The Trump Value Meal: Extra Buffoonery With A Side Of Fascism

INSIDE: Elon Musk ... Kamala Harris ... Liz Cheney

Feasterville-Trevose, PA - October 20 : Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after handing out food while standing at a drive-thru window during a campaign stop at a McDonald's in Feasterville-Trevose, PA on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

How To Explain Trump To Future Generations

Because we don’t have enough to worry about at the moment, I sometimes fret that future generations may only see the madcap buffoonery of Donald Trump and his MAGA sidekicks and wonder what all the fuss was about.

That guy was an existential threat to American democracy? That guy actually won once and narrowly lost a second time? That guy was nominated for president three times by the Republican Party and was neck-and-neck to win his third bid for the White House?

With the election in its final stretch run, the past 72 hours have been a grand tour of Trump buffoonery. Remarkably, the examples that jump out most to me don’t include any that might be directly ascribed to his aging, diminished cognitive function, or his reported “exhaustion.” These are the kinds of things in style and tone you could have heard from Trump 2016 or Trump 2020 (though it’s true that his disinhibition seems generally worse now):

• Trump comparing the Jan. 6 rioters to the Japanese-Americans interred during World War II;

• Trump calling Kamala Harris a “shit vice president”;

• Trump lamenting that serial sex abuser Harvey Weinstein got “schlonged”;

• Trump extolling the size of the late golfing great Arnold Palmer’s manhood.

Here’s your visual rundown of Trump’s latest rampage of buffoonery:

What has only become obvious over the past decade (to those of us who haven’t professionally studied fascism in Europe in the 1930s) is that the buffoonery and the fascism go hand in hand. They are inseparable. The buffoonery doesn’t make the fascism less dangerous, and the fascism doesn’t make the buffoonery less ridiculous. Both are spectacles in their own way, delighting willing audiences with their bombast, transgressiveness, and appeal to base emotions.

It’s only when we try to analyze the buffoonery and the fascism separately that we make the mistake of treating them as different impulses in apparent conflict, rather than similar dynamics acting in unison. Trump’s adoring audiences – so often derided as unsophisticated marks – have no trouble seeing the buffoonery and the fascism as part of the same set piece. They don’t see a tension there.

The Tenor Of Our Times

• WaPo: Trump repeats ‘enemy from within’ comment, targeting Pelosi and Schiff

• HuffPost: Christina Bobb, a top election lawyer for the RNC, said last week that she’s hoping for a “cleansing in our nation” and that “we can clean out the filth.”

• NYT: Trump Ratchets Up Threats on the Media

We Are Not Taking Mass Deportations Seriously Enough

Timothy Snyder: “The deep purpose of a mass deportation is to establish a new sort of politics, a politics of us-and-them, which means (at first) everyone else against the Latinos.  In this new regime, the government just stokes the fears and encourages the denunciations, and we expect little more of it.”

UPDATE: Election Threats

• Politico: ‘The center of the storm’: Arizona’s election chief prepares for a disinformation battle

• WSJ: ‘It Feels Very Dystopian.’ Republican County Officials Brace for Election Deniers—Again

• Politico: The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway

Just Go Ahead And Give Dominion Your Money Now

Mediaite: “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) claimed Friday during an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that Dominion Voting Systems software was ‘switching’ votes in her district from Republican candidates to Democratic Party candidates.”

MUST READ

TPM’s Hunter Walker: The Biggest Mystery Of January 6 Remains Unsolved

All Musk, All The Time

With America on the brink of some newfangled high-tech oligarchic fascism, the deep involvement of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, in the campaign to elect Donald Trump stands out as a warning sign of the country’s deep structural corruption independent of MAGAism:

• NYT: U.S. Agencies Fund, and Fight With, Elon Musk. A Trump Presidency Could Give Him Power Over Them.
  WSJ: Elon Musk Offers $1 Million Daily Prize for Signing His Petition

• Brian Beutler: The Rotten World Elon Musk Is Trying To Force On Us

• Chris Geidner: Even the Fifth Circuit is questioning Judge Reed O’Connor — and Elon Musk

• Open Secrets: Pro-Trump dark money network tied to Elon Musk behind fake pro-Harris campaign scheme

• TPM’s Josh Marshall: Elon Musk’s Fake Sites and Fake Texts Impersonating the Harris Campaign

• Chris Hayes: “It is the grossest, most cynical ploy in an election cycle that’s rotten with cynical ploys”:

Still Remarkable

Democrats will never be bipartisan enough to satisfy the demands of DC political journalists, but I’m not sure what more they can do after this this election cycle. Kamala Harris’ embrace of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) isn’t a one-off thing. Check out Harris’ plans for today (emphasis mine)`:

Democrat Kamala Harris … touches down in three Midwestern battleground states on Monday to hold moderated conversations with Republican Liz Cheney. … Their conversations will be moderated by a conservative radio host and a GOP strategist.

By The Numbers

• A new WaPo-Schar School poll of likely voters in the battleground states shows:

  • PA: Harris 49%, Trump 47%

  • GA: Harris 51%, Trump 47%

  • MI: Harris 49%, Trump 47%

  • WI: Harris 50%, Trump 47%

  • NV: Harris 48%, Trump 48%

  • AZ: Trump 49%, Harris 46%

  • NC: Trump 50%, Harris 47%

• Harris sets record for biggest fund-raising quarter ever, enabling her to outspend Trump 3.5-1 in September.

2024 Ephemera

• MT-Sen: Montana ranger questions Senate hopeful Sheehy’s bullet wound

• NE-Sen: A Tattooed Union Leader Is Threatening to Topple a Republican Senator in a Deep-Red State

• NYT: Jill Stein Won’t Stop. No Matter Who Asks.

Bipartisan Report Details Secret Service Failures

The July assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, was “preventable and should not have happened,” according to a preliminary report by a House bipartisan task force.

Good Read

WaPo: The CIA analyst who triggered Trump’s first impeachment asks: Was it worth it?

Trump Prosecution Watch

• Jan. 6 case: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed the appendices to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s mammoth brief on presidential immunity, but they were heavily redacted and offered only a smidge of new information.

• NYT: For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment

• Mitch McConnell, speaking of Trump and Jan. 6 (but saying this only in private and then endorsing Trump’s re-election bid): “If he hasn’t committed indictable offenses, I don’t know what one is.”

What’s Causing The Recent Spike in Global Temperatures?

Elizabeth Kolbert talks with NASA’s top climate scientist about the insanely steep rise in global temperatures in 2023 and science’s struggle to explain it.

Truth

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