Eugene Robinson, a regular columnist for The Washington Post, says that Bret Baier intended to make Kamala Harris look bad when he interviewed her on FOX News, but he actually allowed her to demonstrate that she’s articulate, fearless, and strong.
He writes:
One of the people Vice President Kamala Harris might want to thank in her victory speech, if she wins the election, is Fox News anchor Bret Baier. His combative interview Wednesday gave Harris the chance to display qualities — and present facts — that Donald Trump desperately wants to keep hidden from the network’s millions of viewers.
Don’t take it from me; take it from Baier himself. He said afterward that he thought Harris came to the interview seeking “a viral moment” and added: “I think she may have gotten that.”
Baier was surely referring to the exchange about Trump’s repeated threat to deploy the U.S. military against domestic critics he calls “the enemy within” — using the language of totalitarian despots. Baier presented a too-brief clip from a town hall event, aired on Fox earlier Wednesday, in which Trump denied saying any such thing. This was gaslighting: A slightly longer clip would have shown Trump railing against “the enemy from within” and naming two leading Democrats, Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, as being part of that “sick” group.
Baier obviously knew that — and Harris called him on it.
“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the ‘enemy within,’ that he has repeated. … That’s not what you just showed,” Harris said forcefully. “Here’s the bottom line: He has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that. And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him.”
Only after having her say — and mentioning that retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, believes he is a threat to U.S. democracy and national security — did she let Baier move on to another topic.
Practically since the day Harris became the Democratic nominee, Fox News hosts and guests have blasted her for not doing more unscripted interviews. Wednesday’s half-hour encounter was a reminder that we should all be careful what we wish for.
From start to finish, Baier was more of an inquisitor than an interviewer; there was none of the deference that fellow Fox anchor Harris Faulkner had given Trump when she moderated his town hall. Baier repeatedly interrupted the vice president, trying to talk over her and posing questions seemingly cut and pasted from the list of Republican talking points.
Intentionally or not, all of this was a gift to Harris. She stood her ground, refuting the Trump campaign’s claim that she is weak and easily pushed around. She spoke fluently and cogently, putting to rest GOP claims that all she offers is word salad. She brushed off the most tendentious questions, engaged with the substantive ones, and insisted on finishing her answers whether or not Baier liked it.
When he laid an obvious trap, asking whether she thought the millions of voters who support Trump are “stupid,” she sidestepped it with ease. “Oh, God, I would never say that about the American people,” she said — before reminding Baier of some of the vicious things Trump does say about Americans who oppose him.
Harris got to present facts that Fox tries to keep its audience from learning. Viewers heard that Harris had just come from a rally attended by 100 prominent Republicans who are crossing party lines to endorse her candidacy. They heard about the host of Trump administration officials who oppose giving their former boss another term in office. They heard Harris say she does not favor “decriminalizing” undocumented border crossings, despite what some Fox hosts regularly claim.
Fox viewers heard, perhaps for the first time, that Harris has offered concrete plans to boost the economy and support middle-class families. And they learned about all the economists who say Trump’s policies, compared with hers, will make inflation much worse and add trillions of dollars to the national debt.
In a contest that polls show as margin-of-error close, will Harris’s foray into hostile territory make any difference? Who knows. It is hard for me to imagine anything Harris might say or do that would weaken the bond between Trump and the core MAGA faithful. They are accustomed to believing what their Dear Leader says over the “lies” told by their own eyes and ears.
But there are moderate Republicans and right-leaning independents who recognize Trump’s faults but have been told by Fox News that Harris is insubstantial, inarticulate and unqualified. If they watched the interview, they saw a woman whose policies they might not love but who has command of the issues, handles pressure with ease and is nobody’s pushover. Those voters saw a viable alternative to four more years of Trump and his insanity.
Some might think Baier was properly adversarial, others might think he was obnoxiously rude. Either way, the Harris campaign ought to send him flowers.
A campaign ad released by former President Donald J. Trump in battleground states slams Vice President Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and migrants, concluding: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
But the Trump administration’s record on providing services for transgender people in the sprawling federal prison system, which houses thousands of undocumented immigrants awaiting trial or deportation, is more nuanced than the 30-second spot suggests.
Trump appointees at the Bureau of Prisons, a division of the Justice Department, provided an array of gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy, for a small group of inmates who requested it during Mr. Trump’s four years in office.
In a February 2018 budget memo to Congress, bureau officials wrote that under federal law, they were obligated to pay for a prisoner’s “surgery” if it was deemed medically necessary. Still, legal wrangling delayed the first such operation until 2022, long after Mr. Trump left office.
“Transgender offenders may require individual counseling and emotional support,” officials wrote. “Medical care may include pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., cross-gender hormone therapy), hair removal and surgery (if individualized assessment indicates surgical intervention is applicable).”
This post is about the misinformation that Republicans are spreading in light of recent disasters. Two of the deadliest hurricanes have swept through Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, East Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia and then through Florida again.
Millions of Floridians were displaced by one of the fiercest storms of the century to strike the west coast of the state. I saw some of the displaced people as they escaped Hurricane Milton to Atlanta and beyond.
Life in our warming world is becoming more dangerous. Many have been forced to flee their homes two times in the past month. They know that hurricanes are part of life living where they do. One person wrote that her house has been demolished three times by hurricanes before Milton came roaring into the St Petersburg-Tampa Bay shoreline cities.
