Several former White House officials who served under Donald Trump have come out in support of retired General John Kelly, who earlier this week called the former president a fascist who often praised Hitler.
Politico reported Friday that more than a dozen officials agreed with Kelly in a letter of their own, stating that “this is who Donald Trump is.”
“The revelations General Kelly brought forward are disturbing and shocking. But because we know Trump and have worked for and alongside him, we were sadly not surprised by what General Kelly had to say,” they wrote in the letter.
The letter goes far in backing Kelly, with the signatories saying that like him, they “did not take the decision to come forward lightly.”
“We are all lifelong Republicans who served our country. However, there are moments in history where it becomes necessary to put country over party. This is one of those moments. Everyone should heed General Kelly’s warning,” the letter states.
The letter’s signatories included Trump administration officials such as former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, former press secretary to the vice president Alyssa Farah Griffin, and former assistant secretary of homeland security Elizabeth Neumann, among others.
Grisham spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, telling the Chicago audience that Trump “used to tell me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, just say it enough and people will believe you.’” Griffin has also come out against Trump, calling his message to women “creepy.”
The letter is the latest example of many Republicans turning against Trump. Some have even gone on to endorse Harris, such as a group of more than 100 former GOP officials, as well as former staffers to previous Republican presidential candidates. Harris hopes that the GOP defections don’t stop there but continue at the ballot box in 11 days.
The chair of the conservative-led House Freedom Caucus said that North Carolina’s legislature ought to preemptively grant Donald Trump all 16 of the state’s electors before any vote has even been counted.
Maryland Representative Andy Harris’s outrageous comments were in response to a speech that right-wing extremist Ivan Raiklin, who previously assembled a “Deep State target list” of Trump’s political enemies, gave at a Republican Party dinner hosted Thursday. Raiklin argued that due to the widespread damage and displacement caused by Hurricane Helene, North Carolina’s Republican-led state legislature should award its electors to Trump ahead of the election results, according to Politico.
Raiklin also suggested that Republican-controlled state legislatures in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia, and Wisconsin could carry out similar schemes, by coming together for a vote on Election Day.
When Raiklin opened the floor to questions, Maryland Representative Andy Harris said that it “makes a lot of sense” for North Carolina’s legislature to simply say Trump won, and actually suggested that waiting for the results of the popular vote would somehow “disenfranchise” voters.
“You statistically can go and say, ‘Hey, look, you got disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would have been,’” Harris said. “Which would be—if I were in the Legislature—enough to go, ‘Yeah, we have to convene the Legislature. We can’t disenfranchise the voters.’”
The popular vote typically determines the allocation of electors in all 50 states.
Harris argued that the plan would only work in North Carolina, and would probably look like an illegal plot to steal the White House if Republicans tried it anywhere else.
“But how do you make the argument in other states? I mean, otherwise it looks like it’s just a power play. With North Carolina I mean, it’s legitimate. There are a lot of people who aren’t going to get to vote, and it may make the difference in that state,” he continued.
When asked to explain his statement, Harris told Politico, “As I’ve repeatedly said, every legal vote should be counted. I would hope everyone could agree that legal American voters whose lives were devastated by the recent storms should not be disenfranchised in the upcoming voting process.”
Early voting in North Carolina began last weekend, and already, voter turnout appeared to be lessened by the destruction of Hurricane Helene earlier this month. Across 13 counties in western North Carolina that were identified as the most affected by Helene, voter turnout on the first day of early voting was significantly lower than it was in 2020, according to Citizen Times.
Donald Trump’s ex-allies and former staffers agree that the Republican presidential nominee is a fascist—but the people laser-focused on returning him to the Oval Office are working overtime to undercut the dire warning.
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist ideology, characterized by dictators who lean on military force to quash civil opposition. Trump has repeatedly mirrored the rhetoric of some of the world’s most infamous fascist leaders—namely, Adolf Hitler—on hot-button issues such as immigration. Earlier this week, interviews in The Atlantic and The New York Times revealed that Trump had, in private conversations, showered the violent regimes with praise, reportedly telling White House staffers that he needed the “kind of generals that Hitler had.”
