He did it again: Can a reporter please, please please ask Trump to explain what he means when he says that NATO countries are “delinquent?” He clearly believes they are supposed to pay money to the “club” or maybe to him and doesn’t understand that the financial commitment is actually to commit a certain percentage of GDP to defense. The truth is that he is hostile to Europe and has been for decades. They’re “laughing at us” and they gave him trouble with his golf courses. Europeans make him feel inferior. But clearly “NATO has to pay its dues” is the only policy idea he’s ever had so that’s what he’s gone with and nothing has changed in 8 long years. And, it’s also clear, that his phone pal Vladimir Putin, has been telling him for years now to withdraw from NATO. As we know, Trump believes him over his own experts and staff. BTW, only 8 out of the 31 countries are not currently meeting or exceeding their commitment and all of those are very close. When they fell short in the last decade it was largely due to the Great Recession caused by the financial crisis.
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The weirdo once again says something that’s easily fact checked: Ok: There were many personal heroes in my life: aunts and uncles, a protective sister, a father who re-entered my life at the right time. But I benefited, too, from the example of a man whose public life showed that we need not be defeated by the domestic hardships of youth. It is one of the great failures of recent political history that the Republican Party was too often unable to disconnect legitimate political disagreements from the fact that the president himself is an admirable man. Speaking of lying: I think he may be a worse liar than Trump. He is the future of MAGA.
Trump has “a woman problem” And worker problem (The New Republic): It turns out that some of the people wearing “Auto Workers for Trump” shirts at J.D. Vance’s rally in Detroit Tuesday weren’t autoworkers at all. The Detroit News’s Craig Mauger covered the rally and spoke to some of the more than dozen people wearing the shirts. Six of the people wearing the shirts told the newspaper that they didn’t work in the automobile industry. It’s not a surprise, as the Trump campaign has a long history of faking support from certain groups in desperate attempts to attract more voters. This isn’t even the first instance of Trump faking support from auto industry workers, either. One year ago, the former president made a big show of reaching out to union autoworkers at a campaign event in Michigan, but it was held at a nonunion factory, and it wasn’t clear how many of the people attending were even employed in the industry. Trump’s entire M.O. has been fake it till you fail at it and Daddy bails you out. But Daddy Fred is long gone. Trump plans to steal this election when he fails to win again.
Today we have yet another GREAT piece by Rick Perlstein about our weird political culture. He takes a look at America’s current obsession with “cult-culture” as a way people are trying to explain our politics to themselves. Boy, do I relate to that. I’ve been reading books and studies and psychology papers as well as watching the movies and series Perlstein outlines in his piece. (He notes a few that I haven’t seen which I excitedly made note of for weekend binging.) I have been obsessed with this subject for the past few years for obvious reasons. Here’s an excerpt but do read the whole thing if you’re as concerned about this phenomenon as I am: THE ASSOCIATION OF TODAY’S REPUBLICAN PARTY and its luminous god-king Donald J. Trump with cults began almost as soon as his first presidential campaign did. But what would a docuseries about MAGA-as-cult—the one Netflix, Hulu, Max, or CNN would never produce, because that would make them unduly “partisan”—look like?
Interesting that Trump was just in Detroit today talking about how terrible Detroit is. I guess he’s just seeding the ground.
MTG’s space lasers misfire President Joe Biden hit back at MAGA misinformation on Wednesday (TPM): “But now I want to be clear about something. Over the last few weeks, there’s been a reckless, irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies that are disturbing people,” Biden said. “It’s undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken and will continue to be taken. It’s harmful to those who need help the most. There is simply no place for this to happen.” But he saved his most biting remarks for Greene, who has been spreading the lie that the federal government (??) geo-engineered (??) Hurricane Helene in order to seize control of lithium deposits (??) in a certain area of North Carolina, called Chimney Rock. “Now the claims are getting even more bizarre. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman from Georgia, is now saying the federal government is literally controlling the weather. We’re controlling the weather,” Biden said. “It’s beyond ridiculous. It’s got to stop.
Gallup measured some attitudes: Perceptions of Trump are similar to what Gallup found at the same time in 2020, except voters are now slightly more likely to believe he would display good judgment in a crisis, up six percentage points to 52%. (How soon they forget…) Here’s why she doesn’t get points for being a strong and decisive leader: It’s the sexism, stupid, (although why anyone thinks that the guy who wears more make-up and hairspray that last year’s winner of RuPaul’s Drag race and whines like a little bitch 24/7 is some kind of alpha male, I’ll never understand.) As for Trump being able to get things done … lol. They clearly haven’t looked at his record from 2017-2021. How gullible Americans are, how pathetically eager they are to be conned. Trump’s rating for being honest and trustworthy is higher now than his 38% rating in 2016 when he won the election. However, even at that lower level, Trump’s honesty rating exceeded Hillary Clinton’s, at 31%. This changed in 2020 when, despite seeing his “honest” score improve to 41%, Trump trailed Joe Biden by 11 points on this character dimension.
Trump the coward said today that there would absolutely no debate because he knows that she wiped the floor with him and will be humiliated again. At this point he’s avoiding anything but his safe spaces. (Check out today’s Detroit Economic Club Q&A fluffing, for instance.) Harris, on the other hand, is everywhere: Vice President Kamala Harris will participate in a town hall with CNN on Oct. 23, her campaign announced Thursday. Harris’ participation comes after former President Donald Trump has declined to face the vice president in another debate before the Nov. 5 election. CNN also offered Trump a town hall, and his campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from POLITICO. “Trump may want to hide from the voters, but Vice President Harris welcomes the opportunity to share her vision for a New Way Forward for the country. She is happy to accept CNN’s invitation for a live, televised town hall on October 23 in Pennsylvania,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.
Since the “social media is bad for teens” myth will not die, I keep having intense conversations with colleagues, journalists, and friends over what the research says and what it doesn’t. (Alice Marwick et. al put together a great little primer in light of the legislative moves.) Along the way, I’ve also started to recognize […]
Hey, remember when JD Vance weirdly went on about the Biden administration’s alleged censorship during the debate with Tim Walz in order to evade saying whether the 2020 election was stolen? Yeah. They’re all very, very shrill on the subject complaining about Democrats allegedly destroying the 1st Amendment. It’s one of their major memes. And yet … Get a load of this from Josh Marshall: Florida has become the state where elements of a future second Trump presidency America already comes into view. We’re seeing some of these things happening right now in Florida. The example I’m about to share with you legitimately shocked me. (That’s a high bar.) It’s about the pro-choice ballot amendment which would restore Roe protections in Florida if it reaches a 60% threshold. As in most other states, getting to 50% isn’t that difficult. 60% is much harder. To head off even the chance that the ballot initiative might hit that challenging high bar the state of Florida is already spending a substantial amount of tax payer dollars campaigning against the initiative.