WEDNESDAY 10/16/24

US Warns Israel – No more US military aid to Israel within 30 days unless it lets in humanitarian aid supplies to Gaza, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in a letter Sunday to Israel’s defense minister and its minister of strategic affairs. The amount of aid entering Gaza is at its lowest since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, said State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller, who on Tuesday confirmed the letter, (per The New York Times). 

“In fact, it has fallen 50% from where it was at its peak,” Miller said. 

 Timing … The 30-day cutoff would come after the November 5 presidential election, which gives the Biden administration cover for the inevitable outcry from supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and/or pro-Palestinians in the US.

•••

Big Early GA Vote – More than 300,000 Georgians cast ballots around the state in its first day of early in-person voting, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. That’s more than twice the first-day turnout in November 2020. Thousands more cast their early ballots by mail, the newspaper reports.

•••

Tariff-ick Obsession – GOP presidential candidate Donald J. Trump’s interview at the Economic Club of Chicago defending his tariff plan is reverberating through the business world and probably among remaining traditional Republicans who have not withdrawn their support of him – yet. When Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait tried to explain how inflationary Trump’s tariff plan would be, Trump called “tariff” the “most beautiful word in the dictionary.

“All you have to do is build your plant in the United States and you’ll have no tariffs,” he said. 

Trump said he wouldn’t allow Nippon Steel to purchase US Steel (a position roughly akin to President Biden’s) and stopped short of promising to break up Google, though he said; “Google is rigged just like our government is rigged.” 

As for TikTok, which he has flip-flopped on, most recently opposing kicking it out of the US, Trump said, “I think everything is a threat. Some time you have to fight through the threat.”

Trump declined to confirm The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward writing in his latest book, War, that Trump after leaving office phoned Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. But he asserted; “I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing.”

And Trump said he has the right to jawbone the Federal Reserve about its monetary policy, though he did not say whether he would force its chairman, Jerome Powell, to step down.

“I think it’s the greatest job in government,” Trump said, mockingly. “You show up to the office once a month and you say, ‘let’s say flip a coin’ and everybody talks about you like you’re a god.”

Is this some sort of self-inflicted October surprise? As pundits continue to discuss Trump’s strange MAGA Soul Train performance Monday night, the pertinent question seems to be; has the former president lost it, or is he simply letting loose with policy positions that are anything but traditionally conservative and Republican? 

Trump also told Mickelthwait that concerning deficits, interest rates and the dollar, “You’ve been wrong all your life about this stuff.”

Are we simply misreading his “beautiful mind”?

--TL

_______________________________________________

TUESDAY 10/15/24

Harris’ Highlight Clip – Vice President Kamala Harris began hitting back at Donald J. Trump at her campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Monday with a 30-second video clip of the ex-president repeatedly kvetching about “the enemy within” (see “Trump on Fox Business,” this column below). 

“Please roll the clip,” Harris began (per NPR’s Morning Edition). 

As with Maria Bartiromo, Trump in his highlight reel suggests political opponents should be jailed or dealt with by police or military force violently.

“He is out for unchecked power,” Harris tells her crowd. “That’s what he’s looking for.”

From Pennsylvania -- identified by pundits in recent days as the swing state to end all swing states -- Harris’ appeal appears both desperate (how is this election so close?) and confident, as in; this should turn independent voters who likewise fear authoritarianism toward her.

Up next … Harris is scheduled to take questions from Charlamagne Tha God, host of The Breakfast Club at 5 pm Eastern/2 pm Pacific Tuesday, and make her first-ever appearance on Fox News at 6 pm Eastern/3 Pacific Wednesday on Special Report with Brett Baier. 

Let’s dance … Appearing with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem in suburban Philadelphia Monday, Trump interrupted his rally when two people in the crowd needed medical attention. The ex-president turned the rally into a dance party, with Trump getting down and getting funky to his adopted theme song, The Village People’s YMCA. Upon hearing about the MAGA Soul Train, Harris said, “I hope he’s okay,” Newsweek reports. 

To the Garden … Donald J. Trump is so looking forward to his October 27 rally, nine days before the presidential election, scheduled for New York City’s Madison Square Garden. 

“I’m gonna fill the garden,” Trump has boasted to a confidant who passed the comment on anonymously to the anti-MAGA conservative outlet, The Bulwark. Home of the New York Knicks, Madison Square Garden seats nearly 20,000.

--TL

_______________________________________________

MONDAY 10/14/24

Trump on Fox Business – Why, Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo wanted to know, is there not more talk about two recent assassination attempts on Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump? Bartiromo obviously was prompting the former president to comment on “liberal” media and how outlets like Fox News were making a big thing of it (much as conservative media makes a big thing about illegal southern border crossings).

