The reflexive rationalization of the Trump voter: I don’t like everything he says but I just like his policies. What policies you say? They rarely have a specific answer. Here an example of one of his allegedly great policies they love so much: That’s Trump being asked a very specific question about a very specific policy and he answered with a long whine about how he was named Michigan Man of the Year (a lie) and how the fake news unfairly denied it. That’s Trump’s policy. Whining about being treated badly, complaining about immigrants and foreigners and bragging about how well he gets along with dictators. That’s pretty much it. What’s not to love?
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What an amazing life.
Trump’s henchmen aren’t very good at this: Speaking with Fox Business on Monday, Republican Representative Greg Murphy claimed that attacks by the Democrats on the MAGA leader’s health care plans were futile, almost entirely because Trump and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, don’t actually have a “full, fleshed-out plan.” “The Harris campaign has just released this new report, it came out this morning, they’re calling it ‘The Trump-Vance Concept of Healthcare: A plan to rip away coverage from people with preexisting conditions and raise costs for millions,’” said guest host Cheryl Casone. “We’re now starting to have that conversation about health care, which is still a main issue for voters across this country. What do you make of the campaign doing this?” “Well, Kamala and her crew, it’s absolute nonsense. There’s not a full, fleshed-out plan by the president or J.D. Vance, and for them to come out with a book of fiction, they’re just a bunch of damn liars,” Murphy retorted. Lol. Right. They don’t have a plan.
Dan Rather also has a few words for his former employers at CBS: According to CBS News’ editorial standards, moderators Norah O’Donnell, anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” and Margaret Brennan, host of “Face the Nation,” are there to ask questions and enforce the rules. They are not fact-checkers. CBS says it is up to the candidates to fact-check, though “the moderators will facilitate those opportunities” during rebuttal time. While both fact-checking (ABC during the Harris-Trump debate) and not fact-checking (CNN during the Biden-Trump debate) have drawn criticism this year, for the most part, the criticism was unsurprisingly partisan. CBS is not abdicating completely. In a live blog and on social media, CBS News’ misinformation unit will provide real-time fact-checking. So, the audience is expected to watch the debate and simultaneously monitor a blog? Simply put, this “rule,” imposed by CBS, incentivizes lying. It invites the participants to bend the truth, since their opponent then has to spend his rebuttal time calling out the lie, rather than giving an opposing view.
As you wait for the debate tonight, watch this if you missed it: Rachel Maddow shows JD Vance explaining his lack of faith that democracy can deliver on his conservative ideals, and shows the influences behind Vance’s preference that the United States government be gutted and instead run by a dictator. This guy is so deeply creepy that I honestly don’t think I can live in a country led by him.
Tom Nichols has a typically tart piece in the Atlantic today about the state of the election. This part of it is one of the most depressing aspects of this whole thing. Harris will win the popular vote by millions of votes, you can bet money on that, but once again the electoral college could favor Trump. What kind of a democracy is this? I think it’s important to ask why this election, despite everything we now know, could tip to Trump. Perhaps the most surprising but disconcerting reality is that the election, as a national matter, isn’t really that close. If the United States took a poll and used that to select a president, Trump would lose by millions of votes—just as he would have lost in 2016. Federalism is a wonderful system of government but a lousy way of electing national leaders: The Electoral College system (which I long defended as a way to balance the interests of 50 very different states) is now lopsidedly tilted in favor of real estate over people.
I suspect a lot of the cult members think they will be contributing to his campaign. But no. He’s running a scam while running for president. Never say he didn’t warn people: Trump had inked a deal with Tony Robbins, the frighteningly upbeat motivational speaker, by which Robbins would pay Trump $1 million to give ten speeches at his seminars around the country. Crucially, Trump had timed his political stops to coincide with Robbins’ seminars, so that he was “making a lot of money” on those campaign stops. “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it,” Trump said. … He wasn’t lying for once.
He won’t debate and now he won’t do the traditional 60 Minutes interview: Former President Donald Trump has backed out of a previously scheduled interview with “60 Minutes,” the most-watched newsmagazine in the United States, CBS News said Tuesday evening.[…] “For over half a century, 60 Minutes has invited the Democratic and Republican tickets to appear on our broadcast as Americans head to the polls,” the network said in a statement. “This year, both the Harris and Trump campaigns agreed to sit down with 60 Minutes.” Trump had committed to the interview first, followed by Harris, through campaign spokespeople, CBS said. Veteran CBS anchor and correspondent Scott Pelley was lined up to interview Trump. “After initially accepting 60 Minutes’ request for an interview with Scott Pelley, former President Trump’s campaign has decided not to participate,” CBS said. Why? Here’s Trump’s spokesman: I don’t understand this.
The New Yorker endorsement of Harris is really great. Read it if you can. They lay out the full indictment of Trump and the full case for Harris. This is the conclusion: Four years ago, in our endorsement of Joe Biden, we said that, while he was leading in the polls, we hoped he would displace Trump “by a margin that prevents prolonged dispute or the kind of civil unrest that Trump appears to relish.” We know what happened: the margins, in four decisive states, were extremely narrow, and Trump refused to concede. Instead, he levelled wild accusations and filed dozens of lawsuits. When those failed, he called on his MAGA believers to march on the Capitol. This time around, the Trump campaign and various right-wing groups have already deployed deny-the-vote efforts around the country, particularly in swing states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona. There is every likelihood that, if Trump loses, the drama could go on for weeks or months after Election Day. He has made no secret of the fact that he is willing to use every lever, deploy every dirty trick, political and rhetorical, to bring the country to the brink once more.
The man who runs our judicial system has devised yet another depraved plot to destroy the planet: A rightwing organization is attacking efforts to educate judges about the climate crisis. The group appears to be connected to Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightwing takeover of the American judiciary who helped select Trump’s supreme court nominees, the Guardian has learned. The Washington DC-based non-profit Environmental Law Institute (Eli)’s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation”, according to Eli’s website. The American Energy Institute (AEI), a rightwing, pro-fossil fuel thinktank, has been attacking Eli and their climate trainings in recent months. In August, the organization published a report saying Eli was “corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote questionable climate science”.