Señor T Once Again Denies He’s A Filthy Nazi— In The Face Of Irrefutable Evidence That He Is

Old Fashioned Republicans Are Embarrassed, Upset

Yesterday, J. Michael Luttig, a conservative legal scholar from the old pre-MAGA Republican Party attempted to warn whichever conservatives read the NY Times to abandon Trump. I hope I’m wrong, but it won’t change a single vote. The kind of people who would vote for Trump don’t read The Times or trust any mainstream media. Trump succeeded in accomplishing than early on in his political career. In Luttig’s world “Americans live in faith with our Constitution and with the past generations of Americans who swore to protect it and fought to defend it.” That may have been true when Luttig graduated from law school in 1981 or possibly when he sat on the federal appeals bench from 1991 to 2006… but not among MAGAts nor among what turned into MAGAts. A MAGAt wouldn’t know what the Constitution is if someone shoved it up their ass.

Luttig asserts that Trump isn’t fit to be president of the United States, There are 75 million Americans who either disagree or believe he’s the lesser evil. “There could be no higher duty of American citizenship than to decisively repudiate a man who betrayed the nation when he was previously entrusted with the highest office in the land and now threatens the persecution of American citizens who have crossed him. In the almost 250 years since the founding of the nation, no president before Donald Trump has ever so betrayed America.” Is that supposed to scare Republicans? That’s what they want. Their lives are miserable and they want revenge. Trump and Fox News— and now a gaggle of treacherous South African billionaire fascists— have been successful in persuading them that their misery is the fault of immigrants, the woke, Democrats, anyone Trump doesn’t like… 

Poor 70 year old Luttig. He says he has always voted for the Republican candidates for president— presumably Trump in 2016— “because I never doubted they would honor their sacred obligations to our democracy and our Constitution. I have never doubted the Democratic candidates for the presidency would honor their obligations, either. But today, I do not recognize the Republican Party that I have known across my lifetime. It is not the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan and neither is it conservative, as that term has been inspiringly invoked by conservatives since the founding. Today, the party of Lincoln and Reagan stands only for one man and that man’s disfigurement of both republicanism and conservatism.”

For him, “America’s democracy and the rule of law are the only truly consequential stakes in the 2024 presidential election. Yes, there are important policy issues about which we disagree. But that has always been the case and always will be. In this election, these policy differences are comparatively inconsequential, if consequential at all. It is our democracy, Constitution and rule of law that have made America the envy and the beacon of freedom to the world for almost a quarter of a millennium, and on the eve of the 2024 presidential election Donald Trump stands as an imminent danger to those foundational cornerstones of our nation. Harris is the only candidate who can be trusted to honor the president’s sacred obligations to America’s democracy, Constitution and rule of law.”

I’m even older than Luttig and we had civics classes back then. Republicans have long made sure most schools no longer teach civics— although Bannon taught a civics class when he was in prison recently. Anyway, one thing I’ll never forget was what we learned about a German pastor and vocal opponent of the Nazis, Martin Niemöller, an antisemitic conservative who at first supported Hitler. He broke with the Nazis when they came after Jews who had converted to Christianity and was arrested in 1937 and spent the war in Sachsenhausen and Dachau. In 1946 he wrote the poem for which he is famous:

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

5-6 decades ago, every literate Jew knew that poem. I don’t know if that’s still the case. Kamala’s husband, Doug Emhoff, a Jew, sure knows it. Yesterday, Haaretz, one of Israel’s biggest newspapers, reported that on Monday Emhoff he “delivered what amounted to the Kamala Harris campaign's closing argument to Jewish-American voters, insisting that combatting antisemitism is ‘the essence of her life and leadership’ while Donald Trump's ‘chaos and cruelty’ is only enabling it. ‘It's an uncomfortable and unsettling time to be Jewish. These are hard days. There's a pride in our people, but also a deep sense of insecurity,’ he said, noting he knows Jews hesitant to wear Jewish symbols publicly and parents worried about their children’s security on college campuses. ‘We should never have to wonder where our government stands or whether our leaders are praising Nazis behind closed doors… Whenever chaos and cruelty are given a green light, Jew-hatred is historically not far behind. That matters today because Donald Trump is nothing if not an agent of chaos and cruelty,’ Emhoff said, speaking in Pittsburgh one day after the sixth anniversary of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue. ‘It's no coincidence that things have gotten worse for American Jews since Trump entered politics— just as they have for so many,’ Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a U.S. president or vice president, continued. ‘Have we already forgotten about Donald Trump's Muslim ban?’” 