The rescue efforts by first responders are planned by folks that take their life saving work seriously. The people in need during these disasters look for help from first responders and local, state, and federal government.
THE DESPICABLES
But lurking in the bushes are two despicable liars, Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Donald Trump is the one who never changed a tire or diaper (accord, but can spread misinformation about the weather (remember Sharpie), immigration, political rivals, the press, etc.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a do-nothing conspiracy theorist. She thinks “they” cause Hurricanes. Not so.
One is a convicted felon, a sex offender and rapist, and a fraudster. He also was impeached twice and indicted for trying to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and stealing classified documents from the U.S. government.
The other is a known bully, liar, and conspiracy storyteller. She is a Republican representative from one district in Georgia. During her first term in Washington, she was barred from serving on any committees because of one of her conspiracy theories. She has done nothing in Congress except shout, insult, argue, and defame others.
DISINFORMATION: AN INSULT TO FIRST RESPONDERS AND PEOPLE IN NEED
Deliberately spreading false informationamid national disasters should be a crime, as Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene have done. We call this disinformation.
“Disinformation is designed or spread with full knowledge of it being false (information has been manipulated) as part of an intention to deceive and cause harm. The motivations can be economic gain, ideological, religious, political, or supporting a social agenda. Misinformation and disinformation may cause harm, which comprises threats to decision-making processes and health, environment, or security. The critical difference between disinformation and misinformation is not the content of the falsehood but the knowledge and intention of the sender.” (Source: World Health Organization).
Trump is spreading lies about the government’s ability and will to help people recover from these hurricanes. He’s said that FEMA has no money for disaster relief because they gave it to migrants. This is not true.
He says that folks in need will only get $750. This is not true. These lies have caused great harm, and he doesn’t care. He will continue with these lies forever. He lacks empathy. Instead, he kicks people when they are down.
According to the World Health Organization, spreading disinformation is considered one of the top five threats to human health.
“THEY”
CLIMATE CHANGE
Marjorie Taylor Greene believes that “they” control the weather. In fact she reports that “they” direct hurricanes over people living in red states such as Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. Well, let’s see. Georgia has two blue Senators, and NC has a blue governor. That should debunk her theory, but not in MAGA land nor in Greene’s conspired mind. Scientists have had to publicly admit that we humans can’t control hurricanes, or tornadoes, and any other weather phenomenon.
Neither Trump or Greene have clue about the effect of the earth’s warming on hurricanes and other environmental disasters inciting fires, flooding and drought.
They deny global warming and claim it’s a hoax. Trump thinks the Chinese created the hoax. Their denial is dangerous. They deliberately harm others by refusing to accept the established truth that earth’s climate has warmed because of fossil fuel burning.
For decades, science education researchers have explored trends in proposed US state legislation employed from 2003 to 2023 by anti-evolution and anti-climate change education movements to constrain the teaching of these sciences. This is a critical issue in the education of students who will live in rapidly changing world.
Two hundred and seventy-three climate and evolution-related House and Senate bills, concurrent resolutions, and joint resolutions were identified, coded, and analyzed.
Eleven anti-science education legislative tactics were employed from 2003 to 2023. Five were first identified in the literature review: academic freedom (42.1%), rebranding (12.1%), balanced treatment (12.1%), censorship (2.6%), and disclaimers (2.6%).
The analysis revealed six new tactics: anti-indoctrination (16.8%), standards (12.1%), instructional materials (10.3%), religious liberty (8.8%), avoidance (4.4%), and religious instruction (4.0%).
One-quarter of bills and resolutions employed a combination of tactics. The most ubiquitous tactics were academic freedom bills, which urge science teachers to introduce ideas like intelligent design or climate change denial under the mantle of academic freedom, and anti-indoctrination bills, which prevent teachers from advocating for controversial topics deemed political.
Since 2017, anti-indoctrination has become the preferred tactic. Southern, southeastern, and midwestern states were the most prolific in their contribution to anti-science education legislation. Qualitative analysis revealed that bill and resolution language was often recycled across years and states, with slight changes to wording. From 2003 to 2023, the total number of anti-science education state legislative efforts increased, as did the number of passed bills and resolutions.
CLIMATE RESOURCES
Why do disasters like Hurricane Helene and Milton unleash so much misinformation? FEMA is not seizing anyone’s property. The agency did not prevent evacuations. Its grant programs generally don’t require repayment. FEMA’s disaster relief funds were not diverted to assist migrants at U.S. borders. Chimney Rock doesn’t have any lithium mines. Uncle Sam can’t control storms.
In my household, there was a vigorous debate about whether Kamala Harris should sit for an interview with Bret Baier of FOX News. Was it wise to enter the Lion’s den? I thought it was a great idea; Mary did not. From what I have read, it was a debate, not an interview, as Baier turned his questions into MAGA talking points.
Heather Cox Richardson watched the debate and believes that Kamala was dominant, even though Baier repeatedly interrupted her, spoke over her, and didn’t let her finish her answers to his questions.
Two Fox News Channel interviews bracketed today: one this morning with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in front of an audience of hand-picked Republican women in Georgia, the other by Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris with host Bret Baier. Together, the two were a performance of dominance.
