I regret to tell you (once again) that the headlines do not capture the enormities1 of the last few days. Tucker’s latest batshittery; JD’s dive into the fever swamp; Trump’s praise for Putin; and his dark hour of anti-immigrant hate in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
Deep breath. 36 days until Election Day. Happy Sunday.
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We need the dogs
Before we dive into this swamp of excreta, I think we need some dog pictures, which are, after all, the point of this newsletter. Some flashbacks:
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Meeting Baby Eli. The boys had mixed feelings.
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He did his best, cuddling up to the senior dogs. Here he is with Pete, who tolerated him.
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And here he is with Auggie. The tail was a pretty good indication that he was going to be a big boy.
7 moments of loathsomeness
At the risk of leaving a lot of stuff out — because it’s hard to keep track these days — let’s review the deep abnormality of the last few days. Feel free to add anything I missed.
President Volodymyr Zelensky wore a grim expression as he stood next to former President Donald J. Trump….
As Mr. Zelensky stood silently beside him, Mr. Trump presented the Russia-Ukraine war as one that both sides wanted to end, including its instigator, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
FFS.
Mr. Trump did not fault the Russian leader for the invasion or for the illegal seizure of territory or for the thousands of Ukrainians he has bombed out of existence. Instead, the former president described the situation as if it were a dispute between two parties operating in good faith that could be resolved in a “fair deal,” but only if he returns to the White House.
“I’ve been saying that I believe if I win, we’re going to have a very fair, and I think, actually rather rapid deal,” Mr. Trump said. The war, he added, “should stop, and the president wants it to stop. I’m sure President Putin wants it to stop. And that’s a good combination. So we want to have a fair deal for everybody.”
In characteristically rambling and sometimes disconnected remarks, Trump railed on President Joe Biden's trips to the beach and labeled Harris "a very dumb person" and "mentally impaired."
“If Kamala is reelected, your town and every town just like it all across Wisconsin and all across our country, the heartland, the coast, it doesn’t matter — will be transformed into a third-world hell hole,” Trump said.
Trump in Prairie du Chien on migrants: "They will walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat.”
Trump on migrants: "These people are animals."
Trump on migrants: "They're taking all of our Black population's jobs."
Trump: "I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We're going to liberate our country."
"Oh, there's a fly. I wonder where the fly came from" -- Trump suggests migrants are to blame for the fact a fly is bothering him during his speech.
Fresh off an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s extremist election tour, Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance is set to sit for a Pennsylvania town hall hosted by far-right Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau….
Wallnau has pushed a litany of extreme views, including that Vice President Kamala Harris embodies “the spirit of Jezebel.”
“What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel,” Wallnau said earlier this month. “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation and domination — especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth — you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit.”
“So, with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation,” he added.
Days after Rep. Clay Higgins posted a racist tweet about Haitian migrants, Speaker Mike Johnson praised him as “A very principled man,” who had “prayed” about it before removing the post.
"Clay Higgins is a dear friend of mine and a colleague from Louisiana and a very frank and outspoken person. He's also a very principled man. And I think he tweeted, I don't, I didn't even see it, but he tweeted something today about Haitians. And he was, he was, he was, he was, he was approached by January 28th. Well, look, he was approached on the floor by colleagues who said that was offensive. He went to the back. I just talked to him about it. He said he went to the back and he prayed about it and he regretted it and he pulled the post down. That's what you want a gentleman to do. I'm sure he probably regrets some of the language he used, but you know, we move forward. We believe in redemption around here."
Despite the backlash and ultimate decision to take down the post after he said he prayed on it, Higgins told CNN he stood by his demeaning comments.
“It’s all true,” Higgins said. “I can put up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to. I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I’ll say what I want.”
Digging in, Higgins continued: “It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off and move on with my life.”
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BONUS: Peter Wehner writes in The Atlantic:“The Republican party today isn’t incidentally grotesque; like the man who leads it, Donald Trump, it is grotesque at its core. It is the Island of Misfit Toys, though in this case there’s a maliciousness to the misfits, starting with Trump, that makes them uniquely dangerous to the republic. Since 2016, they have been at war with reality, delighting in their dime-store nihilism, creating “alternative facts” and tortured explanations to justify the lawlessness and moral depravity and derangement of their leader.”
“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump said in the post.
“This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections. If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, when I win the Election and become President of the United States.”
“If you are a conservative, then you believe in the rule of law and you believe in limited government, economic freedom, individual responsibility, free trade. And I think that if you look at the two candidates, Kamala Harris represents more of those views than Donald Trump,” Flake said. “I don't agree with everything that the Harris campaign has put out. That's not necessary. I've never agreed with the entire platform of any Republican I voted for.”
This is all just sick. There is nothing redeeming in any of this. They are all as bad-as Roseanne Barr .If these people believe for a moment that Dems or never-Trumpers drink babies’ blood, we no longer have a country. There are crazy haters and the rest of us.
As for Putin and Trump—the latter is so far out of his league. If he were once to give in to Putin he would never even know what hit him. The ultimate rube. I don’t want him to take me down too.
Do half of the citizens of this country really think any of this is normal or ok? When George Will, Dick Cheney, Andrew Sullivan and Jeff Flake are voting for Kamala, things are bad indeed..
Zelensky had to put up with that loathsome old sack of smelly mess.
This is all just sick. There is nothing redeeming in any of this. They are all as bad-as Roseanne Barr .If these people believe for a moment that Dems or never-Trumpers drink babies’ blood, we no longer have a country. There are crazy haters and the rest of us.
As for Putin and Trump—the latter is so far out of his league. If he were once to give in to Putin he would never even know what hit him. The ultimate rube. I don’t want him to take me down too.
Do half of the citizens of this country really think any of this is normal or ok? When George Will, Dick Cheney, Andrew Sullivan and Jeff Flake are voting for Kamala, things are bad indeed..