Donald Trump is preaching a rash rhetoric of bizarre claims and lies - unqualified to lead

Donald Trump was always unfit to be president, however his apparent cognitive decline since he last ran for office in 2020, is alarming. Echo opinion published in the Yakima Herald-Republic news in Washington state. (A Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial)

He has long spewed lies and conspiracies, but Trump’s rantings have become more delusional — underscoring how he can’t be trusted with the nation’s nuclear launch codes, let alone to manage budgets, unpredictable crises or delicate matters of foreign affairs.

If elected again, his detachment from reality poses a threat to the stability of the country and the free world.

Trump is stuck in a dark place, making it impossible to lead the nation to a brighter future. His fear and anger routine feels especially tired next to Vice President Kamala Harris’ vision of joy and hope. Indeed, the growing wave of enthusiastic support for Harris has seemingly knocked Trump loose of his moorings.

Donald Trump Quotes That Are Completely Ridiculous

In recent weeks, he has significantly reduced his campaign schedule and retreated to his Palm Beach resort, where he gave a rambling news conference that was unglued even by Trumpian standards. With no supporting facts, he claimed the stock market was crashing, that the country was on the brink of a depression, and World War III was looming.

Trump made a number of bizarre claims, including that people were “dying financially because they can’t buy bacon” and that Governor Tim Walz, Vice-PresidentHarris’ presidential vice presidential pick, was “heavy into the transgender world.”

Trump wrongly said everyone would be forced to buy electric cars, and that would require every bridge in the country to be rebuilt because the weight of the batteries made electric vehicles heavier.

He went off on a wild tangent about the time he almost crashed in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, even though Brown says he never flew with Trump.

Contrary to what polls show, Trump said the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was something “every Democrat and every Republican wanted done.” He incoherently said gasoline was “going up $7, $8, $9 a barrel” although gas is sold by the gallon.

Trump repeatedly overstated crowd sizes at his rallies. At one point, he falsely claimed more people attended his speech on January 6, 2021, than the estimated 250,000 who watched the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

Washington DC August 28, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivered "I Have a Dream" during the March on washington. 

By the time the news conference ended, Trump issued 162 misstatements, exaggerations or flat out lies in just over an hour, according to a review of the transcript by a team of reporters and editors at NPR. The full transcript is worth perusing to fully contemplate how Trump could be president again — or how a Fox News anchor could describe his performance as a “clear eyed and sober assessment of the state of the nation.” 

Days later, Trump took to social media to claim the massive crowds turning out for Harris and Walz were fake and had been generated by artificial intelligence. His wacky post makes QAnon conspiracy believers seem cogent.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Trump wrote. “There was nobody at the plane and she ‘A.I.’d it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DON’T EXIST!”

The election is fast approaching, and this is the nonsense Trump is obsessed about. For the record, video footage and photographs captured by the media and attendees showed large crowds greeting Harris.

Trump, a twice impeached, convicted felon, facing three criminal indictments, went on to argue that Harris “should be disqualified” from running for president because the (not) fake crowd image was election interference.

Such drivel may be chalked up to Trump giving the MAGA masses more bread and circuses. But it is more troubling than that, as Trump is once again undermining democracy by recklessly sowing seeds of doubt in the upcoming election.




During recent rallies, Trump has gone on incoherent rants about sharks and electric boats. He has an odd obsession with fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter.

At a rally in Montana, Trump strangely said no one knows Harris’ last name. Uh, it’s Harris, just like her father, the retired Stanford University economics professor.

On several occasions, Trump has conflated mental asylums with asylum seekers. During a rally in the Bronx, he gave a head-scratching soliloquy about how he puts on his pants. He even claimed President Joe Biden would crash the Democratic National Convention and take back the nomination.

This is way beyond weird and has nothing to do with policies or plans to improve the lives of working Americans. Still, most Republican officials and many in the media ignore or downplay Trump’s peculiar state of mind.

He did the same thing in 2020. Even after losing more than 60 court cases and having his own Homeland Security officials declare the election was the most secure in history, Trump refused to concede and illegally attempted to overturn the results, which culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Trump’s recent meltdowns are part of his broader deterioration. He frequently slurs words, forgets names, and confuses elected officials.

This is not a new issue, but it appears to be getting worse. In 2019, Trump called Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tim Apple. In 2020, he repeatedly referred to Rep. Matt Gaetz as Rick Gates, a former aide who was convicted for his role in the Russian election interference case. More recently, Trump mixed up Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.

During recent rallies, Trump has gone on incoherent rants about sharks and electric boats. He has an odd obsession with fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter.

At a rally in Montana, Trump strangely said no one knows Harris’ last name. Uh, it’s Harris, just like her father, the retired Stanford University economics professor.

On several occasions, Trump has conflated mental asylums with asylum seekers. During a rally in the Bronx, he gave a head-scratching soliloquy about how he puts on his pants. He even claimed President Joe Biden would crash the Democratic National Convention and take back the nomination.

This is way beyond weird and has nothing to do with policies or plans to improve the lives of working Americans. Still, most Republican officials and many in the media ignore or downplay Trump’s peculiar state of mind.

