Before You Hire Trump for the Job, Check His References
PLUS: A review of "Woman of the Hour" starring Anna Kendrick
It’s standard practice: When you apply for a job, you supply your potential employer with references. Your prospective boss would like to hear from those you have worked with—supervisors, co-workers, direct reports, team members—to know if you would be someone he or she would like to work with. Similarly, if you’ve ever been in a position to hire someone, you’ve probably checked your applicants’ references as well. It is one of the most critical parts of the job recruitment process. Employers want to know if an applicant is hard-working, a team player, pleasant to work with, qualified, trustworthy, praiseworthy. Checking references also allows a potential employer to see if a prospective employee is everything they claim to be.
The United States is a democracy. That means in this country, the people are the boss. Every four years, we hire a president to run the place. They’re given tremendous power in return. No bill becomes a law without the president’s signature. Government agencies—including those tasked with law enforcement—follow their orders. They respond to national emergencies, and can authorize military operations. They are entrusted with the codes to our nuclear arsenal.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are running against one another to win this awesome responsibility. They have spent the past three months making the case for themselves and attacking one another. Their surrogates—including many who have worked for or alongside them—have vouched for them.
But there are also many officials who worked for Trump when he was in the White House who have come forward to say that based on what they saw of the man after he was entrusted with that awesome responsibility that Trump is not qualified to serve as president. These are not ordinary White House staffers either, nor disgruntled ex-employees or individuals who parted ways with Trump over a policy disagreement. They are officials directly responsible for the workings of the government who were in the Oval Office with Trump advising him during the most consequential moments of his presidency. These are people Trump picked to be by his side in those moments. Most are Republicans who wanted to be there, as they supported his agenda. Each felt that by serving the president—by helping Trump fulfill his duties as the nation’s chief executive—that they were serving the country. But that sense of national duty keeps them today from recommending to the American people that we should rehire their old boss as president.
I have spent years arguing that Donald Trump is not qualified to be president. You don’t have to take my word for that, though. Listen instead to those he hired to serve alongside him at the highest levels in his administration, who took the job believing a Trump presidency would benefit the nation. You’re the boss in this democracy. Do what a good boss would do before you head into that voting booth: Check Trump’s references.
Start with John Kelly, who served as White House Chief of Staff (basically the president’s top advisor and the person tasked with overseeing the operations of the White House executive staff) from mid-2017 through the end of 2018. Kelly enlisted in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, was commissioned as an officer, rose through the ranks to become a four-star general, led a task force in Iraq, and served as the commander of the United States Southern Command from 2012-2016. Trump selected him as his first Secretary of Homeland Security based on Kelly’s support for tough enforcement of immigration law.
Last week, Kelly sat down with Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times for a recorded interview about Trump. “‘In many cases, I would agree with some of his policies,’ [Kelly told the Times], stressing that as a former military officer he was not endorsing any candidate. ‘But again, it’s a very dangerous thing to have the wrong person elected to high office.’” Here’s Kelly in his own words:
When asked if Trump met the definition of a “fascist,” Kelly consulted an online definition of the term (from Wikipedia actually) and responded, “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. … 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 [Trump] certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.” If you need a point of reference, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were fascists.
When asked about what Trump thought of Hitler, Kelly said, “[Trump] commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’” (MORE: “‘First of all, you should never say that,’ Mr. Kelly said that he told Mr. Trump. ‘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…philosophy, so that nothing he did, you could argue, was good — it was certainly not done for the right reason.” Mr. Kelly said that would usually end the conversation. But Mr. Trump would occasionally bring it up again.’”) By the way, Kelly isn’t the only Republican who has compared Trump to Hitler (but those were different times, I guess.)
When asked about Trump’s admiration of dictators, Kelly answered, “[Trump] certainly prefers the dictator approach to government. [He] never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted. I think he’d love to be just like he was in business — he could tell people to do things and they would do it, and not really bother too much about whether what the legalities were and whatnot.” Trump has stated a desire to act as a dictator if re-elected president.
