Donald J. Trump, Cosplayer

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I think Marcy and I both have takes on Trump’s fast food stunt. Mine comes from an awareness of fan studies, which is a subset of communications and cultural studies.

This old dude is cosplaying.

Donald J. Trump wearing an apron while dispensing french fries at a McDonald's fast food restaurant in Pennsylvania as part of a campaign stunt on Sunday, October 20, 2024. Photo by Doug Mills/AP.

Donald J. Trump wearing an apron while dispensing french fries at a McDonald’s fast food restaurant in Pennsylvania as part of a campaign stunt on Sunday, October 20, 2024. Photo by Doug Mills/AP.

What’s cosplay, you may ask if you’re not familiar with popular culture. From Wiktionary:

cosplay

Noun
cosplay (countable and uncountable, plural cosplays)

(uncountable) The art or practice of costuming oneself as a (usually fictional) character.
(countable) A skit or instance of this art or practice.

Coordinate terms
dress-up

Verb
cosplay (third-person singular simple present cosplays, present participle cosplaying, simple past and past participle cosplayed)

(intransitive) To costume oneself as a character.
She cosplayed at the manga convention.
(transitive) To costume oneself as (a character).
She cosplayed Sailor Moon at the manga convention.
(figurative, often derogatory, transitive) To adopt the behavior and mannerisms of another.

It’s playing in costume, dress-up like we might have done as children, or at costume parties.

Cosplay originated roughly a hundred years ago but it didn’t enter mainstream popular culture until the 1980s. At first it was tied more closely to specific events; by the 1980s it became more widely practiced as an expression of fandom participation. Its popularity has risen in sync with that of comic book conventions, which have in turn expanded to encompass much of popular culture from comics to movies to premium cable series.

Cosplaying offers an escape from one’s real life as well as a sense of belonging to a fandom community.

For some folks cosplay is a kink as well. I’m not going to kink shame – your kink is not my kink and that’s okay – but let’s acknowledge for some participants there’s a sexual element to this expression of fandom.

(Side note: Based on Stormy Daniels’ statements about her intimate episode with Trump during which she spanked him with a magazine, it’s possible Trump has a humiliation kink. Cosplaying at McDonald’s might serve his need to be shamed by what he perceives as beneath him.)

Trump is dressing up as a character. He is not actually working in fast food. A shut-down McDonald’s and a Fox News TV crew isn’t real but a stage and a production team for campaign propaganda.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Trump cosplaying, either.

Donald J. Trump in the driver's seat of a Mack truck on the lawn of the White House; Trump is amusing himself yelling behind the steering wheel. C. 2019 Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA.

The question before voters is this: when is Trump NOT cosplaying?

~ ~ ~

Let’s look at other roles Trump may have cosplayed in the past.

Exhibit A: Trump cosplayed as a successful investor of real estate and casinos.

Donald J. Trump in Trump business office c. 1970s. Photo: Getty Images

Trump in Trump business office c. 1970s. Photo: Getty Images

Perhaps this is why his real estate ventures have been of questionable success. He was only playing at this, not actually being a rational, competent real estate investor but a man costumed as one.

Cosplaying a business tycoon could explain why Trump racked up multiple bankruptcies and failed businesses from Trump-branded steaks to Trump University.

(It’d also explain why the office in this photo looks unfit for business — like a simulacra of an office.)

Exhibit B: Trump cosplayed as a rich and successful CEO.

Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue bearing a promotional banner for NBC’s The Apprentice reality TV series with a photo of Donald Trump and the tagline words, “You’re Fired.” Photo: Bernd Auers via Fortune.

The Apprentice was a scripted program in which Trump was characterized as the leader of a successful organization. This script was based on the previous cosplay effort; in other words, a canon of Donald J. Trump had already been established in a way that The Apprentice could simply extend this commercial franchise.

Buying into this scripted costume play could explain why Trump hasn’t released tax returns – who’d expect a man who only appears to be a businessman on TV to do anything more than follow the script?

Apparently Mark Burnett should have written a couple episodes dealing with business taxes.

Exhibit C: Trump cosplays as a golfer.

Via Newsweek: Donald Trump at Trump National Golf Club on August 10, 2023, in Bedminster, New Jersey. The former president bragged recently about winning two golf tournaments. Photo: Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Via Newsweek: Donald Trump at Trump National Golf Club on August 10, 2023, in Bedminster, New Jersey. The former president bragged recently about winning two golf tournaments. Photo: Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Real golfers don’t need to cheat every round, to the point one is a legendary cheater. Trump just pretends to be a golfer. His cheating assures his golf score card looks like a real golfer’s score.

Exhibit D: Trump cosplays as a family man with family values.

Screen capture: tweet containing two photos of Trump with a young Ivanka sitting on his lap. Source: Snopes

Screen capture: tweet containing two photos of Trump with a young Ivanka sitting on his lap. Source: Snopes

This is so very obvious, from his chronic infidelities to his abusive behavior toward his first wife and sons, to his revolting attitude and behavior toward his daughter.

Exhibit E: Trump cosplayed as president.

Trump in White House Oval Office behind Resolution Desk while giving an address. Photo: Carlos Berria/AP

Trump in White House Oval Office behind Resolution Desk while giving an address. Photo: Carlos Berria/AP

When did the extended commercial franchise end? Do we really know?

The person who sat in the Oval Office for four years wasn’t competent as president. He performed the role of president but a substantial number of his actions were not deeply thought out and instead reflexive. Perhaps many of his actions were scripted by others; some recent White House staff memoirs suggest others were definitely pulling the strings on this man who has no moral compass and a pathological need for approval.

Did he cosplay a presidential candidate as well in 2015-2016, failing to respond as one might expect a legitimate candidate because he only appeared to be a candidate?

Is he cosplaying a presidential candidate now because he has more incentive to play the role of his life, for his life?

Does that include cosplaying a fast food worker doing the kind of labor he’d never have been caught dead doing in reality?

~ ~ ~

Marcy and I have both mentioned kayfabe before with regard to Trump – me with regard to his handling of COVID, and Marcy with regard to the performative drama in which members of the media have participated wittingly or unwittingly with regard to Trump’s current campaign.

Kayfabe is performance; when effective and sustained, audiences and sometimes performers themselves can be sucked into believing performance is real and not a synthetic creation miming an alternative reality.

Cosplay is not kayfabe but dress-up. One doesn’t become a dog by wearing a fur suit.

It’s possible for kayfabe and cosplay to overlap, though.

