Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American"

It sounds like there’s enough interest in my reposting these daily letters, as I did for years at bb, for me to do so here instead. As I (more or less) wrote there:

Heather Cox Richardson has been providing a valuable service for over four years now by writing crystal-clear summaries of each day’s US political events. I highly recommend her daily recaps, just as a way of keeping track of everything, but also because it’s kind of thrilling to see someone do so with such clarity.

I doubt HCR would mind these repostings; she posts these summaries nightly on Facebook and as a Substack [oh well!] newsletter.

Heather Cox Richardson is a historian at Boston College. I know little about her several books and other writings, but I find reading her nightly postings (I don’t know how she does this 7 nights a week!) a great way to stay on top of the multitude of characters involved in this nearly decade-long fight to subdue the tangerine-colored monster. She also helps me keep in mind how each day’s events fit into the larger picture, including of course historically.

Enjoy! And I hope that you find her perspective overall as inspiring and hopeful as I do.

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October 29, 2024 (Tuesday)

Republican presidential nominee former president Donald Trump offered Americans his closing argument in the 2024 presidential race on Sunday, October 27, at Madison Square Garden. At a rally that evoked a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939, Trump’s warm-up acts set the terms of Trump’s final pitch to voters by calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean” and railing against “fcking illegals.” They called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil,” and called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a btch.” When Trump took the stage about two hours late, he echoed the warm-up acts, and then reiterated that he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”

The racism and fascism Trump’s MAGA Republicans displayed at Madison Square Garden is usually expressed within their media bubble, where it passes for normal conversation. The backlash against it among people in the real world appears to have shocked the Trump campaign so much that the candidate is running away from his own closing argument.

On Monday, Trump felt obliged to tell an audience in Georgia, “I’m not a Nazi.” The Trump campaign has made it a point never to apologize and never to explain, but on Monday it broke that rule, trying to distance itself from performer Tony Hinchcliffe’s comments about Puerto Rico.

This morning, Trump announced he would hold a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. He showed up more than an hour late for the assembled press, then began the event by undermining faith in the election, claiming the campaign is going “very well; there are some bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught or are in the process of being caught,” although it was unclear what he meant.

He went on to deliver such a litany of lies that CNN cited them as a reason to cut away from the speech. Trump chose not to acknowledge the offensiveness of the Madison Square Garden event, saying ““The love in that room, it was breathtaking—and you could have filled it many many times with the people that were unable to get in.”

Tonight, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris offered her own closing argument to the American voters. Once again taking her campaign directly to Trump, she held a rally at the Ellipse near the White House, where Trump spoke to his supporters on January 6, 2021, before sending them off to the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president.

More than 75,000 attendees in the Ellipse and standing on the Mall near the Washington Monument waved flags and held up signs with “USA” printed on them as Harris spoke in front of a backdrop of the White House, on a stage with a line of American flags.

“One week from today, you will have the chance to make a decision that directly impacts your life, the life of your family, and the future of this country we love,” she said. “[I]t will probably be the most important vote you ever cast. And this election is more than just a choice between two parties and two different candidates. It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or ruled by chaos and division.”

Harris outlined Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and noted that he is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.” She continued: “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That is who he is. But America, I am here tonight to say: that is not who we are.” She called for Americans “to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division.”

The vice president described herself as “someone who has spent most of my career outside of Washington, D.C.,” a former prosecutor who cares that all people are treated fairly and that those who “use their wealth or power to take advantage of other people” are held to account.

She promised to “work every day to build consensus and reach compromise to get things done…. [to] work with everyone—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—to help Americans who are working hard and still struggling to get ahead.” She vowed to lower costs by delivering tax cuts to working people and the middle class, ban price gouging on groceries, lower the cost of prescription drugs, provide down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, and build millions of new homes.

She promised to fight for a child tax credit and to lower the cost of child care, as well as allowing Medicare to cover the cost of home aides for seniors.

