Trump lost. In the words of his acolyte Senator Lindsey Graham: the debate was a “disaster.” Not surprisingly, Trump has refused to debate Kamala Harris again
By Tom Arms
Trump lost. In the words of his acolyte Senator Lindsey Graham: the debate was a “disaster.” Not surprisingly, Trump has refused to debate Kamala Harris again, making it one of the few times that he has turned down the opportunity to blow his horn.
The former president did land a few punches in Tuesday’s verbal brawl. In fact if you listen to the first and last ten minutes then you might come away thinking that Trump won. But the political theatre will be remembered for how he was mocked, rattled and lied, lied and lied.
Millions around world sniggered or guffawed when the former president claimed that immigrants were eating the pets of the residents of Springfield, Ohio.
He was clearly rattled when Kamala Harris invited viewers to attend one of his rallies and added the pointed observation that numbers of attendees are dropping and people are leaving early, bored with his rambling monologues. Rubbish, he retorted, and then falsely claimed that Kamala Harris paid people to attend her rallies.
Read: Breaking down the words used in Harris, Trump debate
The lies came fast and furious—Millions of criminals are flooding across America’s borders. In reality, of the 1.4 million illegals who entered the US in the past year, 14,700 were found to have a criminal record or .01 percent. They were immediately deported. Among native-born Americans there were 16.5 violent crimes for every 100,000 in 2021.
Violent crime, claimed Trump, was going through the roof (again, he said, because of immigrants). Wrong. According to the FBI homicides were down 26 percent in 2023 and violent crime as a whole is at its lowest level in 50 years.
Abortion is a hot election issue. Trump claimed that the Democrats want abortions in the ninth month of pregnancies and are killing babies after they are born. This earned gawp of disbelief from Kamala Harris and was quickly corrected by moderator David Muir.
The big question in post-debate America is whether Trump’s lackluster performance will weaken his power base
Inflation, according to the former president, “is the worst in US history.” It was bad. It reached 9.7 percent. But it has been higher five times since they started keeping records.
“Crime,” said Trump, “is down in Venezuela because they are sending all their criminals to America.” The chaotic state of Venezuela means that any figures produced by the government lack credibility. But those that are produced say that crime is down because there is very little left to steal.
Repeated, again and again, was Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election. ‘Nuff said. He lost.
Obamacare is the closest America has to a national health service. Trump claimed that he saved it when he was president. He tried to kill it.
The big question in post-debate America is whether Trump’s lackluster performance will weaken his power base. Probably not. Lies have never damaged him. They reinforce his dominance by forcing subordinates to agree that the person in charge owns the prize of dictating reality.
Read: Trump rules out another presidential debate against Harris
The victims of the lies—the supporters–have a stark choice: surrender their integrity, the ownership of their beliefs or their own perceptions. In either case, once they have agreed to a deliberate lie, it becomes harder to challenge later ones since that means acknowledging all the lies that went before it. They are caught in a downward spiral of lies as they double down, down, down….
Taylor (single cat lady) Swift’s endorsement is likely to have a bigger impact then the debate. In the 24 hours following her public backing of Ms. Harris, 377,821 people registered to vote. They were overwhelmingly in the 18-25 year old category. As with most elections, the key to victory is dragging your supporters off the sofa and down to the polling station. In the last election 74 percent of young voters cast their ballot for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
World Review
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was the female darling of the Republican far-right. No longer. The new girl on the block is 31-year-old Laura Loomer who is so far to the right that right-wing Ms. Greene has called her “mentally unstable and a documented liar.”
Ms Loomer is also emerging as a confidante of Donald Trump. She travelled on his plane to the 10 September presidential debate in Philadelphia and is said to have fed him the story about immigrants eating pets in Ohio.
She continued with the former president to New York and was with him when he attended the bipartisan services to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attack. This despite the fact that Ms. Loomer has claimed that 9/11 was an “inside job” perpetrated by the Deep State liberal elite.
Laura Loomer loves right-wing conspiracy theories. In her playbook the mass shootings at Last Vegas, El Paso and Parkland were all staged by the anti-gun lobby. The winter storm that disrupted the Iowa caucus was created by meteorologists hired by Deep State Democrats to help Republican candidate Nikki Haley.
Ms Loomer proudly identifies as an “Islamaphobe.” When told that 2,000 Muslim immigrants had drowned while crossing the Mediterranean, she tweeted: “Good. Here’s to 2,000 more. “
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have all banned her for spreading hate speech and misinformation, although Elon Musk reinstated her account. She has also been banned by the online banking services Paypal, Gofundme and Venmo. The taxi services Uber and Lyfft have barred her from using their vehicles because of her attempts to ban Muslim taxi drivers. She is suing all of the above—unsuccessfully.