Trump donning an apron in a closed-to-the-public McDonald’s and handing out fries is cosplay. In no way does he gain any further true understanding of what real fast food workers’ lives are like.

Taking off the apron ends Trump’s cosplay; in reality, taking off the apron doesn’t end challenges for minimum-wage workers. They don’t shed rent, health care, and transportation costs they can’t afford on part-time minimum wages. They don’t lose the challenges of scheduling child and elder care, education, household needs when they walk out the restaurant’s door.

Trump donning a suit and tie, then touting economic policy he doesn’t fully understand is both cosplay and kayfabe. Like a wrestler we never see without their trademark hair cut and attire, we don’t see Trump outside his blue suit and red tie or his white polo shirt and khaki golf pants. These are the element of both his cosplay as business person and president and golfer. They are signs of his engagement in kayfabe – when he’s wearing them, he’s on.

But you never see him outside these costumes, you might note.

That’s because there’s nothing there behind the suit and tie, behind the de rigueur golf apparel, and now behind the fast food apron.

Trump is an empty husk of a man. His narcissism underlies his fear others will discover this, that he is nothing but a propped-up costume used like a puppet by his sponsors whether Putin or billionaire oligarchic fascists.

He’s compelled to cosplay because he dare not do otherwise. Whatever costume he was wearing would crumple to the floor as he decompensated.

~ ~ ~

It is not in this nation’s best interests to elect a cosplayer-in-chief.

We have real problems requiring real solutions from people who aren’t playing or performing to the darkest interests. We need leaders who think and care deeply about the needs of this nation and are willing to do the real work necessary to serve.

It is and has been a national security problem to allow a narcissist who placates his screamingly hollow ego with praise from hostile foreign leaders and fascist oligarchs for his performative behavior in costume.

Imagine what will happen if he is elected again and is told by his sponsors on Day One, “Okay, Mr. Trump, give us your best impression of Hitler. We know you can do a great job.” He’s already warned us he’s interested in becoming an autocrat out of the gate.

This same approach may already have been used to encourage him to cosplay at McDonald’s: “Sir, we know you can be a better fast food worker than Harris. We know you can do a great job and it’ll help your campaign.” Voila, the hollow man has donned the apron to mimic a minimum wage worker for a photo op.

Imagine what a weak man with a humiliation kink, a desperate hunger for approval, and a love of cosplay could do if an authority figure demands specific kayfabe while in costume.

Kamala Harris against Despair

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As you know, I’ve been tracking Kamala Harris’ outreach to Republicans, Liz Cheney above all, with a good deal of interest. I’ve spoken about why it makes sense from a demographic perspective; if Harris can attract some of Nikki Haley’s voters, it could put her over the top in these 50/50 states. I’ve described how seeing endorsements from people like Liz Cheney and her father create a permission structure for other Republicans to take the risk of voting for Harris.

More recently, I described that events with Liz Cheney and other Republicans provide a news hook for Trump’s fascism that cannot be dismissed as partisanship.

I’ve even observed (though perhaps only on social media) that events with Liz Cheney provide Harris a way to get out of an ethical dilemma. As Vice President, she should not discuss pending Federal cases against a criminal defendant, including the January 6 case charged against Trump. But Liz Cheney can. And Cheney happens to be an expert. In the events she did and is doing and still will do with Harris today, Cheney prosecuted the January 6 case against Donald Trump. And as she described how Trump sat, doing nothing, as his supporters attacked Congress, one of the people behind the women nodded vigorously.

But I also realized, as I watched the Michigan version of these events today, that Harris and Cheney are also modeling democracy. They are giving people — women who are my age and Cheney’s age and moderator Maria Shriver’s age are the primary but by no means the only target — what they want: a democracy where people talk to one another.

That is, these events, at their most ambitious, are about giving people a reason to defend democracy.

That’s something Harris said as she answered the last question in the Royal Oak event.

Shriver described several people in the audience talking about how scared they are, and she asked Harris how she copes with the stress.

Not eating gummies, Harris responded.

But then, after admitting she wakes up most nights these days, she gave an impromptu speech against despair.

Let me just speak to what people are feeling. We cannot despair. We cannot despair. You know, 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 people.

Oh there’s great strength in that.

And, it is very fragile. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it. And so that’s the moment we’re in. And I say do not despair because in a democracy, as long as we can keep it, in our democracy, the people — every individual — has the power to make a decision about what this will be.

And so let’s not feel powerless.

Let’s not let the — and I get it, overwhelming nature of this all make us feel powerless. Because then we have been defeated. And that’s not our character as the American people. We are not one to be defeated. We rise to a moment. And we stand on broad shoulders of people who have fought this fight before for our country. And in many ways then, let us look at the challenge that we have been presented and not be overwhelmed by it.

The baton is now in our hands, to fight for, not against, but for this country that we love. That’s what we have the power to do.

So let’s own that? Dare I say be joyful in what we will do in the process of owning that which is knowing that we can and will build community and coalitions and remind people that we’re all in this together.

Let’s not let the overwhelming nature of this strip us of our strength.

That’s how I feel about this.

The entire event is worth watching.

But what the Vice President said about despair may well be the nugget of inspiration that moves us forward.

How to Read the Immunity Appendix

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I’m still working through a deeper dive of the appendix to his immunity brief that Jack Smith released on Friday.

But I thought I’d share how I’m reading it, as I’ll need to refer back to that when I write up some of the interesting things I’ve found.

The appendix was released in four volumes:

Volume I: GA 1 through GA 722

Volume II: GA 723 through GA 965

Volume III GA 968 through GA 1503

Volume IV: GA 1503 through GA 1885

There are also a bunch of GA 1900 references in the immunity brief; those are to video and other multimedia, but we don’t get them.

But what we’ve got may be better understood in sections:

GA 1 through at least GA 653: Most of Volume I consists of interview transcripts arranged in alphabetical order, Barr to Wren, in what is visible. Once you understand that that section is in alpha order, it helps to substantiate whether citations in the immunity brief are to one or another person. For example, it seems highly likely that the GA 97 to 102 range is Kenneth Chesebro, because citations to those pages describe stuff he was involved with, and those pages appear between the visible Rusty Bowers and Justin Clark sections, and after material that must be from Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr and former MI House Speaker Lee Chatfield. I’ll return to both Chesebro and Chatfield tomorrow.

These transcripts are generally truncated, including just the pages necessary to substantiate the material in the brief — though there are transcripts in there, such as that of Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel in the GA 323 to GA 342 range, that cover the full range of activities in which she played a part.

