Dance Dance Insurrection
I’ve been involved in politics for over 30 years now. There have been numerous firsts with Donald Trump but this weekend brought us the strangest political moment I’ve ever seen. After joking about someone fainting at a Town Hall event, Trump said “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” and asked for his staff to play music instead. Presumably the people attending a Town Hall would like to hear questions as that’s what the event is for, but Trump wanted to listen to music instead.
And so he did.
For 39 minutes.
For nearly 40 minutes, Trump stood on stage, alongside a bewildered Krisi Noem, and swayed while making the occasional hand-motion to a playlist of mostly artists who have publicly denounced his use of their music. I’m not sure I have the vocabulary to describe how WEIRD this was but if you’d like to watch two minutes of Donald Trump blankly nodding along to November Rain, now you can! (Take in mind he had already been doing this for half an hour at this point.)
Kamala Harris did an interview with Fox News’s Brett Baier today. Harris brought up Trump repeatedly referring to Americans as “an enemy within.” Baier played a clip of Fox News asking Trump about these comments. The clip was edited to remove Trump using the exact phrase “enemy within.”
After being convicted of multiple felonies regarding paying Stormy Daniels to be quiet about Trump having an affair with her, Trump’s lawyers offered to pay Stormy Daniels to be quiet about Trump having an affair with her. This is not a years old development; it happened this summer.
Trump went on a late night rant about how dangerous it is that Kamala Harris has had urticaria, rhinitis, and conjunctivitis, saying these are “deeply serious conditions that clearly impact her functioning.” You may recognize those conditions as “allergies.” The serious condition Trump is attacking Harris over here is a runny nose.
Asked about the war in Gaza, Trump lied about having been there. He has never been there. His campaign responded to this by saying Gaza is in Israel and Trump has been to Israel. This is a bit like me saying I’ve been to Oregon because I have been to Florida.
Continuing to bolster his plan for massive tariffs, Trump said our country was “richest” in the late 1800’s because of McKinley’s tariffs and suggested McKinley may have been assassinated by foreign countries paying tariffs. Foreign governments do not pay tariffs, McKinley was killed by an American anarchist who thought McKinley was oppressing the working class, and the Tariff Act of 1890 was a massive failure.
Trump has continued saying FEMA isn’t helping hurricane victims because they’re spending the money on illegal immigrants instead. This is a lie.
General Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Trump, has joined the huge number of former Trump administration members to express what a danger he is. Milley said Trump is a “total fascist” and “the most dangerous person to this country.” Roughly half of Trump’s former cabinet members have not endorsed him. No living Republican nominee for President or Vice-president has endorsed him, including his own Vice-president who may have decided not to endorse Trump when a mob of Trump supporters broke into the US capitol in an attempt to murder him so they could keep Trump in office.
In a town hall on women’s health issues, Harris Faulkner let Trump know the family of Amber Thurman was doing a press event in opposition. Amber Thurman died of septic shock after being unable to obtain medical care due to Georgia’s anti-abortion law. Trump’s response to this was saying he would get better ratings than the dead woman’s family. At the same event, he inexplicably referred to himself as “the father of IVF” despite admitting he had to ask Katie Britt recently what IVF is.
I’d like to conclude with another direct quote from Trump. The media these last 9 years have done an incredible job of transposing his words into rational sounding summaries when they are not. Phillip Bump published Trump’s full answer to how he’ll lower grocery prices in The Washington Post and I’m quoting it in its entirety here. Good luck getting to the end. It’s not possible to read this and think this man is capable of running anything, much less a super power. Keep in mind as you read this, it’s his explanation on how he will lower grocery prices.
“So, you know, it’s such a great question in the sense that people don’t think of grocery. You know, it sounds like not such an important word when you talk about homes and everything else, right? But more people tell me about grocery bills, where the price of bacon, the price of lettuce, the price of tomatoes, they tell me. And we’re going to do a lot of things.
