Madison Square Warning

 

At Madison Square Garden, Trump abandoned all pretense. He said to those who call him a fascist, “Yes I am, and I’m so sure my voters want it that I’ve gathered the greatest collection of profane, nasty, lying authoritarianism-lovers ever assembled. I’ll ride it to November 5 and as far beyond as necessary to get what I’m owed.”

After that fascist jamboree, Trump’s mouthpieces spent the next day doing damage control: the “joke” about Puerto Rico being garbage “doesn’t represent our views,” his campaign tested. But it does. They’d seen and approved that guy’s script, removing only one word. Also, recall that Trump delayed help for two years after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. When he finally showed up, he tossed paper towels like dropping pennies into a beggar’s bucket. That’s what represents his views.

The day after the Garden’s cesspool of nonstop negativity, Trump ignored the Puerto Rico insult and called it “a lovefest.” Team Trump selected each of those speakers, including the scumlord whose profane, foul screed against Hillary Clinton (is she running?) ought to have offended at least some of the cultists in attendance. Instead, there were cheers of delight.

None of the participants disavowed the unending invective. Trump upped the pollution with his usual lies about FEMA, Kamala Harris, immigrants, and voting, adding his Hitlerian “enemies within” incitement. Plus attacks on the press and promises to prosecute anyone who disagrees with him.

It’s unimaginable that that hate-filled display attracted undecided voters. Aimed strictly at his base, it wasn’t intended to. Hopefully, it turned away not only Puerto Rican Americans but anyone with at least a thimbleful of decency.

The degrading offensiveness of that rally, not coincidentally held in the same venue as an overtly Nazi one in 1939, should have repulsed all Americans. The latter was attended by the ideological fringe, while thousands of citizens protested outside. Its swastikas were overt, not implied. Nor was it organized and promoted by a former “president” of the United States, the convicted criminal re-choice of a once-respectable, not-fringe political party.

If that celebration of rage, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and torrential lies didn’t nail, screw, and padlock the coffin of Trumpism; if he’s elected or, like last time, “elected,” the America envisioned by its Founders no longer exists, and deserves everything that will follow: an economy wrecked by Trump’s reckless tariffs, except for companies willing to pay him tribute for exceptions; inflation worse than the post-Covid era, back to normal now under President Biden; handing the world, our allies, to global adversaries; trade wars; actual -- not made-up by time-wasting, performance-preferring House Republicans -- weaponization of government; malicious mistreatment of immigrants, legal or not; abuse of minorities and women; Project 2025 theocracy; loss of healthcare for millions; unsustainable increases in wealth inequality at the cost of helping anyone below millionaire status; and the adverse effects of losing millions of long-standing, hard-working, tax-paying, community-supporting but undocumented residents.

My grandchildren don’t deserve it, though. Trumpists’ grandchildren don’t, either. Yet it’s they who’ll suffer. For Trump, as he said about the possible hanging of Mike Pence, it’d be another “So what?” That he’s the best today’s Republicans can offer ought to dishearten everyone who considers themselves conservative. Or patriotic. Not to mention Christian. Or decent.

That rally was an ineradicable stain on America. Contrast it with Vice President Harris’ positivity and inclusivity, Tuesday, on the National Mall, attended by 75-thousand people, cheering for decency, not its opposite.

Am I angry? Damn right! It’s my country, too. Republicans used to be better than this. Americans used to reject authoritarians and their lies. With Vice President Harris, we might get it back. If Trump wins, it’s over. His venomous hate-fest at MSG removed any doubt.

On the other hand, the democracy we’re trying to save might not exist anyway. Not since our McConnell-packed Supreme Court handed elections to the ultra-richest and neutered the Voting Rights Act. Not since America’s oligarchs concluded crossing Trump would be unprofitable, whereas there’d be no retaliation from a President Harris, because she honors the idea of America. And they know how to get anything they want from Trump.

To wit: we’ve learned that the billionaire owners of the LA Times and the Washington Post, the latter being Jeff Bezos, who does much business with the government, overrode their papers’ intentions to endorse Vice President Harris. It’s a window to the future, where political cowardice before a bully leads to totalitarianism. In the darkness of a cowardly press, democracy dies. Trump has been working it since before day one.

We’ve also learned that Elon Musk, whose PAC just ran an ad saying “We can’t have a ‘C-word’ in the White House,” is in regular contact with Vladimir Putin. Gifting China at Putin’s request, Elon shut down his Starlink communication satellites over Taiwan. Imagine what else he – and Putin, Xi, and Kim -- would get away with under Trump, so easily manipulated by fake flattery from more powerful men.

