Jeanne Melvin is a public education activist in Ohio. She urges Ohio voters to vote YES on issue 1. This would put a bipartisan commission in charge of redistricting instead of the Legislature. It would block the Legislature from designing their own districts to assure a supermajority. Ohio’s Republican supermajority has passed numerous bills to privatize school funding, including a universal voucher bill that enables all parents to get public funding to subsidize their private school tuition. Vouchers. Most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. Like all universal vouchers programs, Ohio’s is welfare for the wealthy.
Melvin writes:
Public Education is on the ballot across our nation.
Americans must choose between two presidential candidates whose policies, strategies, and experience relating to issues in public education are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
This November, Ohio voters will also decide if politicians should be left in charge of drawing our voting maps, or if the politicians should be removed from the process in favor of a citizens commission.
According to Dr. Christina Collins, former State School Board member and current director of Honesty for Ohio Education, the lack of competitive districts brings “extreme” education policies like attempting to regulate curriculums to avoid what legislators call “critical race theory” from getting into schools, the anti-LGBTQ law keeping transgender students from playing sports in the teams that align with their gender identity, and active bills that would threaten funding and dictate the kind of materials allowed in school libraries.
As previously stated, Ohio’s gerrymandered GOP majority has brought forward some extreme education bills designed to benefit private schools and to defund and diminish public school districts. Public education advocates have responded with facts, logic, and common sense, but lawmakers and lobbyists have chosen not to listen.
Ohioans can VOTE YES on Issue 1 on or before November 5,a bipartisan effort to remove the politicians from legislative redistricting in favor of a 15-member citizens commission made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independents.
For education, this would mean that instead of Ohio lawmakers focusing on culture wars and EdChoice school voucher expansion, they could focus on more important issues, such as fair school funding to help our local public school districts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Past and present journalists at the newspaper urged readers not to cancel. Loss of revenue means future layoffs.
Even with the cancellation of the endorsement, the Post remains the most forthright and persistent critic of Trump and his racism, misogyny, xenophobia, as well as his all-around unfitness for office.
Those who look for a future with a stable, functioning two-party system–post-MAGA–should resubscribe.
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.
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.”
Massachusetts has one of the highest performing school systems in the nation on the national test called NAEP (National Assesmrnt of Educational Progress). Some attribute this success to the state’s testing and accountability program. Others believe that the state test–MCAS–is overused and misused as a high school graduation requirement. Critics of the high-stakes exam as graduation requirement say that it was not designed to be an exit exam, that it has no value for diagnostic purposes, and that the small number of students who don’t pass it are disproportionately made up of students with disabilities and students who are not native-English speakers.
Opponents of MCAS as a high-stakes graduation requirement have placed a referendum on the ballot called Question 2.
I urge voters in Massachusetts to vote YES on Question 2.
Belief in standardized testing as a remedy for low test scores has been misplaced for decades. Some believe that facing a test compels students to study harder, but we now know that the results of the standardized tests reflect family income and education more than student effort and ability. Those at the bottom of the scores inevitably are students with disabilities, students who don’t read English, students living in high poverty.
If high-stakes standardized were the solution to poor academic performance, the U.S. would have no failure at all. We have been administering those tests for more than 20 years. After the initial increases that are associated with test prep, improvement ground to a halt and score gaps between racial and economic groups stubbornly persisted.
Massachusetts teachers know that good things happen to students when schools have ample resources, small classes, and time to help the students with the greatest needs.
The YES vote is supported by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, many local school boards, and Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The NO vote is supported by Governor Maura Healey and the business community.
The campaign to keep the MCAS as a graduation requirement just received a donation of $2.5 million from former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg ran the New York City schools with a firm belief that high-stakes testing, charter schools, and firing professionals would fix the schools. They didn’t, but he hasn’t learned anything from his stewardship of the schools.
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg gave $2.5 million to the group trying to beat back a ballot question that would eliminate the MCAS test as a graduation requirement, offering a significant infusion into the heated campaign just ahead of Election Day.
Bloomberg’s seven-figure donation is the largest contribution the “Vote No on 2″ campaign has received, and accounts for more than half of the $4.8 million it has reported raising this election cycle, state data show.
It’s not the billionaire’s first time pouring money into a Massachusetts ballot campaign. Bloomberg donated $490,000 in 2016 to a failed ballot question that would have expanded charter schools in Massachusetts.
If approved by voters, Question 2 would repeal a provision of the state’s landmark 1993 education law that makes earning a high school diploma contingent on students passing MCAS exams in English, math, and science. In its place, the ballot measure would establish a new mandate: Students would need to complete coursework certified by their districts in those subjects that meet state academic standards. The state would be able to add new subjects to that list.
James Fallows is a veteran journalist with an illustrious history as a writer and editor. In addition, he was chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. In this article in his blog, he interviews himself about the election and wonders why Trump is not appealing to anyone other than his rabid base. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is getting endorsements from Republicans who want to stop Trump from returning to the White House, the latest being Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Fellows writes on his Substack blog “Breaking the News”:
Do we know what is going to happen?
