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Sarah Longwell: An Appeal to Republicans

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2024 //
15

Sarah Longwell is publisher of The Bulwark, executive director of Republican Voters Against Trump, and host of “The Focus Group” podcast.

In this article, she appeals to fellow Republicans to stand up and speak out about Trump. I hope her article is read by George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and Lamar Alexander. They know how dangerous Trump is. They know he is destroying the Republican Party.

She writes:

I HAVE A QUESTION FOR FORMER Trump administration officials, Republican electeds (and former electeds), business leaders, and conservative writers and pundits who recognize Donald Trump for the threat he is. Actually, it’s a question for anyone on the right who knows what Trump’s re-election could mean for the country, for liberal democracy, and for the world—and, who, in the face of this threat, has decided to maintain either a posture of silence or both-sides-are-bad neutrality.

My question is this: 

How are you going to feel if Trump wins on Tuesday by an extremely narrow margin?

I suspect you’ll spend the next four years holding your breath. 

Because if Donald Trump does a tenth of what he has promised—pulls the United States out of NATO, abandons Ukraine and sides with Vladimir Putin, puts RFK Jr. and Elon Musk in charge of serious parts of the American government, rounds up 15 million undocumented immigrants into camps and deports them, seeks political retribution against those who opposed his candidacy—I suspect you’ll come to regret your silence when you could have made a difference. 

I can see you holding up your hands to show us how clean they are. Saying, “But I said Donald Trump was a threat! I said I wouldn’t vote for him! What more do you want from me?”

And I get that. I do. The problem is that this moment demands more from all of us. 

It demands clarity. And it demands your leadership. 

Over the course of your career you’ve asked people to trust you. Either by voting for you, or listening to your advice, or relying on your judgment and analysis. 

So why is it suddenly a bridge too far for you to tell everyone what you really believe?

I understand that this moment is hard. Trump could win. Even if he doesn’t win, coming off the sidelines could alienate you from career networks, business opportunities, or even friends and family.

But being a leader means standing up and telling the truth even when it’s hard, or costly, or scary. Especially when it’s hard, or costly, or scary.

It’s still not too late. Every day, more people are speaking out—people with reputations, and reservations, but whose consciences won’t let them sit this one out. 

You shouldn’t sit this one out, either. You should not decide, after a career in leadership, that this time you’d rather just be a spectator. 

Maybe you think that adding your voice wouldn’t matter to voters. After all, so few things seem to move the needle. Well, I’m here to tell you that it matters. It all matters. Every little bit. You do not know who’s listening as the moment approaches to cast their vote. You do not know who you might persuade at the eleventh hour. And you do not know what the margin will be. If this election is decided by 9,000 votes in Pennsylvania—which is absolutely a real thing that could happen—then every single input could be the tipping point.

We’re almost there. Stay with us! The Bulwark is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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I can’t see the future. I don’t know if your endorsement would be the difference maker. Just like I don’t know what price you would pay for speaking out more clearly. 

What I do know is this: If you abdicate the obligations of leadership in this moment and the thing you fear comes to pass, you will regret having stood down when the country needed you to stand up. You will regret it for all of your days. 

MAYBE YOU ARE A RETIRED FOUR-STAR GENERAL, or cabinet secretary, or someone who took a job as a political appointee in the Trump administration and saw things that shocked your conscience. And maybe you’ve told reporters about what you saw, or written about it in a book. That’s not enough because books have a relatively small reach, and your words are mediated through paper. What’s needed is for you to look voters in the eye and give them a direct warning about what a second Trump term might mean. Especially now that you won’t be on the inside to try to protect the country from him. 

Maybe you’re a former Republican president or presidential nominee. Maybe you were once the leader of the party Donald Trump has destroyed. I am sorry, but the unpleasant fact is that you cannot preserve your influence for some future GOP. This is actually the last moment in which you have a chance to influence it. Your party, every bit as much as your country, needs you. Right now.

