Need to Know by David Rothkopf

Need to Know by David Rothkopf

What if They Gave an October Surprise And No One Noticed?

Trump's Back to Flooding the Zone with Shit

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David Rothkopf
Oct 08, 2024
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Four weeks to go. Nail-biting time.

Much of what is happening is exciting. Vice President Harris is up in the polls a smidge, leading nationally, even in the latest New York Times Sienna poll. In keeping with the spirit of the baseball playoffs she is repeatedly hitting it out of the park in interview after interview—60 Minutes, the View, Call Her Daddy, Howard Stern. The latest policy initiative unveiled by the Harris campaign, providing Medicare coverage to enable families to carry for aging, ailing relatives at home, is a masterstroke. (No seriously. I’ve never ever heard more positive feedback on such an initiative in my life. This is one that really hits us where we live, whether we know we’re in the “sandwich generation” or not.)

But the race is far from won. And Kamala Harris’ opponent, former president Donald Trump, has saddled up a horse called “Chaos” for his his final stretch ride. It’s so Trumpian it shouldn’t come as a shock. Chaos has always been his friend. Create a crisis today so people forget yesterday’s crisis and tomorrow’s even more egregious lunacy seems comparatively normal. Dominate headlines because chaos always commands attention. After all, imagine you are an assignment editor somewhere, do you want 1000 words or 5 minutes of video on a rational argument about some policy issue or on Holyshitwhathefuckwasthatcraziness?

Trump’s mad dash is also being amped up by the fact that he know that if he loses he could actually go to jail. So he will say or do anything—up to and including, don’t you doubt this for a minute, sending America into the throes of a civil war if it might keep his expansive ass out of the penitentiary.

He lies. He howls. He does something he thinks is dancing but isn’t. He accuses. He rants. He froths at the mouth. He compares himself to Jesus.

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