No.
Oh, come on.
Last week I quoted the famed Democratic strategist, James Carville, and the famed Republican, Stuart Stevens, on the reasons both of them were confident that Kamala Harris would win.
For myself, I think that if what has been a hair’s-breadth race might “break” at the last minute, it would break in Harris’s favor. To put it in political-operative terms: Donald Trump might have solidified his base but reached his ceiling. Kamala Harris, by contrast, might not yet have “closed the deal,” as the pundit cliché goes, but still have potential for extra last-minute support.
If so, that would mean that polls had yet again missed the fury of many female voters, as happened before the midterms two years ago. They could also have missed the unease and disgust of Republican and centrist voters about everything associated with Donald Trump. The reasons would start with January 6 and the Dobbs decision and go on from there.
I hope that is the “surprise” in store for us. But I don’t know.
And is Donald Trump even trying to win the vote any more? Or is he just thinking about winning the count?
That’s the darkest fear: That Trump has given up even trying to draw newcomers into a majority-rule “big tent.” The fear is that he has skipped his sights past November 5 and is concentrating on what comes next. Intimidation, threats of violence, election-day victory claims, post-election lawsuits that reach an obeisant Supreme Court. That would be the logic behind revving up “Stop the Steal!” rhetoric now, to condition his followers to think a loss must have been rigged.
Only twice in the past few months did Trump strike me as running a “general election” campaign, aimed at more than the MAGA base. Significantly, both were while the vulnerable Joe Biden was still in the race. One was the opening 30 minutes of Trump’s fateful debate with Biden, when Trump was patient and relatively polite as he watched Biden dig himself into a deep hole. The other was the opening 30 minutes of his acceptance speech at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, when he more or less stuck to the “president of all the people” prepared text.
In each case, when those 30 minutes were up, Trump could no longer resist and let loose with insults and lies. But since that time, and after Kamala Harris’s debut as nominee, from Trump it’s been all grievance and lies, all the time. His rallies are all the same. Except for off-the-cuff economic promises—no taxes on anything, stiff tariffs on everything—they seem almost scientifically calculated to drive away anyone not already in his thrall.
From Trump himself, we assume this is not calculation but pure impulse. On that point everyone who knows him seems to agree. But for the party as a whole? Can they really be so calm as they watch their standard bearer rant and offend? Or are they acting so calm because they know that November 5 is just the beginning, and that far more disciplined strategists will get to work, on terrain they’ve already mapped out?
I mentioned my hope for a last-minute break in the votes. This is my corresponding fear: About the reserve army for the post-November 5 battle, which ranges from the Proud Boys to the majority on the Supreme Court.
Oh, come on (again). And was this latest Trump rally actually that bad?
Yes. It was.
Obviously you want to be careful with Nazi comparisons. Nothing in the modern Western world matches what Hitler’s Third Reich became, from industrialized mass slaughter to all-frontiers invasions and world war.
But Hitler started someplace. And while the United States in the 2020s could hardly be more different from Weimar Germany after World War I—the strongest and richest nation in the world, versus one defeated and bankrupted—the rhetoric and references between Donald Trump’s current appeals and those of the nascent Nazis are strikingly similar. Listen to the Madison Square Garden rally three nights ago. And compare it with the rhetoric of the 1934 Nuremberg rally shown in Triumph of the Will. Vermin. Poisoning our blood. Bad genes. The enemy within. Round them up and send them out. Floating island of garbage. It’s a closerparallel than you’ll find with any other major US party rally since World War II.
This post appeared originally in the Louisville Courier-Journal. It has since been posted by The Network for Public Education, whose contents are curated by Peter Greene.
Liam Amick is a senior at Trinity High School, a Catholic school in Kentucky, where vouchers are on the ballot next week in Amendment 2, a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would okay vouchers. Trinity has made support of the Amendment mandatory. Amick would like to disagree, and does so in the Courier Journal.
Every day when I drive into school, I’m greeted by yard signs blazing with the message “YES on 2!” To see these put up at Trinity, a school that generally requests little political discussion at school, was quite a shock.
I’m a “private school kid.” I went to St. Francis of Assisi for first through eighth grades, and I am now a senior at Trinity High School. I will always be indebted to those schools for providing me with fantastic educations and experiences in the most formative years of my life. But to say I am disappointed with Trinity’s stance on Amendment 2 — a Kentucky ballot measure that would allow public tax funding to be used for private schools — would be an understatement.
An even bigger disappointment has been Trinity’s and the Archdiocese of Louisville‘s responses to criticism of their position. When both Trinity’s Student Government and Faculty Senate asked if the “YES on 2!” signs could be taken down, they were told that the archdiocese had asked us to put them up and there was absolutely no chance of them being taken down. Also, the administration doesn’t allow our school journalism program to report on any political topics and or criticisms of Trinity and its policies, so I felt that to share my views I had to look outside of the school.
