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You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Friday Evening Open Thread: Exhausting

Friday Evening Open Thread: Exhausting

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I didn’t think President Biden should be forced into dropping his reelection campaign — being Irish-American myself, I assumed that the harder he was pushed, the more stubbornly he’d hang on. But I gotta admit it’s been a blessing, over the last few months, that he’s been able to focus on the job of being President while VP Harris has so capably stepped into the role of running for President.

And given the percentage of voters who subconsciously assume ‘the health of the king is the health of the land’, having a vigorous younger woman competing against the rapidly deteriorating sack of vile humors that is TFG has, if nothing else, encouraged Our Very Serious Media to focus on the real worn-out old sadsack in this election… Per Politico, “An ‘exhausted’ Trump says no to another interview”:

Recently, it’s become something of a pattern: Donald Trump is scheduled for an interview with a neutral media outlet, the date nears and then … things fall apart.

It happened just this week to planned Trump sit-downs with NBC in Philadelphia and CNBC’s “Squawk Box” — and that’s on the heels of him backing out of a “60 Minutes” episode earlier this month.

Why does this keep happening? Another outlet was recently given an explanation by Trump’s team for why their own interview wasn’t coming to fruition: exhaustion.

The Trump campaign had spent weeks in conversations with The Shade Room, a site that draws a largely young and Black audience — a demographic where Trump has been making inroads. It hosted an interview with Kamala Harris just last week…

Axios piles on — “Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election”:

Former President Trump‘s planned appearance at a National Rifle Association event next week was cancelled Thursday, the latest in a slew of scuttled public appearances and interviews by the former president in recent weeks.

Why it matters: With only 17 days to go until Election Day, the spate of cancellations gives voters fewer chances to hear from Trump before heading to the polls in a coin toss race.

  • Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has been on a media blitz after enduring criticism from Republicans about a perceived lack of interviews.
  • And while Harris has ventured into the unfriendly territory of a Fox News interview, Trump has stuck to the safe spaces of conservative outlets.
  • In the appearances he has made, Trump’s rhetoric has grown more violent and nativist. In recent weeks, he has decried his critics as the “enemy from within” and fanned the flames of false conspiracy theories about migrants

    • …
    The big picture: It’s not just events and interviews that have taken a hit — Trump is also hosting fewer rallies this election cycle than he did in 2016…

    NYMag is sceptical “Trump Too ‘Exhausted’ to Do Interviews With Unfriendly Outlets”—

    …But it’s also possible that “exhausted” was just an excuse the adviser came up with on the fly for why the campaign is calling off interviews where they think Trump is more likely to go off the rails. As Playbook noted, the canceled interviews were all with “neutral media outlets”; in recent weeks he’s backed out of sit-downs with 60 Minutes, CNBC’s Squawk Box, and NBC in Philadelphia. Trump has been doing lots of interviews recently, appearing on various “bro podcasts” and Fox News programs. The one challenging interview he did this week, with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, turned into a bit of a fiasco, and Trump later claimed he “got hoodwinked to go on that.”

    The campaign has good reason to limit Trump to lower-stakes and more sycophantic interviews. The New York Times reported on Friday that the Trump team is worried that rambling and erratic behavior is hurting him:

    [Some Trump advisers] worry that Mr. Trump’s impetuousness and scattershot style on the campaign trail needlessly risk victory in battleground states where the margin for error is increasingly narrow.

    At a time when his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has stepped up her attacks on him as “unstable,” Mr. Trump has struggled to publicly hone his message by veering off script and ramping up personal attacks on Ms. Harris that allies have urged him to rein in.

    “When he’s good, he’s great, and when he’s off message, he’s not so great,” said David Urban, a Trump adviser. “I don’t think anyone is really changing their mind at this point, but when he distracts from his biggest, broadest messaging, it’s counterproductive because the Harris campaign uses it to turn out their voters.”


    Harris was questioned after this event:

    Reader Interactions

    184Comments

    2. 2.

      TS

      NYMag is sceptical “Trump Too ‘Exhausted’ to Do Interviews With Unfriendly Outlets”

      I agree 100% – He opens his mouth & loses another hundred voters – he is incompetent, unable to speak to a topic and his language & sentence structures are almost non existent. This is not exhaustion, this is mental capacity.

    3. 3.

      Baud

      I’m more reminded of how the media treated Hillary when she came down with pneumonia in 2016, compared to how they’re treating Trump now.

    4. 4.

      dr. bloor

      It’s certainly not a reflection of eleventy-dimension chess on his part, but TFG is laying down a track record for an inability to stand trial due to diminished capacity when the Day of Reckoning rolls around.

    5. 5.

      Scout211

      Exhausted? What are they all talking about? Trump’s not exhausted!   Just ask his national press secretary.

