A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
‘One Really Violent Day’
With five weeks until the election, and early voting underway, Donald Trump has returned to the themes that most animate him: ones grounded in race and racial violence.
In a campaign appearance Friday in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, where the outcome of the 2024 election may very well be decided, Trump launched into a disjointed attack on crime, long a Republican code word for Black. But the dream sequence he narrated about unlawfully using violence preemptively as a deterrent to more crime was clear as a bell:
Crime and immigration as racist code words are not new in general or specifically to Trump. He has fallen back on them over and over, as other rhetorical devices come and go. As has been observed repeatedly over the past decade, Trump seems to have a visceral personal reaction to the prospect of violence, especially as a means of cleansing or rejuvenating, a baptismal violence fantasy that he indulges when the going gets tough.
The violence of Trump’s fantasies take many forms – police brutality, vigilantism, pro-wrestling theatrics – but in every form they serve as a projection of strength for a fundamentally weak, craven, and damaged man.
Trump Cranks Up Attacks On Immigrants
In related news, Trump’s racist anti-immigrant rhetoric has deepened and darkened as the race has tightened and Election Day approaches. While xenophobia has always been part and parcel of Trumpism, the combination of finding little traction elsewhere and Kamala Harris’ own biracial status has left blatant racist appeals as Trump’s last campaign grasp:
- WSJ: Trump Amps Up Rhetoric to Keep Immigration at Center of Election
- NYT: Trump’s Answer to Harris’s Border Trip Is To Call Her ‘Mentally Disabled’
- CNN: To attack Harris, Trump falsely describes new stats on immigrants and homicide
- WaPo: Trump lambastes immigrants using false homicide claims
Springfield Still Reeling From Attack On Haitian Immigrants
- Politico: Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine confronts Trump’s lies.
- NYT: An Ohio Businessman Faces Death Threats for Praising His Haitian Workers
Rule Of Law Watch
- WSJ: Trump Plans Massive Shake-Up of Justice Department
- Politico Magazine: Exactly How Trump Could Prosecute His Political Enemies
The Battle To Control The Senate
- WSJ: Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund plans to spend $67.5 million on TV, radio and digital ads to flip Democratic Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin
- Politico: Ted Cruz rebrands for a tight race in Texas
2024 Ephemera
- VP debate: CBS News, the host of the debate, has abdicated its fact-checking responsibilities, in a concession to the Trump-Vance ticket.
- New York Times/Siena College polls: Harris leads Trump among likely voters in Michigan 48%-47% and in Wisconsin 49%-47%.
- Never Trumper: Former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), mostly recently the U.S. ambassador to Turkey under Biden, endorsed Kamala Harris.
Feds Bring Charges In Iran Hack Of Trump Campaign
Three Iranian nationals were indicted in federal court in Washington, D.C., for their alleged roles in the hack-and-leak attack against the Trump campaign.
Still Fighting Impeachment I At Ukraine’s Expense
An astonishing moment, really:
Can’t Ignore
Outside of Morning Memo’s usual jurisdiction, but the weekend developments in Lebanon are too momentous not to mention:
- Israeli airstrike on Friday killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a southern suburb of Beirut.
- Israeli special forces have been reportedly operating within southern Lebanon ahead of a potential ground invasion that could come as soon as this week.
Southern Appalachia Faces A Long Recovery From Helene
The death toll from Hurricane Helene rose past 100, more than a third of those deaths in and around Asheville in crippled western North Carolina, where historic rainfall caused catastrophic damage to human infrastructure.
Kris Kristofferson, 1936-2024
Kris Kristofferson’s many remarkable incarnations – from youthful accomplishments like Rhodes Scholar and Army helicopter pilot to his creative output as a songwriter and musician to his substantial career as an actor – made him the embodiment of certain eras of American pop culture, especially the 1970s.
I have an offbeat amalgam of mental snapshots of him: flying helicopters offshore for the oil and gas industry from my hometown while he wrote “Me and Bobby McGee,” which Janis Joplin would make famous posthumously; the trucker in the Sam Peckinpah movie based on the novelty song “Convoy” that defined the big rig craze of the 1970s; a member of the supergroup The Highwaymen in the 1980s along with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings; his fabled confrontation with Toby Keith backstage at Nelson’s 70th birthday party in 2009, that Ethan Hawke famously described and that Kristofferson himself said he had no memory of.
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frist?
This is Rayne Beau (rainbow), who recently walked from Yellowstone to California.
Yes you are! I’m second.
After churning across the southern US and causing massive destruction and dozens of deaths in North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere, Hurricane Helene appears set to collide with the presidential campaign. **Donald Trump**will speak this afternoon in Valdosta, Georgia about the storm, undoubtedly with an eye on turning the swing state’s voters away from Kamala Harris. The former president has already made the hurricane’s destruction into an attack line on the Democrats, reportedlyaccusing Joe Biden of “sleeping” as the storm raged. Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania yesterday he also accused Harris of turning a blind eye to the destruction.
Biden plans to speak from the White House at 10.30am ET about his administration’s response to the storm, while Harris has announced the cancellation of campaign events in Las Vegas today so she can return to Washington DC and be briefed on the storm’s impact at Fema headquarters. She’ll arrive just after 5pm.
CBS decided not to fact check the guy that admitted on camera that he literally just makes shit up?!?!?
Somewhere Walter Cronkite’s grave is making a turbine sort of sound.
It really is as if Voldemort was running, and half the people voting scratched their chins and said, “Maybe if we got on his good side, we could benefit from his destructive magic…”
“The violence of Trump’s fantasies take many forms – police brutality, vigilantism, pro-wrestling theatrics – but in every form they serve as a projection of strength for a fundamentally weak, craven, and damaged man.“
Ya think?