At 11:55 a.m. this morning, Donald Trump boarded the original pastel-blue Air Force One and was quickly followed by what appeared to be several members of his staff, who were carrying large, bubble-wrapped, gold-painted frames, including one that featured a photograph of former President Bill Clinton.
Just a few hours later, at 3:37 p.m., Donald Trump stood in front of his most devoted followers in Dubuque, Iowa, and began one of the longest and most erratic rally speeches of his presidency. Throughout the nearly two-hour speech, he repeatedly slurred his words, struggled to keep his eyes open, and complained about past “stupid presidents” and how “We only had one great one in the last 50 years. Me.” He said all that while assuring everyone that he could have “won the Vietnam War in one week,” maybe forgetting how he avoided serving in Vietnam after receiving five draft deferments, including one for bone spurs.
He told the audience that “we got Greenland” and acquired it for “zero dollars” and that it is ours “forever,” adding, “what a deal!”
He tried to convince the people in the room and those watching from home that when he goes off on long, incoherent tangents, he is doing it intentionally, insisting, “This isn’t rambling. This is genius.” He then continued rambling for several more minutes before declaring, “But the way I do it, it’s pure freaking genius. Okay.”
Then, after just insisting that he doesn’t ramble, he spent several minutes puzzling his audience with this absolute nonsense:
“Little things, I have a lot of flagpoles, all over my place in Los Angeles, including by the ocean, in a magnificent place. I have a guy, though. It’s life. I call him Flagpole Jim. His whole life, that’s all he does. Believe me, when you order a flagpole, there are good ones and bad ones, and some are ugly. Have you ever seen the ones that go up dead straight and are flat on top? That’s called a piece of steel, not a flagpole. These are beautiful, with a beautiful bronze top on them. The wires and cords are inside, so it doesn’t look bad and doesn’t make noise. Flagpole Jim is the best. If you ask him to cross the street, please, he couldn’t do that, but for flagpoles, he’s great, the best in the world.”
If that wasn’t enough, he also decided this was the perfect time to start making strange arm movements and full-body contortions while blurting out, “Please, Mary, go, go, baby. Oh, Mom. Oh. Ah,” as he acted out a fake weightlifting competition, while pretending to speak in the athlete’s mother’s voice. This was the President of the United States, standing on a stage just two days before an election he claims will determine the fate of our country.
Watching his increasingly erratic behavior is only made worse by remembering that, like it or not, this is all coming from one of, if not the most powerful man in the world. This isn’t to say that he deserves that title or that the United States deserves to wield that much power, but the reality of the situation is that, in this moment, that is exactly what he is, as illustrated by the chaos and destabilization that he has managed to unleash across almost every inch of the planet.
Underneath the strange tangents and slurred words, something else very deliberate is being done by Donald Trump and his enablers. They are laying the groundwork for the Big Lie 2.0, using much of the same playbook he used in 2020, only this time he’s had six years to refine it.
Before Donald Trump’s rally in Iowa, he gave a separate interview with a far-right organization where he was asked about the possibility that ballot counts could change overnight on election night, the way they normally do in every election, because that’s how counting works. Trump responded by repeating the original lie, word for word: “That happened to us in 2020. We won the race. They rigged it. It was rigged.” He described the 2020 election as a race he had already won on election night before additional ballots he claimed were illegitimate were counted. He is pre-loading the same false narrative so that if results shift as votes are tallied on Tuesday night and into the next day or beyond, which they very well could, his supporters will already have the explanation ready: it was stolen. Again.
Because Donald Trump knows that the lie doesn’t work unless people believe Republicans were supposed to win, he has to convince his supporters that a Republican victory is inevitable. You don’t claim a stolen election when everyone expected you to lose. You claim it when you’ve spent months constructing a reality where your victory was so obvious and inevitable that anything else would be impossible. And that is exactly what Trump has been doing. Today alone, he told the crowd that MAGA is stronger than ever. He claimed his rallies are sold out, with thousands watching on screens outside. He even showed CNN graphics about his approval rating among Republican voters and declared himself more admired than Abraham Lincoln.
