A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

John Kelly Goes On The Record

In on-the-record interviews with The Atlantic and NYT, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly issued new warnings about the danger Donald Trump poses to American democracy if he is re-elected in November.

After years of sharing his criticisms of Trump with reporters in more subdued ways, Kelly – who was Trump’s White House chief of staff and secretary of the Department of Homeland Security – said he felt compelled to come forward more publicly by Trump’s recent remarks about using the military to target the “enemy within.”

In unprecedented-until-this-month remarks by a former high-level U.S. official, Kelly said that Trump fits the definition of fascist. “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” he told the NYT.

Coming on the heels of former Joint Chiefs Chair Mark Milley’s warnings about Trump’s personal fascism, we now have two of the military men that Trump disparaged as “my generals” publicly denouncing him as a fascistic threat to the rule of law and American values. Never before have flag officers raised these kinds of concerns about a president or presidential candidate.

“Where we’re at is that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump says he is ‘fascist to the core’ and Trump’s former White House chief of staff says he ‘certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,'” CNN reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere observed.

In his interview with Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, Kelly offered new and buttressing accounts of some of the awful things he heard Trump say while president about the military, service members, and Hitler:

• “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”
• “President Trump used the terms ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’ to describe soldiers who gave their lives in the defense of our country. There are many, many people who have heard him say these things. The visit to France wasn’t the first time he said this.”
• “Vietnam would have been a waste of time for me,” Trump said. “Only suckers went to Vietnam.”
• After Trump volunteered to pay for the funeral of a murdered soldier, he became outraged when presented with the bill: “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!”

But it was Trump’s urge to use the military against Americans, exhibited both while in office and more recently on the campaign trail, that most troubled Kelly: “And I think this issue of using the military on — to go after — American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad thing — even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it.”

Kelly’s dual interviews came the same day Trump touted at a campaign event the “extreme power” he would have if elected again: “As president, you have tremendous — it’s called extreme power. You have extreme power.”

MUST READ

NPR:

Since 2022, when he began preparing for the presidential campaign, Trump has issued more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents, NPR has found.

A review of Trump’s rally speeches, press conferences, interviews and social media posts shows that the former president has repeatedly indicated that he would use federal law enforcement as part of a campaign to exact “retribution.”

Election Threat Watch

• WSJ: The Secretive Billionaire Network Funding ‘Stop the Steal’ 2.0
• TPM’s Emine Yücel: Musk Encourages People To Post About Voter Fraud, Playing Into Conspiracy Theories
• CBS News: North Carolina “election protection” activist says he plans to flag voters with “Hispanic-sounding” names as “suspicious.”

Harris: We’re Ready For Trump’s Post-Election Shenanigans

“We will deal with election night and the days after as they come, and we have the resources and the expertise and the focus on that,” Kamala Harris told NBC News in a sit-down interview Tuesday at the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory in DC.

Disinformation Alert

• WSJ: Spy Agencies Warn of U.S. Election Violence Stoked by Iran and Russia
• WaPo: “U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday said Russians seeking to disrupt the U.S. elections created a faked video and other material smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz with abuse allegations.”
• NYT: As Election Looms, Disinformation ‘Has Never Been Worse’

Good Read

WaPo: How a conspiracy-fueled group got a foothold in this hurricane-battered town

Georgia Supreme Court Trumps Georgia Election Board

In a major unanimous decision, the Georgia Supreme Court let stand a lower court order blocking controversial new rules promulgated by the Georgia State Election Board, meaning that they will not be allowed to go into effect for the 2024 election. The two rules were among the most eyebrow-raising moves by the MAGA-infused election board: (i) hand counts of the number of ballots cast; and (ii) requiring counties to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into the election before certifying the results.

2024 Ephemera

• NYT: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has eschewed his usual aversion to electoral politics and contributed $50 million to Future Forward, the main outside fund-raising group supporting Kamala Harris.
• Greg Sargent and Michael Tomasky: Are GOP Polls Rigging the Averages in Trump’s Favor?
• Kamala Harris will hold a rally Friday in Harris County, Texas (Houston), a foray into a red state where Sen. Ted Cruz (R) is facing a legit challenge from Rep. Colin Allred (D).

Rudy!

A federal judge ordered former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to begin surrendering assets to Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman to satisfy their $148 million defamation judgment against him.

Among the assets that Giuliani must turn over: his Manhattan apartment, a Mercedes-Benz, more than two dozen luxury watches (including one his grandfather gave him), furniture, his television, sports memorabilia, cash, and his $2 million legal claim for unpaid attorneys’ fees from the Trump 2020 campaign and the RNC. He has seven days to comply.

The judge kicked Giuliani in the seat of the pants one last time in denying his request for a delay past the election, noting the “profound irony” of a leading purveyor of the 2020 Big Lie professing to worry about a “media frenzy” close to the election.

Attorney General Aileen Cannon?

I don’t know how much credence to give any work product of the Trump II transition operation here in October, but for your awareness ABC News has gotten ahold of a personnel roster titled “Transition Planning: Legal Principals” that lists U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon – who famously dismissed Trump’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents indictment – second among nearly a dozen potential candidates for attorney general.

A ‘Very Serious’ Escalation In Ukraine

NYT: “Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III confirmed on Wednesday that North Korea had sent troops to Russia to join the fight against Ukraine, a major shift in Moscow’s effort to win the war. Mr. Austin called the North’s presence a ‘very serious’ escalation that would have ramifications in both Europe and Asia.”

