Well, obviously this was the big overnight news and it will dominate the remainder of the election and reshape everything and be the biggest, most important, most earth-shaking story ever.
Except … no. No that’s not quite what happened. What happened was that a man in a Trump rally started to raise a sign. Some extra-twitchy Trump fan screamed “gun,” and the next moment the Secret Service came in to hustle Trump off stage.
Guy with sign was wrestled down and taken out of the rally, where he was found to be … a guy with a sign.
It took precisely 6.8 seconds for this story to go through the complete cycle of Republican paranoia and delusion, as illustrated in the delightful tweets of Citizens for Trump organizer and official social media jackass, Jack Posobiec.
You got your Trump bravely returning under fire: “Trump is back on stage minutes after assassination attempt.”
Reports of Mike Pence’s ferocious anger: “Pence reported to say, ‘In Reno? Hell, lemme at em’”
Elaborations on the terrible assassin: “Reports coming in that the assassin attempted to grab the gun of a Secret Service agent #Reno”
Blame directed at Clinton, and at the media: “The media is responsible for this latest Trump assassination attempt. They are inciting violence!”
Intro speaker at next Trump rally opens with harrowing tale of the attempted murder.
And finally, confirmation that this is the most important event of the election: “WOW! My neighbor who was voting for Hillary just said she is voting for Trump because of what just happened in Reno. We will Win!”
Meanwhile, the guy with the sign was sitting unhappily outside the rally, ready to talk to anyone about how he had just tried to raise a sign. But that’s okay. 99.4% of Trump voters will believe that Trump left the stage under a hail of bullets—each of which was personally made by Hillary and dipped in blood by John Podesta—and shrugged off the Secret Service to come powering back to the podium so he could finish talking about locking up terror Muslim Hillary in defiance of his own safety. For you, America. He does it for you.
What’s that? Pundits? In the abbreviated pundit round-up? Yeah, I guess we could try that. Come inside.
Nicholas Kristof says the “for Hillary” case is even better than the one “against Trump.”
I’ve known Clinton a bit for many years, and I have to say: The public perception of her seems to me a gross and inaccurate caricature. I don’t understand the venom, the “lock her up” chants, the assumption that she is a Lady Macbeth; it’s an echo of the animus a lifetime ago some felt for Eleanor Roosevelt. ...
In fact, what makes Hillary Clinton tick has always been a 1960s-style idealism about making the world a better place.
I did door knocking on Saturday, and made it my mission not to say the name Donald Trump. I didn’t quite succeed, because some folks who opened the door were in a mood to rant about his orangeness, but I didn’t have to once do the soppy “well, Hillary is bad, but Trump is worse” shtick that seems to pass for “support” in much of pundit land. People weren’t just eager to vote against Trump, they were also excited about voting for Hillary. And nobody I ran into was planning to sit this one out.
In 1993, The New York Times Magazine published a famous article about Clinton titled “Saint Hillary,” mocking her as a befuddled do-gooder trying to help the unfortunate. The article ridiculed her as naïve, sanctimonious and incoherent, but it also captured something real about her earnestness and motivations.
In contrast, today’s widely held caricature of an avaricious, selfish and manipulative crook is to me just plain wrong. Sure, she compromises, she sometimes dissembles and at times her judgment has been flawed. But fundamentally she is a morally serious person whose passion for four decades has been to use politics to create a more just society. That’s her real conviction.
Frank Bruni admits he has both the jeebies and the heebies.
Tuesday nears, after such epic ugliness. “It’s almost over,” friends say. “We’ll finally be done with this.” What a lovely thought. What a naïve fantasy.
There’s no end here, just a punctuation mark, a measly comma between the rancor that has built until this point and the fury to come. And there’s no way to un-see what all of us have seen over these last 18 months, to bottle up what has been un-bottled.
Election Day will redeem and settle nothing, not this time around. No matter who declares victory, tens of millions of Americans will be convinced — truly convinced — that the outcome isn’t legitimate because untoward forces intervened. Whether balloons fall on Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, there will be bolder divisions in America than there were at the start of it all and even less faith in the country’s most important institutions.
We have one political party in America whose governing position is that that governing institutions are intrinsically evil, that governing is evil, that rules and laws and agreements are evil. Trump didn’t start that. He just picked it up and ran with it. So long as the Republican Party’s argument is not “government shouldn’t be like this” but “government shouldn’t be,” the situation will degrade in direct proportion to the number of elected Republicans.
