On Thursday, two speeches delivered within as many hours defined the stakes of this election perhaps as well as everything that has come before.
In back-to-back appearances, in what might be the two most compelling hours of the entire election, Michelle Obama in New Hampshire and Donald Trump in Florida delivered the fiercest, most provocative and hardest-hitting speeches of an election cycle that has been without precedent in hot rhetoric.
Michelle Obama delivered a highly personal, impassioned, and forceful speech. And at the same time, she showed that you can be inflamed without losing your intellect. That empathy and moral outrage are powerful enough to still reach people in the midst of a season overrun with exaggeration and outright lies.
“And I have to tell you that I listen to all of this and I feel it so personally, and I’m sure that many of you do, too, particularly the women. The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman. It is cruel. It’s frightening. And the truth is, it hurts.”
Michelle Obama delivered a red-hot sense of decency and a flaming demand for the rejection of cruelty and abuse. She grabbed this election by the scruff of the neck and shook it.
As she finished, Donald Trump emerged onto a stage in Florida to address his latest rally. And what Trump showed was that passion can amplify more than intellect and decency. It also serves hatred. It also amplifies distrust. It welds fear and anger into destructive rage.
What Donald Trump delivered was the demolition plan for democracy.
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“This is not simply another four-year election,” he said. “This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not we the people reclaim control over our government.”
His attacks on the press included not just personal attacks against People Magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff based on her looks ...
“You take a look. Look at her,” he said. “Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”
but general attacks against the media that ended with reporters having to be escorted from the rally under police protection.
As his speech went on, Trump tied the media into a grand conspiracy. One that was centered around the Clintons.
“The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure,” he said. “We’ve seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents, in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special-interest friends and her donors.”
The phrase “international bankers” is one with a long, dark history.
“Whether intentionally or not, Donald Trump is evoking classic anti-Semitic themes that have historically been used against Jews and still reverberate today,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights discrimination, said in a statement.
Trump may well have drawn the phrase from Breitbart or InfoWars or any other of the alt-right sites and organizations feeding his campaign. Those sites, in turn, know very well its origin. And celebrate it. There was no doubt about the purpose of Trump’s speech: To raise the stakes on an already overheated campaign and to focus on himself as a Christ-like figure that offers the only salvation in a failing world.
In two hours Thursday, the lines were drawn as never before. Michelle Obama delivered a case against Trump’s personal and moral fitness with a forcefulness that Hillary Clinton cannot match, given the past charges against her husband. Meanwhile, Trump has embraced fully the blow-it-up argument that will rattle Republican leaders but which animates those Americans who are most alienated from the country’s establishment. Those are the parameters of the political debate as it stands today — and the choice that will be settled on Election Day.
Trump was right about one thing. He really is an “existential threat.”