Trump’s hate NEW HAMPSHIRE: THIS NEEDS TO BE CONDEMNED: Libertarian Party of New Hampshire

 

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Trump’s hate

“Hate” has become his signature utterance

Robert Reich Sep 23

Friends,

The FBI is investigating the source of suspicious packages sent to election offices in 21 states. Some election offices have been evacuated; staff are frightened.

Suspicious packages, bomb threats, death threats, harassment, assassination attempts, and violence are consequences of the politics of hate, now emanating more ferociously than ever from Trump and his sycophants.

Many explanations have been offered for why two assassination attempts have been made on Trump over the last two months. Some blame easy access to assault weapons; I’m sure that’s part of it.

But the real incitement to violence in America is hatefulness — hate speech, fearsome lies, and dangerous, paranoid rumors — the epicenter of which is Trump.

Trump blames the intensifying climate of violence on Kamala Harris and the Democrats: “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” he said. “Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” he wrote in a social media post. Trump’s campaign has circulated a list of so-called “incendiary” remarks Democrats have made against Trump and posted video clips from top Democrats calling him a “threat.”

JD Vance says “we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he’s elected it is going to be the end of American democracy.”

Hello? Calling Trump a fascist and a threat to democracy is not inciting violence; it’s telling the truth. American voters need to be made aware, if they aren’t already.

Let’s be clear: The most significant cause of the upsurge in political violence — including the two attempts on Trump’s life — is Trump himself, along with his close allies Vance and Elon Musk, and other cranks and crackpots that have come along for the ride.

Trump’s proclivity for violence was evident when he urged his followers to march on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, knowing they were carrying deadly weapons.

He has urged supporters to beat up hecklers; mocked the near-fatal attack on the husband of the Democratic House speaker; suggested that a general he deemed disloyal be executed; threatened to shoot looters and undocumented migrants; warned of “potential death & destruction” if indicted in his New York criminal case; made the ludicrous claim that “Babies are being executed after birth”; and predicted a “bloodbath” if he’s not elected in November.

Trump has never taken responsibility for the consequences of his hatefulness.

He still insists he was not responsible for the attack on the Capitol. Yet since the attack, he has suggested the mob might have been correct in wanting to hang his vice president. And he has called for those arrested in connection with the attack to be released, casting them as “hostages,” “political prisoners,” and “patriots,” whom he will pardon if reelected.

His incendiary rhetoric about immigrants — calling them “vermin,” claiming they’re “poisoning the blood” of America, charging that the United States is “under invasion” from “thousands and thousands and thousands of terrorists” — is worsening the hate and violence.

His baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pets continues to generate bomb threats and death threats there. Schools and government offices have been closed. After more than 33 such bomb threats, Ohio’s governor has provided state police to conduct daily sweeps of Springfield schools.

“We did not have threats” before the claims, said Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, referring to the accusations made by Trump and JD Vance. “We need peace. We need help, not hate.”

When Trump was asked last week if he denounced the bomb threats, he said, “I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats” and repeated the lie that Springfield had been “taken over by illegal migrants, and that’s a terrible thing that happened.” In fact, Haitian immigrants are in Springfield legally.

The word “hate” has become Trump’s signature utterance.

During the presidential debate, he claimed that President Biden “hates” Harris, that Harris “hates” Israel and also hates Arabs. After Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, he posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” in capital letters.

Hate is the single most powerful emotion Trump elicits from his followers. Hate fuels his candidacy. Hate gives Trump’s entire MAGA movement its purpose and meaning.

Trump’s closest allies are magnifying Trump’s hate.

Vance has doubled down on the false claim that Haitians are eating pets in Springfield. He also says he’ll continue to describe Haitian residents there as “illegal aliens,” although most have been granted temporary protected legal status in the U.S. because of Haiti’s crisis.

Elon Musk posted to his 198 million followers on X, just hours after the alleged assassination attempt on Trump, that “no one is even trying” to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. Musk has since deleted the post and said it was intended as a joke, but millions saw it — confirming that Musk is a threat to the nation’s security.

Meanwhile, Musk’s blatant refusal to moderate hateful lies on his X platform — and his descent into reposting many of them — is also contributing to the rise of hate in America and around the world.

Musk’s X blared out lies that caused race riots in the U.K. Musk himself shared lies that the U.K. was going to open detainment camps for rioters. He claimed that the ex-first minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, a Muslim, “loathes white people.”