In a joint statement released Friday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell claimed that it was Vice President Kamala Harris, and her decision to formally label Trump a fascist, that has ushered more violence into the presidential race (as opposed to Trump’s dangerous and economically unstable policy goals).
Harris “must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions,” the pair wrote.
Memorializing the assassination attempt on Trump in July, the conservative leaders argued that the “Democratic nominee for President of the United States has only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus.”
“Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over,” Johnson and McConnell wrote. “The Vice President’s words more closely resemble those of President Trump’s second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility.”
But the joint letter belies the reality that the conservative leaders are backing Trump for wildly different reasons. Johnson, a Christian nationalist with plans to curb LGBTQ+ right and hand states the keys to ban abortion, has vehemently defended Trump for years, going so far as to design the legal strategy to further the former president’s 2020 election interference conspiracy. On the other hand, McConnell—an expedient Republican operative—has privately referred to Trump as “stupid,” “ill-tempered,” and a “despicable human being,” all while publicly endorsing him and promising that he’s on the “same team” as the Republican presidential nominee.
Their letter also conveniently ignores the fact that Trump has repeatedly called Harris a fascist for the past few months, despite the fact that Harris’s rhetoric and policies don’t align with the authoritarian ideology while Trump’s do.
Meanwhile, almost half of all Americans acknowledge that Trump is a fascist, according to a new poll from ABC News/Ipsos. That included 87 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of independents, and 12 percent of Republicans. That same survey found that nearly two-thirds of voters view Trump as a candidate who regularly departs from the truth.
Read more about Trump’s comments:
It appears Jeff Bezos is very afraid of Donald Trump. For the first time in 36 years, The Washington Post will not be endorsing a presidential candidate this election.
The Post’s editorial page editor David Shipley announced the news to shocked colleagues in a reportedly tense meeting Friday morning. The paper’s publisher, William Lewis, published a note to readers shortly thereafter confirming the news, writing that the newsroom is “nonpartisan” and wants to let readers “make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions.”
It’s a stunning announcement from the paper that proudly adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” just after Trump became president in 2017.
The news caught staffers completely off guard. In fact, the Post—reporting on the chaos within its own newsroom—noted that a presidential endorsement for Kamala Harris had already been drafted. The paper’s editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned soon after the public announcement, and other staffers are similarly furious over the decision. One opinion writer, speaking anonymously to Semafor’s Max Tani, said, “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t.”
The Post’s union put out a statement pointing a finger directly at Bezos for the decision.
Marty Baron, the newspaper’s former executive editor, also slammed the decision. “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” he wrote on X. “[Donald Trump] will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner [Jeff Bezos] (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
The Post endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020, calling out Trump’s threat to democracy as well as his “few accomplishments in his first term and no agenda for his second.” The editorial board has also previously condemned Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection, his actions while in office, and his general rhetoric.
Suffice it to say, this is a major departure that can only be explained by cowardice from Bezos, one of the world’s richest people. The Amazon founder is likely worried about how a Harris endorsement would hurt him if Trump returns to office. Bezos has contracts before the federal government that could be at risk, including Amazon’s shipping and cloud computing services and his Blue Origin space company (also a government contractor).
The news indicates a troubling trend of billionaires already bowing to Trump. Earlier this month, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong reportedly ordered the paper to avoid making an endorsement in the presidential election. On Wednesday, the LA Times’ editorials editor Mariel Garza resigned in protest, saying the decision made the paper look “craven and hypocritical” given its past reporting and editorials on Trump.
This story has been updated.
More on the chaos of the 2024 race:
Almost half of all Americans view Donald Trump as a fascist, according to a new poll from ABC News/Ipsos.
The poll, released Friday morning, shows 49 percent of registered voters think of Trump as fitting the definition of a “political extremist who acts as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents.” The survey also found that nearly two-thirds of registered voters say Trump departs from the truth.
The poll’s results seem to break down along political lines, with 87 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of independents, and 12 percent of Republicans calling Trump a fascist. The poll showed that 22 percent of registered voters saw Kamala Harris as a fascist, broken down to 41 percent of Republicans, 20 percent of independents, and 3 percent of Democrats.