Anne Applebaum is also keyed up about the Trump threat and how it stretches into the white nationalist movements of Europe and elsewhere.
They share ideas and ideology, friends and funders. They cross borders to appear at one another’s rallies. They have deep contacts in Russia — they often use Russian disinformation — as well as friends in other authoritarian states. They despise the West and seek to undermine Western institutions. They think of themselves as a revolutionary avant-garde just like, once upon a time, the Communist International, or Comintern, the Soviet-backed organization that linked communist parties around Europe and the world. Now, of course, they are not Soviet-backed, and they are not communist. But this loose group of parties and politicians — Austria’s Freedom Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom, the UK Independence Party, Hungary’s Fidesz, Poland’s Law and Justice, Donald Trump — have made themselves into a global movement of “anti-globalists.” Meet the “Populist International”: Whoever wins the U.S. election Tuesday, its influence is here to stay.
That’s been part of my concern for months. It’s not “Trump TV,” it’s Trump’s ongoing nationalist movement and propaganda machine, which is in turn part of the whole “burn down the world” movement that seems to be popping up everywhere.
… they want to radically overthrow the institutions of the present to bring back things that existed in the past — or that they believe existed in the past — by force. Their language takes different forms in different countries, but their revolutionary projects often include the expulsion of immigrants, or at least the return to all-white (or all-Dutch, or all-German) societies; the resurrection of protectionism; the reversal of women’s or minorities’ rights; the end of international institutions and cooperation of all kinds. They advocate violence: In 2014, Trump said that “you’ll have to have riots to go back to where we used to be, when America was great.”
Sometimes they claim to be Christian, but just as often they are nihilists and cynics. Their ideology, sometimes formalized and sometimes not, opposes homosexuality, racial integration, religious tolerance and human rights.
This is your “go read the rest” assignment for the morning.
Kathleen Parker is perfectly, perfectly calm.
If Trump wins, he’ll be held more or less in check by the House and Senate because that’s the way our system of government is set up. Not even Republicans are eager to follow Trump’s lead.
There won’t be a wall. He won’t impose any religion-based immigration restrictions, because even Trump isn’t that lame-brained. He’ll dress up and behave at state dinners and be funny when called upon. He’ll even invite the media to the White House holiday party. He won’t nuke Iran for rude gestures. He won’t assault women. He and Vladimir Putin will hate each other, respectfully.
Ahh. I get it. She’s calm because she’s clearly taken a metric ton of sedatives. Republicans would absolutely follow Trump’s lead. Hell, it’s not even Trump’s lead. It’s Trump sliding down a path that’s been greased by half the Republicans in the Senate and all the Republicans in the House Freeeedddoooom! Caucus. In response to that second paragraph? Yes there will, yes he will, yes he is, no he won’t, not a chance, sure he would, he already did, and they’ll be sauna buddies.
Dana Milbank looks into the magic (gold) mirror at the first 100 days of Trump
Now that James B. Comey has dedicated the FBI to the election of Donald Trump, a remote possibility is a serious prospect. But we don’t have to wonder what the first 100 days of a Trump presidency would look like. Trump has given a clear picture of what he plans, and the rest would be filled in by events beyond Trump’s control.
Among things you can expect: a trade war with China and Mexico, a restarting of Iran’s nuclear program, millions losing their health insurance, the start of mass deportations, a possible military standoff with China in the South China Sea and North Korea, the resumption of waterboarding, the use of federal agencies to go after Hillary Clinton and other Trump critics, the spectacle of the commander in chief suing women who have accused him of sexual misconduct and a constitutional crisis as the president of the United States attempts to disqualify the federal judge in a fraud suit against him because the judge is Latino.
Oh, lord. I suddenly understand why the media has been working so hard to make it possible for Trump to win. Compared to that, Hillary is going to give them 100 days of sound policy and tedious making things work well. Yawn.
American businesses would lose hundreds of billions of dollars in exports. A Moody’s report done for The Post predicts a net cost to the United States of 7 million jobs. Recession would come within a year — unless further economic shocks bring about a 1930s-style depression.
Major recession, or actual depression? Actually Trump’s just drawing up the papers for how he can declare the country bankrupt and walk away with billions. He has experience.
Ross Douthat was too painfully boring to summarize this morning, but if you want a lengthy retelling of his family tree and dash of bitterness for everyone not reproducing wildly, go right on and read it. Warning: there’s not even a good word this week.
Paul Krugman on the Republican’s willingness to win at all costs.
