Reminder: While Donald Trump, tapping into Long islanders’ obsession with crime, pitches himself as the “law and order,” “tough on crime” candidate to Long Islanders, Trump is a convicted felon who promises to pardon the insurrectionists he incited to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has pardoned a score of criminals who have gone on to commit crimes, and promises to use the Department of Justice to seek retribution against his political foes © Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com via MSNBC.
By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com, editor@news-photos-features.com
They say we shouldn’t be judgmental of Trump supporters, but it is hard not to be when they accept obvious lies and absurdities as truths and follow blindly as if in a cult. This was on view during Trump’s rally at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, when he asserted his confidence that he could actually win New York State’s electoral votes (despite being double-digits behind and no Republican winning New York in decades). But he was really here to elect those Long Island Republican Congressmen in order for Republicans to hold control of the House.
After Springfield, Ohio officials repeatedly told Trump and his mini-me VP JD Vance that there was no truth to their tall tale of Haitian migrants (legally in the US having been granted Temporary Protected Status and invited to Springfield to help resuscitate their moribund economy) kidnapping and eating pets, Vance admitted to lying as a political tactic “to get media attention” but more accurately, to inflame hate, stir political violence and get votes.
A candidate who would lie about legal migrants eating pets to trigger votes would lie us into war for political or personal benefit. Trump has already proved he will sell out national security – extort a desperate foreign leader like Ukraine’s Zelenskyy by withholding appropriated military aid; sell arms to Saudi Arabia; sell out allies (like NATO); set the powers of government against opponents who he has called “vermin,” “animals” and “unhumans” while pardoning actual criminals and insurrectionists because they support him; obstruct justice and steal classified secrets.
So Trump comes to Long Island and repeats the lies about “illegals” invading New York and promises the biggest deportation crusade in history (never mind actual laws and due process).
Honing in on crime which is a real hot button issue for Long Islanders even though the region is among the safest in the United States (up until the recent uptick in gun violence which may well be related to the Supreme Court’s overturn of the state’s century-old gun law that has resulted in easy access to concealed carry permits), he lies about rampant crime when, in fact, New York City has the 96th lowest crime rate among America's 100 largest cities, and violent crime. This is thanks to Biden-Harris administration and Governor Kathy Hochul’s gun safety policies and community policing investment and violence intervention programs, has dropped at record pace after spiking under Trump. But while violent crime has dropped, hate crimes increased 39% in 2024, double the incidents against Jews and Muslims, largely because Trump stokes hate and political violence for his own ends, giving permission to his followers to go after anyone he or they have targeted. Meanwhile, gun violence is highest in 2024 in states with the loosest gun restrictions: Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, and Montana.
Trump actually said this: “They would take me to a subway, put me on and say, ‘Bye, darling. Bye.’ If you do that today, you have about a 75% chance that you’ll never see your child again. What the hell has happened here? What has happened?”
Clearly, his addled mind is confusing riding the subway (when have you heard about any school kid getting assaulted on the subway?) with being massacred at school, the movies, the mall, the grocery, a parade, because of his promotion of easy access to assault weapons, his glorification of gun violence and his refusal to push for Red Flag laws or provide resources for mental health.
Trump also presented himself – get this – as the “law and order,” “tough on crime” candidate: “But when I get back into the Oval Office, the madness ends, and the law and order is going to return to our country. A fully reformed Federal Department of Justice will deliver massive public safety funding for New York and other Democrat-run cities that are under siege. Give me a shot. You will have a safe New York within three months. Three months. For every New Yorker being terrorized by this wave of migrant crime, November 5th will be your liberation day. It’s going to be liberation, because you are living like hell. You’re living a life like hell.:
On the other hand, Trump, who is the first person to run for office as a convicted felon and has yet to face trial for stealing national secrets, obstructing justice, attempting to overturn the election, inciting an insurrection and disrupting the peaceful transition of power, already has a record for doing the “lawfare” he accuses Democrats of – that is, weaponizing law enforcement by pursuing and manufacturing investigations against his foes and people he was just pissed at including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe, Patrick Strzok, John Kerry and John Bolton, while obstructing, interfering, or cancelling investigations and prosecutions against his friends including Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon.
So when Trump promises to use the Department of Justice to seek “retribution” against his enemies – from politicians to military officers to federal officials to journalists – and the Imperial Supremes have given him the green light to do so, people are taking him seriously enough to say they would leave the country should Trump be reelected.
The guy who claims he will restore “law and order” and derides former District Attorney and Attorney General Kamala Harris as “soft on crime” pardons or grants clemency to actual criminals. He commuted the sentence of a New York drug dealer and loan shark who threatened the family of a Brooklyn rabbi despite undermining an FBI investigation (but is a buddy of the Kushners), who has just been rearrested and charged with assaulting his wife and her father. He granted clemency to a man who was serving a life sentence for murdering a federal law enforcement officer (he shared an attorney with Don Jr.) who was just convicted in Florida of attacking his wife.
Of the 238 people who Trump pardoned or granted clemency, by 2022 at least 10 were back in legal jeopardy, ABC News reported. Besides the drug dealers and cop killers, murderers and batterers, “Those pardoned by Trump during his term in office included dozens of friends and political allies. The list included celebrities, lawmakers and former aides who had been convicted of crimes ranging from fraud to murder -- including four private military contractors who were in prison for murdering 17 Iraqi citizens, including two children, in a 2007 attack in Baghdad.” Among them, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon (who proved so vital to his 2020 attempted insurrection) and Charles Kushner (Jared Kushner’s father), and interfered with the prosecution of Michael Flynn. So yeah, “law and order” and “tough on crime.”
