What if the Worst Happens?

By Michael Woyton

We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

That is what I keep saying to myself on this Election Day Eve here in America.

As I looked through the news and the social media Monday morning, I started thinking about how things felt eight years ago as we were plunged into the impending first term of the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist known as Donald Trump.

Because there was so much being thrown at us after Hillary Clinton conceded the race, I didn’t want to rely on my memory about those nascent days of Trump’s rise to power.

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Fortunately, I had “The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year” to turn to, still accessible via my Kindle app.

Written by former Wall Street executive and president of The New Agenda Amy Siskind, “The List” is what she called a first draft of history of things happening because of Trump’s election that were “not normal.”

As I started re-reading Siskind’s meticulous work, I was startled by the very first entry for Week 1: Nov. 13-20, 2016:

“1. Acts of hate — Of the first four hundred acts of hate cited by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), I had seen many covered by the media. Then I noticed the updated count exceeded seven hundred, and I realized I knew very little about those additional three hundred.” 

The source that Siskind provided was an article in the New York Daily News by Chris Sommerfeldt published Nov. 19, 2016. It was headlined “More than 700 ‘Hateful Harassment’ Attacks Reported Since Donald Trump’s Election.”

The first week closed out with entry No. 9 from Vanity Fair: “A request for tolerance for, and understanding of, white supremacists. Following a white nationalist conference held in D.C. during which participants gave Nazi salutes and chanted ‘Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!,’ Trump issued a statement that avoided condemning the actions directly and instead claimed that he ‘will be a leader for every American.'”

Needless to say, the rest of “The List” went on from there.

At least, though, we have the written record of that first year and more through Siskind’s “The Weekly List” podcast, and as I’ve often said, it is important who gets to write the history books.

What will happen after Tuesday’s General Election is anyone’s guess, but I believe we have a very good idea what is at stake if Trump is elected to a second term.

Vice President Kamala Harris said in her “closing argument” speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., that Trump would, if elected, walk into the Oval Office with his enemies list and she “will walk in with a to-do list,” Forbes reported.

She also said Trump is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”

Over the past couple of days, we’ve seen Trump become more and more outrageous and dark, saying, among other things, that America is a failed nation. 

His speeches frequently use violent imagery: suggesting that former Rep. Liz Cheney should be shot in the face and that he would be OK with someone shooting the news media to get to him.

Trump even asked a rally audience if they wanted to see him “knock the hell out of people backstage” after enduring a sound problem, the Independent reported.

No doubt he will bring that anger — and people like Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller who will help stoke it — back into the White House.

Trump has vowed to begin a large-scale deportation operation to remove an estimated 11 million people who live in the United States but do not have legal immigration status, according to ABC News. 

Economists said such a prospect would result in a massive decrease in the country’s GDP.

And then there’s Project 2025.

Trump has repeatedly said he knows nothing about the plan crafted by the Heritage Foundation to reshape America into an authoritarian-led government.

Whether or not he knows anything about Project 2025 — come on, he knows — Sen. JD Vance surely does.

Trump’s running mate has ties to the Heritage Foundation and  even wrote a forward to a book written by the foundation’s president Kevin Roberts, the New Republic said.

The book, called “Dawn’s Early Light,” was originally subtitled “Burning Down Washington to Save America” but is now subtitled “Taking Back Washington to Save America.” 

Project 2025 aims to replace federal civil servants with Trump loyalists, get rid of NOAA and the Department of Education, ban abortion, establish a biblically based definition of marriage and family, ban pornography and shut down tech companies that allow access, strip taxpayer funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and stop offering school lunches to children who can’t afford them.

That list is just a fraction of what Project 2025’s 900 pages call for. 

There is no doubt in my mind that Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson will eagerly enact what is contained in Project 2025.

And we must never forget the blank permission slip the U.S. Supreme Court gave the presidency by saying any commander-in-chief is completely immune from prosecution for any crimes committed during official acts in office.

So far, 76.4 million mail-in and early in-person votes have been cast throughout the entire country. In 2020, a total of 158.4 million votes were tallied. There are still a lot of votes yet to be cast.