      Trump’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that he was exhausted in a statement to Playbook, stating: “President Trump is running laps around Kamala Harrison the campaign trail.”

      “And has done media interviews every day this week. He has more energy and a harder work ethic than anyone in politics.”

      Sure,  Jan Karoline.  We totally believe you.  Uh huh.

    6. 6.

      Harrison Wesley

      Is he really going to show up at Mickey D’s to make hamburgers – sorry, hamberders?  If he did, would you eat anything he made?

    8. 8.

      SiubhanDuinne

      the rapidly deteriorating sack of vile humors that is TFG

      Imma change that, AL, to TCFFG. I think the part of the acronym that stands for “Convicted Felon” is exactly why he is a “rapidly deteriorating sack of vile humors” — the strain of the trials, judgments, and mounting legal costs is taking a huge toll on his physical and mental health.

    13. 13.

      The Audacity of Krope

      @SiubhanDuinne: rapidly deteriorating sack of vile humors

      I do find that lack of a productive endeavor can be bad for someone’s mental health.

      How Trump has managed to run for President three times in 12 years and not treat it as a productive endeavor, I will never understand.

    14. 14.

      Jackie

      @TS:

      He opens his mouth & loses another hundred voters

      Hard disagree. Trumpers know who TCFG is, and they don’t CARE. They LIKE what he says. They AGREE with what he says.

      Sad, but true.

    15. 15.

      RaflW

      “Exhausted” is a euphemism for his brain no longer working. He probably is also tired, I mean being up at 3 am in panic-rages about looming criminal and civil cases does seem like it’d wear a person out.

      But he’s also just falling completely to pieces.

    17. 17.

      Jackie

      @Harrison Wesley:

      Is he really going to show up at Mickey D’s to make hamburgers

      It’s fries. Because that’s what Harris did while in college.

      I sincerely hope that the chosen McD’s has a power outage and has to shut down until TCFG’s scheduled event time expires.

    18. 18.

      HumboldtBlue

      “When he’s good, he’s great, and when he’s off message, he’s not so great,”

      Oh, what utter bullshit. His best was always being able to spew ridiculous bullshit and have stupid people nod their heads while a compliant media sanewashed his bullshit.

    19. 19.

      geg6

      Hahahaha, the David Urban, Cheetolini advisor, quoted in that article went to high school with my younger sister.  He was an asshole then and he’s an asshole now.  Went to West Point and now, in an old West Point tradition, is a seditionist.

    21. 21.

      Anotherlurker

      @sixthdoctor: In the clip that I saw, The Orange Scumbag was complaining about the mic popping.  That is entirely on him . Popping is 100% poor mic technique.  That desk mic he is using is not up to being shouted into and slobbered all over.  This is what he gets for hiring scab labor.

      It would be nice if he fell into an open power box.  His blubber frying would smell like rancid, moldy bacon

      IATSE represented

    23. 23.

      Chet Murthy

      I for one am eagerly awaiting, with ‘bated breath am I, the avalanche of pronouncements from media pundits near and far, that TCFG must withdraw from the race, b/c he’s manifestly unfit.  With ‘bated breath, I do await these calls!  [narrator: as he turns blue waiting ….]

    31. 31.

      mrmoshpotato

      @Harrison Wesley:

      Is he really going to show up at Mickey D’s to make hamburgers – sorry, hamberders? If he did, would you eat anything he made? 

      Oh hell no.

    32. 32.

      Geoduck

      @Jackie: “Trumpers” doesn’t equal “Everyone who might vote GOP”. All of disengaged fence-sitters need to have this behavior rubbed in their faces between now and voting.

    33. 33.

      Chet Murthy

      @The Audacity of Krope: No, they aren’t the deciders.  But they play a crucial role in informing the public, and that role is Constitutionally-protected in the -first- Amendment (so important is that role).  Of course they refuse to play that role, ah well.

    34. 34.

      hitchhiker

      @Baud: My dad’s union! Me and my 7 siblings could eat because of those guys.

      Which is how I know the trump team used scab labor to set up their equipment. Now he’s yelling about how he’s not going to pay them.

    35. 35.

      The Audacity of Krope

      @Chet Murthy: But they play a crucial role in informing the public…

      …or not.

      Of course they refuse to play that role, ah well.

      See? You already know.

    37. 37.

      Chet Murthy

      @Harrison Wesley: He’ll show up to stand around in the kitchen with people filming.  Wil he actually make fries?  I worked in a Jack-in-the-Box for 2.5yr, doing every job in the store, so I can tell you that there’s nothing to making fries.  You (1) shake some frozen fries from a bag/box into a basket, (2) drop the basket into the hot oil, then (3) N minutes later you pick up the basket, put it on a rack to drain.  (4) Then M minutes later you dump the fries into a metal basin under hot lights to stay warm until they’re bagged.

