The Conversation -- October 21, 2024

Presidential Race

Maeve Reston of the Washington Post: “Kamala Harris spent the Sunday of her 60th birthday working to turn out Black voters in Georgia, where she asked congregants at two churches outside of Atlanta to choose between a country of 'chaos, fear and hate' — represented, she implied, by ... Donald Trump — and the 'country of freedom, compassion and justice' that she envisions.... At her first stop, at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest on Sunday morning, Harris told congregants that she was guided by the teachings of the Bible from an early age, and that growing up in the Black church in Oakland has shaped her leadership style.... At her second stop — a Souls to the Polls event at Divine Faith Ministries International where musician Stevie Wonder serenaded her with 'Happy Birthday' — Harris again framed the election as a choice between a leader who would denigrate others and one who would seek to lift them up.... Harris’s campaign hopes that the Souls to the Polls effort — led bmfiy its National Advisory Board of Black Faith Leaders — will allow it to bank millions of early votes so it can focus on turning out lower-propensity voters, including non-churchgoers skeptical of her, in the final days before the election.” (Also linked yesterday.) CNN's story is here.

Katie Rogers of the New York Times: “In an interview on Sunday with the Rev. Al Sharpton, Vice President Kamala Harris responded to a profanity-laden insult that ... Donald J. Trump used about her tenure as vice president, saying he had 'not earned the right' to hold office again. 'The American people deserve so much better,' she told Mr. Sharpton on his show.... Ms. Harris spent much of Sunday, her 60th birthday, at churches in Georgia, as part of the campaign’s 'Souls to the Polls' mobilization effort to reach Black faith communities.” (Also linked yesterday.)

Jess Bidgood, et al., of the New York Times: “... Vice President Kamala Harris is moving aggressively to make sure voters in the battlegrounds remember precisely why they rejected Donald J. Trump four years ago. Gone is the euphoria of her joyful first weeks as the Democratic presidential nominee. She is no longer trying simply to diminish the former president.... 'See for yourself,' she told a crowd in Ashwaubenon, Wis., on Thursday, gesturing to two large television screens installed at the rally. 'Let’s roll a clip.' The video screens lit up with a 40-second montage of Mr. Trump bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade.... Deploying his words as her sharpest weapons, Ms. Harris is pointing to Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior and increasingly outlandish and antidemocratic statements to paint him as unfit, unstable and, above all, too dangerous for another term.... His recent run of undisciplined behavior has given Ms. Harris ample material to highlight.... Mr. Trump has been delivering winding speeches that have alarmed some allies, and he has doubled down on politically toxic threats to his opponents and a dark, apocalyptic message that helps to illustrate Ms. Harris’s point.”

Theodore Schleifer & Albert Sun of the New York Times: “Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign set a record for the biggest fund-raising quarter ever this fall, raising $1 billion in the three-month period that ended Sept. 30. Ms. Harris’s campaign and its allied party committees raised over $359 million in September alone, compared with the $160 million reported by ... Donald J. Trump’s campaign and allied groups. Ms. Harris and her groups entered October with over $346 million on hand; Mr. Trump’s aides said his campaign and its affiliated groups had $283 million.... Each month since Ms. Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, she has significantly out-raised and outspent Mr. Trump, building a vastly bigger campaign than has the Republican nominee.”  ~~~

     ~~~ Politico's story, under the headine “Harris outraised Trump more than 3-to-1 in September,” is here. MB: I sure hope a good portion of Harris' money is going to a GOTV effort. The Harris campaign probably can't do worse than Elon who has funded GOTV efforts in which canvassers are scamming him by not actually visiting potential voters.

