87 Comments

Powerful words as always Steve Schmidt. By our beloved Winston Churchill as well. JD Vance's name shouldn't even be in the same sentence as his as well as DJT's. I have Faith in the American people too. Enough!! Sick of the madness and chaos. My ptsd is going nuts. #HarrisWalz2024.

πŸ’™πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ’™πŸ™

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Right On, Lisa! πŸ’™πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ’™πŸ™

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I'm with both of you.πŸ‘

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The problem for Trump/Vance and Maga is that they ARE fascists. I am mailing this into my local newspaper as a letter to the editor. We must make people aware of how dangerous Trump/Vance and the movement they lead are:

Donald Trump is getting very boring; the same old routine, endlessly repeated. Big lies, little lies, demonization, threats, and claims to the singular ability to solve every problem facing us. The MSM is not alerting the population to who he really is. He posted this on Truth Social (9/7):

" WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country."

Assuming victory and threatening to prosecute β€œLawyers, Political Operatives, (and) Donors,” before the election takes place is the promise of a megalomaniac out to take control of our country to his own benefit. Praise of dictators is laying the groundwork to ally with Putin and other enemies of the U.S. in furtherance of his insatiable appetite for power and wealth.

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Great letter Anthony!!

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We as a country have allowed for too long the minority of this country to rule the majority.

The electoral college should be scrapped. One person , one vote, and the majority rules.

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Remind me to proof read before pushing the send button.

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Easy to correct. See the three tiny dots? Edit.

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Shady Vance, Total Hypocrisy: "I'd say that's pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric. It needs to cut this crap out. Somebody's going to get hurt by it." Trump, Vance, and cohorts need to turn their fingers around so they're pointing at themselves. GO Harris/Walz!!

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School children in Springfield are being terrorized! They could be traumatized by this. Sickening.And Vance is worried about the 'rhetoric' affecting the MAGA nuts! Wicked nutty!

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While I like the play on Vance's initials, I'm not sure about the extent to which it applies. Vance is clear about his positions and goals. They are vile, but not obscure. I'm not even sure you can call him a hypocrite, because there is in him no evident core of belief that he betrays with his rhetoric. He needs to disappear from American political life, except as a negative example.

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Yes, you're correct. Vance isn't "shady" at all. He's not hiding who he is at all and he is rotten to the core. Thanks!

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Plus is politically ambitious to the point of being unmeasurable! A complete know-it-ALL!

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I’d say Churchill was right at the time he made the statement, but times change and it no longer holds. I look at voting patterns and who is getting elected and what they represent and what they say about others. As Mark Robinson said about people who oppose MAGA: β€œsome folks deserve killing.”

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I agree with you, John. And on top of the incendiary racist and antidemocratic rhetoric and lies by TFG and his minions, we have that arson being accelerated by social media and rightwing 'news' outlets, both of whom are believed uncritically by MAGA followers. Dangerous times...

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I have been trying to separate what I hope for to what I am witnessing. I wish they lined up, but they do not.

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Thanks Steve. We seem to be living in an America where too many, including the MSM, are unwilling to call out the danger of Trump, Vance and what used to be the Party of Lincoln. Are we living in β€œThe DaVinci Code”? Republicans are asking in plain sight for death threats on Harris, Biden snd Walz. What happened to America? Long held grievances, irresponsible journalists, politicians with no ethics, plus violence have landed us where we are today. Ugly and dangerous.

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The chickens are coming home to roost. Donald needs to look in the mirror if he wants to see who is responsible for the hate speech and why his comments are bringing out this lunacy. Donald and his propaganda ministers are responsible for the assassination attempts on his life. His lies and thuggery incite the violence and that is the reason it is landing on his doorstep.

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He should look in the mirror, but we know he won't. He plays the victim better than anyone. It's one of the few things he does well, along with lie.

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founding

Perhaps at a different time, when trump looked into a mirror, the mirror would fracture into a million little pieces. There is no Jekyll & Hyde in this scenario, he was never, not in his entire life, a Jekyll. He is Hyde through and through.

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Trump is getting what he deserves? He needs to clean his slate and act as if he is running to head a respected nation of the World! The gig is over and the media should seek the truth. They should flag the ultra hate and dishonesty of the MAGA party. NOT helping this country nor the generations to come! In the hands of the voters so use your power to make changes. Turn the page!

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I agree that the Churchill quote has been true, thus far.

We've been gifted as a country right from the start because of our natural resources. Our constitution and institutions have provided an effective safety net against fascism, thus far.

But no one gets an endless amount of second chances.

The lack of education, knowledge of history, and critical thinking skills of our citizenry coupled with the modern day epidemic of narcissism and victimhood makes me quake in my boots for our "Republic, if we can keep it."

The Constitution, if enforced, mitigates the evil within us. The Declaration of Independence, if embodied, allows the soul to soar.

I've given money, I've knocked on doors, I've engaged in conversations with MAGA, and I will vote Blue up and down ballot in November.