Read It And Weep

Following on last month’s revelation that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was hosted by a flaming right-wing uber-Catholic German princess the year after he authored Dobbs decision overturning Roe, Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis invited the NYT to interview her in her palace where Alito was a guest. The story traces her arc from 1980s party girl to doyenne of the European far-right set.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

An Unprecedented Bipartisan Effort

One of the persistent conceits of the fuzzy, supposedly non-ideological DC establishment – a conceit shared by way too many political editors – is that everyone in public life should work harder at just getting along. And nothing says getting along like ostentatious flourishes of bipartisanship: the back-slapping, fake-sincere, hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie that feels about as authentic as a politician’s smile.

And so it is that in an election year when democracy is on the ballot, when fair and free elections are under threat, and when, we continue to see encomiums to bipartisan gestures and feel-good reach-across-the-aisle vibes as a political and policy end unto itself. Meanwhile, staring us right in the face, is a most unprecedented demonstration of bipartisanship, putting country over party, and linking arms despite deep political differences into order to stave off an existential political threat.

Kamala Harris was joined Monday for three sit-down public conversations with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) in three different swing states, by any measure a remarkable turn that shows a tectonic shift in American politics. The coalition of anti-Trump allies that spans Cheney to AOC marks a commitment to democratic principles that supersedes smaller partisan differences in the face of the Trump threat.

Kamala Harris: We cannot despair. We cannot despair. The nature of a democracy is such that I think there's a duality. On the one hand, there's an incredible strength when our democracy is intact. An incredible strength in what it does to protect the freedoms and rights of its… pic.twitter.com/kpLsnbWq4v

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 21, 2024

By campaigning with Cheney, Harris wasn’t just touting her bipartisan bona fides but making an active and deliberate effort to coax other disillusioned Republicans, especially GOP women, into her camp for this election. Cheney even went so far as to laud Harris’ positions on abortion and tell anti-abortion Republicans that Trump not only isn’t a reliable ally but has overreached with his anti-abortion policies.

Even as the Republican Party veered hard to the right, became anti-democratic, and descended into cultish devotion to Trump, the centrist-moderate conceit that bipartisanship should carry the day has persisted, a form of denialism that allows people already possessing power of one kind or another to hold themselves above the fray, fancy themselves as bigger than ideology and petty partisanship, and avoid actually taking any sort of policy risk or moral accounting of themselves.

They refuse to see actual bipartisanship even when it’s staring them right in the face.

On The Ground

• WaPo: Trump flips stance on making voting easier after storm batters North Carolina
• NYT: With two weeks until Election Day, more than 17 million people have already cast their ballots.
• WSJ: Republicans Eat Into Democrats’ Early Voting Advantage

By The Numbers

• TPM’s Josh Marshall: Are Right-Wing Pollsters Flooding the Zone?
• WSJ: The Pollsters Blew It in 2020. Will They Be Wrong Again in 2024?
• NYT: Two Theories for Why the Polls Failed in 2020, and What It Means for 2024

2024 Ephemera

• WaPo: A Visual Guide To The 7 Battleground States
• The Guardian: Trump ground game faces new fraud claims as video shows door-knock hack
• Neil Makhija: You’re Being Lied To About Voter Fraud. Here’s the Truth.

Senate In The Balance

• PA-Sen: The Cook Political Report moved the race from “lean Democrat” to “toss-up” as the race between Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and David McCormick (R) has tightened.
• NE-Sen: With union leader Dan Osborn, an independent, putting a scare into Sen. Deb Fischer (R), the Cook Political Report has shifted the race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.”
• Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), 91, is laying plans to assume the chair of the Judiciary Committee if Republicans take the Senate majority, amidst rumblings that he’s not up to the task, Punchbowl reports.

Epic Debunker

NYT: The Many Links Between Project 2025 and Trump’s World

What Trump II Could Look Like

• David Dayen: A Second Trump Administration Would Be a Carnival of Corruption and Greed
• WaPo: Donald Trump is gunning to undermine the independence of the Federal reserve.
• CBS News: Trump’s Social Security plan would hasten insolvency, lead to bigger benefits cuts, analysis finds

Election Threats Watch

• AZ: Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor  of failing to perform her duty as an election officer for refusing to certify the 2020 election results.
• PA: A Philadelphia man was charged with the threatening to kill an unidentified state political party official who was recruiting poll watchers for the Nov. 5 election.
• Wired: Russian Propaganda Unit Appears to Be Behind Spread of False Tim Walz Sexual Abuse Claims

Straight From The Top!

Former DeSantis administration lawyer says in a sworn affidavit that the anti-abortion-rights pressure campaign to keep Florida TV stations from running pro-Amendment 4 ads originated from the governor’s office.

No, The Civil War Couldn’t Have Been ‘Settled’

Paul Krugman: “Trump’s most disturbing remark over the past few days may have been his unprompted comment about Abraham Lincoln.”

Good Life Advice

Sykes: Lindsey Graham was on TV saying what are you NeverTrump Republicans doing.. There’s a lot of people disillusioned with the Republican Party but they’re afraid of paying the price. What do you say to them?

Cheney: Well, don’t listen to Lindsey Graham. It’s good life advice… pic.twitter.com/noaaVyBfDz

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 22, 2024

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!