FNC billed Trump’s so-called town hall as a chance for female voters, a demographic that is swinging heavily to Harris, to ask Trump about issues they care about. But Hadas Gold and Liam Reilly of CNN reported that FNC had packed the audience with Trump supporters. The first question came from the president of the Fulton County Republican Women, though she was not identified as such. FNC then edited the broadcast to cut out remarks in which the attendees expressed support for Trump.
It seems unlikely that Trump attracted any new voters by speaking to an audience of loyalists audibly cheering him on.
After Trump refused to debate her again, Harris voluntarily moved into his right-wing territory, agreeing to an interview with FNC host Bret Baier. In that interview, Baier reframed right-wing talking points as questions, essentially giving Trump a second shot at a debate. Baier kept talking over the vice president’s attempts to answer—even putting out a hand to interrupt her—in a stark contrast to FNC’s deference to Trump. Harris asked him to let her reply, and then answered his questions, sometimes testily, usually turning them into opportunities to contrast her own candidacy and record with Trump’s.
Control of the interview changed abruptly when Harris called out Trump for referring to the “enemy within” and talking about using the American military against those he considers enemies. Baier used that opportunity to show a clip of Trump saying he wasn’t threatening anyone, but the clip was edited to remove his threats against “sick,” “evil,” “dangerous” “Marxists and communists and fascists” including Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) and “the Pelosis”—presumably former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her husband, who was attacked by a man with a hammer in 2022 by a man who wanted to force Nancy Pelosi to renounce the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Harris had had enough propaganda.
“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within that he has repeated when he’s speaking about the American people. That’s not what you just showed…. You and I both know that he’s talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy. And in a democracy, the president of the United States in the United States of America should be… able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it. And this is what is at stake, which is why you have someone like the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying what Mark Milley has said about Donald Trump being a threat to the United States of America.”
Simply by going on the right-wing network, Harris was demonstrating dominance. Then, by answering as thoroughly as she did, she undercut the right-wing narrative that she is stupid and inarticulate. By calling out the FNC for deliberately misleading its viewers, she took command. Baier, rather than Harris, was the one doing the post-interview spinning.
Writer Peter Wehner, who worked for presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, wrote: “Bret Baier has rarely looked as bad (or tendentious) as he did in his interview with Kamala Harris. On the flip side, this was one of her best interviews. She dominated Bret. All in all it was quite a bad day for MAGA world’s most important media outlet.”
In between the two FNC events were two others that also told a story, this one about how the Republican Party’s descent into MAGA is creating a new political coalition to defend American principles.
Trump held a town hall with undecided Latino voters moderated by Mexican journalist Enrique Acevedo for Univision. Members of the audience asked excellent questions: how would he bring down household costs, who would take the jobs left behind by undocumented workers if Trump deported them and how much would that drive up food costs, why Trump took so long to stop the January 6 rioters, if he had caused deaths during the pandemic by misleading Americans, and if he agrees with his wife, Melania, about protecting abortion rights.
But Trump did not answer the questions, instead regurgitating his usual talking points. He promised to produce more oil and gas, called undocumented immigrants criminals, repeated the lie about Haitian migrants eating pets, and, after notably referring to the January 6 rioters as “we” and law enforcement officers as “the others,” called January 6 “a day of love.” The audience did not appear convinced.
Meanwhile, Vice President Harris joined more than 100 Republicans in Pennsylvania, near the spot where George Washington and more than 2,000 Continental soldiers crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 to surprise a garrison of British soldiers at Trenton, New Jersey, where they won a strategic victory.
Harris noted that those gathered were also near Philadelphia, where in 1787 delegates from across the country gathered to write and sign the U.S. Constitution.
“That work was not easy. The founders often disagreed. Often quite passionately. But in the end, the Constitution of the United States laid out the foundations of our democracy, including the rule of law, that there would be checks and balances, that we would have free and fair elections and a peaceful transfer of power. And these principles and traditions have sustained our nation for over two centuries, sustained because generations of Americans, from all backgrounds, from all beliefs, have cherished them, upheld them, and defended them.
“And now, the baton is in our hands,” she said. [A]t stake in this race are the democratic ideals that our founders and generations of Americans before us have fought for. At stake in this election is the Constitution of the United States…its very self.”
Harris welcomed the Republicans in the crowd, saying that everyone there shared a core belief: “That we must put country before party.” The crowd chanted, “USA, USA, USA.”
Harris noted that many of the Republicans on stage had taken the same oath to the Constitution that she had. “We here know the Constitution is not a relic from our past, but determines whether we are a country where the people can speak freely, and even criticize the president, without fear of being thrown in jail, or targeted by the military. Where the people can worship as they choose without the government interfering. Where you can vote without fear that your vote will be thrown away. All this and more depends on whether or not our leaders honor their oath to the Constitution.”
Trump, she pointed out, tried to overturn the will of the people expressed in a free and fair election, has vowed to use the military to go after any American who doesn’t support him, and has called for the “termination” of the Constitution. “It is clear,” she said, “Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged, and he is seeking unchecked power.” Trump, she said, “must never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States.”
“And to those who are watching,” she said, “if you share that view, no matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time: There is a place for you in this campaign. The coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of Donald Trump.”
“I pledge to you to be a President for all Americans. And I take that pledge seriously.”
She reiterated her promise to appoint a Republican to her cabinet and to establish a Council on Bipartisan Solutions to strengthen the middle class, secure the border, defend our freedoms, and maintain the nation’s leadership in the world. She noted that the country needs a healthy two-party system, and described how the Senate Intelligence Committee left partisanship at the door. It “was “country over party in action,” when she sat on the committee, she said, “[s]o I know it can be done.”
“[O]ur campaign is not a fight against something,” she said. “It is a fight for something. It is a fight for the fundamental principles upon which we were founded, It is a fight for a new generation of leadership that is optimistic about what we can achieve together—Republicans, Democrats, and independents who want to move past the politics of division and blame and get things done on behalf of the American people.
“[W]e are all here together this beautiful afternoon because we love our country…and we know the deep privilege and pride that comes with being an American and the duty that comes along with it…. Imperfect though we may be, America is still that ‘shining city upon a hill’ that inspires people around the world. And I do believe it is one of the highest forms of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country.”
“So, to people from across Pennsylvania, and across our nation, let us together stand up for the rule of law, for our democratic ideals, and for the Constitution of the United States. And in twenty days, we have the power to chart a New Way Forward, one that is worthy of this magnificent country that we are all blessed to call home.”
As we have seen over the past two years, Trump has used his legal team to delay, delay, delay, with the hope of eventually getting a sympathetic judge who will dismiss the case against him. That is what happened in Florida, where Trump-appointed District Court Judge Aileen Cannon threw out the entire case about Trump’s theft of documents. The reason: She believes that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. She is the first federal judge to reach this conclusion. Many other judges and legal scholars have reached the opposite conclusion and found the appointment of special counsels to be constitutional. Her decision has been appealed by prosecutors.
Yesterday, Obama-appointed District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan dismissed most of Trump’s requests to “discover” more government documents that might show that his actions on January 6, 2021, were necessary.
In a significant legal setback for Donald Trump, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a detailed ruling on his latest discovery requests in the 2020 election subversion case, dismissing most of his demands as speculative and unsupported by law. Trump had sought to compel the federal government to search for and produce a broad array of documents related to election interference, cybersecurity threats, and law enforcement actions connected to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In this article, we will succinctly analyze Judge Chutkan’s latest ruling and its implications on Trump’s election interference case. To read our full analysis below, please join as a paid subscriber to support our work.
Let’s get into it:
The ruling, issued today (October 16, 2024), addressed two key motions filed by Trump’s defense team: a Motion to Compel Discovery and a Motion for an Order Regarding the Scope of the Prosecution Team. In these motions, Trump’s lawyers asked the court to force the federal government to search nine government agencies for information across 14 categories, including classified intelligence assessments and communications about foreign election interference. Trump’s defense argued that this information would support his claim that his actions were based on legitimate concerns about election security.
Judge Chutkan, however, found that Trump’s requests were largely unsupported by the law. She pointed out that under both Brady v. Maryland and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16, defendants bear the burden of demonstrating that the requested materials are material to their defense. “Speculation” that the government might possess favorable evidence is not enough to justify an expansive search, Chutkan noted, and Trump had failed to show that the requested documents were likely to yield new, non-cumulative evidence.
For example, Trump sought all drafts and communications related to the 2020 Election Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), claiming that these documents would help demonstrate his “good faith” concerns about foreign interference. But Chutkan rejected this request, noting that Trump did not claim to have been aware of these drafts at the time of his indicted actions. Without showing that this information could have influenced his state of mind, Trump could not meet the standard of materiality required for discovery.
Judge Chutkan also denied Trump’s request for communications and drafts of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) statement, which had described the 2020 election as “the most secure in American history.” Trump argued that earlier versions of the statement might show narrower language that would support his defense, but the court found this request speculative and irrelevant to Trump’s intent at the time.
Trump did win a limited victory in his request for certain “discrete, identified” documents, which Judge Chutkan ruled the government must produce. However, these documents represented only a small portion of Trump’s overall requests. The ruling emphasizes that Trump’s legal strategy cannot rely on vague or speculative claims of what might be found in government records.
Chutkan’s ruling further solidifies the challenges Trump faces as he prepares his defense in the federal criminal case. Trump’s argument that his state of mind was shaped by legitimate concerns about election integrity appears increasingly difficult to substantiate, as the court continues to limit the scope of discovery to concrete and relevant evidence.
Judge Chutkan’s Conclusion and Order
This ruling follows a pattern in which courts have resisted attempts by Trump’s legal team to broaden the scope of discovery in various legal challenges. Chutkan’s decision reiterates the principle that discovery is not an unlimited right and must be grounded in specific, demonstrable need.
With the court setting an October 30 deadline for any further motions to compel discovery, the Trump defense team will need to reconsider their approach as the case moves toward trial. Judge Chutkan’s decision is another indication that Trump’s claims, both inside and outside the courtroom, face serious judicial scrutiny.
I follow whatever is posted by the Meidas brothers. They do a great job of pulling together clips from the campaign, to show you what’s happening.
This series of clips is an eye opener. It’s frankly disgusting to see the racist, anti-immigrant appeals that Trump and his surrogates deliver to the voters.
We used to pride ourselves on being a nation of immigrants. Now Trump wants us to see immigrants as murderers, rapists, and criminals.
He says he will invoke a law passed in 1798 to round-up millions of immigrants and deport them. Is this The Final Solution?
