Ruthless People
“At the end of June, in the afterglow of a debate performance that would ultimately prompt President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection, Donald Trump startled his aides by announcing that he’d come up with a new nickname for his opponent. ‘The guy’s a retard. He’s retarded. I think that’s what I’ll start calling him,’ Trump declared aboard his campaign plane, en route to a rally that evening, according to three people who heard him make the remarks: ‘Retarded Joe Biden.'” Tim Alberta gives you an inside look at The Ruthless, Restless Final Days of Trump’s Campaign.
+ The craziness will continue through Tuesday and beyond. “Election deniers have in recent years developed a rapid-response system for amplifying rumors or exaggerating the impact of real voting irregularities, creating the impression of widespread voting fraud that is not backed up by the facts.” WaPo (Gift Article): Four years after ‘Stop the Steal,’ an organized army emerges online. “The fringe group that tried to subvert Donald Trump’s 2020 loss has spent years preparing to contest the 2024 vote. This time, Elon Musk is on their side.” (Here’s an election prediction: When the dust clears, if Trump loses, exit polls will show Elon was a net negative for the Trump campaign.)
+ Elon Musk’s misleading election claims have been viewed more than 2 billion times on X, analysis finds.
+ “According to an analysis of fema data, some twenty million Americans are actively preparing for cataclysm—roughly twice as many as in 2017. Political violence, including the spectre of civil war, is one of the reasons. A recent study conducted by researchers at U.C. Davis concluded that one in three adults in the U.S., including up to half of Republicans, feel that violence is ‘usually or always justified’ to advance certain political objectives (say, returning Trump to the White House). ” Charles Bethea in The New Yorker: The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil War. (Sometimes it looks more like a continuation of the first one…)
+ And, as if you needed another sad reminder of what this monster and his enablers have done to American politics, there’s this: Fencing erected at White House, Harris’ residence ahead of Election Day. And from 60 Minutes: Why Georgia election officials say voters can trust the process in 2024. (Some poll workers have to wear lanyards with emergency buttons because they have faced so many threats.)
