Is This Love, Is This Love That I’m Feeling?
Is This Love, Is This Love That I’m Feeling?
Two candidates’ closing arguments.
The election may be a week away, but Trump isn’t waiting to kick off Stop the Steal 2.0.
“Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before,” Trump posted on Truth Social an hour ago. “REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!”
Serenity now. Happy Wednesday.
A Tale of Two Speeches
by William Kristol
Yesterday morning, Donald Trump spoke at Mar-a-Lago. He had nothing much to say, but apparently wanted to get in the news cycle before Kamala Harris spoke at the Ellipse last night. In any case, Trump made no apologies for Sunday’s remarkable hatefest in Madison Square Garden.
Quite the contrary, he offered this about that occasion:
The love in that room, it was breathtaking. There’s never been an event that beautiful. It was a love fest. It was love for our country.
You might not have thought that what you saw Sunday at the Garden was beautiful. In fact it might have looked ugly. You might not have thought that what you saw was love. It might have looked more like hate.
But Trump says it was love. Who are we to argue? To do so might make us enemies from within. And Trump and his gang will wreak vengeance and exact retribution, if they win, on those who are enemies from within. But not to worry. They’ll wreak vengeance and exact retribution under the banner of love.
There’s a precedent for this. The interior ministry in George Orwell’s Oceania, the building with no windows but with its interior lights always on, the heart of state power and repression, the place where submission to Big Brother is ultimately enforced. That is the Ministry of Love.
If Trump wins, perhaps the building from which Stephen Miller organizes and executes the mass deportation of 15 million American residents will be called the Ministry of Love? Or will that be the name of the command center from which Stephen Bannon directs the program to deal with the enemies from within?
Several hours after Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Harris spoke at the Ellipse. (If you missed them, you can see her remarks here.) She spoke intelligently and soberly but also movingly about America. There was no hatred that had to be dressed up as love. There were no threats against fellow Americans. There was no denigration of others due to their race, ethnicity, country of origin, or gender.
Yesterday, between Trump’s remarks at Mar-a-Lago and Harris’s speech at the Ellipse, I voted here in Virginia. Watching Harris’s speech later on, I wasn’t merely comfortable with my vote for her. I’ve got to say that I was proud to be a Harris voter. I’m sure she’ll disappoint me if she wins. They always do. But she’s risen to the occasion in this campaign in a way that speaks to much that is admirable about today’s America, the America that Trump and Miller and Bannon hate, but that many of us do love.
Bannon’s Back
by Tim Miller
Seventeen floors above Park Avenue, a motley crew of rabble-rousers gathered yesterday to mark the return of Steve Bannon from a federal penitentiary in front of a handful of assembled journalists and MAGA gadflies masquerading as press.
I was bestowed the Helen Thomas memorial vantage point for the event due to years of commitment in covering this freak show. And from that front row seat my main observation will certainly not shock you. Four months in the clink has done absolutely nothing to change Bannon nor all his works and empty promises.
He was dressed in his classic prep-school triple-shirt style, sporting the shoulder-length white hair of an aging pirate and skin deeply bronzed from either ample time in the Danbury prison yard or a fresh Manhattan spray-tan.
His long-running obsession with the elite he wages a kayfabe war with was in full display—both in the gilded uber-suite that hosted the event and in his off-the-cuff homage to a recent “Vanity Fair cover story on our populist nationalist beliefs,” which he must’ve read either in the prison library or in the black car from Connecticut.
His rhetoric was equal parts inflammatory and cheeky. Blustering about fighting the deep state and tying the treatment of MAGA January 6th prisoners to those black and brown inmates who he met while teaching a jailhouse civics course (I shit you not). He also used his self-described experience meeting the “Dominicans and Puerto Ricans” as a proof point for a plussed-up version of the Ultra MAGA program he has long been pushing—a party dominated by culturally conservative men of all races and creeds.
When I tried to see if he might have used any of his newfound private time to reform himself or to reflect on the actions that landed him in the pokey, beginning with the incitement of a mob, well . . . watch for yourself.
No change! Alas.