Donald McDonald. Jacob Gallagher of the New York Times: “At a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, [Donald Trump] manned the fry line and dispensed orders to supporters in the drive-through lane.... He did not wear a hairnet.... Beyond the apron, Mr. Trump ... [didn't wear the McDonald's] uniform.... He didn’t change into the pedestrian dark shirt and slip-resistant shoes like the rest of the McDonald’s staff. Mr. Trump didn’t plop on a McDonald’s branded visor. Certainly, he was the only 'employee' at the franchise on Sunday to be packing orders in a shirt with French cuffs.... The visual differences between Mr. Trump and the franchise’s employees mostly served to underscore ... that the former president ... exists in a vastly different class of someone working a service job to get by.... His unpaid campaign stunt reaffirmed Mr. Trump’s well-crafted image as a rich man with relatable, unvarnished sensibilities.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Of course there's a reason Relatable Don put on that McDonald's apron, and it's not because he's the Hamburglar: ~~~

~~~ Heather Knight & Nicholas Nehamas of the New York Times: “Vice President Kamala Harris has recalled her stint at a Bay Area McDonald’s 41 years ago in introducing herself to voters — a biographical detail relatable to millions of Americans who have toiled in fast-food restaurants. But ... Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused her of inventing it. Lacking a shred of proof, he has charged that she never actually worked under the golden arches — recalling his earlier false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Mr. Trump’s latest allegation also appears to be false.... Wanda Kagan, a close friend of Ms. Harris’s when they attended high school together in Montreal, said she recalled Ms. Harris having worked at McDonald’s around that time.... Ms. Kagan said that Ms. Harris’s mother, who died in 2009, had told Ms. Kagan about the summer job years ago." MB: Oddly, the reporters wait till the 11th paragraph to get to Kagan's recollections. This is particularly peculiar because, as far as I know, this is the first time a major news outlet has reported out a refutation of this particular Trump invention. ~~~

~~~ AND, as we have come to expect, Donald McDonald's stunt was even phonier than the Times let on: 

~~~ Marianne LeVine & Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post: “The restaurant was closed to the public during Trump’s visit, and the motorists whom Trump served were screened by the U.S. Secret Service and positioned before his arrival. No one ordered food. Instead, the attendees received whatever Trump gave them. Trump was at the fry station for about five minutes and spent about 15 minutes at the drive-through window, much of it taking questions from reporters.... Trump ... did not answer a question about whether he supported raising the minimum wage. 'Well, I think this. These people work hard,' Trump said. 'They’re great. And I just saw something — a process that’s beautiful.'... Instead, he focused on promoting his unsubstantiated claim that Vice President Kamala Harris did not work at the fast-food chain in college.... In pro-Trump media..., the absence of documentation [that Harris worked at a McDonald's in 1983] has morphed into proof that Harris lied.” ~~~

~~~ Now Serving: Fries & Lies. John Bowden of the Independent: “As he took a question from a reporter through the drive-thru window, Trump once again resorted to baseless suggestions that the 2024 presidential election results would be tainted by fraud, a charge he and running mate JD Vance have repeated about the past presidential election. 'Will you accept the results of the election?' asked a reporter. 'Yeah, sure, if it’s a fair election,' the apron-clad Trump declared, his head fully poking out of the drive-thru.... He now looks poised to contest the results of the race again should he lose; whether it be through legal challenges or merely rhetoric.”

Maggie Astor of the New York Times: “... on Sunday, [Donald Trump] sat for an interview on Fox News, where he was challenged directly on some of his most glaring falsehoods of the campaign.... Mr. Trump repeatedly denied knowledge of information that has long been publicly available, questioned the sources and then pivoted away to an unrelated topic. On one point, though, he stuck by his words with no deflection or equivocation: He absolutely believed, he said, that his political opponents were an 'enemy from within' who posed a greater threat than foreign adversaries. Here’s a look at notable moments in Mr. Trump’s interview with Fox News’s Howard Kurtz[.]” Do read on if you have a NYT subscription. (Also linked yesterday.)

Peter Baker of the New York Times: “America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office.... What would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow Mr. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to 'retribution.'... He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president.... He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.... Any one of [Mr. Trump's] scandals by itself would typically have been enough to derail another politician. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first bid for the presidency collapsed when he lifted some words from another politician’s speech.” Baker runs down many of Trump's scandals & failures. It is, for that reason, quite a long article. (Also linked yesterday.)