“I don’t want to say ‘conspiracy theorists’ and all that, but you could ask that question.” Trump asserted that investigators – presumably the FBI, though he did not specify – has confiscated six phones in one of the two cases and have not unlocked any of them to investigate content.

“Maybe they don’t want to do it,” Trump said, live from the Fox Business studio Sunday. 

He also suggested that President Biden ought to act against Iran over its apparently ongoing attempt to assassinate Trump, saying that the current president should threaten that unless Trump is left alone, “We’re going to blow your whole damn country up – and they’ll stop it.”

Trump told Bartiromo the border issue is “bigger than inflation” (perhaps because the Consumer Price Index came down to 2.4% in September) and criticized the White House hurricane response, particularly in North Carolina and “parts of Georgia.” (He also praised Republican governors’ leadership in the response in those swing states.)

Chaos agents… Does Trump expect chaos on election day? Bartiromo asked.

“No, not from the side that votes for Trump. … The bigger problem is from people within.”

As is his modus operandi, Trump turned the tables on Democrats and never-MAGA Republicans who express worry over Trump’s anti-democratic tendencies. The ex-president did this table-turning by suggesting more authoritarian action.

“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical-left lunatics,” Trump said. “And it should be really very easily handled, if necessary by National Guard and if really necessary by military. Because they can’t let that happen.”

Trump does not have to buy their support, but … The National Border Patrol Council, self-described as “the guardians of non-supervisory border patrol agents and support personnel assigned to the US Border Patrol” has endorsed Trump for president, the Arizona Republic reports, as the former president has “pledged to hire thousands of new agents” with a $10,000 signing bonus.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

_____
MONDAY 10/14/24
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

President Biden gave a strong rebuke to the lies, distortions and conspiracy theories made by the Trump/Vance campaign in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton Wednesday, as reported in the center column. 

In the right column, Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay examines Trump’s tariff policy and how the ex-president sent coveted coronavirus test kits to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, as reported by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward in his latest book, War. 

Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung called Woodward’s book the “work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. None of these made-up stories … are true.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed delivery of the test kits from Trump to Putin but denied that Trump as ex-president made secret calls to Putin, as described in War.

As we quickly approach the November 5 presidential election, we welcome your civilly stated comments on these and other pertinent issues, whether you approach this news from the left or right, never-Trump or pro-MAGA.

Go to the COMMENTS section of the left or right columns, or email editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line.

Read our newsletter and subscribe for free at thehustings.substack.com.

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THURSDAY 10/10/24

By Stephen Macaulay

One of the things that is underappreciated about Donald Trump is that he is a presidential historian.

How else to explain his pronouncements about William McKinley, 25^th president of the United States?

Trump is bullish about McKinley because what is known as the “McKinley Tariff of 1890.” McKinley wasn’t president at the time of the act’s passage. He was a member of the House of Representatives. But when he was elected, McKinley pursued protectionist policies. So the Idol of Ohio is, well, an idol for at least one person. (You’d think JD Vance, fellow Ohioan, would talk up McKinley, but evidently economics isn’t his thing, fabulation is.)

Trump, of course, wants to apply tariffs to a greater extent than he did in his time in office. (To be fair, Biden has maintained many of them.)

But while Trump describes the dream of across-the-board tariffs of something of a panacea for all the economic woes of all Americans, according to the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan research organization that is thought to be business-friendly:

“The Trump administration imposed nearly $80 billion worth of new taxes on Americans by levying tariffs on thousands of products valued at approximately $380 billion in 2018 and 2019, amounting to one of the largest tax increases in decades.”

Tax increase?

According to the headline of a “fact sheet” produced by the White House on February 5, 2018, “President Donald J. Trump Achieved the Biggest Tax Cuts and Reforms in American History.”

Turns out, however, that wasn’t the case, as the Economic Recovery Act of 1981 signed by Ronald Reagan was. In fact, The Revenue Act of 1964 (Johnson),  1945 (Truman), 1948 (Truman), and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (Obama) were all bigger.

And then there’s that assessment of the Tax Foundation.

Well, no one said he is an economic historian.

But on the subject of American history, let’s go back to January 30, 1799, when the Logan Act was signed into law.

As the act opens:

“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

Vladimir Putin leads Russia. Russia is an enemy of the United States.

Yet Donald Trump is evidently his pal.

According to Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book War, after Trump left office he communicated with Putin an alleged seven times.

