This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated November 1, 2024
Halloween isas a scary time, but of the fun, spooky variety. As we move toward the next big day noted on the calendar, Election Day, things are truly scary in the most frightening sense.
One of the presidential candidates has literally said he wants to shut down all media that is critical of him.In a Fox News interview with Howard Kurtz on October 21, Donald Trump said CBS should lose its license and 60 Minutes should be taken off the air. In September, following the only presidential debate, Trump said the FCC needs to “take away” ABC’s broadcast license. He has also said that NBC, CNN, and MSNBC should have their “licenses or whatever” pulled and that MSNBC should be investigated for “country-threatening treason.”
According to Trump, all of the major over-the-air networks should be pulled off the air except for Fox, and of the three major 24-hour cable news networks, all should have their licenses revoked except for Fox news. He also warned in September that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook could “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he is elected and warned the New York Times, “Wait until you see what I’m going to do to them.”
This is unhinged and unAmerican. It is straight out of the playbook of authoritarians and antithetical to our system of government. Yet somehow most coverage of this contest treats it as a typical contest between typical candidates from either side of the political divide. This race is anything but typical.
Trump recently sat for an interview with the state-run Saudi television network, which is jaw dropping in and of itself, but what he told them is astounding. Even with reliable information confirming that Hamas is currently holding between 60 to 100 living hostages that were taken during the terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, including seven Americans, Trump dismissed the hostages as being an important part of how to proceed, saying, “…many of them have been killed and I’m sure many of them are dead. It’s a very sad thing what’s going to happen when they find out that there are very few hostages.”
More than 60 people held by a terrorist group is not very few, and the families of the seven living Americans still held do not want their country approaching this matter as if their loved ones are already dead. As he regularly does, Trump bragged that he “would have made a deal with them and they wouldn’t have done October 7th,” as if a terrorist organization that sprung up during the Reagan administration and has operated in the same way through every American presidential administration since, can simply be made to go away if a billionaire New York real estate mogul cuts a deal with them.
“And then they want us to have clean. I said wait, we’re gonna be clean but it’s all flying. Just remember that. Does that make sense?”
Donald Trump at New Hampshire rally on October 19, 2024
It does not make any sense, as in it is foolish and a fantastical concept of a plan, but much of what Trump has been saying at recent events has seen the words coming out of his mouth literally making no sense. At a rally in New Hampshire on October 19, Trump said, and I quote, “Which is incapable of solvin’ even the sawlest… smallest problem. The simplest of problems we can no longer solve. We can’t do anything. We are an institute in a powerful death penalty. We will put this on.”
Two days earlier in Iowa, he told a crowd, “Over the seas and over our land. And then they want us to have clean. I said wait, we’re gonna be clean but it’s all flying. Just remember that. Does that make sense? In other words, it’s all coming through the currents through the air, they can name it.” In addition to his authoritarian yearnings, it is clear that mental acuity should be an extreme concern in the case of Trump. And then there is when he referred to a crowd in Arizona as “Aseurasians” on October 13 or a day later when he stopped questions at a town Hall hosted by Governor Kristi Noem to awkwardly stand on stage swaying, dancing, closing his eyes while his musical playlist went on for 38 minutes.
And when he is not struggling to string words together into a coherent sentence, he is randomly jumping between topics, frequently including bizarre references. Like on October 18, when he told an audience in Detroit, MI how they should tell their husbands to go vote for Trump, saying, “get your fat husband off the couch. Get that, get that fat pig off the couch …slap him around.” Or a day later in Pennsylvania when he inexplicably decided to talk about how well-endowed pro-golfer Arnold Palmer is.
For all of these reasons, Trump should never be anywhere near the White House ever again. As we await the outcome of this inexplicably tight race, we will be living through truly scary times.
