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Trump Spoke in Nassau County, New York, Tonight. More Lies

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2024 //
13

New York is considered a Democratic state but Trump came to speak at a rally at the Nassau Colisum in suburban Nassau County. Whether he helped his campaign remains to be seen, but he hopes to bolster Republicans trying to retain their seats in the House. Although Trump accused Harris and Walz for campaign rhetoric that unleashed violence against him, his statements about them were far more inflammatory than anything they said about him.

The local newspaper, The Patch, reported:

UNIONDALE, NY — A confident Donald Trump took to the stage at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum Wednesday before a sea of red — supporters that met him with cheers, including chants of “USA, USA.”

It was his first presidential campaign rally since an assassination attempt was foiled by the Secret Service at a golf course in West Palm Beach in Florida on Sunday.

Trump had been playing a round of golf at Trump International Golf Club, when a man poked a rifle through the bushes. He was not injured in the attempt.

“We have got to get our media back here,” he told cheering supporters before attacking his team’s Democratic opponents, Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, saying that the lies have to stop and that they would turn America into a dictatorship. 

“They’re doing things in politics that have never been done before in the history of our country, and worst of all, with their open borders and bad elections, they have made us into a Third World nation, something which nobody thought was even possible,” he said. “Americans deserve a campaign based on the issues.”

Trump quickly moved into addressing the apparent attempt on his life over the weekend, saying that “God has spared his life,” not once but twice.

The first attempt on Trump’s life was over the summer.

“And there are those that say he did it because Trump is going to turn this state around,” he said of his alleged assailant. “He’s going to turn this country around. He’s going to make America great again, and we are going to bring religion back to our country.”

Less than a few minutes into his speech, he claimed the Teamsters gave him their endorsement. 

Hours before, the union’s leadership said it would not issue any endorsements, according to a statement on it’s website. In a statement, the union said it was due to strong political divides and few comments from candidates.

“These encounters with death have not broken my will,” he said. “They have really given me a much bigger and stronger mission. They’ve only hardened by resolve to use my time on earth to make America great again for all Americans to put America first and to put America first.”

Questions for readers:

Is it not an inflammatory lie to say that Harris and Walz would turn the U.S. into a “dictatorship”? What does he mean? It is he, not they, who has pledged to fire civil servants by the thousands and replace them with political loyalists. It is he, not they, who promised to prosecute anyone who opposed him and jail them. That is the definition of a dictatorship.

What are Harris and Walz doing “that have never been done before in the history of our country”?

When did Harris or Walz say they favored “open borders” other than never?

What does it mean to say they support “bad elections”? Like elections where every registered voter gets to cast a ballot? It is Republican officials who want to kick people off the voting rolls; that would be a “bad election.”

How can Trump “bring back religion” when he has none?

Trump spewed a Gish gallop, where the lies came out like a fire hose.

Categories Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Lies, New York, Trump, Walz, Tim

Jay Kuo: Trump Has “Jumped the Shark” in His Desperation

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2024 //
20

Jay Kuo writes a delightful and informative blog called “The Status Kuo.” In his latest, he explains the origin of the phrase “jumping the shark,” which was new to me. He went on to show that Trump had grown so desperate as his polls declined that he had “jumped the shark.”

He writes:

Photo courtesy of ABC

Toward the end of the fifth year of the popular TV series Happy Days, the writers had The Fonz put on water skis and jump over a live shark. Everyone watching at the time had the same question: What the hell are they doing?

Jumping the shark became a cautionary metaphor for when a show goes awry and is desperate for new ideas and ratings. And since Trump is fundamentally a television personality, and we are all living through his twisted reality show, it is notable that, in desperation over his flagging candidacy and polls showing him trailing Vice President Kamala Harris, the writer, producer and chief protagonist of Unhappy Dayshas now jumped the shark, too.

In today’s piece, I’ll discuss three recent examples that demonstrate this phenomenon and signal that the draw of Trump’s show may be near its end. These examples are about as different as they can be, but they all point to the same conclusion: Trump’s sway over the American public is fading.

A chestnut of a blood libel conspiracy that could fall flat

During the recent presidential debate, the ex-president amplified a gutter internet rumor about Haitian immigrants eating the dogs and cats of Springfield, Ohio. Even after being fact-checked live during the debate and later by reporters, Trump and Vance continued to double down on this sick and false claim. 

Trump refused to condemn bomb threats called in on Springfield buildings during the aftermath of his statements, making clear that he was perfectly okay with the chaos that he himself had created.

And on Sunday Vance gave a disaster class of an interview when he admitted to “creating stories” in an effort to draw the media’s attention to the problem of immigration while CNN’s Dana Bash brutally fact-checked him.

The confession was telling. Per Vance, the whole point of the made-up stories was to frighten enough voters (and therefore the media) into focusing on the immigrant question, even if that means demonizing an entire community of innocent residents, who by the way are there entirely legally. The Trump campaign will do whatever it takes to get the country talking about immigrants instead of Trump’s many crimes, his record on abortion, his poor debate performance, his declining mental acuity, and poll after bad poll.