Later in the press conference, when I remarked that his answers made me think he was a high risk for recidivism, he boiled over with a rant about how he was proud to be a political prisoner and how his followers need to be prepared to be thrown in prison too.
Part of this is bluster, of course. There’s only so much trouble Bannon can cause in the election’s waning days, especially from his current perch on the outside of Trump’s inner circle.
But should we find ourselves facing a replay of 2020, or the 2000 Florida recount, or—God forbid—FOUR FLORIDAS, as Sam Stein ominously hypothesized in our live show the other night? Then Bannon’s role in a Stop the Steal redux could be central, especially given the influence he wields over a “War Room posse” that is already being primed to accept a reality that they are at risk of prison themselves.
Should Trump be defeated again, it doesn’t seem like much of a leap to think that some of those fans might decide to act in ways that make his prognostication true.
Quick Hits
WHERE WERE YOU DURING APOSTROPHEGATE: Kamala Harris had hoped her tentpole speech last night would drive the news cycle today. But it was at least temporarily crowded out last night by a controversy whipped up by comments from her current boss, President Joe Biden, during a campaign call last night.
“Donald Trump has no character. He doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community,” Biden said in recorded remarks. “Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating pile of garbage. The only garbage I see floating out there is his—”
And here, uh, opinions diverge! The next word Biden said was—depending who you ask—either “supporters” or “supporter’s.” Biden was either calling Trump supporters “garbage” en masse, or he was saying “his supporter’s” comments (presumably the rally shock jock in question) were garbage. As he tried to land the plane, his next words were specific to the shock jock: “his, his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable.”
Remember the dress? This was like that, but way less fun.
Republicans, eager to replicate the base-rallying backlash against Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment, heard “supporters.” Democrats, noting that Biden habitually takes pains to focus fire on Trump, not his voters, heard “supporter’s.” Biden quickly took to social media to insist he’d meant the latter.
But the painful bottom line is this: The gaffe stole precious pre-election day oxygen on a night Harris hoped to command the spotlight. In his current more-garbled-than-ever state, where even straightforward sentences become tortuous verbal journeys, Biden risks disaster every time he opens his mouth in public. He did, however, provide one benefit to Harris: putting a complete end to all and any talk that Democrats were somehow having buyer’s (or is it buyers?) remorse for pushing him out of the race.
TURNING THE PAGE: If there’s one question Kamala Harris has struggled to answer effectively during her brief campaign, it’s how she sees her presidency diverging from Biden’s. Asked this month on The View if there was anything she would have done differently, she replied there was “not a thing that comes to mind,” later circling around to add that, unlike Biden, she would have a Republican in her cabinet. Later, in her contentious sit-down interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, she did better, noting that she was “someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington, D.C.” and would bring new ideas to the table.
But last night’s speech was the first moment where she’s really nailed this point—better late than never. Here’s what she said:
I have been honored to serve as Joe Biden’s vice president, but I will bring my own experiences and ideas to the Oval Office. My presidency will be different, because the challenges we face are different. Our top priority as a nation four years ago was to end the pandemic and rescue the economy. Now our biggest challenge is to lower costs, costs that were rising even before the pandemic and that are still too high.
For more on the speech, Andrew took to YouTube with Sam Stein and Jim Swift to break it down last night, which you can watch there or here:
Cheap Shots
I thought Harris would be a competent candidate. A good second-string quarterback. Good enough that with strong support and some luck , she could beat Trump. I wasn't expecting an excellent candidate, one who would run a disciplined, almost flawless campaign. (Yes, "almost". Who ran the last perfect campaign?) Her ability to keep on task and run her own campaign, not the one other people - including me - would have preferred, has worked well. And the skill and temperament she has displayed are exactly what she will need dealing our country's enemies, including Xi and Putin and the fossil fuel lobby.
She will disappoint me in office. If I were elected President, I would disappoint me. To paraphrase a famous general, "No platform survives first contact with Congress." But I anticipate that she will disappoint me less than all the other people I've voted for.
... "I wasn’t merely comfortable with my vote for her. I’ve got to say that I was proud to be a Harris voter." Bill and all the team at The Bulwark, you're a class act. Consequently, I've got to say I am proud to be a Bulwark subscriber. Thanks for everything.