INTERNATIONAL CHEF DAY UPDATES
Just Because You Cook Doesn't Mean You Can Call Yourself A Chef, Chef ...
-This weekend, Kamala Harris brought out all sorts of big guns to help with campaigning - Jennifer Garner and Lizzo in MI, Mark Cuban in WI, Barack Obama in NV, Usher in GA, and Kamala herself - sporting a spiffy DETROIT VS. EVERYBODY T-shirt in MI and to an electrifying rally in GA - as early voting numbers throughout the country (GA, MI, NC, NV) continue to break records. Example: an estimated 20% of all of GA registered voters are likely to have banked their vote by the end of this weekend. Additionally, some early estimates are posting GOP voters for Harris are likely to hit 10% of all Republican votes cast. All of it would appear to bode well for the Democratic candidate.
-And how did Republican nominee REALLY Weird REALLY OLD Convicted Felon Ex-President Trump (R-apist) react? Well, let's catalog the last few days, shall we?
-When last we left the increasingly literally doddering Donald, he was using scatological pseudo-jokes written by unfunny Fox News "comedian" Greg Gutfeld at the New York City annual Al Smith white tie charity dinner, sponsored by and benefitting Catholic Charities. The event traditionally draws Presidential candidates, and the always hungry-for-respect-from-Gotham-elites Trump blathered through his material, complaining about the lack of laughs and theoretical microphone malfunction while trying to "earn" votes for himself because Harris only appeared via video. (That video, by the way, featured Harris leaning into the Catholicism courtesy of a skit which also featured SNL alum Molly Shannon and her Catholic schoolgirl character Kathleen Gallagher, in which Gallagher asked Harris if Harris would mock Catholics, to which Harris retorted "That would be like making fun of Detroit in Detroit!")
-Smarting from Harris being funnier than he was without having to be there, Trump then oozed over to Fox and Friends on Friday morning - and there, while answering a question sitting on what some thought was a black warming pad and others thought was simply a towel to separate Trump and whatever was wrapping his ass from the white sofa on the Fox set (EEEEEUUUUU!), the hosts attempted to make Trump seem warm and fuzzy or grandfatherly or kind of human by taping a question from a five-year-old black child about the Civil War. You can anticipate that Trump's answer was ... well, Trump told the kid that Abraham Lincoln should have "settled" the Civil War ... somehow ... while also then trying again claim that under Trump there never would have been a war in Ukraine (likely because Trump would have served Ukraine on a platter for Putin and would if he were to regain power) (SLAVA UKRAINI!), then followed it up by strongly suggesting a Trump Presidency would defund schools that taught slavery was somehow bad for the United States.
-Naturally, after that answer, Trump went to an interview with super-sympathetic former radio host turned podcaster Dan Bongino (and by "went" we mean "Bongino came to Trump's home to do the interview") - only to have that interview stopped after about 20 minutes when Trump rambled beyond bashing Harris into sounding sad about the prosecution of convicted rapist and fellow sexual predator Harvey Weinstein - specifically, that Trump thought Weinstein got "schlonged." (Yep, an actual quote.) The episode then prompted some of Trump's schedule to be truncated, again raising an issue Harris is sensibly hammering: Trump's growingly apparent "exhaustion" and questions about whether he can physically handle the Presidency, assuming he can even handle the last few weeks of the campaign.
-That campaign returned to Detroit, albeit not smoothly. First, an appearance featured Trump reverting to believing he was back in court on trial for paying hush money to Stormy Daniels, as he was photographed clearly dozing off while voters made statements about things they hoped Trump would do - and Trump responded in kind.
-Trump then went to what was supposed to be a Detroit rally, except the event was first delayed for at least an hour after several reporters noted how empty the original venue was for the rally and moving it to a smaller room to make the crowd appear larger. Perhaps as a result of that move, in mid-speech Trump's microphone cut off, and after bitter recriminations, Trump stopped and waited ... on stage ... standing by himself ... for 19 minutes ... while the mike was replaced.
-Trump's Wooden Indian imitation immediately reprised his eerie Monday rally in PA where he stopped a scheduled town hall and made producers play music from his playlist - while Trump stayed on stage twitching and twisting in an approximation of swaying and listening to music - for 39 agonizing minutes and a slew of other interview cancellations, as well as the claim Trump was "exhausted" from all that twitching and standing.
