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July 21, 2024
Key Takeaways:
- It's been 289 days since October 7, 2023, when, on Simchat Torah, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and murdered 1,200 people (including 44 Americans). More Jews were murdered on that day than on any day since the Holocaust. Hamas wounded 3,300 and took 240 hostage during a day of brutal savagery and unspeakable, undeniable sexual violence; 120 hostages, 43 confirmed dead (but certainly more), some raped and possibly pregnant, remain captive in Gaza today.
- The 120 remaining hostages comprise five religions and 25 nationalities, including eight Americans, five probably alive: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Keith Siegal, Omer Neutra, Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Itay Chen, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Gad Haggai. Freeing every hostage must remain a top priority.
- J.D. Vance is the perfect running mate for Donald Trump: Vance's extremist views, isolationist foreign policy, antisemitism, and extremism on other issues are MAGA personified. Vance does not balance the ticket; he exacerbates its radical departure from Jewish and American values.
- Last week, Trump was the victim of Republican-on-Republican violence. Political violence is inexcusable yet violent political rhetoric runs rampant in the GOP.
- A Trump presidency would spell disaster for America and the world. We cannot become numb to that fact, and the only way to prevent a Trump presidency is to win the November election. That means replacing despair with action.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and upcoming events.
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Hi Steve,
I'm not going to speculate on whether President Biden will choose not to run. I continue to believe that if Democrats rallied behind him instead of giving in to despair, he would win and that pressuring him to step down now would result in a new set of complications. If we think that if Biden does not run, the media will suddenly fall in love with his successor and start covering Trump accurately, we'll find out in about three minutes that we were wrong.
But the pressure on Biden from Democrats who feel differently might force him to step down. If he does, it won't matter who was right or wrong, nor will we ever know what would have happened if he ran. All that will matter is that we unite behind the Democratic nominee for president and work to defeat Donald Trump.
While some Democrats are worried that their nominee--an honest and decent man whose first term ranks among the most successful first terms in history--might be too old, Republicans have no qualms about uniting behind a candidate who is not only old, but a 34-time convicted felon who paid a porn star hush money to cover up having had sex with her four months after his wife gave birth and separately was found legally liable for sexual abuse.
The GOP is a cult masquerading as a political party. But weren't the bandages they wore on the ears to show support for Dear Leader cute? They can put masks on their ears to show loyalty to Trump but not masks over their mouths to prevent Covid.
Trump capped off the Republican convention with a rambling 90-minute speech loaded with falsehoods, exaggerations, and misleading statements. The best way to persuade undecided voters might be to force them to watch all of Trump's speech the way Alex was forced to watch movies in Clockwork Orange. Or share this short clip of what former Trump officials think of him.
J.D. Vance is unqualified to be president. Three years ago, Tom Nichols called Vance a "contemptible and cringe-inducing clown," and backed up his claim with receipts.
National Security Action released a primer on Vance's extreme foreign policy views (while you're at it, read their primer on Trump's biggest foreign policy lies).
Vance was one of the 15 Republican senators who voted against the emergency supplemental aid package to Israel (note to Republicans: It's not a defense to say the package also included aid to Ukraine, which Vance opposes).
Vance has defended Trump's antisemitic comments (more details here). Vance supports the Great Replacement Theory. The Nexus Project posted a thread on Vance's antisemitism over the years and JDCA compiled a list of Vance's extreme views on issues of special concern to Jewish Americans.
The GOP is the party of extreme and violent rhetoric. A Republican, using a weapon the Democrats want to ban but Republicans refuse to ban, killed a Republican while trying to assassinate the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump. Both parties condemned this unacceptable act of political violence.
We've seen no evidence whatsoever that the shooter was inspired by rhetoric from any Democratic politician. That's not surprising because Democratic politicians do not traffic in overtly violent political rhetoric. Biden's use of the word "bullseye" at a private fundraiser was unusual for him and although it didn't come close to the rhetoric used in public by Trump and some Republicans, Biden nevertheless acknowledged he made a mistake. You'll wait a long time before you hear such an acknowledgment from Trump.