      He can do steps (2)-(4).  And it’s even pretty safe.

      My memory is that these days, places like Micky Dee’s have conveyor-belt burger cookers, so no large hot griddle to lean over to flip burgers.  But I don’t really know, since my last contact with fast food work was 1982.

    51. 51.

      Carlo Graziani

      @Jackie:

      @TS:

      He opens his mouth & loses another hundred voters

      Hard disagree. Trumpers know who TCFG is, and they don’t CARE. They LIKE what he says. They AGREE with what he says.

      Sad, but true.

      At this point in the game, the issue is not so much whether they support him, as whether they bother to show up at the polls for him. In the past, he was pretty good at activating unlikely voters—people who chose to vote because of tribalism, rather than a sense of civic duty. Those people have a high threshold for getting off their beer-stained couches.

      So if some fraction of them should lapse back into apathy because they feel loser energy, and fail to undent those couches on election day, that works in Harris’ favor even if they nominally “support” Trump. I think this is the motivation for all the Harris ads showing Trump babbling and swaying listlessly at his own rallies: they are trying to demotivate his voters by giving them a loser feel about the election.

    52. 52.

      The Audacity of Krope

      @Bill Arnold: I want to know what “the most beautiful word” is

      ETA ah, two days ago it was “tariff”.

      Tarriff(n): A tax the US President can unilaterally raise on average working schmucks while he advocates Congress lowering taxes for the well-heeled.

    55. 55.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Jackie: a clever manager will ask an underling, or a friend, to go secretly to the fuse box, and pull the lever down. ..

    56. 56.

      Spanky

      …But it’s also possible that “exhausted” was just an excuse the adviser came up with on the fly for why the campaign is calling off interviews where they think Trump is more likely to go off the rails

      STOP COVERING FOR HIS ASS!

    59. 59.

      Scout211

      So for the past two days, the news media keeps saying that the Trump campaign is “in talks” with Nikki Haley.  I wonder what these “talks” are all about. You either support a candidate or you don’t.  Why are these “talks” taking so long?

      So what do you think is going on? What are they negotiating? She wants a cabinet position? She wants Trump to back her run for president in 2028?  What do you think is being negotiated? 🤔

    61. 61.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Chet Murthy: making French fries, it’s a multi step process. This sounds harder than tossing paper towel rolls into a crowd lik3 a game show host charming disaster victims…

    62. 62.

      mrmoshpotato

      @Carlo Graziani:

      In the past, he was pretty good at activating unlikely voters—people who chose to vote because of tribalism, rather than a sense of civic duty. 

      Tribes of racists and misogynists.

    63. 63.

      Scout211

       CNN  More than 11 million Americans have already voted in this year’s election, with 18 days to go until Election Day.

      That’s according to data from 42 states gathered by CNN, Edison Research, and Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit advocacy groups, including insights into who is voting before November.

      California leads the way with more than 1.5 million ballots cast, followed by Georgia with more than 1.1 million ballots. More than 900,000 ballots have been cast in each of Florida, Michigan and Virginia.

    65. 65.

      The Audacity of Krope

      @Bill Arnold:venue, he calls tariffs (and related taxes) “positive taxes”.

      I’m sure conservative business people are impressed. In another

      Right because he convinced himself this somehow hurts Jyna, even though their affected industries will just pass along the costs. Meanwhile no mention of fair labor standards in trade deals. Indeed, Republicans’ idea to make the American economy “more competitive” with China is to lower our own labor standards until we have a similar supreme overclass.

    67. 67.

      Lyrebird

      @Chet Murthy: I for one am eagerly awaiting, with ‘bated breath am I, the avalanche of pronouncements from media pundits near and far, …

      I got nothin’ to add to Anne Laurie’s commentary above, agreed with all of it…   Just posting to say I very much enjoyed what you did here.

    69. 69.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Carlo Graziani: people who chose to vote because of tribalism, rather than a sense of civic duty.

      im getting an image

      tribalism: a cult-like situation. Insular, w slogans and deep us vs them thinking, and information being amplified within a closed circle. You’re  loyal, you don’t dare lose your trivial brotherhood connection. Herd mentality.

      civic duty: open discourse, information being exchanged and discussed cordially

    70. 70.

      Sure Lurkalot

      @HumboldtBlue:

      When he’s good, he’s great, and when he’s off message, he’s not so great,”

      Oh, what utter bullshit.

      Question! Which one of his messages is “on” and which “off”? Rounding up immigrants…on? Rounding up his political enemies…off? Tariffs good, Kamala’s stupid…on? Sharks and electric boat motors…off?

    71. 71.

      Quinerly

      I just Googled this. Have been meaning to check it. I thought I had dreamed it the other night (keep the radio on at night).