If early voting locations are not open Monday, please be aware that after Tuesday it will be too late.

Lead art: Michael Woyton

Did Trump Simulate %*$#!^@ at Milwaukee Rally?

By Michael Woyton

How many of you remember what a big deal it was for presidential candidate Bill Clinton to appear on MTV in 1992 for a campaign event in order to appeal to young viewers only to have one of the questions and answers become the big story?

He was asked whether he preferred boxers or briefs and all hell broke out.

According to the website Waxy.org, the media at the time went crazy about it, with coverage appearing in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Baltimore Sun and many others.

Well, what are the odds that the latest daily Trump outrage will appear on the print pages or websites of mainstream media?

I’m only going to say that in appears the convicted felon, during a rally in Milwaukee Friday night, pretending to perform a sex act on a microphone because he was upset that sound equipment wasn’t working properly.

Let’s leave it up to the internet to tell the story.

Lead art: Michael Woyton

Trump’s Daily Outrage Escalates, with Liz Cheney as Target

By Michael Woyton

It’s pretty frustrating, after taking a late-night look at the news and deciding what the next daily outrage story will be, only to wake up the next morning and find something else about which to be more outraged.

That is typical of a Donald Trump presidency as well as his mere existence. We can look forward to more of this should the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist be re-elected to the White House.

Last night, the suer-in-chief let it be known he was filing a lawsuit against CBS alleging election interference for editing and airing Vice President Kamala Harris’s “60 Minutes” interview. Plus he was demanding $10 billion. Yes, billion.

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The icing on the litigious cake was that Trump’s legal eagles dove down into the Northern District of Texas to judge shop United States District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — a Trump lifetime appointee — to oversee the filing.

The suit claims CBS Broadcasting and CBS Interactive have sided with Harris over Trump to be the next president, KFDA reported.

Forget the fact that neither CBS nor Trump are headquartered in Texas. Famously, Kacsmaryk was the chosen one, judge wise, to oversee a lawsuit against the Maryland-based Food and Drug Administration to restrict nationwide the abortion pill mifepristone.

But imagine my surprise, after waking up Friday morning, when I learned that Trump suggested that former Rep. Liz Cheney — no fan of the wannabe authoritarian — should be executed, according to the headline on the Drudge Report. 

Calling her a “radical war hawk,” Trump said during an event moderated by Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, that “let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” Politico reported, adding that the crowd cheered at the suggestion that the guns be trained on her face.

CNN’s Kasie Hunt spoke about Trump’s comments on her news show Friday morning, saying that violent rhetoric was nothing new for the former president, “but this stark imagery represents an escalation.”

Hunt reminded viewers that Trump has previously said that the U.S. military be used against what he calls the “enemy from within,” meaning Americans who have the audacity to oppose him.

Also, Hunt’s viewers were reminded that, while president, Trump asked his advisers if the military could shoot protesters in the legs in the streets of Washington, D.C. Fortunately, his advisers pushed back on the idea.

Trump has also said that retired U.S. Army General Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, should possibly be executed.

We all remember, thanks to the constant media coverage of the Trump rallies leading up to the 2016 election, the then-candidate encouraging his supporters to rough up people who might be protesting.

The Atlantic put together “A Brief History of Trump’s Violent Remarks,” with 40 instances going back to the 2016 campaign when he “incited or praised violence against his fellow citizens.” Read it here.

Cheney responded to Trump’s statement via the site formerly known as Twitter:

“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant. #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala”

So much of what Trump says is immediately disavowed by his followers with statements such as “he didn’t mean what he said,” “he was just joking,” or, incredibly when there’s a video or audio recording, “he never said that.”

We should believe Trump when he says he will bring retribution into the White House and will take care of his political enemies.

Thanks to the Supreme Court granting presidents full immunity for official acts — and the fact that there will not be anyone who could rein him in next time — Donald Trump is a dangerous man.