AdVance Warning

"I don't know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance."

Mitt Romney said that. Mean and nasty aren’t terms typically used to describe Mitt, so it’s significant, because if Trump were to win, J.D. could become president within a couple of years. Who doubts he’d be delighted to invoke the 25th Amendment?

Wrapping himself in fundamentalism and Christian nationalism, Vance is a conscience-free opportunist; and whereas that also describes Trump, with Vance, it’s intentional. Unlike Trump, J.D. is smart. Not a pathological liar like Trump, who seems unable to help himself, Vance is a silky liar who chooses to be. Witness his one-eighty on Trump’s suitability for the presidency.

A poseur willing to say anything to gain advantage, he knows exactly what he’s doing. And, also unlike Trump, he can form words into coherent sentences. Like these, when asked whether Trump lost the election: “Not by the words I would use.” Wow. To Vance, words are meaningless except as weapons aimed at the ill-informed. It’s the Humpty Dumpty theory of language. 

And these, intended to deceive gullible MAGAs: “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?” Excellent question, Senator. Did she? When? How? Got receipts? Just asking questions, right?

More words: “Kamala Harris, who has tried to arrest everything from pro-life activists to her political opponents … used the Department of Justice as a weapon against people.” Again: When? How? What’s the proof? (Never mind: MAGAs don’t require or even want proof. Just saying it is enough to convince.)

From Trump, such blatancy is baseline. Bizarre and disgusting, but expected, predictable. From Vance, who, it’s presumed, can tell a lie from the truth, this mountain of mendacity is even more disqualifying than Trump’s. The hands of someone knowingly pushing premeditated lies so unabashedly ought not be within reach of the levers of power. Or that red button.

Here’s an indicator of where he stands on the Constitution, asked about certifying the 2020 election, one of only two inscribed duties of a Vice President: “I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors,” he averred, contrasting himself with “an-illegal-bridge-too-far-even-for-me” hyper-sycophantic Mike Pence.

After Liz Cheney accurately described him as “unfit for office,” Vance let loose this smacker of all remaining gobs: “She’s not motivated by a love of this country. She’s a resentful, petty, small person,” (motivated) “by an obsessive hatred of the people who cost her Wyoming congressional seat.” Former Congresswoman Cheney was precisely motivated by love of country when, knowing it’d cost her her seat, she sided with the Constitution over the criminal Donald Trump. She did that long before she was voted out of office because of it. Like Trump, J.D. can’t imagine having the courage and decency to take a costly, principled stand.

And let’s not forget his weirdness. Here are his thoughts on his children. 

There’s more to say about Vance, but, with the election days away, there are other issues. Here’s one: Trump’s former Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, finally laid it all out.

Also: the most ubiquitous anti-Harris TV ad says she wants your tax dollars to pay for transgender surgery for prisoners. And here’s guidance from the Trump-appointed Board of Prisons, back in those dark days, regarding gender-affirming treatment of prisoners: “Medical care may include pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., cross-gender hormone therapy), hair removal and surgery (if individualized assessment indicates surgical intervention is applicable).” Accusing others of doing what they do? Whodda thunk, right?

Something that deserves to be widely seen, and won’t be but if it were wouldn’t penetrate a single MAGA skull is this revealing interview with the man who promoted Trump’s fake “reality” show, The Apprentice, coming clean. He confesses to creating the myth of Trump the successful businessman out of whole cloth; describes Trump’s cluelessness and nastiness, acknowledges that without that falsified show, Trump would have remained the third-rate laughing stock in New York City that he was at the time, and would never have become “president.” “I hope it’s not too late,” he said, too late.

Believing Trump’s lies about FEMA, cheering when he calls Kamala Harris a “shit vice-president,” and all the rest, is sad proof of how lost MAGAs are. Trump is explicitly running as a fascist. They don’t care. They relish it.

Hopefully not too late are Republicans joining forces to vote for the Harris/Walz ticket, Liz Cheney topping the increasingly long list. Making the case that a vote for Harris is the only conservative option, hers and Harris’ interview with former conservative talk-show host Charlie Sykes is must-see, especially for undecided voters (do they really exist?)

Let’s end with hilarity: Trump’s fry-cook-fakery at McDonald’s. The store was closed, the actions rehearsed, the “customers” hand-picked Trumpists, told what to do, which they did, knowing it was phony. If that isn’t the perfect metaphor for Trumpism, nothing is. 