She promised to “fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court Justices took away from the women of America.” “[W]hen Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide,” she said, “as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.”

She promised to “work with Democrats and Republicans to sign into law the border security bill that Donald Trump killed.” She promised to “remove those who arrive here unlawfully, prosecute the cartels, and give border patrol the support they so desperately need. At the same time,” she said, “we must acknowledge we are a nation of immigrants.” She vowed to “work with Congress to pass immigration reform, including an earned path to citizenship for hardworking immigrants like farmworkers and our Dreamers.”

“As Commander in Chief,” she said, “I will make sure America has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.… I will strengthen—not surrender—America’s global leadership,” and stand with America’s allies because “our alliances keep American people safe and make America stronger and more secure.”

While Trump offers “more chaos, more division, and policies that help those at the very top and hurt everyone else,” Harris said, “I offer a different path. And I ask for your vote. And here is my pledge to you: I pledge to seek common ground and commonsense solutions to make your life better…. I pledge to listen: To experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make, and to people who disagree with me…. I pledge…to approach my work with the joy and optimism that comes from making a difference in people’s lives. And I pledge to be a president for all Americans. And to always put country above party and self.”

“I love our country with all my heart,” she said, “And I believe in its promise. Because I’ve lived it…. And I see the promise of America in all of you…. I see it in the young people who are voting for the first time who are determined to live free from gun violence and to protect our planet, and to shape the world they inherit.

“I see it in the women who refuse to accept a future without reproductive freedom, and the men who support them. I see it in Republicans who have never voted for a Democrat before but have put the Constitution of the United States over party. I’ve seen it in Americans, different in many respects, but united in our pursuit of freedom, our belief in fairness and decency, and our faith in a better future.”

“Nearly 250 years ago, America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant. Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in so doing, proved to the world that a government of, by, and for the people is strong and can endure. And those who came before us—the patriots at Normandy and Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall, on farmlands and factory floors—they did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms…only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.

“These United States of America: we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised: a nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us, and fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.

“So, America, let us reach for that future. Let us fight for this beautiful country we love. And in seven days, we have the power—each of you has the power—to turn the page and start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.

“I thank you all,” she said. “God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

In Las Vegas, Nevada, today, the Harris campaign placed a giant political advertisement on the Sphere, the music and entertainment venue owned by the same family that owns Madison Square Garden. The globe showed stars and stripes, pictures of Vice President Harris, the words “Harris-Walz,” “November 5,” “Vote for Freedom,” “Vote for Opportunity, “Vote for our Future,” “Vote for Kamala,” “Vote for a New Way Forward.” “Vote for Reproductive Freedom,” “When We Fight, We Win,” and “When We Vote, We Win.”

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thank god

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Well, that’s brilliant.
Thanks, @Millie_Fink .
I did do as you suggested and subscribe to her newsletter on my email.

Unfortunately, my email is now flooded with messages from Over there and elsewhere and it’s gonna take time to sift through them, so thanks for replicating one of my favourite threads here.

ETA: Absolutely Nick-Of-Time stuff, too, needless to say.

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Thank you so much for picking this up!

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October 30, 2024 (Wednesday)

On Friday, October 25, at a town hall held on his social media platform X, Elon Musk told the audience that if Trump wins, he expects to work in a Cabinet-level position to cut the federal government.

He told people to expect “temporary hardship” but that cuts would “ensure long-term prosperity.” At the Trump rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Musk said he plans to cut $2 trillion from the government. Economists point out that current discretionary spending in the budget is $1.7 trillion, meaning his promise would eliminate virtually all discretionary spending, which includes transportation, education, housing, and environmental programs.

Economists agree that Trump’s plans to place a high tariff wall around the U.S., replacing income taxes on high earners with tariffs paid for by middle-class Americans, and to deport as many as 20 million immigrants would crash the booming economy. Now Trump’s financial backer Musk is factoring in the loss of entire sectors of the government to the economy under Trump.

