Over the last several weeks, dozens of senior advisers to former president Trump have warned about his fascist and dictatorial tendencies in his first term. More urgently, they have warned that those tendencies will be unleashed in a second Trump term in which he will have a “get out of jail free card” from the Supreme Court. Recent revelations from Trump's chief of staff John Kelly remind us that Trump admires “Hitler and his generals.”
See The Atlantic, Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’. (“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”)
Trump surely knows that “following orders” included the genocide of Jews and a world war against the nations of Europe. His praise for “Hitler and his generals” should trouble every American regardless of party.
In a bracing admission, John Kelly described his former boss as “a fascist.” Kelly’s acknowledgment echoes the statement by former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley that “Trump is fascist to the core.”
On Wednesday, Kamala Harris took the unusual step of speaking from the steps of the Vice President's residence (the Naval Observatory) to formally condemn Trump's fascist agenda. See NYTimes: Harris seizes on former Trump aide’s warning that he fits the ‘fascist’ label.
Kamala Harris’s critique of Trump began and ended with Trump's own words, i.e., his repeated description of fellow Americans as “the enemy within”—a classic formulation of fascist ideology.
In her remarks, Vice President Harris said,
Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there, and no longer be there to rein him in.
The bottom line is this: We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be: What do the American people want?
Harris also responded to Kelly’s comment that Trump said that Adolf Hitler “did some good things.”
Harris said,
It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler. The man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans. All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is.
Kamala Harris is speaking for every American who values democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law. She intends to keep it up. According to reports, she plans to give a speech on the Ellipse on the National Mall—the place where Trump summoned his mob of insurrectionists to assault the Capitol. See CNN, Harris to deliver closing argument speech on Ellipse, site of Trump’s January 6 rally, as she issues warnings over his fitness for office.
We have been warned. But the warnings are merely reminders of events we witnessed firsthand. Still, the fresh warnings are good. For too long, the media treated Trump as a legitimate candidate for the presidency. He is not. The election is not a horse race. His policies are tales told by an idiot, signifying nothing--but have been treated by the major media as though they are legitimate policies worthy of analysis by pundits and surveys by pollsters.
Enough. Trump is a fascist. He sees half the American people as his enemies. He believes he has been freed of constitutional and legal restraints by the Supreme Court to pursue an agenda of vengeance, retribution, and profiteering.
We have been warned. Let’s ensure that everyone hears and heeds that warning.
Coda to “We have been warned.”
Despite the explicit warnings over the last four years (and prior), Republican politicians have consistently excused, dismissed, and amplified Trump's fascist rhetoric. On Wednesday, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu dismissed Trump's praise for Hitler’s generals as a fact that is “baked in” to the election results. See Mediate, Chris Sununu Sticking With Trump After Kelly's Hitler Reveal.
Sununu said,
So, look, we’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump from Donald Trump. It’s kind of par for the course. It’s really unfortunately, with with a guy like that, it’s kind of baked into the vote at this point.
In other words, to Sununu, the only thing that matters is whether Trump is winning the horse race. Sununu has ignored the moral dimension of supporting a fascist—and has forever tied his reputation to a man who admires Hitler and his generals. Chris Sununu should be ashamed of himself every day for the rest of his life. He had a good gig as a nepo-baby governor based on his father’s accomplishments; he has tarnished his entire family’s reputation by being a shill for a fascist.
To similar effect are the actions of the owner of the Los Angeles Times, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong. The LA Times Editorial Board just announced that it would not be endorsing a presidential candidate. On Wednesday, the head of the LA Times Editorial Board resigned in protest, saying that the Board was prepared to endorse Kamala Harris, but Patrick Soon-Shiong ordered the Board to “compare and contrast” the accomplishments of Trump and Harris in a side-by-side format.
Soon-Shiong posted the following statement,
With this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years.
Soon-Shiong’s proposed format of “comparing and contrasting” the “accomplishments” of Trump and Harris is not an endorsement, as the head of the editorial board noted in her resignation statement. See NYTimes, L.A. Times Editorial Chief Quits After Owner Blocks Harris Endorsement. (Behind a paywall.)
Soon-Shiong is using his wealth and ownership of the LA Times to run cover for the fascist policies of Donald Trump. Soon-Shiong has had a brilliant and wildly successful career that he created from scratch as a first-generation immigrant. His legacy may be facilitating a second Trump term that will attack the very immigration policies that welcomed him with open arms.
If Donald Trump wins, it will be in large part because wealthy business leaders (like Soon-Shiong) and spineless politicians like Chris Sununu put their political and monetary fortunes ahead of the democracy that allowed them to succeed. Shame, shame, shame!