And he still hasn’t done a day’s worth (or twenty minutes) of honest work. Kamala Harris, by contrast, has.

Faulty Framers

Around 250 years ago, give or take, a group of mostly young, liberally educated men, imbued with revolutionary fervor and committed never again to live under authoritarian rule, argued and compromised their way to creating a nation based on enshrined, secular law and the unprecedented notion that its citizens would have the ultimate say on how and by whom they’d be governed. Perhaps, if the Framers had included women and non-whites, it’d have been more bulletproof. (As it were.)

Those men were farsighted and preternaturally brilliant, but not enough, tragically, to have envisioned the ease with which, centuries later, through a combination of dishonest media on one side and cowardly ones on the other, plus diminished public education and increasingly militant Christian nationalism, not to mention an ideological Supreme Court removing voting protections and allowing anonymous millions of dollars to buy elections, citizens could become enthralled by a pathological liar, fake Christian, malignant narcissist seeking power for personal aggrandizement and vengeance against those who’ve seen him as he is and called him on it.

During his popular-vote-losing “presidency,” Trump appointed 44 cabinet-level people, 40 of whom are now urging us not to vote for him. His highest-ranking general has described him as “fascist to the core.” His former Secretaries of State and Defense, among others, warn of existential danger should he regain the presidency. His consistently-debunked election lies are believed by nearly half the country and are the basis for legislatures in Republican states limiting access to voting by people likely to vote against them, under the pretext of preventing fraud, which, except for the occasional Republican, is virtually nonexistent. 

Trump treats truthfulness like he did his first two wives. He’s offering nothing that promotes the general welfare, establishes justice, ensures domestic tranquility, or secures the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. It’s as if, in MAGA world, those prefatory Constitutional ideals were written in disappearing ink. Now, his utterances are mostly mephitic lies and promises to punish “migrants,” whom he describes as genetically-inferior murderers and rapists who’ll “break into your kitchen and slit your throat.”

People leaving his rallies must be doing so when he wanders away from feeding their lust for retribution or calling Kamala Harris “retarded,” and into bizarre discursions about sharks, batteries, and cannibals. Or, as just happened, standing on stage, mute, for 39 minutes. 

Lies excuse hate. Hate excuses lies. The latest instance of dangerously delusional MAGA behavior comes from North Carolina, where, following Trump’s and his smarter clone’s fulminating falsehoods about the Biden administration’s response to devastating hurricanes, FEMA removed workers from hard-hit Rutherford County because of threats of harm to them. And not just North Carolina.

Lies like that, endangering others, are the epitome of Trumpism and Trump, reflecting who he is and what he’ll do if given another chance. This time, though, there’d be no generals or Secretaries to dissuade him. Who doubts that Trump, if hearing about those FEMA incidents, would say what he did when told January 6 rioters were threatening the life of his Vice President: “So what?”

Given Trump’s obvious decline, torrential lying, and fascist foghorns (not dog whistles), that the election remains close means his supporters aren’t rationalizing his promise of wrathful dictatorship; they WELCOME it. Nearly half of America must relish imagining Trump, as he told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo last week, loosing our military on “radical left lunatics.” He mentioned Adam Schiff and, later, Nancy Pelosi; but he means all liberals. "The enemy within," he calls us, speaking fluent Fascist. 

Other than that, what does Trump offer those supporters? Few are wealthy enough to receive his tax cuts. Many are benefitting from Obamacare, which Trump has promised to end. All will suffer the consequences of unregulated pollution. They, not other countries, will pay higher prices and face the inflation his tariffs will cause. And, because Trump will ignore it, their grandchildren will have to live, if they can, with intolerable climate change.

No, it must be delighted anticipation of seeing millions of darker-skinned people rounded up and sent to detention camps awaiting deportation. And, because Trump would appoint a willing Attorney General, it’s visualizing President Biden, Vice President Harris, Governors Walz and Newsom, the Clintons, truthful reporters, Merrick Garland, and every prosecutor pursuing Trump’s crimes, arrested and tried by a military tribunal before being locked away. (Some, evidently, will vote for him because he’s lying.) 

Trump’s promise of Constitution-ignoring, punitive autocracy, his racism, misogyny, and xenophobia are increasingly obvious, though some, like Virginia’s Governor Younkin, would have you believe otherwise. Trumpists act offended when accused of sharing those views, but to vote for him is to enable and, therefore, to approve of them. It’s to reject America’s foundational ideals.