Normalizing Trump’s unhinged musings is dangerous, and the kid-glove treatment stands in stark contrast to the onslaught Biden endured from the media, Democratic officials, and donors following his lousy debate performance.

Biden’s issues centered more on his speech, stemming from his lifelong struggle with stuttering. During the debate, he looked at Trump with his mouth agape and occasionally lost his train of thought and froze up, adding to the ⏰💥 alarm.

Trump, on the other hand, struggles to form coherent sentences, mispronounces words, and goes off on nonsensical tangents that are detached from reality. His incessant lies border on pathological. He also exhibits a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, and a constant need for attention and admiration that can impair leaders who are so deeply focused on themselves.

President Biden wisely put the country ahead of his personal ambition and stepped aside. That leaves Trump, 78, as the oldest presidential nominee in American history. His advanced age is not the only red flag.

In 2017, more than two dozen concerned psychiatrists and mental health professionals warned about Trump’s instability in a book titled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. And more recently, medical experts have expressed concern about Trump’s mental capacity with one psychologist saying his speech, memory recall, and other behavior shows he is “dangerously demented.”

It should be noted, however, that those assertions are a violation of the American Psychiatric Association’s so-called “Goldwater Rule,” which prohibits mental health experts from offering “professional opinions about the mental state of individuals that they have not personally and thoroughly evaluated.”

For his part, Trump claims that he “aced” a cognitive test, though mental health experts note that it is hardly an effective diagnostic tool.

And it’s unlikely that the former president would ever feel compelled to release more details about his mental state.

So it will ultimately be left to voters to determine whether Trump’s outlandish ravings are the product of “a very stable genius,” or someone who is more dangerous, more delusional, and more unfit to be president with each passing day.

Historians warn about the dangers of enduring a transformative Donald Trump administration

Echo opinion by Thomas B. Edsall published in The New York Times: Interviews with historians and political scientists, who rank presidents from best to worst. Donald Trump invariably comes out at the bottom. Nevertheless, the consequences of his ambitions to destroy American democracy will be transformatively impactful, if he should somehow be re-elected. Trump is dangerous❗

This year, to give one example, the 2024, Presidential Greatness Project released the results of a survey of 154 current and former members of the presidents and executive politics section of the American Political Science Association.

The highest ranked included no surprises: on a scale of 0 to 100, Abraham Lincoln (95.03), Franklin Roosevelt (90.83), George Washington (90.32), Teddy Roosevelt (78.58) and Thomas Jefferson (77.53).

Dead last: Donald Trump (10.92), substantially below James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.6) and William Henry Harrison (26.01).

There are other ways to rank American presidents, however: How consequential were they?

By these standards, Trump no longer falls at the bottom of the pack. That’s not necessarily a good thing. My view is that Trump is a consequential president for all the wrong reasons.

After the nation rejected the presidential bids of George Wallace, Pat Buchanan and David Duke, Trump demonstrated that the contemporary American electorate would put a candidate who appeals to voters’ worst instincts in the White House.

Trump has capitalized on the anger, fears and resentments of a besieged but fundamentally decent working class to exacerbate ethnonationalist hostility to immigrants and minorities, creating a right-wing populist antidemocratic movement.

In the process of building this MAGA coalition, Trump has made explicit the racist, anti-immigrant themes that have underpinned the Republican Party for the past half-century.

Persistently, insistently repeating election lies, subverting election norms, raising doubts about election integrity and refusing to commit to accepting the 2020 — or 2024 — vote count, Trump is focused on transforming the Republican Party into a cult with adherents willing to support a nominee who openly plans to undermine — indeed ravage — American democracy.

In that sense, Trump ranks high as a (negative) transformative president.

A 2022, paper, “Donald Trump and the Lie,” by Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex, political scientists at Sciences Po Paris and Princeton, provides a case study of Trump’s impact on American politics. The authors studied “the evolution of public opinion about Donald Trump’s ‘big lie’ using a rolling cross-sectional daily tracking survey” from October 27, 2020, through January 29, 2021. They found: The number of Republicans and independents saying that they believe the 2020 election was fraudulent is substantial, and this proportion did not change appreciably over time or shift after important political developments. Belief in the lie may have buoyed some of Trump supporters’ self-esteem.

“Republican voters reward politicians who perpetuate the lie,” Arceneaux and Truex concluded, “giving Republican candidates an incentive to continue to do so in the next electoral cycle.”

I asked a range of experts on the American presidency to evaluate Trump in terms of impact. Their answers varied in terms of substance, tone and the level of harshness of their assessment of Trump’s policies, rhetoric and initiatives.

For a number of presidential scholars, Trump represents not an innovative force but rather a revival of — and capitalization on — the darker strains in this country’s history.

Marjorie R. Hershey, a political scientist at Indiana University, Bloomington, wrote in an email: I’d rate Trump as a significant president. Not a great president or even a good one, but significant in that Trump has pushed a movement to reverse many of the gains in acceptance of diversity that have been so hard-fought in recent decades.