There are people, like former MI Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, whose only citations are to January 6 transcripts (and so are visible). There are far more people (like Chatfield, Chesebro, and McDaniel) whose only citations are to DOJ interviews, so are sealed. But some people, starting from Bill Barr, have citations to both J6C and DOJ transcripts. In general, the DOJ transcripts appear to come after the J6C ones (though I’m not sure that’s the case with Jason Miller).

GA 654 through GA 722: The balance of the first volume may also be transcripts, but it’s not in obvious order. Although one or several Eric Herschmann interviews appear from around GA 190 through GA 238 in the alpha order section, a great deal of GA 654 through GA 722 is also Herschmann-related material (including the blacked out pages starting at GA 709). There’s a lot of Herschmann in this brief, and I thought prosecutors did a less compelling job of explaining why those were unofficial than the Mike Pence material.

I had considered whether this section consists of more sensitive files, and it may. But it’s not the sensitivity I first considered: that of Executive Privilege (or grand jury versus interview transcripts). Mike Pence’s interviews appear starting at least by GA 413, between the visible Jason Miller and Katrina Pierson transcripts.

GA 723 through GA 771: The first 50 pages of Volume II are from the President’s Daily Diary, which documents all of the President’s calls and meetings. That the section tracked calls involving Trump was already evident from this footnote, which substantiates Steve Bannon’s near-daily phone calls with Trump resuming in mid-December:

And footnote 546 identifies GA 742 as PDD explicitly.

GA 772 to GA 965: The rest of that volume is Tweets and other social media, by Trump and by others. One interesting aspect of this volume is the type of Tweet. For example, it appears prosecutors attempted to include both the legal process version and the screen cap of all of Trump’s Tweets, but they don’t always do that. Trump’s RTs, in particular, appear to have been difficult to reproduce; remember that, because Trump’s account was suspended, there were some difficulties in reconstituting parts of it. There’s a bunch obtained from the Trump Twitter archive, suggesting they may not have been preserved at Twitter. There’s also just the text of the Mike Pence courage Tweet and his “sacred landslide” Tweet, which may come from a dump of the phone (and serve to substantiate that it was written with that phone). And there are a bunch of what appear to be text versions of Trump’s Tweets or Team Trump disseminations of them, the latter of which prosecutors point to to substantiate their argument that these are campaign, as opposed to Presidential, Tweets. If this ever goes to trial, how these got used will often say as much as the actual content included.

The other two volumes provide all the other kinds of backup to the immunity brief, largely documentary evidence.

This documentation generally follows the structure of the immunity brief itself, though obviously there’s a lot of overlap, particularly between Trump’s pressure on state parties and his fake elector plot. That may explain why prosecutors broke the Volumes where they did.

In addition to some random stuff (not included in my table), Volume III has the state-focused evidence.

GA 966 to GA 999: Forming the conspiracy

GA 1000 to GA 1236: Pressuring states to help deceive

GA 1245 to GA 1502: Fake Electors plot

Volume IV picks up from the effort to pressure Pence to throw out the votes and includes January 6. But it also includes a bunch of things — like campaign advertising and funding records — in there to substantiate an argument that Trump was acting in his role as a candidate, not as President.

GA 1503 to GA1663: Pressure Pence

GA 1664 to GA 1684: January 6

GA 1685 to GA 1869: Prove this is Unofficial

So Volume III and IV both have the same type of evidence: documentary backup. But rather than showing what happened, there’s a part of Volume IV that aspires to show that what happened amounted to campaign activity.

With that as a framework, one can figure out almost all of what is in the appendix in sealed form, based off the footnotes. And while none of the good stuff — the dickish comments Mike Roman made while on a conference call trying to tamp down a revolt from Pennsylvania’s fake electors, for example — are unsealed in the appendix, those two pages of text messages that appear at GA 1407 and 1408 do appear in the text itself.

We can’t see most of what’s in the appendix. But understanding how it works does provide some insight about the investigation.

Update: Corrected post to reflect beginning of Volume II as entries from the Presidential Daily Diary.

Witnesses

Update: Here’s a list of my best guesses for the interviews included in Volume I. I’m fairly certain about the identity of the people listed here; I’m fair less certain about where they begin and end. I’ve bolded the people I’m pretty certain have both sealed and unsealed content. I’ve italicized the people who, I think, have only unsealed content. The rest have just sealed content.

This is very rough!!!

GA 2-6: A cop who will testify about the riot.

GA 7-13: Bill Barr, sealed and unsealed.

GA 15: A Chapman/Shirkey related witness.

GA 20: Rusty Bowers.

GA 55-56: A lawyer who worked with Chesebro to deliver fake certificates.

GA 58-59: Probably Alex Cannon, testifying to the quasi campaign role Herschmann had.

GA 62-67: GA Attorney General Christopher Carr.

GA 70-82: Former MI Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield.

GA 97-103: Kenneth Chesebro.

GA 105-122: Pat Cipollone, testifying about things he wasn’t involved in, as well as efforts to get Trump to do something on January 6.

GA 126-?: Justin Clark has both sealed and sealed content. His testimony may extend to where Kellyanne Conway’s begins.

GA 160: Kellyanne Conway. [May be an unsealed only.]

GA 164-5: A fake elector.

GA 166: White House valet.

GA 170: Ruby Freeman.

GA 173: Details of the targeting of PA electors.

GA 175: Details of the riot; possibly Pence’s Secret Service.

GA 180: Stephanie Grisham.

GA 184-189: WI Supreme Court Judge Hagedorn.

GA 190: Vincent Haley, testifying about adding attacks on Pence back into speech.

GA 194 – ??: Where Eric Herschmann begins and ends is tough to tell, but it’s roughly from GA 194 through GA 238.

GA 246-259: Hope Hicks.

GA 261: Chris Hodgson.

GA 266: Greg Jacob. It’s unclearhow much of this is Jacob, but at least through 283.

GA 295-296: Chris Krebs.

GA 297: Amy Kremer.

GA 310-319: Nick Luna.

GA 320: Tom Marino (he dropped off as a fake elector in PA).

GA 323 through 359: It’s unclear how much of this is Ronna McDaniel, but her testimony covers a range of topics.

GA 361 to 368: Mark Meadows. This may go further.

GA 374 until around 397: Jason Miller.

GA 399-406: The then SAC of the Washington Field Office Secret Service office.

GA 405-406: This may be Stephen Miller (in which case the SAC’s last name is Miller too).

GA 411-467: It’s unclear where Mike Pence begins and ends (and where Pat Philbin begins, but something like this.