      Chris LaCivita has earned a staggering sum of more than $22 million in just the past two years as Trump’s adviser.

      Trump’s other co-campaign manager, Susie Wiles, is a volunteer. And on the other side of the ticket, Harris’s campaign manager is paid $13,442 a month, according to campaign finance records, a far more paltry sum in comparison.

      https://newrepublic.com/post/187174/trump-campaign-manager-chris-lacivita-grift-campaign

    73. 73.

      Quinerly

      @HumboldtBlue:

      This is at least the second time Obama has used the diaper line.

      Obama had some great lines today…specifically aimed to get under Trump’s thin skin. It was quite the speech.

    74. 74.

      EngineerScotty

      @Carlo Graziani: Our strategy is simple to keep those voters on their couches.

      Tell them that if they get off the couch to vote, JD is going to come visit their house!

    75. 75.

      WaterGirl

      @Scout211:

      What do you think is being negotiated?

      I have no idea, but Haley, but whatever it is won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.  She’s a fool for even entering into negotiation with this creature.

    76. 76.

      sdhays

      @Quinerly: Honestly, a Trump campaign manager pouring $22m into his pocket is a dog-bites-man story. Of course that’s where the money’s going!

      But Wiles being a volunteer? Surely she has steered $100m into her own consulting company or something. There’s got to be more to that story.

    77. 77.

      Carlo Graziani

      @Gloria DryGarden: Well, yes.

      Those tribal voters are one of the things adding vast amounts of unquantifiable noise to pollster “likely voter” models. Essentially because of the unpredictability of the irrational mindset that you just nailed, and contrasted with the very predictable behavior of people for whom elections are a normal part of civic life.

    79. 79.

      Chet Murthy

      @WaterGirl: [Omar Little voice] Oh inDEED.  inDEED.

      I can only hope that TCFG stabs her in the back (and the front, and the sides) repeatedly and her career bleeds out in all directions.  She’s hoping that somehow she’ll get a boost out of this: I hope she gets yeeted into the sun.

    80. 80.

      Chet Murthy

      @Gretchen: “I can’t imagine why she’d work for free”

      ISTR a certain other TCFG campaign manager who worked “for free”.

    81. 81.

      Chet Murthy

      oh, noes!: https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-2669441560/

      “Musk-backed PAC canvassers may have falsified doorknocking figures in key states: report”

      The Elon Musk-funded political action committee set up by the billionaire entrepreneur to help Donald Trump return to the White House is scrambling to meet doorknocking targets as it looks into allegations that some canvassers falsified the number of voters they claimed to have contacted.

    82. 82.

      Quinerly

      @sdhays:

      I seem to remember something about money going to her daughter when she was hired. Something about a daughter. Then, again, my brain could be fried.

    84. 84.

      Chet Murthy

      @Quinerly: A-yup.  They’re all scoundrels.

      ETA: It bothers me that we are -so- aware of all these scoundrels and their shenanigans.  And the bastards have the temerity of accusing us of being in a “woke bubble”.  I only wish.  Only wish.

    86. 86.

      Jackie

      @satby: 17 days plus a few days of “too close to call” before we finally know the winner.

      UNLESS Harris wins in a landslide!🤞🏻

      And, then, all the GQP shenanigans begin. Challenges, challenges, and more challenges… The Trump SC 6 are the same justices who actually supported democracy in ‘20, denying all challenges except one. I guess we’ll see what’s “different” this time around…

    87. 87.

      HumboldtBlue

      Goddamn, Joe Biden really is the best of us.

      President Biden was in Berlin for 24 hours. He has to be exhausted and jet lagged, but he shook hands and spoke with all of us who were waiting to meet him. He took selfies, made jokes, and was overwhelmingly kind and friendly.

      The best was when he told the girl beside us, “Hello! I’m Joe Biden. I was President for a while once.” And then he laughed. What an absolute honor to shake his hand.

    88. 88.

      David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch

      sigh

      I’d sell my soul to the devil if we could just beat the Yankees once

    89. 89.

      Gretchen

      @Jackie: Roberts, Coney-Barrett and Kavanaugh all worked for the Bush campaign in Florida in 2000 so we know that none of them are averse to stealing an election if it suits them.

    92. 92.

      Gretchen

      @Chet Murthy: Right. There’s got to be something. None of these people understand sacrificing for the greater good.
      My Trump loving relatives think that the whole Russia connection was a hoax. They can’t explain why Manafort went to prison.

    93. 93.

      zhena gogolia

      @KatKapCC: And although I’m not Irish (I think), I agree totally with this:

      I didn’t think President Biden should be forced into dropping his reelection campaign — being Irish-American myself, I assumed that the harder he was pushed, the more stubbornly he’d hang on. But I gotta admit it’s been a blessing, over the last few months, that he’s been able to focus on the job of being President while VP Harris has so capably stepped into the role of running for President.