Hitler’s disciple has been reacting badly to Democrats, the media and even some people from his former regime pointing out that his behavior and agenda fit the definition of “fascism.” Trump claims he’s the “opposite of a Nazi,” whatever he considers that to be. Calling Anderson Cooper, an out gay man, “Allison Cooper” over and over again probably isn’t it. And his own aides are worrying that the fascist rally in Madison Square Garden backfired.

Trump, wrote Hannah Knowles and Marianne LeVine, “has repeatedly referred to his political opponents as the “enemy from within,” including during a rally he hosted Sunday at Madison Square Garden, where his opening acts made racist remarks and the Confederate anthem “Dixie” played. Some Democrats, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the vice-presidential nominee, drew parallels between that event and a 1939 Nazi rally held at the same venue.

“They use: ‘He’s Hitler’ and then they say ‘He’s a Nazi.’” Trump said. “I’m not a Nazi, I’m the opposite of a Nazi.”

Trump also falsely stated that Harris and her campaign have deemed “everyone who isn’t voting for her” a Nazi, before he described the vice president as a “fascist”— a strategy Trump routinely uses to turn political rivals’ criticism onto them.

In the closing days of the presidential campaign, Democrats have highlighted statements from Trump’s former advisers who have declared him unfit for office. In a recent book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, retired Gen. Mark Milley said Trump is a “fascist to the core.” Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, recently renewed comparisons between Trump and foreign dictators when he told The Atlantic that Trump expressed admiration for “Hitler’s generals.”

Trump and his campaign have vehemently rejected any comparisons of him to Hitler.

Trump said “You know, years ago, my father— I had a great father, tough guy— he used to always say, ‘Never use the word Nazi. Never use that word.’ And he’d say, ‘Never use the word Hitler. Don’t use that word.’ And yet they use that word freely. Both words. They say, ‘He’s Hitler,’ and then they say, ‘He’s a Nazi.’ I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi.”

Ever hear Yemen Blues’ music? The quartet, which got together in Israel, includes musicians from Morocco, Yemen, Israel and Uruguay. They released a new album, Only Love Remains, last month and a new single, “YYY,” which they note, stands up to “dangerous political, religious, and cultural polarization and xenophobia, helping to create a color-blind, all-embracing celebration of gyrating togetherness with love firmly at its pulsing core.” They describe their music as an “exhilarating polyglot mélange of Bedouin folk, funk, blues, avant-garde, Arabian classical, fuzzed-out rock, psych, and jazz. They’re on tour right now and if you’re in any of these places, you’re unlikely to see any MAGAts are their shows:

Nov. 1- Munich (Import Export)

Nov 03- Berlin (BiNuu)

Nov 06- Dornbirn, Austria (Spielboden)

Nov 07- Paris, (New Morning)

Nov 08- Odense, Germany (Odense Theater )

Nov 09- Zurich (Moods)

Nov 10- Bern (Turnhalle im PROGR)

Nov 11- London (100 Club)

Nov 13- Den Haag (Paard)

Dec 10- New York (Joe’s Pub)

Dec 12- Hartford (The Webster)

Dec 14, 15- Miami (Palapa)

Dec 17- Cambridge, Mass. (Middle East) 

Dec 19- San Francisco (SF Jazz)

Dec 22- Portland, Oregon (Jack London Revue)