GA 476: Pat Philbin.

GA 481: Katrina Pierson.

GA 488-495: Fake elector.

GA 497-501: I think this is Reince Priebus.

GA 513: Brad Raffensperger.

GA 517-523: Fake electors.

GA 525-541: Dan Scavino.

GA 550-551: Al Schmidt.

GA 553-578: Mike Shirkey.

GA 578-588: Marc Short.

GA 600: There may be a senior campaign advisor besides Bill Stepien in here.

GA 609: Bill Stepien. [If there is sealed testimony, it may only be a page.]

GA 616-633: Larry Tabas.

GA 634-642: Ross Worthington.

GA 643: Caroline Wren.

After Wren, there may be someone who was involved in calls to Doug Ducey.

 

 

Trump’s GOP Is Running on a Platform of Freeing Seditionists and Cop Assailants

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I’m halfway done my first review of the materials Jack Smith released today.

All of us who have followed this have concluded there’s not any new news (though the presentation of it reveals certain things about Smith’s investigation).

So why did Trump’s lawyers wail and wail about releasing these materials before the election?

Just days ago, after all, Trump’s lawyers argued that releasing these materials would alter the election.

It may be this:

As the appendix documents, on March 11, 2024, Trump posted to Truth Social that, along with closing the border and DRILL, BABY, DRILL, his first priority, Day One, was to free the seditionists and cop assailants who had fought for him on January 6.

Prosecutors cited that post to support their argument that Trump ratified the violence that day.

As the Government identified in its Rule 404(b) notice, ECF No. 174-1 at 8-9, the Government will introduce some of the defendant’s numerous statements that post-date his time as President in which he has blamed Pence and approved of the actions of his supporters who breached the Capitol and obstructed the certification proceeding,722 thus providing evidence of his intent on January 6.

The defendant’s endorsement of the violent actions of his supporters on January 6, and his sentiment that they were justified in threatening Pence—all made while the defendant was a private citizen after the end of his term in office—are probative of his intent during the charged conspiracies.

722 See, e.g., GA 1970 at 17:37 (Video of Trump Interview 07/10/2021); GA 1926 at 1:15:30 (Video of Conroe Rally 01/29/2022); GA 1971 at 15:51, 16:42 (Video of Trump Interview 02/01/2022): GA 1962 at 48:29 (Video of Trump at Faith and Freedom Coalition 06/17/2022); GA 1966 at 09:30 (Video of Trump Interview 09/01/2022); GA 1973 at 43:07 (Video of Waco Rally 03/25/2023); GA 1694 (Transcript of CNN Town Hall 05/10/2023); GA 1964 (Video of Trump Campaign Statement 2024); GA 1967 at 45:18 (Video of Trump Interview 08/23/2023); GA 1965 at 56:10, 57:11 (Video of Trump Interview on Meet the Press 09/17/2023); GA 1935 at 35:50, 01:16:16 (Video of Greensboro Rally 03/02/2024); GA 967 (Donald J. Trump Truth Social Post 03/11/2024); Isaac Arnsdorf and Maeve Reston, 7rump claims violence he inspired on Jan. 6 was Pence’s fault, WASH. PostT, (Mar. 13, 2023, 8:09 p-m.), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/13/trump-pence-iowa/. [my emphasis]

The GOP candidate for President has a criminal docket. And in that criminal docket, today, the government included a post promising to free seditionists and cop-assailants with the same urgency with which Donald Trump promises to close the border. “My first acts,” the GOP standard-bearer stated, would include freeing the people who assaulted the Capitol on January 6.

This was the proposal back in March, one of the first things Trump did after Nikki Haley conceded. And since that time, the entire GOP has fallen into line behind that plan.

The Republican Party’s candidate for President is running on a platform of freeing cop assailants and seditionists.

There’s nothing new in this appendix. But that post does clarify things considerably.

Could This Week’s Developments Change the Race?

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As you know, Nicole Sandler and I do a wrap up of the week every Friday. We tape at 12PM ET, 5PM my time, and 9AM Nicole’s time (through daylight savings). It may show, but I usually walk into those recordings with no sense of what happened in the previous week. These weeks have all been so momentous for so long they’ve each felt like a year running into the next one.

This week, though, I think it important to assess the week as a whole, because I think it’s possible that events of the week will have a substantive change on the results of the election. No promises. But it is possible.

Start with the baseline: The race is statistically tied in all seven swing states. The race is close to tied nationally. If nothing happens, the race will be determined by two things: first, which side can get more of its voters to the polls, and second, how much Trump’s expected fuckery can thwart the actual vote from being counted.

At this stage, all we know is that people are voting — Jimmy Carter, a record number of early votes in Georgia, and even people from the hardest hit areas of North Carolina stood in line and voted in strong numbers yesterday. There are promising signs of greater than historic early vote from women (though Trump’s men could come in late). Nevada’s Clark County has still not posted the bulk of votes there, so it’s too early to tell if the Republican narrowing of registration in Las Vegas can swing the election. Early turnout in Arizona has been 44% Republican as compared to 33% Democratic, but the abortion referendum may affect how even Republicans vote.

It’s just too early to tell, yet.

As for fuckery? In Georgia, at least, there’s been some pushback against efforts to disrupt certification, including (again) from Republicans. NBC has done an update of how Trump deliberately stoked tensions at the TCF counting center in Detroit, and how Trump is training vote observers to do so again. Most counties in Michigan, however, will count early votes ahead of time. Meanwhile, Republicans — and one gambler who might be a certain South African billionaire — are using voting markets to create the illusion that Trump is winning, which will stoke distrust if that turns out to be fake, the same way shoddy GOP polls did in 2020.

It’s a tied game, and Trump has tried to systematize the ways he attempted to cheat in 2020.

Before we turn to whether events of the weeks might change that deadlock, consider why it’s tied.

It’s tied because 35 to 40% of likely voters are cult-like followers of Donald Trump. Those people live in a hermetically sealed world of his propaganda. Short of cognitive collapse, none of those people will abandon their Donald (though a surprising number of them are not voters).

It’s tied because 8 to 13% of voters believe a number of things that credit Trump with more success than he had and taint Kamala Harris with things she didn’t do. They blame Biden for global post-COVID inflation. For some justifiable and some unjustifiable reasons, they believe the economy is in worse shape than it is. They often forget how poorly Trump handled COVID. They may not know of Trump’s epic corruption. Because of a number of changes in the media, they don’t regularly access credible descriptions of the truth. Many of these people recognize that Trump is a horrible person, but because they credit him with successes he didn’t earn, they’re willing to vote for him anyway.