When Europe’s Digital Commissioner Thierry Breton reminded Musk of his legal obligation to stop the “amplification of harmful content,” he responded by tweeting out a meme: “Take a big step back and literally, fuck your own face!”

Before Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X, Twitter had suspended Trump from the platform “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Musk has reinstated Trump.

Hate is a dangerous corrosive. It undermines civility, eats away social trust, dissolves bonds of community and nation.

A week ago Sunday, even before the second attempted assassination of Trump, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire posted on X that “Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero.”

The party deleted the post, but two days later it posted on X a lengthy follow-up referring to historical instances of violence supposedly “necessary to advance or protect freedom,” including the assassination of “past tyrants like Abraham Lincoln,” and stating that “it’s good when authoritarians” (that is, “progressives, socialists, and democrats”) are made to “feel unsafe or uncomfortable.”

Trump, Vance, Musk, New Hampshire’s Libertarian Party, and the neo-Nazis they’ve attracted to Springfield, Ohio show how infectious hate can be as its venom spreads through political bottom-feeders and the swamps of the Internet.

Those who wield hate for personal ambition are among the vilest of human beings.

How to deal with the hate that Trump and his enablers are fueling?

We must call them out for what they’re doing. We must vote against the haters now running for office, from Trump on down, and urge others to join us.

In the case of Musk, we must boycott his products and push the U.S. government to terminate all contracts with him. Musk is a threat to national security.

Most fundamentally, we must hold all purveyors of hate accountable for the consequences of their hatefulness.

 REGISTER!  VOTE!

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Shame, Madness and a Fascist GOP

The self-described “Black Nazi” and North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is an appalling example of what the GOP has become

Steven Beschloss Sep 23

The embrace of Mark Robinson at the Republican National Convention in July. (Photo by Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s Republican candidate for governor, called himself a “Black Nazi” and a “perv,” one who supported reinstating slavery. This became known in recent days from a CNN exposé, drawing on detailed research into a pornography website where Robinson posted dozens of times over a decade ago.

None of this is shocking for anyone who’s paid attention to North Carolina’s lieutenant governor and nominee running against the state’s attorney general, Josh Stein. Robinson’s public pronouncements have revealed him as an antisemite and Holocaust denier; he has made frequent incendiary remarks against civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., has frequently used homophobic slurs and attacked transgender people (despite previously watching trans pornography), has called for a complete ban against abortion and maligns Muslims. But CNN’s reporting takes his hostility and hypocrisy to another level.

Robinson denies that he posted those comments on the site called Nude Africa, and he’s made clear that he will not exit the race because of these new allegations. “We are not getting out of this race. There are people who are counting on us to win this race,” Robinson said several days after the story broke.

In another time, we would ask what is a man like this even doing as the gubernatorial nominee of one of the country’s two major parties. We also would have assumed that, overcome by shame, he would have withdrawn in disgrace.

Not anymore.

In the Trump era, defined in part by pathological lying and a refusal to express regret, apologize or express shame for corrupt, criminal or depraved behavior, someone like Mark Robinson continues his campaign to win the most powerful job in North Carolina. Ultimately, this says less about Robinson than it does about the moral collapse of the Republican Party that attracts and empowers loathsome people like this.

When Donald Trump visited North Carolina this weekend, Robinson was nowhere to be seen or even mentioned. Yes, that’s a sign that he’s become too radioactive for even Trump—who previously endorsed Robinson and called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.” That’s not because of his extreme views or behavior, but because of his increasing likelihood to hand Democrat Josh Stein an easy win and discourage Republican turnout.

The reality is that Robinson is just one particularly repellant example of a once-legitimate party that has kowtowed to a wannabe dictator and demagogue, rejected democracy and the duty to embrace factual reality, traded in hate and division, and continues to demonstrate its readiness for fascist rule.

I won’t recount again the despicable lies by Trump and JD Vance about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio—and the climate of violence that these known lies have fueled. But the appalling (and continuing) episode of hate toward immigrants and the GOP ticket’s rejection of knowable facts illustrates their determination to usher in fascism. Fantasized problems that stir up hatred and incite violence replace real problems that government can and should solve.

As Timothy Snyder, Yale professor and author of the new book On Freedom, put it in a new essay, “In the Trump-Vance political theory, government acts not in the normal way, by laws, but as an instrument of the fury of the people…Us-and-them then becomes the normal form of politics, with us becoming complicit in ever more terrible actions, which incidentally make traditional government harder and our expectations of government lower.” And, Snyder notes, as governmental impotence and conflict between Americans rises, the space for the richest among us increases.