Kamala Harris’s town hall on CNN
Kamala Harris turned in a commanding performance on a CNN town hall that was originally scheduled as a debate with Donald Trump. I have already read online reviews of the debate that criticize Harris’s performance without acknowledging that Trump failed to show up because of his disastrous debate against Kamala Harris! And CNN’s panel of Trump-curious analysts nit-picked Kamala Harris’s performance at the very moment Trump was reiterating his fascist threat to deport ten million immigrants. CNN is broken. But I digress.
The headline takeaway is that Kamala Harris said, “Yes, I do” when asked if Trump is a fascist. That answer was part of a broad-ranging attack against Trump's fitness to be president and his fascist agenda.
Among Harris’s statements:
She said that John Kelly’s statement that Trump is a fascist is “a 9-1-1 call to the American people.”
She said that Congress should “take a look at” the filibuster if Congress can’t codify access to abortions and reproductive healthcare.
She pledged to be a “president for all Americans.”
She vowed to crack down on price gouging.
She said she “prays at least twice a day.”
When asked why some of her positions have changed (e.g. fracking), Harris responded, that Americans deserve a president who “works on getting stuff done, and that means compromise.”
She said that Trump broke his promise to build a wall between the US and Mexico by building only 2% of the wall. Amazingly, CNN fact-checked this statement by saying,
The entire US-Mexico border is roughly 2,000 miles. The 52 miles of new primary wall would amount to 2.6% of that total length, but as CNN has previously reported, Trump had pledged to build “more wall,” not “a new wall” across the entire southern border.
Add CNN to the list of major media outlets that no one will mourn when it is gone. That type of fact-checking is pathetic. When Trump announced his candidacy, he said the following:
I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.
Kamala Harris’s claim was right. Trump didn’t say, “I will build “more wall,” he said I will build a “great, great wall.” CNN appears to be a Trump ally in dignifying such “fact checks.”
In general, media pundits are criticizing Harris for doing what every political candidate does—taking an adversarial question and reframing it to express her primary messages. That’s smart politics in the era of soundbites. And, again, Harris was parrying real-time in a town hall while Trump was raving about mass deportations and “the enemy within” in a near-simultaneous campaign event. CNN did not do fact-check of Trump's event.
Ah, well! Kamala Harris has done everything that we (or a self-centered press) can reasonably expect of her in a foreshortened campaign. The issue is whether voters and the media will focus on the stakes of the election rather than the horse race and betting odds.
I have faith in the American people. The media, not so much.
Justice Department warns Musk over $1 million giveaway to register to vote
As expected, the Department of Justice has warned Musk that his $1 million giveaway to encourage people to register may be illegal. See NYTimes Justice Department Warns Musk That His $1 Million Giveaway Might Be Illegal. (Behind paywall.)
Per the Times,
The Justice Department sent a letter to the super PAC founded by Elon Musk this week warning that awarding $1 million to registered voters who signed a petition might violate federal laws against paying voters, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
It is good to see that the DOJ is acting to protect the integrity of the election. The “60 Day Rule” does not apply.
2024 is not 2020
I receive emails every week from readers who say they fear a “replay” of January 6. While we should not minimize efforts by MAGA extremists to contest or disrupt the election, it is a mistake to map the events of 2020-21 onto 2024. Marc Elias addressed the tendency of pundits to make ominous predictions about intereference in 2024 without acknowledging the differences. Elias wrote the following in one of his daily newsletters:
“Absent from many of those discussions, however, are some basic facts we know:
1. In 2020, Donald Trump and his allies filed more than 60 lawsuits to overturn the election results in six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He lost nearly every case and failed to change the vote count in any one of those states.
2. Five of those six states now have Democratic, or Democratic-appointed secretaries of state and attorneys general. Four have Democratic governors.
3. A new law limits the ability of state legislatures or Congress to alter the certified results. [The new law is the Electoral Count Reform Act.]
4. Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, is the president. [And Kamala Harris, not Mike Pence, is the President of the Senate, and will be on January 6, 2025 when the electoral votes are counted.
To similar effect is David French’s newsletter of October 23, 2024, entitled, If he loses, the former president cannot rerun his 2020 legal playbook. I believe that French’s opinion is in a “subscriber only” newsletter format, so let me summarize:
French explains that the plot to stop the count of the electoral ballots on January 6, 2021 would be foiled in 2024 by the passage of the Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA) and the Supreme Court’s decision in Moore v. Harper, in which the Court declined the opportunity to adopt the “independent state legislature” theory that was the underpinning of the 2021 coup attempt.
As to the ECRA, French writes,
Congress reformed the Electoral Count Act. First, it raised the threshold for asserting objections to election certification. Under the new law, it takes 20 percent of the members of both chambers to object before Congress has to debate the objection.