But the thing about Abraham Lincoln that Donald Trump should have considered before he said that is that, in 1864, Lincoln held a presidential election in the middle of a civil war. He believed he was going to lose, and there were calls to delay the election. He refused, and he held the election anyway because he understood that the survival of democracy depended not on whether he stayed in power, but on whether the American people were allowed to choose. Lincoln believed the election was bigger than him. Trump believes he is bigger than the election. That is the difference between a president and a tyrant. And the fact that he invoked Lincoln’s name tonight while actively working to undermine the legitimacy of the vote on Tuesday is one of the most grotesque things about this administration.
Although he is emulating his failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election, here is what makes this time different from 2020, and in many ways even more dangerous. This morning, Reuters published an investigation that revealed that Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and White House Counsel Will Scharf have been working since April on ways Trump could keep ramming through his agenda without congressional approval. Their reporting shows that they are preparing executive actions on immigration, tariffs, housing, and federal spending. They also have White House lawyers coaching officials on how to respond to congressional subpoenas. Additionally, the administration has sought a Justice Department opinion that could help Trump use executive privilege to shield communications from congressional investigators. When they asked a source how comfortable Trump would be governing through executive authority under a Democratic Congress, the answer was: “Very comfortable.”
What that reporting revealed is deeply troubling, a phrase I have been using more in the past 22 months than I have in my entire life. Because while Trump is publicly insisting that Republicans are going to win in a landslide, his own White House has spent seven months preparing for the very real possibility that they lose. They are building the Big Lie 2.0 in public and the workaround in private.
In 2020, the lie was improvised, reactive, and chaotic. This time, the narrative is being constructed in advance, the legal challenges are already filed, and the administrative infrastructure for governing without Congress is documented in a Reuters investigation. He learned from 2020, and we should probably be asking ourselves if we learned from it, too.
Today, the betrayal of our country didn’t just come from the Executive Branch. It also came from the great state of Michigan. Congresswoman Haley Stevens, a Democrat who had privately reassured senior party leaders that she would not endorse the Republican candidate for Senate, did exactly that. She attended church with Republican Mike Rogers and then endorsed him publicly after being uninvited from a Democratic unity event over a dispute involving outside political spending. Her own chief of staff immediately resigned, and many of her staff walked out. Rep. Jamie Raskin said he was stunned.
There was one person who didn’t seem particularly surprised by the announcement, and that was Donald Trump. In fact, he went so far as to share this on Truth Social: “Wow, this is BIG! Congresswoman Haley Stevens, a Highly Respected Democrat, who narrowly lost in the Primary to Abdul Mohamed El-Sayed, and who has been breathlessly wined and dined by the Dumocrats to help in their Michigan Campaign for the United States Senate against Mike Rogers, has just ENDORSED Mike Rogers for Senate! Her following is huge, and the level of respect from the People of Michigan, especially our African American and Jewish populations, is virtually unparalleled. Haley said what few people are willing to say. She showed great and almost unprecedented loyalty to the Great People of Michigan with what she did. It’s a thing called bravery, and few people have it like just displayed by Congresswoman Haley Stevens! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Based on a post shared late tonight, it appears that Donald Trump might be making a backup plan to his backup plan to stay in control. Late this evening, Tucker Carlson, whom I would not normally consider a credible source by any stretch, posted a very long message on social media claiming that the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran, under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I’m not going to repeat every claim he made, and I don’t think anyone should panic based on a single post from a man who has built a career on getting a reaction from people. But I also know this: we can’t dismiss anything Donald Trump would be willing to do. And the timing would serve both leaders. Trump’s own words today should remind us of that. Standing on that stage in Iowa, he said the only reason he hasn’t finished Iran off is because he wants “to be nice,” and then added, “But at some point we’re going to have to give them the hammer.”
We also learned some terrible news about a true patriot who has been fighting back and resisting all that Donald Trump and his enablers have been putting our country through. Senator Chris Murphy suffered a stroke after experiencing arm numbness at his son’s hockey game. He was transferred to Johns Hopkins, and his office says he is awake and alert and his doctors are encouraged by his progress. Senator Murphy had just come back from the Middle East, had been sitting in classified briefings, and had been sharing what he knows about Trump’s plans for Iran. He has been sounding the alarm every single day, and now he is in a hospital bed. I can only imagine the weight of everything he has been carrying, although we do not know what caused his stroke.
