Trump, Biden on ‘Garbage’: The 2024 Presidential Campaign

A reader wrote me to say essentially this: “That did it. Biden called us garbage. I don’t like Trump, but I have to vote for him now. I have no choice.” The reader also spoke of voters going to the polls, early, wearing garbage bags — to symbolize their objection to President Biden and their support of Donald Trump.

Biden really put his foot in it. Trying to clean up, he said,

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Trump is pretty free with his language too — with no remorse or “cleaning up.” He calls his opponents “vermin” and “the enemy within.” When he was president, in 2019, he called anti-Trump conservatives (like me) “human scum.” This barely made a ripple. No one really cared, or cares.

The rule is this, apparently: Trump and his supporters, you have to treat with kid gloves. Everyone else is fair game.

Let me propose a thought exercise: Routinely, Trump calls Kamala Harris “low IQ,” “mentally impaired,” “mentally disabled,” “dumb as a rock,” etc. Everyone accepts this as normal — like the weather. Not worth commenting on. But what if Harris said those things about Trump?

“See what she is saying about us?” every Republican in the country would exclaim. “See how she demeans us?” The Republican, and Republican-aligned, media outlets would explode.

“If it weren’t for double standards,” goes an old expression, “there would be no standards at all.”

• Name-calling is part of the Trump act. Always has been. Lately, he has been calling Anderson Cooper, the broadcaster, “Allison Cooper.” Cooper is gay. So he is “Allison,” not “Anderson” — get it? For a news report on this, go here.

There is an old debate — about eight years old now: Do people support Trump despite this kind of thing or because of it? There are some in each group, I’m sure — but I bet he wouldn’t win without it.

Which says something about us.

• From RFE/RL (our combination of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty):

U.S. intelligence on November 1 accused “Russian influence actors” of making a video purportedly showing a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times in the U.S. state of Georgia.

(For the report in full, go here.)

Brad Raffensperger is the secretary of state in Georgia. In a statement, he asked Elon Musk and “the leadership of other social media platforms” to take the video down. “This is obviously fake and part of a disinformation effort,” said Raffensperger.

On Thanksgiving Day 2020, in the White House, President Trump said this of Raffensperger: “He’s an enemy of the people.” That was because Raffensperger, a Republican, refused to falsify the vote in Georgia for his party’s leader.

• A headline from CBS News: “2 more Russian disinformation videos targeting U.S. election are circulating online, sources say.” (Article here.) In my opinion, this should concern all Americans, whether we wear a red jersey or a blue one — or neither.

• Another article, related: “A Russian Disinfo Campaign Is Using Comments Sections to Seed Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theories.” (This seems pretty obvious.)

• Americans don’t like it when foreign leaders interfere with our elections, even to the extent of declaring a preference — except when they do like it:

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• A report: “Inside Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s not-so-secret mission to elect Trump.” (Go here.) The Orbán operation and MAGA (i.e., the Republican Party) are very closely allied.

• “I don’t really do endorsements,” said Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he has.

Let me be honest with you: I don’t like either party right now. My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results. Democrats aren’t any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime.

Further on in his statement, Schwarzenegger said, “I want to tune out. But I can’t.” He is especially repulsed by the behavior of Republicans after the 2020 election. “And I will always be an American before I am a Republican.” He is voting for Harris.

So will many other Republicans — not because they like Harris or the Democrats but because they think it is imperative to keep Trump from returning to power. How many such Republicans are there? Who knows?

I imagine this is pollable. But there is also a secret ballot in our country. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has endorsed Trump. Do you think he will vote for him? Pull the lever for him? I’d be shocked.

Garry Kasparov has written about the election: “An endorsement of Kamala Harris from a Russian dissident.” Bret Stephens has written a column headed “A Conservative Case Against Trump.” In New Hampshire, Gordon Humphrey, the ex-senator, has come out for Harris: “I voted for Republicans for more than 50 years. I can’t vote for Trump . . .”

In the Wall Street Journal, Admiral McRaven had an interesting article.

You may not like her policies, her followers or her vision for America, but Ms. Harris won’t threaten the press, demean immigrants, mock those who have died for the country, break with our allies, or undermine the Constitution.

He went on to say,

I am pro-life. I believe in a small government, big business, a strong military and a secure border, and I always stand for the American flag. I am a conservative, and I would love to be part of a Republican Party I can be proud of, one that stands for the values, the decency, the sense of duty and honor and country which so many previous Republican presidents strived for.

(Quick language note: I would have said “strove,” but eether/eyether.)

• Josh Rogin, of the Washington Post, has sounded an alarm: “Americans, your calls and texts can be monitored by Chinese spies.”

• The fluoridation of the water is back. It was a big issue, in former times: a Bircher issue, an issue for kooks on the left, too. The fluoridation of the water was a conspiracy, they contended, meant to harm us all.

Well: “RFK Jr. says a future Trump administration will end public water fluoridation.”

For 50 years, Bill Buckley and his allies tried to separate the Right from kookery. The work is never done.

“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” said Trump at a recent rally. He was talking about RFK Jr. “I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”

• How do you feel about daylight saving time? There are people who say, “Keep it all the year round.” There are people who say, “No! Keep standard time all the year round!” I am not really a student of this issue. But I admire Scott Lincicome, who is a standard-time guy, all the way. In 2021, he wrote this article: “#EndDST: Changing the clocks is anti-health, anti-science, and anti-family.”

I also admire Luke Lyman — who last week wrote this article: “No More Turning Back the Clock: Making daylight-saving time permanent would provide Americans huge economic and health benefits.”

Myself, I’m for the designated hitter. Why? Well, as an American League kid, I grew up with it. It’s normal to me. Similarly, I am used to a split year: some months standard, some months daylight-saving. “Fall back,” “spring forward.”

This is a kind of conservatism — what you’re used to . . .

• I saw a pumpkin or two on Halloween. My favorite of all was carved for his children by my friend Vivek Dave, known to listeners of my Q&A podcast as a sports guru. The Daves lives in the Detroit area. So, this was their pumpkin:

Go Lions.

• My favorite tweet on Halloween:

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• Back to Halloween in a moment. I have some music to share — articles. For my “New York chronicle,” in the new New Criterion, go here. For a review of Il trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera, go here. And for a review of Bernadette Peters in Carnegie Hall, go here.

That last one was not really my beat. But any male my age . . . anyway, Bernadette is somethin’.

• A shot of my block, on Halloween Eve (if you can say such a thing):

• On Halloween itself, this little guy is standing outside my building, waiting for the candy-giving to commence. Actually, he’s not standing. He’s grooving:

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• Elsewhere on the block: