DL Open Thread: Friday, October 18, 2024

The Big Story Is That Trump Is Unhinged And Suffering From Something Very Much Like Dementia:

“What’s alarming is how the rate of Trump’s bizarre speech and political decisions have been increasing. He gave an answer about childcare to the Economic Club of New York so incoherent that even his supporters were concerned. Last week he got cognitively lost in a rally and began to talk about the ‘eight circles’ that Biden filled up with journalists. No one on his staff has been able to explain the reference.

“Trump has shown evidence of dementia for the past year as indicated by his strange gait, phonemic paraphasia—when he begins a word and can’t finish it—and decline in the complexity of his words and concepts. This limited capacity explains his poor debate performance, but there are two more disturbing signs of his decline.

“First, he is avoiding events where he has to respond coherently and spontaneously: He has refused a second presidential debate and abruptly cancelled a 60 Minutes interview. Second, he has become more impulsive, another sign of incipient dementia. This explains his strange behavior in Philadelphia – his abrupt decision to play DJ is yet another sign of his accelerating cognitive decline.”

This is what a responsible press would be reporting 24/7.  This is what the Harris Campaign must emphasize 24/7.  Even Trump knows it.  It’s why he keeps canceling events.  Including, wait for it, an NRA-sponsored rally in Savannah, Georgia.  This is the story. Should the Harris campaign fail to make it the story, it will have been political malpractice.  We already know that the press would rather report on some incremental change in the polls than on the real story.  Although, Axios has a pretty comprehensive report on what we know about Trump’s health.  And one columnist has sounded the alarm:

Though cautioning that they could not diagnose Trump without examining him, experts said his speech patterns match those of people experiencing the effects of things like mood changes, aging, and dementia.

“There’s reasonable evidence suggestive of forms of dementia,” clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis told STAT. “The reduction in complexity of sentences and vocabulary does lead you to a certain picture of cognitive diminishment.”

Yet Trump’s party has not urged him to step aside for the good of the country, as Biden’s did. And much of the press is doing the American people a disservice by treating Trump’s obvious cognitive slippage as just “Trump being Trump.”

Yes, the press has a lot to wrestle with when it comes to Trump, including his embrace of authoritarian strongmen, his refusal to vow to accept the election results, his criminal conviction and civil judgments for fraud and sexual abuse, and his racism and disparagement of women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants.

But his diminishing cognitive ability can’t be ignored. He may not be able to get a grip, but it’s long past time the news media and Republicans stop participating in the gaslighting. We can see reality with our own eyes.

BTW, I’m not a professional joke-writer, but Tim Walz is the perfect guy to blow up Trump’s bragging about ‘The Weave’.  That joke tells itself:

“You know, I do the weave,” he said. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”

One way that Walz could respond:  ‘You see this hair? I don’t do the weave.’  (Note to Harris Campaign:  Please send me a million dollars, and you can use the joke.)

Vance And Religious Right–Scofflaws:

Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance’s appearance at a far-right Christian revival tour last month may have broken tax and election laws, experts say.

On Sept. 28, Vance held an official campaign event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, in partnership with the Courage Tour, a series of swing-state rallies hosted by a pro-Trump Christian influencer that combine prayer, public speakers, tutorials on how to become a poll worker and get-out-the-vote programming.

Ziklag, a secretive organization of wealthy Christians, funds the Courage Tour, according to previously unreported documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented. A private donor video produced by Ziklag said the group intended to spend $700,000 in 2024 to mobilize Christian voters by funding “targeted rallies in swing states” led by Lance Wallnau, the pro-Trump influencer.

Even before the Vance event, ProPublica previously reported that tax experts believed Ziklag’s 2024 election-related efforts could be in violation of tax law. The Vance event, they said, raised even more red flags about whether a tax-exempt charity had improperly benefited the Trump-Vance campaign.

Both Lance Wallnau Ministries and Ziklag are 501(c)(3) charities, the same legal designation as the Boys & Girls Club or the United Way. People who donate to charities like these can deduct their gift on their annual taxes. But under the law, such charities are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.

Quick, someone wake up Merrick Garland.

Big Document Dump A’Comin’ Today!:

Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday denied former President Donald Trump’s request to delay until after the election the unsealing of court records and exhibits in the 2020 election interference case and said the court would release evidence submitted by the government on Friday.

In her five-page order, Chutkan said there was a presumption that there should be public access to “all facets of criminal court proceedings” and that Trump, in claiming the material should remain under seal, did not submit arguments relevant to any of the factors that would be considerations. Instead, Trump’s lawyers argued that keeping it under seal for another month “will serve other interests,” Chutkan wrote. “Ultimately, none of those arguments are persuasive.”

Wilmington Debates Locations And Restrictions For Marijuana Dispensaries:

With less than six months until the scheduled start of legal recreational marijuana sales in Delaware, the Wilmington City Council is still debating one of the most important questions in the process: where retail shops and other marijuana-related businesses can open.

A proposal recently put before the Wilmington City Council aims to designate those areas but has sparked a healthy debate over what areas work best and how to align them with sensitive institutions like schools.

What do you want to talk about?