Trump has promised to appoint Musk to be the government’s “chief efficiency officer.” “Everyone’s going to have to take a haircut.… We can’t be a wastrel.… We need to live honestly,” Musk said on Friday. Rob Wile and Lora Kolodny of CNBC point out that Musk’s SpaceX aerospace venture has received $19 billion from the U.S. government since 2008.

An X user wrote: “I]f Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit—there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…. Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.”

Musk commented: “Sounds about right[.]”

This exchange echoes the prescription of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, whose theories had done much to create the Great Crash of 1929, for restoring a healthy economy. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” he told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living
will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

Mellon, at least, was reacting to an economic crisis thrust upon an administration. Musk is seeking to create one.

Today the Commerce Department reported that from July through September, the nation’s economy grew at a solid 2.8%. Consumer spending is up, as is investment in business. The country added 254,000 jobs in September, and inflation has fallen back almost to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.

It is extraordinarily rare for a country to be able to reduce inflation without creating a recession, but the Biden administration has managed to do so, producing what economists call a “soft landing,” rather like catching an egg on a plate. As Bryan Mena of CNN wrote today: “The US economy seems to have pulled off a remarkable and historic achievement.”

Both President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris have called for reducing the deficit not by slashing the government, as Musk proposes, but by restoring taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

As part of the Republicans’ plan to take the country back to the era before the 1930s ushered in a government that regulated business and provided a basic social safety net, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expects to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.

At a closed-door campaign event on Monday in Pennsylvania for a Republican House candidate, Johnson told supporters that Republicans will propose “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” if they take control of both the House and the Senate in November. “Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said. Their plan is to take a “blowtorch to the regulatory state,” which he says is “crushing the free market.” Trump’s going to go big,” he said.” When an attendee asked “No Obamacare?” he laughed and agreed: “No Obamacare…. The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

Ending a campaign with a promise to crash a booming economy and end the Affordable Care Act, which ended insurance companies’ ability to reject people with preexisting conditions, is an unusual strategy.

A post from Trump last night and another this morning suggest his internal polls are worrying him. Last night he claimed there was cheating in Pennsylvania’s York and Lancaster counties. Today he posted: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before. REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!”

Trump appears to be setting up the argument he used in 2020, that he can lose only if he has been cheated. But it is increasingly apparent that the get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, efforts of the Trump campaign have been weak. When Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and loyalist Michael Whatley became the co-chairs of the Republican National Committee in March 2024, they stopped the GOTV efforts underway and used the money instead for litigation. They outsourced GOTV efforts to super PACs, including Musk’s America PAC.

In Wired today, Jake Lahut reported that door-knockers for Musk’s PAC were driven around in the back of a U-Haul without seats and threatened with having to pay their own hotel bills if they didn’t meet high canvassing quotas. One of the canvassers told Lahut that they thought they were being hired to ask people who they would be voting for when they flew into Michigan, and was surprised to learn their actual role. The workers spoke to Lahut anonymously because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement (a practice the Biden administration has tried to stop).

Trump’s boast that he is responsible for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion is one of the reasons his support is soft. In addition to popular dislike of the idea that the state, rather than a woman and her doctor, should make decisions about her healthcare, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision is now over two years old, and state examinations of maternal deaths are showing that women are dying from lack of reproductive healthcare.

Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana of ProPublica reported today that at least two pregnant women have died in Texas when doctors delayed emergency care after a miscarriage until the fetal heartbeat stopped. The woman they highlighted today, Josseli Barnica, left behind a husband and a toddler.

At a rally this evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump said his team had advised him to stop talking about how he was going to protect women by ending crime and making sure they don’t have to be “thinking about abortion.” But Trump, who has boasted of sexual assault and been found liable for it, did not stop there. He went on to say that he had told his advisors, “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”

The Trump campaign remains concerned about the damage caused by the extraordinarily racist, sexist, and violent Sunday night rally at Madison Square Garden. Today the campaign seized on a misstatement President Biden made when condemning the statement from the Madison Square Garden event that referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” They tried to turn the tables to suggest that Biden was calling Trump supporters garbage, although the president has always been very careful to focus his condemnation on Trump alone.