“I think this issue of using the military on — to go after — American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad thing — even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it.” For context, over the past month, Trump has repeatedly proposed using the military to “handle” whom he has termed “the enemy within,” whom he clearly perceives as his political rivals. By the way, when fascist dictators like Hitler use the military to “handle” the enemy within, it leads to things like this, from Nazi Germany, with implications that should shake you to your core:
“Certainly [Trump’s] 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. He would just say: ‘Look, it just doesn’t look good for me.’”
“‘The time in Paris was not the only time that he ever said it,’ Mr. Kelly said, referring to reports that Mr. Trump told him that he did not want to visit a cemetery where American service members killed during World War I were buried. ‘Whenever John McCain’s name came up, he’d go through this rant about him being a loser, and all those people were suckers, and why do you people think that people getting killed are heroes? And he’d go through this rant.’ To me, I could never understand why he was that way — he may be the only American citizen that feels that way about those who gave their lives or served their country.” Trump’s remarks were likely deeply personal to Kelly, as his oldest son was killed in 2010 while on patrol in Afghanistan. But they should also disturb anyone who has lost a loved one in wartime, who knows someone who serves in the military, or any American for that matter.
“He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government — he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that. He just doesn’t understand the values — he pretends, he talks, he [says he] knows more about America than anybody, but he doesn’t.”
Again, all that comes from Trump’s former top advisor.
Let’s move on to Mark Esper, who served as Trump’s Secretary of Defense from mid-2019 to November 2020. Esper is a graduate of West Point, saw combat in the 1991 Gulf War, and worked as chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation (a prominent conservative think tank) and as a senior executive at the Chamber of Commerce.
On the third anniversary of 1/6, Esper told CNN, “[Y]es, I do regard [Trump] as a threat to democracy, democracy as we know it, our institutions, our political culture, all those things that make America great and have defined us as, you know, the oldest democracy on this planet.”
Esper told CNN in November 2022 while lamenting Republican underperformance during the midterms, “I think [Trump’s] unfit for office.”
Last week, when asked about Kelly’s remarks and if Trump meets the definition of a fascist, Esper told CNN he agreed, stating, “It’s hard to say that [Trump] doesn’t, when you kind of look at those terms. But, he certainly has those inclinations. And I think it’s something we should be wary about.”
Esper also said the public should take Trump “seriously” when he proposed using the military against American citizens. Why does he believe that? Said Esper, “Because I lived through that, and I saw over the summer of 2020 where President Trump and those around him wanted to use the National Guard in various capacities in cities such as Chicago and Portland and Seattle.” (Esper should know: After appearing with Trump after the area around Lafayette Square was forcibly cleared of demonstrators during the George Floyd protests of 2020 [an appearance Esper came to regret], Esper urgently redeployed troops from the 82nd Airborne Division who were in the DC-area back to North Carolina so Trump could not quickly summon them to confront protesters.)
Esper also confirmed that Trump did not like to associate himself with wounded servicemembers. (“[Trump] was very troubled by the fact that we would have America’s wounded warriors out in public, and he did not like that. He just thought we should conceal them. And our view — my view, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — was that these were America’s heroes and it was important to show the American people and their colleagues in the service that when our heroes come home wounded, that we take care of them.”)
General Mark Milley served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2019-2023, which made him the highest-ranking military officer and chief military adviser to Trump during his final 16 months as president. (I should note here that while Milley was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Trump, the position is not a political one.)
Milley is quoted in Bob Woodward’s latest book as saying, “[Trump] is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country. A fascist to the core.”
And then, of course, there is Mike Pence, Trump’s former hand-picked vice president. Pence refused to go along with Trump’s plan to undermine the 2020 election on January 6, 2021. That decision made Pence a target of the mob Trump sent to the Capitol that day; when informed Pence’s life was in danger, Trump replied, “So what?” Pence has not endorsed Harris for president, but he has pointedly refused to endorse Trump as well.