“That’s not new,” Hershey declared, adding: In some ways, Trump is a modern-day version of the grisly race baiters of the Old South in that he’s understood that whipping up fears and hatred and stimulating chaos allows those with real power to accumulate more profits while the rest of the public is busy hating and fearing one another.

Nor, Hershey contended, is Trump a political genius: It’s not that Trump is a brilliant politician. 😪He’s just met his time. So many people’s anxiety level has been increased by 9/11 and other terrorism and Covid and, especially, rapid sociodemographic change. Nativism has long shadowed U.S. politics, but the speed of this particular change, in which the population has dropped from about 85 percent non-Hispanic white to less than 70 percent in just a few decades, has raised some pretty base fears.

Along similar but not parallel lines, Lori Cox Han, a political scientist at Chapman University, where she directs the presidential studies program, wrote to say that “Trump could definitely be called transformational, but in a negative way.”

The nation, she added, has never experienced a president (or ex-president) who has been this disrespectful of the Constitution, the rule of law, the norms of the office or just basic decency. So yes, I would say that he has shifted the common understanding of what is good and sensible and that he has gravely damaged principles and values within the Republican Party on issues such as foreign policy and immigration, transforming it into something unrecognizable to where the party stood during the Reagan years.

Clearly, Han concluded, “Trump is still a significant presence in American politics, but he has turned much of the traditional discussion about presidential leadership on its head.”

Nicole Hemmer, a historian at Vanderbilt and the director of the Center for the American Presidency, argued in an email, “I consider Trump a transformative, or at least pivotal, president for his impact on the policy preferences of Republican voters, his role in supercharging polarization and his part in the January 6th insurrection.”

Hemmer continued: He did not innovate on the policy front: Many of his policy preferences were either longstanding Republican preferences, like budget-busting tax cuts and appointing judges to overturn Roe v. Wade, or had been prefigured by politicians like Pat Buchanan a generation earlier.

Nor would I consider his presidency world-historical in any real sense. He may have foregrounded different issues in the debate over foreign policy, breaking through bipartisan consensus, but he did not remake the role of the U.S. in the world in any meaningful or lasting way. He certainly elevated harsh rhetoric on immigration and attempted to institute restrictionist and nativist policies, but nothing he did restructured the immigration system like the 1921, and 1924, quota systems or the 1965, Immigration Act.

The most consequential act of Trump’s presidency, according to Hemmer, was his rejection of the peaceful transfer of power. While I’m not sure that is a world-historical event — not enough time has passed to fully evaluate the long tail of Jan. 6 — it marks a pivotal moment in the history of the United States, and it is enough to single him out in the history books. How transformative the insurrection, and thus his presidency, was will depend on how well U.S. democratic systems survive the next few decades.

Elaborating on this point, Corey Brettschneider, a political scientist at Brown University, argued in an email that other presidents, including John Adams and Richard Nixon, have challenged democratic principles only to see their successors restore these traditions. Trump, in contrast, poses a more serious challenge:

What makes Trump’s threat different from previous ones is that in the past the nation recovered. Future presidents followed those who threatened democracy and, at the behest of citizens, sought to bolster the institutions and norms that had been trampled on. Also, none of those previous presidents who threatened democracy recaptured office.

This moment is different. Despite various attempts at legal accountability and to challenge him politically, the fact is Trump will be the nominee of one of the two major parties for office, and he is in a dead heat with the incumbent in the polls.

If he wins, unlike even the most dangerous of our former presidents, Trump is explicit in his desire for dictatorship and the destruction of current checks on presidential power. Trump has learned from his previous term where choke points of American democracy lie. He knows, for instance, that by installing a loyalist attorney general, he can avoid even the limited accountability he faced in his previous term. And like Adams, he promises to prosecute political opponents. Past presidents have threatened democracy. But Trump might succeed where they failed.

If so, could he conceivably qualify as a world historical figure? Jeffrey Engel, the founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, replied by email to my inquiry, concentrating his attention on the fact that if Trump wins again in November, he would be serving his second term. 

Such a second Trump term, Engel argued, would indeed prove structural and foundational, affecting our diplomacy, our sense of the rule of law and frankly our faith in elections and the democratic process writ large. I used to think such a sentence impossible, unreasonable or at least the product of over-agitation. Now I think it may be understating the case.

Alan Taylor, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, argued in an email that Trump has already had a significant impact on American politics: He certainly has transformed the Republican Party and eliminated almost all previous norms of civility and bipartisanship in foreign policy.

Trump has tapped into and mobilized a vast following of discontented people — so the transformation is at least as much about them rather than his leadership (which is chaotic and has accomplished little save for the big thing of mobilizing and inflaming discontent).

Taylor noted that the evaluation of Trump crucially depends on your vantage point:  If I am ranking in terms of transforming a major party and roiling our public discourse, then I can’t think of anyone more transformative, with the possible exception of F.D.R. If ranking the ability to accomplish things legislatively and diplomatically, then Trump is one of the least effective presidents, down there with James Buchanan.

