Author Archives: Ted

The closing argument: Trump is a fascist

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Trump is a fascist.

Period. Full stop.

That what John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving Chief of Staff, said. As if that wasn’t enough, Kelly added that Trump often spoke positively of Hitler and wished our generals were more like Hitler’s.

“Trump is a total fascist.”

That’s what retired General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Trump administration, said. For good measure, he added that the former president “is now the most dangerous person to this country.”

In case you’re wondering, a fascist is someone who: “exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”

Trump is viewed as a fascist because these are the ideals he aspires to, as repeatedly evidenced by his own words and actions — most recently with his comments referring to people such as Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi as the “enemy within” and promising he would punish them if he is elected.

Other members of the former President’s staff have chimed in to support Kelly’s and Millley’s assessments. These are not partisan attacks. These are heart-felt beliefs from people who worked with Trump and knew him best.

Trump’s defenders, as per usual, are trying to gaslight the country — telling them that Trump didn’t really say what he clearly said. It’s not working.

Vice President Harris has picked up this baton and is now running with it — stating that Trump is indeed a fascist.

This is shaping up to be her closing argument.

There is debate as to whether or not this is the best strategy. I believe it is definitely the right way to go.* However, it requires more than just name-calling. You have back it up with convincing evidence that Trump is truly the danger to this country that the label implies. I obviously believe you can.

Trump stands exposed. And Americans have a clear choice. Either you vote against Trump because you are against electing a fascist as President, no matter what your other policy preferences might be — or you’re okay with, and perhaps even prefer, the leader of our country be a fascist. Harris is correct to frame the stark choice this way.

Shockingly, given the lunacy of Trump supporters, I expect most of them will go with the latter. But surely there must be enough sane voters left to hand victory to Harris. If I am wrong, then I despair for the future of this country.

Addenda

* I don’t mean to suggest that the economy is irrelevant to how people vote. It obviously isn’t. As this New York Times article makes clear, many working class voters continue to view it as the decisive factor:

“Working people worry much more about payday than they do Jan. 6. Fair enough: But why turn to a lying, abusive billionaire to help them solve their economic problems? Their explanation is simple. Times were good when Trump was president.”

I could argue that they are wrong to not worry about Jan. 6. If Trump truly becomes a dictator, they won’t see a return to the country they yearn for. And I could argue that Trump isn’t likely to lead the way to a better economy in any case (most economists worry much more about a coming Trump economy than a Harris one).

But evidence suggests this will likely fall on deaf ears. Which is my point. At this stage of the campaign, Harris is unlikely to gain many new votes with a sole emphasis on her already-stated economic plans. The voters interviewed in this article are so obviously committed to Trump that nothing Harris could say about the economy would change their vote. My cynical self suspects that many of these people would be in Trump’s camp even if they felt Harris would be better for the economy. They are his “base.”

So yes, Harris should continue making her economic case. But I firmly believe that the primary hope for shifting any remaining votes is to stress the danger to democracy that Trump poses.

Update: October 27: New York Times columnist Janelle Bouie agrees with our assessment here, writing: “To my mind, it is now the only story worth telling about the 2024 presidential election. It should be the only thing Americans talk about between now and Nov. 5. And every one of Trump’s allies and surrogates should have to answer the question of whether or not they agree that their boss is a “fascist to the core,” as Milley put it.“

What’s wrong with this picture?

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The cover of the October AARP Bulletin, pictured above, highlights an article where the two Presidential candidates’ respond to questions on a variety of issues, as asked in phone interviews with each one. The AARP informs readers that the article was edited for “clarity and length” and there was no fact-checking.

Aside from the absence of fact-checking, it sounds innocent enough. Potentially useful even.

So…what’s wrong with this picture? Why am I objecting to this article?

Because the article is guilty of two all-too-common journalistic sins — especially relevant when dealing with Trump. It’s not the worst-case example of these sins, but it’s still worth calling out.

Sin #1 is sane-washing — selective editing and choosing of headlines, designed to make Trump’s words and actions seem much more sane than they actually are. And thereby allowing him to be perceived as a more rational and acceptable candidate than he actually is.

That’s why, in my admittedly biased view, I object to the entire idea of this article. By presenting Trump and Harris as co-equals, without comment, it elevates Trump to a level he does not deserve.

To be fair, the article does expose Trump’s utter shallowness and incompetence — by simply quoting him. For example, when asked “How would you ensure that Americans have access to affordable high-speed internet?,” Trump replied:

“We’ll build out our internet system. Biden has done nothing. He’s done very little on that, but we’re going to build out our internet system. It’s moving. We had it really going along good, and then a lot of it was stopped, but we’re going to be building out our internet system. They have to have access.”