Twice Ms Loomer has run for Congress for a Florida seat. Twice she lost and twice she was endorsed by Donald Trump. She has written for Alex Jones’s Info-wars; The Geller Report which pushed the Obama birther lie; Rebel Media which describes as a counter-Jihad platform and Veritas, a major broadcaster of conspiracy theories.
Ms. Loomer denies that she is a White Supremacist but proudly admits to being a White Nationalist. She is not a Christian nationalist because she is Jewish and has been the target of death threats from the anti-Semitic wing of America’s far right.
Her loyalty to Donald Trump is rock solid. She told the Washington Post: “If Trump doesn’t get in I don’t have anything. Ms. Loomer attacked Florida governor Ron de Santis and his wife for daring to challenge the former president and has advised Trump that he should make a list of those who have challenged him in the courts and elsewhere and, when re-elected president, “execute them for treason.”
__________________________
What if Trump loses? Will there be a repeat of January 6 when rioters stormed the US capitol in a vain attempt to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory?
Unlikely. But only because this time around Biden—not Trump—controls the security apparatus. And he has put in place an array of measures to protect not only the capitol building, but the entire metropolitan area of Washington DC.
No. If there is a threat to the election it will be in the voting booths, the counting rooms, the election boards and the courts.
As in 2020, Trump is planting the seeds for a legal challenge in case the vote goes against him. This time his objections will be based on illegal immigrants voting for Harris. He told a rally in Las Vegas this summer that “the only way they can beat us is to cheat.”
In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee has put 102 election deniers on local and state election boards. In Georgia, for instance, the election deniers control the state-wide board and have already introduced rules that allow them to delay voter certification while they conduct “investigations” into “unspecified irregularities.”
Read: Observations of an Expat: Kamala’s Foreign Policy
In fact, the Republican National Committee, is not waiting for the election to start its challenges. It has already launched more than 100 lawsuits over election rules. Most of them involve attempts to purge voters from voting lists. In August the RNC sued North Carolina’s election board twice in one week, claiming that it had “once again failed in its mandate to keep non-citizens off the voting roll.” The courts found that the allegations had no foundation.
The Georgia board’s new rules have already clashed with Governor Brian Kemp (a Republican) who responded by setting a deadline for state-wide certification of December 5. But the Trump supporters have indicated that they are prepared to ignore the Governor’s ruling. If that happens the election ends up in the courts.
Both Republicans and Democrats are prepared for courtroom battles. The two parties have hired hundreds of lawyers to fight anticipated legal challenges. Chris La Civita, a key adviser to the Trump campaign, said last month: “It’s not over on election day. It is over on inauguration day.”
______________________________
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden faced a stark choice when they met in Washington this week: Is it riskier to escalate or not escalate the war in Ukraine. The decision will not be made immediately.
Forcing the West into this difficult decision is Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky’s increasingly strident requests for long-range missiles to hit targets in Russia.
There is no doubt that such a move would have a positive impact for Ukraine. So far, the Russian people have been largely shielded from the effects of the war. Ukraine’s military excursion into the Kursk salient has forced the evacuation of thousands and pushed the Russians into the uncomfortable truth that the what is happening in Ukraine is much, much more than a mere “special military operation.” Sending long-range missiles across the border into Russia will reinforce that message and undermine Moscow’s credibility.
But at what price?
Vladimir Putin is backing away from the nuclear saber-rattling of the early days of the conflict; probably because of Chinese objections.
But the Russian leader made it clear that supplying Ukraine with long-range weaponry is a dark red line which the West crosses at its peril. To underscore, this, Putin has thrown out six British diplomats whom he accused of spying. He then said Ukraine’s use of NATO long-range missiles required data from Western satellites, and that only NATO service personnel could input that data.
This would mean, said Putin, “That NATO countries… are fighting with Russia.”
He said Russia’s response to such a situation would be two-fold. First, Russia would substantially strengthen its missile defense systems. This would probably mean breaching existing arms control agreements. It would also be difficult to achieve because of the vast expanse of Russian territory.
Next, Putin said that Russia would supply similar long-range weaponry to countries opposed to the US and other NATO members. Some of the likely beneficiaries could be North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela and possibly factions in Libya, Sudan and West Africa. This is both conceivable and achievable and leaves NATO with the uncomfortable prospect of conflicts on multiple fronts in order to support Ukraine.
Failure to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles also has its consequences. There is a very real possibility that Ukraine will lose the war unless it can force Russia to the negotiating table from a position of strength. The ability to attack targets deep within Russia could give them the required negotiating leverage.
Ukraine is fighting the West’s war. It has the spirit to win but lacks the means. If it loses then Ukraine will effectively become a puppet state in the thrall of Moscow. Russia will have effectively expanded up to its border with Poland and its increased influence will be felt throughout Europe. Putin will also be emboldened to continue to expand into additional territories in Europe and Central Asia.
Read: Observations of an Expat – Defense Cooperation: Back Door to Europe
_____________________
Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain.”