When nearly half the electorate is defenseless against malign manipulation, autocracy arrives and democracy departs. Our eighteenth-century founders believed they’d prevented it. It wasn’t the only thing they got wrong.

A Theme-a FEMA Lies

 

Okay, some things demand that one not remain silent, lest one’s unvented head explode. Specifically, it’s Trump’s and MAGA’s weapons-grade lies about Hurricane Helene and FEMA’s response that threaten to push gray matter out one’s ears. Because only the most deeply confused, brain-confiscated Foxified will believe MTG’s claims that “they” control hurricanes and direct them to Republican-populated areas, we’ll speak no further of them. Or maybe we should. But it’s Trump’s lies that bring MAGAs to him. With Helene, he’s going aller-inner.

To refute many of Trump’s prior lies, some effort has been necessary. Was Barack Obama really born in Kenya? Did he actually send “investigators” to Hawaii and were they finding “amazing things”? Is he an honest golfer? But debunking his FEMA/Helene lies requires only listening to the governors of affected states. Trump is doing the shoe thing, and his cult have removed their socks.

It’s pathetically obvious. It’s mendacious brazenness that ought to offend everyone, and finally awaken Trumpists to how they’ve been played since his golden descent. It confirms Trump’s certainty that his voters are stupid, his media shameless, and that slack-spine, lack-moral MAGA politicians will further his lies. And he’s right. It’s the perfect simulacrum of Trumpism. 

With Trump and MAGA, accusations are confessions. Trump lied that President Joe Biden is withholding aid for Republican areas, whereas until his people convinced him that there were Republicans in California, he’d withheld aid during their horrific wildfires. He lied that President Joe Biden diverted money away from FEMA to help migrants, but it was Trump who took $270 million from FEMA to pay for his border detention jails. 

It’s a window into how he’d “govern” were he to win (or, like last time, “win”) in November. Trumpists would welcome his vengeful authoritarianism like the Second Coming; between the biblical version and his re-election they’d see no difference. Contemplating the next disaster, though, everyone else should remember Trump’s promise to rid the government of FEMA and other expertise. And vote accordingly.

The comprehensive response of President Joe Biden’s team to the hurricane, including pre-positioning resources before it hit, shows Trump’s Puerto Rico towel-toss (after delaying help for weeks) for what it was. If he thinks it helps him, or if it gives his needy ego pleasure, Trump is happy to let people suffer. In the case of Helene, he’s lying to convince voters that it’s been a failure like his own. If desperate people believe FEMA is confiscating homes, or that all they’ll get is $750, and if those lies convince them to reject help, who cares? Not Trump. Not Congressional Rs, who’re refusing to allocate more funds to FEMA as President Joe Biden is requesting, because political posturing and kowtowing to Trump is what they do.

How can people still overlook Trump’s lies when they’ve become so obvious and pernicious? Even considering decades of Foxification, this amount of acceptance is shocking.

There will always be people who’d drink Jim Jones’ Kool-Aid, who’d succumb to other suicide cults, like Heaven’s Gate. People in such pain that they’re easily manipulated by narcissistic maniacs are, on some level, sadly understandable. But this is on a scale that defies explanation. Or, because it’s so destructive, sympathy. And it’s in America, where, despite Trump’s other big lie, things are going pretty well; where, at one time, people preferred truth over lies.

Putting in office such deplorables as Trump, Vance, Greene, Boebert, Jordan, Comer, Fox, Gosar, Johnson, the other Johnson, Cruz, Hawley, Tillis, Tuberville, DeSantis, Scott, Abbott, Paxton, Walters (I could go on for days) used to be the exception. Now, to be elected by Republicans, being a cruel, faux-Christian liar is a requirement. Tuberville-Greeneian stupidity helps, too.

It's possible, but unlikely, that, at this stage of his mental decline, Trump is unaware he’s lying. But not all of the aforementioned miscreants are demented. Vance knows. Cruz knows. But, because it’s the only way to maintain power over people that demand it, they repeat Trump’s lies. It’s a doom-loop, affecting all Americans. A November blowout is the last chance to break it, which is why Republican legislatures are making it harder for Democratic constituents to vote, and Lara Trump’s RNC is placing election-denying election officials all around the country.