Of those I contacted, Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, was the most skeptical of the significance and consequence of Trump’s presidency. In Cain’s view, the problem with describing Trump as politically transformative is the fact that Trump has already so scrambled the allegiance, the sense of purpose and the respect for history that once characterized the Republican Party that it is now completely adrift.

Cain made the point that “it is questionable whether Trump’s charismatic hold on MAGA will have staying power without him, especially since it has not translated into significant legislative achievements other than usual Republican stuff of tax cuts and regulatory relief.”

Importantly, in terms of the longevity of Trump’s impact, Cain argued that “the congressional party is currently in complete disarray, the party seems to be unwilling to offer a party platform and could not revise health policy even when it had trifecta control.”

Similarly skeptical — but for very different reasons — Marc Landy, a political scientist at Boston College, wrote by email:

A political transformation is indeed taking place in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, but I resist giving Trump too much credit. What we used to think of as “conservatism” has changed its spots, but this is due as much to a new version of liberalism that is unable to control immigration, that lionizes “victims,” belittles religion and patriotism, as it is to Trump or any other individual.

Trump, Landy added, “is far from world historical, a term that should be reserved for the most important founders — Washington, Napoleon, Lenin and Mao.”

Trump’s “great sin,” Landy wrote, is his disregard for the Constitution and the great republican norms and procedures it puts in place. January 6th is a day that will live in infamy. His efforts to undermine the electoral process were reprehensible. His retention of sensitive documents and his leaking them to others verges on treason.

Despite these caveats, Landy acknowledged: Trump was an influential president. Biden has followed his lead in turning away from free trade, instead using tariffs as a means to resuscitate American manufacturing and protecting national security and in taking China seriously as a threat.

John Judis, who wrote “Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes” with Ruy Teixeira, argued that Trump’s reversal of the Washington consensus in favor of free trade makes him a transformative president. In an email, Judis wrote: His election in 2016, and his presidency transformed American politics. He repudiated a consensus on free trade, free markets and footloose corporations, immigration, military adventures abroad and the need to reduce deficits by cutting “entitlements.” Republicans had enthusiastically endorsed this consensus since Ronald Reagan’s presidency and Democratic administrations had either accepted it or were coerced into doing so by Republican Congresses.

Biden has followed Trump’s lead on trade, and China and is being forced by Republicans and public opinion to do so on immigration.

In contrast to Cain and Landy, Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist at Stanford, contended that Trump has permanently changed the direction of American politics: “Given the completeness with which the Republican Party has been transformed and how that transformation is likely to outlast Trump, the answer to your question is definitely yes, he has transformed the U.S. political system and perhaps politics outside the U.S.”

In Fukuyama’s view, there is one key element lacking in Trump’s imprint: “an intellectual framework to situate his transformation; some are trying, but I don’t see a coherent ideology that would define the change he’s wrought.”

Of all those I contacted, only Matthew Dickinson, a political scientist at Middlebury College, stressed what I consider to be a crucial factor in the evaluation of the former president: “Trump’s historical significance is mostly due to his ability to give voice to the growing number of Americans who feel unrepresented by the political class — Republican and Democrat — that exercises predominant power today.”

A part of Trump’s appeal, Dickinson wrote by email, is likely rooted in ethnonationalism among whites who worry that they are losing status in an increasingly racially diverse society. But attributing Trump’s popularity solely to “racial resentment" misses an important source of his support: the belief among mostly working-class Americans that the economic and political playing field, as constructed by political elites in both parties, is tilted against them.

This perspective, Dickinson added, “extends to working-class voters of color; recent voting patterns suggest that some Latino and, to a lesser extent, Black voters are shifting allegiances away from the Democratic Party — to be sure, how large and durable a shift is not yet clear.”

On the last full day of the Trump presidency, January 19, 2021, the BBC published “U.S. Historians on What Donald Trump’s Legacy Will Be,” a series of illuminating interviews. Laura Belmonte, a history professor and the dean of the Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, told the BBC: The moment I found jaw-dropping was the press conference Trump had with Vladimir Putin in 2018, in Helsinki, where he took Putin’s side over U.S. intelligence in regard to Russian interference in the election. I can’t think of another episode of a president siding full force with a nondemocratic society adversary.

She described the incident as “very emblematic of a larger assault on any number of multilateral institutions and treaties and frameworks that Trump has unleashed, like the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, the withdrawal of the Iranian nuclear framework.”

In addition, Belmonte said she was struck by “Trump’s applauding Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, really turning himself inside out to align the U.S. with regimes that are the antithesis of values that the U.S. says it wants to promote.”

The BBC asked Kathryn Brownell, a professor of history at Purdue University, “What’s Trump’s key legacy?” Her answer: Broadly speaking: Donald Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party and conservative media have put American democracy to the test in an unprecedented way. It is truly striking the ways in which he has convinced millions of people that his fabricated version of events is true.

Just as the Watergate impeachment inquiry “dominated historical interpretations of Richard Nixon’s legacy for decades,” Brownell maintained, “this particular postelection moment will be at the forefront of historical assessments of his presidency.”