Michael Bender of the New York Times: Donald Trump “says that his [speaking] style is to 'weave' from one subject to the next.... His critics say such detours are a troubling sign of his incoherence and raise questions about his age and cognitive health.... Here are four examples of Mr. Trump’s rambling from just this past week. Schoolchildren asked him about boyhood heroes. He ended up at the border wall.... Asked about inflation, he roamed to his annoyance with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s college experience.... Asked about climate change, he drifted to his golf course and then to World War III.... He started discussing tax breaks for car loans. He found his way to a nerve-racking rocket landing.” In each case, Bender transcribes Trump's quite crazy meanderings. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I realize that when most of us speak extemporaneously, our remarks don't usually sound as if we're reading from a well-edited textbook. On the other hand, politicians should be able to anticipate a high percentage of the questions they'll be asked, and they should be able to give coherent answers that more-or-less address the questions. At the same time, politicians -- unlike most of us -- are accustomed to answering questions, so they should know how to do it, even when they don't like the questions, or even when they're unprepared for particular questions. I don't care if Trump's groupies find him entertaining or even mesmerizing; I find his incoherence in and of itself disqualifying.

⭐ Annals of “Journalism,” Ctd. Dan Froomkin in Salon: “If Donald Trump wins the Nov. 5 election, the New York Times will be partly responsible. As the dominant voice in American journalism, the Times could have fundamentally changed the way Trump has been covered not just by its own journalists but by the political media as a whole. It could have stopped using soft, empty language and false equivalence, and made it crystal clear to the public that if elected Trump would turn America into a racist, authoritarian regime where facts don’t matter. But ... the Times has chosen to engage in tortured euphemisms, passive construction, and poor news judgment.... The day-to-day coverage treats Trump like a normal candidate, rather than as the wildly dangerous and unhinged felon that he is. Day in and day out, the Times 'sanewashes' his dark and unintelligible ramblings.... New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and editor Joe Kahn have made it abundantly clear time and again that they prize their so-called 'journalistic independence' over any obligation to sound the alarm that electing Trump would be a disaster for the country.” ~~~

      ~~~ Marie: I don't disagree with Froomkin, except to the extent that other outlets need not mimic the Times' "standards." For instance, if you listen to "neutral" CNN through several segments covering U.S. politics, you'll see that their reports & panel discussions treat the candidates from president on down as equals. If you watch CNN, you have to already know Trump's MO to figure out when on-air personalities are reporting or alleging scary news about his latest threat.

Ruthless Rick Wilson, the former (and likely future) GOP strategist, said on his latest podcast: “This is why they're canceling [Trump's] events. He's too tired. He's too sick. His brain is too broken and he can't keep doing this. He has lost a fundamental edge.... He has for the last two weeks displayed an acute, immediate, severe mental decline. His family should frankly have him withdraw from the race and get him some immediate medical attention. This is elder abuse at this point, folks.... He's out there threatening to put his political opponents in jail, but he won't be the president for very long. JD Vance will be the president.... Now, this is the dirty little secret of this campaign. Peter Thiel and JD. Vance and Chuck Johnson and Steve Bannon and all the rest of these people around Trump. Elon. The second Trump by some chance is inaugurated, the clock starts running. They will replace him under the 25th Amendment....” There's more. Via Red State Rachel of Crooks & Liars.

Marie: Depending upon whose reporting you believe, Donald Trump drove his companies into bankruptcy four or six times (and would have done so more often if his father hadn't repeatedly bailed him out). So are we surprised that his latest plan is to bankrupt Social Security? ~~~

~~~ Julie Weil of the Washington Post: “A new report projects that the Social Security Trust Fund might run out of money within six years under a Donald Trump presidency, while Vice President Kamala Harris’s proposed policies would not meaningfully change the current trajectory. Social Security faces a looming funding crisis in an aging country, with trustees most recently predicting that the retirement and disability program’s trust fund will become insolvent in 2035. Many of Trump’s campaign proposals would accelerate that timeline, potentially by years, said the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that opposes large federal deficits.” MB: Bear in mind that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people are voting for Trump because they think -- and are willing to say out loud -- that he is better at business than Harris. Every week we get at least one stunning new story that disproves their theory of the case. Nitwits. ~~~

~~~ AND This. Steve Peoples & Linley Sanders of the AP: “Voters remain largely divided over whether they prefer Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris to handle key economic issues, although Harris earns slightly better marks on elements such as taxes for the middle class, according to a new poll. A majority of registered voters in the survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research describe the economy as poor. About 7 in 10 say the nation is going in the wrong direction.” MB: Gosh, too bad the reporters don't bother to report that by most measures, this is perhaps the best U.S. economy in history, and it is currently the “world's strongest” economy. I don't see much point in running a survey asking how people “feel” about the national economy without comparing or contrasting those “feelings” with the facts. The average person has no way to know the state of the economy.