Further, it is clear they intend to leverage the MAGA mob and a statistically predictable number of crazies to do their dirty work. But this kind of stochastic terror is hardly new ground for Trump. 

He did it when he came down the escalator and called Mexicans drug dealers and rapists—rhetoric that fueled hate and led to the El Paso Wal-Mart massacre. 

He did it again when he targeted the AAPI community during Covid by labeling it the “China Virus,” causing a sixfold increase in anti-AAPI hate crimes in America, followed by a deadly shooting spree in Atlanta at a Korean-owned spa.

Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric was always destined for the final, lowest kind of take: blood libel.

We have to rewind over a thousand years to understand this canard. The blood libel conspiracy during medieval times falsely alleged that Jews were reenacting the crucifixion of Christ and required human blood for the making of matzo bread. Baseless but dangerous claims against Jews in England ultimately alleged they had actually killed a child as part of ritual sacrifice. This rumor spread and was amplified by politicians of the times, leading to widespread violence, mass executions and pogroms.

Trump and Vance’s false claims have led to a modern day version of this, where scary “others” are devouring the beloved family members, in this case pets, of the local residents. And it has had its intended effect. Schools and hospitals in Springfield are now closed due to threats of mass shootings and bombings. Immigrants are afraid to go outside and are keeping their children at home. Vehicles of Haitian immigrants have been vandalized and hit with acid. Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP continue their call for “mass deportations,” even of legal immigrants, in what is essentially a call for ethnic cleansing.

Trump is now planning an appearance in Springfield to drive home his false narrative, but this could backfire. To put it in television terms, the attention Trump hopes to draw has been overshadowed by the reckless stunt he pulled in an attempt to juice his ratings.

Trump has jumped the shark.

It is worth noting that Trump’s initial statement was initially met with derisive laughter and disbelief, not just from the left but from most of the center of the country. As Aaron Blake of the Washington Post noted, a poll of voters showed that independents disbelieved the claim by a factor of two to one, and five times as many independents are sure that it’s false as those who believe it’s true.

And according to a recent Data for Progress poll, huge majorities of voters of all persuasions believe that Trump’s statements about immigrants eating pets is a weird thing to say.

Trump’s ploy might well result in the worst of all outcomes for him and his campaign: the American public collectively shaking their heads at him with contempt over his racist targeting of a whole community and entirely unmoved by his upping the ante.

Collective yawn

As evidence that Trump has overplayed his hand in what we hope is his final season, it appears there was a second attempted assassination, this time by someone who was caught by authoritieswith an AK-47 a few hundred yards down the golf course where Trump was playing on Sunday. The only shots fired were by the Secret Service.

(To those on the right questioning how the would-be assailant could have possibly known where to find Trump, it was at his golf course. That’s where he always is.)

Note that the second would-be assassin is, like the first, also a white male. He is not an immigrant, a Haitian or a drag queen. He’s a gun enthusiast who voted for Trump in 2016 but soured on him by 2020, and whose social media indicates he is a vaccine conspiracy theorist while supporting a Haley/Ramaswamy GOP ticket. Not exactly a stable individual.

The first time Trump was shot at, there was a collective gasp from the public and an outpouring of condemnation of political violence. This time feels different. Once again, the perpetrator, however unstable is a statistically predictable outgrowth of the very toxic political environment that Trump himself created. Like his second indictment, this second attempt feels like more of the same, with Trump himself to blame for much of it. 

It didn’t help that Trump squandered whatever political capital he might have had from the first attempt by brandishing his absurd ear bandage, later taken up as a symbol of fealty by the MAGA faithful because they’re not at all in a cult.

A second attempt on Trump’s life is therefore hardly shocking to anyone who understands the kinds of chaotic forces Trump himself has unleashed. It seems only Donald Trump could manage to make us all numb to the idea of two attempts on a candidate’s life in this election season. If we were in the writers’ room, the notion quickly would be shot down as an overreach. 

In my best Miranda Priestly voice, “Another Trump assassin? Groundbreaking.”

Swift vengeance

One final indication that Trump has overreached and overplayed his hand: that Taylor Swift thing.

Right after that disastrous debate for Trump ended, the coup de grâce came from pop megastar Taylor Swift, who posted on her Instagram to her 284 million fans that she had watched the debate, done her research and would be voting for Harris/Walz. She encouraged folks to register to vote and do their own research into the election.

That endorsement led to some 400,000 visits to vote.gov and what appears to be a big surge in voter registration nationally. As Tom Bonier of TargetSmart observed, there was a “400% or 500% increase” in voter registration, meaning somewhere between 9,000-10,000 people per hour. “It’s really unlike anything I’ve seen,” Bonier said. 

In a race where key battleground states may be won by a few thousand votes, this spike in voter registration among Swifties was terrible news for Trump. That’s apparently why he then went and did the worst possible thing in response. Over the weekend, an enraged Trump tweeted in all caps, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” 

If you know anything about Swift’s fan base, this declaration of war was a terrible idea. It will only force more Swift fans to direct action and even greater involvement in the election, because nothing gets them riled up like their idol being attacked.

Perhaps in the back of his mind Trump intended to sow terror again by turning his MAGA faithful against Swift. After all, her concerts in Vienna were canceled due to actual planned terrorist attacks—something her fans are still in keen pain over. But if Trump believes creating online hate and stirring up further threats against Swift will cause her or her fans to back down, he has badly miscalculated.

Once again, in his desperation, he has gone a step too far. 

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Hoax, Trump

Michael Hiltzik: Trump and Vance Are Wrong About Tariffs: They Raise Consumer Prices and Inflation!

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2024 //
24

Michael Hiltzik is the Pulititzer Prize-winning business columnist for The Los Angeles Times. In this column, he explained that Trump and Vance are wrong to claim that tariffs will produce vast new revenues for the U.S. Treasury. Hiltzik shows that Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

He writes:

Despite strong evidence that the average voter in the presidential election doesn’t care a hoot about international trade policy, Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have been promising to step up Trump’s tariff war with China.

As usual, they’re backing their promise with lies and other humbug.

“A tariff is a tax on a foreign country,” Trump asserted at an Aug. 19 rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., for example. “That’s the way it is, whether you like it or not. A lot of people like to say it’s a tax on us. No, no, no. It’s a tax on a foreign country.”

Questioned during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Aug. 25 about the effect of Trump’s tariffs on ordinary households — and economists’ conclusion that consumers pay the price — Vance asserted that “economists really disagree about the effects of tariffs.”

They’re wrong on both counts.

In truth, there’s no detectable disagreement among economists. In two polls conducted by the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, panels of economists unanimously agreed that American households would pay the price for Trump’s tariffs.

Those opinions held in a March 2018 poll and a May 2019 poll of panels of 43 leading academic economists. (The panels weren’t identical but did overlap; three respondents in the first poll didn’t provide answers and 11 didn’t answer or were “uncertain” in the second.)


The Harris campaign is more forthright about the cost of tariffs to the average consumer, although its specific estimates about the magnitude of the cost of tariffs Trump has proposed for the future — almost $4,000 a year on middle class households — can be questioned.

It’s proper to note, moreover, that although Harris has called the Trump tariffs a “Trump sales tax,” she doesn’t mention that the Biden administration has kept many of Trump’s tariffs in place and has moved to increase some of them.
It’s safe to say that the entire topic of tariffs is fraught with confusion and uncertainty. Here’s what you need to know.


First, the background. Trump launched a trade war, principally with China, in 2018 with a tariff of up to 25% on $50 billion worth of Chinese products. He stepped up the war later in the year with 10% tariffs on $200 billion in goods, and added tariffs of 10% on an additional $112 billion of Chinese imports. Trump also imposed tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from numerous trade partners.


These levies amounted to a tax of some $80 billion a year on American consumers, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation recently calculated. That was tantamount to “one of the largest tax increases in decades,” the foundation said, blaming the tariffs for the loss of the equivalent of 142,000 jobs. The average household paid a price of nearly $300 a year.


Biden kept in place many of the levies on Chinese products and added some of his own, including a 100% tariff on Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles. He replaced the aluminum and steel tariffs on imports from Britain, the European Union and Japan with a tariff quota, meaning that imports up to a certain level are exempt but tariffs remain in place for higher import volumes.

Tariffs are designed to fall on finished exported goods, but those goods often aren’t what consumers buy directly. Aluminum and steel, obviously, are raw materials used by manufacturers in the importing country. Other products subjected to the Trump tariffs are parts that go into American-made cars or other finished products.


The household-level effect of tariffs also depends on what a consumer buys. Consider the effect of tariffs on washing machines imposed by Trump (and allowed to expire by Biden) and the 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles Biden announced in May.


The EV tariffs will have no effect on American buyers, in the view of economist and economic blogger Noah Smith. That’s because Chinese EVs aren’t a factor in the U.S. market: “If you’re an American, you weren’t buying a Chinese EV yesterday, and now you’re not going to buy one tomorrow either. Nothing will change for you,” Smith observes.

You might, however, be able to buy one at some point in the future. Chinese EV makers including BYD are planning to build factories in Mexico, which would allow them to circumvent the Biden tariff even if the Mexican-made vehicles are bristling with Chinese parts. Some companies may even open factories in the U.S., as BMW, Honda, Toyota and other foreign carmakers have done.

The Trump tariff on washing machines had a measurable effect on the American market, however. Chinese-made machines commanded 80% of the U.S. market in 2018. That January, Trump imposed a 20% tariff on the first 1.2 million imported washing machines per year, and 50% on the excess imports.

Economists at the Federal Reserve and University of Chicago calculated that as a result, the price of washing machines rose by about 11%, or an average of $86.

As it happens, the price of clothes dryers, which weren’t subject to a tariff, also rose, by $92. The reason evidently is that washers and dryers are generally bought as a pair; washer makers taking advantage of the reduction in foreign competition to raise prices on that appliance simply jacked up prices on the package.

Overall, manufacturers passed through more than 100% of the tariff cost to consumers, thanks to the lack of competition and the price increase on dryers. American consumers lost about $1.55 billion because of the washing machine tariffs, the authors found.

