PFAW Member,
As we get closer to Election Day, Trump is leaning into lies, bigotry, and violence – the hallmarks of Trumpism – perhaps more than he ever has.
In just the past week, Trump has:
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Defended the actions of the 17-year-old far-right militia member who murdered two protesters in Kenosha, WI in response to Trump’s inflammatory and dishonest rhetoric about the nature of the ongoing racial justice protests
Continued to escalate his characterizations of mostly peaceful protesters as thugs and anarchists
Continued to assert that Joe Biden supports violence committed by protesters and defunding the police (both are lies)
Urged North Carolina voters to vote TWICE – once by mail and once in person … it’s unclear whether Trump’s intent was to see if his supporters could get away with casting multiple votes for him or if he just wanted to sow chaos and cast doubts about the election results in that important swing state
Claimed, "Portland has been burning for many years, for decades it's been burning" – another lie
Said he’s done more for Black people than any other president except “maybe Abraham Lincoln” (and went on to strongly emphasize the “MAYBE”)
Attacked mail-in ballots as a "disgrace" and claimed that dogs had received them in the mail
Mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask, while Trump himself continued to downplay the coronavirus crisis
Invented a new conspiracy theory about “people that are in the dark shadows” controlling both “the streets” and Joe Biden, and planes “completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that” that were flying into cities to spark riots
Visited Kenosha and, during a press event, appeared to shut down Black ministers before they could answer a question about racial injustice and compared the police killings of Black people to a golfer “choking” and missing a "three-foot putt"
It was also reported this week that Trump has repeatedly mocked members of the military, especially those who have died or have been injured or captured in combat.
And U.S. Intelligence has confirmed Russian disinformation efforts on social media are boosting Trump’s efforts to disparage mail-in voting.
Haven’t you had ENOUGH??
We have just over EIGHT WEEKS to go until Election Day and we need to raise $350,000 (about $81K per week) this month online to keep our electoral programs firing on all cylinders to END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY.
PLEASE. Renew your 2020 support with a donation now>>
A CNN Politics headline on Friday read: “After wild week, the Trump train looks close to full derailment”.
And Trump has definitely been off the rails since the Republican Convention. But this is all just the culmination of the most lawless, corrupt, anti-democratic, and devastatingly awful presidency in American history.
Just before the Republican National Convention, Trump praised followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory – a bizarre and violent movement rooted in the belief that prominent Democrats and media figures are involved in a Satanic cabal that deals in child sex trafficking and cannibalism.
QAnon followers have been linked to at least two murders as well as kidnappings and acts of domestic terrorism.
To be clear, the rise of QAnon benefits exactly one person: Donald Trump.
That’s according to Jared Holt, an investigative reporter who helps lead QAnon coverage for PFAW’s Right Wing Watch and is one of the country’s foremost experts on several far-right movements, including the QAnon conspiracy theory.
More than simply offering praise for QAnon followers, several Republican candidates for office this year – including candidates for the U.S. Congress! – are prominent QAnon promoters. The most famous of them, who is almost assured to be elected to Congress because of her deep-red Georgia district, is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
When she won her primary, Trump congratulated her and called Greene a “future Republican star,” saying, “Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up - a real WINNER!”
Most recently, Greene has grabbed headlines for the unearthing of her past racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic comments as well as her sharing of a Facebook meme depicting her holding an assault rifle (Greene loves to be photographed holding guns) and U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib (three fourths of “The Squad” and all women of color), with the caption “SQUAD’S WORST NIGHTMARE”.
I wish I could say that views like Greene’s were fringe and not widely representative of Republicans’, but new research from the polling group Civiqs shows that a whopping 33% of Republicans say the QAnon conspiracy theory is mostly true, 23% think some parts are true, and only 13% say it’s not true at all. (In contrast, 72% of Democrats correctly say the QAnon theory is not true.)
This is Trump’s party … and QAnon’s just the tip of the iceberg.
As noted by Stephen Collinson in that CNN “derailment” article:
"No President in modern history has gone into a reelection race warning that the process of choosing a government that is the bedrock of American democracy is illegitimate. Trump's conduct risks a full-on post-election constitutional crisis.""
We can’t let Trump’s party become Trump’s America.
Please renew with your most generous donation to defeat Trump and Trumpism before it’s too late>>
Thank you so much for all you do.
-- Ben Betz, Digital & Organzing
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