America Needs an Intervention, Doesn't It?
But nobody's coming to save us.
I really wish this was just our daily dose of comic relief, but I regret to tell you that (1) this is real life, and (2) this guy could possibly win the election three weeks from today.
Bizarre doesn’t begin to capture it. Via the Wapo: “Trump sways and bops to music for 39 minutes in bizarre town hall episode.”
“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said.
For 39 minutes, Trump swayed, bopped — sometimes stopping to speak — as he turned the event into almost a living-room listening session of his favorite songs from his self-curated rally playlist.
He played nine tracks. He danced. He shook hands with people onstage. He pointed to the crowd. Noem stood beside him, nodding with her hands clasped. Trump stayed in place onstage, slowly moving back and forth. He was done answering questions for the night.
This is not a well man. But that’s not the real problem, is it? Despite Trump’s daily incontinence and buffoonery, the incomparable Matt Labash reminds us of the hard truth we are facing: “Donald Trump is a no-joke authoritarian psycho.”1
There are 20 days until Election Day. Happy Tuesday.
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Glenn Youngkin Isn’t a Coward. He’s Something Worse.
On Monday CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Virginia’s GOP governor if he supported Trump’s comments about using the military against American citizens and people he described as “radical left lunatics.”
Youngkin repeatedly tried to claim Trump was referring to undocumented migrants. Tapper, though, pushed back multiple times, noting how Trump had actually named one of the so-called “lunatics” as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
“I’m just reading you his quote,” Tapper told Youngkin.
Youngkin claimed Tapper was “misinterpreting and misrepresenting his thoughts.”
“I’m literally reading his quotes,” Tapper said. “I’m literally reading his quotes to you and I played them earlier so you could hear that they were not made up by me. He’s literally talking about, quote, ‘radical left lunatics,’ and then one of those ‘lunatics’ he mentioned was Congressman Adam Schiff.”
“I don’t believe that’s what he’s saying,” Youngkin countered in defense of Trump.
“I played the quote and I read it to you,” Tapper said at another point. “You can wish that he weren’t saying that, but that’s what he said.”
Tapper later said Youngkin didn’t “want to accept those quotes.”
Over at the Atlantic, Tom Nichols put this embarrassing pratfall into context. “At least cowards run away,” he wrote. “The GOP elected officials who cross the street against the light just to get away from the reporters are at least showing a tiny, molecular awareness of shame. Youngkin, however, smiled and dissembled and excused Trump’s hideousness with a kind of folksy shamelessness that made cowardice seem noble by comparison.”
Some of the people who watched Youngkin’s appalling dishonesty immediately thought of one of the most famous passages from George Orwell’s 1984: “The Party told him to reject the evidence of his eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
But this interpretation gives Youngkin too much credit. Orwell’s dictators were able to terrify people with torture and deprivation into accepting the government’s lies. Youngkin, however, is not a terrified subject of an authoritarian regime: He’s just an opportunist.
Like J. D. Vance, he knows exactly what he’s doing. Youngkin is demanding that everyone else play along and pretend that Trump is just a misunderstood immigration hawk, and then move on—all so that Youngkin can later say that he was a loyal Republican when he contends for the leadership of the GOP after Trump is either defeated, retired, or long gone.
In this, Youngkin joins a long list of utterly dishonorable people, including Nikki Haley, who ran against Trump with energy and honesty and then bowed and scraped after she was defeated.
**
Because Tom and I are intellectual soulmates, I also wrote something yesterday about the sorry souls of the GOP.
Where Dante put the cowards
One of John F. Kennedy’s favorite quotes was something he thought came from Dante: “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.”
As it turns out, that’s not true. That’s not what Dante wrote.
But what he did write was actually better, and it comes to mind as we consider the anti-Trump Republicans who refuse to cross partisan lines to block Trump’s return to the White House.
In Dante’s Inferno, the moral cowards are not granted admission to Hell; instead, they are consigned to the Vestibule, where they are doomed to follow a rushing banner that is blown about by the wind. When Dante asks his guide, Virgil, who they are, he explains:
This miserable way is taken by sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.
They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.
They are destined to be forgotten. “The world will let no fame of theirs endure,” Virgil explains. “Let us not talk of them but look and pass.”