    95. 95.

      Jackie

      @WaterGirl: Do you think what Haley’s negotiating for matters? After she officially endorsed TCFG, her supporters were pissed and felt like Haley had spit on them. They have made it clear that they (for the most part) won’t vote for TCFG. They’ll vote for Harris – or skip the top of the ballot, IMO.

    97. 97.

      Melancholy Jaques

      @Chet Murthy:

      It bothers me that we are -so- aware of all these scoundrels and their shenanigans.

      It bothers me that the normie voters who will determine the outcome of this election in the swing states are either not aware or not concerned.

    99. 99.

      WaterGirl

      @Jackie: I guess the question is matters to whom?

      I think Haley already blew it by not keeping her distance from Trump, so she’s damaged goods, which is good for us.

      The fact that she doesn’t recognize that she’s irreparably damaged is interesting, in a train wreck kind of way.  She’s trying to salvage something out of a pile of shit.

    101. 101.

      Carlo Graziani

      @Jackie: How about “Replace Vance with Haley, get some of that ‘Replace Biden with Harris’ energy”?

      I know it’s stupid, but it’s probably desperation-driven stupid stunt time in the Trump campaign right now. As Josh Marshall at TPM keeps noting, the salient feature of the polling environment is stability since a few weeks after Harris’ ascendance, and in no world is that good news for the Trump campaign.

    102. 102.

      Steve LaBonne

      Look, everybody knows we can’t let Orange Grampa out of the house. He’ll wander off and there’s no telling where he’ll end up and what he’ll do.

    103. 103.

      rk

      @Chet Murthy:

      “it looks into allegations that some canvassers falsified the number of voters they claimed to have contacted.”

      This doesn’t surprise me at all. Imagine having to go door to door, having to talk to morons. It’s not like they’re volunteers and truly invested in Trump. They’re hired to do a crappy job. I’d totally fudge the numbers if I were in that position.

    104. 104.

      WaterGirl

      @Carlo Graziani: That’s an interesting idea.

      Do we think Trump has figured out yet that if he’s elected, he’ll be pushed out by Vance in a heartbeat?  He’s a goner either way.  Maybe he is hoping to find a way to ditch Vance.

    106. 106.

      Chet Murthy

      @WaterGirl: I -almost- agree with this characterization.  Haley blew it b/c she neither

      (a) kowtowed to TCFG most cravenly

      nor (b) ran as far away as she could, like Liz Cheney

      Sure, in some MAGAt future Cheney might have no place in a reconstituted conservative party.  But if MAGA collapses, Cheney is in with a shot.  Whereas …. Haley hasn’t a chance in -either- future: in a MAGA future, she was a traitor, and it matters not a whit that she came back in the end.  Hell, I fully expect TCFG to shiv her regardless of the outcome of the election.  In a post-MAGA future, she’ll always be tainted as MAGA.  Either way, she’s screwed.

      And, gotta say, *GOOD*.

    108. 108.

      comrade scotts agenda of rage

      From Frank Conniff:

      Donald Trump is cancelling and not showing up for so many appearances he’s being sued for plagiarism by Sly and the Family Stone.

      People who get that reference will date themselves.

    109. 109.

      Marc

      @trollhattan:  Hoo boy, fire in the Oakland hills.

      I was looking out of my front window and wondering why an airliner was flying low and slow, followed by another one, noticed the smoke, then holy shit those are fire bombers.  It was about 10 miles from us (in the hills east of East Oakland and San Leandro.  At one point I counted three airliner/water bombers, two helicopters, and a couple of spotter planes.  They had it under control by 5.

      Oddly enough, we had been up in the Oakland/Berkeley hills last night trying to see the comet at sunset, no joy.  Lots of people parked on the side of the road, no one could see anything (although it was a beautiful sunset).  I finally dragged my telescope into the backyard tonight and could just pick it out.  What a disappointment, I should have looked a week ago.

    111. 111.

      mrmoshpotato

      @WaterGirl:

      Do we think Trump has figured out yet that if he’s elected, he’ll be pushed out by Vance in a heartbeat? He’s a goner either way. Maybe he is hoping to find a way to ditch Vance.

      Doubt it.  The mush inside Dump’s orange skull has been fucked by drugs and narcissism for quite some time.

    117. 117.

      Anotherlurker

      @Steve LaBonne: As a Mets fan, I can understand.  I worked as a tech in NY Sports for many years.  10 of those years  A2ed  for many Yankee games.  That made me a fan of any team playing The Evil Empire.

    118. 118.

      Chet Murthy

      @WaterGirl: AAAAAhahahahahaha!  It’s in his nature!

      https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-nikki-haley-2669442311/

      Trump emphasized during a “Fox and Friends” interview that he soundly defeated the former South Carolina governor the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration. When asked whether he feels Haley can help him defeat Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump stressed he “beat Nikki [Haley] badly.”

