A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
‘One Really Violent Day’
With five weeks until the election, and early voting underway, Donald Trump has returned to the themes that most animate him: ones grounded in race and racial violence.
In a campaign appearance Friday in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, where the outcome of the 2024 election may very well be decided, Trump launched into a disjointed attack on crime, long a Republican code word for Black. But the dream sequence he narrated about unlawfully using violence preemptively as a deterrent to more crime was clear as a bell:
Crime and immigration as racist code words are not new in general or specifically to Trump. He has fallen back on them over and over, as other rhetorical devices come and go. As has been observed repeatedly over the past decade, Trump seems to have a visceral personal reaction to the prospect of violence, especially as a means of cleansing or rejuvenating, a baptismal violence fantasy that he indulges when the going gets tough.
The violence of Trump’s fantasies take many forms – police brutality, vigilantism, pro-wrestling theatrics – but in every form they serve as a projection of strength for a fundamentally weak, craven, and damaged man.
Trump Cranks Up Attacks On Immigrants
In related news, Trump’s racist anti-immigrant rhetoric has deepened and darkened as the race has tightened and Election Day approaches. While xenophobia has always been part and parcel of Trumpism, the combination of finding little traction elsewhere and Kamala Harris’ own biracial status has left blatant racist appeals as Trump’s last campaign grasp:
- WSJ: Trump Amps Up Rhetoric to Keep Immigration at Center of Election
- NYT: Trump’s Answer to Harris’s Border Trip Is To Call Her ‘Mentally Disabled’
- CNN: To attack Harris, Trump falsely describes new stats on immigrants and homicide
- WaPo: Trump lambastes immigrants using false homicide claims
Springfield Still Reeling From Attack On Haitian Immigrants
- Politico: Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine confronts Trump’s lies.
- NYT: An Ohio Businessman Faces Death Threats for Praising His Haitian Workers
Rule Of Law Watch
- WSJ: Trump Plans Massive Shake-Up of Justice Department
- Politico Magazine: Exactly How Trump Could Prosecute His Political Enemies
The Battle To Control The Senate
- WSJ: Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund plans to spend $67.5 million on TV, radio and digital ads to flip Democratic Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin
- Politico: Ted Cruz rebrands for a tight race in Texas
2024 Ephemera
Feds Bring Charges In Iran Hack Of Trump Campaign
Three Iranian nationals were indicted in federal court in Washington, D.C., for their alleged roles in the hack-and-leak attack against the Trump campaign.
Still Fighting Impeachment I At Ukraine’s Expense
An astonishing moment, really:
Can’t Ignore
Outside of Morning Memo’s usual jurisdiction, but the weekend developments in Lebanon are too momentous not to mention:
Southern Appalachia Faces A Long Recovery From Helene
Kris Kristofferson, 1936-2024
Kris Kristofferson’s many remarkable incarnations – from youthful accomplishments like Rhodes Scholar and Army helicopter pilot to his creative output as a songwriter and musician to his substantial career as an actor – made him the embodiment of certain eras of American pop culture, especially the 1970s.
I have an offbeat amalgam of mental snapshots of him: flying helicopters offshore for the oil and gas industry from my hometown while he wrote “Me and Bobby McGee,” which Janis Joplin would make famous posthumously; the trucker in the Sam Peckinpah movie based on the novelty song “Convoy” that defined the big rig craze of the 1970s; a member of the supergroup The Highwaymen in the 1980s along with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings; his fabled confrontation with Toby Keith backstage at Nelson’s 70th birthday party in 2009, that Ethan Hawke famously described and that Kristofferson himself said he had no memory of.
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