When Pence declared his candidacy for president in 2023, he said in reference to Trump, “Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be President of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be President again.”
I could go on by citing remarks by former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, former White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House Counsel Ty Cobb, Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, and others. In fact, nearly half of Trump’s former Cabinet officials have refused to endorse him. Numerous Republican governors, senators, House members, and state and local officials have done the same. (Wikipedia has an entire page devoted to “List of Republicans Who Oppose the Donald Trump 2024 Presidential Campaign”.) If you would like to read more about the Trump officials who no longer support him and consider him a threat to American democracy, consult “‘Fascist’, ‘Conman’, ‘Predator’, ‘Cheat’: What 11 Former Trump Staffers Say About Him Now” by Maya Yang of The Guardian and “Ex-Trump Aides Emerge to Back Kelly’s Harsh Warnings” by Meridith McGraw of Politico.
However, you say, there are still many people who worked for Trump who have endorsed him. Yet the number of people who have not only refused to endorse Trump but who openly oppose him is unprecedented, as are the number of high-ranking Trump administration officials who say Trump does not belong in the Oval Office. Again, these are individuals Trump wanted by his side in the White House, the people who sought to serve their nation by serving Trump, who worked to enact his political agenda. Today, after having reflected on their experience of working for Trump, they are saying Trump’s agenda is a less-important public priority than the preservation of American democracy. Some of them, like John Kelly, have matter-of-factly described Trump as a fascist.
So yes, there are Trump officials who have endorsed Trump. But would you hire someone to work for you if half or even a third of his references—people who personally worked alongside this person and saw him doing the job—told you the applicant is not only unqualified for the job but would pose a threat to your organization’s well-being, that he might harm your co-workers, that his values are completely antithetical to the values your company is built upon?
You would not. You would immediately reject that person.
Now I get it, there are millions of voters out there who feel like hostages in a no-win situation. These citizens do not like being told that one candidate is so unacceptable that they have no choice but to vote for the other, particularly when they are unsatisfied with the alternative.
That gripe, however, does not account for what is really at stake in this election.
First of all, let me say Kamala Harris falls within the American political mainstream. She is a Democrat, not a radical. As a matter of policy and ideology, you may not often agree with her, but she would govern within the bounds set by the two parties and the American constitutional system, which is to say that whatever she does, it would be discernable as the sort of action other mainstream American politicians throughout this country could be expected to take. You may not like that she’s a Democrat, but that’s not disqualifying. Your disagreements with her would be reasonable. She may not be your ideal candidate, but it is nearly impossible to argue she is an unacceptable candidate.
You could argue you don’t think Harris is cut out to be president. I’ll be honest: I’ve wondered that myself. But Harris understands the demands of the office and would put the priorities of the American people first. The vice presidency has prepared her for the work. I also think she would be responsive to problems that arise in this nation, unlike Trump, who often creates problems or adds to them. She’s an intelligent, moral person.
It’s also worth noting that while Trump actively works to stoke division in this country by pitting groups of Americans against each other, Harris is supported by an ideologically broad coalition of voters, one that includes both Bernie Sanders and Liz Cheney. There is room in that coalition for you. Your voice will matter there.
But we need to remember why that coalition has come into existence. It’s not because Liz Cheney and other conservatives who have endorsed Kamala Harris have had a change of ideological heart. It’s because when it comes down to it, this election is not really about the issues so many Americans think it is about. It’s not really about the economy or immigration or abortion or taxes. It’s not like past elections that were about health care, leaving no child behind, or Social Security lockboxes, or even weightier issues like war and recession. We may wish otherwise, but this is not an election about policy. It is about something more fundamental than that.