The researchers did acknowledge that manufacturing employment in the washing machine sector increased by about 1,200 in the wake of the tariff. But that worked out to a cost of about $815,000 per new job — borne, again, by consumers.

That underscores the fakery purveyed by Trump and Vance about the purported virtues of tariffs. During his “Meet the Press” appearance, Vance claimed that tariff critics overlooked the “dynamic effect when more jobs come into the country. Anything that you lose on the tariff from the perspective of the consumer, you gain in higher wages.”

But there’s scant evidence for Vance’s claim that the tariffs pay for themselves. Certainly the economists polled by the University of Chicago didn’t think so, and the Tax Foundation found that, on balance, the Trump tariffs cost jobs.
The same conclusion was reached by economists at UCLA, UC Berkeley, Yale and Columbia, who found “large consumer losses from the trade war” Trump instigated. They added together the cost of the U.S. tariffs and those of retaliatory tariffs imposed by target countries, especially China.

That leaves the question of the role tariffs should play in overall industrial policy. They’re a tool that can be useful or warranted in specific contexts, but only if they’re carefully calibrated with other measures. Biden accompanied his continuation of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese semiconductor products, for instance, with the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which provides for about $280 billion in government funding for semiconductor research and development, including $40 billion in subsidies for chip factories in the U.S.

Viewed in isolation, tariffs are disdained by liberal and conservative economists alike. David Dollar and Zhi Wang of the liberal Brookings Institution warned in 2018 that of the costs of Trump’s trade war, “some … will be borne by American consumers; [and] some by American firms that either produce in China or use intermediate products from China.”

Their conclusions were confirmed by the libertarian Cato Institute, which asserted last month that “Americans bore the brunt” of Trump’s tariffs. Among the drawbacks were “higher tax burdens and prices, loss in wages and employment, reduced consumption, decreased investment, a decline in exports, and overall aggregate welfare.”

History offers its own warnings. During an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Trump praised the tariffs proposed by William McKinley (R-Ohio) as a member of Congress in 1888. “If you look at McKinley,” Trump told his interviewer, Mark Levin, “he was a great president. He made the country rich.”

During the years following the enactment of the “McKinley Tariff” in 1890, the U.S. suffered four recessions or “panics,” in 1890-91, 1893, 1896 and 1899-1900.

McKinley became president in 1897. By then the McKinley Tariff had been shown to be a political disaster, leading to landslide losses of 83 House seats in the midterm election of 1890 and the loss of the White House in 1892, placing both chambers of Congress and the presidency in Democratic hands.


In other words, if Trump knew history, he would abandon all this tariff talk. But he doesn’t, and he hasn’t.

Categories Economics, Economy, Elections, Stupid, Trump, Vance, J.D.

Johaan Neem: How to Respond to a Candidate Who Threatens Political Violence and Our Constitution?

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2024 //
20

Johaan Neem is a historian at Western Washington University. He recently published a thoughtful essay about the crisis of our time, the fateful election before us. Will voters return to power a man who has made known his contempt for our Constitution and for the norms of democracy? Neem likens our present dilemma to the “exclusion crisis” in England in the late 1670s and early 1680s. King Charles II sought to turn England into an absolutist state; he canceled laws passed by Parliament and oust local officials who displeased him. Neem suggests that that the U.S. is experiencing a comparable crisis when the question before us is how to resist a tyrannical government that came to power legitimately.

Neem writes:

Today, America is roiled with its own Exclusion Crisis. We too face the very real possibility that in this fall’s election a legal succession could bring to power an executive who has demonstrated his willingness to undermine our Constitution. To draw the parallel is not to propose armed resistance but to force us to reckon with the dreadful gravity of this moment: We may be about to hold an election which will render our Constitution invalid. 

We should not confuse reasonable differences between the two parties and their policies with threats to the Constitution itself. In a democratic republic, open disagreement is a sign of civic health. Regardless of one’s partisan loyalties and policy preferences, however, the evidence is clear that Donald Trump poses a threat to the republic. Like Locke before us, we must consider how to respond should an empowered political leader unknit our order.

There have been many articles and books examining Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and his admiration for authoritarian leaders around the world. The largest threats he poses to the Constitution are not his policies but his efforts to undermine the rule of law by embracing violence as a political tool. Numerous high-ranking officials from the Trump Administration have made clear that, but for their resistance, as president, Trump would have undermined the Constitution during his first term. He has joked that he’ll be a dictator on the first day of his second term, but there’s nothing funny about it. If re-elected, he has promised to unleash all the force of the United States Justice Department against his political opponents, from Gen. Mark A. Milley to President Biden and Vice President Harris, and to bypass the judicial system by using military tribunals. We should take his word for it. 

