Virginia Governor Glenn Trumpkin kisses Trump’s ass on national TV

Governor Glenn Trumpkin finally dropped all pretense last night on CNN with Jake Tapper when Gov. Red Vest made it clear he supports Trump’s promise to “unleash the military” against his political opponents.

Youngkin lied, shifted from side to side, tried to make excuses for Trump but Tapper was having none of it.

Youngkin revealed that he is fully in the bag with Trump, Putin, Orban, Kim, and Hitler.

The only question is how much of the Virginia National Guard will Youngkin commit to keep Trump in power and to arrest Democrats.

But it’s incompetent clowns like Youngkin with the coiffed hair, the WalMart red vests, the Harvard Business School diploma who know better than the rest of us. They make Trump possible

Youngkin rode into power on a combination of: 1) a torrent of lies; 2) racist lies about “CRT”; 3) demagoguery; 4) massive media failure to hold him to account; and 5) lots of $$$.

We can all be thankful that in a few months we Virginians can send Youngkin back to his $40 million tax-free golden parachute; send Miyares back to hanging around ER entrances handing out his business card; send Sears back to her family’s home appliance repair business; and solidify Democratic control of the General Assembly.

Watch Youngkin debase himself here.

Are all Trump voters Nazis, or, are all Nazis Trump voters??

Note the caption — this boat parade was sponsored by the Republican National Committee and was led by Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law.

All those 538 polls that look good for Trump?

He’s paying for them.

Trump has Paid for Many of the Swing State Polls used by 538

If you look at the National vs. Swing State polls, you might notice a pattern.

Nationally Harris is winning by about 2.5-3 points and in many of the swing states, Trump is ahead by a small margin.

When you look at the swing state polls where Trump is ahead, one name shows up multiple times with multiple sponsors.

Fabrizio

If you look at the National polls, only one sponsor appears: The Wall Street Journal. These national polls stopped in mid August.

If you look at say, Michigan, Fabrizio is partnered with multiple other pollsters in various combinations. The sponsor varies but does include Trump himself.

For example, in Michigan, you have the following combinations:
– Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/McLaughlin & Associates
– Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/GBAO
– Fabrizio Ward
– Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/Impact Research

While these have different sponsors, 538 considers these separate polls even though they are performed by the same firm.

These are true in each of the swing state polls. The number of times Fabrizio is used outnumbers all other pollsters in each state.

Now, consider the sponsorship of this pollster. According to OpenSecrets, Trump and Republicans have paid this pollster more than $4 million in this election cycle as of July 16th of this year with Trump spending about 75% of that total. See: https://www.opensecrets.org/campaign-expenditures/vendor?cycle=2024&vendor=Fabrizio%2C+Lee+%26+Assoc

I expect to see that number more than doubled when the next batch of FEC filings are made.

As many analysts have noted: Trump is doing this to set the pretext for him to claim the election is stolen when he loses. Always follow the money. Remember, there is only one poll that matters and that is happening now through early voting and concludes on November 5th. As Obama says, don’t boo, VOTE!

This is what Trump has accomplished

Email shows hurricane recovery officials in N.C. relocated amid report of “armed militia.”   Safety fears are growing as misinformation collides with a large-scale federal recovery effort.

LAKE LURE, N.C. — Federal emergency response personnel on Saturday had employees operating in hard-hit Rutherford County, N.C., stop working and move to a different area because of concerns over “armed militia” threatening government workers in the region, according to an email sent to federal agencies helping with response in the state.

Around 1 p.m. Saturday, an official with the U.S. Forest Service, which is supporting recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sent an urgent message to numerous federal agencies warning that “FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately. The message stated that National Guard troops ‘had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA.'”

“The IMTs [incident management teams] have been notified and are coordinating the evacuation of all assigned personnel in that county,” the email added.

Two federal officials confirmed the authenticity of the email, though it was unclear whether the quoted threat was seen as credible. The National Guard referred questions to FEMA when asked about the incident. One Forest Service official coordinating the Helene recovery said responders moved to a “safe area” and at least some work in that area — which included clearing trees off dozens of damaged and blocked roads to help search-and-rescue crews, as well as groups delivering supplies — was paused.

