What if a foreign adversary baits him?

In a pundit roundup on Daily Kos Greg Dworkin included a quote from Greg Sargent of The New Republic:

In a shocking new development—OK, it was entirely predictable—the mayor of Springfield, Ohio has now confirmed that the widely reported threat by email to bomb Springfield’s City Hall included hateful language toward immigrants. This suggests at least the possibility that MAGA’s Two-Minute Hate of the Week about Haitians eating people’s house pets helped incite a threat of mass violence.

Dworkin also included a video of Pete Buttigieg speaking on CNN (his host wasn’t named in this clip). He said the nasty guy wanting us talking about people eating pets is a strategic move. Better we talk about something outrageous that sucks up all the oxygen and sends reporters scurrying to debunk it than to talk about his record: Tax cuts for the rich, jobs lost, limiting abortion. Or about his agenda, Project 2025. Also from Sargent is a discussion of the nasty guy’s many authoritarian statements.

Yet as horrifying as all that is, another, less-garish scenario also potentially looms—and in some respects it might be a more plausible one. A second Trump presidency could unleash a kind of lower-profile, slow-burn authoritarianism, something that unfolds much more quietly and largely behind the scenes. In its targeting of internal enemies and its efforts to carry out revolutionary changes via far-right governance, it could end up being much less dramatic, visible, or splashy—but at the same time, extremely insidious, difficult to track, and very challenging to mobilize against.

In a second pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Philip Bump of the Washington Post:

This is a central reason that Vance and others on the right are susceptible to being described as “weird.” There’s an online world in which things get taken to the nth-degree because its economy rewards that sort of hyperbole. But then these obsessions and claims are taken out of that bubble and presented to everyone else and they don’t hold up. What else can you do but marvel at how strange it all is?

Ruben Bolling posted a Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon on Kos. It tells the story of an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile hitting a school. The story features a nine year old perpetrator, solemn facial expressions from Republicans, a resident with his own collection of ICBMs, an ICBM enthusiast who insists the weapons are protected from children, and Justice Clarence Thomas using an Ouija Board to contact Thomas Jefferson to pronounce ICBMs are covered by the Second Amendment. Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos with this caption:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, because JD Vance told her what to do.

Louis DeStroy is still in charge of the United States Postal Service (why is he still there?) and there is again concern that ballots sent through the mail won’t arrive in time to be counted. From an Associated Press article posted on Kos about a letter listing concerns about continuing problems at USPS.

The two groups, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, said local election officials “in nearly every state” are receiving timely postmarked ballots after Election Day and outside the three to five business days USPS claims as the standard for first-class mail. The letter comes less than two weeks after DeJoy said in an interview that the Postal Service was ready to handle a flood of mail ballots expected as part of this November's presidential election and as former President Donald Trump continues to sow doubts about U.S. elections by falsely claiming he won in 2020.

So use drop boxes for your ballot. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the nasty guy and his surrogates have been linking the attempt to assassinate him to Democrats, that it was an “inside job.” That claim is based on Biden’s campaign emphasis that the nasty guy is authoritarian who must be stopped and that rhetoric lead to the shooting. Missing from that claim is the decades in which Republicans have been promoting gun culture and doing nothing about mass shootings in schools and elsewhere. This logic can easily “be seen as justification for taking similar measures in response.” It is a part of laying the groundwork for Big Lie 2.0.

But if the polls run away from Trump following his miserable debate performance, he may not wait until Jan. 6. Trump has already been insisting that the election system is corrupt. It would not be hard for him to move to insisting to his supporters that they need to take action before ballots are cast. ... Trump’s lies are likely to grow along with his desperation. And so will the threat those lies represent.

Sumner also reported that the Secret Service and allied organizations are gearing up for heightened security around the Capitol on January 6, 2025 when the Electoral College votes are counted. This is partly in response to the nasty guy planning how to get his supporters angry enough to coup again. But funds for proper protection of the Capitol are still caught up in a government funding bill that is supposed to be passed by the end of the month but House Republicans are making sure is going nowhere. People are working through plans for a wide array of horrible post-election scenarios. Other people are preparing to defeat those pans and create those horrible scenarios. Yet Republicans may simply leave the doors unlocked. Kos of Kos discussed the nasty guy’s debate performance and why it should disqualify him to be back in the Oval Office (one more big reason to add to all the other big reasons). His debate prep advisors knew Harris would bait him. Yet, he fell for the bait every time. He could not help himself. What if a foreign adversary baits him?

Does America really need a president with zero impulse control? When his advisers actually offer sage (and obvious) advice, and he knows it’s good advice, he still can’t help doing the wrong thing. ... [Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen] then speculate as to why Trump couldn’t manage the relatively simple task of just staying on message: He’s “haunted” by his 2020 loss and being labeled a loser; he falls for fake news like the racist lie that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Ohio; he’s old and won’t change his habits; and he surrounds himself with conspiracy theorists like Laura Loomer who are happy to lie to him. That sums up the case against Trump’s reelection very neatly. Age alone is not disqualifying. The other three factors are, and it’s a blight on our country that he still has a chance to win this thing.