Trump’s violence — his penchant for it, for inciting it, and valorizing it — should terrify us most of all. He encouraged and then celebrated the efforts of his supporters on January 6 to undermine an election and threaten the safety of America’s elected officials. At the heart of the American system is the freedom of elected legislatures. That freedom itself emerged out of conflicts between Parliament and King — and between colonial assemblies and royal governors — during the 17th and 18th centuries. The consent of the governed depends ultimately on free elections and the capability of the people’s elected representatives to deliberate the public good. Trump is committed to undermining legislative freedom. Both Republican Senator Mitt Romney and former Representative Liz Cheney have revealed that members of Congress were afraid to vote to impeach President Trump — even when they believed that he had committed impeachable offenses — because they worried that his supporters would threaten their families’ safety. When legislators are not free to deliberate and vote, the Constitution is already dead. 

Fear kills freedom. Fear is the point. 

This is an excerpt. Please open the link to finish reading the essay.

It’s strange indeed that a lifelong playboy who spent his time developing fast-buck schemes, operating casinos, and attending professional wrestling matches has the ability to intimidate and control an entire political party with threats of violence.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, History, Trump

Thoughts and Prayers for Former President Trump

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2024 //
14

It’s a sad day in America indeed. Trump’s Secret Service agents thwarted an apparent effort to assassinate him. An agent saw a man with a long gun protruding into the golf course where the former president was playing. The agent fired at the man, who dropped his weapon and fled. A witness saw the suspect fleeing, took a picture of his car and license plate, and he was captured on the highway less than an hour later.

I send my thoughts and prayers to the former President.

I also note that he has stood solidly with the National Rifle Association in opposing all forms of gun control. One wishes that he might change his mind about gun control as a result of his fortunate escape from mortal peril. And one concludes that nothing will change.

The guy who was arrested, a former roofing contractor in North Carolina, has previously been arrested for weapons violations. From what I’ve read, he appears to be erratic, disturbed, and delusional. A crackpot.

The suspect apparently never fired a shot. Luckily, he was spotted and fled before he had the chance to fire his weapon.

Something must be said about Trump’s frequent encouragement of violence by his supporters. He likes violent imagery, he talks in apocalyptic tones about what will happen to the country if he is not re-elected. He has celebrated the J6 insurrectionists as “patriots.” He has downplayed the consequences of their violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. He told them on that fateful day, “You must fight like hell, or you won’t have a country anymore.”

Neither Trump nor JD Vance have expressed outrage when it happens to others. After the school shooting in Georgia, Vance said that school shootings are “a fact of life,” which implies that we should learn to accept them, not take meaningful steps to limit access to guns. Trump said after a school shooting in Iowa that people must “get over it” and move on.

There should be no tolerance for political violence in this country. I’d like to say “That’s not who we are,” but I can’t. It’s in the interest of every elected official to encourage unity, peace, and calm resolution of differences. It’s in the interest of every elected official to demand gun control.

The ballot, not the bullet.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Guns, Trump

No Sanewashing of Trump at The Washington Post!

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2024 //
37

The mainstream media has grappled with the dilemma of how to write about Trump ever since he became a candidate for the Presidency in 2015. He lies nonstop; he never admits his errors. He boasts nonstop; he insults his political adversaries. His vulgarities and crudeness are openly displayed at his rallies.

Most reporting about him simply ignores his lies, especially his insistence that he won the election in 2020, despite losing some 60 court cases in which his lawyers presented no credible evidence of voter fraud.

His lies have undermined public confidence in the integrity of the electoral system, which is the central mechanism of democracy. Demonizing a small and powerless group encourages hatred and even vigilantism.

Ignoring his lies is called “sanewashing.”

Dan Balz, the chief correspondent for The Washington Post, wrote the following article today, in which he truthfully describes Trump’s nonstop lying.

Former president Donald Trump has long inhabited a bizarre world of his own creation. He rewrites history — or makes it up entirely — to aggrandize himself, denigrate others and spread the basest of lies.

It keeps getting worse.

Since Tuesday’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he’s spiraled ever deeper into conspiracy theories, falsehoods and grievances. He insists he is not a loser. He never lost the 2020 election, he says falsely, and he certainly didn’t lose that debate in Philadelphia. He claims victory in an event in which he spent 90 minutes chasing Harris’s barbs down every possible rabbit hole. He rarely managed to get off the defensive long enough to make a case against her — and when he did, he was barely coherent.

Trump can’t accept the widely held verdict that Harris outdid him, just like he couldn’t accept that President Joe Biden defeated him four years ago. On Friday night, during a rally in Las Vegas that was replete with baseless claims about a variety of topics, he spun up the tale that Harris was receiving the questions during the debate.

Elevating a conspiracy theory that popped up on social media, he falsely claimed she had hearing devices in her earrings, that she was being coached on what to say in real time. He did it in classic Trump style, citing unspecified hearsay as proof.

“I hear she got the questions, and I also heard she had something in her ear,” he said. ABC News, which hosted the debate, denied these false claims, but Trump cares little for the truth. He prefers to spread lies to excuse his own poor performance and to stir up his supporters to think the game was somehow rigged. All that does is further divide the country.

He used a similar technique during the debate, notably about immigration. That night he repeated a claim that had spread on social media that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the pets of local residents. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats,” he said.

