What Line Can’t Donald Cross?

Morning Dispatch

It’s just hate speech all the time now.

If you were to look at the front page of The New York Times this morning, you would get the impression that the only campaign facing problems is the Vice President’s. In the midst of above-the-fold headlines like

• “The Trump Voters Who Don’t Believe Trump”

• “Pennsylvania will be the center of attention as both candidates campaign there today” 

• “A close race gets closer”

there’s this:

• “Harris’ Final Challenge: Restore a Splintering Democratic Coalition”

The Washington Post is just as uninformative.

• “Harris and Trump vie for Jewish voters unsettled by Israel-Gaza conflict”

• “Trump wages aggressive campaign against real-time fact checks”

• “The vast divide between Republicans and Democrats over fast food”

And a fun quiz!

• “How serious are Trump’s and Harris’s campaign promises? Take our quiz.”

The only article that effectively informs voters of the dangerous disinformation Donald Trump traffics in was this:

• “Hurricane recovery officials in N.C. relocated amid report of ‘armed militia,’ email shows”

There is, of course, no way hint of his involvement in the headline.

On the front page of neither paper is there is a hint of all of the disqualifying behavior and language Donald engaged in over the weekend.

During a rally in Coachella, California, at which he left the attendees stranded for hours in the desert, Donald lied about crowd size as he stood behind bullet-proof glass there to protect him but nobody in that crowd. As a protestor was led out, he said she was “going back to mommy” who would knock the hell out of her.

He claimed that Kamala Harris has

imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world. They come from the dungeons of the third world. Many, many are prisoners. Many are some had [sic] death sentences. They were going to be executed for murder, but they're not living happily in California and other places in our country. 21 million people into our country. It's not sustainable. 645,000 are criminals and some are 214,000 are what they call high grade-a criminals. 

All nonsense, all numbers he’s just pulling out of the air at this point.

He spoke incomprehensibly about defleeting, deflating, and defeating inflation.

He made it clear that, if elected, Democratic governors will be denied disaster aid unless they do what he tells them to do. He made this point by engaging in one of his bizarre obsessions—inadequate water pressure in showers.

They, they use the environment, everybody uses the environment to stop things. But we're not going to let that happen because it was toward the end and we're not gonna ever let that happen again. You would have so much water. I read where in Beverly Hills and Bel Air they want to bring you down to like 28 gallons a person. You know, that sounds like a lot. But you know what that is like about a seven-minute shower. You know, you spend a fortune for a house and you can't take a shower. So, uh, we're gonna take care of our farmers. We're going to take care of your water situation and we'll force it down his throat and we'll say Gavin, if you don't do it, we're not giving you any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire forest fires that you have.

At an event with billionaire donors, Donald shifted into a different gear. After months of questioning Kamala Harris intelligence, and calling her “mentally impaired,” he said she was “retarded,” a slur so offensive CNN couldn’t bring itself to include it in its reporting and that neither The Times nor the post thought worthy of drawing attention to.

Up until recently, the term “mental retardation” was a diagnostic one, included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual until the newest edition in which “mental retardation” has been replaced by “intellectual disability,” which is now the term of choice in education and medicine.

Use of the R-word outside of clinical settings has always been despicable, an awful slur meant to be harmful and demeaning. According to the Special Olympics, “The R-word is a form of hate speech that stands for ‘retard,’ ‘retarded,’ or other offensive words ending in ‘-tard.’”

But when Donald Trump uses it, apparently it’s not even news.

And finally, in a sit-down with the useless Maria Bartiromo, Donald sent up a signal flare:

I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within...We have some very bad people, some sick people, radical left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.

When he says “radical left lunatics,” he’s referring to anybody who doesn’t support and isn’t going to vote for him.

Donald wasn’t joking when he floated the idea of calling out the National Guard and the military to deal with his enemies. He wasn’t sending up a trial balloon, he wasn’t being sarcastic. Donald Trump knows he can get away with anything he wants. Nobody is stopping him, so there’s no reason for him to stop.