jan. 6 cannot be forgotten.

His threats to deploy the military against his political opponents, merely for being his political opponents, are a sobering reminder of what kind of president he would be. In June 2020, Mr. Trump threatened to send active-duty military personnel into the streets of American cities to confront Black Lives Matter protesters. He wanted the soldiers to shoot them in the legs, according to his defense secretary, Mark Esper, who then took the unusual step of publicly rebuffing the president. Mr. Trump subsequently fired Mr. Esper, and the former president has made clear that if he is re-elected, he intends to pick officials who will do what he says. He would continue trying to blur the important boundary that has long kept the American military out of domestic politics, and he is implying that opposing him politically is, in his view, tantamount to treason.

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL ALLOW VIGILANTE VIOLENCE TO END CRIME. BELIEVE HIM.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
One rough hour — and I mean real rough. The word will get out, and it will end immediately.”

Addressing what he has described as a plague of unchecked property crime in American cities, Mr. Trump, at a rally in September in Erie, Pa., suggested a brief burst of police violence as a corrective.

WHY YOU SHOULD BELIEVE HIM
Mr. Trump has a long history of encouraging violence against those he accuses of crimes, a category that stretches from thieves to legal protesters, public officials and journalists. He told people at his rallies to “knock the crap out of” protesters. Former officials say that Mr. Trump wanted the military to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters. On Jan. 6, 2021, he told his supporters to “fight like hell” to prevent Congress from confirming Mr. Biden’s victory. And during the current campaign, he has repeatedly returned to the idea that the government should kill shoplifters. Last October, he called it a “simple” solution to retail theft. Mr. Trump’s campaign insisted that his call for a “rough hour” shouldn’t be taken literally or seriously. But there’s good reason to: The violent language frequently deployed by Mr. Trump, and by his acolytes, is contributing to an environment in which acts of political violence, especially by right-wing extremists, are increasingly common.

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL ORDER THE MILITARY TO STRIKE FOREIGN CIVILIAN TARGETS IF THE UNITED STATES IS ATTACKED. BELIEVE HIM.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities, and the country itself, to smithereens.”

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL PUNISH BLUE STATES BY WITHHOLDING DISASTER RELIEF. BELIEVE HIM.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
We’re going to take care of our farmers. We’re going to take care of your water situation. And we’ll force it down his throat. And we’ll say: Gavin, if you don’t do it, we’re not giving you any of that fire money that we sent you all the time for all the forest fires that you have.”

At a rally in the Coachella Valley in October, Mr. Trump suggested that he would withhold emergency aid for California after wildfires unless the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, complied with his demands for changes in unrelated agricultural policies.

WHY YOU SHOULD BELIEVE HIM
As president, Mr. Trump repeatedly sought to prevent the distribution of emergency aid to places run by Democrats. His administration delayed more than $20 billion in emergency aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria struck the island in 2017, but it expedited aid for the Florida Panhandle after Hurricane Michael struck the following year. “They love me in the Panhandle,” Mr. Trump said, according to the autobiography of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. “I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?” After wildfires swept California in 2018, the president initially declined to approve emergency aid. Mark Harvey, a senior official on his National Security Council, told Politico that the funding was approved only after aides presented Mr. Trump with data showing that there were more Trump supporters in Orange County, Calif., than in the entire state of Iowa. During the Covid pandemic, Mr. Trump urged Congress to require blue states to adopt his policy priorities, including the elimination of sanctuary cities and payroll taxation, to be eligible to receive emergency aid. The president of the United States is supposed to act in the interests of all Americans. That is a responsibility Mr. Trump has never taken seriously.

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL USE IDEOLOGICAL TESTS TO DECIDE WHICH PUBLIC SCHOOLS GET FEDERAL MONEY. BELIEVE HIM.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
On Day 1, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto our children. And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate. I will keep men out of women’s sports, 100 percent.”

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL ABANDON
U.S. ALLIES. BELIEVE HIM.

IN HIS OWN WORDS
No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”

At a rally in South Carolina in February, Mr. Trump said “one of the presidents of a big country” asked him whether the United States would still defend that country if it was invaded by Russia, even if it doesn’t “pay.”

WHY YOU SHOULD BELIEVE HIM

As president, Mr. Trump instructed aides in 2018 to prepare to withdraw the United States from NATO, though he was dissuaded from following through, in part by promises from European nations to increase military spending. That spending has increased: Two-thirds of NATO’s 32 members are now meeting the pact’s defense spending guidelines. But Mr. Trump remains a skeptic. While NATO was created in 1949 to bind Western democracies together and as a counterweight to the power of the Soviet Union and its allies, Mr. Trump shows no appreciation for either vital national interest. He has said that he does not see the point of the alliance or the purpose in expending American resources to protect other nations. Last year, Congress passed a law that expressly prohibits the president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without lawmakers’ authorization. But Mr. Trump could act to undermine the alliance even without withdrawing formally, for example, by reducing the number of troops dedicated to NATO, an approach that some experts describe as quiet quitting. (The Editorial Board, the New York Times).

One more thing.

Authoritarian Trump in Michigan last night.

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The Washington Post caved too.

In yesterday’s Roundup, I posted that the publisher of the Los Angeles Times had decided the paper would not endorse a Presidential candidate. The paper has endorsed a Democrat for president in every election cycle since 2008.