A significant chunk of these people can be motivated by the grievance politics that dominates the Trump cult — that’s why this year’s election will significantly pivot on education levels. Trump’s grievance politics are significantly based on his false claims to have been unfairly persecuted and his false claims never to have persecuted others. (This dynamic is a big part of what I’ve been trying to explain in the Ball of Thread podcast I’ve been doing with LOLGOP.)

In short, the reason the US is a knife’s edge away from electing a fascist is significantly a media problem, both the existence of the hermetically sealed world of Trump propaganda and the collapse and/or abdication of credible media for other reasons. The people who would make this election a blowout loss for Trump are often not accessing truthful information.

I read an anecdote on Bluesky that exemplifies this: Someone chatting about voting with two guys who planned to vote for Trump who believed that all of his criminal cases had been dismissed and who had no idea that Trump has been exhibiting signs of mental instability. It’s a media thing. Given that virtually no media outlets correct Trump’s false claims about his criminal exposure, you can’t expect voters to know better. And thus far, the press has sane-washed Trump’s recent decline.

Three things happened this week that may chip away at this dynamic for key voting blocks. Those are:

  • Trump’s meltdown in Oaks, PA, followed by a series of canceled events and poor showings
    • October 7: Trump cancels 60 Minutes interview, leaving Kamala Harris a solo opportunity
    • October 14: Trump sways to music for 39 minutes in Oaks, PA after giving word salad answers to the questions he did take
    • October 15: Bloomberg editor John Micklethwait savages Trump’s economic plans; Trump cancels Squawkbox appearance
    • October 16: Trump misses a few answers in a fluffed up Fox News town hall for women then really blows the Univision town hall
    • October 17: Trump pulls out of an October 22 NRA event in Savannah; Trump “postpones” October 21 NBC. interview
  • Cracks in the curtain of disinformation pulled across Trump’s failures
    • October 10: Harris appears at Univision town hall.
    • October 15: Coverage of Harris’ Charlamagne the God appearance focuses on the label, “fascism”
    • October 16: In Fox interview, Kamala Harris calls out doctored clip of Trump attacking “enemies within” and makes reference to Mark Milley’s attacks on Trump (though without using the word “fascist;” she also references all the Republicans, including former Trump aides, who’ve just appeared with her in Washington Crossing
    • October 17: CNN exposes the editing Fox News did of the women’s town hall and Bret Baier confesses they didn’t show the “enemy within” clip (but takes the blame himself)
  • The likely release, today, of the appendices behind Jack Smith’s immunity brief

To show why I think these developments might matter, I want to go back to Ramiro González, the man at the Univision town hall who asked Trump about January 6. As this person on Xitter noted, González actually asked a question at both Univision town halls. He asked Harris (mostly in Spanish, curiously enough) about rumors that the Biden administration wasn’t serving Republicans in FEMA relief.

In Harris’s response, she first asked if his family was okay. Then she addressed the disinformation about FEMA recovery. She told her story about never asking, as a prosecutor, whether witnesses and victims were a Republican or a Democrat, but instead whether they were okay. “We have seen where … people are playing political games,” she described Trump’s deliberate attempt to suggest that the Biden administration was playing politics. “You have a right to you know that your government and its leaders are putting you first, and not themselves.”

In the same appearance, Harris answered a question about whether she had been installed undemocratically, by describing Trump’s attack on rule of law. She listed the Republicans who were supporting her (including Alberto Gonzales, who is, whatever else you think of him and trust me I do, one of the biggest success stories for a child of migrants in US history), and described the mob on January 6. She stated that January 6 was one reason why Republicans were supporting her.

Those answers were on October 10. Less than a week later, González was back, noting explicitly that he had been a registered Republican, but was no longer registered as such. González pitched his question as a chance for Trump to earn back his vote. I think González sincerely wanted Trump to do so. González asked about January 6, about COVID response, about Pence not supporting him anymore.

Yes, this response was riddled with lies. But even basic ones, like his claim that “we” didn’t have guns, are going unchallenged even when journalists claim to fact check these claims. Still, Trump also didn’t answer the question, and that matters. He was asked about his inaction on January 6, not why people came to DC. He spoke instead about how many people wanted to hear him speak.

Importantly, it’s not just González who seemed to find this answer ridiculous. As the camera panned, several women sat with their arms folded; one looked shocked when Trump claimed no one was killed.

What I think we can see in these two appearances was what happens when Harris has a chance to break through the disinformation that Trump has been spreading. González and Mario Sigbaum, the guy who asked whether she had been installed undemocratically, came in to the Harris town hall believing bullshit that Trump had fed them. The Biden administration was withholding relief from Republicans. Harris had pushed Biden aside and gotten herself installed undemocratically. I have no idea whether her response worked for Sigbaum, but in answering Sigbaum, Harris said things that González would raise a week later with Trump, including that his former people were no longer supporting him.

This is the task before Kamala Harris, as more low-information voters head to the polls. She has to find a way to crack through the wave of disinformation that Trump has spread. These two clips show, I think, that when she has a chance to do that, either what she says or the references she makes or the empathy and leadership she models can be successful in persuading people not just that she’ll put their interests first, but that they’ve been lied to.

To be fair, they’re still getting lied to on social media. This week, for example, Christopher Rufo has been trying to seed claims that Kamala Harris plagiarized her book by cutting and pasting from a press release that the book cited. Many in the traditional press are still not telling the truth about Donald Trump — not about the guns his supporters brought to the Capitol, not about his obvious meltdowns, not about his criminal exposure.

But Trump’s public meltdown and his string of cancellations has finally titillated the chattering class whose claim that Harris couldn’t handle a tough interview was soundly debunked in the Bret Baier interview. Trump’s own fitness has become an issue again, eight years after the press got bored with that story so instead turned to Hillary’s emails.

And it has become clear, in the last week, that Harris’ events with Republicans have started to serve an additional purpose, in addition to giving Republicans permission to support her (though to be clear: González is the kind of self-identified Republican for whom that permission may be important). Those events, and Harris’ discussion of them, are a way to describe how many Trump Administration veterans, how many Republicans, have found him to be unfit.

Have found him to be a fascist.

They offer a credible way to make Trump’s unfitness a story. It’s the kind of story that may have helped to persuade González.

Again, I make no promises this will work. If it doesn’t, we’re looking at turnout and knowledge that Trump’s planning fuckery, even if we only know the half of what he plans.

But events of the last week may finally have stripped some of the curtain of lies that Trump hides behind.