What else stands out? Kellyanne Conway’s first introduction of the notion of “alternative facts” just days into the Trump administration when disputing the size of the inaugural crowds between Trump and Barack Obama.

Presidents across the 20th century have increasingly used sophisticated measures to spin interpretation of policies and events in favorable ways and to control the media narrative of their administrations. But the assertion that the administration had a right to its own alternative facts went far beyond spin, ultimately foreshadowing the ways in which the Trump administration would govern by misinformation.

What do we make of all this? On Monday, Andrew Prokop, a senior political correspondent at Vox, wrote that during Trump’s four years in the White House, “the guardrails held.” The courts, Congress, public opinion, senior aides, top officials and Trump’s own mismanagement held him in check, preventing the adoption of some of his more outrageous proposals.

This time around, Trump would have a sympathetic Supreme Court majority, compliant Republicans in the House and Senate and a staff that wouldn’t block his most aberrant and outrageous ideas — and would even contribute their own.

What could go wrong?

Arizona 1864 archiac anti-abortion law was created during the Civil War before statehood

Echo essay published in the New York Magazine Intelligencer, by Sarah Jones: Not long after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an 1864, ban on abortion could be enforced by the state, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake released a curious statement.  (Ms. ambiguous diva!), Lake opposed the ruling, she said, and if elected would vote for a spectrum of pro-family policies. 

1864 Arizona law outlawed abortion from the moment of conception, with an exception to save the woman's life. It made abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performed an abortion or helped a person obtain one. Arizona became a state on February 14, 1912.

Arizona's Supreme Court made Lake's candidacy difficult when it ruled that the 1864, ban on abortion could be enforced, further igniting an already smoldering political issue.

Not long after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an 1864, ban on abortion could be enforced by the state, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake released a curious statement. She opposed the ruling, she said, and if elected would vote for a spectrum of pro-family policies. Baby bonuses are on her list. So is paid family leave and an extension of the Child Tax Credit, in addition to “investing in childcare,” whatever that means to Lake. “What we need to do is really start supporting women and giving them true choices,” she previously said in March, adding that Republicans “talk about being pro-family, and it’s about time we put the money where our mouth is.” It’s clear enough that she would like to be seen as a moderate in contrast with her current, conspiracy-addled image.

Kari Lake

Nevertheless, much like Donald Trump’s (I was for it before I was against it❓) abortion statement , Lake’s declaration is notable for what it leaves out. She would prefer we all forget that she once supported that 1864, archiac law, which could punish providers with prison time, if enforced. Nor does she explain exactly what shape her pro-family policies would take.

Lake performs a familiar dance. Anti-abortion conservatives railed against Roe v. Wade, but the ruling did them a favor, too. As long as it held, they could use it to rally the base. Now that it’s gone, candidates like Lake have no choice but to confront the deep unpopularity of their position among the broader public. 

Lake, like Trump, hopes to mollify voters by saying that abortion should be left up to the states. However, she can’t dodge abortion extremism. Republicans who say that states should decide abortion law bind themselves to whatever happens in those states. Moreover, Lake can’t paint over her prior positions with a pro-family veneer and hope that voters have short memories. The truth is too obvious to disguise.

The end of Roe forced abortion opponents into uncomfortable territory. For some, the only sensible recourse has been to promote policies that would, in their view, encourage family formation. (Republicans who claim to be pro-life are on the record for voting against family friendly social policies, like family leave.)

In 2023, the New York Times profiled several such thinkers, who have arrived at no consensus on how precisely to help families now that abortion is inaccessible in much of the country. “A full-spectrum family policy has to be about encouraging and supporting people in getting married and starting families,” said Oren Cass of the American Compass think tank. “It has to be pro-life, but also supportive of those families as they are trying to raise kids in an economic environment where that has become a lot harder to do.” Some conservatives have proposed sending families monthly cash for each child, though the Times said they debate the role work requirements might play, and their policies are generally not as expansive as those proposed in the Build Back Better bill.

Modest help for families is better than no help at all, but there are few reasons to think that such conservatives are the vanguard of a friendlier movement. “The end of Roe will require a new type of politics,” Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote in an editorial for the Times. 

But, Brown and his allies haven’t come up with anything new. Beneath all the hype, the conservative pro-family vision is still a violent one. It demands forced pregnancy and birth from women. Abortion opponents all deny women the basic freedom to make a family when or if they choose, or to control what form their family takes. Moreover, even with medical exceptions in place, bans make it difficult — often impossible — for women to seek the care they need, which can put their reproductive plans in serious jeopardy. Abortion restrictions aren’t pro-woman, and that means they aren’t pro-family, either.

Consider the specific case of Ascension, a large chain of Catholic hospitals. “Historically, the Catholic hospitals have had a better reputation, mostly because of their mission,” Jean Ross, a co-president of National Nurses United, told Religion News Service this week. But the union found that Ascension has closed “labor and delivery departments at a higher rate than the national average from 2012 to 2021,” and “to date has shuttered more than 26% of its units that existed in 2012.” Most of the closures occurred in low-income areas and in Black and Latino communities, RNS added. The probable reason? Profitability, though Ascension officials dispute this. The church teaches a consistent ethic of life, but pregnant women are learning that pro-family can mean nothing in practice.