Maybe you’ve led venerable conservative publications. You’ve acted as a thought leader. Someone shaping our political culture. But today you want to keep your hands clean by writing in Edmund Burke on your ballot or some other nonsense protest candidate—as a sign that youkept your purity. I understand this impulse. But it’s wrong. You know that if yours was the single deciding vote, you’d vote for Harris. So just say so. This isn’t an academic exercise, and it’s not about you. 

Maybe you’re a billionaire to whom this country has given everything. Your wealth insulates you from the consequences of the worst-case Trump scenarios. And yet, you see Trump’s transactional nature, his willingness to provide favor if you provide obedience, and instead of standing up to Trump, you cower. This might seem like wisdom, but it’s not actual safety. There will be more demands. The only way to actually protect your business is for the rule of law to be victorious and democracy to be stable.

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FOR MONTHS, YOUR COUNTRYMEN have been waiting for you to tell them the full, unvarnished truth about the danger you believe Donald Trump presents. To tell everyday Americans the same words you say in green rooms, at dinners, and in off-the-record conversations. You haven’t gotten there yet, but you still can. Before you make your final decision, think about Liz Cheney’s warning that some day Donald Trump will be gone, but the choices we make today will be with us forever. 

Choose honor. It’s the choice you’ve made again and again in your professional lives. It would be a sin to stop choosing it because of a mountebank like Donald Trump.

I want to tell you about some Republicans who are already putting themselves on the line for democracy. They don’t have security details, or staff, or budgets. They’re just regular people who voted for Trump before, but refuse to support him again. They joined Republican Voters Against Trump to get the word out to their friends and neighbors. A few of them have lost jobs. Some of them have lost family. All of them have lost friends. None of them regrets it.

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They’ve put their faces on billboards across the country. They’ve appeared in millions of dollars’ worth of paid ads running in their own communities. They’ve taken part in text campaigns, spoken to the media, knocked on doors, and traveled to swing states in the hopes of making a difference.

If Kyle from Alabama, or Jackie from Michigan, or Robert from Pennsylvania, or Jim from Wyomingcan speak out, then so can the generals, politicians, and thought leaders.

THE REASON I BELIEVE THAT every little bit counts is because conservative-leaning voters say that to me all the time.

In Republican focus groups, one thing I hear again and again is that voters are open to hearing from the leaders who served under Trump, who were in the room with him. The messenger is as important as the message, and these people are ready to believe the words of a lifelong Republican or flag officer much more readily than they’ll believe a Democrat telling them the same things.

So if you’re one of the small number of people who can make a difference in this moment, the question is: What are you going to do?

Courage is contagious. And I have one last piece of advice: No one ever regrets doing the right thing. 

You won’t regret it, either. So stand up and join us. It’s our last chance.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Harris, Kamala, Republicans, Trump

Ted Cruz Turns to Anti-Trans Issue to Save His Senate Seat

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2024 //
31

The Texas Monthly writes that Texas has all kinds of pressing needs and problems. But in the closing days of the campaign, Ted Cruz has fastened in a single issue in his battle for re-election: Hate transgender people. They threaten our daughters.

It’s not clear exactly how large the Texas trans population is, but it can’t be large enough to threaten the women of Texas or even the girls.

Cruz, with Colin Allred coming close in the home stretch, concluded that care and hate were his best messages to his constituents.

Michael Hardy of The Texas Monthly wrote:

Texans face a multitude of challenges. The border crisis. Incompetent utility regulators. Rising home and rent costs. Rural hospital closures. So naturally, as campaigning for the U.S. Senate enters its final week, incumbent Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, Dallas-area Congressman Colin Allred, are locked in a fierce battle over . . . transgender rights. Earlier this month, Cruz and an allied political action committee launched a barrage of ominous television advertisements accusing Allred of supporting “boys in girls’ sports,” “drag shows on American military bases,” “taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries” for military service members, and the use of “taxpayer funds to sterilize minors.” The ads are part of a nationwide push by Republican candidates, who have spent more than $65 million on antitrans ads since August. 

