NOTE: While these entries are dated 2022, I decided to backdate the posting dates of events from 2023 onward to the same date in 2022.
October 27, 2024: Donald Trump, running for President so he can carry out his vendetta against America -- and so he can stay out of prison -- held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
New York City, where he was born, was given a fortune, and lost it. Where he built ugly buildings, and got fined by the federal government for racist hiring practices. Where he got 18 percent of the vote in 2016 (56 percent in majority-white Staten Island, 22 percent in his home Borough of Queens, 17 percent in Brooklyn, and 9 percent each in Manhattan and The Bronx), and where he got 22 percent in 2020 (57 in Staten Island, 27 in Queens, 22 in Brooklyn, 16 in The Bronx, and 12 in Manhattan). Where he got 36 percent of the Statewide vote in 2016, and 37 percent in 2020.
New York, the City that knows him the best, and hates him the most. That is not a coincidence.
Donald Trump, owned by Russia, turning Madison Square Garden into Red Square Garden. And bringing back memories of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund rally in 1939, 17 blocks uptown at the previous building with the Garden name.
He was supposed to take the stage at 5:00. He did so at 7:11. The bum was 2 hours and 11 minutes late. In between, he made his idiot fans watch Melania, Beavis and Butt-head (his sons, Eric and Donald Jr.), Speaker Mike Johnson, Rudy Giuliani, Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Tony Hinchcliffe, Hulk Hogan, Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Dr. Phil McGraw, Dana White, and, for all I know, Mike "My Pillow" Lindell.
At the time, I wrote, "And now, he'll talk for who knows how long, slurring his words, lying with every sentence, to people too damned stupid to know it's lies. I hope James Dolan thoroughly fumigates the place tonight."
To all those Republicans who shed crocodile tears because their feelings were so hurt that people were calling Donald Trump a fascist: Stop.
To all the MAGA defenders who said it was over-the-top to compare Trump's Madison Square Garden rally to that held by the German-American Bund in an earlier incarnation of Madison Square Garden: Shush.
To all those who were falling once again for the bought and paid for narrative that Trump somehow had the momentum going into the final week of campaign 2024: Nope.
On Sunday at MSG, Donald Trump engineered what will be seen by political analysts and later by historians as the coup de grâce that killed forever his prospects of being President, and may well have set him on a post-election course on which he finally may be held accountable for his actions.
The interminable rally concluded by an interminable, disjointed, incoherent and yet clearly vile speech by the former president, might have been touted by Trump's son Don Jr., one of the former President's warm-up acts, as the "king of New York returning to reclaim his crown." But Trump was never the king of New York. (Sorry, Lara, your father-in-law did not "build" New York. Immigrants did. But we’ll get to that in a minute.)
Trump has always been loathed in New York City, especially in his former home borough of Manhattan where the vote against him was and will be dependably over 80 percent. But if he was hated before, rest assured, he will be more despised after tonight.
That was clear early on when Tony Hinchcliffe, a man invited by Trump to give one of the introductory speeches -- who, in true MAGA fashion, alleged without providing a shred of evidence that he was a comedian -- offered a KKK buffet of nauseating slurs. He called Puerto Rico "an island of floating garbage."
But this loser did not stop there. He offered unfunny commentary about his view that Latinos "love making babies," and a reference to how his Black friends liked carving watermelons. (Edit: He also made bigoted comments about Jews. What year did the man Rothkopf correctly called "this loser" think this was, 1924?)
You might think that a few super-racist comments from one speaker might not warrant comments that compared the Trump rally to the Nazi meeting 85 years ago. But his comments were hardly the worst. And the racism and the hate and incitement to violence and the promise of an increasingly authoritarian state continued from the very beginning of the event to the very end.
One speaker said that Harris was managed by "pimp handlers," and said of Democrats that "we need to slaughter these other people." (Edit: That speaker was Grant Cardone, a real estate investor.) Disgraced and destitute former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, as did several others, that Democrats were behind attempts to kill Donald Trump. Another speaker called Harris "the devil" and "the antichrist." (Edit: That speaker was David Rem, an old friend of Trump's who ran against Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The Bronx, and lost badly.)
Former Trump aide Stephen Miller as is his habit went directly for the Nazi playbook, saying, "America is for Americans, and Americans only." Tucker Carlson came out to offer more racist slurs about Harris. Hulk Hogan ripped his shirt off while declaring he saw no Nazis in the audience (thus proving that steroids abuse can not only shrivel up your junk but that it’s not really good for your eyesight either).
Elon Musk was there, acting strangely and promising to slash the size of the government (except presumably the parts that are subsidizing his businesses).
As an aside, it is worth noting the irony of Musk appearing at a rally condemning illegal immigration when recent revelations seem to confirm that he himself was an illegal immigrant. That's not just hypocrisy. If he lied about any aspect of his citizenship status or journey when filling out the forms required to get the Top Secret clearance that this phone pal of Vladimir Putin has, it's a felony, and could not only cause his clearances to be revoked it could be bad news for his businesses and frankly his ability to stay in the United States. No wonder he is all in for the only "politician" in America who would pardon his crimes in a heartbeat.