Lake, of course, is no thinker, or true believer in anything except herself, with the exception of Trump. She is a reactive creature, and she belongs entirely to the fringe, whatever she says now. 

In fact, during Lake's failed campaign for Arizona governor, she thanked an evil Nazi 卐 sympathizer for his support and appeared with figures linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory, CNN reported at the time. What does it mean for the pro-family cause if someone like this considers herself to be an adherent- (when what she has said in the past is different than what she says today.....)? Under scrutiny, pro-family conservatives are extremists, too. They can be trusted with nothing. There’s only hot air and more danger for women.

Idaho Republican legislators say their anti-abortion laws are not causing harm? They are unfit to serve!

The negative impacts of Idaho’s restrictive abortion ban are becoming clearer | Opinion echo from the Editorial Board of the Idaho Statesman newspaper:

Overturned Roe v. Wade wrong minded SCOTUS ruling causes harm in Idaho but the state's Republican legislators ignore reality.

The New York Times, illustrated the impact of Idaho’s restrictive abortion ban. The Times documented the plight and flight of maternal-health doctors in Idaho because of the potential of criminal charges associated with Idaho’s “trigger law,” which criminalized abortion once the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The Times talked to Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, a family doctor who also delivers babies in McCall — and thinks about leaving Idaho “every day.” Two doctors have already left Idaho: Dr. Kylie Cooper, who moved to Minnesota, and Dr. Lauren Miller, who left for Colorado.

Two small hospitals in Idaho closed their labor and delivery units this year, including Bonner General Health, in North Idaho, citing the state’s “legal and political climate” and the departure of “highly respected, talented physicians.” Dr. James Souza, the chief physician executive for St. Luke’s Health System, told The Times that the state’s laws have “had a profound chilling effect on recruitment and retention” and that St. Luke’s is now relying in part on traveling doctors to fill the gap.

Idaho sets one of the highest bars in the nation for abortion, allowing it only when a victim of rape or incest provides a police report of the crime, or to save the life of the mother. 

Doctors in Idaho are now fearful of finding themselves in a situation where providing necessary medical care for a pregnant patient means they could be charged with a crime, punishable by up to two to five years in prison. So, as The Times reported, doctors are referring patients out of Idaho for maternity care. It’s a disastrous situation.

The impacts of the abortion ban reach more than just people who seek to have an elective abortion. It also affects basic, life-saving medical care for anyone who is pregnant. Further, as Idaho doctors flee the state, and hospitals shut down labor and delivery units, it creates maternity care deserts, making it difficult if not impossible to find a doctor. 

And once again, Idaho’s Republican legislators are demonstrating a complete lack of forethought when making new laws.  “We never looked that close, and what exactly that bill said and how it was written and language that was in it,” Idaho Rep. John Vander Woude, R-Nampa, told The Times. “We did that thinking Roe v. Wade was never going to get overturned. And then when it got overturned, we said, ‘OK, now we have to take a really close look at the definitions.’” 

Idaho Rep. John Vander Woude

What an embarrassment. This is how we legislate in Idaho?

Vander Woude cast doubt on claims that doctors were leaving Idaho, apparently unaware of the facts. Vander Woude also suggested no one would ever get in trouble under the law he passed.

 “I don’t see any doctor ever getting prosecuted,” he said.

Vander Woude said what? He is not qualified to serve as a legislator!

First, how could a prosecutor not prosecute someone who is found to have broken the law? Second, why pass a law that you think no one would be prosecuted for? 

Meanwhile, the Statesman’s Gabe Barnard reported that hundreds of Idaho residents traveled out of state for an abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned. The article illustrates that abortion bans don’t really reduce the number of abortions; they just change where they happen and make it more difficult for people in certain states.

The situation we’re in illustrates the dangers of a one-party state. The Republican Party has absolutely no incentive to compromise or even consider the impact of awful legislation. They simply pass bills without having to think — about consequences or their constituents. A poll commissioned by the Idaho Statesman in November showed there’s a moderate majority that favors more access to abortion than what legislators passed. A majority (61%) of Idahoans said doctors who perform abortions should not face criminal charges, yet legislators passed a bill criminalizing doctors.

Idaho law allows for an abortion only to save the mother’s life, not preserve her health, yet 85% of respondents said abortion should be legal to preserve the health of the mother. Respondents saying abortion should always be legal vastly outweighed those who said it should always be illegal: 26% always legal to only 7% always illegal. It’s time for legislators to listen to reason, listen to compromise and listen to voters. And most importantly, to think about the consequences before passing extremist legislation.

Idaho Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board.

Trump the Chump uses his own lying words: the failed CNN propaganda fiasco

An echo opinion by column writer Milan Simonich published in the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper:

Ringside Seat:  Let Trump peddle his lies from sea to shining sea?

(Maine Writer- just love this column's name!)

Critics of CNN are everywhere this week. 

