They say Presidential elections begin in earnest the day after Labor Day. You may have noticed that Trump is doing very little campaigning. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning, they discussed how the Trump campaign knows that they can’t get more people to like him, so they have to make people dislike Vice President Harris.
Before Trump became the nominee, he took over the GOP, put his daughter-in-law in charge of the RNC, and fired most of the staff. They canceled plans to increase GOP nationwide offices ahead of the election. They have no intention of trying to get out more votes, or win by the popular vote. Heather Cox Richardson said in her newsletter today that the GOP is focusing on “election integrity,” whining about how the Democrats are getting non-citizens to vote (there is no evidence of that, and there is a 1996 law that prevents that). Richardson writes, “The campaign has focused on lawsuits to make it harder to vote and to put their own loyalists into positions where they might be able to affect the certification of the 2024 vote….They are bringing the tactics of the reactionary southern Democrats after the Civil War forward to the present day in an attempt to impose the same sort of minority rule on the nation as a whole.”
This is how they plan to win, not from legal voting from American citizens. They are sewing doubt and confusion and hatred of the other side. The confusion he sews is evident in his recent statements about abortion—it’s unclear exactly what he has said, what his position is. Trump uses the lightning speed news cycle to good effect. One day he says he’s for this the next day he’s for that….and it all comes out in the news and depending on when and where you read it, you hear one or the other. He continually calls Kamala a comunist or Marxist— of course there’s zero truth to that, and it really has no meaning anymore— it’s just a buzz word that he hopes will scare people.
Yesterday, speaking at a Moms-For-Liberty event, Trump said that our schools are giving gender affirming operations to kids. This is of course totally not true, and so fantastical that it’s hard to grasp his brain coming up with it. He said,
“Think of it, your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child. And many of these childs, 15 years later say, what the hell happened? Who did this to me? They say, who did this to me? It’s incredible,”
This made me think of the above drawing. Does he come up with this on his own in bed at night, jot it down on a pad at his bedside, or does it just emerge in the moment? He starts a rumor— a lie—and counts on it to spread. I would assume most who hear his story about operations and don’t really believe it (it’s really out there), but they are scared about the unknown of Kamala Harris, so they choose to believe it and share it. It’s another dog whistle. And what do other Republicans think when they hear this? “Ah well, if it gets Republicans back in the White House, it’s fine.”
As they attempt to demonize Harris and Walz, they are already calling Democrats who support abortion “baby killers,” because they claim they allow execution after birth. At what point will they bring out the “vast pedophile ring” from 2020 again?
The surge of support for Harris/Walz is huge. We can feel it. But things are tenuous, and when Trump is not campaigning or spreading lies in key places, he is scheming. They are working behind the scenes to create chaos.
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Thanks for being here, happy Tuesday!