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Eight days out, and the temperature’s rising.
There is at least some consensus today among the journalists of New York City (Donald Trump’s “enemies of the people”) about Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. The New York Times headline called it, “A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny, and Racism,” and the front page of the Daily News announced it as a “Racist Rally: Speakers Supporting Trump at MSG Event Insult Puerto Ricans, Blacks, Jews, and Harris.”
Most commentators and outlets focused on the racist comedic stylings of someone named Tony Hinchcliffe, who single handedly delivered millions of Puerto Rican voters in the swing states to Kamala Harris, and the always entertaining Stephen Miller’s brilliant Joseph Goebbels imitation when he intoned, “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Rudy Giuliani followed with the assertion that, “Palestinians are taught to kill us at two years old, and Kamala wants to bring them to you!” And there were many more contributors, including the execrable Sid Rosenberg and Dana White. It went on interminably.
There were moments during the hours-long event when it seemed like the farewell show of an aging entertainer, basking in the retrospective ardor of his fans one last time before retiring into a much-deserved rapid descent into obscurity. These were the Hulk Hogan moments, struggling again to tear his shirt and work up the “Trumpomaniacs!” in 80s-style WWF/E cheek. And sometimes it seemed like an audition for future MAGA performers like Vivek “I follow the energy” Ramaswamy, trying to out-MAGA the others in demagoguery: “We will have the largest mass deportation in history!”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. received the loudest ovation upon taking the stage, which seemed to surprise him and drive him to make even more twisted and outrageous claims for Trump, “who’s going to restore the moral authority of the United States of America!” RFK Jr.’s self-loathing battled openly with the arrogance in his voice, but one could barely hear him above the heartbreaking roar of his recently deceased mother spinning in her grave.
This America-in-Decline spectacle reached a two-part nadir in the appearances of Tucker Carlson and Dr. Phil. Carlson opened with his trademark Joker laugh and then spluttered out, “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. talking about boys playing girls’ sports at a Trump rally! It’s a realignment!” Tucker Carlson is the Trump version of thoughtful. “Why do people like Trump? Because he likes them,” opined Tucker.
The Dr. Phil filibuster, which doubled as an infomercial for his new network, Merit Street Media (“legacy media have sold out!”), sought earnestly to make the point that Trump and Trump supporters, including himself, are victims of bullying by the rest of America. Oh yes, he said, people say that Trump is the bully, but he can’t be the bully because, for there to be bullying, “there has to be an imbalance of power!” So in Dr. Phil’s addled psyche, Donald Trump is powerless? Dr. Phil just became the in-house victimologist/psychiatrist of MAGAdom.
This shank of the show led to JD Vance, exemplifying why Harris and Walz currently hold a 22- and 21-point lead, respectively, over Trump and Vance in likeability. The question asked voters in the poll was, simply, do you like this person? Then Elon Musk, introduced as “the greatest capitalist in the history of America,” and also as the future head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DGE or “Doge”) in the next Trump administration. Musk introduced Melania and Melania introduced Trump.
44 million people have voted in this election so far, which represents about 30% of 2020’s entire electorate. It appears that turnout is going to be very high, which has always been thought to benefit Harris/Walz. But the race is still tied and the turnout of women voters, especially, is going to be crucial.
Rev. William J. Barber II endorsed Kamala Harris for president today, releasing this statement: “In a moment like this, I am compelled to be clear that every voter must make a choice, and my choice is to oppose the dangerous politics that Trump and the MAGA movement have unleashed by supporting the ticket that can defeat this potential for American fascism.”
Rev. Barber then pointed to the sixth chapter of Proverbs, listing seven things that God hates, and he said that Trump is guilty of all seven, with no repentance at all: “Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and a man who sows discord among brothers.”
“There can be no middle ground,” Rev. Barber said, in this election.
David Levi Strauss is the author of Co-illusion: Dispatches from the End of Communication (The MIT Press, 2020), Photography & Belief (David Zwirner Books, 2020), Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow (Aperture, 2014), From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual (Oxford University Press, 2010), Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, with an introduction by John Berger (Aperture 2003, and in a new edition, 2012), and Between Dog & Wolf: Essays on Art and Politics (Autonomedia 1999, and a new edition, 2010). In Case Something Different Happens in the Future: Joseph Beuys and 9/11 was published by Documenta 13, and To Dare Imagining: Rojava Revolution, edited by Strauss, Michael Taussig, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and Dilar Dirik, was published by Autonomedia in 2016, and in an Italian edition in 2017. The Critique of the Image Is the Defense of the Imagination, edited by Strauss, Taussig, and Wilson, was published by Autonomedia in 2020. He is Chair Emeritus of the graduate program in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York, which he directed from 2007-2021.