Here’s what I’ve found interesting:
- Trump’s racist messages have grown in recent rallies,
- Don’t minimize Trump’s “bad genes” remark;
- The practicalities of mass deportation;
- Trump’s push to make police more violent;
- Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says Trump is “fascist to the core;”
- Adding meteorologists to the list of people receiving MAGA death threats;
- Congress isn’t ready for a mass-casualty event; and
- Remembering what happened at the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
This post includes articles and commentaries written by Myah Ward, Parker Malloy, Radley Balko, Asawin Suebsaeng, Tim Dickinson, Andrew Feinberg, Katie Selig, Katherine Tully-McManus, Will Bunch, and the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. .
Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.
#1
We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker. (Myah Ward, Politico, Link to Article)
Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.
Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”
He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Former President Donald Trump has never been particularly subtle about immigration—after all, he called Mexican immigrants “rapists” during his campaign kickoff in 2015. But we have witnessed him become even more stark and fascist in his dehumanizing descriptions of the immigration issue and how he plans to resolve it through mass deportations and detention camps.
While some people believe some of this rhetoric is Trump trying to fire up his base of voters, it is consistent with what his immigration aide Stephen Miller has urged him to implement and with the plans outlined in Project 2025.
Kudos to Ward and Politico for not sanewashing Trump’s recent remarks about immigrants. Reporters and editors should not shield voters from what Trump is saying in his increasingly weird events. Voters should understand what they will get if they vote for him.
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#2
Trump’s “Bad Genes” Remark About Immigrants Should Be Called Out For Echoing Nazi-speak (Parker Malloy, The Present Age, Link to Article)
During a Monday appearance on conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt’s show, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said immigrants brought “bad genes” to the country.
…
The article itself isn’t terrible. In fact, I think it’s pretty good. Times reporter Michael Gold does a solid job of documenting Trump’s longtime embrace of “horserace theory,” contrasting how Trump has talked about largely white audiences in Minnesota (“You have good genes”) to how he’s spoken about immigrants who have been accused of crimes (“I don’t know if you call them people”).
But most people will just see the headline, and I don’t understand why it’s so hard to frame the story in a way that reflects the content without coming off as above it all. Clearly, the paper understands the Nazi and eugenics themes being pushed—they say as much in the article—so why leave that out of the headline in favor of something so bland?
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
And here’s an example of why I wanted to make sure I gave Politico kudos for framing their story above—because they could have instead chosen to do what the New York Times did here.
That headline would work for a geneticist sharing their latest Nobel-worthy research findings. It should not also work for a presidential candidate who seems to be channeling the Adolph Hitler book of speeches his first wife, Ivana, said he kept in a cabinet by his bed.
In today’s media environment, many people will only see the headlines in their social media feeds or the push notifications sent to their phones. This dynamic is not a new one. Journalists have been pointing it out for months. So, it is reprehensible that the New York Times (among others) refuses to adapt to this reality and misleads its readers.
#3
Trump’s deportation army (Radley Balko, The Watch, Link to Article)
The Atlantic, New York Times and Washington Post have all looked at what Trump and the MAGA coalition have planned for immigration policy should he be elected again. Those stories all got some attention at the time, but not nearly enough to reflect the insanity of what he’s proposing. Perhaps it’s the sort of bluster Trump often spurts out in the moment, but never bothers to implement.
We ought to take it more seriously. Trump has made 15 million deportations a central part of his 2024 campaign. And he’s stepped up the dehumanizing of immigrants he’ll need to get a significant portion of the country on board.
Even if Trump gets distracted, it’s likely he’ll put Stephen Miller in charge of the plan. Miller is the only non-relative senior staffer who served the entirety of the first Trump term. And Miller won’t be distracted. Ridding the country of non-white immigrants has been a core part of his identity for his entire life.
Miller himself has long made clear that the distinction that matters most to him is not between “legal” and “illegal,” but between white and non-white immigrants. Both prior to and after joining the Trump campaign in 2016 and White House in 2017, Miller sent hundreds of emails to far-right outlets like Breitbart touting racist literature like Camp of the Saints, and links to unabashed white nationalist sites where writers argue that nonwhite immigrants are of lower intelligence, and are disease-ridden, parasitic, and predisposed to criminality.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
I’ve gone back a few months to this article because it is the most comprehensive one I’ve read about what it would take to implement the Trump mass deportation plan. Trump recently upped the ante with calls to remove upwards of 20 million. And Republican delegates are excited about the prospect, as we saw at their National Convention in July.