This has been an election in which almost every week sees some longstanding norm in U.S. political life get broken. We now have a major-party candidate who refuses to release his tax returns, despite huge questions about his business dealings. He constantly repeats claims that are totally false, like his assertion that crime is at record highs (it’s actually just a bit off historic lows). He stands condemned by his own words as a sexual predator. And there’s much, much more.
... Republicans decided long ago that anything went in the effort to delegitimize and destroy Democrats. Those of us old enough to remember the 1990s also remember the endless series of accusations hurled against the Clintons.
For reference, see “Hillary Supporter Attempted to Assassinate Trump in Reno” directly above.
Jack Schlossberg reminds us that voting is an action we can take pride in for a long time.
Four years ago, I went to the polls to cast my first vote. I knew that years later, I’d proudly tell a kid voting for the first time that when I was her age, I voted for Barack Obama.
For my entire life, people have come up to me and told me a story just like mine, except for them, it was 1960 and their first vote was for my grandfather, John F. Kennedy. These men and women came out in numbers to elect a man who challenged them to ask what they could do for their country, who called for bold leadership in science and space, who supported civil rights and who inspired millions to help change the world for the better. ...
Every young person, in age or at heart, should realize that Hillary Clinton is our candidate and that we have a responsibility to each other to turn out and vote. Too much is wrong with our country, our world and our planet for any of us to stay home.
That's it. Look upon this moment. Savor it. Rejoice with great gladness. Great gladness! Remember it always, for you are joined by it. Remember it well. this night, this great victory. So that in the years ahead, you can say, 'I was there that night, with Hillary, the president!'
Okay, it’s quite possible that I took that word-for-word from Merlin’s speech to the Knights of the Round Table, and it may have been Arthur, not Hillary. But Kennedy got me thinking of Camelot, and then … it seemed to fit.
Liz Spayd delivers a mixed report card on the Times coverage of Russian hacking.
The team in Washington produced commendable, competitive work on an exceptionally difficult reporting target. Led by David Sanger, The Times was first to link the Russians to the hacks, to examine the baffling role of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and to smartly explore the options that the Obama administration could use to retaliate. I have no substantive complaints about the stories The Times has done.
Solid A, research team.
What was missing is a sense that this coverage is actually important. After The Washington Post broke the story that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, The Times came back with its own solid piece, but it didn’t crack the front page and it earned only a modest mention on the home page. A piece laying out evidence that the Russians may be trying to falsify voting results in state databases ran on A15 and got minimal play digitally. Another on Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signaling that the White House was prepared to order a rare covert cyberattack against Russian found a home on page A19.
But Liz, the Times had to devote (literally) every single column of the front page to the news of Comey’s “more emails” letter. And then there were those inside stories from unnamed sources at the FBI debunking stories that other people were running where the Times had to run them without checking a word of what those sources said. So you really can’t blame them for … No, really. It’s an F. Guys in the front office? An F.
The New York Times is climbing into a Times machine (see what I did there?) to visit the distant land of … Wednesday.
The United States has seen worse than Donald Trump. It has endured political crises and corruption, war abroad and bloodshed at home. But that doesn’t make it any easier to contemplate the catastrophe that looms if we wake up Wednesday morning to President-elect Trump.
There’s no sense complaining anymore. The hurricane is three days from landfall. The urgent thing now is to avert the worst, minimize the damage, save the foundations, clear the mess.
Remember: There’s a full two months between election day and inauguration day. That is time for everyone not a Anglo-Saxon protestant to seek sanctuary, and for those who qualify to buy a red hat and practice chanting. I suppose some media people would also be in trouble. Thank goodness I never said anything bad about Trump. Or Russia. Or the FBI. Boy, that would have been not good.
The Washington Post wonders if Republicans are still taking orders from democracy.
The big question after Tuesday’s election will not be whether Obamacare is repealed, Social Security expanded or the Ryan budget passed. It will be whether the nation’s leaders act to preserve our republic — or hasten a descent toward a banana republic. ...
Unfortunately, many congressional Republicans appear set on making an already corrosive atmosphere in Washington even more toxic. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, promised to mire the country in years of investigations if Hillary Clinton wins. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) raised the possibility that Republicans would block any Clinton Supreme Court nominee. Now Republicans are brazenly and irresponsibly discussing the true nuclear option: impeachment.
It’s not too late to resolve the issue of anyone who name is preceded by “Rep.” Let Chaffetz go spend a few years investigating how he got dumped. Then he can work his way back to looking at other races.
Now put down your coffee. Go knock on some doors.