Can he be elected by serving up a steady diet of hatred and fear?
The State Election Board in Georgia, controlled 3-2 by Trump partisans, recently adopted a requirement that local officials to perform a hand-count of ballots cast on November 5. This, of course, would cause lengthy delays in reaching a result.
Robert C. McBurney is a judge of the Georgia 5th Superior Court District Atlanta Circuit. He was first appointed by Republican Governor Nathan Deal and was subsequently elected. Just days ago, he overturned Georgia’s abortion ban.
A county judge in Georgia on Tuesday blocked a new rule mandating a hand count of election ballots across the state. Enacting such a sweeping change for the November election, he said, was “too much, too late.”
Judge Robert C.I. McBurney did not, however, knock down the rule outright; his decision was confined to the current election, halting the rule from taking effect for 2024 while he further weighs its merits.
The rule, passed last month by the State Election Board, would have required poll workers across Georgia to break open sealed containers of ballots and count them by hand to ensure that the total number of ballots matched the total counted by tabulating machines. (It would not have required officials to tally for whom the ballots were cast.)
But Judge McBurney agreed with challenges from several county election boards that the rule was made too close to the election.
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post wrote a summary of Trump’s lies. No one can detail all of them, there were so many. During Trump’s term in office, the Post’s fact-checker used to keep count. He–Glenn Kessler–attributed more than 30,000 lies to Trump during his presidency. Since then, Trump has had four years to lie some more.
Trump is a master liar. There are his insulting lies (Vice President Kamala Harris is “mentally disabled”). Then there are his xenophobic (“They are eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats.”) and antisemitic (saying Jews will be responsible if he loses) lies.
There are his economically ignorant falsehoods (e.g., foreign countries pay tariffs). There are his lies to raise resentment and anger at the current administration (e.g., it is denying aid to hurricane victims, crime is rising, tens of thousands of migrant murderers are running loose). There are his lies to deflect blame (e.g., former House speaker Nancy Pelosi is responsible for the attack on Jan. 6, 2021; sexual assault victim E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Trump for defamation twice, was lying). There are his lies about Democrats (e.g., they favor infanticide).
Trump also recycles numerous lies about the American people (e.g., everyone wanted to repeal Roe v. Wade, women love him) and his own record (e.g., his economy was the “greatest” ever, he had a perfect callwith Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, troops under his command suffered only “headaches” from an Iranian attack). He even lies about what he said (e.g., denying he ever signaled openness to restricting contraception). His lies undermining democracy might be the most dangerous (e.g., he won in 2020, millions of illegal immigrants are registering to vote).
We should not forget the “merely” ludicrous assertions of his own powers. (e.g., Hamas would not have attacked Israel if he were president, he could “settle” the Ukraine war) and dystopian predictions if he loses (e.g., we won’t have a country, there will be a “bloodbath”). And his absurd conspiracy theories can never be disproven (e.g., the Deep State). His exaggerations about his wealth, his physical health and his cognitive performance are among the most cringeworthy.
His lies are so prolific, they prompt some to question whether he knows he is lying. But like many authoritarianleaders, Trump uses his go-to tactic to bend reality and bamboozle the public. He lies to conceal his own abject failures, criminality, incompetence, disloyalty and ignorance — and the lies are made more potent when the right-wing media echoes his lies and the mainstream media presents his distortions as he said-she said disputes. For him, it’s better to be called a liar (and rely on the public’s suspicion that “all politicians lie”) than acknowledge his manifest faults and failures.
No matter what the problem, the cause is always IMMIGRANTS, in the minds of Trump and Vance. The answer to the problem, to them, is always the same: Round up and expel the immigrants!
Greg Olear wonders about their fixation and concludes that it’s fascistic. Are housing prices going up because of immigrants? How many do they want to deport? 25 million? 13 million? 11 million? What about Trump’s idea of building new cities on empty federal lands? Where are those federal lands?
“O, what a happy, contented land this would be if only we could expel the immigrants!” They say. once they are gone, middle-class Americans could occupy the immigrants’ palatial estates. Housing crisis solved.
At the VP debate…, Margaret Brennan addressed “the top contributor to inflation, the high cost of housing and rent,” asking the candidates, Tim Walz and JD Vance, what they’d do about the “shortage of more than 4 million homes in the United States… [that] contributes to the high housing crisis.”
It’s not all bad news. The homeownership rate is not, as I feared watching the debate, in freefall. On the contrary, it’s in the same two-thirds-give-or-take range it’s occupied for my entire lifetime, as this Federal Reserve chart shows:
The decennial census of 1890 was the first to ask basic housing questions and, in particular, whether one owned or rented. The census data since 1890 show three distinct eras of homeownership in America.
In the 1890-1940 period, the homeownership rate fluctuated in the 43- to 48-percent range. From 1890 to 1920, the homeownership rate fell as immigration and urbanization offset the rise in income. Income growth increased the homeownership rate during the 1920s, but the Depression more than wiped out this gain so that the rate had fallen to a low of 43.6 percent by 1940.
During the 1940-1960 period, the homeownership rate rose by over 18 percentage points, from 43.6 to 61.9 percent. This remarkable transformation was facilitated by higher incomes, a large percentage of households being in prime homebuying age groups, the FHA-led revolution in mortgage financing, the GI bill of rights, improved interurban transportation, and development of large-scale housing subdivisions with affordable houses.