Is that enough for a people who don't know what they have?

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The unsettling thing to me is not only, "Is that enough for a people who don't know what they have?", but the ones who know and simply don't care. And it's also about the way the swing states vote. 155 million people voted in 2020, yet it came down to fewer than 50k votes in the 6 or so swing states. A few thousand here or there, or simply "find me 11800 votes" in the wrong places, or enough election officials disenfranchise 10s of thousands of voters and refuse to certify turns everything on its heels.

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I no longer have enough faith in the accuracy of Churchill's words to believe America will eventually do the right thing. Some Americans, maybe even most Americans, strive to do the right thing in most circumstances. However, it sure seems that those who have been seduced by Trump and Vance and their psycho-pathologies are never going to be able to un-seduce themselves. Trumpism, in other words, is going to outlive Trump, and no one appears to have the solution - any solution - for how to destroy Trumpism once and for all. The MAGA crowd isn't going to just go away, even if Trump & Vance lose big time. What's it going to take to de-program these people going forward?

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The problem is, we have never fully acknowledged or compensated for the mistakes and grave mistreatment of "others" in our past: To name a few, the genocide against Native Americans, enslavement of African-Americans, concentration camps for Japanese Americans, the horrors of our use of agent orange and napalm, the "shock and awe" attack on Iraq, second class citizenship for women, institutional prejudice against gays, people of color etc.

Americans have not been told the true history of our country. Instead, they have been fed stories about "Manifest Destiny," "our Exceptional Nation status," "our being a Shining City on a Hill," and other such pablum.

MAGA is the latest iteration of far right movements that have reinforced belief in our inherent superiority and the inferiority of 'others.' Purify our national bloodstream, go back to rugged individualism, shrink the government, assign status to individuals on the basis of irrelevant "grouping."

I wish I knew how to help people supporting Trump understand what they are doing to themselves and our country.

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Agree. Trumpism and its popularity illustrate some disturbing things about some Americans and their perceptions. Right wing media and now social media, along with foreign (mostly Russian but also Chinese and North Korean, among others) influence have fissured our electorate. Repair will be long and difficult.

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You can only help those that want to be helped! MAGA crowd is not in that group!

Seat belts on! Rough roads ahead!

MAGAs want chaos to please their master/leader and change is very doubtful! They want power, recognition, and BIGLY space in our society even IF in the minority!

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Unfortunately, MSM echo chambers and SM algorithms make this nearly impossible to overcome. Not talking about censuring people, but it certainly is a different take on 1A. This is something that Churchill could have never considered in his comments. To me, it's similar to 2A at a time of muskets vs. what's available today. There is just no comparison.

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Did anyone see scott jennings last night practically in tears about the second attempt at trumps life and blaming Harris/Biden for it? Nobody at the table thought to inform jennings that perhaps people listen to trumps rhetoric every day on the news and make their own decisions about him!

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Marc Thiessen, who was the Chief Speechwriter for George W. Bush, had a column in the Washington Post today praising the MAGA candidate and telling people all the great things coming our way if we vote MAGA.

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The infection has spread deep and wide.

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Indeed. Steve probably knows Thiessen well. I would have expected better from someone who should be an intelligent person, but the guy’s devotion to Chump makes him as dumb as a rock.

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Worthless words? Count on it!

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Thiessen lives in an alternate universe. You can be sure if you see his name attached to any article, the substance of that article will sit 180 degrees from observable reality.

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That has been my experience. And Kathleen Parker is another annoyance. She says that Chump is a bad person but Harris supporters are on drugs. Another loon.

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One of the reasons I canceled my WaPo subscription last year.

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I’m ready to cancel. Between him and Kathleen Parker, it is a tired paper of retreads with nothing helpful to say.

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You can count in Marc! He is consistent every time he gets a chance!

Maybe his wish is to be a speech writer for Trumpie?

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Scott is a buffoon but CNN still hires him! One of the MAGA drags on that channel?

No Trump truth coming from those lips!

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The first rule in dealing with trump is that nothing is real. These two incidents need to be carefully investigated to see if they were real or fakes staged by trump for the publicity and to boost his image as a victim and a martyr. Look at the video of the first incident. Trump turns his head to the right, his ear away from the camera. Shots are heard, Trump's head doesn't twitch or jerk around, he raises his hand to his ear and takes it down palm up. There is no blood on his hand at this point. He ducks behind the podium and comes up a little later with a red substance on his hand and ear. Pictures and videos of trump a week or so later show no damage to his ear. No medical report is ever issued. There's a lot more to consider, but I don't want to write an essay. Think about it carefully.

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The most pernicious feature of fascism is its recalcitrant need to discombobulate the terra firma upon which humanity walks, namely, objective reality sustained by empirically verifiable knowledge that is conventionally agreed upon by nearly all humans. Fascism corrodes and hollows out the mind as a precondition for exterminating bodies. It weaponizes mental illness to create doubt even in normal, psychologically well-adjusted people. In short, Trump and his Shitlerian MAGA fascist cult symbiotically fuse moral evil with shared psychosis, a danger America first wrought in its original sin of institutionalized human chattel slavery of black African peoples but now risks transmogrifying, absent exigent intervention, into a juggernaut whose destination is the end of American civilization and its noble experiment in self-governed freedom.

