The Banter Brief: Will The Nightmare End?

The evidence is compelling.

Welcome to this week’s mega edition of The Banter Brief!!

1. Most Important Story Of The Week

Trump is trying to kill his supporters

According to Trump’s website, there are five live Trump campaign rallies today. Given we are in the middle of a pandemic, the only thing we can deduce is that Trump is quite literally trying to kill off as many of his supporters as possible in the days leading into the election. The evidence for this is clear:

A CNN investigation of 17 Trump campaign rallies finds that 14 of the host counties -- 82% of them -- had an increased rate of new Covid-19 cases one month after the rally.

The 17 rallies occurred between August 17 and September 26. CNN evaluated the rate of new daily cases per 100,000 residents at four weeks before the rally, on the rally date, and four weeks after the rally at the county level and at the state level.

If ever there were a sign of how sociopathic, cruel, and monstrous Trump is, his campaign schedule would be it. But this is the president we have been living under for the past four years — a narcissistic megalomaniac who has such little regard for his supporters or the people who work for him that he is willing to subject them to a deadly virus to help his re-election.

"The freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble is enshrined in the Constitution in the United States, and we have an election coming up this fall," Mike Pence said earlier this year about Trump’s mass rallies.

This coming from the man supposedly leading the country's coronavirus response.

Please vote.

Go deeper with Banter Members:

Win Or Lose, ‘White Idiocracy’ Isn’t Going Anywhere Soon

White American men without college degrees present a grave threat to the future of the Republic. We can't let them win again, says Bob Cesca

2. Poll Analysis

The best poll crunchers in the business are unanimous: Donald Trump has such a narrow path to victory in November that his presidency is almost certainly over. Here is FiveThirtyEight’s simulation:

And The Economist’s:

It is worth noting that no reputable poll has Trump ahead in enough swing states to pull off a victory. That being said, the polls could be off. But they would have to be off in a way we haven’t seen before — even in 2016.

3. Quote Of The Week

“The narrative Glenn presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear as a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum. It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time. For now, it is important to make clear that our goal in editing his work was to ensure that it would be accurate and fair. While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign — the Trump campaign — and launder them as journalism.

We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years. It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not The Intercept.”

- Editors at The Intercept on Glenn Greenwald’s resignation

4. What to Watch

What: ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’

Why: Is this Borat better than the 2006 original? No, not quite. But it is damn funny and in some ways a more complete film. Sacha Baron Cohen’s lovable (and deeply offensive) Kazakhstani television host is back in America, this time to gift his daughter to Vice President Mike Pence as a gesture of good will from his home nation. The plot is ridiculous, but that hardly matters as Baron Cohen and the director Jason Woliner never pretend to take it seriously. In fact, the sheer lunacy of it is part of the charm, leaving the audience free to sit back and watch 90 minutes of utterly outrageous comedy.

There is more heart and more thought behind this iteration of Borat, and the point isn’t just about humiliating people he runs into. In Trump’s America, Borat is no longer a grotesque caricature — a point Cohen is well aware of. Rather than upping the shock value (as he did with Bruno), Cohen instead looks to expose the deep rot pulling apart American society. The focus is right wing America, and the stings are highly revealing. This is well-worn territory for Borat, but there is an urgency to it not present in his other films. The mockumentary culminates in an interview with Rudy Giuliani that…well… just watch it.

Where: Amazon Prime

5. Good News

This nightmare is nearly over

This has been a brutal four years, and the odds indicate this national nightmare is going to be over by next week. The polls are obviously not a sure sign that Biden is going to win the election handily, but they are our best indicator. The Trump campaign is waging on the errors in polling to be far, far greater than the errors in 2016, and the likelihood of that happening is incredibly small. That being said, if you haven’t voted yet or know of someone who hasn’t voted yet, you know what to do. The nightmare ends when enough Americans decide to do something about it. Thankfully, there is every indication that the country has finally had enough of this unending chaos. Let’s make damn sure Trump and his criminal administration are sent packing and we can live in a country future generations might want to live in.

Have a great weekend! (And go vote!!)

Read the latest for Banter Members:

Win Or Lose, ‘White Idiocracy’ Isn’t Going Anywhere Soon

White American men without college degrees present a grave threat to the future of the Republic. We can't let them win again, says Bob Cesca

Why Returning To Normal After Trump Is A Terrible Idea

It’s time for America to reject the chaos and corruption of the Republican Party, find its new normal, and lay a foundation for the next half century of stability, says Justin Rosario