For the middle class, homeownership is a critical metric. We don’t want too many Americans living in rentals owned by private equity firms, and at the mercy of rapacious Wall Street speculators.
But that’s only part of the picture. There is a shortage of housing—and the gap is a lot more than the number Brennan suggested. According to a study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the U.S. real estate market is plagued by
a shortage of 7.3 million rental homes affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes—that is, incomes at or below either the federal poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income, whichever is greater. Only 34 affordable and available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renter households. Extremely low-income renters face a shortage in every state and major metropolitan area. Among states, the supply of affordable and available rental homes ranges from 14 affordable and available homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households in Nevada to 57 in South Dakota. In 12 of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the country, the absolute shortage of affordable and available homes for extremely low-income renters exceeds 100,000 units.
Households throughout the country, particularly those with the lowest incomes, are struggling with the high cost of housing because of decades of underbuilding, high construction costs, and the resulting shortage of homes for sale and for rent, all combined with inadequately funded housing assistance.
So, yes, this is a big problem.
In the debate, Tim Walz proposed rolling out a down-payment assistance plan similar in concept to the GI Bill that helped increase the homeownership rate after the Second World War, as well as incentivizing new construction—boilerplate New Deal-style solutions that will almost certainly work, if Congress could be swayed to vote for them.
But it was JD Vance’s answer to Brennan’s question that gave me pause. The Ohio Senator and eyeliner enthusiast expounded on Donald Trump’s concepts of a plan to tackle the national housing crisis. There were two proposals, if we can call them that, the Republican VP nominee advanced, both of them bone-chilling.
Let’s look at them more closely:
1. Mass deportation of tens of millions of “illegal aliens” to create more housing inventory
“We don’t want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices,” Vance said. “But we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country, which does drive up costs, Tim. Twenty-five million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country. It’s why we have massive increases in home prices that have happened right alongside massive increases in illegal alien, alien populations under Kamala Harris’s leadership.”
First—and I only say this because a lot of people who watched the debate are probably unaware of how the federal government works: as Vice President, Kamala Harris has zero authority to do fuck-all. She can break a tie in the Senate, and she can succeed the President Biden if he croaks. That is the comprehensive and unabridged list of her constitutional powers. Can she suggest? Sure. Can she propose? Absolutely. But POTUS is under no obligation to listen to her at all, let alone act on what she says. One can mount an argument that Biden is responsible for the housing crisis, but the idea that Harris is to blame is objectively untrue. So, yeah, Vance lied.
Second: it is troubling to me that the alleged number of “illegal aliens” in the United States seems to rise every time Trump opens his mouth. It was 15 million, then 18 million, then 22. Now it’s 25 million, Vance says. Bear in mind that the total U.S. population is something like 333,000,000. Thus, Couchfucker claims that 7.5 percent of the residents of this country—about one in 13—is here illegally, which is preposterous. The actual number, according to Pew Research, is closer to 11 million:
Are Trump/Vance and their surrogates exaggerating the undocumented population to play up the MAGA fear of a border invasion? Or—and this is the scary part—is that how many U.S. residents they intend to round up and deport? Because, like, 25 million is more people than just those here illegally. A lot more. Over twice as many.
But you gotta give the MAGA braintrust credit. Displacing one thirteenth of the entire U.S. population would indeed make available a lot of housing. The Trump/Vance plan would absolutely work. We know it would work, because that’s literally what the Nazis did in Poland in 1939.
In her incredible and horrifying book The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War, Lynn H. Nicholas explains Hitler’s attitude toward the Poles:
In an extraordinary speech to his highest commanders, delivered on August 22 [1939] just after he had agreed to sign the Russian treaty, Hitler had urged his forces to “act brutally…be harsh and remorseless,” and had encouraged them to “kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language” in the coming “invasion and extermination of Poland.”
For Poland was to become Germany’s creature totally. Its culture and peoples were to be eliminated and replaced by Hitler’s “New Order.” The Nazis were only too eager to put their racial theories into actual practice in a place where resistance could be countered with total brutality. They believed without any qualms that Slavs, Christian or otherwise, were so inferior they could not be considered human. They, along with the Jews, were the “degenerate art” of the human race.
The Nazis rounded up anyone they considered undesirable and sent them to the concentration camps, and then they took their suddenly vacant homes—and everything in those homes—for themselves. Housing crisis solved!
I trust that by this point, we’ve all heard enough of Trump’s dehumanizing invective about immigrants—a hateful and fascistic theme of his campaigning since he came down the escalator in 2015—to make pointing out its similarly to stuff Hitler said about the Jews unnecessary. In spirit, Donald is a Nazi.
After the debate, CBS showed a graphic comparing the two housing proposals. Walz: “$25,000 Down Payment Assistance; Tax Incentives for Builders.” Vance: “Changing Regulations & Making Federal Land Available; Mass Deportation to Ease Demand.”
This led the attorney who goes by NYC Southpaw to remark on BlueSky: “This is one that I genuinely think will be printed in history books one day to show how insane American media culture has become. CBS News presenting ethnic cleansing as a housing policy to be compared with home construction tax incentives.”