While we don’t know that to be the case, let’s consider this from the debate with Kamala Harris, when Trump was asked about the Russian attack on Ukraine:

“I want to get the war settled. I know Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship. And they respect your president. Okay? They respect me. They don't respect Biden. How would you respect him? Why? For what reason? He hasn't even made a phone call in two years to Putin. Hasn't spoken to anybody. They don't even try and get it. That is a war that's dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president. If I win, when I'm President-elect, and what I'll do is I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other, I'll get them together. That war would have never happened. And in fact when I saw Putin after I left, unfortunately left because our country has gone to hell, but after I left when I saw him building up soldiers, he did it after I left, I said oh, he must be negotiating. It must be a good strong point of negotiation.”

He also said:

“And I'll get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended. If I'm President-elect, I'll get it done before even becoming president.”

Sounds like he and Putin have kept a line open. And the Logan Act is still in effect.

But there is something that is claimed in Woodward’s book — and let’s face it, outside, primarily, members of Team Trump who cast aspersions in abundance with no factual basis for them, Woodward’s reporting has proven to be solid over the years — that should be more disturbing than Trump and Putin having a jaw-boning session about who knows what:

Trump, in 2020, reportedly sent Putin COVID testing equipment.

Equipment that was in short supply in the U.S. in 2020. The year that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 350,831 American citizens died from COVID.

Presumably some of those people would have been saved had there been more available testing.

America first? Really.

_____
THURSDAY 10/10/24

How to define a liberal? How to define a conservative?

The answers to those questions have been elusive since long before The Hustings began publishing in the autumn of 2020. But the ascendence of Donald J. Trump’s political career as he descended his Golden Elevator in 2015 has made the issue of how to define “left” and “right” even more acute. 

Is former US Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) a RINO for endorsing Kamala Harris for president? How liberal is Harris herself after reversing her stand on fracking?

We are always up for debating such arguments at The Hustings, but if Cheney wants to write a column for us (email us, Ms. Cheney, at editors@thehustings.news) we certainly will post it in the right column, not the left because she may or may not be, officially, a Republican, but she certainly remains a conservative.

In today’s right column, Rich Corbett, a regular reader and occasional contributing pundit for the conservative side calls out The Hustings for posting criticism of Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, in that right column.

And that is what the right – and left – columns are for: civil commentary from pundits and readers from various points on the political spectrum and to foster political discussion with respect for the facts and for readers and writers who may not agree with your point of view. 

The Hustings invites you to join the discussion. Go to the Comments section in any of these columns or email editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your leanings – from moderate liberal to hard-left/progressive or moderate conservative to hard-right/populist in the subject line. 

Don’t forget our regular newsletter/blogs at thehustings.substack.com.

_____
WEDNESDAY 10/9/24
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Editors:

My assumption is either only leftists are reading (the audience) or are writing (the opinion columnists) for The Hustings. Lately, the “Right” column does far more to criticize the Republican candidate running for president than to present an opposing point of view to the Democrats. Either leave it blank or fill it with an opposing POV to the radicals on the left — there’s not much balance if that’s what is supposed to be represented by the columns.

--Rich Corbett

(The author is an occasional guest pundit for The Hustings)

•••

Email your comments to editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line.

_____
WEDNESDAY 10/9/24
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

What are your thoughts and hopes about the escalating war between Israel and Hamas, and now with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon? 

What are the realistic prospects for a ceasefire in Gaza before the end of the year?

Is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enabling a Trump/Vance win in the November 5 US presidential election? Would a Trump administration use Netanyahu’s proposal for Israeli judicial “reform” as a model?

As always, we seek your civil comments on these and other current issues. You can use the Comment section in this column or in the column on the right, if you lean toward political conservatism. 

Or email editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line. 

Sign up for our free Substack newsletter here.

•••

Don't miss these commentaries in the right column ...

• "The Art of the Lie," "Laws, Schmaws" and "Advantage: Intellectual Arteriosclerosis?" by never-Trumper Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay.

• "Vance Was Rock-Solid" by pro-MAGA contributor Rich Corbett.

And in the left column ...

• Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay (again, this time as counterpoint on the vice presidential debate), "About Second Place."

_____
MONDAY 10/7/24

By Stephen Macaulay

In my neighborhood in a suburb of Detroit, the number of Trump lawn signs vastly outnumber those for Harris. The signs are graphically consistent, with the dominating factor being the names Trump and Vance. 

The differences are found just below the top of the signs.

Sometimes it says “Promises Kept.” This is a curious statement. Near as I can tell, the only promise Trump kept was to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade. What is somewhat ironic about that situation is the pertinent justices, when questioned in the Senate about their positions regarding Roe v. Wade, cited stare decisis, saying that this is settled law. Then they, in effect, broke their implicit promises and treated it as though it wasn’t.