Yesterday, Jamelle Bouie tries to reassure us how unlikely it is Trump will successfully overturn the election results if he loses. Come now Kyle Cheney and others at Politico to explain how Trump could pull it off. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Daddy, What's an Oligarchy? ~~~

~~~ Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: Elon “Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies. His entanglements with federal regulators are also numerous and adversarial. His companies have been targeted in at least 20 recent investigations or reviews, including over the safety of his Tesla cars and the environmental damage caused by his rockets.... [Mr. Musk] has thrown his fortune and power behind ... Donald J. Trump and, in return, Mr. Trump has vowed to make Mr. Musk head of a new 'government efficiency commission' with the power to recommend wide-ranging cuts at federal agencies and changes to federal rules. That would essentially give the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest.... Instead of entering this new role as a neutral observer, Mr. Musk would be passing judgment on his own customers and regulators. Already, Mr. Musk has discussed how he would use the new position to help his own companies.” (Also linked yesterday.)

Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times asks some campaign finance lawyers to address whether or not Elon Musk's financial incentives to voters are legal. “Brendan Fischer ... said, 'There would be few doubts about the legality if every Pennsylvania-based petition signer were eligible, but conditioning the payments on registration arguably violates the law, which prohibits giving anything of value to induce or reward a person for registering to vote.'... Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and the state’s former attorney general, said on Sunday on Meet the Press that the giveaway was 'something that law enforcement could take a look at.'” Schleifer did find one expert who said it was okay: former SEC chair Brad Smith. MB: I checked out Smith: he's a member of the right-wing Federalist Society, he planned to testify for Trump in his hush-money trial, he's probably the country's most prominent opponent of campaign finance laws. Oh, and Bill Clinton, formerly our sleaziest modern president, appointed him to head the FEC, an appointment which horrified campaign finance reform advocates. (Also linked yesterday.) CNN's story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin -- who is a lawyer -- pointed out in an appearance on MSNBC that the payments may be illegal because they appear to be unreported campaign contributions.

Colby Hall of Mediaite: “CNN’s Jake Tapper and Speaker Mike Johnson battled over former President Donald Trump’s recent warning of an 'enemy within' the nation and the suggestion of using the National Guard against them.... At one point, after Speaker Johnson tried to insist he wasn’t talking about American democratic officials, Tapper interjected with, 'Nope! He talked about Adam Schiff, the Pelosis....'” Tapper played a clip of Trump saying exactly that, after which Johnson had the gall to say, “... No. He’s talking about using the National Guard in the military to keep the peace in our streets in the summer of 2020 that my Democratic colleagues call this summer of love....” The article includes a transcript of the full exchange between Tapper & Johnson as well as of the clip Tapper played. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ At about the same time Bible Mike was lying about what he had just heard on the CNN teevee, Donald Trump was over at Fox, confirming what Bible Mike just lied about. According to Maggie Astor of the New York Times (linked above), “Mr. Kurtz asked who the 'enemy from within' was, and Mr. Trump identified Representative Adam Schiff of California and the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.” Marie: Some reporter should ask Bible Mike if his church suspends the Ninth Commandment ("Thou shall not bear false witness" [i.e., lie]) during campaign season. ~~~

~~~ Kelby Vera of the Huffington Post: “Jake Tapper couldn’t get a straight answer from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) when he asked him Donald Trump’s recent rally riff about golfer Arnold Palmer’s penis on Sunday’s episode of 'State of the Union.'... Though the speaker tried to deflect, Tapper pressed on.... After a bit of back and forth, Johnson reluctantly relented. 'I’ll address it. Let me answer it. OK. Don’t say it again,' the clearly uncomfortable speaker told Tapper, before dismissing the Palmer penis comments as mere 'lines in a rally.' 'You can cherry pick a few words or lines out of a two-hour event,' he later added, then criticizing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’ communication style as 'word salads.'”