Hen in the Fox House: Jorge Velázquez and Ramiro González Better Served Democracy than Bret Baier

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Fox News has been a toxin in the United States for most of thirty years. Yesterday, Kamala Harris went into the Fox House in an attempt to chisel away at that toxin.

It’ll be days, weeks, years before we learn how it worked, in part, because it was (in my opinion) only the third most important TV yesterday.

The most important TV was probably Trump’s town hall on Univision. Six minutes in, a man named Jorge Velázquez took the mic (after Trump offered a smarmy compliment him on his hair, which is the kind of beautiful thick mane that Trump covets). Velázquez described that he used to pick strawberries and broccoli and asked, if Trump deports everyone he wants, who will do that work and how much will food prices go up. (Given the way he distilled the problem with Trump’s mass deportation plans with one poignant question, I would be unsurprised if he has some tie to the United Farm Workers,)

Trump immediately said he was the best thing to happen to farmers. He seemed to suggest he would bring back the bracero program (since Elon Musk has begun paying Trump’s bills, Trump has been pushing to greatly expand legal immigration). But he ultimately didn’t answer the question. It was an unresponsive answer to a question that every person who imagines themselves a journalist should be asking.

That wasn’t the only challenging question Trump dodged. After 25 minutes, José Saralegui asked Trump why he lied about the Haitians in Springfield. After 33 minutes, Ramiro González, a Republican who has dropped his registration in the party, invited Trump to win back his support by explaining his inaction on January 6. Trump not only offered the platitudes he always does, lied about his supporters bringing guns, and used the first person plural to align himself with the mob (which may end up being useful to Jack Smith), but he did not answer the question. By that point, a number of the viewers in the audience had a hostile body language to Trump. After 40 minutes, Jesús González asked Trump to explain his gun control policy to victims of school shootings. After 43 minutes, Carlos Aguilera asked Trump if he still considered climate change a hoax.

In this forum, average voters asked Trump the kind of questions that journalists no longer do. And they did so on an outlet that sill commands a great deal of trust from its viewers.

The second most important TV yesterday may be the Fox Town Hall for women.

It was everything that Trump voters distrust about the media (though will overlook here): A hand-selected group of Trump sycophants that was edited to take out parts damaging to Fox (including that one participant had already voted for Trump).

The Georgia Federation of Republican Women wrote on its Facebook page Wednesday that the group helped host the event, posting photos from the venue and writing they were “Super excited for the opportunity of hosting this event right here in Georgia!”

Shortly after CNN reached out to the group and Fox News about their role, the post was edited to state they were “excited for the opportunity of attending this event right here in Georgia!”

[snip]

The first question posed to Trump at the town hall came from a woman identified as Lisa, who asked the former president a question about the economy. The network did not disclose that Lisa is also the president of the Fulton County Republican Women group.

Some of the town hall attendees made it clear they were supporters of the former president, either in their questioning or in their attire.

“I want to thank you for coming to a room full of women the current administration would consider domestic terrorists,” a woman named Alicia said to laughter from the audience before a question about foreign policy.

But a portion of Alicia’s question was edited by Fox News to remove her admission that she was voting for Trump.

“I proudly cast my vote for you today. I hope they count it,” she added, according to an audio recording from a CNN reporter in attendance.

While it’s common for a pre-taped event or interview to be edited for time, Alicia’s short remark came in the middle of her question, which remained intact on the broadcast.

During another moment missing from Fox’s broadcast, Trump asked the crowd who they were voting for, leading to a chant of “Trump, Trump” breaking out by the attendees.

And Trump still bolloxed three questions. In response to a visibly distraught woman asking about child care costs, he offered the same babbling pablum about assigning Ivanka to address the issue that he offered at the NY Economic Club. In response to a softball about IVF, Trump first claimed to he the father of IVF before confessing he needed Katie Britt to explain why it was important. And then when a woman asked Trump about making choices for her own body, Trump offered the same canned answer about moving abortion back to the states but him, personally, believing in exceptions that don’t exist in a number of states.

Within the safe space of Harris Faulkner’s set, Trump seemed not to care about offering credible answers. The women in the room will vote for him anyway. But clips of his answers will circulate outside that safe space.

Importantly, Fox also edited a clip from the woman’s town hall, to cut Trump’s most fascistic speech, identifying the Pelosis as the “enemy within.” When Bret Baier questioned Kamala Harris about it during their interview, she called him on the edit, and used it to talk about what “you and I both know” about Trump’s threats to turn the military on Americans. What was meant to be one in a series of gotchas instead became a moment for Harris to point to things that Fox deliberately keeps from its viewers: the threat Trump poses to democracy.

When Baier played a Trump transgender ad, offering little excuse for doing so, Harris noted that Trump had paid $20 million to instill fear about an issue that has little to do with issues that affect people’s lives. Again, she pointed to the spectacle that Fox viewers consume unthinkingly.

The Fox News interview will not win over voters, by itself. But Harris turned Fox into an issue. She called out Baier, repeatedly, for interrupting her. He kept doing it.

She also revealed things that don’t get covered at Fox. Harris mentioned having just been on the stage with Trump’s former staffers twice. She mentioned his former aides saying that he was not fit to be President. She mentioned Trump’s accusations there’s an enemy within. She mentioned that Mark Milley said that Donald Trump was a threat, without raising the word fascism (after which Baier attempted to dismiss it by specifying it was a quote in Bob Woodward’s book, telling viewers where to find more). She described Mike Pence’s criticisms of Trump and joked that Pence’s opposition to Trump is why the job was open to pick JD Vance.

All of these are things that are not permitted on Fox News.

During several of those exchanges, Baier’s face looked pained, as if he was acutely aware of the danger of letting such things be aired on Fox News.

After 25 minutes, as Baier was trying to drown out Harris’ criticism of Trump’s handling of Iran, he said, “We’re talking over each other, I apologize.”

Harris responded,

I would like that we would have a conversation that is grounded in full assessment of the facts which includes — I think this interview is supposed to be about the choices that your viewers should be presented about this election. And the contrast is important.

Baier interrupted again. As Harris told viewers to go check out her site to see her solutions, Baier interrupted again.

It’s the term, “we both know” which Harris used at least four times, that resonates.

Someone commenting after the interview voiced the same impression I have of it: It’s a Google interview. [Update: It was Brian Stelter.] No one will be convinced by it. But a number of people might Google to find out what the hell Harris was talking about — to find out what Milley said, to find out what Republicans supporting her have said to explain why, even to find out her plans to help people buy homes.