When David Muir, one of the two ABC moderators, pointed out that the city manager in Springfield had told the network there were “no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” Trump replied, “Well, I’ve seen people on television.”

As Muir tried to interject, Trump continued. “The people on television saying their dog was eaten by the people that went there,” he said. Muir responded, “I’m not taking this from television. I’m taking it from the city manager.”

Trump tried again, saying, “But, the people on television saying their dog was eaten by the people that went there.” Muir countered once more. “Again, the Springfield city manager says there is no evidence of that,” he said. “We’ll find out,” an unrepentant Trump said.

In the past few years, Springfield has experienced a large influx of Haitian immigrants, who are in the United States legally. They have filled jobs in local businesses but they also have put a strain on the city’s services and caused an uproar among some local citizens. Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), seeking to highlight the issue of immigration in the campaign, helped put the town in the spotlight after an 11-year-old boy was killed in a traffic accident caused by a Haitian migrant.

Nathan Clark, the boy’s father recently denounced those who have invoked the death of his son to score political points, calling it “reprehensible.” “To clear the air,” he said last week, “my son Aiden Clark was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti.” He criticized Trump, Vance and other politicians for using the tragedy to advance their own interests. “They have spoken my son’s name and use his death for political gain,” he said. “This needs to stop now.”

The repeated false claims about the Haitian community have brought threats to the city. On Friday, two elementary schools in Springfield were evacuated because of bomb threats and a middle school closed. It was the second day in a row that schools were closed due to such threats. The Columbus Dispatch reported that one of the threats included the same debunked claims about the migrant community that have circulated on social media.

Trump continues to fuel anti-immigrant outrage. He has previously said that if elected he would order the deportation of all undocumented immigrants living in the United States, a proposal judged by experts as both impractical and legally questionable. During a Friday news conference with reporters in California, Trump said, “We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country. And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora, [Colorado].”

Aurora is another city Trump cites as being destroyed by illegal migration, saying that it has been overrun by Venezuelan gangs. Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, a former Republican U.S. House member, said last week that such claims are “grossly exaggerated,” that the problem is limited to specific housing properties and is being dealt with by law enforcement.

That Trump has lost focus on the messages his campaign wants to highlight has been evident for weeks. There are issues that could put Harris on the defensive, if he were capable of a sustained and effective message based on facts and not falsehoods. He’s proving that he isn’t able to do that.

Most polls show that voters believe he is better able to handle the economy and inflation, issues at the top of voters’ lists of concerns. He has an advantage on immigration. Beyond that, Harris is still trying to fill out her profile for voters. In a Friday interview with Brian Taff of WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, she offered mostly general answers to some specific questions about how she would lower prices and where she differs with Biden.

In the debate, Trump tried repeatedly to put immigration front and center, but he was ineffective, in large part because of exaggerations or, as with the Springfield example, outright lies. Many Republicans who support Trump for president fear he is neither talking about what matters most to voters nor heeding the counsel of his campaign’s senior advisers.

Meanwhile, the question of who has his ear has come to the fore. Laura Loomer is an attention-seeking purveyor of racist and homophobic comments and a spreader of conspiracy theories. Recently she posted on X that if Harris, who is Black and Indian American, is elected, the White House will “smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.”

Last week, Loomer accompanied Trump to the debate in Philadelphia and joined him the next day at ceremonies commemorating the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A year ago, she had posted on X that those attacks were “an inside job,” a conspiracy theory for which there is no evidence.

Her presence at Trump’s side has alarmed many Republicans. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) recently posted on X: “Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning reelection. Enough.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told a reporter for HuffPost that her history “is just really toxic.” Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a committed acolyte of Trump and his Make America Great Again movement, and herself a purveyor of conspiracy theories and falsehoods, called Loomer’s comment about Harris “appalling and extremely racist,” adding, “This type of behavior should not be tolerated ever.”

Trump, who has praised Loomer over the years, on Friday tried to duck from the criticism about her. He first claimed that he didn’t really know what she has said. Later he posted on Truth Social that he disagrees with the statements she’s made, a classic dodge on his part.

He went on to suggest that she is justified because she is “tired of watching the Radical Left Marxists and Fascists violently attack and smear me.” Apparently, no one can be too extreme if they support him — or at least they can be forgiven.

This has been Trump’s pattern from the time he first became a candidate nine years ago. If anything, he has become even less disciplined and more conspiratorial than he was back then. Few people likely to vote this fall do not already have an opinion about him, pro or con. Because the country is so closely divided and questions about Harris exist, he remains in a position to possibly win the election.

******************************************

Our nation needs a sane and reasonable immigration policy. No one favors open borders. Trump’s brand of divisiveness makes it hard to envision that he will be able to achieve bipartisan consensus on any legislation. Meanwhile Trump unleashes and politicizes racism and hatred. What grows in such a climate is violence against the targets, either by lone wolves or by mobs.