CHAOS IN MAGAland — Trump rally-goers stranded for hours!!!

If you are stupid enough to support Trump . . . and if you compound your stupidity by attending a Trump rally, you deserve what you get.

Chaos in Maga land!!! Trump supporters stranded in the Coachella valley.

Stranded at Trump rally in Coachella. Surely someone is to blame.  When I tell you they are in the middle of nowhere, I am serious. Thoughts & prayers! Watch out for the coyotes!

“This is criminal” says attendee. Trump’s Coachella rally attendees are still stranded at midnight and have been told no more buses are coming. Are RivCo deputies going to transport them to safety or will Trump save them?

https://www.tiktok.com/@transpotatoface/video/7425180898775174446?_r=1&_t=8qVRNRIz9ix

 

I say piss on them.  If you are stupid enough to support Trump, you deserve what you get.

Trump’s madness exposed . . . along with Republican madness

Yesterday we learned from a forthcoming book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward that in 2020, while he was president, Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his own personal use at a time when Americans could not get it. To be clear, this equipment was not the swabs we now use at home, but appears to be what at the time was a new point-of-care machine from Abbott Laboratories that claimed to be the fastest way to test for Covid-19. 

Journalist Karly Kingsley points out that at the time, central lab testing to diagnose Covid-19 infections took a long time, causing infections to spread. Machines like Abbott’s were hard to get. Trump chose to send them to Putin—not to charge him for them, or to negotiate for the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, two Americans being held by Russia at the time and later released under the Biden administration, but to give them to him—rather than keeping them for Americans.

It’s hard to overstate just what an astonishing story this is. In 2016, Republicans stood firm against Putin and backed the arming of Ukraine to stand against Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. But that summer, at Trump’s urging, the party changed its platform to weaken its support of Ukraine. In 2020, it appears, Trump chose to give lifesaving equipment to Putin rather than use it for Americans. And in 2024, Trump’s willingness to undermine the United States to cozy up to an adversary his own party stood against less than a decade ago does not appear to be a deal breaker for Republicans.

As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) put it: “What has this country come to if the revelation that Trump secretly sent COVID testing machines to Putin while thousands of Americans were dying, in part because of a shortage of testing machines here, doesn’t disqualify him to be President?” He continued: “Donald Trump helped keep Putin alive during the pandemic and let Americans die. This revelation is damning. It’s disqualifying. He cannot be President of the United States.”

Increasingly, Trump’s behavior seems to parrot the dictators he  admires. 

After 60 Minutes called him out for breaking a fifty-year tradition of both candidates talking to 60 Minutes and backing out of an interview to which he had agreed, Trump today accused the producers of 60 Minutes of cutting Vice President Kamala Harris’s answers to make her look good. He suggested that such cuts were “illegal” and possibly “a major Campaign Finance violation” that “must be investigated, starting today!” “The public is owed a MAJOR AND IMMEDIATE APOLOGY!” he wrote. Trump is trying to cover for his own failure by attacking CBS in an echo of dictators determined to control the media.

In a post on his social media site tonight, Trump appears to have declined to appear at another presidential debate with Vice President Harris. After declaring he had won the previous debate with Harris and rehashing many of his grievances, he wrote: “THERE WILL BE NO REMATCH!”

As Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post recounted yesterday, a report from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that the Trump White House prevented a real investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. More than 4,500 calls and electronic messages about Kavanaugh sent to the FBI tip line went directly to the White House, where they were never investigated, and the FBI was told not to pursue corroborating evidence of the accusations by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez although lawyers for the women presented the names of dozens of people who could testify to the truth of their allegations.  

A number of senators said the lack of corroborating evidence convinced them to vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. As Steve Benen of MSNBC recalled, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said at the time that it appeared to be “a very thorough investigation,” while the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that the 2018 FBI report “looks to be a product of an incomplete investigation that was limited perhaps by the White House.”

