Damn, now that was a debate 🔥

Wow. There is a LOT to unpack from the presidential debate on Tuesday night. First things first: Vice President Harris was formidable. She skillfully made her case to the American people while simultaneously setting rhetorical traps for Donald Trump as only an experienced prosecutor could. And he took the bait every. single. time. She showed voters how easy it is to trigger him, and why that weakness is so dangerous in a world full of bad actors who already have his number from his last term. It was a sight to behold. Brava, Madam Vice President. Brava.

And I wasn’t the only one who was impressed. Fox News was too. So was Taylor Swift. You won’t often see those two entities agree on anything.

As for Trump, well. Let’s just say it was a bad night for the…former president. I witnessed it live. Anthony Scaramucci and I were guests of Vice President Harris in the media spin room, countering his lies as former Trump officials. Needless to say, it kept us busy.

What made my national security eyes roll the hardest was Trump’s dictator love fest. His example of a world leader who admires him was, um [checks notes] Viktor Orban? He repeatedly mentioned the Hungarian strongman (yes, he even used the word!), along with his bestie in Moscow, whom he knows very well, and “Abdul,” whom he must not. He even bragged that he could end the war in Ukraine before January, but couldn’t say which country he actually wants to win. Negotiating with a dictator before you’re president? I’m pretty sure that’s not even legal. Americans should pay attention to this because it matters more than most voters understand or know. Our safety and national security are at stake.

It was much easier to laugh at Trump, as the Vice President did, when he desperately claimed, “In Springfield, [migrants] are eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” It was even easier to disprove it, despite what “people on television” may say because much of what Trump says is utter nonsense. It’s stuff that would be innocuous coming from your weird old uncle who had too much to drink on Thanksgiving. But when misinformation and rumors are recklessly spread by the leader of the free world, they become much less amusing — even dangerous. We lived a few of these episodes with Trump before.

If there’s a rumor floating around about people eating family pets, of course Trump would pick up on it to denigrate Haitian migrants. He’s never met a wacky conspiracy theory he doesn’t like, and undocumented immigrants have been his favorite target since he descended the golden escalator. His official policies reflected it in a big way, often calamitously, but his rhetoric around migrants has helped inspire some real-world tragedies as well.

Under Trump, the “Great Replacement Theory” — the ideology behind the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists infamously chanted, “Jews will not replace us” — went mainstream in the Republican Party. In 2018, Trump officials all but admitted that the president used migrant caravans to scare Republicans into turning out in the midterms. It didn’t work (Democrats won big), but the damage was done. Migrants became Public Enemy No. 1 for millions of Trump supporters. Within a year after he left office, the “Great Replacement Theory” was espoused by half of all Republicans.

Sadly, some have taken this fallacious belief to deadly extremes. In my hometown of El Paso, Texas, a white supremacist who railed against the "Hispanic invasion of Texas” and told authorities that he "wanted to shoot as many Mexicans as possible,” killed 23 shoppers in a Walmart on August 3, 2019. It was devastating for me personally because El Paso is my hometown, and my aunt was a survivor of this horrific mass shooting.

But I also worked the aftermath of that event. I waited for the President and the White House to explicitly condemn white supremacy and the theory that drove this sick individual to do what he did that day. I’m still waiting. Trump would go on to energize white supremacists again and again while claiming to be a “law and order” president or candidate.

It wasn’t the only tragedy provoked by the Great Replacement Theory. There were the 11 lives lost in the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the aftermath of which I also worked while in my White House role. Later, there was the 2022 mass shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, during which 10 people were killed. More generally, incidents of antisemitism and other race-driven hate rose during Trump’s term. 

Now, by amplifying a wild conspiracy theory, he’s endangering Haitian immigrants, too. Most disturbing of all, Trump and running mate JD Vance are even exploiting a child’s death to make their case against migrants, forcing the boy’s bereaved parents to implore them to stop.

Last month, the Trump campaign account on Twitter/X posted two pictures. One showed a typical suburban neighborhood, captioned “Your Neighborhood Under Trump.” The other showed a group of Black and Hispanic migrants, captioned: “Your Neighborhood Under Kamala.” The post said: “Import the third world, become the third world.”

Some people never learn — or perhaps that’s just who they really are. It’s particularly abhorrent when they happen to be a former President of the United States, seeking to hold that office again.

There’s more. So so much more. “Deep State” conspiracies that put a target on the backs of government workers. COVID-19 misinformation that impacted the well-being of so many across the country, including the lives of doctors, who were and remain the targets of harassment and threats. And the last major piece of bunk from the Trump presidency (and arguably the most damaging to our institutions long-term): Trump’s quest to subvert the Constitution and overturn the 2020 election.

I was glad to hear this topic raised at the debate. Trump blamed the “Stop the Steal” protest planners, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Capitol police officers, and those who accepted his invitation and violently protested at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He took zero responsibility for his failure to act as Commander in Chief on that day and for his role as ringleader of an insurrection based on utter nonsense. Where did he learn these lessons in leadership? From his “friends” around the world, obviously.

We need much more space to explore these issues. Stay tuned.

Talk soon,

Olivia

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