The poll was conducted before Trump’s former chief of staff, retired General John Kelly, told The New York Times in an interview published Tuesday that the former president fit the definition of a fascist and had praised Hitler multiple times in the past. An article published Tuesday from The Atlantic also detailed Trump’s praise for autocrats and his desire to use the military against his political opponents.
Harris has called out the former president for his authoritarian wishes, saying on Wednesday, “We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question, in 13 days, will be: What do the American people want?”
Well, right now, the American people are almost evenly split in their choice for president, according to the latest polls, with some of them showing Trump ahead and others giving Harris the edge. With only 11 days left to go, Harris still has to convince more Americans that Trump is a fascist, and how dangerous that would be. Unfortunately, it appears many Americans openly embrace Trump’s fascistic ideas, such as putting immigrants in militarized camps. The question is whether those Americans will vote in large numbers.
Very related read on Trump fascism:
Senator Lindsey Graham is sounding the alarms that another seismic terrorist attack is on the horizon—if Donald Trump doesn’t win the November election.
During an interview on Fox News’s Hannity Thursday, the South Carolina Republican baselessly argued that Vice President Kamala Harris’s border policies would cause another 9/11.
“That’s Donald Trump, Kari Lake, Sam Brown—let’s secure these Senate seats to help this president shut down the border before another 9/11 comes,” Graham said as the show’s outro music began.
“This is the most important election in our lifetime. Turn around those caravans. LindseyGraham.com,” Graham added.
yikes — Lindsey Graham on Hannity’s show suggests another 9/11 is coming unless Trump is elected pic.twitter.com/u2BDDfKqIc
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 25, 2024
A $118 billion bipartisan border deal was moments from coming to fruition earlier this year, before Republicans willingly tanked it in order to hand Trump fodder for his 2024 campaign. The deal would have tightened rules for asylum and created a standard for shutting down the southern border if undocumented crossings reached daily benchmarks, meeting practically every requirement set by the conservative caucus.
And run on the issue he has. At a rally earlier this month in Aurora, Colorado, the Republican presidential nominee amped up his Nazi rhetoric, weaponizing violent and dehumanizing language against immigrants, referring to them as the “enemy from within,” while advocating for harsher criminal punishments for the vulnerable demographic, including promising the death penalty.
“They took the criminals out of Caracas, and they put them along your border, and they said if you ever come back, we’re going to kill you,” Trump said.
“Think of that!” he continued. “We have to live with these animals. But we won’t live with them for long!”
Trump has made his own violent threats about his potential loss in recent months, including claiming that the nation would lose World War III if he failed to resume the Oval Office.
“We won’t even be in World War III, we’ll be losing World War III with weapons the likes of which nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said at a Nazi-attended conservative conference in Racine, Wisconsin, in June. “These are the stakes of this election. Our country is being destroyed. And the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me. It’s true.”
A ballot initiative campaign to enshrine abortion rights in the New York state Constitution has raised more than $2 million toward its efforts—but only a sliver of that money has been spent on reaching voters. The lion’s share has gone toward consultants and overhead, according to Politico.
New Yorkers for Equal Rights has been organizing in support of the Equal Rights Act, or Prop 1, a measure that will prohibit government discrimination regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, pregnancy status, disability status, or sexual orientation. It will also codify abortion protections.
But New York voters may not actually know that, because Republican groups have been waging a fierce campaign against the measure by focusing on the amendment’s protections for transgender people, threatening that the measure could end women’s sports. Vote No on Prop 1 has spent nearly half a million dollars on ad spots to run during Jets, Bills, and Giants football games, according to the New York Post. In one ad, the group claims the measure will somehow aid in allowing noncitizen voting, which is not only illegal, it hardly ever happens.
And, so far, the advertising and outreach efforts of New Yorkers for Equal Rights have been practically nonexistent, which is surprising for a group that has raised so much money. But that’s because the bulk of their fundraising isn’t going toward voter outreach at all.