“I remember reading the polls saying that the race was within two or three points and wondering what Cruz was going to do about it,” said veteran Texan lobbyist Bill Miller, who has worked with Democratic and Republican candidates. “And then I was watching TV and Cruz’s transgender ad came on. As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s the issue they’re going to beat Allred with.’ ”

In 2023, Allred voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, a Republican-backed bill that would have barred athletes assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ sports. The bill passed in the House of Representatives on a party line vote but was not taken up in the U.S. Senate. Earlier this year, Allred signed a letter opposing Republican efforts to ban drag shows on military bases and restrict gender-affirming care for transgender service members and their families. In a written statement to Texas Monthly, Allred campaign manager Paige Hutchinson said “Colin believes we must stand united against all forms of prejudice and discrimination.” 

Cruz campaign spokespeople did not respond to an interview request to discuss Cruz’s strategy. The senator’s campaign website boasts that “Ted is proud to stand alongside all female athletes and will continue to fight for their right to play sports on their own terms, without fear of being forced to compete against biological men.” 

At first glance, the senator’s going all in on transphobia for his closing argument might seem puzzling, given that he’s spent most of his campaign stressing immigration and jobs. A recent poll conducted by the University of Texas at Austin asked voters to name their top political issue. A plurality (18 percent) chose the economy, which was followed by immigration, inflation, democracy, and abortion. Pollster Jim Henson told me that hardly anyone cited transgender issues as their foremost concern. A national Gallup polltaken in September asked voters to evaluate the importance of 22 campaign issues. “Transgender rights” came in dead last.  

So why the last-minute pivot to transgender issues? “It’s an easy way for a Republican to paint their opponent as an extremist,” Henson said. “Even if it’s not a particularly salient issue, it’s very effective in signaling to moderates that your opponent is out of the mainstream.” Last year, a UT-Austin poll found that 63 percent of Texans—including 33 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents, and 89 percent of Republicans—agreed that the sex listed on a person’s original birth certificate should be the only way to define gender, with just 25 percent disagreeing. (Twelve percent of respondents said they weren’t sure.) “I suspect the Cruz campaign’s internal polling is showing what the external polling shows,” Henson said, “which is that for a Republican candidate, this is a pretty good issue.” 

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Texas

Trump calls Kamala and Her Team “Scum” and “Garbage”

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
43

Bring out the fainting couches! Biden made a comment that offended the Republican Party! Biden says he was calling the comedian who insulted Puerto Ricans “garbage,” they say he meant that every Trump supporter was “garbage.” Republicans did not accept his prompt clarification. It all depended on an apostrophe (supporters vs. supporter’s).

But the Lincoln Project helpfully assembled the many times that Trump has called other people “garbage.” He calls Kamala “low IQ,” “garbage,” and “scum.” He has also called her and other Democrats “radical left, Socialists, Marxists, fascists, and Communists.

Watch this Lincoln Project video!

We expect him to scrape the gutter for his insults.

Categories Bigotry, Extremism, Fraud, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Trump Called the U.S. “a Garbage Can for the World”

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
9

“Garbage” is the word of the week.

A comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage,” presumably referring to the people because Puerto Rico is a very beautiful island.

Puerto Rican leaders were deservedly outraged. All sorts of people criticized Trump’s campaign for allowing such a vicious comment. The comedian’s script was reviewed before it was put on the teleprompter.

When President Biden denounced the comment, he created a media firestorm by seeming to suggest that Trump’s supporters were also garbage. Google Garbage, Biden, Trump–it’s the story of the week.

Biden said: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his [supporters/supporter’s]–his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

The White House put out a transcript with the apostrophe, to prove that he was speaking about the comedian–one person–but the damage was done. Republicans leapt to the attack, thrilled that they could change the subject from the MSG hatefest.

The Trump campaign and Trump himself treated the comment as comparable to Hillary Clinton calling his supporters “deplorables.”

Trump yesterday pulled a stunt where he dressed up as a garbage man (like pretending to be a worker at MacDonald’s for 15 minutes). Trump said he did it to honor Biden and Harris and call attention to the terrible defamation of his supporters.

Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC last night produced video of Trump at a rally calling Kamala and all those around her “scum” and “garbage.” No outrage. No firestorm. No media frenzy. O’Donnell said archly that Trump’s insults are so commonplace that they are not newsworthy.

Only days ago, Trump referred to the U.S. as “a garbage can for the world.”

ABC News reported:

Former President Donald Trump escalated his anti-immigrant rhetoric at a rally in battleground Arizona on Thursday, calling the United States a “garbage can for the world.”

“We’re a dumping ground. We’re like a — we’re like a garbage can for the world. That’s what, that’s what’s happened to us. We’re like a garbage can,” Trump said at a rally in Tempe, Arizona, on Thursday.

Trump made the comments as he criticized the Biden-Harris administration for its handling of the border, a key voter issue — especially in Arizona, a border state and swing state that President Joe Biden flipped to edge out Trump by 0.3 percentage points in 2020. Trump also made the comments with less than two weeks until Election Day — and as the former president and Vice President Kamala Harris duke it out in what’s expected to be a close contest.

Trump has said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” that they are rapists and murderers, that they are the refuse of prisons and mental institutions from their native lands.

Hitler used the term “blood poisoning” in his manifesto “Mein Kampf,” where he criticized immigration and the mixing of races. He wrote, “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”

That’s ridiculous. We are a polyglot nation.

Trump says things like this about other people almost daily, and he is occasionally called out. But we are so accustomed to his rants that they lack the originality to unleash a firestorm of criticism. He gets away with it.

But he, the master of trash talk, now lectures Bidennand reacts with shock.

Categories Biden, Bigotry, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Hypocrisy, Trump

Trump Says He Will Protect Women “Whether They Like It or Not”

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
12

The New York Times reported on Trump’s rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin yesterday, where he laid out the Trump Paternalism Doctrine.

He said he would protect women “whether they like it or not.”

Like he “protected” women by stripping away their reproductive rights?

Like he “protected” the women who accused him of sexual assault?

Women want to make their own decisions.

The story in the Times by Nicholas Nehamas and Erica L. Green pulled no punches, offered no “both sides”:

Former President Donald J. Trump said at a rally on Wednesday that he would protect American women “whether the women like it or not” — remarks that he cast as paternal but only served as reminders to many of his critics of his history of misogynistic statements and a civil court case that found him liable for sexual abuse…

Ms. Harris quickly sought to respond, writing on X: “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not.” Her campaign posted a series of videos on social media emphasizing Mr. Trump’s remarks. And it sent out a news release that blared: “In Wisconsin, Trump reminds women how little he values their choices…

Over the course of the campaign, Mr. Trump and his allies have made a series of misogynistic, sexualized attacks against Ms. Harris. In August, Mr. Trump used his social media website to amplify a crude remarkabout her that falsely suggested she had traded sexual favors to help her political career. On Sunday, at his Madison Square Garden rally, one speaker referred to Ms. Harris as having “pimp handlers.” And a super PAC financed by his ally Elon Musk released an ad that called her a “C word,” although the ad eventually revealed that the word was “communist,” rather than the slur for women.

Mr. Trump has been accused by roughly two dozen women of sexual misconduct. In 2016, the “Access Hollywood” tape caught him boasting about grabbing women by the genitals, remarks he later dismissed as “locker room banter.” The writer E. Jean Carroll said he raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. In civil proceedings, Mr. Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll, and ordered to pay hefty fines. Mr. Trump is appealing the case.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Gender, Trump

Talking Points Memo: The Phony Firestorm Over Biden’s Gaffe

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2024 //
13

David Kurtz writes about the media’s supercharged response to President Biden’s comment about the comedian who called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage.” He said that the people at the Madison Square Garden event were garbage, but he meant that calling Puerto Rico a garbage island was garbage.

The media and the Republican Party leapt on the story because it diminished attention to Kamala’s excellent speech in Washington, D.C.

Kurtz writes:

Here We Go Again

Like sharks with blood in the water, leading national political reporters went into a feeding frenzy last night after Republicans faked outrage at remarks from President Biden that they construed as calling Trump supporters “garbage.”