Delegates were so excited to wave these!
But how would deporting up to 20 million people work? Balko gets into the details, and I hope most Americans find them alarming:
In November, Miller offered the details of his plan in an interview with Charlie Kirk. Miller plans to bring in the National Guard, state and local police, other federal police agencies like the DEA and ATF, and if necessary, the military. Miller’s deportation force would then infiltrate cities and neighborhoods, going door to door and business to business in search of undocumented immigrants. He plans to house the millions of immigrants he wants to expel in tent camps along the border, then use military planes to transport them back to their countries of origin.
People will try to defend themselves, their family members, and their neighbors. There is no way such a plan doesn’t become a bloodbath, especially when it starts happening in blue states.
The size of this deportation force would approach the size of the army. The cost would be measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The moral cost to our nation would be immeasurable.
Trump last Friday also said he would also invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as part of this process. As the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch explains:
Yet, the solution that Trump — naming it Operation Aurora — proposed for a fake, invented problem was both real and terrifying. The 45th and wannabe 47th president pledged to jump-start a slumbering 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act that gives the government power to round up and detain noncitizens and citizens alike and was last invoked for one of the most immoral moments of American history: the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Do we really want to go down that road again as a nation—but more vigorously?
Voting for Trump is a vote for this humanitarian crisis of ethnic cleansing. Republicans can’t finesse this after waving thousands of these signs at their National Convention. The stakes are clear—and we should take them seriously.
#4
‘American Death Squads’: Inside Trump’s Push to Make Police More Violent (Asawin Suebsaeng and Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, Link to Article)
In the years since he left office, following his efforts to cling to power, the former president’s desire to finish the job on policing that his first administration couldn’t, or wouldn’t, has only grown more intense. In the final weeks of his 2024 campaign to retake the White House, Trump is now explicitly running on a platform of encouraging domestic law enforcement to initiate — with an idea that drew immediate comparisons this week to the dystopian-horror movie series, The Purge — “one really violent day” of policing to put the fear of god into retail thieves.
The remarks at his campaign rally weren’t just Trump blowing off steam or trying to sound tough to his fans. His vision for a far more savage standard of American policing is fundamental to understanding the former — and perhaps future — president’s deeply authoritarian policy proposals that have been throttling the U.S. political landscape and society for nearly a decade now. And if Trump and his party defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in this year’s presidential contest, he and some of his closest allies are already plotting to build on what Trump tried to do in his first term, and push law enforcement to be as brutal as possible.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
We know from former members of the Trump administration that he wanted to use the police and military against protesters during his first term. He has been talking about it frequently during this campaign, including the statements highlighted in this story.
Some people online asked whether what Trump was describing is actually more akin to the Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass—when Nazi Party forces attacked Jewish homes and businesses throughout Germany in November 1938.
I believe we should take seriously the implications of what could happen when we combine Trump’s thoughts about “one really violent day” with his proposal to offer immunity from prosecution to police officers.
I wish we could agree that it’s bad if people can seriously debate whether a presidential candidate is calling for The Purge or Kristallnacht. But that’s where we are now. Will enough voters notice?
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#5
Trump’s top general calls ex-president ‘fascist to the core’ and ‘most dangerous person to this country,’ new book says (Andrew Feinberg, The Independent, Link to Article)
Mark Milley, the US Army general who Donald Trump appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now says the current Republican presidential nominee is a “fascist to the core” and says no person has ever posed more of a danger to the United States than the man who served as the 45th President of the United States.
Milley, a decorated military officer who became a target for right-wing scorn after it became known that he expressed concerns over Trump’s mental stability in the wake of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, is described by journalist Bob Woodward in his new book, War, as incredibly alarmed at the prospect of a second Trump term in the White House. The Independent obtained a copy ahead of the book’s October 15 release date.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
This seems important to me—particularly given the stories I’ve featured so far in this newsletter. When a military leader warns about fascism, we should listen. This news also seems like something voters should have known when it happened, Bob.
(And, Stacey, you were right about this one. I’m not sure why I decided initially to disagree with you and defend Bob Woodward’s ongoing practice of holding important news back for his books. Mea culpa. You were so right.)