This is an election about democracy and whether the United States should continue to be a democracy or if we should just blow it up and put a wannabe autocrat in charge who has already attempted to overturn an election, has said he wants to be a dictator, has threatened to use the military to arrest his political enemies, and who his closest advisors have called a fascist. I think what John Kelly was telling us last week is that the choice we are facing in this election is whether or not we as voters want to continue to have choices, which is the essence of democracy.
I am sorry about this. As Americans, we should not have to vote on whether or not we want to have a democracy in this country. We should be able to take democracy as a given. Yet that’s the question Trump has put on the ballot this November, and that’s the question we must answer by voting for Kamala Harris.
So no, as a voter, you have not been taken hostage. Instead, you have been given a choice between democracy and autocracy. That should be an easy choice. I urge you to choose democracy. Choose Kamala Harris.
Signals and Noise
From The New Republic: “The 100 Worst Things Trump Has Done Since Descending That Escalator”.
Democracy Watch
In a poll taken before John Kelly’s interview broke, ABC News found 49% of Americans consider Trump a fascist. (Only 22% said the same about Harris.) It probably isn’t surprising that 87% of Democrats consider Trump fascist, but so do 46% of independents and 12% of Republicans. Amazingly, 8% of those who consider Trump a fascist still intend to vote for him. ABC News interviewed them and their answers are wacky.
From The Daily Show:
After John Kelly confirmed that Trump had said he wished he’d had Hitler’s generals, Brian Kilmeade of FOX News attempted to clean up Trump’s comments about wanting Hitler’s generals by saying, “I can absolutely see him go it’d be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do, maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis or whatever.”
By the way, can we just remember that the problem with the German generals is that they did do what Hitler wanted them to do. The issue isn’t that Trump wants Nazi generals; it’s that he wants generals who will ignore their conscience.
Don Trump told Joe Rogan that the “enemy within” is a bigger problem than North Korean despot Kim Jong Un.
From The Daily Show:
Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson got all snippy about Kamala Harris agreeing with John Kelly that Trump is a fascist, stating Harris “only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus.” Trump, of course, has spent much of the past three months calling Harris a fascist even though there is nothing to base that claim upon. Jake Tapper of CNN had some fun with McConnell and Johnson’s statement:
From Politico: “The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway” (Counterpoint: Paul Rosenzweig of The Atlantic and Barton Gellman of Time assure readers their votes are secure.)
“CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”—Don Trump, on TruthSocial
The Public Religion Research Institute found nearly one in five Republicans said that if Trump loses the 2024 election, he should ignore the results and seize power. Furthermore, 30% of Republicans believe patriots may need to act violently to save the country. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and these answers ... are keeping me up at night,” said Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI.
The FBI finally found and arrested the man who brought a giant pro-Trump billboard to the 1/6 riot that was used as a battering ram against police officers.
Trump and his allies are once again alleging without evidence that voting machines have been hacked.
The Washington Post found over 230 GOP congressional candidates have questioned the legitimacy of the 2024 election.
Georgia ran an audit of its voter rolls and found a total of 20 noncitizens registered to vote out of 8.2 million registered voters. That’s 0.000002439% of all registered voters. Eleven of those voters have never voted, while the other nine cast ballots years ago before ID checks were put in place.
The New York Times reports on the rising wave of threats election officials are currently facing.
A judge has ordered Rudy Giuliani to turn over many of his prized possessions to the two Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation lawsuit against him. These possessions include his Manhattan apartment, two dozen luxury watches, a 1980 Mercedes once owned by Lauren Bacall, and shirts and pictures signed by Joe DiMaggio and Reggie Jackson.
Trump said he would fire special prosecutor Jack Smith on the first day of his presidency and end the federal cases against him. He also said Smith “should be considered mentally deranged and thrown out of the country.”