And if Donald’s housing policy being eerily reminiscent of the Third Reich’s weren’t bad enough, when we consider that Hitler modeled the Nazi conquest of Poland on what the United States did to the Native Americans in the 19th century, that makes the second part of the MAGA plan seem even more ominous:
2. Building new cities on federal land.
“Well,” Vance said, “what Donald Trump has said is we have a lot of federal lands that aren’t being used for anything. They’re not being used for national parks. They’re not being used. And they could be places where we build a lot of housing. And I do think that we should be opening up building in this country. We have a lot of land that could be used. We have a lot of Americans that need homes. We should be kicking out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes, and we should be building more homes for the American citizens who deserve to be here.”
A former celebrity real estate developer and TV personality, Trump has a long history of outlining audacious new initiatives that are heavy on imagery and light on details. The latest offerings come with a few explanations for how they will be executed.
Trump says he would host a contest for the public to design and then build “Freedom Cities” on a small portion of federal land to “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American Dream.”
(A contest? Everything is a reality show with this ass-clown.)
calls for the creation of new tech-controlled sovereign cities that would essentially act as miniature countries. These independent territories can be created in one of two ways.
The first is called Voice. This route entails using the political system to take over existing city governments through elections. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan is currently trying the “voice” method in San Francisco, where he is spearheading a tech-funded campaign to capture control of City Hall. (How do I know this is a Network State project? Because Tan has described his project as such.)
The second method is called Exit. The “exit” method involves finding a bare piece of land that can be built up into a new tech city, ideally with tax breaks or other exemptions from “host governments.”
Próspera, on the island of Roatan in Honduras, is an example of this: a tech-run Special Economic Zone where certain rules don’t apply. Próspera has become a mecca for unregulated gene therapy experiments.
And then there’s our local version: California Forever. This proposed tech city in Solano County was supposed to go to voters for approval on November’s ballot, but it has been delayed due to massive community opposition. California Forever denies being a Network State project, but [libertarian tech bro Marc] Andreessen is one of its investors.
In addition, Balaji Srinivasan—the main evangelist of the Network State idea—has strongly suggested that California Forever is a Network State project. (Note: Srinivasan has clearly derived his ideas from J.D. Vance associate Curtis Yarvin, who calls these tech-governed dictatorships “patchworks” or “realms” rather than network states.)
This is an important detail because Andreessen, Srinivasan and Thiel are working closely together to make the Network State a reality.
Peter Thiel, of course, is the very same Sauron-like billionaire who funded JD Vance’s Senate campaign, and before that, his venture capital enterprise. We can safely assume that Vance is nothing more than his whoremaster’s mouthpiece.
To me, this “freedom city” proposal looks less like a solution to the dearth of low-income housing and more like the 21st century version of a medieval stronghold, where well-to-do residents can simply wall off the starving, unhoused hoi polloi: out of sight, out of mind.
Furthermore, the creation of new “network states” run by MAGA puppets would inevitably lead to the creation of new actual states—further gerrymandering the Senate to establish a more permanent minoritarian rule.
Then there’s this vague “federal land” suggestion. Here is a map of all extant federal land:
Most is in Alaska, or in the Western states. The sections in brown are managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Is “federal land” a euphemism for “American Indian reservations?” Donald Trump, remember, hung in the Oval Office a portrait of Andrew Jackson—maniacal conqueror of Native lands, driving force behind the Indian Removal Act of 1830, author of the Trail of Tears, and arguably the most anti-Native American president in U.S. history. Is confiscating more Native American territory how Donald Sr. plans to Make America Great Again?
These MAGA proposals are not just bad policy. They are dangerous, they are Hitlerian, and if implemented, they are sure to bring woe upon tens of millions of human beings.
“That’s never going to happen,” the non-MAGA Trump voters insist. To which I reply: That’s what the Germans said in the 1930s. The only difference is that the Germans in the 1930s didn’t have the Germans in the 1930s as a precedent to learn from.
Heather Cox Richardson pulls together the signs of Trump’s descent into unapologetic fascism. He offers no agenda or policies for the future, but focuses instead of who he will punish. Immigrants, he insists, are the biggest problem facing the nation. He promises to restore the U.S. to its imagined glory of white male Christian supremacy. If elected, he will call out the National Guard or the military to round up not only immigrants but his political enemies. He is a dangerous man. He is increasingly paranoid, determined to punish his enemies. Will he imprison Harris, Biden, Clinton, Obama, Newsom, and others who have opposed him?
She writes:
“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country…a fascist to the core.”
This is how former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the primary military advisor to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council, described former president Donald Trump to veteran journalist Bob Woodward. Trump appointed Milley to that position.
Since he announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, Trump has trafficked in racist anti-immigrant stories. But since the September 10 presidential debate when he drew ridicule for his outburst regurgitating the lie that legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their white neighbors’ pets, Trump has used increasingly fascist rhetoric. By this weekend, he had fully embraced the idea that the United States is being overrun by Black and Brown criminals and that they, along with their Democratic accomplices, must be rounded up, deported, or executed, with the help of the military.
Myah Ward of Politico noted on October 12 that Trump’s speeches have escalated to the point that he now promises that he alone can save the country from those people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.” He falsely claims Vice President Kamala Harris “has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world…from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens.”
Trump’s behavior is Authoritarianism 101. In a 1951 book called The True Believer, political philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that demagogues appeal to a disaffected population whose members feel they have lost the power they previously held, that they have been displaced either religiously, economically, culturally, or politically. Such people are willing to follow a leader who promises to return them to their former positions of prominence and thus to make the nation great again.