Watching CNN's town hall held at St. Anselm's College in Manchester New Hampshire, was an ugly spectacle, in which the former president lied about everything from the 2020 election to the January 6th Capitol attack that he incited.

They say the network bombed by giving Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a forum that was infected with his lies and whining.

In fact, the televised event damaged Trump, though he might not realize it.

The backdrop is more straightforward than the outcome. Former President Trump detests CNN. The network wanted to quiet charges that it’s a liberal counterpoint to Trump’s apologists at Fox (Fake) News and other Republican outlets.

CNN Trump Town Hall: Darcy cartoon

In (a failed attempt) to demonstrate its sense of fair play, CNN hosted a Republican town hall with Trump and voters in New Hampshire (held at a Roman Catholic Saint Anselm's College in Manchester, NH!- I am a Roman Catholic who criticized Saint Anselm's for hosting this lie-a-thon in my social media!).

Trump stuck to his hackneyed script in which he starred as a victim of foul deeds.

Critics say CNN enabled Trump to regurgitate his lies that the 2020, election was rigged for Democrat Joe Biden.

Not so. Anchor Kaitlan Collins (flopped!) worked to hold Trump accountable. She confronted him with hard evidence, such as Trump’s 60 frivolous and failed lawsuits challenging the election results.

Context was absent from most of the complaints about CNN. Alex Sherman of CNBC wrote that CNN “inexplicably allowed a partisan audience to cheer on Trump’s running commentary.”

Inexplicably? Everyone knew a town hall composed entirely of Republicans would be partisan. So what? Trump is running for the Republican nomination.

Another safe bet was many of the town hall’s participants would shout their approval of Trump. But in the big picture, the voices of partisans in the televised event are small.

New Hampshire has 800,000 fewer people than New Mexico. CNN and the rest of the national media bestow extraordinary coverage on New Hampshire because it holds the first presidential primary.

The important fallout from CNN’s event with Trump has little to do with the host state. What matters is the network’s core national audience. It is composed of people who have no respect for Trump based on character flaws.

He reinforced their position with his histrionics and denunciation of Collins. Trump’s false claims about the election serve as inspiration for the silent majority that watched his performance. Now more than ever, as the politicians might say, they want to defeat him.

New Mexico saw a similar reflex action last year. The election for governor was in November, but it was decided four months earlier, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s base was ignited by the ruling ending federal recognition of abortion rights. Every state would once again establish its own laws, a patchwork system that hurts low-income women in Republican strongholds.

Lujan Grisham benefited politically from the ruling. She stayed resolute on abortion rights, saying New Mexico’s government would not decide if a woman can end a pregnancy.

Republican candidate Mark Ronchetti tried to soften his rigid anti-abortion stand in hopes of appealing to independents and swing voters. A former television weatherman, Ronchetti followed his natural instincts by trying to be all things to all people.

The more Ronchetti talked and advertised, the more his waffling drove the opposition. What might have been a tight election turned into a comfortable one for Lujan Grisham. She won by 45,000 votes.

Trump stands a better chance than Ronchetti for one reason only. Governors are elected by popular vote. The Electoral College determines the winner of presidential elections.

Trump lost the popular vote both times he was on the ballot. If he is nominated in 2024, he will lose it again.

The Electoral College gives him hope. Trump took the requisite majority of electoral votes in 2016 with upset victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, three states that for 20 years had gone for Democratic presidential candidates.

Both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Trump had high negatives with voters. Clinton’s exceeded Trump’s in most swing states.

Biden won back Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2020. He also took Georgia and Arizona, states that had also gone for Trump four years earlier.

Trump for more than two years has escaped indictment in Georgia for attempting to steal votes in that state. In a tape-recorded phone call with Georgia’s top election official, Trump tried to bully his fellow Republican into switching thousands of votes to steal Biden’s victory.

None of this matters to Trump’s base. Its members must have pinched their noses as they tuned into CNN for Trump’s town hall.

They were outnumbered by viewers Trump angered when he claimed he could remain in the White House if only his vice president, Mike Pence, disallowed Biden’s electoral votes.

CNN’s show gave the whole country a look at Trump’s ongoing hysterical act. And for that, some would kill the messenger.

Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news, written by Milan Simonich.

Keep abortion legal and safe

Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, undoing nearly 50 years of legalized abortion nationwide.

After Kansas pro-abortion vote, a longtime White House advisor to 4 presidents says political consultants are scrambling: 'What the Hell did you make of this?':  Insider report echo, by Kimberly Leonard, Nicole Gaudiano and Warren Rojas.

Republican political strategists have a message for GOP candidates in the face of the surprise-high voter turnout that showed up in Kansas during Tuesday's primaries to protect abortion rights: Keep your focus on pocketbook issues, and stay out of the abortion debate.

While the resounding vote in Kansas has lifted Democrats' spirits — Politico Playbook on Wednesday morning dubbed it an all-caps "POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE" — Republicans are still mulling over what the vote will mean for their desired majorities come November. So far, they're banking that economic concerns such as inflation and high gas prices will still win the day.