-So perhaps Trump felt he had to compensate for it - and he did, making this stirring get-out-the-vote pitch to his MAGA hordes: "Go tomorrow, it's just starting, go and vote. Make sure you vote and bring all our friends that want to vote for us. Tell them, 'Jill, get your fat husband off the couch, get that fat pig off the couch, tell him to go and vote for Trump, he's going to save our country!" (Trump is leaning heavily on men to bail out what is a huge and growing gender gap, and reducing his voters to MARRIED WITH CHILDREN stereotypes is apparently his chosen strategy to do so.)
-But, the end of a campaign is a hungry beast that must be fed, so out Trump went out again today, this time to PA, which is where his Last Stand is taking place. Trump traveled to Latrobe in western PA, a Trump-friendly area most widely known as being the home of golf legend Arnold Palmer. Well, in an apparent attempt to tip his ... hat? ... to both the local boy made good and his own obsession with golf, Trump went to the stage to praise ol' Arnie with this word-for-word tribute:
-"... but I said, I would tell the real story of Arnold. But Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that with all due respect to women, and I love women, but this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough and I refused to say it. But when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there. They said, oh my God. That's unbelievable. I had to say it. I had to say it!"
-Yes, that was Trump talking about how well-endowed Palmer was to his home town because he "had to say it!" And yes, that's the second reference to a schlong in this update. (For the record, Palmer's daughter Peg denounced Trump's rhetoric in 2018, making her belief that her father would never have been a Trump supporter clear.) (Also, it is unclear why Trump believes professional golfers shower as if they were in high school.)
-But don't worry - Trump eventually got back to the whole political rally part of his Latrobe appearance, making sure everyone was clear about his "closing argument" by calling Harris "a shit Vice President!" and his regular menu of lies and half-completed sentences and, again, slurring and unmodulated low-energy ramblings that are leading observers to question not just his competence in general, but his actual mental and physical health - so much so that Fox cut from the Trump mouth sharting to the Harris rally with Usher in GA.
-Trump ended yesterday by announcing he was heading to Pittsburgh to watch the Steelers play the Jets last night. The Steelers play the Jets on Sunday Night Football, which is the day after.
-OH, and THIS JUST IN: Trump has announced to great fanfare that he will man a fry station at a McDonald's. While many may think this is simply Trump being able to get food faster, in reality another one of Trump's obsessions about Kamala Harris is not believing her when she said she worked at a McDonald's in the 1980s when she was an undergraduate, because she didn't keep the shirt or put it on her resume or produced co-workers who remember her or ... something. This could be an appearance where his escalating use of vulgarities in public and private - well-documented and a well-documented piece of evidence to discuss cognitive decline among senior citizens - could hit a new low. Gird your loins ...
-Of course, on the Democratic side all this news is only leading to more and more Pha-REEK!-outs over the admittedly natural question of why someone like Trump is drawing more than, say, 20% of the vote - especially with OMIGODTHEPOLLSANDTHENETWORKSSAYITISDEADEVENTRAZORSEDGEDOWNTOTHEWIREWATCHTHEMTOOVERANALYZETHENUMBERSKAMALAISDOOOOMED! feelings abounding.
-This is where we all need to be reminded, again, of the reality that Republicans are using specialized polling (at least a dozen such polls according to Hopium Chronicles Substacker Simon Rosenberg) that are designed specifically to move polling and create the illusion of Trump momentum. Combined with pollsters attempting to account for the 3% overvote that Trump received but was not picked up by pollsters in 2016 or 2020 (while perhaps not doing the same for women voters in the wake of the Dodds decision or overall Democratic overperforming their polling from 2017 through 2022), and the simple reality of voting already begun, and it is all meant to be clear that polling is meant to be a snapshot, not a predictor. (And if you need some good poll news, the New York Biden Harris Hate Times even admitted this morning in their new poll that Harris is up nationally 49%-46%.)
-Okay, but predicting is fun, so people suspicious of polling have turned to another area of prediction: gambling houses that place odds on everything from football to elections. And some betting houses seemed to be much more accurate than polling. But even then, Pha-REEK-ing out is taking place because one of the newest and largest online betting houses, Polymarket, over the weekend suddenly decided Trump has more than a 60% chance of winning. Because the polling had shifted that much? No, apparently because according to that liberal betting rag the Wall Street Journal, four Polymarket accounts placed over $30M in cryptocurrency on Trump to win, thus skewing those odds as well. Given that Polymarket is tied to JD Vance patron Peter Theil and onetime political whiz kid Nate Silver and is meant to be a driver of crypto, even that example perhaps should not be treated as seriously as one should.
-MEANwhile, back in PA, A CORRECTION: I mentioned in my last update that Trump did not have any celebrity surrogates campaigning for him. That is untrue. Billionaire weirdo Elon Musk, who has decided it is super-important for Trump to win, has 'moved' to PA in an effort to win that state for Trump no matter what the cost. And, when Musk says "at all costs," he apparently means that literally.