“You know, our farmers aren’t being treated properly. And we had a deal with China, and it was a great deal — I never mentioned it because once covid came in, I said, that was a bridge too far because I had a great relationship with President Xi [Jinping]. And he’s a fierce man and he’s a man that likes China and I understand that. But we had a deal and he was perfect on that deal, $50 billion he was going to buy. We were doing numbers like you wouldn’t believe, for the farmer. But the farmers are very badly hurt. The farmers in this country, we’re going to get them straightened out. We’re going to get your prices down.
“But you asked another question about safety and also about Black population jobs and Hispanic population in particular those two. So when millions of people pour into our country, they’re having a devastating effect on Black families and Hispanic families more than any others. I think it’s going to spread to a lot of other places.
“I think it’s going to spread to unions. I think unions are going to have a big problem because, you know, employers are just not going to pay the price. They’re going to — and it’s going to be — it’s a very bad thing that’s happening.
“So they’re coming in. Many are coming in from jails and prisons and mental institutions, insane asylums. That’s like, you know, step above, right? Insane asylum. And whenever I go, Hannibal Lecter, you know what I’m talking about. They always go — the fake news. That’s a lot of fake news back there, too.”
“They always mention — you know, it’s a way of demeaning, they say, ‘Hannibal Lecter, why would he mention?’ Well, you know why, because he was a sick puppy, and we have sick puppies coming into our country. I figured that’s a lot — that’s better than wasting a lot of words. You just say, ‘Hannibal Lecter. We don’t want him.’ But. But they always sort of say, ‘Why would he say that?’ I do it for a lot of reasons.
“But I do it because we are allowing some very bad people into our country. And they’re coming as terrorists. You know, you saw the other day, last month they had the record number of terrorists. I had a month — and I love Border Patrol.
“Did you see they gave me a full endorsement two days ago? Border Patrol.”
“The Border Patrol. And they’re great. And, you know, they want to do their job. They don’t want to let these people come in. They look at them. They can tell. They can look at somebody, say good, bad. They say what’s coming into our country now, it’s having a huge negative impact on Black families and on Hispanic families and ultimately on everybody.
“And we’re going to close that border so tight. It’s going to be closed. And I said the two things I’m going to do, first, we’re going to close that border — and people are going to come in. You want people to come in. We need people to come in. People are going to come into our country legally.
“You know, it’s so unfair. You have people that are waiting on a system, in a line and they’ve been waiting in this line. You know how long? For years, 10 years, 12 years and they study and they take tests. And then people come. I actually say, ‘Why don’t you just go and just come on across?’ I tell people that it’s terrible, right? I said, ‘Go out. You’re incredible.’ They say, ‘What can I do to speed up the process?’ I say, ‘You know what, go to the southern border. I’ll see you on the other side.’ It’s so unfair.
“But we’re going to have them come in legally. You have to see what they have to do. They take tests on, you know, who was the first one here? What date was this? What does 1776 mean? All this stuff.
“And these other people are coming in and they’re affecting the school systems and they’re affecting the hospital system. I mean, if you take a look at what’s going on in Springfield, Ohio, a town of 50,000 people, they’ve just added 32,000 people. Illegal immigrants. And we’re not going to put up with it.
“And we’re going to take care of your costs are going to come down, and you’re not going to have a problem with — because the biggest problem, and I’m hearing it from Black people and to a lesser extent right now, but it’ll be the same, Hispanic people.
“And I’ll tell you what, our poll numbers have gone through the roof. With Black and Hispanic, have gone through the roof. And I like that. I like that. I like that. So we’re going to take care of it. You will be — I’ll tell you, if everything works out, if everybody gets out and votes on January 5th. Or before.
“You know, it used to be, you’d have a date. Today, you can vote two months before, probably three months after. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing. But we’re going to straighten it all out. We’re going to straighten that out. We’re going to straighten our election process out, too. That’s going to be important, also. So thank you very much, darling. We’re going to get it straight. Thank you.”
As of writing, there are 19 days until the 2024 election.
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