By Timothy Snyder writes about how Trump’s plan to deport 12 million people would throw the country into turmoil: (“The deep purpose of a mass deportation is to establish a new sort of politics, a politics of us-and-them, which means [at first] everyone else against the Latinos. In this new regime, the government just stokes the fears and encourages the denunciations, and we expect little more of it. If Trump and Vance win, this dynamic will be hard to stop, especially of they have majorities in Congress. The only way to avoid it is to stop them in November with the vote.”)
Brian Stelter of CNN reports on how Trump’s threats to strip television broadcasters of their licenses is sending a chilling effect through the industry.
Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark writes that the Washington Post’s decision not to endorse for president in this election is a sign of how the American business community is capitulating to Trump. (The Post is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.) (“And that’s what this story is about: It’s about the most consequential American entrepreneur of his generation signaling his submission to Trump—and the message that sends to every other corporation and business leader in the country. In the world. Killing this editorial says, If Jeff Bezos has to be nice to Trump, then so do you. Keep your nose clean, bub.”)
Republican Rep. Andy Harris, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said the North Carolina legislature should just consider awarding the state’s electoral college votes to Trump given the devastation resulting from Hurricane Helene.
“If the election is about that bigger question — which is, ultimately, democracy or authoritarianism — then this election isn’t about alliances in the way that we normally think about them in politics. This isn’t about who you want in your boat. It’s about if you want the boat to stay afloat.”—Chris Geidner
The 2024 Campaign
By Peter Baker of the New York Times: “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” (“Sometimes lost amid all the shouting of a high-octane campaign heading into its final couple of weeks is that simple if mind-bending fact. America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office and entrust him with the nuclear codes. What would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow Mr. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to ‘retribution.’ In all the different ways that Mr. Trump has upended the traditional rules of American politics, that may be one of the most striking. He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived. He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.”)
Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Lucy Osborne of The Guardian share the story of Stacey Williams, a model who alleges Trump groped her in 1993 after she was introduced to him by Jeffrey Epstein. Two individuals have confirmed Williams discussed the incident with them in the past. Williams also presented a postcard Trump sent her at the time featuring a picture of Palm Beach reading, “Stacey – Your home away from home. Love Donald”.
Trump refused to condemn threats directed at FEMA personnel in North Carolina and continued to spread lies about disaster relief.
The following two quotes are from an article about Trump’s disdain for military service and his preoccupation with dictators in The Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg. The article also recounts Trump’s history of his admiration of Hitler.
“It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!”—Trump, when told the cost of funeral expenses for a Mexican-American servicemember killed at Ft. Hood. Trump promised the family he would personally cover the expenses but blew up in a rage when he learned the amount (which included a public memorial service in Houston) and told Chief of Staff Mark Meadows not to pay the family. The family never received a dime from Trump.
“Vietnam would have been a waste of time for me. Only suckers went to Vietnam.”—Trump, speaking to an unnamed Cabinet official
Trump faced a tough interview in an unusual place: FOX News, where Howard Kurtz grilled him over his false claims about 1/6 and pet-eating immigrants. Trump would eventually claim that he did not know the facts Kurtz confronted him with. Trump did stand by his “enemy from within” comments.
Trump expressed interest in ending the income tax and replacing its revenue with tariffs. Tami Luhby and Kate Sullivan of CNN describe Trump’s plan as “mathematically impossible,” as it would require levying 75% tariffs on imported goods while assuming Americans would still purchase those goods. I would note it would also shift the tax burden from wealthy Americans to lower-income Americans.
An NBC News poll found Trump’s universal tariff plan is not popular, with 44% of respondents saying it makes them less likely to support Trump and 19% saying it makes no difference.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded Trump’s tax and tariff proposals would lead to a 33% across-the-board cut in Social Security benefits by 2031.
Trump worked a french fry station and held a news conference through the drive-through window of a Philadelphia-area McDonald’s. He was surprised to learn McDonald’s workers do not use their hands to place fries in their packaging, something any child who has visited a McDonald’s would know. Asked during that appearance if he supported raising the minimum wage (it’s the federal minimum of $7.25 in Pennsylvania) Trump said, “Well I think this. These people work hard. They’re great. And I just saw something… a process that’s beautiful.”