Trump attacked the media, and egged the crowd on to boo journalists in the crowd. He said migrants had taken over Times Square (which is 9 blocks uptown from where the rally was held). He called the U.S. an occupied country which, while bad, may be better than his reference to it as a garbage can the other day. He called Harris a "low IQ individual." He offered so many lies that cable networks tuned him out because it was impossible to keep up with fact-checking him. He returned to old themes like the bizarre notion that Harris would reinstate the draft and start World War III.
Most importantly from the perspective of confirming his fascism he reiterated at length his assertion that his opponents were "enemies of the people." (You know, the ones against whom he promised to unleash the U.S. military.) He called them "the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth."...
From a political perspective, the strategy is pure suicide. The rally will almost certainly alienate more voters who might have voted for Trump, and it is hard to imagine it has earned him one single new vote. (Unless there is a Franz Liebkind somewhere who has been too busy writing "Springtime for Hitler" to have paid attention to the campaign until now.) It was a play to the base when the biggest problem Trump has in this election is breaking through his rock solid ceiling of around 47 percent of the electorate...
Trump may be thinking the rally will help him mobilize thugs to violence when he contests his loss and we should be wary of that. But he has provided on the eve of the election the best case why he must be defeated that has ever been presented. In the end, because what unfolded was so foul and so offensive and threatening to so many of us, I believe that is why we will someday conclude that for all intents and purposes Trump's final political act occurred on the biggest stage in America’s biggest city, a couple of blocks from Broadway.
It later got out that one of Hinchcliffe's "jokes" was supposedly removed by somebody working for Trump. What that means is, this as-yet-unknown somebody decided that everything else in his speech was fit for public consumption.
Two nights later, Harris spoke before 75,000 people on the Ellipse, between the White House and the Washington Monument in Washington. Her podium was at the exact same spot as the one Trump used to launch his insurrection on January 6, 2021.
An exorcism? Maybe she should have done one at The Garden.
On November 5, enough people showed up at the polls, and enough others stayed home, to render the predictions made by me, by David Rothkopf, and by many others wrong. Trump got back in, and his policies became more Fascist than ever.
*
October 27, 2024 was a Sunday. It was an off-day in the World Series. These NFL games were played:
* The New York Jets lost to their arch-rivals, the New England Patriots, 25-22 at Gillette Stadium in the Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts. Rhamondre Stevenson scored on a 1-yard run with 22 seconds left.
* The Washington Redskins beat the Chicago Bears, 18-15 at Northwest Stadium in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.
* The Green Bay Packers beat the Jacksonville Jaguars, 30-27 at EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville.
* The Atlanta Falcons beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 31-26 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
* The Arizona Cardinals beat the Miami Dolphins, 28-27 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Chad Ryland kicked a 34-yard field goal on the last play of the game.
* The Houston Texans beat the Indianapolis Colts, 23-20 at NRG Stadium (as Reliant Stadium was then known) in Houston.
* The Cleveland Browns beat the Baltimore Ravens, the franchise that used to be the Browns, 29-24 at Huntington Bank Field in Cleveland.
* The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 37-17 at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati.
* The Detroit Lions beat the Tennessee Titans, 52-14 at Ford Field in Detroit.
* The Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers, 28-14 at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver.
* The Kansas City Chiefs beat their arch-rivals, the Las Vegas Raiders, 27-20 at Allegiant Stadium in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada.
* The Los Angeles Chargers beat the New Orleans Saints, 26-8 at at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.
* The San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Cowboys, 30-24 at Levi's Stadium in the San Francisco suburb of Santa Clara, California.
* The Buffalo Bills beat the Seattle Seahawks, 31-10 at Lumen Field in Seattle.
* The preceding Thursday night, the Los Angeles Rams beat the Minnesota Vikings, 30-20 at SoFi Stadium.
* And the next night, on ESPN Monday Night Football, the Pittsburg Steelers beat the New York Giants, 26-18 at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh.
There were 5 games in the NBA:
* The Brooklyn Nets beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 115-102 at the Barclays Center.
* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Atlanta Pacers, 118-114 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Tyrese Maxey scored 45 points.
* The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Atlanta Hawks, 128-104 at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 35 points.
* The Los Angeles Clippers beat the Golden State Warriors, 112-104 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 125-103 at the Moda Center in Portland.
And there were 4 games in the NHL:
* The New Jersey Devils beat the Anaheim Ducks, 6-2 at the Prudential Center in Newark. Stefan Noesen scored 2 goals.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 4-3 at the Wells Fargo Center (now the Xfinity Mobile Arena) in Philadelphia.
* The Edmonton Oilers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-2 at the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit. Leon Draisaitl scored the winning goal, just 18 seconds into overtime.
* And the Colorado Avalanche beat the Ottawa Senators, 5-4 at the Ball Arena in Denver.
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