*cough-cough*
More on that later. It’s very late on Day 3, need to get through these pronto.
~ 3 ~
The tangerine hellbeast will have a total of four rallies in Michigan between Saturday morning and Election Day. I wish I had sufficient lack of self-preservation to go to one of these events and shout at him, “Get out of my state, you diseased cretin!!!” but no.
A pity the Trump campaign hasn’t taken the conservative Detroit News’ hint — both its endorsement of Biden and its front page today:
With three days left, two headlines on one front page, illustrating perhaps the most dominant story of this election. pic.twitter.com/vkw5W3NnBx
— Matt Viser (@mviser) October 31, 2020
A key reason Trump may be in Michigan so often — since his polling has been consistently behind Biden between 5-7% for a couple months — is that Trumpist senate candidate John James is within MOE of incumbent Democrat Gary Peters.
DeVos family and Mitch McConnell’s PAC have dumped more than $10 million combined into this race because it’s closer than some of the incumbent Republicans’ races.
Trump doesn’t sound like he’s convinced he can win. He’s tired; he cut down his Friday night rally in Minnesota to 21 minutes, blaming the governor’s COVID crowd limitations.
Maybe it’s the small crowd. Maybe it’s the cold. But this is the lowest energy I’ve ever seen the President be at a rally. He’s blowing through his applause lines, just checking the boxes on his usual speech, like he’s got somewhere to be. pic.twitter.com/iZyj6YSlLp
— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) October 30, 2020
He was phoning it in. Have to wonder how that will affect James’ chances if Trump can’t produce higher energy for his base in Michigan.
~ 2 ~
Another key reason Trump is making four trips to Michigan sure looks like attempted mass murder by COVID.
New @Stanford study estimates that 18 Trump rallies have led to 30,000 COVID cases and 700 deaths
(via @AaronBelkin) https://t.co/zcR4yKwnEl pic.twitter.com/1yaPivbYFS
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) October 31, 2020
You know Team Trump knows about this trend of increased confirmed cases and deaths. You know they’re aware Michigan has had record case numbers since his 9/11 rally here.
Sure looks like malice aforethought. Add that to the damage to high volume sorting in Detroit’s U.S. Postal office and it’s a deliberate and deadly combination of voter suppression in this swing state he won by a mere ten thousand votes in 2016.
~ 1 ~
And one more key reason for showing up so often in Michigan is his incitement to violence. It’s already spawned at least one seditious conspiracy against Michigan’s Gov. Whitmer, a.k.a. “that woman in Michigan.” He trash talked about her during the last visits he’s made to this state.
Today he tweeted implicit support for an attack by Trump supporters on a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas. The attack showed up on a number of videos posted on Twitter:
These tactics have no place in Texas, my home state, and no place in America.
Please vote. Please volunteer this weekend. The future of our democracy is at stake. pic.twitter.com/G0O4yg2vnJ
— Dr. Eric Cervini (@ericcervini) October 31, 2020
This attack was encouraged by Donnie Jr. with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge, according to the Daily Beast:
“Hey Laredo, Don Jr. here. I heard you had an awesome turnout for the Trump Train,” Donald Trump Jr., son of President Donald Trump, said in a video tweeted by Daily Caller contributor Kambree Kawahine Koa. “It would be great if you guys would all get together, head down to McAllen and give Kamala Harris a nice Trump Train welcome… let’s show them how strong Texas still is as Trump country.”
The FBI is looking into this. Not holding my breath that they’ll get right on this.
~ 0 ~
One last adder to the above three things given today’s terroristic attack on the Biden-Harris bus and Biden: this country is on the verge of systemic violence. This tweet thread notes how coverage of the violence we’ve been seeing incited by Trump and his supporters is not accurately described to the public:
The way that part of the American media are generically talking about the prospects for “post-elxn violence” evacuates all agency & responsibility from the architects of this climate of fear. It reminds me of the “ancient ethnic hatreds” myth from the Bosnian War.
— Jasmin Mujanović (@JasminMuj) October 31, 2020
The media is playing it safe using the same techniques it used when describing torture by the Bush administration — as “enhanced interrogation” — and not attributing it to the inciter or perpetrators.
Even when it’s state-sanctioned violence against the media, it’s not described as bluntly as it should be. This tweet about police in Graham, NC launching an unprovoked attack with pepper spray on a GOTV march which had a permit is as blunt as it gets and it still doesn’t quite convey the level of threat:
Graham NC, where police pepper-spray children and arrest journalists.https://t.co/ASQUKDSG8E
— Steve Brown (@WGRZ_SteveBrown) October 31, 2020
We should expect U.S. media to report both incitement and attacks using the same terms they employ when this kind of violence happens in other countries.
If you’ve already voted, thank you. Please help others get to the polls.
And prepare for anything over the next four to five days.