      ” Nikki Haley and I fought and I beat her by 50, 60, 90 points!” he boasted. “I beat her in her own state by numbers that nobody’s ever been beaten by! I beat Nikki badly! I beat everyone else too badly! I mean, frankly, I set records, both in speed and in the magnitude of the win… I beat everybody by numbers that has never happened before and they keep talking about Nikki, Nikki.”

      Trump then emphasized, “Nikki is in, Nikki is helping us already.”

      Rocha said Trump had a “great strategic opportunity” that “as a strategist, he really whiffed on.”

      “There’s somebody watching Fox News and that’s Nikki Haley voters,” he said. “And they literally served him up a softball to say something nice about Nikki Haley and he could not help himself. And he went down the rabbit hole of how he whooped her in the primaries and she’s no good.”

      He’s a scorpion: it’s in his nature!

    119. 119.

      trnc

      I didn’t think President Biden should be forced into dropping his reelection campaign

      I take exception to the term forced. He was convinced to step aside, and rightly so precisely because he did not appear to have the energy to run a robust campaign AND do the job of president. Both would have suffered. The excuse his campaign offered for his debate performance was jet lag from almost 2 weeks prior. While his public appearances demonstrate clearly that he is still a great president, I think they also continue to demonstrate that the debate was not a one-off in terms of the additional energy required for campaigning.

    120. 120.

      Carlo Graziani

      @WaterGirl: Honestly, I don’t believe that Trump has the cognition for that sort of long-term conspiracist outlook.

      I just think that if his campaign staff thought (however stupidly) that they could produce a break in the stability of their internal polling by a stunt like booting Vance for Haley, and succeeded in selling it to Trump on the grounds of “Harris succeeding Biden is the only reason she’s ahead, let’s do that too,” then, at the very least there would be talks with Haley.

    121. 121.

      Chet Murthy

      Try again:

      WaterGirl: AAAAAhahahahahaha!  It’s in his nature!

      https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-nikki-haley-2669442311/

      Trump emphasized during a “Fox and Friends” interview that he soundly defeated the former South Carolina governor the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration. When asked whether he feels Haley can help him defeat Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump stressed he “beat Nikki [Haley] badly.”

      ” Nikki Haley and I fought and I beat her by 50, 60, 90 points!” he boasted. “I beat her in her own state by numbers that nobody’s ever been beaten by! I beat Nikki badly! I beat everyone else too badly! I mean, frankly, I set records, both in speed and in the magnitude of the win… I beat everybody by numbers that has never happened before and they keep talking about Nikki, Nikki.”

      Trump then emphasized, “Nikki is in, Nikki is helping us already.”

      Rocha said Trump had a “great strategic opportunity” that “as a strategist, he really whiffed on.”

      “There’s somebody watching Fox News and that’s Nikki Haley voters,” he said. “And they literally served him up a softball to say something nice about Nikki Haley and he could not help himself. And he went down the rabbit hole of how he whooped her in the primaries and she’s no good.”

      He’s a scorpion: it’s in his nature!

    122. 122.

      Jackie

      @Carlo Graziani: @WaterGirl:

      LOL! TCFG can’t just dump Vance – even if he wanted to. Vance would have to quit voluntarily, or have a fatal health situation suddenly crop up…

      MAYBE Musk could part with a billion dollars to help Vance suddenly get terminally ill… THAT I COULD SEE…

    124. 124.

      Steve in the ATL

      @Baud: arguably late to the thread, but I met Sean O’Brien yesterday.   He’s quite likable, if you can get last the Boston Irish accent.

    126. 126.

      trnc

      One part of the Bret Baier interview that isn’t getting much focus is that when Harris talked about the border bill, Baier said twice “6 democrats voted against it.” She made her larger point, but someone should ask Baier why he mentioned that. Does he think that a few democrats voting against something nullifies the support by the rest of them? Does he think it absolves the larger number of republicans who voted against it?

      It’s nonsense.

    127. 127.

      WaterGirl

      @trnc: Please can we not get into this again. There are two distinct views here, and when folks on either side make pronouncements, it just stirs things up again.

      Let’s just go with amnesty for all and no stirring up the water.   Please.

    128. 128.

      TS

      @Jackie:

      Hard disagree. Trumpers know who TCFG is, and they don’t CARE.

      Agree – trumpers don’t care – but there are still some republicans at those rallies that are not completely insane – and they are turned off by the stupid. Seems the staff probably turned off his mic today because of “issues”. You don’t do that if the total crowd just want to hear the annointed.

    130. 130.

      WaterGirl

      @trnc: It’s all part of the “gotcha!” game they love to play so much.