The law also narrowed the grounds for raising objections and specified that the vice president’s role in the process is purely ceremonial (he or she has no discretion to block the count). The law requires votes to be counted and electors selected according to pre-existing law. In other words, legislatures have no ability to alter the electoral process or initiate a new process after Election Day.
In addition, the law establishes an expedited process for hearing federal challenges to court outcomes, and it mandates deference to both state and federal court rulings.
French’s summary of the ECRA is helpful. Keep it handy!
We know that Trump and MAGA extremists will attempt to disrupt the election. They are already doing so. We also know they have a 100% losing record so far. We can take nothing for granted, but when discussing attempts to interfere in the election, we cannot omit the efforts by Democrats to resist those efforts and the impact of the ECRA and Moore v. Harper.
Concluding Thoughts
More than 155 million Americans will vote in the 2024 election. As we watch analysts (like Steve Kornacki) drill down on early voting and election-night results on a county-by-county basis, beware the common misstatement that “the election will be decided by a few thousand voters in a handful of counties.” That statement is both false and harmful.
While it is true that the election may be decided by a few thousand votes that can be mapped onto a handful of counties, it is also true that but for turnout and victories in thousands of other counties, those “handful of counties” in swing states would be irrelevant. It will do us no good to win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin if we lose California and New York.
Let’s not take anything for granted or diminish the importance of every vote in every state and county. If we take “non-swing” states for granted, we may be in for rude surprises down-ballot and at the top of the ticket. Telling people in California that their votes aren’t important may cost us control of the House (because of six critical House races in California). So, let’s refrain from reducing the election to six counties in three swing states.
Moreover, a narrow electoral college win with a 15 million popular vote victory is less subject to second-guessing than the same electoral college win with a 500,000 popular vote victory.
I know you know that every vote counts. Let’s help others understand that fact by avoiding the narrative that says “six counties in three swing states” will decide the election. That not true and will hurt turnout elsewhere.
Talk to you tomorrow!
Daily Dose of Perspective
I have run out of new astrophotography photos to share. My late-night astronomy has been cut back due to a lingering cold and wise advice from my wife, who correctly reminds me that she “has never been wrong” when it comes to advice about my health.
So, I will share some of my astronomy photos from vacations, eclipses, and planetary transits until I can refresh my stock of astrophotography images taken at a reasonable hour.
The photo below was taken outside Fairbanks, Alaska. My wife and I are in Cheeto-colored parkas, standing under the Northern Lights. The image is a 4-second exposure at ISO 1000 with a Sony AR7iii and a 24mm F2.8 lens using a remote shutter.
I thought Kamala did a good job at the town hall meeting. She was quick with her replies and they were well thought out. There was no music break with swaying and fist pumps. She answered questions. I thought the commentators at CNN were a bit hard on her and somewhat snarky. They talked on and on about her word salads. Give me a break. The orange one has a word salad or lie every time he opens his mouth.
DOJ seems to be on top of the voting issues. I hope it continues. I am hope filled. IMO I think the BLUE 🌊 is coming and it’s bigger than anyone imagined. The northern lights are so beautiful. The two of you look so cold.
This is my own commentary on part of Robert’s post. This country is returning to the 1930’s when Hitler inserted himself into our politics by having his German American stooges create an environment of trying to convert the country to a fascist nation. It didn’t work. But reading Rachel Madow’s “Prequel” you can see where she spins a tale of what was happening in the ‘30’s and shows it was a “prequel” to what’s happening in our country now. It’s damn scary to think there are enough voters to elect Trump and see our democracy go down the drain. Trump didn’t have to use the “N” for Nazi word for any sane person to see that his seeking the presidency is to change it to a dictatorship, for far longer that the “dictatorship on day one” which he has promised. Ridding the country of its Constitution is exactly what Hitler did and blitzkrieged his way to his own fiefdom in which so many were marginalized and so many were killed in the name of the “Aryan Race”.
If someone wants to have this type of a government they are so ignorant of what that entails. Unless you follow the dictates of the dear leader you might just find yourself on the receiving end of a gun. The January 6th folks were a clear indication of what Dictator Don can achieve by simply suggesting how they comport themselves. It’s really difficult to pigeonhole folks in this type of situation, but they need to understand that the costs of electing Trump will be felt for generations. He worships the likes of Putin, Orban, Xi, et al, strongmen who have inserted themselves into societies’ leadership positions forever.
I wish I didn’t have to write about this. I have family who lost loved ones in WWII when Hitler was in power, and know others who have told the horrific stories about the camps and managed to survive. It is no joke. It is real. It is sick.