I can’t imagine what he has been going through up to this point. I know a small fraction of what that weight feels like, even from the outside. The sleepless nights, not being there for my family as much as I want to be, and the constant feeling that no matter how much I do, it will never be enough. And I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. So many of you feel it, too. The exhaustion, the dread every morning when you open your phone, wondering what terrible thing has happened overnight, and the same question of how much longer you can keep doing this. And if this is what it feels like for us, people who write and read and share and call our representatives and show up, I cannot imagine what it feels like for the people actually inside the machinery, fighting from within, carrying classified knowledge of what this administration is capable of, knowing that every day they speak the truth could be the day it catches up with them.
Our job now is to carry Sen. Murphy’s mission onward until he is fully ready to return to the fight. We carry him the way we carry everyone who needs to step back, everyone who has given everything they have and needs a moment to recover. That is what movements do. They don’t collapse when one person falls. They close ranks and absorb the weight. They keep moving forward. And we vote for him and for others whose voices cannot be heard. The people in detention who never received due process. The families separated by policies built on cruelty. The people we’ve lost because of this administration’s reckless decisions. And Chris Murphy, who has spent the last year trying to stop a war and now needs time to recover.
The path to better days always has peaks and valleys. Today we saw more valleys than peaks, including some terrible news, but we also saw something that gives me hope. More than 53 million Americans have already cast their ballots in this election, surpassing the early voting total from the 2022 midterms. Georgia smashed its first-day early voting record with more than 188,000 ballots. Minnesota broke its record. Virginia’s early voting has already surpassed the entire early vote total from the 2022 midterm. In state after state, people are showing up in numbers we have never seen in a midterm election.
That is why the Trump administration spent today building the Big Lie 2.0. They are not preparing for victory. They are preparing for what comes after they lose. We have just two days left to make sure that we deliver the biggest blue wave in the history of our country. And that is exactly what we are going to do. If you have not voted yet, please do so tomorrow and take a friend or family member with you. We have a big job ahead of us to take back Congress, and we will not be stopping until it is done. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: This was one of those pictures I took for no real reason other than that what I was looking at brought me joy. I absolutely love Balboa Park here in San Diego. Much of what we see there today was built for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, a world’s fair, and it now houses museums, the San Diego Zoo, beautiful gardens, and multiple restaurants. My family has spent more hours than I can count over the years just exploring everything it has to offer. When I think about where I want my taxpayer dollars to go, after the basic needs of my fellow Americans are met, I would love to see more money invested in places like this, along with museums and libraries across the country. We have to make sure that our children have a well-rounded education that includes history, the arts, and the critical thinking skills to recognize propaganda, question what they are being told, and understand how easily democracy can be lost. Because if we are going to make sure this type of takeover never happens again, education has to be part of how we do it.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chris-murphy-stroke-hospitalized/
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/statement-on-senator-murphys-hospitalization
Trump holds midterm rally in Iowa with just days until elections: YouTube Video
UK here. Our BBC reporters were out and about in various US states yesterday asking voters what they were thinking to report for the late evening news. I honestly had to leave the room 😕. I hope the bit I stayed up for was not representative or the world is doomed 🥲. WAKE UP AMERICA. Holding on to your daily hope though, Heather. Thank you 🙏
Heather, here in Chicago, in Grant Park, we have a sculpture called “The Head of State” or “Seated Lincoln.” The sculpture shows Lincoln “gazing downward in a somber, reflective posture.”
Somber! When Pres. Lincoln learns that Trump “invoked his name while actively working to undermine the legitimacy of the vote" we could imagine Lincoln sobbing. Perhaps using a nearby leaf to wipe tears.
Absurd, of course. But I file Trump's use of Lincoln more like "chutzpah, Yiddish for“a person who displays a brazen, almost unbelievable disregard for normal social rules, politeness, or boundaries.” Perfect, right?
Like me and perhaps other fans, when we read that “several members of his staff were carrying large, bubble-wrapped, gold-painted frames,” I’d wager I wasn’t the only one to read “bubble-wrapped” and wished it was Trump sealed for transfer to a hidden location lacking fresh air.
You caution that Republicans "are laying the groundwork for the Big Lie 2.0, using much of the same playbook he used in 2020, only this time he’s had six years to refine it." But I think that reaction will not be repeated.
This time, I'd bet that a good portion of Republicans will react “Thank God” to a Trump loss. And your count of “more than 53 million Americans have already cast their ballots in this election, surpassing the early voting total from the 2022 midterms,” will have these same Republicans praying, “Please let it be so.”