One of the things often noted today is that there were no wars during Trump’s term in office thanks to his mastery of international affairs, which included siding with Vladmir Putin and sending and receiving love letters to and from Kim Jong Un. Presumably that lack of a war is meant to underscore that he would “keep us safe.”

But a promise to keep us safe seems to have been shattered given that in 2020 350,821 Americans died from COVID — something that he repeatedly assured the public would “just go away.”

To be sure Trump didn’t cause COVID. But his administration’s efforts to mitigate the effects of the virus was something short of robust.

And to put that number of COVID deaths into context, 58,220 Americans died in the war in Vietnam, or 17% of the number of Americans who died from COVID during Trump’s last year in office.

Which lead to another of the slogans on the signs, the now-familiar “Make America Great Again.”

Presumably this now implies that things were “Great” during his administration. As the deaths from COVID indicate, perhaps not so much.

When Barrack Obama took office in January 2009 the U.S. unemployment rate was 7.8%. As you may recall, the economy in 2008-2009 was in horrible shape.

When Obama left office in 2017 the unemployment rate dropped to 4.7%.

So when Trump came into office he started with a 4.7% unemployment rate.

He left with a 6.4% unemployment rate.

What’s “Great” about that? Well, I guess you could say the 14.8% unemployment rate that occurred in April 2020, while he was still in office, makes that 6.4% really, really good.

And speaking of Obama, about whom Trump has nothing good to say, the average GDP growth rate during his time in office was 2.3%. He inherited the economic conditions from the Great Recession, so that’s at least positive.

One would imagine that under Trump the Gross Domestic Product soared.

Nope. 2.3%.

So how “Great” did Trump make America?

And finally, there’s this slogan on a Trump sign:

“No More Bullshit!”

This, I must confess, is a mystery to me. The Biden-Harris Administration has done plenty of things that can be vigorously criticized, but one thing that seems evident about the both of them is that they are anything but bullshit artists.

So while on that subject I submit this from a speech Trump gave on September 27 at Macomb County Community College in Warren, Michigan.

He opened by talking about voting. “I will, once and for all secure our elections.” There is little evidence that 2020 was unsecure, so arguably he secured that election, although he has spent the past many years arguing against that.

The next sentence, “We’re going to go to paper ballots.” Odd that there are supporters like Peter Thiel, who has made a fortune on digital technologies.

Then Trump said, “We’re going to have same-day voting, voting ID.”

But within a matter of seconds he told the crowd, “Whether you vote earlier, absentee, by mail, or in person, we are going to protect the vote.”

Didn’t he just say “We’re going to have same-day voting”? And didn’t he vote early this past August in Florida?

But people vote about the economy more than election methodologies.

Trump said:

“We had the greatest economy in the history of our country and we were just getting started actually. But we had the greatest economy, the greatest employment for everybody, men, women, African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, everybody, young people with a diploma, without a diploma.”

Well, as we have seen, to call the economy or the employment rate “the greatest” is quite a stretch. What’s more, the current unemployment rate is 4.1%, which is better than the 6.4% he left with.

Now, Trump claimed that illegal immigrants are taking the jobs of Americans. So, of course, when the issue is immigration, he has to talk about the Wall.

Trump:

“We built more wall than I said I was going to build. And then we had 200 miles of wall ready to go. It was all fabricated, all made to the highest specifications of Border Patrol and ICE, and it was all set. And then we got more votes than any sitting president has ever gotten by far. And they say we lost the election, so let’s leave it at this. You know what? We have one coming up in 39 days, so that’ll be a wonderful replacement. 

Wonderful replacement.”

This one is really chock full of, well, bullshit.

During the 2016 campaign Trump said he’d build 1,000 miles of wall. Then he ratcheted that back to 450 miles of wall. Then when he left office U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealed there were 80 miles of new wall built. There were 452 miles in total, so that means 372 miles of replacement, reconstruction and secondary wall.

Mexico paid for none of it.

And amusingly enough, during the Obama administration there were 299 miles of vehicle barriers and 350 miles of pedestrian fencing built.

Then there was the clever use of a modifier in his statement regarding the number of votes he received as a sitting president.

Obama was the last sitting president who ran for reelection prior to Trump. 

In terms of votes, Obama received 65,915,795 votes in 2012 compared with Trump’s 74,223,234 in 2020.

However, Obama’s number is 51.06% of the total votes cast in ’12 while Trump’s number is 46.8% of the total popular votes cast in ‘20.

So while, yes, Trump got more popular votes than Obama did, he got fewer votes on a percentage basis.

