The President of the United States is warning of commercial planes “completely loaded with thugs wearing…dark uniforms” and the dangers of canned soup in the hands of protestors. On Wednesday, he recommended that his supporters in North Carolina vote-by-mail and then attempt to vote again in person, which is a crime.
My ten-year-old son has taken to pointing at these stories on the television and laughing in disbelief, “Look! Look at what this moron said now! Watch out for ninjas with the Cream of Mushroom! You can’t vote twice in an election, you idiot!”
That’s where my household is with this spectacle. Maybe in some other households, it passes muster or simply goes unnoticed.
You can’t tell from the polls, though, which look the same as they did before the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and the same as before Trump began retweeting conspiracy theories about a secret coup attempt by a “well-funded network of anarchists.”
According to Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, the Justice Department is now investigating protesters on the theory that they are secretly funded by shadowy figures. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky asks, “Who are these people? Who paid for their hotel rooms? Who flew them in?”
Ever since 2017, when a voting integrity commission was launched to “explain” how Trump had lost the popular vote, the government has been bent and twisted to accommodate the president’s insanity. What it won’t do is actually protect the integrity of our elections:
House Democratic leaders on Wednesday criticized the Department of Homeland Security for withholding the release of a draft intelligence bulletin warning law enforcement agencies of a Russian effort to spread disinformation about Joe Biden’s mental health.
The July notice from the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which warned of a Russian plan to promote “allegations about the poor mental health” of Biden, was never released to federal, state and local law enforcement, after a senior DHS official raised concerns about the bulletin over email, as ABC News first reported.
Instead of acting on the warning of Russian interference in the 2020 election, the report was buried for “poor context.”
In an appearance on Fox News, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf confirmed that the bulletin was withheld, calling it “a very poorly written report.”
“I had questions about it when I talked to career officials … in the office that produced the report. They also had questions about it,” he said. “They’re hard at work on rewriting that report, putting it in better context. I hope to see that record out soon.”
Republicans and their media allies have been promoting “allegations about the poor mental health” of Joe Biden, so it was a little embarrassing to realize that this was the Russians’ idea.
Over 180,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. In fact, Trump is now hoping that more people get infected so that we can reach herd immunity. For this reason, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been instructed to change its guidelines and not test asymptomatic people.
This is the clearest example of how crackpot ideas get people killed. At the moment, Trump is in the process of killing the country, too. Any ten year old should be able to understand this.