This dance is so predictable, rehearsed, and tired that everyone has their roles to play and feels compelled to play them despite how intellectually and journalistically bereft the whole exercise has become.

Among the tells in the coverage:

  • Top-tier political reporters quickly jumpedon the perceived gaffe;
  • The parsing of what Biden said quickly gave way to “meta” analyses that it didn’t matter because it was a gaffe anyway;
  • Republican professional fake outrage was treated like a genuine groundswell of umbrage.

On that last point, “firestorm” was the word of choice:

  • Axios: Biden sets off election firestorm with “garbage” comment
  • Politico: Biden sparks a firestorm on the right over ‘garbage’
  • NBC News: Biden sets off a firestorm with his response to Trump rally comedian’s Puerto Rico comments

Among the bigs, the WaPo managed to come closest to capturing the actual dynamic: White House, Trump campaign clash over whether Biden called Trump supporters ‘garbage.’

I’ve grown weary of explaining how these kinds of journalistic set pieces require suspending good, independent news judgment; rely on old, hackneyed journalistic tropes; and traffic in erroneous assumptions about Republicans (and journalists themselves) representing the “real America.”

This kind of coverage has been deeply problematic for a long time, as TPM has pointed out relentlessly for two decades. It has become more egregious and even less defensible when gaffe-based, double-standard coverage is deployed in covering an election with democracy on the ballot.

The coverage lacks intellectual rigor in too many ways to list here, but here’s one example to illustrate the point. When Biden – who isn’t even on the ballot any longer – says something imprecise or wrong-headed, he and the White House scramble to correct the record, say that’s not what he means and not what he thinks, and emphasize what he does actually mean and think. It’s an elaborate self-disavowal. When Trump says something truly outrageous, on purpose, he usually doubles down in the face of withering criticism and confirms that’s exactly what he meant. It’s the former and not the latter that is prone to getting the “firestorm” coverage.

The fact that this manufactured outrage and the race to cover it comes five days after Trump called America a “garbage can for the world” makes the whole thing beyond absurd.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Washington Post: Trump’s Vulgarity Drags the Nation’s Politics into the Gutter

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2024 //
22

I did not cancel my subscription to the Washington Post despite the fact that I was outraged by billionaire Jeff Bezos’s censorship of the editorial board, which intended to endorse Kamala Harris.

I expected that the response of the editorial board and the opinion writ were a would double down on their contempt for the insurrectionist, lying former president.

As this editorial today shows, the editorial board will not be silenced. In this editorial, it draws a straight line between democracy and civility, a character trait that Trump knows not.

Unless Bezos replaces the editorial board with MAGA types, the WaPo editorials will dole out contempt for Trump every day that remains of the campaign. The last paragraph, in particular, is a gem.

Think of it as slow-walking its endorsement of Kamala.

Democracy depends on many things: institutions, traditions, public legitimacy and, yes, a culture of civility. The peaceful transfer of power requires people to have at least a minimum degree of trust in their fellow citizens — that the stakes are not existential. In this regard, former president Donald Trump showed, in his closing argument at a raucous rally at Madison Square Garden, that whether he wins or loses on Nov. 5, he has already done severe damage to American politics by coarsening and corroding public discourse.

Seeking to limit the fallout after a rally speaker referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt lamented on Monday on Fox News: “It’s sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian rather than the truths that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had.”

Here are some of the “truths” from the other “phenomenal” speakers, none of which the Trump campaign disavowed: Businessman Grant Cardone likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute. “Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country,” he said. David Rem, billed as a childhood friend of Mr. Trump’s, called Ms. Harris the “Antichrist” and “devil” while waving a cross onstage.

Radio host Sid Rosenberg called Hillary Clinton a son of a b—- and dropped an f-bomb as he said that all Democrats are “degenerates … lowlifes.” Rudy Giuliani, disbarred over his misconduct as a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s effort to block the 2020 election results, said Ms. Harris is “on the side of the terrorists” in the Israel-Gaza conflict. Donald Trump Jr. claimed Democrats want to “replace” Americans with immigrants.