ProPublica reports that, according to a whistleblower, Trump Media has lied about hiring a predominantly American workforce.
By Alex Keeney of Politico: “‘They’re Just Over It’: How Trump Has Converted Male Frustration Into a Movement”
“There has to be a point at which Dad comes home. Yeah, that’s right. Dad comes home. And he’s pissed. Dad is pissed. He’s not vengeful. He loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them. Because they’re his children. They live in his house. But he’s very disappointed in their behavior. And he’s going to have to let them know. When Dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this.”—Tucker Carlson, speaking at a Trump rally
The Army released a report about the incident at Arlington Cemetery in August involving the Trump campaign. The Army characterized the interaction between the Army official and Trump campaign staffer as “simple assault.”
Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times writes about this election’s surge in disinformation.
CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski found that in the aftermath of 1/6, Trump’s current campaign manager Chris LaCivita shared numerous posts on Twitter blaming Trump for that day’s violence.
The Wall Street Journal reports Elon Musk—the world’s richest, a major defense contractor, and the most prominent backer of Don Trump—has had regular, secret conversations with Vladimir Putin since late 2022.
Elon Musk continued to give away $1 million prizes to swing-state voters despite receiving a warning from the Department of Justice that his giveaways could violate election laws.
The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk worked as an illegal immigrant in the United States in the 1990s when he dropped out of graduate school to begin his entrepreneurial career. Musk has railed against illegal immigration while campaigning for Donald Trump.
This Week in “WTF is Wrong with Don Trump?”
By Ezra Klein of the New York Times: “What’s Wrong with Donald Trump?” (“It is Trump’s absence of inhibition that makes him a great entertainer. It is Trump’s absence of inhibition that makes him feel, to so many, like not a politician — the fact that he was already the U.S. president notwithstanding. It is why the people who want to be like him — the mini-Trumps, the Ron DeSantises and Blake Masterses and Ted Cruzes — can’t pull it off. What makes Trump Trump isn’t his views on immigration, though they are part of it. It’s the manic charisma born of his disinhibition. It is his great strength. It is also his terrible flaw. … Trump’s disinhibition is yoked to a malignancy at his core. I do believe he’s a narcissist. If Putin praises him, he will praise Putin. If John McCain mocks him, he will mock John McCain. Trump does not see beyond himself and what he thinks and what he wants and how he’s feeling. He does not listen to other people. He does not take correction or direction. Wisdom is the ability to learn from experience, to learn from others. Donald Trump doesn’t really learn. He once told a biographer, ‘When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.’”)
“I’ve got no cognitive problem. I have no cognitive… There’s no cognitive problem… Got no cognitive.”—Don Trump
“So, Bobby Kennedy, right? Everybody likes Bobby Kennedy. And he’s so big into the health food and women things. Everything. He wants to do things.”—Don Trump, responding to a question from a voter in the Bronx about what he would do about “artificial food” and bringing organic food to neighborhoods that lack access to them. Trump had no idea how to respond so he cited RFK Jr. as an expert and just BSed an answer. Man, if only there was someone in the White House attuned to this issue…
Trump called the United States “a garbage can for the world” because of illegal border crossings. He’s the first president and presidential candidate I can recall who has ever compared the US to a garbage can.
Michael C. Bender of the New York Times examines Trump’s tendency to meander from subject to subject as he speaks.
“He was appalled by Trump’s lack of civility and what he began to see as Trump’s lack of character.”—Arnold Palmer’s daughter, the day after Trump spoke in Palmer’s hometown about the size of Palmer’s penis.
By Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic: “The Slop Candidate” (“Perhaps it’s because my feeds have been simultaneously clogged with election-season garbage and AI-generated slop, but the McDonald’s photoshoot struck me as a moment of strange synthesis, where reality and tech-enabled fiction felt somehow mashed together by the internet’s cultural particle accelerator. Trump proffering Dollar Menu items isn’t AI, but it is still slop in all the ways that matter: a hastily staged depiction of a fairly stupid, though entertaining fantasy, meant to delight, troll, and, most important, emphasize a false impression of the candidate. This is clarifying, insofar that it demonstrates that Trump’s primary output is always a kind of slop. Slop, as it relates to AI, is loosely defined as spammy, cheap blocks of text, video, or images, quickly generated by computer programs for mass distribution. But nonsynthetic slop is everywhere too. What is a Trump rally but a teleprompter reading of stump-speech slop, interspersed with inexplicable lorem ipsum about Hannibal Lecter and wind turbines spun up by the unknowable language model in Trump’s own head? What are Trump’s tweets and Truth Social shitposts if not slop morsels, hurled into the internet’s ether for the rest of us to react to?”)
Biden slipped in his remarks at a Democratic Party campaign office in New Hampshire and said of Trump, “We’ve got to lock him up.” Trumpworld predictably blew up over this, but that’s like the oversensitive pot calling all the kettles black.
This Week in “WTF is Wrong with JD Vance?”
Asked this week about Trump’s “enemy from within” remarks, JD Vance said, “Donald Trump is unfiltered. This is one of the reasons why the campaign has gone well, is because he is not doing a basement campaign strategy. He is not just running on slogans. When people ask him questions, he speaks from the heart. And sometimes that means he will talk about issues that the mainstream media isn't focused on.”
Abortion
Kristen V. Brown writes in The Atlantic that federal legislation to protect abortion rights nationwide won’t be able to immediately undo the damage done by Dobbs, which has upended abortion services across the country.
The Economy
International News
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. government has evidence North Korea has sent soldiers to Russia to assist in its war in Ukraine, although the purpose of their deployment remains unclear.
Israel struck military targets inside Iran in retaliation for Iran’s October 1 attacks on Israel. The missile strikes reportedly crippled Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Vincent’s Picks: Woman of the Hour
Midway through Woman of the Hour struggling actress Cheryl Bradshaw (Anna Kendrick, who also directs) finds herself a contestant on The Dating Game, a television show that aired intermittently in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Per the format of the show, a single woman would ask three single men hidden from her view a series of questions and then, based on their answers, select one of the bachelors to go out on a date with. The Dating Game gained notoriety for the scripted, innuendo-laden questions producers gave the women to ask and the often risqué responses the men served up in return.
Cheryl has only agreed to appear on the show because she can hardly pay her rent. Feeling debased by the first round of Q&A (and exasperated with the casual misogyny pervading Hollywood in the late 1970s) Cheryl goes off-script. Now, rather than ask her would-be suitors what they would order for dessert at the end of their romantic dinner date, she asks them what they think of Immanuel Kant. It’s a stumper. The buffoonish first bachelor has no idea what she’s talking about, so she dumbs it down for him: “What are girls for?”
It’s a reformulation of one of Kant’s maxims: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end and never as only a means.” Don’t worry if the meaning of that statement isn’t readily apparent, as Kant is hard to grasp and backwards it often seems his sentences unfurl. What he’s basically saying is that you should never treat other human beings as means to an end but regard them instead as ends unto themselves. In other words, don’t use other people for your own purposes, but accord them the dignity autonomous human beings with their own aspirations and agency deserve.
Contestant number one is still bewildered. Contestant number two clearly doesn’t understand the concept, either. He basically says girls are supposed to satisfy the needs and wants of men. But the final contestant has a more sympathetic answer that impresses Cheryl, and he ends up winning the date with her. That’s a terrifying prospect, however, because as viewers we know Woman of the Hour is based on a true story and that the third contestant is Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) a serial killer who murdered at least eight women between 1968 and 1979 and potentially took the lives of as many as 130 women.