"I think there are a lot of phone calls going on today, among strategists in each party, about, 'What the Hell did you make of this? And, 'What are the consequences?' I don't think we know yet," David Gergen, a political commentator who served under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, said. "I think we know there is a possibility that these social issues could be a driving force in a race much more than was assumed before Kansas."

The vote in Kansas represented a major test for the anti-abortion cause following the Supreme Court's (wrongminded!) ruling in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973, decision that previously guaranteed a national right to abortion. 

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an influential national anti-abortion organization, wrote in a release that the vote "underscores the stakes for pro-life Americans."

With its June ruling, the Supreme Court turned the legality of abortion to the states. While Kansas was the first state to put the issue directly before voters, it won't be the last: In November, Kentucky will vote on a similar measure that rejects the right to abortion, and two blue states, California and Vermont, will vote on amendments to enshrine the right to abortion in their state constitutions.

"Kansas voters gave the pro-choice movement a resounding victory," Sarah Isgur, a former spokesperson for the Trump administration's justice department and a deputy campaign manager for Carly Fiorina, a 2016, GOP presidential candidate and businessperson, wrote in the Dispatch. 

Isgur sent the column she co-wrote to Insider when asked to evaluate how the Kansas vote affected the midterms.

"Clearly the ballot drove the high turnout," she wrote in the column.

But what isn't yet clear is to what extent voters will elevate the issue of abortion when weighed against other factors. Many Republican strategists are betting that voters will punish Democrats over high costs in November, and maintain that they should avoid the topic of abortion altogether.

Jeff Grappone, who previously led communications for the Senate Republican Conference, said GOP candidates must stay laser focused on pocketbook issues, drawing a strong contrast on record gas prices and record inflation.

"My advice would be for Republicans to stick with their winning messages about the runaway costs of inflation and energy costs and continue to largely avoid discussing the abortion debate," Ron Bonjean, a former spokesperson for Republican leaders in the House and Senate, said.

That appears to have been the strategy, at least so far. 

As of yet, Republicans in Congress have not unified behind what types of abortion bans they'll pursue nationally, if they win a majority in the House or Senate.

Kristin Davison, the vice president of Axiom Strategies, characterized the vote in Kansas as a one-off that's unlikely to have ripple effects elsewhere.  ❓ #IDTS !  

Duh! #GOP will hear from women voters!

"Democrats want to give the Kansas vote a bigger meaning, but the fact of the matter is an issue referendum does not translate into a candidate battle on the ballot," the GOP political consultant told Insider. She predicted that House Republicans would still pick up more than two dozen seats this fall by hammering incumbent Democrats on inflation, public education, and immigration.

"High gas prices are still going to drown out Democrat base talking points," Davison said. "That will be what drives voters when they go to the polls in November."

Republicans point to mixed polling on abortion

Polling shows that US voters have mixed perspectives about abortion. Most voters want abortion legal, but also don't support abortions later in a pregnancy. Abortion exceptions for rape and incest are popular.  (What about when the procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother? Hello? 

"Most voters don't want extreme changes one way or the other on abortion," Terry Sullivan, a founding partner of Firehouse Strategies, a consulting firm, who managed the 2016, presidential campaign for GOP (right wing!) Senator Marco Rubio.

Abortions are not only about terminating a pregnancy.  Often they are necessary procedures required to save the lives of women. Without legal abortions, women risk death from hemorrhage, and systemic infections following miscarriages or from the dangers of ectopic pregnancies. 

A total of 55% of voters say access to abortion is "very important" to their vote in November's midterm elections, according to a survey that the Kaiser Family Foundation released.

But the poll also found that voters rank inflation ahead of abortion — and above gun violence and healthcare costs — as the top issue. And 53% continue to say the Supreme Court decision has "not made a difference" in their motivation to vote.

Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster for former President Donald Trump, called Tuesday's results a "propping up of what was faltering Democrat vote enthusiasm."

"In several pieces of public-polling data, when the Roe ruling is pitted head-to-head against inflation and rising prices, voters say that inflation and rising prices will determine their vote by wide margin over the Roe ruling," Fabrizio, who also has worked for GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, said.  (IMO, pollsters have not surveyed women who rarely vote at all.....their data is taken from responses to likely voters and is not representative of all women voters.)

Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called record-high prices the "number-one issue in every competitive district."

But some Republicans were decidedly defeated by the vote. GOP Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas lamented Tuesday's outcome in a five-part Twitter message, calling it an "enormous blow" to anti-abortion efforts in the Jayhawk State.

"Words could never express the sadness and emotion myself and many Kansans are feeling after the Value Them Both amendment was not adopted," Marshall wrote late August 2. "This is an enormous blow to efforts to protect the sanctity of life in Kansas."

One "pretty obvious message," Gergen said, is that people will vote on the abortion issue.

"We weren't sure they would, and the early signs when people have actually gone to the ballot box in a conservative state are encouraging for the Democrats — and in like measure they're concerning for Republicans," he said. "If you get two or three Kansans sort of knitted together in some fashion, then the whole narrative begins to change, meaning that this could be much more of a jump ball."