While former President Donald Trump might not prevail next week, we can say with surety that the hope, the joy, the vibes, the brat, and everything else that was supposed to propel Vice President Kamala Harris to victory has faded, to be replaced by what can best be summarized as Orange Man Bad.
Rather incredibly under the circumstances, one of last week’s biggest stories was a rehashed report that claimed former President frequently expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and his relationship with his generals. “In many cases, I would agree with some of his policies,” Marine Corps General John Kelly told The New York Times on Tuesday. “But again, it’s a very dangerous thing to have the wrong person elected to high office.” He continued to claim that Trump met “the definition of a fascist,” a talking point that would be repeated endlessly in the days since, framing everything up to and including the former President’s triumphant appearance at Madison Square Garden yesterday. “Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said. “So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” he concluded, adding “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure” and “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.” General Kelly also took the opportunity to recycle old stories about supposedly disparaging remarks President Trump made about US soldiers along with positive remarks about the Third Reich. “He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Mr. Kelly claimed. “First of all, you should never say that,” he described his response. “But if you knew what Hitler was all about from the beginning to the end, everything he did was in support of his racist, fascist life, you know, the, you know, philosophy, so that nothing he did, you could argue, was good — it was certainly not done for the right reason.” He even went so far as to claim that President Trump looked down on those who were injured in combat, “Certainly his not wanting to be seen with amputees — amputees that lost their limbs in defense of this country fighting for every American, him included, to protect them, but didn’t want to be seen with them. That’s an interesting perspective for the Commander in Chief to have.” Perhaps needless to say, no one at the Times bothered to ask the obvious question: If he truly said these things and you felt they were so horrible, why didn’t you resign on the spot and run to the media then, as opposed to now with less than two weeks before an election?
Regardless, The Atlantic did its part to further both narratives with a blatantly false story that reached the same pro-Hitler conclusion on the very same day. This story begins over four years ago, when President Trump promised to pay for the funeral of 20-year old Army Private Vanessa Guillén, who was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood in Texas in 2020. The family was invited to the White House that April, where the former President expressed sympathy at their loss, “I saw what happened to your daughter Vanessa, who was a spectacular person, and respected and loved by everybody, including in the military” and promised to pay for the funeral. “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.” The funeral itself was conducted without incident two months later, but the topic supposedly resurfaced that December at a national security meeting in the Oval Office, when two-unnamed sources insist the former President asked for no apparent reason, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?” Upon learning the the cost was a whopping $60,000, he supposedly became enraged, exclaiming, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” and telling his Chief of Staff at the time, Mark Meadows, “Don’t pay it!” Later in the day, he was still talking about it, asking “Can you believe it? Fucking people, trying to rip me off” to whoever would listen. Not surprisingly, this story was immediately disputed by almost everyone involved. Natalie Kwawam, the family’s attorney, opnely accused The Atlantic of lying. “After having dealt with hundreds of reporters in my legal career,” she wrote on X, “this is unfortunately the first time I have to go on record and call out Jeffrey Golderg@the Atlantic: not only did he misrepresent our conversation but he outright LIED in HIS sensational story. More importantly, he used and exploited my clients, and Vanessa Guillén’s murder…for cheap political gain…As everyone knows, not only did Trump support our military, he also invited my clients to the Oval Office and supported the I am Vanessa Guillen bill too.” Members of the family insisted President Trump behaved honorably as well. Ms. Guillen’s sister, Mayra, posted on X, “Wow. I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics – hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”
Ironically in light of these and other stories, progressives are simultaneously insisting that President Trump is only performing so well in the polls because the mainstream media simply hasn’t been hard enough on him. If only they’d been just a little more negative than calling him Adolf Hitler or perhaps called him Adolf Hitler a few more times, Vice President Harris would have a commanding lead, so this bizarre thinking goes. The progressive website Salon.com took the lead in this regard on October 20, declaring “If Trump wins, blame the New York Times. America’s paper of record refuses to sound the alarm about the threat Trump poses to democracy.” “If Donald Trump wins the Nov. 5 election, the New York Times will be partly responsible. As the dominant voice in American journalism, the Times could have fundamentally changed the way Trump has been covered not just by its own journalists but by the political media as a whole. It could have stopped using soft, empty language and false equivalence, and made it crystal clear to the public that if elected Trump would turn America into a racist, authoritarian regime where facts don’t matter.” As examples, they the cite describing Trump dancing with the audience at a rally after two people suffered serious health conditions as an “improvisational departure” rather than I’m not sure what. Referring to his mass deportation plan as “hyperbolic rhetoric” and “fury,” referring to various “false claims” he has made rather than “malicious lies,” describing the former President as a rabble rouser who embraces “combative conservatism” rather than simply “hateful and bigoted,” refusing to insist he had dementia and was in “cognitive decline,” and supposedly burying a story about the former President being a fascist (rather rich considering all of the above). Taken together, “the day-to-day coverage treats Trump like a normal candidate, rather than as the wildly dangerous and unhinged felon that he is. Day in and day out, the Times ‘sanewashes’ his dark and unintelligible ramblings. Day in and day out, it treats the divisions about basic facts and democratic rule as just so much partisan squabbling.”
For her part, it appears Vice President Harris is in agreement, using these threads as a closing argument of sorts. A day after the articles appeared, she held a press-briefing at the Naval Observatory, insisting, “This is a window into who Donald Trump really is from the people who know him best,” declaring it “deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler.” She repeated these charges at a CNN-hosted town hall later that same evening. If Trump wins, Harris said, “He’s going to sit there, unstable and unhinged, plotting his revenge, plotting his retribution, creating an enemies list.” Asked if she considered President Trump a fascist, “Yes, I do,” she said. “I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted.” While it might not be much of a closing argument, it does represent something of an improvement in standing for a former President who has long been accused of wanting to be Adolf Hitler, not merely admiring him. Whatever the case, recycling tired canards that haven’t proven effective in the past and blaming the media suggests a new level of desperation in these last days of a shortened campaign, one likely to get worse in this final week.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 