I asked “Are we about to experience a journalistic pandemic, killing editorials?” Rumors were circulating - that the Washington Post was also about to knuckle, under pressure from its owner, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and space company Blue Origin, both of which have contracts with the federal government. Well, the rumors have now proved true. The Washington Post has now said says it will not endorse a candidate for president.

As my friend, Margaret Sullivan has written, “There’s no way to see this decision other than as an appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of their public duty.”

The Washington Post and LA Times refused to endorse a candidate. Why? by Margaret Sullivan.

The choice for president has seldom been starker.

On one side is Donald Trump, a felonious and twice-impeached conman, raring to finish off the job of dismantling American democracy. On the other is Kamala Harris, a capable and experienced leader who stands for traditional democratic principles.

Nevertheless – and shockingly – the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have decided to sit this one out. Both major news organizations, each owned by a billionaire, announced this week that their editorial boards would not make a presidential endorsement, despite their decades-long traditions of doing so.

There’s no other way to see this other than as an appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of their public duty.

At the Los Angeles Times, the decision rests clearly with Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the ailing paper in 2018, raising great hopes of a resurgence there.

At the Post (where I was the media columnist from 2016 to 2022), the editorial page editor David Shipley said he owned the decision, but it clearly came from above – specifically from the publisher, Will Lewis, the veteran of Rupert Murdoch’s media properties, hand-picked last year by the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos. Was Bezos himself the author of this abhorrent decision? Maybe not, but it could not have come as a surprise.

All of this may look like nonpartisan neutrality, or be intended to, but it’s far from that. For one thing, it’s a shameful smackdown of both papers’ reporting and opinion-writing staffs who have done important work exposing Trump’s dangers for many years.

It’s also a strong statement of preference. The papers’ leaders have made it clear that they either want Trump (who is, after all, a boon to large personal fortunes) or that they don’t wish to risk the ex-president’s wrath and retribution if he wins. If the latter was a factor, it’s based on a shortsighted judgment, since Trump has been a hazard to press rights and would only be emboldened in a second term.

“Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage,” the wrote former Washington Post editor Marty Baron on Friday on X, blasting the Post’s decision. He predicted that Trump would see this as an invitation to try further to intimidate Bezos, a dynamic detailed in Baron’s 2023 book Collision of Power.

The editorials editor at the Los Angeles Times, Mariel Garza, resigned this week over the owner’s decision to kill off the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Harris.

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza told Columbia Journalism Review’s editor, Sewell Chan. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

Others, including a Pulitzer prize-winning editorial writer at the California paper, followed her principled lead. The Washington Post editor at large Robert Kagan resigned in protest, too. They do so at considerable personal cost, since there are so few similar positions in today’s financially troubled media industry.

With the most consequential election of the modern era only days away, the silence is deafening
Some news organizations upheld their duty and remained true to their mission.

The New York Times endorsed Harris last month, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president”, and writing that Trump “has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest”.

The Guardian, too, strongly endorsed Harris, saying she would “unlock democracy’s potential, not give in to its flaws”, and calling Trump a “transactional and corrupting politician”.

Meanwhile, the Murdoch-controlled New York Post has endorsed Trump. Although that decision lacks a moral core, it’s far from surprising.

But the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post decisions are, in their way, far worse.

They constitute “an abdication”, said Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. (I run an ethics center and teach there.)

The refusal to endorse, he told me, “tacitly equalizes two wildly distinct candidates, one of whom has tried to overturn a presidential election and one of whom has not”.

As for the message this refusal sends to the public? It’s ugly.

Readers will reasonably conclude that the newspapers were intimidated. And people will fairly question, Cobb said, when else they “have chosen expediency over courage”.

This is no moment to stand at the sidelines – shrugging, speechless and self-interested.

With the most consequential election of the modern era only days away, the silence is deafening. (The Guardian)

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Your Daily Reminder.

Trump is a convicted felon.

On May 30th, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts by the unanimous vote of 12 ordinary citizens.

The Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced on July 11th and September 18th. He will now be sentenced on November 26.

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There will be no Roundup on Sunday and Monday.

Eve and I and 3 friends are canvassing in Souderton, Pennsylvania today and Sunday.

Regardless of everything you might be doing this weekend, I hope you will make calls to Democratic voters on behalf of the campaign. Even 10 minutes of calls make a difference.

Sign up HERE

Getting out the vote is our biggest priority.

Feel free too, to make last-minute high-impact donations.

Here are some of the candidates running for the Senate that can win their races, with a little more help from their friends.👇

Colin Allred, running for the Senate against Ted Cruz in Texas.

https://app.oath.vote/donate?p=niemtzow-allred&ref=PPIAM0N1

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, running for the Senate from Florida, against Rick Scott, MAGA man who is expected to replace Mitch McConnell as the GOP Leader unless we stop him now.

https://app.oath.vote/donate?p=niemtzow-murcarsel-powell&ref=PPIAM0N1

Sherrod Brown, running to return to the Senate from Ohio.
https://app.oath.vote/donate?p=niemtzow-brown&ref=PPIAM0N1

Elissa Slotkin, running for the Senate in Michigan.
https://app.oath.vote/donate?p=niemtzow-slotkin&ref=PPIAM0N1

Tammy Baldwin, running to return to the Senate from Wisconsin.
https://app.oath.vote/donate?p=niemtzow-baldwin&ref=PPIAM0N1

Keep the Senate Blue.

See you on Tuesday.

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FYI. Monday.

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