Actually, let’s talk about them… (which I do in this column)
We know their names — the anti-Trump Republicans like former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Mitt Romney, former Rep. Paul Ryan, former Gov. Chris Christie, former President George W. Bush, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens — who reject Trump but cannot bring themselves to vote for the one candidate who could stop him. And we also know the names of the allegedly anti-Trump conservatives who have since fallen in line behind a second Trump term — from former Gov. Nikki Haley to Gov. Chris Sununu and the editors of National Review. Polls would suggest that the vast majority of Republican and conservative voters are following their lead.
Many of these officials and pundits recognize the dangers that Trump poses, but want to preserve their “relevance” in the party; others clearly hope for Trump’s defeat, but want to keep their hands clean by staying above the fray and casting a write-in vote.
BONUS: I actually had some more stuff to say yesterday: Charlie Sykes Slams Trump As ‘Rapey Seditionist’ Who Wants To ‘Shred The Constitution’
I understand how it’s hard for Republican voters to cross over. I understand that there’s this partisan muscle memory, and that they disagree on a variety of issues. But the point, I think, that has to be made over and over again is that this is not a normal election. This is not Dukakis versus Bush.
This is not Republican versus Democrat.
This is not left versus right.
We are talking about the possibility of the return to power of a convicted felon, a rapey seditionist who threatens to undo the constitutional order. There is nothing conservative about that.
You’ve said this over and over again. It is not that you have left the Republican party or left conservativism. Conservatism has morphed into something that’s unrecognizable. You’re talking about somebody who kowtows to dictators, who wants to shred the constitution.
This is one of those moments where you say, okay, I understand that you are not changing your conservative or centrist values.
I understand that you disagree with Kamala Harris on a lot of different things. But there’s a moment where you have to put the country over party.
I think that one of the closing arguments, one of the most powerful closing arguments that Kamala Harris has is to say, look at the people who have been in the Republican party, who have been conservative leaders. Whether it’s [former Trump Vice President] Mike Pence or whether it’s [Bush-era Vice President] Dick Cheney or whether it’s, you know, [former GOP congresswoman] Liz Cheney herself. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. All of these people who are looking at the Republican party under Donald Trump and saying, this is not who we are. As well as all of the people who worked with Donald Trump, who were in his cabinet, who were in his White House, who are saying, we saw him up close – the man is not fit for another term in office….
And it’s not just the risk of Donald Trump, I also think it’s the question of do you really want to put America through this? Do you really want four more years of this? Do you really want someone back in power who has made it absolutely clear that he is off the charts of the normal American political difference? …You now have permission to do something that you probably would have thought unthinkable a few months ago.
Auggie remains focused on what matters
**
Baby Eli. Four years ago.
**
Eli, last week.
Labash brings the receipts:
[If] you refuse to see the magnitude of the present mess, allow me to replay some of the highlights from my Drudge Report doomscroll of just the last week, stream-of-consciousness-style, without belaboring the particulars:
Trump escalates rhetoric on outlawing political dissent and criticism……”The enemy From within”: Trump calls Democrats more dangerous than U.S. foreign adversaries….. How he may try to challenge voting results if he loses again……Swastika flags flown during Trump boat parade in Florida……Chris Christie becomes latest to sound alarm over Trump’s ‘significant’ mental decline……Poll: Fifth of Gen Z Americans think Hitler has some ‘good ideas’ and wasn’t evil….Milley warning: Trump ‘fascist’…danger to USA…….Before MAGA conversion, JD Vance said Biden won 2020 legitimately…..Meteorologists in danger as conspiracies surge……Fox again cuts away after unhinged rambling…..MAGA maniacs going all in on deranged hurricane conspiracies…..Bannon has called his “army” to do battle, no matter who wins in November....Woodward Blockbuster: Trump close relationship with Putin, many phone calls in the past few years …..The Don secretly sent covid tests to Putin during 2020 shortage….Tech Bro fanboys wanted The Don jailed after Jan 6……MAGA trying to rig ‘24 the way they claimed ’20 was rigged?
Youngkin was always an empty sweater vest. He got elected because he was lucky enough to run in 2021 -- before the overturn of Roe and when Biden was still trying to pass the Infrastructure bill. Country club Republicans wanted to buy the horse shit he was shoveling, that there was still a normal GOP to be salvaged. I doubt another Republican will be elected statewide here for a minute. I see a lot of Harris signs in the same neighborhood I saw Youngkin signs in 2021
Spanberger for Governor 2025!
“[Trump] danced.” Oh please, this is a fat old white guy embarrassing people at a wedding—Trump would be laughed out of American Bandstand when it was still in Philly … and all white.