F**kin Mondays: Fascists in the Garden, Deep breathing for Democrats, and a podcast bonanza!
Trump's Madison Square Gardens rally was one of the scariest political events in modern history.
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of F**king Mondays! In the round up today:
Deep breath, Democrats!
For Democrats freaking out about the election, I suggest you watch Jen Psaki’s recent interview with Kamala Harris’s campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon. O’Malley Dillon ran President Biden’s highly successful campaign in 2020, and I spent a lot of time getting to grips with her theory of modern presidential elections.
O’Malley Dillon is a veteran of the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012, and built a reputation in Democratic circles as a strategic and organizational genius. In my opinion, her reputation is much deserved. In 2019, she took over Biden’s campaign and went to work rebuilding the “blue wall” that had collapsed in 2016. O’Malley Dillon correctly gauged that by building a sophisticated digital campaign infrastructure to mitigate Covid issues, and focusing relentlessly on Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Biden would win the presidency comfortably. This is of course exactly what happened.
While we haven’t heard much from O’Malley Dillon in recent months, we can assume that it is because she has been hard at work laying the groundwork for a Kamala Harris victory on November 5th. In her interview with Psaki yesterday, she outlined why she is extremely confident Harris is going to win. According to O’Malley Dillon, they like what they are seeing in the early vote numbers, and particularly who is voting early. Crucially, they believe they have multiple paths to victory, and that their ground game will prevail on election day. “This is going to be a close race,” said O’Malley Dillon. “We've known it the entire fall. We're very focused on that. We've built for these moments right now, and what we are seeing from turnout to our volunteer operation to the enthusiasm growing, is exactly where we want to be.”
The interview starts at the 3:40 second mark:
The fascist rally in Madison Square Gardens (Pt 2)
Yesterday the Trump campaign held perhaps the darkest campaign rally seen in America since the American Nazi Party held a rally at the same space in February 1939. The rally was an astounding orgy of hate, grievance, and racism that shocked even hardened observers of the MAGA movement.
The lineup included characters like Hulk Hogan, Dana White, Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and Dr. Phil, all of whom spread baseless conspiracy theories about Harris and the Democrats. Other Trump surrogates made openly racist jokes about Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and Jews. Harris was called the “Anti-Christ”, her ethnicity was mocked, and she was likened to a prostitute with “pimp handlers” while others talked about "fucking illegals" and called Hillary Clinton a "sick son of a bitch."
Notably, there was a huge outcry over comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s “joke” that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage,” leading to several prominent Puerto Rican stars announcing their support for Kamala Harris. While I am generally sympathetic to comedians and don’t believe they should be held to the same standards as politicians, the joke bombed so badly that even the Trump campaign distanced itself from them.
"This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign," said senior Trump campaign adviser Danielle Alvarez to Fox News Digital.
Unfortunately for Trump, there are roughly 450,000 Puerto Ricans eligible to vote in Pennsylvania, and his choice to use a comedian widely known for making racist jokes as his opening act could prove disastrous.
Tucker Carlson, who is not a comedian, delivered by far the darkest speech of the night. The obsequious provocateur has slithered his way into Donald Trump’s inner circle and now performs at Trump events where he propagandize the MAGA base with increasingly deranged Christofascist conspiracy theories. Yesterday’s sermon was another morbid depiction of multicultural America’s moral decay with “daddy” Trump as the only solution. Trump, according to Carlson, has “liberated” Americans from the “obligation to lie”. Carlson argued that Democrats have been forcing Americans to “lie about everything at gunpoint” and “effectively put people into prison for refusing to lie.”
The lie that Carlson is most outraged about — or “The Big Lie” — “is that they [the Democrats] are impressive. That the people in charge have somehow earned the right to rule over you, and they haven’t.”
Carlson also mocked Harris’s ethnic background, calling her “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low-I.Q., former California prosecutor”. Harris is of course Indian and Jamaican.
Trump also took the stage and delivered another lie filled monologue where he promised to deliver “liberation day” to Americans from an occupation by invading migrants, and called Democrats the “enemy from within”.
Given the revelation that Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly believes Trump is a fascist, the Madison Square Gardens rally was a terrible misstep. His campaign is now in serious cleanup mode because they know Trump will almost certainly pay a price for it at the polls. In what looks like a very close race, mistakes like this can be fatal.
Podcasting
If you aren’t subscribed to The Banter Roundtable Podcast, make sure you are! We record every week and have a members only podcast called ‘The Emergency Meeting’ too. The latest episode of the free show is here:
And our show for Banter Members is here:
I also spoke to British journalist Nick Cohen on his podcast over the weekend about the election and why I believe Kamala Harris is poised to win. Nick is a former Guardian columnist and runs a fantastic newsletter on British politics. You can listen to the episode here:
Hope everyone has a great week!
I think PBS should re-edit the must-see special "Rick Steves: The Rise of Fascism in Europe" because all that B&W footage of the German working class populace steadily becoming overzealous Nazis seems like it took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Seeing the horrifying HD footage of tens of thousands of Americans openly drink the same KookAid is utterly terrifying. Yes, it can happen here -- and it's only going to get worse. Post Trump, I imagine Carlson, Baier, Hannity, Rittenhouse, or even Rogan will step up to the podium, strap on an armband, and take over.
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