Really? Compared to Harris’ much more specific and cogent answer, Trump’s reply was a nonsensical embarrassment. And that is typical of Trump. Whenever you really listen to what he says, you realize he has no concrete policies. At best, he has assertions, not backed up with details nor tethered to reality. A few examples (from other sources):

• At his lone debate with Harris, Trump conceded that, even after 8 years of promising to entirely trash Obamacare, he still has no specific plan for what he would do instead. He has only “the concept of a plan.”

• Speaking at the Economic Club of New York, when asked what he would do about the cost of child care, his response was so rambling and incoherent that it became fodder for satire.

• Finally, during an interview with Bloomberg, Trump was challenged to defend his proposal to dramatically raise tariffs (something widely panned as dangerous by almost all economists). His reply was “ignorant of basic economic principles, insisting that other countries, not American consumers, would pay for the tariffs.”

A brief aside: The subject of tariffs never appears in the AARP article. AARP might want a pass here because their questions were very tightly focused on issues especially affecting older Americans (e.g., Medicare, Social Security). Still, older people will not be immune to the economic consequences of tariffs. And it is the linchpin of Trump’s economic platform. It could well have been included.

So, yes, I object to how the article — beginning with the picture on the cover — creates the impression that that each candidate has legitimate positions for you to consider. In most other presidential races, this would be an entirely reasonable, even laudable, thing to do. Because both candidates would have legitimate positions. But not in this one.

This segues into sin #2: The normalization of Trump — treating him as if he is a “normal” Republican and “typical” candidate for President — thereby providing “permission” to select his name on the ballot.

This gets to the most egregious aspect of the AARP interview: the critical questions that the article never asked. Specifically, there were no questions about threats to democracy, no questions asked about the Big Lie or January 6th, no questions about the appropriateness of a convicted felon running for office, Trump is completely let off the hook here. While one could again argue that these questions were beyond the scope of the AARP interview, doing so entirely misses the point:

In this particular election, the differing positions of the two candidates should not be the determining factor — because it is fundamentally not an election about positions. Rather, it is an election about the characteristics of the candidates themselves.

It is an election that demands you consider how anyone could vote for a candidate — Trump — who is so completely unqualified and totally unworthy of any elected position, least of all POTUS. What does it matter where Trump stands on crime or inflation or whatever — when he is a criminal who tried to violently overturn an election?

It is also an election about the candidates’ mental competence. And Trump’s substantial cognitive decline has been clearly on display for the past several months — perhaps only now getting the recognition it deserves. How can you vote for a candidate who, regardless of his stated positions, has descended into the depths of vulgarity and lacks even a modicum of self-restraint — to the point that the word “dementia” is being increasingly used to describe his current condition?

I can almost understand how the AARP might have felt it would violate its “nonpartisan” stance to delve into these matters. But I cannot stress enough: To ignore these matters is to sidestep what must be the defining issue in determining our next President. And, if this sidestepping ultimately contributes to a Trump success in November, it will have contributed to a catastrophic outcome for the country.

October 22: Several revisions were made.

Harris v. Trump: It all comes down to this

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For almost every job, there is a minimal threshold you have to cross, a bar you have to rise above to even be considered for the position. Depending on the job, it might be a college degree or 3 years of experience. But it’s something.

For the job of POTUS, however one decides the minimal criteria, Kamala Harris has soared above that bar — and continues every day show why she is more than qualified to be President.

Meanwhile, Trump clearly sank below that bar on January 6th 2021 and — with his current bizarre behavior — drops lower and lower with each passing hour. In the last weeks, his public appearances have become so off-the-rails — that any one of them would have ended the candidacy of anyone but Trump. Take a look at his Univision town hall for one stark example. Or consider his 40 minute dancing interlude. Or listen to just about any of his recent speeches, which the New York Times describes as “Increasingly Angry and Rambling.” Most troubling is his more and more explicit and fascistic “enemy within” rhetoric.

To put it bluntly, Trump has basically lost his mind. And Trump’s campaign staff knows it. That’s why they keep cancelling interviews that he had previously agreed to do — a “Sign of How Bad He’s Doing.”

This is all anyone needs to know to decide their vote in this election. One candidate easily exceeds the bar. The other sinks below it. This race should not even be close. Although polls currently rate the race as a “toss-up,” I predict sanity will prevail — and Harris will be the one to declare victory in the end.

Can somebody please explain this to me?

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The other day, when canvassing for Democrats in CA-13, we were confronted with a voter who said he intended to vote for Trump. His reason? “Trump is a good businessman and the economy was better when he was President.”

