Trump's Feral Offensive

Plus: Elon and Tucker fluff a Nazi apologist

Sep 04, 2024

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose: “US to accuse Russia of trying to influence 2024 election” — CNN

Happy Wednesday.

With 61 days to go until Election Day, how stands the state of the race?

I had some thoughts in this MSNBC newsletter: The race is still a toss-up, “but all things considered, you'd rather be Vice President Kamala Harris than Donald Trump.”

With Americans who typically tune out politics starting to take a serious look at the race after Labor Day, Harris has moved into a narrow lead in national polls and is showing momentum in key swing states, including some that seemed out of reach earlier this year.
Harris is extending her lead among women and widening the gender gap, even as Trump flails.
Still, Trump has a path to victory thanks to the Electoral College, which gives him more leeway thanks to the uneven distribution of Republicans and Democrats.

And now a word from our readers.

To the Contrary is a reader-supported publication. You may disagree with me from time to time (and I expect you will, because I’m not promising you a safe space here). But I’ll always try to give it to you straight. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Trump’s feral offensive

The Wapo reports: “Trump aims to drag down Harris as he scrambles to keep up in tight race.”

Republicans have already started pummeling Harris with attack ads. The bulk of television spending by the campaigns and their allied super PACs between Aug. 23 and Aug. 29 — 57 percent — were attacks on Harris, according to data from the media-tracking company AdImpact. Twenty-one percent were pro-Harris ads that drew a contrast with Trump, and another 14 percent were purely positive about Harris, the data showed. Only 8 percent were anti-Trump attack ads.

None of this will make Trump more likeable. But that’s not the point.

As another adviser told reporters last month: “If you think this race is going to be decided on likability, you’re making a grave error because neither one of them is going to be liked at the end of this race.”

CNN’s Stephen Collinson describes all of this as a “feral political offensive” that includes everything from an attack on her record, to crude jokes about sexual acts, accusing her of being a Communist, and questioning whether or not she is really black.

Trump’s invective amounts to some of the most hardline political rhetoric in years, even by his own standards, and means the next two months are likely to be brutal.
The question is whether this barrage of negative attacks is merely successful in stoking feelings of existential anger Trump uses to drive his base the polls, or whether it begins to tarnish Harris at the margins in battleground states.

Exit take: The history of American politics is, of course full of negative —even vicious — attacks. But, once again, it’s a mistake to see what’s happening as normal.

Think of it this way: The 1988 Bush campaign’s “Willie Horton” ad was the subject of controversy for years for exploiting racially-charged imagery.

But this year: Trump’s campaign is firing off Willie Horton-style attacks every single day on television, social media, and in hundreds of thousands of mailers. And the media basically shrugs it off as Trump being Trump.

The Post-Trump GOP?

There’s a very interesting back and forth today about the possibility of a post-Trump GOP. In Politico, Jonathan Martin writes: “The GOP Is Better Off With Kamala Harris in the White House.”

The best possible outcome in November for the future of the Republican Party is for former President Donald Trump to lose and lose soundly. GOP leaders won’t tell you that on the record. I just did.
Trump will never concede defeat, no matter how thorough his loss. Yet the more decisively Vice President Kamala Harris wins the popular vote and electoral college the less political oxygen he’ll have to reprise his 2020 antics; and, importantly, the faster Republicans can begin building a post-Trump party….

Chris Cillizza isn’t buying it, calling it “ A laughable idea about the future of the GOP.” Why does he think this is all delusional wish-casting? Two reasons:

1. Donald Trump isn’t going anywhere. If he loses in the fall, there’s a 0% chance that he will concede. Trump has already said that the only way he can lose this election is if Democrats cheat him out of it. Do you think he is suddenly going to have an election night conversion and admit he lost fair and square?…
NO CHANCE! I have said it before and I will say it again here: Donald Trump will be the de facto leader (or just the plain leader) of the Republican party until he dies. Period.
2. The base of the party doesn’t have any interest in a return to the past. The smartest quote in the Politico piece comes from longtime GOP strategist Terry Sullivan: “You’re assuming Republicans have a top of the ticket problem and not a voter base problem. It’s not like our leaders have been leading the voters to the wilderness against the voters’ judgment.”…
Correct. There is zero interest among the party base to abandon the national populism of Trump. The idea that, if Trump lost in November, there would be a grassroots movement to return to the internationalist approach to trade and foreign policy and the debt and deficit reduction focus at home is laughable. The party is all about sticking it to the man and giving the finger to the media these days. And the base seems to like it just fine thank you.