But to cement their loyalty, the leader has to give them someone to hate. Who that is doesn’t really matter: the group simply has to be blamed for all the troubles the leader’s supporters are suffering. Trump has kept his base firmly behind him by demonizing immigrants, the media, and, increasingly, Democrats, deflecting his own shortcomings by blaming these groups for undermining him.
According to Hoffer, there’s a psychological trick to the way this rhetoric works that makes loyalty to such a leader get stronger as that leader’s behavior deteriorates. People who sign on to the idea that they are standing with their leader against an enemy begin to attack their opponents, and in order to justify their attacks, they have to convince themselves that that enemy is not good-intentioned, as they are, but evil. And the worse they behave, the more they have to believe their enemies deserve to be treated badly.
According to Hoffer, so long as they are unified against an enemy, true believers will support their leader no matter how outrageous his behavior gets. Indeed, their loyalty will only grow stronger as his behavior becomes more and more extreme. Turning against him would force them to own their own part in his attacks on those former enemies they would now have to recognize as ordinary human beings like themselves.
At a MAGA rally in Aurora, Colorado, on October 11, Trump added to this formula his determination to use the federal government to attack those he calls enemies. Standing on a stage with a backdrop that read, “DEPORT ILLEGALS NOW” and “END MIGRANT CRIME,” he insisted that the city had been taken over by Venezuelan gangs and proposed a federal program he called “Operation Aurora” to remove those immigrants he insists are members of “savage gangs.” When Trump said, “We have to live with these animals, but we won’t live with them for long,” a person in the crowd shouted: “Kill them!”
Officials in Aurora emphatically deny Trump’s claim that the city is a “war zone.” Republican mayor Mike Coffman said that Aurora is “not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs” and that such statements are “grossly exaggerated.” While there have been incidents, they “were limited to several apartment complexes in this city of more than 400,000 residents.” The chief of the Aurora police agreed that the city is “not by any means overtaken by Venezuelan gangs.”
In Aurora, Trump also promised to “invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.” As legal analyst Asha Rangappa explains, the Alien Enemies Act authorizes the government to round up, detain, and deport foreign nationals of a country with which the U.S. is at war. But it is virtually certain Trump didn’t come up with the idea to use that law on his own, raising the question of who really will be in charge of policy in a second Trump administration.
Trump aide Stephen Miller seems the likely candidate to run immigration policy. He has promised to begin a project of “denaturalization,” that is, stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship. He, too, spoke at Aurora, leading the audience in booing photos that were allegedly of migrant criminals.
Before Miller spoke, a host from Right Side Broadcasting used the dehumanizing language associated with genocide, saying of migrants: “These people, they are so evil. They are not your run-of-the-mill criminal. They are people that are Satanic. They are involved in human sacrifice. They are raping men, women, and children—especially underaged children.” Trump added the old trope of a population carrying disease, saying that immigrants are “very very very sick with highly contagious disease, and they’re let into our country to infect our country.”
Trump promised the audience in Aurora that he would “liberate Colorado. I will give you back your freedom and your life.”
On Saturday, October 12, Trump held a rally in Coachella, California, where temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) sparked heat-related illnesses in his audience as he spoke for about 80 minutes in the apocalyptic vein he has adopted lately. After the rally, shuttle buses failed to arrive to take attendees back to their cars, leaving them stranded.
And on Sunday, October 13, Trump made the full leap to authoritarianism, calling for using the federal government not only against immigrants, but also against his political opponents. After weeks of complaining about the “enemy within,” Trump suggested that those who oppose him in the 2024 election are the nation’s most serious problem.
He told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that even more troubling for the forthcoming election than immigrants “is the enemy from within…we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics…. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
Trump’s campaign seems to be deliberately pushing the comparisons to historic American fascism by announcing that Trump will hold a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday. More than 20,000 people showed up for the “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.
Trump’s full-throated embrace of Nazi “race science” and fascism is deadly dangerous, but there is something notable about Trump’s recent rallies that undermines his claims that he is winning the 2024 election. Trump is not holding these rallies in the swing states he needs to win but rather is holding them in states—Colorado, California, New York—that he is almost certain to lose by a lot.
Longtime Republican operative Matthew Bartlett told Matt Dixon and Allan Smith of NBC News: “This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote-rich or swing vote locations—it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes.”
Trump seems eager to demonstrate that he is a strongman, a dominant candidate, when in fact he has refused another debate with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and backed out of an interview with 60 Minutes. He has refused to release a medical report although his mental acuity is a topic of concern as he rambles through speeches and seems entirely untethered from reality. And as Harris turns out larger numbers for her rallies in swing states than he does, he appears to be turning bloodthirsty in Democratic areas.
Today, Harris told a rally of her own in North Carolina: “[Trump] is not being transparent…. He refuses to release his medical records. I’ve done it. Every other presidential candidate in the modern era has done it. He is unwilling to do a 60 Minutes interview like every other major party candidate has done for more than half a century. He is unwilling to meet for a second debate…. It makes you wonder, why does his staff want him to hide away?… Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America? Is that what’s going on?”
“For these reasons and so many more,” she said, “it is time to turn the page.”