The stand-up comedian who made that nasty crack about Puerto Rico, Tony Hinchcliffe, made other tasteless ethnic jokes about African Americans, Latinos and Jews. The Bulwark reported that Trump campaign staffers reviewed a script of Mr. Hinchcliffe’s routine in advance and asked him to excise only a line that referred to Ms. Harris as a “c—.”

Even so, a pro-Trump group funded by Elon Musk, who also spoke at Sunday’s rally, posted on X, the platform he owns, and later deleted a video that referred to Ms. Harris as the c-word. After some innuendo, the video’s narrator clarifies that they mean she’s a communist.

To be sure, Mr. Trump has been destabilizing civil discourse since even before he started his 2016 campaign: It was in 2011 that he started voicing support for the false notion that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Yet in the final weeks of this election, he seems to be making the normalization of incivility one of his campaign’s de facto objectives.

He opened a rally this month in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, by commenting on the size of golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia. Mr. Trump told the crowd that night that his wife, Melania, has urged him to use less foul language and that evangelical leader Franklin Graham wrote him a letter pleading the same case. His punchline is that he cannot help himself because Ms. Harris has been a “s—” vice president and everything she touches turns to “s—.” The crowd started chanting “s—” in Latrobe. A top-selling shirt outside his rallies describes Ms. Harris as a “hoe.”

True, Mr. Trump’s campaign is not only a cause of this society’s spreading incivility but a consequence of it. Moreover, norms regarding profanity follow a cultural dynamic separate from politics, and the culture is more permissive about such things than it once was. This may explain why Ms. Harris has also occasionally been using four-letter words on the stump. She swore up a storm in a Rolling Stone interview and said being vice president has made her more profane. Her running mate, Tim Walz, called Mr. Musk “a dips—” during a rally last week. Not a great example. But Mr. Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally and events like it are in a class by themselves, not least in their threatening tone.

When he finally took the stage on Sunday, the former president declared without irony: “The Republican Party has really become the party of inclusion.” Then, over 80 minutes, he promised to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport undocumented immigrants, called Democrats “the enemy within” and the mainstream media “the enemy of the people,” described the United States as “an occupied country,” and predicted Nov. 5 will bring “Liberation Day.” Even without a vulgarity, it was the most offensive language of all.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of the Press, Media, Trump

Trump Calls Madison Square Garden Rally “an Absolute Love Fest”

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2024 //
11

The day after Trump’s Madison Square Garden, the media reacted with shock to the raw racism and misogyny on display. The New York Times reported:

Former President Donald J. Trump sought to head off the major speech Vice President Kamala Harris was planning to deliver Tuesday night by casting her as responsible for all of the nation’s ills while also attempting to draw attention away from bigoted and racist remarks at his rally in New York.

Two days after he hosted a rally at Madison Square Garden where several speakers made racist and vulgar statements, Mr. Trump accused Ms. Harris of running “a campaign of absolute hate.”

Mr. Trump then headed to Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state, for two campaign stops. Ms. Harris is expected to speak at the Ellipse, the same park near the White House where Mr. Trump marshaled his supporters to descend on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The setting for Ms. Harris’s remarks will provide her campaign with a symbolic moment to go along with its increasingly blunt warnings about the dangers posed by Mr. Trump, who Democrats say is unstable and will run roughshod over democratic norms if he returns to the White House.

Mr. Trump’s allies have shown anxiety that the backlash to the Madison Square Garden event, and descriptions of him as a racist and a fascist, may be breaking through to segments of voters in battleground states. On Tuesday, however, the former president sought to attack Ms. Harris with the very accusations he himself has been facing, telling a group of supporters and reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida that her message “has been a message of hate and division.”

In his remarks, Mr. Trump continued to push back against criticisms of his rally — which he called, unprompted, “an absolute love fest” — mocking Democrats who have pointed out that a pro-Nazi rally was held at Madison Square Garden in 1939.