In Wisconsin today, when he disembarked from his plane, Trump put on an orange reflective vest and had someone drive him around the tarmac in a garbage truck with TRUMP painted on the side. He complained about Biden to reporters from the cab of the truck but still refused to apologize for Sunday’s slur of Puerto Rico, saying he knew nothing about the comedian who appeared at his rally.

This, too, was an unusual strategy. Like his visit to McDonalds, where he wore an apron, the image of Trump in a sanitation truck was likely intended to show him as a man of the people. But his power has always rested not in his promise to be one of the people, but rather to lead them. The pictures of him in a bright orange vest and unusually dark makeup are quite different from his usual portrayal of himself.

Indeed, media captured a video of Trump’s stunt, and it did not convey strength. MSNBC’s Katie Phang watched him try to get into the truck and noted: “Trump stumbles, drags his right leg, almost falls over, and tries at least three times to open the door…. Some transparency with Trump’s medical records would be nice.”

The Las Vegas Sun today ran an editorial that detailed Trump’s increasingly obvious mental lapses and concluded that Trump is “crippled cognitively and showing clear signs of mental illness.” It noted that Trump now depends “on enablers who show a disturbing willingness to indulge his delusions, amplify his paranoia or steer his feeble mind toward their own goals.” It noted that if Trump cannot fulfill the duties of the presidency, they would fall to his running mate, J.D. Vance, who has suggested “he would subordinate constitutional principles for personal profit and power.”

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And of course, he did not reveal any of those ideas. They’ve had 14 years now to come up with an alternative, and they have nothing. They don’t have a plan because they want nothing. They want no healthcare other than private insurance. Fuck the poors, they’re replaceable. That’s their plan.

Anyone who is still supporting Trump is garbage. I’m tired of people trying to rationalize people voting for this guy. At this point, if you support him, you are racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, or some other form of bigotry I’ve left out. There is no other explanation at this point that makes any sense. To paraphrase James Carvell, “It’s not the economy, stupid.”

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That pretty much sums up his attitude toward women in all subjects, doesn’t it? “Why should they have a say at all? They are the property of their husbands or fathers! They don’t get to decide!” I’m sure that will be accepted quite well. By his misogynistic male followers. Women need to be paying attention to this. As well as the “outrage” over the campaign to let women n=know that they do not have to tell their husbands who they voted for. It is all very much “Believe them when they tell you who they are.”

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I had the same reaction to folks “finally” seeing 45 for who he is after the MSG rally. :roll_eyes: It really highlighted how far folks will go to ignore reality.

As many women behind the desk at some left-leaning networks have been pointing out, the problem is that many of those supporters are married to men who act just like 45. Remember the story of the woman in her 80s who voted for the first time because her controlling husband died? We’ve been saying for years that 45 uses an abusive pattern on everyone. So we have to treat his victims accordingly. We’re gonna need a program/path forward for his male fans, too, because we’ve seen what they tend to come up with in their attempts to keep others under their control. :grimacing:

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Wow. Good for her! And her husband was an asshole. My mom is 83. My dad is 85. If my dad had ever tried to tell her not to vote, or who to vote for, there might have been blood. They’re both lifelong Democrats, though, so it wasn’t ever an issue. But my dad never told my mom what to do. Ever. About anything.

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Wise man. My wife was a “I vote Republican because my family always has, and no one really pays attention to politics” Republican when we got married. I probably pay too much attention to politics, and talk about issues pretty consistently. She used to say things like “When did they start doing that?” a lot, to which I replied, “Honey, they always have.” She is a more rabid progressive than I am at this point. A lot of this is the whole Mama Bear response to having a trans child, as well as being a woman. But would I ever tell her how to vote? I value my life more than that.