Lead art: screen grab from C-SPAN

Biden ‘Garbage’ Comment Brings Out the Snowflakes

By Michael Woyton

Yes, the president could have picked a better word than garbage to include in his answer to a question about comments concerning Puerto Rico.

And yes, Joe Biden sometimes stumbles over words when he speaks — hell, who doesn’t every once in a while?

But seriously, The New York Times and The Washington Post? His garbage remark is the lede on both your print editions Thursday.

Here is a suggestion: Why not cover House Speaker Mike Johnson on your front pages saying that there will be “no more Obamacare” if Trump is returned to the presidency?

https://twitter.com/KamalaHQ/status/1851639507377885197

There are a few points to make about this “garbage” controversy, with the most obvious being, man oh man, the MAGAs are so sensitive — dare I say “snowflakes.”

I can’t begin to tell you how many times, since the convicted felon and former president Donald Trump was sent to the White House, that articles I’ve written have been called “fake news” or had the words “Let’s Go Brandon” or the more vulgar “Fuck Joe Biden” put in comments. Even in non-political stories — SMDH.

Just listen to what was said at the neo-Nazi rally Trump held Sunday in Madison Square Garden — yes, the rally the adjudicated rapist called a “lovefest.”

Hillary Clinton was called a “sick son of a bitch.” Puerto Rico was called a “floating island of garbage.” Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was called the “Antichrist” and was said to have “pimp handlers,” according to Newsweek.

Trump has called Harris “low-IQ,” while saying that her supporters are “scum” and “enemies from within.”

And Dark Brandon’s “garbage” taken-out-of-context comment, made by someone who isn’t running for president, has all of MAGAland’s knickers in a twist and the mainstream media obsessing over it?

No person who has run — or will ever run — for president is perfect.

But I will never understand how we let it get this far — that a man who encouraged the overthrow of an election, who made fun of someone with disabilities, who said he is proud of taking reproductive rights away from women, who said he prefers war heroes who weren’t captured, who calls members of the military and veterans “suckers” and “losers” or who has been convicted of 34 felonies and called an adjudicated rapist would be on the ballot for president of the United States.

As I have long said, it’s going to be very interesting to see how this past decade of politics is going to be written by historians. 

It seriously all depends on who is allowed to write the history.

SEE ALSO: ‘There Is a Sane Vote Here’: Jon Meacham

Lead art: Michael Woyton

Crashing U.S. Economy ‘Sounds about Right’: Musk

By Michael Woyton

People versed in economics have said that the tax policies Donald Trump is proposing for his possible second term would be really bad for the country.

According to a survey of economists, the convicted felon’s policies would cause an almost 9 percent drop in the GDP, mostly because of his threatened mass deportation of immigrants, that would decimate the workforce and likely plunge the country into a recession or depression.

Also, Trump’s tariffs imposed on imported goods would mean up to $4,000 taken out of Americans’ pockets, and all told, his policies would increase the national debt by more than $3 trillion.

All that apparently is OK with the world’s richest man.

A post on the site previously known as Twitter, @FischerKing64 said that if Trump actually goes through with mass deportations and Elon Musk, who seems to want a position in the government, cuts the federal budget and fires government employees, “there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy,” causing the markets to tumble.

@FischerKing64 goes on to say, “But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.”

So, to summarize, everyone who isn’t a billionaire should prepare for financial pain.

And that is fine with Musk, who responded to the tweet with “Sounds about right.”

According to MSNBC, “this plan would match cuts implemented by Argentina’s far-right pro-Trump president, Javier Milei, who has developed a cult following in today’s GOP. And if that’s Musk’s model, Americans have a lot to fear.”

Musk told Rolling Stone that, if he gets a role in government, “Americans will suffer ‘hardship’ as a result of efforts to address the national debt.”

MSNBC’s Ja’Han Jones wrote that the billionaire is already worried about the possible public unrest such a plan could stir up.

“The whole, you-must-suffer-for-your-country thing certainly smacks of authoritarian propaganda,” Jones wrote. “And I think that we can all rest assured Musk — billionaire many times over, who has already benefited greatly from government investment — won’t be enduring any true hardship if his plan is ever implemented.” 