While the group had spent $1.3 million by the end of September, nearly $900,000, or 70 percent, went to hiring consultants, fundraisers, pollsters, and other staff. Only $226,000 was spent on direct contact with voters, according to Politico’s review of the committee’s campaign finance reports.
The group also received $744,000 in in-kind contributions, 85 percent of which went to cover staff, while only 14 percent went to advertising and outreach costs.
For comparison, high-profile campaigns for propositions in New York typically spend more than 90 percent of their funds on direct voter contact.
“That’s just malpractice,” said one consultant not affiliated with the campaign, who was granted anonymity to speak openly with Politico.
The campaign insists that more ads are coming. It launched a $500,000 advertising effort on streaming and digital media on October 8, which will appear on the next financial disclosure report. The group plans to have spent at least $2.4 million on direct voter outreach by the end of October.
New Yorkers for Equal Rights campaign director Sasha Ahuja said that the group was also planning to jump on a spike in voter attention as the election draws nearer.
“We went up on digital and streaming a month before the election and, like countless campaigns across the country, we’re concentrating our paid media efforts in the final weeks—when voters are most engaged,” Ahuja told Politico.
“Running a successful campaign in New York also requires top-tier staff and organizers—which is why we built out a robust ground game early, ensuring we can reach voters as Election Day approaches,” Ahuja added.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced in June their support for the campaign, which planned to raise $20 million to spend on television ads, direct mail and organizing in support of the Equal Rights Act.* Democratic leaders hoped that putting abortion on the state ballot might motivate Democratic voters to support Democratic candidates in November, flipping back four swing districts that turned red during the midterm elections.
* This story has been updated to clarify who intended to raise the money.
Read more about abortion rights:
Elon Musk is thumbing his nose at the Department of Justice, on Thursday night resuming his super PAC’s scheme to give away $1 million to a battleground state voter every day despite receiving a warning from the DOJ earlier in the week.
Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC announced two winners on X Thursday night: Jason from Holland, Michigan, and Brian from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. They join four other winners since Musk began the giveaway on Saturday to registered voters in swing states who sign the super PAC’s petition in support of the First and Second Amendments.
On Wednesday, it was reported that the DOJ sent a letter to America PAC warning that the scheme may break federal laws against paying people to register to vote. Legal experts have said that at best, Musk’s scheme falls into a legal gray area. Now it seems that the tech mogul is daring the federal government to take action against him and press charges, which would not only create a major media circus, but also result in a long legal battle against the world’s richest man.
Musk has thumbed his nose at the federal government and gotten away with it in the past. He faced penalties from the Securities and Exchange Commission for lying on X (formerly Twitter) about being able to take his Tesla car company private, but was able to stay on as CEO, only paying a fine and losing his board chairman position for three years. With his vast net worth, he could probably drag out any court case against him, even when the DOJ is involved. Moreover, if the DOJ were to hit Musk with criminal charges, the case would continue long after Election Day on November 5, and the tech mogul would likely still keep giving money away in the meantime.
In addition to his lottery, Musk is busy with his other efforts to return Donald Trump to the White House, including talking strategy with right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch, keeping negative stories about Trump off of his X platform, and posting debunked conspiracy theories as well as misinformation.
The tech CEO is using his money in other nefarious ways as well, including a cynical ad campaign using Israel’s brutal war in Gaza to convince Arab American voters in Michigan that Kamala Harris is too pro-Israel, and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania that she opposes Israel’s actions. It seems that Musk thinks that his power and money allow him to influence politics in any way he wishes, and he clearly doesn’t fear repercussions from the government.
Unfortunately More on Elon:
With less than two weeks until Election Day, former Trump allies are sounding the alarm that Donald Trump isn’t the same man they knew.
Speaking with Kaitlan Collins on CNN’s The Source Thursday night, former Trump White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews agreed that the Republican presidential nominee had become “unstable” and no longer resembled the man who captured the nation’s attention when he descended a golden escalator at Trump Tower in 2015.
“That’s been my warning to Republican voters out there,” Matthews told Collins. “This isn’t the same man that I worked for. I think that something in him broke in the 2020 election. He was unable to accept that loss and he started to unravel.”