Is it any surprise that Vance, when asked by an NBC reporter in Philadelphia, minimized the allegations about Robinson? “The allegations are pretty far out there, of course, but I know that allegations aren’t necessarily reality,” Vance said.

Not necessarily reality. In another time, we might take the GOP VP nominee’s comment as a reasonable attempt to encourage public caution. Not anymore. They reinforce his and Trump’s desire to degrade the public’s capacity to know what is true and what isn’t, thereby strengthening their ability to spin tales that serve their hateful agenda.

Meanwhile, let’s keep in mind that, even though there are still 43 days until Nov. 5, early voting has begun in some states. Voters can already cast their ballots in person as of Friday in Virginia, Minnesota and South Dakota. Add Illinois voters to that list later this week. Around 70 percent of the 154.6 million votes cast in 2020 happened prior to Election Day.

Every pronouncement, every endorsement, every successful event takes on added meaning when we realize how it may sway voters to make their choice. That puts the onus on each of us to reach out to those we meet and ask who they’re voting for.

Maybe you’ll want to mention that, just yesterday, 741 national security leaders endorsed Kamala Harris for president. That list—comprised of Democrats, Republicans and Independents—includes over 230 general and flag officers, ten cabinet secretaries, 15 retired four-star generals and admirals, and 148 ambassadors.

Their signed letter notes that they did not come to their decision lightly. “We are trained to make sober, rational decisions,” they said, adding, “This election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. Vice President Harris defends America’s democratic ideals, while former President Donald Trump endangers them.”

You might also want to mention that—at a time when many members of the media are demanding more policy specifics from Kamala Harris—Trump was posting mad, desperate, policy-free rants about women in ALL CAPS over the weekend. He asserted women are poorer, less healthy, less safe, less optimistic and more depressed than they were four years ago.

And how will this misogynistic man—who’s proud of his role in ending Roe v. Wade and is facing a 21-point gender gap of women who prefer Harris—fix all this? Who knows. Because a day-one dictator need not explain how—just say anything to get into power: “I will fix all of that, and fast, and at long last this national nightmare will be over. Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free!”

Please do share these fake promises. I suspect they can help sway some of the early voters—to cast their ballot with the capable woman in the race. Let’s not forget that, while many registered voters may be uniformed or misinformed, most are not that dumb.

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The Week Ahead

September 22, 2024

Joyce Vance Sep 23

Election season is officially underway. States were required to send ballots out to voters who are in the military and Americans who live abroad by Saturday, September 21, and there are reports from across the country that they are in the mail. Also on Saturday, Minnesota and South Dakota started mail and in-person early voting, and in-person early voting began in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Other states will follow soon. Only Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire lack early voting options, and even there, some provision is made for absentee voting. The cacophony of voting practices underscores that we do not have one national election but rather a multiplicity of state and local ones.

NBC has a new poll out that showed that just as voting was getting underway, Kamala Harris was widening her lead over Donald Trump. Is it possible that the fever dream is finally breaking? Is Donald Trump's hold on America slipping as we head into the election? Whatever your views on that, Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 has taught voters the importance of running through the tape and never assuming you’ve won the race in a presidential election prematurely.

Thanks to those of you whose paid subscriptions to Civil Discourse help me devote the time and resources necessary for this work. Except for the Friday night interviews and occasional livestreams, which are exclusively available to paid subscribers as my thanks to them, the newsletter is free, and anyone who would like to can subscribe.

This week, two very important legal developments will take place.

The first is a Mississippi case that could end up having a national impact. On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral argument in RNC v. Wetzel. Mississippi counts mail-in (absentee) ballots that are received up to five business days after an election, so long as they are postmarked on or before election day. The RNC is challenging that process, arguing that extending the count “effectively extends Mississippi’s federal election past the Election Day established by Congress” and results in “valid ballots” being “diluted by untimely, invalid ballots.” 

On its face, the argument is pretty silly. Extended mailing times are permitted for all sorts of work, including filing papers with courts, in recognition of how the world actually works. Of course, that is necessary far less often in the courts these days, as lawyers are able to upload the briefs on the day they are due directly to the court in question using an e-filing system. Unfortunately, with rare exceptions, online voting is not available, so acknowledging that a ballot cast on election day might take some time to be delivered is a pragmatic approach.