A question for political scientists and historians: how did this race-baiting, misogynist con man manage to take control of a once-great political party? Mitch McConnell could have impeached Trump after the attack on the U.S., but he assumed that Trump had disgraced himself. The U.S. Supreme Court had the opportunity to remove him from the ballot for having incited an insurrection, but dodged the decision, betraying their alleged commitment to textualism and originalism. In an article in the Atlantic, Mark Leibovich attributes the subjugation of the GOP to the spinelessness of its leaders.

What Dan Balz demonstrates is that journalists have a moral obligation to their readers to tell the truth. That’s a good start.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Elections, Ethics, Lies, Trump

John McWhorter on Trump’s Rhetorical “Weave”

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2024 //
22

John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics who writes frequently for the New York Times. In this column, he reviews Trump’s claim that he knows exactly what he is doing when he jumps from topic to topic, sometimes in the same breath. Trump said he was “weaving” and said that his oratorical style was “brilliant.”

McWhorter wrote:

Donald Trump’s word-salad oratory has always been a distinctive feature of his public life, leaving some observers to grasp for a novel way to describe it. Last week Trump himself gave it a name, one that sounds kind of like a ’70s dance: “the weave.”

“You know what the weave is?” he asked the crowd at a rally in Johnstown, Pa. “I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”

I wonder if somewhere in the recesses of his mind, one of those English professors is me.

No friend of his am I (nor an English professor exactly — my field is Linguistics), but I wrote in 2018, in response to speculation even then that Trump was suffering some kind of dementia, that in listening to him we must realize that informal, occasionally jumbled speech is not automatically incoherent.

Consider this much-dissected sample, from back in 2015:

Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at M.I.T.; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, they do a number ….

Franklin Roosevelt would not have been caught dead talking like this in public. But especially with intonation, pacing and context, Trump manages to convey meaning thoroughly in this passage. An audience member could hear that the parts about Wharton and his defensiveness about his intelligence were an extended parenthetical. We know how to navigate those sentences because the truth is that’s how lots of casual conversation goes.

But Trump’s weaving style is still disturbing, because of what it demonstrates about his state of mind.

It’s one thing to overlap topics within a jolly conversation with a friend, when you might laughingly say, “We’re so many layers in!” But to jump around this way at a podium, supposedly on matters of broad public importance, suggests an inability to sustain attention — at least on anything beyond one’s self — which is a quality that so many of the people who have worked with him have confirmed. Presidents are supposed to be able to focus.

If the weave reflects a failure of attention on the part of the speaker, however, it demands an almost burdensome amount of attention for the listener. Especially lately, the connections between one topic and another become ever more murky. Trump lives to a disconcerting degree in his own head and shows no inclination to face outward…

Intimates chewing the fat about things mutually understood get the job done. But Trump, stringing together insights with no outwardly discernible connection, just chews his own fat.

Or bacon. “You take a look at bacon and some of these products,” Trump said at a recent town hall in Wisconsin. “Some people don’t eat bacon anymore. And we are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down — you know, this was caused by their horrible energy — wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow, we have a little problem.”

Figuring out how wind power raises the cost of bacon takes some work. As does the connection, in remarks last year, between shark bites and being electrocuted. “If I’m sitting down and that boat is going down and I’m on top of a battery and the water starts flooding in,” Trump said, “I’m getting concerned, but then I look 10 yards to my left and there’s a shark over there, so I have a choice of electrocution and a shark, you know what I’m going to take? Electrocution. I will take electrocution every single time, do we agree?”

It all made perfect sense — to him. Those who care to join him on these journeys are always welcome to do so, welcome to nod along or laugh at the punchlines. But he makes no effort to meet other people where they are.

Speaking effectively means mastering, usually subconsciously, two types of expression: planned and unplanned language. Planned language is public address and most writing; unplanned speech is conversation, texting and the like. Trump is satisfied to cast important addresses as unplanned verbal kaleidoscopy.

Flouting the codes of planned language is boorish to some, relatable to others. But it’s more than a matter of style. It’s a refusal to think ahead or consider the perspective of others, things we should rightly expect our leaders to do. Presidents should have a responsibility to speak outwardly and above, communicating to and for us, not just to themselves. Trump’s “weave” can be amusing, but it is yet another attribute that proves him — almost every time he opens his mouth — to be unfit for office.

Categories Elections, Trump

Best Song of the Day!

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2024 //
36

Here is the true story of the dogs and cats!

Categories Elections, Humor, Trump

Linda Ronstadt Endorses Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2024 //
17

Linda Ronstadt, one of the greatest singers of our time, posted her endorsement in the 2024 Presidential campaign.

“Donald Trump is holding a rally on Thursday in a rented hall in my hometown, Tucson. I would prefer to ignore that sad fact. But since the building has my name on it, I need to say something.

It saddens me to see the former President bring his hate show to Tucson, a town with deep Mexican-American roots and a joyful, tolerant spirit.

I don’t just deplore his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty and ignorance — although there’s that.

For me it comes down to this: In Nogales and across the southern border, the Trump Administration systematically ripped apart migrant families seeking asylum. Family separation made orphans of thousands of little children and babies, and brutalized their desperate mothers and fathers. It remains a humanitarian catastrophe that Physicians for Human Rights said met the criteria for torture.