And when they discover that it’s actually Fox — and not CBS, as the Fox-fueled conspiracy holds — that is hiding stuff from its viewers, they may grow to question what they’ve been told.

But the Baier interview was, in my opinion, only the third most important TV yesterday. That’s significantly true because there are far more undecided voters among Univision’s viewers than among Fox’s. And Trump showed contempt in that situation. He showed contempt to undecided Latino voters, to their face. And he refused to answer the questions that no one else will ask.

Normally, the whitewashing that Fox does for Trump hides how contemptuous he is of American voters. Yesterday, there were several places where voters might see the cracks in that whitewashing.

325,000 People Vote in First Day of Early Voting in Georgia

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I voted 25 days ago; my vote was received 22 days ago.

It has taken the interim three weeks before people living stateside have started getting into the fun — nowhere more so than in Georgia. Over 325,000 people voted in yesterday’s first day of early voting.

You can go here to track early vote in each state. It shows that Georgia’s turnout is promising, but by no means dispositive for Kamala Harris. Almost 30% of people who voted yesterday were Black (about the same percentage as they made up in 2020 exit polls, but still three percent short of eligible Black voters); 54% of people who voted were women (two percent short of their 2020 exit poll rate). According to AJC’s Greg Bluestein, over 45,000 of the people who voted yesterday did not vote in 2020.

68% of the people who’ve voted early in Pennsylvania so far are registered Democrats (though Biden had a much bigger percentage of early voters in 2020 than Trump).

Almost 56% of people who’ve voted in Michigan are women, a few points higher than 2020 exit polls.

But there are cautions for Democrats, too. The Nevada Independent’s Jon Ralston doesn’t have the same same confidence that the Democrat will win Nevada as he has had in recent years.

Plus, almost no one can track this well, because the last two elections — the first Dobbs election and the COVID presidential — are so unusual.

Perhaps the most interesting stat I’ve seen in the last day is this poll, showing (unsurprisingly) that Kamala Harris is picking up a far greater percentage of the AAPI vote than Biden was, particularly among Indian-American voters.

This is a significant (over 4% of the vote) voting block in NV, GA, PA, MI, and NC, but doesn’t always get tracked in cross tabs. It could be that we’ve spent months talking about whether Harris, who would be the first Black woman President, would match normal Democratic support among Black voters (who tend to come home late), while missing that Indian-American voters could put the first Asian-American President over the top.

As of today, Donald Trump has <3% of his campaign left (20 of 721 days).

As of today, Kamala Harris has over 18% of her campaign left (20 of 107 days).

Every one of those days is a chance to get less likely supporters out.

Update: Bluestein also confirms what other people had jumped the gun to report: Jimmy Carter’s vote for Kamala Harris was dropped in the dropbox at the Sumter County Courthouse.

We Are All Don Bacon’s Wife: The Threats Trump Elicits for Personal Gain

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I’ve been staring at a screen all morning trying to get my mind around the way that WaPo reported that emergency response personnel in North Carolina had to relocate after threats from an armed militia … without once mentioning lies from Donald Trump or Elon Musk.

Around 1 p.m. Saturday, an official with the U.S. Forest Service, which is supporting recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sent an urgent message to numerous federal agencies warning that “FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately. The message stated that National Guard troops ‘had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA.’”

“The IMTs [incident management teams] have been notified and are coordinating the evacuation of all assigned personnel in that county,” the email added.

Armed militias didn’t start hunting FEMA personnel in a vacuum. They did so after Trump launched a deliberate campaign of lies about FEMA to serve his own personal needs.

And yet, WaPo simply disappeared Trump’s role in deliberately creating threats so serious they’ve interrupted disaster response.

Donald Trump deliberately made disaster relief harder as part of his campaign. Donald Trump deliberately disrupted the quiet success of Springfield, OH, to serve his campaign. Donald Trump deliberately harmed Aurora, CO, to serve his campaign.

Haitians in Springfield

Meteorologists

FEMA personnel

Public health officials

Former spooks warning about Russia

Disinformation experts

Judges and prosecutors

FBI Agents

Whistleblowers

Anti-corruption ambassadors

Journalists

Blue state governors

Republicans who vote to impeach him or who investigate his riot

Republicans who uphold democracy

Jews

Barack Obama

Ruby Freeman and other election workers

Don Bacon’s wife

His own Vice President

No one is safe from Trump’s threats. Yet a naive belief among Trump supporters can benefit from being part of Trump’s in-group nevertheless makes precisely these threats popular.

JD Vance Asserts that He and Trump Cannot Win Legitimately

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There’s a fetish in the traditional media for asking Republicans to disavow crazy things Trump has said or done. This involves Tom Cotton so frequently I’m thinking of naming the phenomenon “Cotton swabs.” Marco Rubio and — since he became Speaker — Mike Johnson are other frequent participants in “Cotton swabbing.”

Perhaps Manu Raju confronts the person in the halls of Congress, perhaps they get invited to a Sunday show. And then the reporter asks them to be outraged about something outrageous that Trump said. Rather than disavowing it, the Republican blurts out some kind of propaganda instead.

Instead of serving as an opportunity to get Republicans to distance themselves from Trump, Republicans exploit the “Cotton swab” to perform obeisance to Trump’s fascism and air propaganda on the mainstream media.

It works every single time.

Yet journalists keep trying it, never varying their method.

Because he’s a smooth and shameless liar, JD Vance is especially adept at exploiting “Cotton swabs.”

In the past week, JD’s “Cotton swabs” have involved questions about whether JD would have certified Joe Biden’s victory. It started when NYT’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked JD the question five times.

Last few questions. In the debate, you were asked to clarify if you believe Trump lost the 2020 election. Do you believe he lost the 2020 election? I think that Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election, but we’re focused on the future. I think there’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020. I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020, which is a wide-open border, groceries that are unaffordable. And look, Lulu —

Senator, yes or no. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Let me ask you a question. Is it OK that big technology companies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, which independent analysis have said cost Donald Trump millions of votes?

Senator Vance, I’m going to ask you again. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes? I think that’s the question.

Senator Vance, I’m going to ask you again. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? And I’ve answered your question with another question. You answer my question and I’ll answer yours.

I have asked this question repeatedly. It is something that is very important for the American people to know. There is no proof, legal or otherwise, that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election. But you’re repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I’m saying, which is that when our own technology firms engage in industrial-scale censorship — by the way, backed up by the federal government — in a way that independent studies suggest affect the votes. I’m worried about Americans who feel like there were problems in 2020. I’m not worried about this slogan that people throw: Well, every court case went this way. I’m talking about something very discrete, a problem of censorship in this country that I do think affected things in 2020. And more importantly, that led to Kamala Harris’s governance, which has screwed this country up in a big way.