-For about a week, Musk has offered supporters anywhere from $47 to $100 to either find friends to vote for Trump or vote for Trump him/herself - and on Saturday, expanded that offer exponentially that, through his SuperPAC, he will give away $1 million a day from now to Election Day to any registered voter who "signs a petition supporting free speech and gun rights." If you're thinking that is a really bad and stupid disguise for vote-purchasing and vote-tampering, you probably didn't grow up the child of apartheid whose parents made their fortune harvesting blood diamonds - but yes, this is HELLA illegal ...
-BUT WAIT - THERE'S MORE! That same Musk-created PAC is also attempting to create get-out-the-vote drives nationally as a way to cover for what is one of Trump's major vulnerabilities and one of Harris' biggest advantages. How successful Musk will be remains to be seen, but this weekend reports have emerged of supervisors not reporting true results of their endeavors while, shockingly, losing much of the money that is supposed to go into voters pocketstowards door knockers and paid staff and volunteers. In an election that might be super-close (CALM DOWN OUT THERE!) GOTV efforts can bring a critical percentage point or two to a campaign - while a bad or non-existent GOTV can destroy such efforts, particularly in the stretch run which we are in now.
-It's crazy and getting crazier. Keep working, keep calling, keep knocking (Democratic voter contacts continue to shatter records), vote early (so the focus can be on lower-propensity voters and using the off-the-charts enthusiasm for Harris/Walz to get them to move), STAY POSITIVE (people like a little swagger, not doom) ... and, in an unusual move for this Substack, I'm moving up one of my features for one exception ...
-HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KAMALA HARRIS! You're 60? No biggie - we hear 60 is the new 47!
-On this date in 1803, the Senate ratified The Louisiana Purchase. On this date in 1968, Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis. On this date in 1935, Chinese Communists ended their Long March. On this date in 1944, Douglas MacArthur made good on his promise and returned to the Philippines - along with the U.S. 6th army. On this date in 1968, Dick Fosbury won the Olympic high jump Gold Medal with a revolutionary technique - approaching the bar backwards and jumping head and shoulders first, aka The Fosbury Flop. On this date in 1973, Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was fired - and Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckleshaus resigned for refusing to fire Cox (who was fired by notorious Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork) in what became known as The Saturday Night Massacre. On this date in 1977, a plane carrying the band Lynryrd Skynyrd crashed in MS, killing six and injuring 20. And on this date in 2020, the U.S. Justice Department sued Google on monopoly charges (be on the lookout for potential resolutions to this case soon).
-Debuts on this date: the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947), PETER PAN (Broadway musical, 1954), THE LORD OF THE RINGS - THE RETURN OF THE KING (1955), the Sydney Opera House (1973), BOY (1980), Ice-T on LAW & ORDER (2000).
-Happy Birthday to Arthur Rimbaud, John Dewey, Bela Lugosi, Margaret Dumont, Jelly Roll Morton, Arlene Francis, Will Rogers Jr., Grandpa Jones, Art Buchwald, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Mickey Mantle, William Christopher, Jerry Orbach, Juan Marichal, Wanda Jackson, Robert Pinsky, Valery Borzov, Tom Petty, Claudio Raneiri, Bill Nunn, Keith Hernandez, Lee Roy Selmon, Thomas Newman, Danny Boyle, Dave Krieg, Razor Ramon, Viggo Mortensen, Sunny Hostin, Chavo Guerrero, Jr., Snoop Dogg, and John Krasinski.
-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Eugene V. Debs, Henry Stimson, Wilbur Shaw, Herbert Hoover, Ronnie Van Zant, Cassie Gaines, Steve Gaines, Mary Coyle Chase, Burt Lancaster, Calvin Griffith, Jack Elam, Shirley Horn, Jane Wyatt, Max McGee, Gene Hickerson, Oscar de la Renta, Derryl Cousins, and Lucy Simon.
-Feed the Worms: early right-wing hate commentator Michelle "Malkin" Magalang entered Earth on this date. Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and Muammar Gaddafi bought it on this date.
-The Number One Novel in the U.S. on this date ... in 2024, THE BOYFRIEND by Frieda McFadden ... in 2014, GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn ... in 2004, THE DARK TOWER by Stephen King ... in 1994, INSOMNIA by Stephen King ... in 1984, THE FOURTH PROTOCOL by Frederick Forsyth ... and in 1974, CENTENNIAL by James Michener.