Election Day is one week from today. Here’s what else to know:

  • Madison Square Garden rally fallout: Republicans moved swiftly to distance themselves from remarks disparaging Puerto Rico made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who was one of the opening speakers at Mr. Trump’s New York rally. The island’s Republican Party chairman is demanding an apology, and the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny stepped up his condemnation of the remarks on Tuesday.
  • Hinting at a vulgar taunt: An ad from Elon Musk’s PAC refers to Ms. Harris as a “C Word” — eventually calling her a “communist” — in an allusion to an insult against women that is one of the most obscene words in American English.
Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Gender, Racism, Trump

Ronald Reagan vs. Stephen Miller on Immigration

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2024 //
6

At the infamous Madison Square Garden hate rally, Trump’s close advisor Stephen Miller railed against immigrants. If Trump is elected, Miller will be in charge of the program to round up and expel millions of undocumented immigrants.

And Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who has shaped many of Trump’s immigration policies, said Americans are having their jobs “looted and stolen from them” and sent to foreign countries. 

He went even further: “America is for America and Americans only,” he said, a starkly anti-immigration view that advances what has already been said throughout the campaign. 

But President Ronald Reagan had a different message. This was his last message as President. He devoted it to welcoming immigrants. During his time in office, he passed legislation to reform the immigration system so that all immigrants entered legally. He extended amnesty to those who were in the U.S. without documents.

An immigration website describes Reagan’s bipartisan legislation:

President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan

A few months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan issued a “Statement on United States Immigration and Refugee Policy” in which he outlined his goals to continue America’s tradition of welcoming people from other countries, especially those fleeing oppression. He called for the millions of undocumented “illegal immigrants” present in the country to be given recognition and a path to legal status — without encouraging further illegal immigration.

On Nov. 6, 1986 Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the most far-reaching immigration law passed during his presidency. The Act’s most significant effect was that it allowed immigrants who had entered the U.S. illegally before Jan. 1, 1982 to apply for legal status, provided they paid fines and back taxes. This provision — which Reagan himself referred to as “amnesty,” allowed around 3 million immigrants to secure legal status after paying $185, demonstrating “good moral character” and learning to speak English.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Immigration

Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally: A Disaster

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2024 //
42

Trump’s campaign may have launched the “October Surprise”–the game-changing event in the last days of the campaign–as a boomerang. The political columns, like Politico, are filled with reactions to the comedian’s line about Puerto Rico being “an island of garbage.” The outrage is loud and bipartisan, since Republicans realize the “joke” offended an important voting bloc.

The Archbishop of San Juan demanded a personal apology from Trump.

JD Vance said at a rally that people should not be so easily offended by a joke. But they are. Calling the island garbage means calling the people on it garbage. Why shouldn’t they be offended? Would Vance be so complacent if someone called Ohio “a garbage state?”

And the controversy revived memories of Trump throwing paper towels to people in Puerto Rico after a devastating hurricane, as well as Trump’s indifference to the island:

On the NBC website was news about the joke:

Apart from Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican singer Marc Anthony slammed Trump for his actions during Hurricane Maria as he endorsed Harris, posting on Instagram: “I remember after Hurricane Maria devastated our island… Trump blocked billions in relief … while thousands died. I remember that when our families lacked clean water and electricity, Trump threw paper towels and called Puerto Rico ‘dirty’ and ‘poor.’” He added he was not “surprised,” because Trump “launched his campaign by calling Latinos criminals and rapists.”

After the 2017 hurricane, Trump repeatedly opposed disaster funding for Puerto Rico as he disputed and failed to acknowledge Maria’s death toll — almost 3,000 people in the U.S. territory, making it the deadliest hurricane in the U.S. in 100 years. Trump also drew attention for disparaging statements about Puerto Rico after Maria, including “they want everything to be done for them,” and for tossing paper towels in a visit to the island after the deadly hurricane.

During his presidency, Congress approved a total of $20 billion in federal housing funds for Puerto Rico’s post-hurricane reconstruction, a historic amount. But the Trump administration blocked Puerto Rico from receiving such funds and obstructed a government probe looking into officials who withheld the aid, according to a Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General report.

All good news for Kamala, who had just released her plans to help Puerto Rico’s economy.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Stupid, Trump
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