A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
The Insurrection Playbook
Morning Memo had the chance to attend director Nick Quested’s screening of his Jan. 6 documentary “64 Days” last night in DC. It draws mostly on footage Quested shot while he was embedded with the Proud Boys in the run-up to Jan. 6 and during that day’s attack on Capitol.
Quested’s footage — which revealed the clandestine meeting between Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and and Oath Keepers top dog Stewart Rhodes, both of whom were subsequently convicted of seditious conspiracy — was turned over to law enforcement and Quested testified publicly to the House Jan. 6 committee about his experience. So the gist of what Quested had shot was already known.
But seeing him compile his exclusive, up-close footage into a 64-day narrative that builds from Election Day 2020 to Jan. 6 was a good reminder of how intentionally orchestrated, blatant, and obvious the planning and preparation was for the effort to overturn the election results that culminated with the attack on the Capitol.
In the post-screening Q&A moderated by former TPMer Ryan Reilly, Quested was joined by Jan. 6 committee Chief Investigative Counsel Timothy Heaphy and one of his staff counsel, Jacob Glick. The documentary and the subsequent discussion reminded me of something I’ve written in various ways a few times before: If only we could be so lucky as to have Jan. 6 be the end of the story. It is not. Jan. 6 never stopped. It is ongoing.
The items below in today’s Morning Memo demonstrate that Jan. 6 was not an end point but a way station on a treacherous path toward something even darker and more dangerous:
- Trump’s new threat to fire Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting him for his alleged Jan. 6 crimes;
- The virulent and conspiracy-addled attacks on immigrants by Trump, Elon Musk and others combined with false claims about non-citizen voting to create a pretext for challenging the 2024 election results as fraudulent;
- The army of election deniers installed at the state and local level in the years since 2020 and now actually in charge of elections in many places.
From the get-go, the Jan. 6 attack was part of a larger conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election. But the effort to subvert the election was itself part of a larger Trump-driven fascistic movement to use violence and the threat of violence to tear down democracy, undermine the institutions of civil society, and eliminate other power centers as threats to far-right hegemony — all in pursuit of creating a new paternalistic American authoritarianism.
The historical perspective we can’t yet have with much clarity is unlikely to see Jan. 6 as a distinct point in time or a discrete event but as the loudest, most glaring warning sign we had on the road to American fascism.
Trump Threatens To Fire Jack Smith Immediately
In an interview Thursday with Hugh Hewitt, Donald Trump plainly said he would fire Special Counsel Jack Smith as soon as he is sworn in to a second term. “Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy … I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said.
Smith is prosecuting Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack and for absconding to Mar-a-Lago post-presidency with classified documents.
Trump has promised repeatedly and in myriad ways to weaponize the Justice Department against anyone who opposes him, revoke its independence, and use the powers of the presidency recently enhanced by the Supreme Court to protect himself from criminal prosecution and accountability to the rule of law.
What Fascism Looks Like, Part 3,631
WaPo:
Former president Donald Trump painted a dark picture of the United States under the Biden administration at a campaign rally here Thursday, comparing the country to “a garbage can for the world” because of illegal border crossings.
“First time I’ve ever said ‘garbage can,’” Trump said. “But you know what? It’s a very accurate description.”
We’ve Known For A Long Time Now
This was making the rounds again yesterday, a 2018 video by Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley on Trump’s fascism:
Quote Of The Day
“Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant.”
–Bruce Springsteen, at a Georgia campaign rally for Kamala Harris
The Menace Of Elon Musk
- EXCLUSIVE: The WSJ on the secret conversations Elon Musk has been having with Vladimir Putin since late 2022.
- Bloomberg: Elon Musk Is Now X’s Biggest Promoter of Anti-Immigrant Conspiracies
- Musk put another $44 million into his America PAC, pushing him past Miriam Adelson as the second biggest contributor to Trump this cycle, trailing only Timothy Mellon.
Important Read
The 4 big takeaways from the NYT Mag article on “How a Pro-Trump Army Built a Movement to Reject Elections“:
- Conspiracy theories are working. People believe the election system is rigged.
- Deniers are taking over county and state boards that oversee elections.
- They are trying to change the rules.
- Some administrators are willing to face consequences for their efforts
Election Threat Watch
- NBC News: ‘Big lie’ 2.0: How Trump’s false claims about noncitizens voting lay the groundwork to undermine the election
- Joyce Vance: What DOJ is doing to protect the election
- CNN: In a defeat for the RNC, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that voters will be allowed to cast provisional ballots in person at their polling place if their mail ballots are rejected because of certain defects.
By The Numbers
- *FINAL* NYT/Siena College poll: Among likely voters nationwide, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are tied at 48% apiece.
- Harris trounced Trump in fundraising in the first half of October: $97 million to $16 million. The final FEC reports due before the election show both campaigns spent half a billion dollars over just 16 days in October
- The Bulwark: “In the past five weeks, Trump’s operation has spent more than $29 million on TV ads criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting transgender surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants in detention, according to data from the media tracking firm AdImpact. That makes the topic, by far, the biggest focal point when it comes to Trump’s ad spending.”
2024 Ephemera
- WaPo: How Trump talks: Abrupt shifts, profane insults, confusing sentences
- MT-Sen: In “a sign of confidence” that Sen. Jon Tester (D) will lose, the GOP super PAC American Crossroads is moving money out of the Montana Senate race, Semafor reports.
- Bloomberg: The election-betting site Polymarket has identified a French national as the source of more than $45 million in pro-Trump wagers via four different accounts. Contrary to initial speculation, Polymarket says the person has “extensive trading experience and a financial services background” and that it has not found any evidence to suggest the bets were made to manipulate or attempt to manipulate the market.
What Trump II Portends
- ProPublica: Trump Says He’ll Move Thousands of Federal Workers Out of Washington. Here’s What Happened the First Time He Tried.
- NYT: The right-wing think tank America First Policy Institute is poised to be more influential in a Trump II presidency than Project 2025.
Harris’ Short List For Attorney General
NBC News reports that the three main contenders for attorney general in a Harris administration are:
- North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper
- former Biden DOJ No. 3 Vanita Gupta
- U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams
Not Bold Enough Or Fast Enough
New UNEP emissions gap report highlights a "massive gap between rhetoric and reality" and calls for a "quantum leap" in ambition to deliver Paris goals, as the world is way off-track today.
— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) October 24, 2024
I cover the details over at @CarbonBrief: https://t.co/PKae14c066 pic.twitter.com/aCyYmbKlOx
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Kitty is tired of all the chaos coming from the dotard and wishing he would just go away.
Yeah, about that. It’s bullshit. The tweaks are the point.
Couple this with teeny tiny respose rates and we’re just left with content for it’s own sake.
FLirST!
Country of the small shoulders. (Sorry Carl)
The polls seem so out of line with other evidence that I’m just wondering how much “skewing” is going on. I’m starting to wonder just how much of the poll results are being fiddled to give the orange one cover for claiming election rigging and justification for whatever he does next.
I’m also suspicious that this election will be the last hurrah of polling. I think it’s just impossible to get a good sample with all the new and different communication means. I suspect caller Id was the beginning of the end here.