Kamala Harris refuses to condone Donald Trump on January 6

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‘The American people are exhausted by his gaslighting’

With JD Vance’s claim that Trump won in 2020 and Trump himself calling January 6 a “day of love,” the Republican ticket is doubling down on the Big Lie with three weeks to go before Election Day — and Kamala Harris has none of that. .

In a notable shift, Harris has expanded her usual campaign speech to include more direct criticism of Trump’s anti-democratic extremism. Earlier this week, she called out his comments about “domestic enemies,” even going so far as to start playing a video of his comments at her own campaign rallies. As the week draws to a close, she incorporates Trump’s latest comments about minimizing January 6 into her own speech.

“So now we know here that January 6 was a tragic day. It was a day of terrible violence. There were attacks on law enforcement officers: 140 law enforcement officers were injured, some were killed. And what did Donald Trump say last night about January 6? He called it a ‘day of love,’” Harris said at a rally in Wisconsin on Thursday.

In Trump’s comments earlier this week, he again referred to the January 6 rioters as “we,” an admission sure to pique the interest of Special Counsel Jack Smith: “We had no weapons. The others had weapons, but we had no weapons. And when I say we, these are the people who walked down – this was a small percentage of the total, that no one sees and no one, no one shows. Trump’s claim that none of the rioters had weapons is a falsehood he often repeats.

Harris, for her part, folded Trump’s Jan. 6 lies into her larger “We Are Not Going Back” theme: “The American people are exhausted by his gaslighting — exhausted.” … Enough,” Harris said. “We are ready to turn the page.”

Zombie fake voters

CNN: At least 30 2020 election deniers and fake voters are serving as Trump electors this year.

Chutkan rejects Trump’s plea for more delay in January 6 case

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected a request by Donald Trump to delay the public unsealing of a file in the Jan. 6 presidential immunity case until after Election Day. In denying the request, Chutkan said she would order the attachments to special counsel Jack Smith’s massive immunity dossier, which was unsealed today. Trump could request intervention from the appeals court, but this morning there is no sign he has done so.

The aftermath of Kamala Harris’ Fox News interview

• Bret Baier says he aired the wrong Trump segment during the Harris interview: “I made a mistake.”

• Greg Sargent: Harris’ harsh takedown of Fox’s Bret Baier exposes MAGA’s biggest lie

• The ratings for the Harris interview surpassed those for Trump’s town hall the same day on Fox News and were the highest for an episode of “Special Report With Bret Baier” since 2020. reports The Wrap.

Quote of the day

Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, on Donald Trump’s increasingly gloomy rhetoric: “From a mainstream candidate, I don’t think we’ve seen this kind of use of the most vicious, nativist, racial backlash. He doesn’t even use code words or anything. He’s just all in.”

Trump speaks like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini

Anne Applebaum: “The deliberate dehumanization of entire groups of people; the references to police, to violence, to the “carnage” that Trump has said will unfold if he doesn’t win; cultivating hatred not only against immigrants but also against political opponents – none of this has been successfully employed in modern American politics. But neither has this rhetoric been tried in modern American politics.”

Mitch McConnell’s eternal shame

Mitch McConnell, private: Donald Trump is ‘stupid and ill-tempered’, a ‘despicable human being’ and a ‘narcissist’.

Mitch McConnell, publicly: “Whatever I’ve said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham and others have said about him, but we’re all on the same team now.”

Does Elon Musk also want to be sued by Dominion?

NBC News: Musk pushes debunked Dominion voting conspiracy theory in first appearance in Pennsylvania

In other Elon Musk news…

• NYT: How tech billionaires became the GOP’s new donor class

• Susan Glasser: How Republican Billionaires Learned to Love Trump Again

• NPR: head office location.

Watch disinformation

• NBC News: The Pipeline: How Russian Propaganda Reaches and Influences the US

• AP: Right-wing influencers hype anti-Ukrainian videos made by a TV producer also funded by Russian media

• WSJ: A mysterious $30 million wave of pro-Trump bets has set a popular prediction market in motion

‘We have created a monster’

Former NBC Marketing Chief Apologizes for Helping Create Trump’s Reality TV Image: “While we were successful in marketing ‘The Apprentice,’ we also caused irreparable damage through Trump’s false image as a successful leader. I deeply regret that. And I regret that it took so long for me to go public.”

“It’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

A federal judge in Tallahassee blocked the DeSantis administration’s pressure campaign against TV stations for airing abortion rights ads in support of Amendment 4, with this scathing summary: “To keep things simple for the State of Florida, it is the First Amendment, you stupid idiot. .”

UPDATE: Trump assassination attempts

• NYT: “An independent panel that reviewed the failures that led to the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump in July called on the Secret Service to replace its leadership with private sector people and focus almost exclusively on its protective mission.”

• WaPo: “In its 52-page report, the panel wrote that ‘the Secret Service as an agency needs fundamental reforms to carry out its mission. Without that reform, the Independent Review Panel believes another Butler can and will happen.'”

• WSJ: “The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent and static, even as risks have increased and technology has evolved,” the panel said in the report. “It is simply unacceptable for the service to have anything less than a primary focus on its protective mission, especially when that protective mission function is currently suboptimal.”

• Politico: “Lawyers for the man accused of trying to assassinate former President Donald Trump on a Florida golf course last month have asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to recuse himself from the case.”

Texas Supreme Court halts controversial execution

Following intervention from a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers, the state Supreme Court halted Robert Roberson’s execution, which was scheduled for last night. The late reprieve in the controversial shaken baby case came after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene earlier in the day.

“Roberson is still alive after an unprecedented 48-hour period in the final days leading up to virtually every execution scheduled in the United States at that time,” reports Chris Geidner.

Harris vs. Hecklers

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