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The insurance companies know that due to Covid there’s going to be a lot more health care needs for the majority of the population.

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You value your marriage more than that. I doubt she’s a violent danger to you.

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Ah, but you see, she is my life. When she had her heart attack last year, it was driven home to me just how much that is true. And I will stop there, because crying at work is frowned on.

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:heart: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes_cat:

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I never want that experience. Just getting our wills done brought me to tears :sob:

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October 31, 2024 (Thursday)

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has responded to news stories about his plan to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) by claiming his comments at the closed-door campaign event on Monday were taken out of context. But they weren’t. The tape is clear. Johnson said that Republicans want “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” When an attendee asked, “No Obamacare?” Johnson laughed and agreed: “No Obamacare. The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

MAGA Utah senator Mike Lee reposted the video of Johnson and commented: “Kill Obamacare now[.]”

Trump today posted on social media that he never mentioned repealing the Affordable Care Act, “never even thought of such a thing.” But this was either a memory lapse or a lie, because in 2016 he ran on repealing the ACA and his 2016 platform called for “a full repeal of Obamacare.” Within hours of taking office in 2017, Trump issued an executive order weakening the law, and when the Republican-dominated House voted to repeal the law, Trump held a celebration in the Rose Garden and declared the ACA “essentially dead.”

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) bucked Trump to protect the ACA then, and Trump began this year’s campaign with a promise to get rid of it before backing off. Even still, the vague promise in the 2024 platform to “increase Transparency, promote Choice and Competition, and expand access to new Affordable Healthcare” sounds a lot like Johnson’s promise to restore “the free market” to health care.

While Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has been campaigning in the swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Trump today held a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a state President Joe Biden won by almost 11 points in 2020 and that Democrats are likely to win in 2024. Trump had to hold the rally at a private airplane hangar after city officials refused to rent the Albuquerque Convention Center to the campaign because it still owes Albuquerque almost $445,000 from a similar rally in 2019.

Once there, he made it clear he was trying to repair some of the damage caused by the extraordinary racism and sexism on display at his Sunday rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, where a comedian called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

Courting offended voters, he said: “Don’t make me waste a whole damn half a day here, OK? Look, I came here. We can be nice to each other, or we can talk turkey. I’m here for one simple reason: I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic or Latino community.” That outreach might not be enough to bring back the voters lost after the Madison Square Garden event.

The campaign is seeing other weaknesses, as well. Meredith McGraw and Jessica Piper of Politico reported today that nearly half of the ballots already cast in Pennsylvania have come from voters over the age of 65, and although the numbers of registered older voters are divided evenly between the parties, registered Democrats have made up about 58% of Pennsylvania’s early votes, compared to 35% for Republicans. Those numbers might well simply reflect different approaches to mail-in ballots, but they also might explain why Trump is already claiming fraud in Pennsylvania.

He is also seemingly nervous about Pennsylvania because women are voting there at a much higher rate than men in the early vote: 56% to 43%. And Democratic women are the biggest group of new voters in the state. New voters who were too young eight years ago to hear the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, have been hearing it on TikTok lately, as younger users record their reactions to it and call out their older male relatives for voting for anyone who would talk as Trump did.

“I moved on her, and I failed,” Trump says in the tape. “I’ll admit it. I did try and fck her…. I moved on her like a btch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married,” Trump said. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful— I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the p*ssy. You can do anything,” he said.

The Harris campaign and pro-Harris organizations leaned into the history of women’s suffrage today with videos highlighting those who fought so that women could vote and reiterating: “We are not going back.” To assist those women who might not feel safe letting their husbands know how they voted, women have been posting notes in women’s public bathrooms assuring other women that their vote is secret. A Democratic advertisement voiced by actress Julia Roberts powerfully makes the point that women do not have to tell their husbands how they vote.

Right-wing figures like Charlie Kirk have expressed alarm at the gender gap in voting. As well, there has been a right-wing backlash to the idea that women will vote for Harris while letting their husbands assume they’re voting for Trump.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who famously cheated on both of his first two wives, expressed dismay at the idea that a woman might need to keep her vote secret from her husband. “For them to tell people to lie is just one further example of the depth of their corruption,” he said. “How do you run a country…saying wives should lie to their husbands, husbands should lie to their wives? I mean, what kind of a totally amoral, corrupt, sick system have the Democrats developed?”

On the Fox News Channel’s The Five this morning, host Jesse Watters said that if he found out his wife “was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair…. That violates the sanctity of our marriage.” Christian pastor Dale Partridge posted: “In a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her husband’s direction. He is the head and they are one. Unity extends to politics. This is not controversial.” But, he added, “submission does have limits. A wife doesn’t need to submit to her husband in sin (in this case voting democrat).”

Tonight, at an event with right-wing host Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, Trump seemed to move beyond misogyny to murderous intent. He turned his increasingly violent rhetoric against former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who has urged Republican women to vote against Trump. “She’s a radical war hawk,” he said, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Carlson is friendly with authoritarian Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has undermined democracy in his own country and is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Today Orbán posted that he had “Just got off the phone with President [Trump]. I wished him the best of luck for next Tuesday. Only five days to go. Fingers crossed[.]“

Meanwhile, a lot more major endorsements for Harris have been coming in.

Today basketball legend LeBron James released a powerful one-minute ad with clips of Trump’s many racist statements and drawing a straight line from him back to the most violent days of the civil rights movement. “HATE TAKES US BACK,” it says. In a post sharing the video, James wrote: “When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me. VOTE KAMALA HARRIS!!!” James has 53 million followers on X.

The Economist today endorsed Harris, warning that “a second Trump term comes with unacceptable risks.” Former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg also posted on social media that he had voted for Harris “without hesitation,” and added that he hoped undecided voters would join him. “Trump is not fit for high office,” he wrote in a Bloomberg op-ed. He praised Harris’s positive vision and bipartisan outreach.

Conservative judge J. Michael Luttig published an op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday, titled: “My Fellow Republicans, It’s Time to Say ‘Enough’ With Trump.” The former president is unfit for office, Luttig wrote. “When we entrusted our Constitution and our democracy to him before, he betrayed us.” Luttig assured readers that “[t]here could be no higher duty of American citizenship than to decisively repudiate” Trump.

He reminded his fellow Republicans that they had always “proudly claimed they would be the first to put the country above all else when the time came. That time has come…. ​​All Americans, but especially Republicans, will live with their decision the rest of their lives.” “The choice for America next Tuesday,” Luttig wrote, “could not be clearer.”

Ever since Vice President Harris tapped Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, Democratic governors have been demonstrating their support for one of their own. Today, for Halloween, Democratic governors Wes Moore of Maryland, Janet Mills of Maine, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and Phil Murphy of New Jersey each dressed to match a photograph of Walz.

“No tricks this Halloween!” Whitmer posted. “Just dressing up as our friend [Tim Walz]—excited to elect him and [Kamala Harris]. If you haven’t yet, make a plan to vote: http://iwillvote.com[.]”

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Better late than never! Good timing, actually.

nene-leakes-the-real

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Weird. He recently did the same thing in Pennsylvania, attending a small gathering of 500 GOP supporters. Here’s the reaction from county Democrats:

Asked if they have a comment about Trump visiting Delaware County, Colleen Guiney, chair of the Delaware County Democratic Committee, released this statement: “I’m not sure why the Trump campaign is visiting Drexel Hill today, as most candidates seek to rally their supporters. In 2020, President Biden won Upper Darby Township with a vote margin of more than 35,000 votes. I look forward to a higher margin this year for VP Harris, particularly if the former president continues his divisive messaging.”

from

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