Roll Out the Barrels
It’s hardly breaking news that as we approach the election, Trump is hitting new behavioral lows. Sadly, it’s also not breaking news that most of the media will simply lump this behavior into the bottomless pit of affronts to decency and democracy we’ve seemingly accepted as Trump being Trump. His enablers will explain it away. And the silent Republicans will fail to speak (I’m looking at you, W.) But when a serial woman abuser who has vowed to protect women “whether they like it or not,” and threatened retribution on his enemies fantasizes aloud about one of his female opponents having guns trained on her face, well, I lead with it. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.” Let’s see how American voters will react with nine barrels shooting at our democracy. The Atlantic (Gift Article): Trump Suggests Training Guns on Liz Cheney’s Face.
+ Maybe this violent speech doesn’t get the coverage of a Biden garbage comment gaffe because it’s such a dog bites man story. (Or in today’s parlance, a “They’re eating the dogs” story.) The Atlantic (Gift Article): A Brief History of Trump’s Violent Remarks.
+ “‘I don’t think any of my friends had heard it,’ said Kate Sullivan, a 21-year-old student in Ohio who heard the tape for the first time on her TikTok For You feed this week. ‘We all felt equally shocked.'” WaPo (Gift Article): Trump’s ‘grab them’ comment was history. Now TikTok is showing it to young voters. (And when they ask us how we could have elected him anyway, what will we say?)
+ And how will we explain that Americans seemed cool with watching Trump and Vance make nonstop anti-trans ads central to their closing argument?
+ “Earlier this year, Wally Nowinski and his buddy Matt Curry were texting back and forth about what they — two regular voters with no ties to any political campaign — could do to defeat Donald Trump in the presidential election.” They decided to target white males in the one place they weren’t already being hit with political ads. P-rn sites. Meet the Democrats using p-rn ads to convince Trump voters to stay home.
+ If Trump is turned back next week, the most likely reason will be a strong turnout among women. And in 2024, we’ve seen a marketing and media battle over whether or not women should feel free to vote for a candidate regardless of their husbands’ wishes. One Fox anchor argued that his wife voting for Harris would be the equivalent of having an affair. Women are voting — and it’s driving MAGA men mad. (I don’t need to control my wife. As long as she watches three hours of MSNBC a day and yells Maddow at the point of ecstasy, she can vote for whoever she wants.)
+ Here’s a Mike Luckovich cartoon that sums things up pretty well.