Matthews argued that Trump, who at the start of his political career ran on a vision to “Make America Great Again,” has since devolved into a far-right ideologue “hell-bent on revenge and retribution.”
“She’s focused on solutions; he’s focused on petty arguments and getting revenge on people,” Matthews said, comparing Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris.
While Trump’s politics have taken a turn for the violent, the 78-year-old’s mental acuity has also slipped, with the onetime bully struggling to avoid verbal gaffes during his public appearances. And the glitches continue: Speaking at a Turning Point Action event in Las Vegas on Thursday, Trump seemingly misfired as he attempted to speak about his plan to strip taxes from tips, instead offering up a jumbled word salad while trying to cover his tracks.
“Increasing the so-called tipola—you know she, she, she wants to—when I said no tax on tips, remember?” Trump told the crowd.
Trump: “Increasing the so-called tipola— you know she she” pic.twitter.com/FpPl5D966M
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 25, 2024
In recent weeks, Trump has dodged mainstream news appearances, including going so far as to break election tradition by refusing to sit for a 60 Minutes interview in September, which he reportedly backed out of last-minute over fears that the rigorous show would fact-check him.
Instead, Trump has relegated his TV appearances to friendlier, more sycophantic networks, including Fox News, whose anchor Maria Bartiromo did not interrupt or correct Trump when he claimed that the real Election Day threat is the “enemy from within” while suggesting that the military should forcibly involve itself in handling the election results.
More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
“We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads.
“Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones,” the letter continued. “As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities.”
The letter describes an “awful situation where only flawed choices are available.”
“In our view, it is crystal clear that allowing the fascist Donald Trump to become President again would be the worst possible outcome for the Palestinian people. A Trump win would be an extreme danger to Muslims in our country, all immigrants, and the American pro-Palestine movement,” the letter states.
The letter includes several reasons why the coalition believes Trump would be far worse for Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and all those organizing for Palestinians. The writers cite Trump’s bloodthirsty remark last week about how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should “go further” in Gaza, while criticizing President Joe Biden for “holding him back.” At the time, Trump hailed Netanyahu for doing a “good job” and voiced his support for expanding military operations into Lebanon, where Israel has killed at least 1,800 people in the past five weeks alone.
The letter also notes Trump’s ties to Zionist Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson, who is pushing for Trump to allow Israel to illegally annex the West Bank. Israel has killed 165 children in the occupied West Bank in the last year.
“Voting for Harris is not a personal endorsement of her or of the policy decisions of the administration in which she served. It’s an assessment of the best possible option to continue fighting for an end to the genocide, a free Palestine, and all else that we hold dear,” the letter says, asking others to place the immediate needs of their communities over their dissatisfaction with Harris. The group dismissed third-party candidates such as Jill Stein, saying that voting for them could only “make Donald Trump president.”
“If our communities ally with the Green Party to defeat Harris, we risk marginalizing ourselves as they did by alienating the tens of millions of voters who support the cause of Palestinian freedom and are fighting to defeat Trump by electing her,” the letter continues.
The letter urges that after the election, they can hold Harris accountable with “every nonviolent tool of democracy.” Such tools would likely not be available under Trump, who has vowed to deport pro-Palestinian protesters and threatened to turn the military against his own citizens.
Since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris has struggled to find footing with Arab and Muslim voters, after spurning the Uncommitted Party’s request for a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Convention in August.
A poll released Monday conducted by Arab News/YouGov found that Trump led Harris 45 percent to 43 percent among Arab Americans. Those voters said that they viewed Trump as more supportive of Israel’s current government, but that he was more likely to end the conflict.
Harris has repeatedly delivered milquetoast talking points about defending Israel’s “right to defend itself,” and touting Palestinians’ “right to dignity,” though her statements have not gone much further than that.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration threatened to reevaluate military support if Israel did not improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza and reduce civilian casualties within 30 days. In response to reports from the U.N. that Israel had prevented aid from entering Gaza, Harris posted on X, “Israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need. Civilians must be protected and have access to food, water, and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected.”