Whoa! You hear this sort of rationale a lot from Republicans — and even some “undecideds.” So it’s worth taking a closer look at it.

As for the economy, this has been debated endlessly in the media. Wage growth has exceeded inflation over the past few years — and unemployment is way down — and on and on. On paper, the economy is not worse now than it was four years ago. Quite the contrary; it is in excellent shape! Furthermore, most economists predict that Trump’s economic plan (such as it is) will almost certainly lead to a far worse financial future than anything Harris is proposing. But these arguments continue to fall flat and haven’t put much of a dent in many voters’ perceptions — especially when these voters stare at the higher prices of almost everything today, the result of several years of high inflation. So let’s reluctantly call this a draw.

Still, if we are really talking about how things were four years ago, it’s worth pointing out that we were in the middle of a pandemic four years ago — a crisis where thousands of people died unnecessarily because of Trump’s staggeringly poor management — including his recommendation that people inject bleach in their veins. And the economy was pretty much in shatters when he left office — which significantly contributed to why Trump lost in 2020. Somehow, all of this gets conveniently pushed aside by those voters who now give Trump a higher favorability rating than he achieved when he was actually President! <sigh>

But enough. Let’s move on from the state of the economy — to the assertion that Trump is a “good businessman.”

We are talking about someone has declared bankruptcy at least 6 times over his career — a sign of incompetence more than acumen. But Trump is not only incompetent, he is a deliberate fraud. Trump cheated with his so-called charitable foundation — eventually fined $2 million for misusing its funds to “further his political and business interests.” Trump University, another Trump grift, was shuttered years ago — after being ordered to pay a $25 million fine for conning its students into enrolling in a “sham university.” In 2022, Trump’s company was found guilty of a criminal tax fraud scheme that began years ago and lasted into his presidency. Most recently, Trump was found guilty of a massive financial fraud in New York State — and ordered to pay almost a half billion dollars in fines and interest.

This is the person that Trump supporters tout as a “good businessman”? The only way to square that circle is if his supporters choose to remain ignorant of the facts — and would rather believe Trump’s self-serving hype and lies.

But what about the future? How might this “businessman” perform if he gets to return to the White House? Not well. As quoted in an extensive New York Times article, 91 people who represent Trump’s “family and friends, world leaders and business associates, his fellow conservatives and his political appointees” — many of whom worked with him in the White House — have been harshly critical of his intellect and competence — and describe him as unfit to serve as President. These are people who know him well and were supportive of him at one point; they are not his political opposition.

On top of all that, Trump has been convicted of 34 felony counts of election interference — related to covering up payments to a porn star. Trump is literally a crook. Trump has also been indicted for a criminal attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election and for inciting the January 6th insurrection at the Capital.

Finally, let’s take a brief look at Trump’s character. In his speeches, he talks like a playground bully — hurling childish insults on a daily basis. Most recently, he called the Democratic nominee for President, Kamala Harris, a “retard.” He spews harmful lies just as frequently — such as his completely false claims about the White House’s response to the recent hurricanes. In one instance, Trump claimed that Biden had not yet spoken the Governor of Georgia — just minutes after the Governor had gone on television to say he had spoken to Biden and they had had a very positive conversation. Trump also uses lies to promote his racist and xenophobic agenda, such as his absurd assertion that immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. Oh, one more thing: Trump has been held liable for the sexual assault (essentially rape) of E. Jean Carroll.

A “businessman” with all of this on their resume would never get hired as the CEO of any major corporation in this country. He wouldn’t even get as far as an interview. Trump is a “good businessman” only in the same sense that Al Capone was. Yet there are voters who seem ready to hire Trump as the CEO of the entire country — enough such voters so that Trump remains in a close race to be the next President of the United States!

Somebody please explain all of this to me. How does any citizen sweep all of this under the rug and conclude that Trump is worthy of their vote? How does any of this make sense? And why do Democrats apparently have such difficulty in getting this message across? How is this race even close? I will never understand it. I can only hope that, by the time the votes are counted, we see that enough citizens understood the dire threat that Trump represents so that he goes down in defeat.

Update: October 15: I just viewed last night’s opening segment of The Rachel Maddow Show. Coincidentally, it covers a lot of the same territory. Definitely worth watching!

Update: October 16: Speaking of the economy, when pressed to give details about his economic plans, especially his call for tariffs, Trump crumbled and was revealed to be “incoherent.” More generally, Trump is increasingly bizarre anytime he is speaking in public. These are definitely not the characteristics of a “good businessman.”