My take: Cillizza is right. But the GOP — and the country — would still be infinitely better off if Trump loses. Bigly.

Tucker and Elon Fluff an Apologist for the Nazis

On Earth 2.0, this would be a bigger story: “Tucker Carlson Platforms Holocaust Revisionism – With Elon Musk's Endorsement - Haaretz.com”

Via Mediaite: “Tucker Carlson’s Favorite Historian Has Repeatedly Suggested Hitler Wasn’t So Bad.”

Darryl Cooper, the historian deemed by Tucker Carlson to be the “best and most honest” in the U.S., appears to have a strange fondness for Adolf Hitler.
Cooper recently joined Carlson on an episode of The Tucker Carlson Show. During their conversation, Cooper claimed that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II because he “was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did.” He also claimed that the Holocaust was some kind of unintended consequence of Germany being “completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war.” According to Cooper, millions “ended up dead” because there was no food to feed them and German soldiers decided it was “more humane to just finish them off quickly.”

That, of course, is not what happened. Millions did not end up dead — they were murdered. Nor was the mass murder a “more humane” approach. It was a Holocaust.

Liz Cheney weighed in on Tucker’s whitewashing of Hitler.

But you know who liked it? “Very interesting. Worth watching,” wrote Elon Musk on X (before deleting it).

As Mediaite notes: “Based on his social media activity, that whitewashing of the atrocities of the Holocaust isn’t out of the ordinary for Cooper. In a now-deleted tweet from late July, [Tucker’s favorite historian] appeared to claim that scenes of Nazi-occupied France — specifically, a photo of Hitler before the Eiffel Tower — were ‘preferable’ when compared to the scenes of the Olympic opening ceremony in Paris.”

Some right-wing commentators professed shock. “Didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become an outlet for Nazi apologetics, but here we are,” Erick Erickson wrote on X.

Actually, some of us did. And we tried to warn you. But here we are.

Nota Bene

What Would Stop the Steal 2.0 Look Like? - John McCormack - The Dispatch

“We see a big push to withhold certification,” Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at Just Security and a lead author of the House of Representatives January 6 committee’s report, told The Dispatch. “Basically, if the vote doesn’t go Trump’s way, they want to be in a power position to withhold certification.” “They” refers to MAGA loyalists who have heeded Steve Bannon’s call in 2021 to adopt a precinct strategy and be in a position to try to block certification of the vote at the local and state level. “I think all those [efforts] are probably unlikely to succeed and will fail in courts of law,” Joscelyn said. “But there are all sorts of things they could do. It’s sort of like hitting a moving target. There’s too many variables.” He added: “That’s kind of what they did in the lead up to January 6: We’ll try this. Well, that doesn’t work, then we’ll try this. … Keep moving from one sort of anti-democratic measure to another.”

Puck’s Peter Hamby interviewed James Carville and Mary Matalin:

Speaking of pivoting: Like every Democrat watching the Biden debate in Atlanta, you knew it was over in the first few minutes. What was the first thing you did that night? Who did you call?
Carville: Three minutes into the debate, I said, I’m taking two gummies and listening to country music. Fuck it. And my phone was just lighting up with texts. I didn’t even have to look.
Matalin: Anybody who’s ever done this knew in five minutes that there was no coming back. Nothing. That’s the difference between guts and numbers. Guts told you what you needed to know. And that was a five-minute gut check.

Thanks for reading To the Contrary! This post is public so feel free to share it.