There is no forgiving or forgetting the heartbreak he caused.

Trump first ran for President warning about rapists coming in from Mexico. I’m worried about keeping the rapist out of the White House.

Linda Ronstadt

P.S. to J.D. Vance:

I raised two adopted children in Tucson as a single mom. They are both grown and living in their own houses. I live with a cat. Am I half a childless cat lady because I’m unmarried and didn’t give birth to my kids? Call me what you want, but this cat lady will be voting proudly in November for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz .”

Categories Arizona, Elections, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Racism, Trump, Vance, J.D., Walz, Tim

Michael A. Cohen: This Debate Might Make a Difference

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2024 //
12

Michael A. Cohen (NOT the ex-Trump lawyer) writes that this debate might change the views of independent, uncommitted voters. Trump’s behavior and Harris’s cool were a stark contrast. Republicans are complaining that the moderators fact-checked Trump but not Harris, and were biased. But a few of Trump’s many lies were so egregious that the moderators were compelled to correct him, such as his debunked claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating pets, and his claim that Democrats support “post-birth” abortion. The moderators pointed out that the pet story was a hoax and that no state allows murdering a baby after birth.

Cohen writes:

Presidential debates usually don’t matter. A trove of political science literature suggests that most debate watchers have already decided whom they are supporting. While a winning candidate might get a temporary boost from a strong performance, the polling bump often fades. 

However, last night’s showdown between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump could be the exception to the rule. Why? Because never before in American presidential politics has there been a debate as one-sided as what we saw Tuesday night in Philadelphia. 

If this had been a heavyweight fight, a towel would have flown across the ring and the referee would have stopped the bout. This was such a rout that even conservative pundits bemoaned Trump’s disastrous performance. Over and over, Harris threw fresh chum into the water. In practically every one of her answers, she included at least one line that she knew would firmly lodge itself under Trump’s infamously thin skin. 

She needled Trump about his boring political rallies and pointed out that his alma mater, the Wharton School of Business, had thrown cold water on his economic plans. She listed his litany of criminal indictments and prosecutions. She repeatedly called him a disgrace and an easy mark for foreign leaders.

And each and every time, without fail, Trump took the bait. The result was a series of angry, disjointed and incoherent rants at ever-increasing decibel levels. He claimed without evidence that “many of those [Wharton] professors … think my plan is a brilliant plan.” He defended his political grievance fests by claiming they are the “most incredible rallies in the history of politics.” And in the debate’s most bizarre moment, he falsely claimed that immigrants in Ohio are stealing and killing pet animals. The contrast between sullen, angry Trump and polished, even-keeled Harris couldn’t have been starker. While much of the analysis from last night will focus on Trump’s lunacy, Harris’ performance may have been more decisive.

By and large, voters know what they think about Trump. Nine years in the political spotlight will have that effect. But Harris has been a 2024 presidential candidate for just seven weeks. If recent polling is to be believed, going into last night many voters saidthey want to know more about her. In a New York Times poll released Sunday, 28 percent of voters “said they felt they needed to know more about Ms. Harris, while only 9 percent said they needed to know more about Mr. Trump.” The number is close to half among the small segment of undecided voters. Along with last month’s Democratic convention, Tuesday’s debate was one of Harris’ best opportunities to introduce herself to the public. Did last night seal the deal? CNN’s instant poll taken immediately after the debate showed Harris trouncing Trump 63-37. That’s almost a mirror image of its poll after the Biden-Trump debate earlier this year. It’s similar to the margins for Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney in the first debates of the last three presidential elections — each of which led to a bump in the polls.

But a strong debate performance is no guarantee of victory. In 2004, John Kerry trounced George W. Bush in all three presidential debates. The same was true for Clinton against Trump in 2016. In 2012, Romney wiped the floor in his first debate with a listless Barack Obama. None of those three ended up in the Oval Office. 

Still, the differences between Harris and Trump were so significant — and considering the potential boost to a candidate not as well known as her opponent — it’s hard to imagine last night’s debate will not have at least some effect on voter opinion. At the very least, she might have given the sliver of the electorate still unsure about Harris enough information to win their vote in November.In the near term, the debate should generate days of coverage about the former president’s mental state. Perhaps it will also move the news media away from continuing to claim that Harris has not explained herself and her plans to the American people.

But ultimately, the question for Democrats is: Did Harris swing enough voters in her direction to ensure she wins the White House? Even if her poll numbers improve in the next week, will those gains remain in place until Election Day?

Time will tell. But if Trump remains a high-floor, low-ceiling candidate, with a strong base of support and a limited ability to bring in new voters, even a small move of undecided voters to Harris could be decisive. And it’s hard to imagine any presidential candidate having a better night than Harris did on Tuesday. Democrats can’t ask for much more than that from their new standard bearer.

Michael A. Cohen

Michael A. Cohen is a columnist for MSNBC and a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Project at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He writes the political newsletter Truth and Consequences. He has been a columnist at The Boston Globe, The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of three books, the most recent being “Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans.”

Categories Elections, Fake, Harris, Kamala, Trump
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