60 Minutes, in a statement: "... Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false. 60 Minutes gave an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer section of her answer than that on 60 Minutes. Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response. When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment. Remember, Mr. Trump pulled out of his interview with 60 Minutes and the vice president participated."\

Hannah Nichols & Stef Kight of Axios: "In a biography set to publish a week before the election, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell backed special counsel Jack Smith and said he hopes former President Trump will 'pay a price' for his role in Jan. 6th.... 'If he hasn't committed indictable offenses, I don't know what one is,' the longest-serving Republican leader told journalist Michael Tackett in an interview for 'The Price of Power,' weeks after Smith brought the charges against Trump in August 2023. 'From the start, McConnell thought the charges brought by federal prosecutors against Trump had merit.' Tackett writes. McConnell told him 'there's no doubt who inspired it, and I just hope that he'll have to pay a price for it,' referencing Jan. 6." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Axios now requires readers to "subscribe" to its content and to provide Axios with their email addresses. It took maybe 10 seconds for Axios to send me a verification email and another 15 seconds to send me their first "regular" email. I'm afraid this may become (at least) a daily thing.

Lauren Irwin of the Hill: “President Biden released a statement mourning the 'devastation' after a bridge collapsed on Georgia’s Sapelo Island, killing 7 people. 'We are heartbroken to learn about the ferry dock walkway collapse on Georgia’s Sapelo Island. What should have been a joyous celebration of Gullah-Geechee culture and history instead turned into tragedy and devastation,' Biden said in a statement Saturday evening.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Vice President Harris's statement, via the White House, is here. See stories under Sunday's Ledes. (Also linked yesterday.) 

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Ohio Senate Race. Julie Smyth of the AP: “Former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, scion of one of the state’s best-known Republican families, threw his support Sunday behind Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in his hotly contested reelection race against GOP nominee Bernie Moreno. Taft, 82, made known his intention to vote for Brown over Moreno, a Donald Trump-backed Cleveland businessman, in a letter to the editor of the Dayton Daily News. The grandson of 'Mr. Republican' Robert A. Taft Sr. and great-grandson of William Howard Taft, the only person in American history to have been president and chief justice of the United States, praised Brown in the letter without mentioning Moreno. Taft cited, among the reasons for his decision, Brown’s collaboration with U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, on behalf of the Dayton area, including Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; Brown’s 25 years of experience in public office; and Brown’s committee assignments as a result of his senior status in the Senate.... Bob Taft is the only politician in Brown’s long political career to ever defeat him in an election. Taft beat Brown in his 1990 bid for reelection as secretary of state.”

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Israel/Palestine, et al. The Washington Post's live updates of developments Monday in Israel's wars are here: “Israel launched a string of airstrikes across Lebanon, including the capital Beirut, saying it was targeting the financial operations of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.”

Comments

[Akhilleus]

Following the article by Dan Froomkin (linked above) in which he measures AG Sulzberger and his head of Both Sides “jurnelizm”, Joe Kahn, for their “J’Accuse!” suits for promoting fascism (there’s no other way to describe it…if a house was on fire and you stood there watching, declining to call the fire department, claiming your job was just to watch the conflagration and report on the dead, you could hardly disavow any responsibility for the tragedy), and Marie’s additional comment, I offer this article from Time Magazine(!), a piece which displays an appalling double standard.

The writer takes Democrats and the Harris campaign to task for not being nice enough to Dementia Fatty, stating that pointing out Trump’s ever lengthening litany of his mental problems is bad, bad, bad! It’s AGEISM!!

Oh, shit! Ageism? I guess Time and CNN and the AG times and every other fucking corporate media outfits who were laser focused on Joe Biden’s tiniest slips weren’t indulging in AGEISM!!, they were just being journalisticky.

See, it was fine to give Biden daily rectal exams, even though he clearly has all his marbles, but daring to say anything about Fatty’s Dementia Dance Party is just wrong!

It’s par for the fucking course. Attack Democrats for any and every thing, including repeating PoT and Trump lies, as “People are saying” reports, but in every possible way, go easy on Trump.

This Times idiot warns that attacking poor Donnie would piss off older voters cuz they would be turned off by AGEISM. Dear moron, no one is “attacking” Trump for being old. They’re pointing out his acute and hysterically obvious mental disabilities. Plenty of people older than that tub of fascist lard are sharp as a tack and could put voters half their age on the losing end of any Jeopardy tournament. Trump would be lucky to spell CAT on Wheel of Fortune.

But be nice to him. You evil Democrats.

Time Magazine isn’t what it used to be when we were kids, but it was once one of the premier news outlets in the world. Now? It’s just another “Help Poor Donnie” water carrier.