Woman of the Hour premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and is only now making its debut on Netflix. Do not mistake this movie for your standard scary season fare, however. Woman of the Hour is instead a deadly serious film about how the objectification of women leads to violence against women. If it plays like a horror movie, it’s because Kendrick captures on film how the unease women often feel in the company of men can so easily turn to dread.
Woman of the Hour examines how individual women are seen and not seen by men. As an actress, Cheryl longs to be seen by others, but Hollywood’s interest in her is superficial. Two male casting directors talk openly about her in her presence as though she somehow can’t hear them, and when Cheryl tells them she won’t perform nude, she is quickly dismissed. When she arrives on the set of The Dating Game, the show’s slimeball host (Tony Hale) pays no attention to what she has to say and instead tells her what he expects of every female contestant: Just laugh, smile, and, so as not to intimidate the guys, don’t act too smart. Cheryl’s neighbor and fellow actor Terry (Pete Holmes) helps her rehearse but he also presses for something more in return for his generosity. Terry is simultaneously too attentive and inattentive to Cheryl, imposing on her without picking up on signals she would prefer to be left alone. All the while, men comment on her physical appearance and wardrobe choices and brush her hair back behind her ears. Cheryl is made to feel as though her purpose is to please men: To make herself available to them, assure them she is non-threatening, provide them with anything else they want, and just accept it as the way of the world.
Alcala also gazes upon women. He photographs his victims before murdering them, turning them into flattened, two-dimensional images. The cameras in this film—both Alcala’s and the cameras that transmit Hollywood’s products to the world—are symbolic of the dehumanizing power of the male gaze, which turn women from complex, unique individuals into representations of male desire. By objectifying women this way, it becomes easier for men to use, abuse, and dispose of women, which may become an imperative if a woman dares to defy or disappoint them.
Alcala is an extreme example, but Kendrick is arguing here that Alcala is not an aberration but the product of a deeply misogynistic society, one that hardly notices the way women are mistreated and that somehow can’t distinguish a serial killer from your average bachelor. Just consider the difference in the way Alcala is treated by police when they stop by his place of work to interview him and the way an audience member named Laura (Nicolette Robinson) is treated by studio security when she recognizes Alcala as the man who was last seen with her friend the night her friend was raped and murdered: The police laugh off their interview with Alcala as a case of mistaken identity while Laura is escorted to an empty room and abandoned. Even Laura’s boyfriend is skeptical of her story, wondering aloud to her why the police wouldn’t have already arrested Alcala if he had committed the crime. That’s not really hard to understand at all in a country that may be about to send a man accused by at least 25 women of sexual assault back to the White House. And remember, it’s Trump—not the woman who has actually prosecuted people charged with sexual assault—who is considered “tough on crime.”
As the director, however, Kendrick is also armed with a camera, and she uses it to excellent effect. She invites viewers to watch the film from the perspective of the female characters, leading us to assess situations in order to distinguish between the discomfiting and the dangerous and to try to figure out what might be done to guarantee their safety. We are constantly attuned to the distance between men and women and alert to when a woman’s personal space is violated, whether by matters of inches or yards. Kendrick keeps the mood taut and tense throughout, reflecting how women often feel the need to keep their guard up around men and how menace can creep into casual interactions between the genders. This is an assured directorial debut.
So far, I have hesitated to call Woman of the Hour a “true-crime thriller.” It is certainly a true crime story, but it does not deliver what many have come to expect from the genre. The movie is not fascinated with real-world evil. It does not exploit the suffering of others for the sake of a captivating story. Most importantly, it does not grant viewers the opportunity to confront and manage their fears. Instead, it contends the source of women’s fears is embedded within society, pervasive and inescapable, fostering an environment that too often leads to violence. By the time the film ends, you won’t be screaming in terror; you’ll be screaming in anger.