In my opinion, the desire of non-public schools to support Amendment 2 is logical, but closed-minded. What’s important to remember is that, in Kentucky, 65% of non-public schools are found in Louisville, Lexington and the general Northern Kentucky area. Out of 120 counties in Kentucky, 89 have no access to a non-public school, and well-run, accredited non-public schools aren’t going to magically appear in those counties after the passage of Amendment 2. So, the “school choice” amendment would in fact offer students in these areas no “choice” to go to a different school.
Supporters of Amendment 2 often bring up Kentucky’s 2023 $1 billion budget surplus, claiming that that money will be used to provide funding to public schools and said schools will lose no money. However, that surplus money already has a destination. According to House Appropriations and Revenue Chair Jason Petrie, the extra money has “provided the opportunity to invest more than $2.7 billion over the next two years to improve road, rail, river, air, and water infrastructure.” Although Petrie claims they are also making “targeted investments in school facilities,” the bottom line is that significantly fewer tax dollars would go to public schools, leaving no replacement funding in their wake.
Jonathan V. Last writes at The Bulwark, the always interesting gathering spot for Never Trumpers. He wrote that he has been stewing about the intervention of Jeff Bezos, billionaire owner of The Washington Post, to stop the editorial board from endorsing Kamala. after Bezos locked the editorial, three of the 10-member editorial board stepped down.
He wrote:
ON FRIDAY, after the Washington Post’s publisher announced that the paper was suddenly abandoning the practice of the editorial page endorsing presidential candidates, news leaked that—on the very same day—Donald Trump met with executives from Blue Origin.
Blue Origin, of course, is the rocket company owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.
What we witnessed on Friday was not a case of censorship or a failure of the media. It had nothing to do with journalism or the Washington Post. It was something much, much more consequential. It was about oligarchy, the rule of law, and the failure of the democratic order.
This was neither a coincidence nor a case of Bezos and Trump being caught doing something they wished to keep hidden. The entire point of the exercise, at least for Trump, was that it be public.
When Bezos decreed that the newspaper he owned could not endorse Trump’s opponent, it was a transparent act of submission borne of an intuitive understanding of the differences between the candidates.
Bezos understood that if he antagonized Kamala Harris and Harris became president, he would face no consequences. A Harris administration would not target his businesses because the Harris administration would—like all presidential administrations not headed by Trump—adhere to the rule of law.
Bezos likewise understood that the inverse was not true. If he continued to antagonize Trump and Trump became president, his businesses very much would be targeted.
So bending the knee to Trump was the smart play. All upside, no downside.
What Trump understood was that Bezos’s submission would be of limited use if it was kept quiet. Because the point of dominating Bezos wasn’t just to dominate Bezos. It was to send a message to every other businessman, entrepreneur, and corporation in America: that these are the rules of the game. If you are nice to Trump, the government will be nice to you. If you criticize Trump, the government will be used against you.
Which is why Trump met with Blue Origin on the same day that Bezos yielded. It was a demonstration—a very public demonstration.
But as bad as that sounds, it isn’t the worst part.
The worst part is the underlying failures that made this arrangement possible.
My friend Kristofer Harrison is a Russia expert who runsthe Dekleptocracy Project. This morning he emailed,
America’s oligarch moment makes us more like 1990s Russia than we want to believe. Political scientists can and will debate what comes first: oligarchs or flaccid politicians. 1990s Russia had that in spades. So do we. That combination corroded the rule of law there, and it’s doing so here.
Russian democracy died because their institutions and politicians were not strong enough to enforce the law. Sound familiar? I could identify half a dozen laws that Elon Musk has already broken without enforcement. Bezos censored the Post because he knows that nobody will enforce the law and keep Trump from seeking political retribution. And on and on. The corrosive effect on the rule of law is cumulative.
The Bezos surrender is our warning bell about entering early-stage 1990s Russia. No legal system is able to survive when it there’s a class not subject to it because politicians are too cowardly to enforce the law.
And that’s the foundational point. The Bezos surrender isn’t just a demonstration. It’s a consequence. It’s a signal that the rule of law has already eroded to such a point that even a person as powerful as Jeff Bezos no longer believes it can protect him.
So he has sought shelter in the embrace of the strongman.
Bezos made his decision because he calculated that Trump has already won—not the election, but his struggle to break the rule of law.
Yesterday, Timothy Snyder issued a call to Americans to not obey in advance. He is correct, of course. We should continue to resist fascism as best we can. The stakes have not changed.
If Trump wins? Well, I suppose we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
What should change is our understanding of where our democracy currently sits on the continuum. We are not teetering at the precipice of a slide into autocracy. We are already partway down the slope. And that’s even if Harris wins.
But Bezos and Trump have just taught America’s remaining small-d democratic leaders: The time for normal politics, where you try to win bipartisan majorities by focusing on “kitchen-table” issues is past. The task in front of us will require aggressive, systemic changes if we are to escape terminal decline.
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.
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.
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.
Diane Ravitch's blog 