After he left office, Trump told author Michael Wolff that he had gone to bat for Kavanaugh, saying: “I…fought like hell for Kavanaugh—and I saved his life, and I saved his career.” Kavanaugh was the crucial vote for Trump’s right-wing agenda, including ending the federal recognition of abortion rights by overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Ken Bensinger reported in the New York Times today that Trump’s team has refused to participate in preparations for a transition to a potential Trump presidency. Normally, the nonpartisan transition process, dictated by the Presidential Transition Act, has candidates setting up teams as much as six months before the election to begin vetting and hiring political appointees and working with the administration in office to make sure the agencies continue to run smoothly. 

With the election less than a month away, Trump has neither signed the required agreements nor signed the transition’s ethics plan that would require him to disclose private donors to the transition and limit them to contributions of no more than $5,000. Without that agreement, there are no limits to the money the Trump transition can take. Trump has also refused to sign an agreement with the White House requiring that anyone receiving classified information have a security clearance. Currently, his aides cannot review federal records.

Trump ignored the traditional transition period in 2016, cutting off communications with President Barack Obama’s team. He refused to allow incoming president Joe Biden access to federal agencies in 2020, hampering Biden’s ability to get his administration in place in a timely fashion. Now it’s possible that Trump sees no need for a normal transition because Project 2025, on which he appears to be relying, has been working on one for many months.

It calls for him to fire most federal employees, reinstating the policy he started at the end of his term. To fill their positions, the Heritage Foundation has been vetting loyalists now for months, preparing a list of job candidates to put in place a new, right-wing agenda.

Yesterday, on California’s KFI radio station, Trump told host John Kobylt that Tom Homan of Project 2025, who as director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversaw the family separation policy at the southern border, will be “coming on board” a new Trump administration.

This afternoon, Trump told an audience in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that he expects to put former rival Vivek Ramaswamy into an important position in his administration. On October 7, 2024, Ramaswamy suggested on social media that he wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. He wrote: “Shut down the entitlement state & you solve most of the immigration problem right there. We need to man up & fix the root cause that draws migrants here in the first place: the welfare state. But no one seems to want to say that part out loud, because too many native-born Americans are addicted to it themselves.”

Trump has expressed frustration with the independence of the Federal Reserve, expressing a desire to make it answer to the president. In an interview with Barron’s, one of his advisors, Scott Bessent, has floated the idea of creating a shadow Fed chair until the term of the current chair, Jerome Powell, ends, thus undercutting him without facing a fight over firing the Fed chair.

This agenda is not a popular one in the U.S., but Trump is getting a boost as Russian operatives work to swing downballot races toward the Republicans. In a briefing on Monday, October 7, experts from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told reporters that China and Iran are trying to influence the upcoming election and that “Moscow is leveraging a wide range of influence actors in an effort to influence congressional races, particularly to encourage the U.S. public to oppose pro-Ukraine policies and politicians. Russian influence actors have planned, and likely created and disseminated, content, particularly over social media, intended to encourage the election of congressional candidates that Moscow assesses will oppose aid to Ukraine.”

Russia, an ODNI spokesperson said, uses “influence-for-hire firms, or commercial firms with expertise in these type[s] of activities.” It also coopts “witting and unwitting Americans to work on Russia’s behalf,” to “launder their influence narratives through what are perceived as more authentic U.S. voices.”

Not all of Trump’s supporters appear eager to stick around to see if Trump will win another term. Today news broke that Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive officer of OverStock, who became a fervent advocate of the idea that Trump was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election, has left the country, apparently permanently, to live in Dubai. Dominion Voting Systems is suing Byrne, as is President Biden’s son Hunter. The younger Biden sued Byrne for defamation last November after Byrne claimed Hunter Biden sought a bribe from Iran. 

In September, Biden’s lawyers were trying to schedule a date for Byrne’s deposition when his lawyer abruptly “claimed for the first time that Defendant has moved his residence to Dubai and if Plaintiff wanted to take his in-person deposition counsel would have to fly to Dubai to do so, to which Plaintiff responded with various related inquiries to try to resolve this matter and defense counsel stated Defendant would not be returning to the United States for the foreseeable future.”

Byrne claimed to have fled the U.S. because the Venezuelan government has put a bounty on him, but as Biden’s lawyers note, “the Defendant’s truthfulness is directly at issue.”