And then there’s the fact that Joe Biden received 81,282,632 votes, or 51.3% of the popular vote, which is even better than Obama’s 51.06% and significantly better than Trump’s 46.8%.

Final example: China. While Trump has called Xi Jinping a “brilliant man,” China is as much of a boogie man as illegal aliens.

Trump told the assembled in Warren:

“I charged hundreds of billions of dollars to China in tariffs and taxes. No other president has ever charged China 10 cents, and we’ve taken hundreds of billions of dollars.”

As the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) wrote in July 2022, “Two years ago, President Donald Trump signed what he called a ‘historic trade deal’ with China that committed China to purchase $200 billion of additional US exports before December 31, 2021. Today the only undisputed ‘historical’ aspect of that agreement is its failure.”

Huh? Isn’t he the consummate dealmaker?

PIIE continues, “In the end, China bought only 58% of the US exports it had committed to purchase under the agreement, not even enough to reach its import levels from before the trade war. Put differently, China bought none of the additional $200 billion of exports Trump’s deal promised.”

Where do those “hundreds of billions of dollars” come from? Well, a non-trivial amount is from the pockets of people like those in Warren, every time they shop for goods at the local Walmart that are made in China. They are paying the price of tariffs.

The truth is hard. Bullshit is easy.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings, writing primarily for the right column.

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MONDAY 10/7/24

That question is still up for debate at The Hustings. Email editors@thehustings.news with your thoughts and with your political leanings (independent of your pick for winner in the Vance v. Walz event) in the subject line.

Scroll down this page with the trackbar on the far right to read our center-column analysis, “Ohio Normal Meets Minnesota Nice,” with right-column commentary by guest contributing pundit Rich Corbett and left-column commentary by Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay.

You’ll not that Macaulay is back in the right column at the top of the page with his latest commentary, “Laws, Schmaws.”

Further down the page in the right column, don’t miss Macaulay’s “Advantage: Intellectual Arteriosclerosis” and “Where Have You Gone, Edward Gibbon?”

Sign up for our free newsletter at thehustings.substack.com.

_____
THURSDAY 10/3/24

By Stephen Macaulay

It is fair to say that all readers of The Hustings are law-abiding citizens. Meaning that we don’t do things like shoplift when we go pick up a prescription at CVS — you know, grab a package or razors or a stick of antiperspirant, whatever might not be locked behind a Plexiglas screen.

In fact, most Americans of all walks of life are law-abiding citizens.

So when someone says something about a way to address crime, we are probably interested because when those objects from CVS take the five-finger discount out of the store, we all eventually pay.

Convicted felon Donald Trump announced his plan for reducing theft during a speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, last weekend:

“One rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out and it will end immediately, you know? It will end immediately.”

The “rough hour” would be undertaken by law enforcement.

Presumably some people get pumped up by talk like that. After all, they think, they’re not criminals, they don’t steal things, so why not?

Why not have the people who serve and protect beat the hell out of people so those miscreants will never think about lifting even a free, proffered snack at Costco?

Maybe because it is against the law.

It is really sad that the man who wants to lead the country — a country that was heretofore one where people are expected to abide by the law, even if it means stopping at a red light in the middle of the night on a deserted street — is encouraging people to break the law — people whose job and sworn duty it is to uphold the law.

What if police officers were encouraged not only to smack down shoplifters but even other infractions? Forget the protections of the Fifth Amendment. Wait, that was to be suspended, too, on day one, along with the rest of the founding laws of the U.S.A.

What kind of country would this be? Certainly not the one that one that people have pledged to uphold and defend.

And what’s “Great” about that?

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THURSDAY 10/3/24

Tune in CBS News at 9 pm Eastern time Tuesday, October 1, when Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) faces Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) in the campaign season’s only vice-presidential debate, from New York City. NPR also will carry the debate live. 

Then come to The Hustings for analysis and help us choose the debate’s winner. Use the Comment section in this column if you lean left (regardless of who you think won the debate) or the Comment section in the right column if you lean right (again, regardless of who you think won the debate).

Or email editors@thehustings.news and indicate your political leanings in the subject line. 

Meanwhile, check out Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s latest commentaries from the never-MAGA right, including “Advantage: Intellectual Arteriosclerosis?”, “Where Have You Gone, Edward Gibbon?”, “The Art of the Fraud” and “First Impression.” 

Don’t miss guest contributor Kate McLeod’s left-column take on the Harris-Trump debate, “No Debate Inflation.”

More left and right commentaries on the September 10 presidential debate, including a pro-Trump column by guest contributor Rich Corbett, can be found on page 2.

Be sure to subscribe to our free newsletter at thehustings.substack.com.

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MONDAY 9/30/24
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news