It would take a separate newsletter to document the violent rhetoric that runs rampant in the Republican Party but at least consider the violent rhetoric used by Republicans who were featured speakers at the Republican National Convention last week. This is not a "both sides" issue because a similar list for next month's Democratic National Convention would be a blank page.
Republicans claim without evidence that comparing Trump to Hitler led to the shooting. But Trump invites those comparisons. Trump repeatedly invokes Hitler and the Nazis and recently called for the "creation of a unified reich." Trump dined with Kanye West and white nationalist/Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Trump said that white nationalists marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us" were "very fine people." No less an authority than J.D. Vance once called Trump "America's Hitler."
The day after a bullet grazed Trump's ear, Trump did not call the family of the Trump supporter who was killed but he did find time to play golf. President Biden did call the family that day.
Trump is a divisive demagogue. He called for terminating the Constitution. Trump and other Republican politicians regularly use violent rhetoric--for Trump, violent rhetoric is a pattern, not a one-off as it was for Biden. If Republicans don't like that rhetoric they could have chosen a different nominee. Trump does threaten our democracy. The remedy is to ensure he does not win in November, not violence, and Democrats have not suggested otherwise.
What was true before the shooting is true after the shooting: As Greg Sargent writes, "Trump poses a foundational threat to republican governance. Nor is it beyond the pale to charge that MAGA is the only major faction in American life that valorizes political violence and sees its utilization in service of Trump and his goals as good."
Katrina vanden Heuvel writes that while Trump deserves sympathy for the attack he experienced, "we should understand that getting shot does not ennoble the target – or transform victims into moral leaders. A presidential race is not a WWW wrestling drama. Trump should be assessed – as anyone who would lead this country – on his behavior, his character, and his agenda. That responsibility does not disappear because someone took a shot at him. The prospect of a Trump presidency was as deeply unsettling before Saturday’s shooting incident – and it remains so after it."
David Frum summed it up best: "We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life."
Or as Adam Serwer wrote, nothing about the attempted assassination redeems Trump. Trump is still the threat to our democracy and our safety that he was before the assassination, and we must continue to speak out and remind voters that defeating Trump in November is an existential necessity for our country.
A Trump victory in November would mean the end of legal abortion. A 34-time convicted felon should not be president. A man who paid hush money to cover up sex with a porn star four months after his wife gave birth to prevent Americans from knowing his true character before an election should not be president.
Trump's racism, xenophobia, and contempt for democracy, not to mention his unhinged mind, his detachment from reality, his theft of classified documents, inciting an insurrection, refusing to accept the results of a lawful election, legal liability for sexual abuse, terrible record as president, and long record of antisemitism are matters of fact.
A Trump presidency would spell disaster for America and the world. We cannot become numb to that fact, and the only way to prevent a Trump presidency is to win the November election.
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. No one pointed out any substantive errors in last week's newsletter.
In Case You Missed It:
- Did you ever hear of Shabbos Kestenbaum before he addressed the Republican convention? Neither did I. Maybe you still have never heard of him but you don't have to know who he is to benefit from reading Rabbi Jay Michaelson's response.
- We should not fault members of Congress for attending Netanyahu's July 24 speech to Congress; he is the Prime Minister of one of our closest allies. But neither should we fault members of Congress who heed Hadar Susskind's advice not to attend. Attendance at a speech is not a litmus test for whether one is pro-Israel; we will see pro-Israel members of Congress opting to attend and not attend.
- Israel's Knesset voted 68-9 for a declaration firmly opposing "the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan." Joshua Shanes explains what this means for our current discourse and politics.
Tweets of the Week. Ben Wexler, David Frum, and Bob Newhart.
Cartoon of the Week. Paul Noth.
Video Clips of the Week. Trae Crowder and Trump's Project 2025.
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read and the original home of the viral and beloved 2022 and 2023 Top Ten Signs You're At a Republican Seder. If someone forwarded this to you, why not subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday? Just click here--it's free.
I periodically update my posts on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism and on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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