But maybe this breaking news will engender an awakening: when Americans couldn’t get Covid testing equipment, partly because Trump thought knowing the extent of infections would harm his image, he secretly shipped kits to Putin for his personal use. And, since being flung from office, he’s maintained frequent contact with Vlad, the dictatorial idol to whom he genuflects for reasons we may never know. Ominously, he sent aides out of the room during those conversations. 

So much for “Russia, Russia, Russia” being a hoax, right MAGAs? It’s time to acknowledge your mistake and become the patriots you claim to be.

Decision Time

People still attending Trump’s rallies, albeit in diminishing numbers, who aren’t among those walking out while he’s still speaking, will love every lie, every grade-school-level personal attack on Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. History confirms that humanity includes a plentitude of terrible people; still, it’s jarring to hear the cheers and laughter when Trump says, “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. It’s sad, but lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way.” That’s an unsubtle combination of racism and misogyny, which explains the joyous crowds’ reaction. And it’s projection: lying is his lifelong m.o., his raison d’etre. That it’s become the expected call and response at all Trump rallies speaks ill.

In Georgia, Trump added to his intra-galactic record of consecutive days with at least ten lies by claiming, a day after Governor Kemp had said he’d talked with President Joe Biden and received everything he’d asked for, that Kemp had been unable to reach Biden. Each of the governors of the four states most affected by the hurricane said the same: they’re getting what they need.

Trump’s visit was a photo-op to show how much he cares, in contrast to President Biden and Vice-President Harris who, by implication, don’t. That appearing amid rescue efforts distracts personnel from those efforts, and that the governors had asked them to stay away for now, mattered not to Trump and to his fluffers on Foxian media. His and their shamelessness knows no end. At least he didn’t toss paper towels this time. Nor did he mention Project Trump 2025’s intent to end FEMA and the National Hurricane Center. Funny, that.

For shamelessness, though, and evil, Trump hit an all-time low, directly accusing Kamala Harris of murder, blaming her personally for “letting in” a migrant who murdered someone. She may as well have had the gun in her hand, he said. “Lock her up,” chanted his delighted pawns. Suddenly it’s vice-presidents who make policy; who are responsible for inflation (but not its decline?), for border crossings (but not the reduction in same?), and whatever else Trump and MAGA Republicans would have us believe. Like rising crime which is falling. Puzzlingly, none of them credit Mike Pence for what Trump claims as accomplishments. He was, after all, hanging around.

The Constitution assigns one and only one job to the Vice President: breaking ties in the Senate. Which Kamala Harris did on several occasions, to the benefit of us all. Weirdly, it didn’t come up in the VP debate.

Made clear, though, is that JD Vance is a much more talented liar than Trump. He definitely won on style points, solid as a Yale padlock. And Governor Walz struck out looking as several fat, hanging curveballs floated by; a better debater would have knocked them out of the park. Like the whopping fabrication that Trump “saved” Obamacare. What saved it was the thumb heard 'round the world. 

The programmed stuff is now over. Trump not only refuses to debate Vice-President Kamala Harris again, but he just backed out of appearing on 60 Minutes. Maybe it’s because, at a speech in Wisconsin, he looked and sounded weak and defeated, speaking barely above a whisper. And the smallifying crowd was all but silent. Even his lies about “bare cupboards” when Covid hit got nothing. Not mentioned was the fact that one of his early “presidential” acts was to disband the pandemic preparedness group established by President Obama. Probably just an oversight.  

For all but the inexplicably remaining “undecideds,” minds are made up. A few “conservative” pundits are cynically demanding more “specifics” from Kamala Harris, despite the fact that she’s provided many and Trump’s have mainly been about economy-destroying, inflationary tariffs, imprisoning his enemies and, hot off the depresses, an unconstitutional day of wilding by police in which bad guys like shoplifters would be “roughly” taken out.

By now, we know who Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump are. It’s time to stop being distracted, as hoped by Team Trump, by squirrels; like almost non-existent transgenderizing of incarcerated criminals. An exception might be noting that when Trump just said that “eighteen years ago” San Francisco was the greatest city in the US, Kamala Harris was its District Attorney. History isn’t among his strong suits, evidently. Or arithmetic. Unless the curiously-timed longshore strike, led by their union president who’s a prominent pal of Trump, has an impact, there’s not much left to decide.. 

Which is another way of saying this column, written on an aging laptop by a man a month from 80 years old, sitting in a recliner with no commentary credentials, read by tens of people, is inconsequential. Maybe the best approach, for now at least, is to let things play out and remain silent. Let the cow chips fall where they may.