Just to hammer home the point that Trump continues to mislead the public — i.e., lie — that foreign countries will pay the tariffs he is hoping to implement on imported goods, executives of companies that rely on foreign-made goods are preparing to jack up prices if the former president wins the election.

“Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers,” The Washington Post reported.

Tariffs are paid to the United States Customs and Border Protection agency by American importers at the time their products enter the country, which is completely contrary to Trump’s claim that the foreign countries would pay the import taxes.

Timothy Boyle, CEO of Columbia Sportswear, said his company is buying items now for next fall’s delivery and is set to raise its prices.

“It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans,” he told The Washington Post.

Needless to say, it’s extremely unsettling that Trump is either unwilling to understand the economic forces at play here or is incapable of understanding them.

Lead art: Screen grab from RSBN

Fallout over Racist Rally Comments? Who Would Have Thought

By Michael Woyton

It’s no (October) surprise that there’s fallout for the convicted felon’s presidential campaign over vile racist comments about Puerto Ricans at his Madison Square Garden hate-fest rally Sunday.

According to Politico, the fallout is “spreading like wildfire” in the swing Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

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The news site said Monday that many Puerto Rican voters in the state are furious about the comments delivered by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe during the Donald Trump rally. He referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” and made other demeaning comments about the residents of the United States territory who are American citizens.

“Some say their dismay is giving Kamala Harris a new opening to win over the state’s Latino voters, particularly nearly half a million Pennsylvanians of Puerto Rican descent,”  Politico reported.

Voters were reacting online via WhatsApp, a nonpartisan Puerto Rican group urged its members to oppose Trump, and some were planning protests during a Trump rally in Allentown Tuesday.

While the Trump campaign — which we know vetted the comedian’s act because he was asked to remove a line calling Harris the “c” word — tried after the rally was over to distance itself from the slurs, the former president waited until Tuesday to say to ABC News that he didn’t know who Hinchcliffe was, The Hill reported. 

At least Trump didn’t say the comedian was just there to deliver coffee.

https://twitter.com/fakedansavage/status/1850870642603679848

Lead art: Screen grab from RSBN.

Trump MSG Rally: ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’

By Michael Woyton

Donald Trump has long wanted to headline Madison Square Garden, and on Sunday, he got his wish.

I’m not so sure that his name received top billing, though.

It seems that the real star of the show was HATE.

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From a so-called comedian’s vile comments about Puerto Rico, to an expletive-filled description of Hillary Clinton, to calling Vice President Kamala Harris the antichrist, to Tucker Carlson calling Harris “the first Samoan, Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor,” the rally segued to the convicted felon again promising to initiate the largest deportation program “in American history” and said “the enemy from within” has done very bad things to this country.

“And this is who we are fighting,” the former president said.

And in case you didn’t think Trump lied to his worshippers, here is Daniel Dale’s fact check of the rally from CNN.

No one should be surprised — especially people in the GOP — that Trump’s hate-fest is being compared to the 1939 American Nazi Party rally also held in Madison Square Garden.

Just last week, Harris was asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper at a town hall whether she thinks Trump is a fascist, and she very quickly said yes.

Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly was quoted in the press saying Trump is a fascist and someone who admired Adolph Hitler.

Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee, compared the Sunday rally to the one held in 1939, The Hill reported, and said there was a direct parallel.

“And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there,” Walz was quoted as saying.

The last day to vote in this presidential election is Tuesday, Nov. 5.

There is a clear decision to be made between moving America forward or taking it back to 1939.

Lead art: Google Maps screen grab

Required Reading: What If Trump Fires Jack Smith; Dark Brandon’s Election Eve Speech

By Michael Woyton

Here are a few things that crossed my computer screen of which you should be aware.

Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade explains in a podcast what would happen if Trump is re-elected and fires Jack Smith. I mean, SCOTUS said he has complete immunity, right? The New Republic

New York Times bestselling journalist and lawyer Seth Abramson has the Top 100 reasons not to support Donald Trump all in one easily shared image. X.com

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Writer Greg Olear penned a proposed speech that President Joe Biden — channeling Dark Brandon — should give on Election Eve. “The most important job the president has is to defend the country from enemies foreign and domestic. And by God, that’s what I aim to do.” Prevail

And finally, the latest from political cartoonist Mike Luckovich:

Lead art: The Bar at Chihuly Garden and Glass/Michael Woyton

Economists Size Up Harris & Trump Policies

By Michael Woyton

How many Nobel Prize-winning economists can dance on the letterhead of an endorsement? Turns out, the answer is 23.

In a joint letter released Wednesday, the prize-winning economists added their endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president over her rival, the former president and convicted felon Donald Trump.

The 23 economists, led by Joseph Stiglitz, the 2001 Nobel Prize winner for market economics research, said the former president’s economic agenda would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality,” CNBC reported.

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Trump’s agenda includes hardline tariff proposals and aggressive tax cuts, the financial network explained.

On “Morning Joe” Thursday, economic analyst Steve Rattner discussed the economic plans of Harris and Trump, showing where the latter’s would have more dire effects.

Watch the video below:

Rattner found that a survey of economists preferred Harris’s plans for a $6,000 tax credit for newborns, raising the corporate tax rate, capping insulin prices and out-of-pocket prescription drugs costs and more over Trump’s 20 percent universal tariff, making his tax cuts permanent and eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits.

His survey showed, interestingly, that there was zero support for Trump’s 20 percent tariff scheme.

Rattner said the economists were asked in the survey how Trump’s plan would affect Americans as opposed to what Harris was proposing.

Trump’s policies, the economists said, would cut the GDP by 8.9 percent, mostly due to his threatened mass deportation of immigrants, which would decimate the workforce.

https://twitter.com/SteveRattner/status/1849398752282358009

Rattner explained that the decrease was roughly twice the amount that the GDP went down during the financial crisis. He said the country would be looking at something between a recession and a depression as a result.

Harris’s policies had virtually no effect on either the GDP or inflation, he said.

There is much more that Rattner covered with his charts, and it is well worth your time watching it because he explains it so well.

Trump’s plan to eliminate taxes on Social Security would also have a devastating effect on the solvency of the safety net, leading the Social Security trust fund to run out of money in 2031 rather than 2034 as currently projected.

Rattner called Trump’s SS tax elimination one of the more cynical ideas the former president has come up with because there would be a huge cost to other taxpayers to make up for the losses.

All combined, the economists said Harris’s policies would add only about $500 billion to the nation’s debt, while Trump’s would add more than $3 trillion dollars to the debt.

“So the party that’s supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility turns out to be the party of fiscal irresponsibility,” Rattner said. “Again, perhaps voters are starting to figure that out.”

Lead art: Screen grab from Morning Joe/MSNBC

Kelly Says Trump Is ‘Fascist,’ ‘Admires Hitler’

By Michael Woyton

According to a retired four-star general who served for two years as his chief of staff in the White House, Donald Trump is a fascist and admires Adolph Hitler.

This is no longer just something that someone “who spoke on condition of anonymity” said they heard. 

That Trump meets the definition of “fascist” comes from former chief of staff John Kelly’s own lips, as recorded by Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times.

That Trump admires Hitler also comes from Kelly, as he was interviewed for The Atlantic, in an article titled “Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals that Hitler Had.’ “

It seems that these stories should be splashed all over the mainstream media Wednesday morning. Or so you would think.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today or The Wall Street Journal — none of those featured on their print-edition front pages any of Kelly’s comments, according to Media Matters.

As of midday, I had to click-scroll three times down the home page of the Times to find Schmidt’s article with the shortened title “Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”

I’m dumbfounded and don’t know what else to say.

We’ll just leave it with a comment on the website formerly known as Twitter from David Rothkopf, a columnist for Daily Beast:

“He admires Hitler. Why are we discussing anything else?”

Lead art: Screen grab from Kaitlin Collins on X.