But remember, this is the Fifth Circuit, a court with a propensity for reaching maximalist results when a more narrow ruling would have served and enabling the Supreme Court to go off on a tangent, like it did when it reversed Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs case, which also came out of Mississippi. Hopefully, the panel judges, James Ho, Stuart Duncan, and Andrew Oldham—all Trump appointees—will push aside the RNC’s argument and rule in favor of Mississippi’s Republican Secretary of State, who is the defendant. But we have to contemplate the possibility that they or the Supreme Court might ultimately decided that all ballots must be both cast and counted by election day, which would make it more difficult than it already is for student voters, older voters, voters who are sick or who have disabilities, voters who must work on election day, and other voters who Republicans seem to believe are inclined to vote Democratic, to cast their ballots and have them counted.

The Justice Department has filed an amicus brief supporting extra time for Mississippi voters’ ballots to be received. They point out that this could impact whether members of the military and Americans living abroad have their ballots counted. When the district court ruled that Mississippi could continue to count late-received ballots after election day, the court pointed out that Congress has never taken steps to alter the many state statutes that impose post-election day deadlines for mail-in ballots. One hopes that the Fifth Circuit will not rush into that breach.

In the District of Columbia on Thursday, Jack Smith will file his opening brief in the effort to determine what charges and evidence are still in play in the election interference case against Trump following the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.

Local rules limit the type of brief Smith is about to file to 45 pages. Lawyers must file a request for permission before they file an “oversized brief.” On Saturday, Smith filed a motion to exceed the page limit, advising the court that his brief will not exceed 180 pages, around 30 of which involve “extensive footnote citations” to evidence in an appendix.

There are good reasons for that, given the Supreme Court’s direction to the district court to create a detailed record of the issues here, which includes four criminal charges and the voluminous evidence the government will want to use at trial to sustain them. In fact, it would be judicial malpractice for the court to refuse to let Smith air his case for her consideration as Judge Chutkan prepares to rule on what, if any of it, escapes the broad grant of immunity ordered by the Supreme Court. Smith has advised the court that the conduct and evidence he will offer in his brief goes beyond what is included in the indictment and other pleadings to date, which makes a great deal of sense. The government is not required to put all of its case into an indictment but simply to put a defendant on notice of the charges against him that he must be prepared to defend against. Additional information is revealed in the course of discovery, but frequently, some of the details do not come out until trial. Given the expansive protection the Supreme Court has granted Trump in the form of immunity, the government will want to pre-vet its evidence with the court. Ultimately, this matter is headed back to the Supreme Court for a ruling on what the jury can hear, a task they have already pointed out they cannot accomplish in the absence of a detailed factual record.

Trump’s lawyers, of course, have opposed the Special Counsel’s motion for more pages. This is a ridiculous exercise in gamesmanship, given that if Smith sticks to the page limits and omits arguments, they would cry foul or argue that anything he didn’t squeeze into the page limits couldn’t be raised down the road. They asked the court to give them until 5 p.m. Tuesday to file their opposition. Judge Chutkan filed a minute order later than evening giving them until Monday at 5 p.m.

When can we actually expect to see the brief? Typically, lawyers file as close to the deadline as possible because they are busy tweaking and proofreading down to the last minute—proof that they, too, are human. But here, Smith’s advance request for an exception to the page limits almost a week out suggests that he is mostly ready, and at least far enough along to know what the page count looks like. So we may see it earlier in the day on Thursday. Of course, we will not get to see all of the brief. Smith is going to file a request to release a redacted version to the public.

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, with this framing:

Concerns about the Supreme Court have not dissipated. Instead, as we draw closer to the first Monday in October when the Justices convene for the start of a new term of court, the focus on the need for, at a minimum, Supreme Court reform seems to be percolating across the government. It would take a trifecta Harris victory, taking the White House, Senate, and House, for that to be a realistic possibility.

In addition to these two cases and the hearing, there will be a brief—each side gets 15 minutes to present its case—oral argument in Trump’s appeal of the New York Attorney General’s civil fraud judgment against Trump.

This is the case before Judge Arthur Engoron, which concluded in January of this year. Donald Trump and co-defendants, including his adult sons, were ordered to pay more than $450 million in total to the state, including ill-gotten gains from decades of fraudulent business practices.

I also expect that the new Vance baby chicks will continue to be ridiculously cute this week. I’ll share pictures.

We’re in this together,

Joyce