And now Trump promises to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists he calls “political prisoners” and “hostages” - sending a message to those he wants to riot, or play footsie with ballots to insure he takes office in 2025.
Reminder: it is Trump (not Biden or Harris) who has called to defund police in cities that provided sanctuary to migrants, particularly New York City, and continues to call for defunding the FBI and CIA for the audacity of investigating domestic terrorism and foreign interference in elections.
One of the biggest lies is when he promised Long Island he would “cut taxes for families, small businesses, and workers, including restoring the SALT deduction” which he maliciously put into place to stick it to Blue States (the Donor states that send billions of dollars more to the federal government than are returned) and had his minions in Congress repeatedly reject repealing the SALT cap, as Democrat Congressman Tom Suozzi has been trying to do since taking back the seat from Republican fraudster George Santos.
Take the blinders off, does this remotely sound with what you see around you? “New York, with crime at record levels, with terrorists and criminals pouring in, and with inflation eating your hearts out, vote for Donald Trump. What the hell do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? Think of it. What the hell do you have to lose?” (He used the same line in 2016 to cajole Black Americans, but during his presidency, Blacks saw what they had to lose – their voting rights, health care, their homes, their jobs, their lives as they were more likely to succumb to COVID and gun violence.)
What the hell do we have to lose? How about our freedom. Women have had a taste of what they have to lose under Trump and it will only get worse. Women are needlessly dying now for being denied access to reproductive and emergency health care.
“Together, we will rebuild our roads, bridges, highways, and airports. They’re falling apart. They’re falling down. We will renovate New York’s subway.”
Actually, thanks to Governor Andrew Cuomo (yes, that guy), Governor Kathy Hochul and Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, New York’s infrastructure is being rebuilt for the 21st century – new LaGuardia and JFK airports, new Penn Station and Grand Central Madison stations, new LIRR third track and subway lines, new UBS and Barclays Center arenas, new Tappan Zee (Cuomo) and other bridges; improved roads, parks, broadband, water infrastructure, climate mitigation, affordable housing – no thanks to Trump who made an effort to kill the Hudson Gateway Tunnel deal (back on track with Biden-Harris), just to stick it to New York. And despite hailing every week as “Infrastructure Week”, the self-proclaimed Great Builder never built anything.
I wonder if the Trump supporters realize that while he boasts and makes these outrageous claims, he never actually provides any detailed policy (as they keep demanding of Kamala), or that who and what he supports is directly tied to who donates to him. So now that’s Elon Musk and he has moderated his venom for electric vehicles like Tesla.
To say Trump is “transactional” is an understatement. At a fundraiser, he promised Big Oil that if they donated $1 billion to his campaign, he would sweep away Biden’s historic climate actions and told Long Island he would end the electric mandate on cars and “terminate the Green New Scam...one of the greatest scams in the history of our country.”
Ditto Big Pharma and Project 2025 intention to repeal negotiated rates for prescription drugs like insulin. Ditto a promise to sweep away any regulations on the already massively corrupt crypto currency scam.
But how creepy is it that just days before the election, Trump announces he is launching a crypto currency company, to get in on the con and promises to make the US “the crypto capital of the world” (undermining his next promise “to keep the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. We’re losing that, but I’ll keep it. I’ll keep it. China wants to take over, and if that happened to us, that would be like losing a war. That would be the biggest thing. That would make us a third world country. We will keep our dollar as the reserve currency. Remember I said it, and it will be easy. It’ll be easy.”
Trump also promised to “settle the war in Ukraine” in a New York minute because “I got along very well with Putin and Zelenskyy.” Also, “ending the chaos in the Middle East” is a piece of cake for Trump, though he has never actually said how. On the other hand, he charged, “A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote to obliterate Israel. That’s what’s going to happen. Israel will not exist in two years. And by the way, we are closer to World War III right now than at any time during anybody’s life in this beautiful room.”
To sum up, Trump spewed a rambling list of promises, or rather, obsessions: “We will stop the invasion, the migrant crime, support our police, strengthen our military... We will build a missile defense shield around our country, keep critical race theory and transgender insanity out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports. We will defend the Second Amendment, restore free speech, and we will secure our elections, and we will secure our borders. Everyone will prosper, every family will thrive, and every day will be filled with opportunity and hope.
“But this is how we will end the era of inflation, mayhem, misery, under Kamala and Crooked Joe, and unleash safety, prosperity, and peace for Americans of every race, religion, color, and creed. That’s what we’re going to do. Together, we will deliver low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, low inflation, so that everyone can afford groceries, a car, and a home. Very simple. Right?
But while Trump doesn’t actually have a plan or even an understanding of economics, public policy or foreign policy, his handlers who created Project 2025 do.
So easy. Very simple. Right?
__________________________
© 2024 News & Photo Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. For editorial feature and photo information, go to www.news-photos-features.com, email editor@news-photos-features.com. Blogging at www.dailykos.com/blogs/NewsPhotosFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures, Tweet @KarenBRubin Threads: @news_and_photo_features