Trump’s first Vice President (Mike Pence) isn’t supporting him because of that “almost getting him killed on January 6” deal. Former Vice President Dick Cheney isn’t supporting him. More than half of his cabinet officials aren’t supporting him. Wikipedia has compiled quite a list of Republican officials who aren’t supporting him.
This development is unprecedented in our nation’s history. Given the often violent reaction MAGA supporters have when someone criticizes Trump, these people are taking a risk. They have seen him up close and are warning us. The question is whether enough voters will listen.
#6
Meteorologists Face Harassment and Death Threats Amid Hurricane Disinformation (Katie Selig, The New York Times, Link to Article)
A meteorologist based in Washington, D.C., was accused of helping the government cover up manipulating a hurricane. In Houston, a forecaster was repeatedly told to “do research” into the weather’s supposed nefarious origins. And a meteorologist for a television station in Lansing, Mich., said she had received death threats.
“Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes,” wrote the forecaster in Michigan, Katie Nickolaou, in a social media post. “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
I also can’t believe she had to type that. Still, when presidential candidates and Members of Congress lie about the government’s ability to control hurricanes, people will react.
Given the perceived stakes, some reactions will be threatening or violent. And we shouldn’t be surprised this happens, given how much violent rhetoric is used by Trump at his rallies and social media posts.
These lies matter. Some people may not want to take Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Georgia) seriously when she spreads misinformation about the government’s ability to control the weather. But MAGA supporters online do.
We can now add meteorologists to the elected officials, voting tabulators, reporters, and others who have made the list of people MAGA supporters attack for not supporting Trump.
#7
‘One pistol clip can change the balance of power’: Congress is wholly unprepared for a mass casualty event (Katherine Tully-McManus, Politico, Link to Article)
Over the past 15 years, members of Congress have survived two near-deadly shootings, a train crash with dozens of them on board, and a Capitol riot that had hundreds of lawmakers fearing for their lives.
Despite those incidents, the institution is wholly unprepared for a catastrophic event that kills or incapacitates multiple members — even if that hypothetical tragedy results in a major power shift: changing which party holds the majority in the House or Senate.
Members of Congress themselves have proposed a host of solutions to the havoc a mass casualty could wreak. Those propositions range from a constitutional amendment allowing members to designate their own successors to simple rule changes to prevent violence from shifting party power. But a POLITICO review shows that both Republican and Democratic leaders, including chairs of key committees, have failed to significantly advance any of the ideas proposed since a mass shooting at a GOP baseball practice in 2017. That’s largely based on a reluctance to acknowledge the issue and a general resistance in Congress to changing rules.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
I have previously expressed by frustration in this newsletter about the dangers our nation faces by refusing to deal with these kind of continuity of government challenges. So I welcome any opportunity to do it again. For example, I wrote this in February 2023:
For example, the September 11, 2001, attacks revealed a significant continuity of government problem because our Constitution requires elections for the House of Representatives. The likely target for Flight 93 before the passengers intervened was the United States Capitol Building, where Congress was in session. If more than half of the members of the House were killed in an incident, it would be impossible for that chamber to convene for months while states held special elections to fill the seats. Here’s a great report from the Continuity of Government Commission that explains this vulnerability in more detail.
This Politico story offers several other examples demonstrating how, in this era of closely divided government, a terrorist attack could lead to a flipping of the majority party in the House.
I think the solutions offered in the story—particularly the idea that each Member of Congress provide a list of potential alternates who would serve until a special election can be held—to be quite thoughtful. We need to fix this problem.
But I fear we won’t until it is too late to do so.
The Closer
This could be the most depressing issue of interesting things I’ve compiled since I began this newsletter. That said, I believe Kamala Harris is going to win this election. There are a variety of reasons based on polls I’ve seen, early voting patterns, and my hope that a majority of voters are still interested continuing this experiment in democracy.
So, here’s something a little different. Sometimes it is important to remember the proverb that “victory has a hundred parents, but defeat is an orphan” and note what the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson pointed out on X/Twitter yesterday:
You know Trump is losing because Jared, Ivanka, and Melania are nowhere to be seen. If he was really ahead, they’d be all over the Campaign like jackals on a two day old gazelle corpse.
Indeed. That observation guarantees nothing, but tells an intriguing story (especially since Ivanka reportedly had the urge to rejoin the campaign when her dad was leading in the polls). It’s a close race and there is a lot of work to do.
A Reminder Not to Forget What Really Happened During the January 6, 2021, Insurrection
Post-Game Comments
Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:
“Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.” (Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die)”
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