Senator, would you have certified the election in 2020? Yes or no? I’ve said that I would have voted against certification because of the concern that I just raised. I think that when you have technology companies —

The answer is no. When you have technology companies censoring Americans at a mass scale in a way that, again, independent studies have suggested affect the vote. I think that it’s right to protest against that, to criticize that, and that’s a totally reasonable thing.

Two other journalists imagined they could do better. After letting JD claim that Trump’s lies about Aurora have some truth to them and insisting that he knows better about disparate assistance in North Carolina, for example, Martha Raddatz again gave JD a chance to claim that the two-day delay of letting people see Hunter Biden’s dick pics swung the 2020 election, and utterly predictably, he took the opportunity to falsely claim that “big tech” had “censored” Hunter Biden’s dick pics and that that was cause enough to declare the 2020 election invalid.

RADDATZ: Senator, we’re just about out of time here. We’re just about out of time here. And I want to end with this — in interview after interview, question after question, and in the debate, you refused to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

So I’m just going to assume that if I ask you 50 times whether he lost the election, you would not acknowledge that he did. Is that correct?

VANCE: Martha, you’ve — you asked this question, I’ve been asked this question 10 times in the past couple of weeks. Of course, Donald Trump and I believe there were problems in 2020. You haven’t asked about inflation, the —

(CROSSTALK)

RADDATZ: No, I’m sorry, let’s stick to this. I know — I know —

VANCE: The American people want us to talk about how to make their lives better. They don’t want us to —

RADDATZ: Why won’t you say that? Why won’t you say that?

VANCE: Because — because, Martha, I believe that in 2020, when big tech firms were censoring American citizens, that created very serious problems. And by the way, Martha, you’re — you’re a journalist. You represent the American media.

Look at the polling on this. A lot of Americans feel like they were silenced in the run-up to the 2020 election. That is such a bigger issue. That fundamental problem —

(CROSSTALK)

RADDATZ: If you — I just want to —

VANCE: — that me and Donald Trump talking about it, and unfortunately, Martha —

RADDATZ: But I don’t understand why you want to say that you believe it?

(CROSSTALK)

VANCE: She’s — well, won’t just say what, that I think the 2020 election had some problems? I’ve said that repeatedly.

RADDATZ: Did Donald Trump lose? That’s the question, and you know that’s the question.

VANCE: Martha, I’ve said repeatedly I think the election had problems. You want to say rigged. You want to say he won. Use whatever vocabulary term you want — I want to focus on the fact that we had big technology firms censoring our fellow citizens in a way that violated our fundamental rights.

Thankfully, Phil Bump laid out the absurdity behind JD’s answer so I don’t have to. What JD claims was a question about censorship was, in fact, a question about whether, if the hard drive that right wingers claim is a laptop yielded information about China that Congress never managed to find in two years of trying, would it have changed their vote.

It is not the case that tech companies censoring a story — specifically, a New York Post story about an email attributed to a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter — cost Trump the election.

This, too, has been explored at length in the past, but it should immediately fail the smell test anyway. The 2020 election was a referendum on Trump, on his presidency and particularly on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It is ridiculous to suggest that this would have changed had Twitter (as it was then known) not briefly limited the sharing of a New York Post story about how one of Hunter Biden’s business partners sent him an email thanking him for getting him in the room with his father.

The “independent studies” which Vance mentioned presumably refer to one poll conducted on behalf of the right-wing Media Research Center after the election. It presented respondents with a sweeping claim linking Biden to foreign business interests, asking whether awareness of that purported link would have led people to reconsider their votes. A chunk of self-reported Biden voters said they would have.

Setting aside the vast inaccuracies inherent in having people assess what they would have done had the conditions of their decision-making been slightly different, the question didn’t even center on the New York Post story! It was about purported Chinese investors and used the same “Biden family” framing on which the failed Republican impeachment probe depended.

Even ignoring all the other false premises — that the hard drive he claims was a laptop was “censored,” that the right wing poll is accurate — not even the laptop itself, in federal hands, has substantiated illegal conduct beyond a known crack addiction and a gun purchase.

I would add that, in his answer to NYT, JD justifies a claim about what he would have done in 2021 with a partisan poll not taken until two years later. His answer is based on false premiise after false premise and a time machine.

But, as Bump also lays out, this answer is especially ridiculous given the confirmation that Trump’s campaign has done what JD falsely insinuates the Biden campaign did in 2020: Ask a tech company (probably all tech companies) to censor data.

As Ken Klippenstein described when declaring victory, Elon Musk personally made the decision to reverse his permanent suspension when NYT exposed the Trump campaign’s involvement.

Late last night, X (née Twitter) reinstated my account after banning me on September 26 for publishing the J.D. Vance dossier. Elon Musk personally intervened, in the name of “free speech principles,” according to correspondence I’ve seen. Musk had previously declared me “evil” before X suspended me in a move we now know was coordinated with the Trump campaign.

“I’ve asked X Safety to unsuspend him, even though I think he is an awful human being,” Musk told political commentator Brian Krassenstein (and frequent doppelgänger of mine) on October 11. “Important to stay true to free speech principles.”

The reinstatement of my account later that day reversed what X had previously informed me was a “permanent” suspension. The only explanation I’ve received from X came in an email from Twitter Support last night. The email reiterated my alleged violation of X’s policy on posting private information, but also said that the incident may have been a mistake on my part, for which reason I was being un-suspended.

Note, Klippenstein’s account is back. The links to the JD dossier are not. Xitter is still doing what Elon Musk claims is an affront to free speech, suppressing true information.

It is a testament to the voluntary impotence of the press that they don’t make JD pay a price for these ridiculous claims.

After all, if he believes his premise — that the throttling of content based on stolen information is such a severe abuse that it makes the entire election illegitimate — then he has already conceded that he and Trump cannot score a legitimate victory. If it is the case that “big tech” “censorship” can delegitimize an entire election — even ignoring that Trump’s campaign made demands and Biden’s campaign only asked for non-consensual dick pics to be taken down — then he has conceded all legitimacy.

To be sure, I’m not saying this. I think Vance and Trump might still win this, fair and square.

But Vance, based on his comments, has already stated that if Trump wins, Trump’s victory will be illegitimate based on his success at censoring the JD Vance dossier.