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I am struck by the unanimous condemnation of the assassination β€œattempt” In the media. To be provocative, I post the following question:

At what point does a person become so dangerous to the country that an assassination is warranted? Would anyone condemn the β€œbriefcase bomber” who attempted to assassinate Hitler?

Just asking.

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The difference I would draw here is

1) Trump is not president.

2) the safety nets that should have thrown Trump on the scrap heap of history, have failed:

Merrick Garland is worthless. Fail. Half of the members of SCOTUS are corrupt and cancerous. Fail. Congress twice failed to impeach. Fail. The Republican party made Trump their candidate 3x. Fail. The common sense of the American people. Fail. Decency, reason, logic. Fail.

3) a man like Trump is not supposed to rise to the top in a democratic Republic. Our institutions should have protected us. He should have been laughed at and shown the door. Assassination as a means of handling such people belongs to the Russians. Not us, supposedly. But stay tuned, more rot is on the way

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Wow! Your hammer sure hit those nails perfectly! One of the BEST I have seen and read! Thanks.

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I used to wonder how so many people could become Nazis and then advance that sick ideology. After watching people like Vance, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Lindsey Graham, I no longer wonder. Tim Walz, as Barack Obama said, is just the kind of person who should be in politics. His background is like so many other Americans and he is by word and deed a caring and empathetic American. JD Vance is a millionaire venture capitalist who no longer has any idea of right and wrong. Vance is inspiring bomb threats in Ohio, Vance's own state to advance his career and he refuses to take responsibility for his actions. Is this what he thinks presidential character looks like? He should be impeached from the senate or at least censured.

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The persons named in your second sentence are Eliot's "hollow men, the stuffed men, headpiece filled with straw. Alas!" Alas, indeed. We have known for a long time that Trump is without a moral center (other than what he perceives to be good for Trump at any particular instant). It becomes increasingly clear that Vance is cut from similar cloth, or perhaps stuffed with similar straw. They need to be gone.

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Great response. Thank you.

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Steve, very sage advice and wisdom. I won’t even bother addressing Vance, Trump or the rest of the despicable clown car. They are a distraction, and every word we waste analyzing these merchants of death and destruction, is to give legitimacy to their cause, and their pathetic waste of space of a party.

The day Trump’s team convinces the MSM that it is not their responsibility to fact check obvious lies, is the day we no longer are in danger of becoming a 21st version of Orwell’s novel 1984; we’ll be the living embodiment.

News organizations have a responsibility to educate their viewers with the most accurate and up to date information. They were given FCC licenses to operate under those conditions. Since the advent of television, we’ve seen republicans slowing erode all semblance of the Fairness Doctrine, culminating in its demise under Reagan. So don’t be surprised that this is the result. It’s been forty years in the making, by media consolidation and corporate takeovers and a lack of regulation.

I’m not sure which is more surprising though; that after nine years of Trump’s madness, the MSM is even more confused and afraid of Trump, or the fact that 46% of Americans believe that Biden and Harris are a great threat to democracy than Trump and Vance.

These people will stop at nothing in the quest to attain and retain power. They’ve actually turned a mid-level, safe red city in a red state, run by republicans, into a divided city, suffering from outside death and bomb threats, while the inhabitants chose sides, and fight each other over a hoax perpetuated by the most demonic and morally bankrupt imbecile this country has ever produced. And we’ve produced Epstein, OJ, Dahmer, Weinstein, and MUSK; okay he’s South Africa’s fault, but we did let this asshole in, so…….:)

I read today that most republicans believe Trump more than they believe republican politicians and governors who can confirm that Springfield hasn’t been invaded by migrants stealing jobs and stealing municipal services like hospitals and education. Outstanding!!!!!….:)

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Divide & conquer is TFG tactic. Putin is right in there helping. Wake up MSM! Thanks Robert.

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"Though much of the national media doesn’t understand that Trump’s calls for retribution and revenge nullify the need for VP Harris to delineate the particulars of line 23b, clause C of her tax proposal, the American people should appreciate that Trump is targeting us."

The lack of media perspective is endangering all of us. Tom Tomorrow sums it up nicely: https://prospect.org/power/2024-09-17-this-modern-world/

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Yes, Tom Tomorrow sums it up perfectly! Thanks for posting this link.

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Thanks for posting this. I support him on Patreon and he seldom if ever disappoints.

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It almost defies belief that Vance blames "the rhetoric" on the Democrats. Then I remember there is nothing he will not say or do in pursuit of power and position. He, and his indescribably unfit running mate, are precisely the type of personality that should not be anywhere near positions of power.

I hope the residents of Springfield express their disagreement with Vance that the bomb threats and turmoil are good for Springfield.

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