      These people pick at scabs for a living, metaphorically speaking, trying to draw blood.

      They are hideous vampire creatures, with apologies to vampires.

    133. 133.

      Another Scott

      Meanwhile, … ProPublica.org:

      Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance’s appearance at a far-right Christian revival tour last month may have broken tax and election laws, experts say.

      On Sept. 28, Vance held an official campaign event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, in partnership with the Courage Tour, a series of swing-state rallies hosted by a pro-Trump Christian influencer that combine prayer, public speakers, tutorials on how to become a poll worker and get-out-the-vote programming.

      Ziklag, a secretive organization of wealthy Christians, funds the Courage Tour, according to previously unreported documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented. A private donor video produced by Ziklag said the group intended to spend $700,000 in 2024 to mobilize Christian voters by funding “targeted rallies in swing states” led by Lance Wallnau, the pro-Trump influencer.

      Even before the Vance event, ProPublica previously reported that tax experts believed Ziklag’s 2024 election-related efforts could be in violation of tax law. The Vance event, they said, raised even more red flags about whether a tax-exempt charity had improperly benefited the Trump-Vance campaign.

      According to Texas corporation records, the Courage Tour is a project of Lance Wallnau Ministries Inc., a 501(c)(3) charity led by Wallnau. There have been five Courage Tour events this year, and Vance is the only top-of-the-ticket candidate to appear at any of them.

      […]

      Both Lance Wallnau Ministries and Ziklag are 501(c)(3) charities, the same legal designation as the Boys & Girls Club or the United Way. People who donate to charities like these can deduct their gift on their annual taxes. But under the law, such charities are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.

      […]

      I’m shocked, shocked.

      That is, of course they broke the rules and the law. It’s what they do.

      It’s long past time for the IRS to crack down on these fake “charities” and “social welfare organizations” that are fronts for RWNJ politicians and groups.

      Much more at the link.

      Grr…,
      Scott.

    141. 141.

      wjca

      @Scout211: So what do you think is going on? What are they negotiating? She wants a cabinet position? She wants Trump to back her run for president in 2028?  What do you think is being negotiated?

      He drops out of the race (just like Biden did), and she becomes the nominee (just like Harris did**).  Hey, it might work somehow.  In a different reality — which, after all, is where TCFFG lives. .

      ** OK, not precisely the same.  But nuance isn’t part of their skill set.

    142. 142.

      David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch

      Gotta say it…

      How often do you get the chance…

       

      Its a whole new ballgame!

    144. 144.

      Ruckus

      @RaflW:

      The average of death for someone born in 1946 is 66.1 yrs old.

      He was born on June 14, 1946. He’s 78 yrs old.

      And he takes such reasonably good care of himself……

    146. 146.

      Ruckus

      @HumboldtBlue:

      Oh, what utter bullshit. His best was always being able to spew ridiculous bullshit and have stupid people nod their heads while a compliant media sanewashed his bullshit.

      Seemed to me this deserved to be repeated.

    152. 152.

      The Audacity of Krope

      @jonas: What did one of his flunkies say when he would doze off during his trial this summer? Oh, yeah, he was just “meditating.”

      As an obviously mindful person, this must be a regular practice of his.

    153. 153.

      wjca

      @satby: 17 days now. Can’t wait for it to be over.

      Really hoping it is only 18.  That Harris wins so overwhelmingly that we don’t have to wait on tender hooks for a week or three, while the courts do their thing.

    154. 154.

      Ruckus

      @HumboldtBlue:

      That may not be falling asleep.

      He may actually be shutting down. Not like turning off a light or stove, just his brain not having the ability to connect A+B and so getting – Shut it down so that there is enough energy to fix the problem, which is, in more concise words – He is unable to continue or think ahead without shutting down as much as possible. IOW his brain is worn out (Yes we knew that decades ago….) and only has so many working cells/lines of thought. He has to tune out every outside input just to figure out how to keep breathing.

      He’s not the first human to get here, he won’t be the last. And yes  I’ve seen this before. I believe it’s mental deterioration, it often starts a noticeable bit before the last day. Some slow down at an almost unnoticeable pace, others show real deterioration in harsh terms. Some just up and stop.

      Given his life and what I’ve seen/heard, I’d say it’s #2, on display for all to see.

    155. 155.

      jonas

      @WaterGirl:  She’s a fool for even entering into negotiation with this creature.

      ETTD. You’d think Haley might have been just smart enough to recognize this ironclad law of physics by now, but apparently not.

    156. 156.

      wjca

      @WaterGirl: Haley, but whatever it is won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.  She’s a fool for even entering into negotiation with this creature.

      You aren’t looking at this right.  She negotiates to take over the nomination, in return for the promise of a Nixon-like full pardon.  And then, if she wins, stiffs him.  So yeah, not worth the paper it’s probably not written on (because mob bosses don’t do that).

