Never mind that he was in Wisconsin. Never mind that it was windy but perfectly sunny. Former President Donald Trump was scheduled to speak about the hurricane.
This was a nine-minute incident of yesterday’s nearly two-hour campaign rally in which President Trump used the remarks to show that Vice President Kamala Harris was sending billions of dollars to foreign countries while helping domestic disaster victims. denounced the falsehood that it was only providing $750 in aid to each person. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been working on the response for several days.
He then went further and falsely accused the White House of playing politics with disaster relief, which is exactly what he did.
“You know, this is a primarily Republican area, so some people say they did it for that reason, and I don’t think they’re that bad, but maybe they are,” Trump said in Juneau, Wisconsin. No,” he said. That’s where I went to hear his final pitch to voters, or whatever it was that day.
With less than 30 days until the November election, Trump’s closing arguments at rallies across the country focused on polarizing disinformation, false claims of election fraud by his opponents, and It was a series of baseless personal attacks. As for Harris, he said his advisers and allies outside the Republican Party have been urging him to stop speaking out for weeks.
For Trump, this is a strategy squarely aimed at pleasing his base, and is reminiscent of his care for Election Day in 2016.
His claims spread quickly. At the rally, I spoke to Kurtz Keitlinger, a 22-year-old voter with 50,000 TikTok followers, who said that before President Trump spoke in Juneau, he had previously spoken elsewhere. cited false claims about a $750 aid limit. . (FEMA says on its website that people can apply for $750 in “Severe Needs Assistance,” which is an advance payment that helps with food and other expenses, as well as additional funding to cover temporary housing and home costs.) ) repairs, etc. )
Even more concerning, even as Republican governors praise the federal response, the claims appear to be helping fuel misinformation on the ground, with local officials It’s the same way President Trump has spread false claims about immigration in places like Springfield, Ohio, while pleading with Trump to stop.
All of this will directly impact the lawsuit against Trump by Democrats who have denounced him as a threat to democracy that voters across the political spectrum must unite to stop. This entails considerable political risk.
But he doesn’t seem too worried about that.
“I want to be kind. I want to be kind. I think I’m a good person,” Trump said. “But we can’t accept, we can’t, if we lose this election, this country is over, I truly believe that.”
Strengthen personal attacks
The rally was Trump’s fourth in Wisconsin in the past eight days, and follows his return to Butler, Pennsylvania, where there was much uproar after a shooting in July.
For months, Republicans, including his own advisers, have urged Trump to avoid personal attacks on Harris while delivering a focused message on the issues voters trust him most with, such as the economy and immigration. There have been concerns that this could widen the gender gap. And turn off key swing voters.
He often ignored this guidance. And in Juneau, he ramped up his attacks on the vice president, suggesting that Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, was chosen because of her race, just as she was when she first took the top job.
“They chose her because they wanted to be politically correct,” he said, before finding several ways to insult her intelligence.
“That dummy, I’m not going to let her destroy our country,” he said.
He also suggested with a laugh that those who supported Harris in the crowd could face physical violence.
“Will anyone vote for Kamala, who lied? Raise your hand, raise it,” President Trump said before changing his mind. “Actually, please don’t raise your hands. It’s very dangerous. We don’t want to see anyone get hurt. Please don’t raise your hands.”
lack of discipline
In many ways, President Trump’s campaign has become a well-oiled machine filled with advisers and aides who adhere to their talking points. But Trump revels in his ability to go off-script at his rallies. In Juneau, he boasted about his casual relationship with a teleprompter and went on and on about hydrogen cars.
“If it explodes, you won’t know who it is,” Trump said, as if he were playing the role of a local official dealing with the aftermath of an accident. “Please come down and identify your husband, uh, there’s blood on the tree. Can you identify him?”
He drew the loudest cheers of the day when he called the migrants, who have become increasingly ominous in recent weeks, “savage.”
“Wisconsin will no longer be Wisconsin, and no state will be Wisconsin,” he said. “This country will no longer be the United States.”
baseless accusations of wrongdoing
Trump’s allies have all but acknowledged that Trump’s obsession with the 2020 election, which he has falsely claimed was marred by fraud, is a political liability. On stage during the debate, vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance tried to avoid questions about whether Trump had actually lost the election, saying he wanted to focus on the future. That was a week ago. Two days later, Ms. Harris and her most prominent Republican supporter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, campaigned together in Wisconsin and called Mr. Trump a threat to democracy.
But here in Juneau, as he is almost everywhere, Mr. Trump railed about the last election and issued dark warnings about the next one.
“They’re going to cheat. They’re going to cheat. All they want to do is cheat, and if you look at this, that’s the only way they’re going to win,” President Trump said. “And we can’t allow that to happen, and we can’t allow it to happen again.”
Democracy experts have expressed deep concern that Mr. Trump is trying to sow doubts about the election results and pave the way for a challenge if he does not win.
How October 7th shaped American politics
As the newsroom and my colleagues around the world mark the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and abducted 250, I would like to take some time to cover them. I hope you stay. Our Politics team reporters dig into what two key battleground states mean for American politics a year from now.
Pennsylvania: “Our American Jewish community is crying out in despair.”
My colleague Jonathan Wiseman writes that Jewish communities across the country are in perpetual distress, feeling divided, suspicious, and betrayed from within and without.
“I’m worried, and it’s growing,” Bob Bernstein, 70, said as he and his wife walked down Murray Avenue in Pittsburgh on Friday night. His wife Ellie, also 70, agreed: “But we can’t live in fear.”
The intensity of the political season in Pennsylvania, which now spans the High Holy Days, has only exacerbated these fears. Jewish voters in this battleground state are being courted by leaders of both political parties and repulsed by those within each party. Of them.
Click here for details.
Michigan: Arab voters reject Harris as Middle East war threatens her position
The relentless escalation of violence in the Middle East threatens America’s Democratic coalition, writes my colleague Katie Glueck. While Arab American voters are showing signs of abandoning the Democratic ticket, some Jews are worried about their future in the party their families have embraced for generations.
Nowhere are these tensions more politically important than in Michigan, a key battleground state with large Arab American and Muslim voters. Of nearly 20 interviews over the weekend with voters ranging from religious observance level to family origin, only two said they would vote for Katie.
Click here for details.