    161. 161.

      frosty

      @wjca: Tenterhooks. And I’m sorry to say you’ll have to wait for PA. Thanks to our wonderful legislators they can’t start opening mail ballots until 7:00 AM Election Day.

    162. 162.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Ruckus: re brain shut down.

      my mom went down with progressive aphasia , after a head injury. As her dementia progressed, she not only couldn’t find words she wanted, she began to not know answers to simple questions. ( I’m at the zoo, mom. I’ll go see your favorite animal. What’s your favorite animal? / I don’t know, ask your father)

      gradually she began to string words and sounds together in tone and cadence very much like English, only it was nonsense and gibberish. I could tell when she was giving me advice, though there was no content, and I took it in as a form of love. My sister tells of a time period when our mom thought her daughter was her sister (they do have similar coloring)

      On a whale watching boat ride, She would converse with strangers, babbling on and on, and people sat with her and seemed to be enjoying the “conversation”. Somehow she was engaging, and friendly even when she made no sense.

      I am comparing and contrasting my mom’s aphasia with trump’s paragraphs full of disconnected phrases and sentence fragments. Different, but quite similar. I can’t diagnose, but I recognize that he’s got his cadence and tone in a familiar formatting, and he sounds like himself, even as his content shifts around like it’s short gusts of high winds, blowing in different directions, swirling, and, I guess, fascinating to the tribe members.
      And like after a hurricane, there’s a storm surge of rising waters, only they are so fascinated and hypnotized by the flavor of his tone, the blustering and calling together of their group, that they don’t really notice they are standing in a dangerous spot, about to be swept away in fast moving currents.

      And now it’s going to rain

    165. 165.

      wjca

      @frosty: I’m sorry to say you’ll have to wait for PA.

      Only have to wait on Pennsylvania if it’s close.

      If, for example, Michigan and North Carolina break for Harris, it’s all over.  Don’t even need to wait on Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona.

    167. 167.

      Chet Murthy

      @wjca: In my warm fuzzy happy place dream, Texas breaks for Harris, and I have eat all my angry words at Texas(s) the next morning.  Which I would do with great contentment.

    169. 169.

      Chet Murthy

      @Jay: Shiraz?  My friend, I have champagne and pear cider a-waiting.  It would give me great happiness to use ’em to wash down my cruel words about Texas(s).

    170. 170.

      HumboldtBlue

      President Biden asked where I was from, & I let him know we had moved to Berlin from Ithaca, NY. I knew he lived in Syracuse, so I was excited to see him smile. He told me, “I learned to ski on Skaneateles.” And I told him, “That’s my favorite Finger Lake.”

      And he was SO happy.

    171. 171.

      wjca

      @Chet Murthy: In my warm fuzzy happy place dream, Texas breaks for Harris, and I have eat all my angry words at Texas(s) the next morning.

      With you there!  Although Florida, with an abortion measure on the ballot, seems a bit more likely. And both would be heaven.

    172. 172.

      mrmoshpotato

      @Chet Murthy: And Shithead Ted loses re-election and can finally go live in Cancun (and be deported by Mexican authorities back to his birthplace – Canada).

    173. 173.

      Jay

      @mrmoshpotato:

      Problem is, to deport someone to another nation, requires that the other nation is willing to take them back. Thus the Brit’s trying to deport asylum seekers back to their home states, but settled on Rwanda, because Rwanda would take them, or ditto with Italy and Algeria, (except Algeria said “nope”).

      So Cancun Cruze can be deported out of Mexico towards Canada, where he will have to take up permanent  residence in the International Arrivals lounge at what ever airport they land him in.

    174. 174.

      Fair Economist

      @Marc: I went to Newport Beach to try to see comet Atlas tonight. I’d looked from my house Sunday and saw nothing; Monday I was busy, and then Tuesday through Thursday we had coastal clouds. It was totally invisible to the naked eye but I spotted it with binoculars without too much trouble once it was really dark. I estimate it was about magnitude 3; you’ll never see it from a city area now.

      It’s astonishing how fast it’s fading and moving. I suspect Monday was the best day, overall. I feel a little disappointed; it was no Hyakutake or Hale-Bopp; not even a McNaught.

    182. 182.

      Barry

      @Jackie: ​
       

      “Hard disagree. Trumpers know who TCFG is, and they don’t CARE. They LIKE what he says. They AGREE with what he says.”

      I disagree with your disagreement. The trick is peeling all of the reachable/moderate Republicans off.

      We hope and trust that Trump can’t win with just the hardcore.

    184. 184.

      Chris T.

      @Marc: The Keller Ave area caught fire less than a decade ago too, when I lived in Montclair (right up by CA-24, around the intersection with CA-13).

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