As the brilliant Peter Baker notes in today’s Times, Donald Trump keeps throwing issues around with his wild rants (usually based on equally wild untruths), hoping something will stick, as he plunges straight into Tuesday’s midterm election, when, largely because of him, he will lose the House and (miracles sometimes happen!) maybe even the Senate.
Today, CNN reports growing unrest among savvy veterans who are harshly critical of his most recent stunt: ordering 5,000 troops to our southern border because Election Day is only six days away (https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/30/politics/trump-troops-border-criticisms/index.html) — when there are crises around the world which are far more dangerous, and where our military could be put to better use.
It’s called “Operation Faithful Patriot,” even though Trump is so faithless to our Constitution that he wants to amend it by an executive order, causing KellyAnne Conway’s husband, George Conway, to break with his wife on the issue of birthright citizenship.
Will Fischer, a former Marine who now works for VoteVets, a progressive veteran’s organization, told CNN, “Donald Trump thinks unarmed people who are fleeing horrors and are still 1,000 miles away [in Mexico] are a national security threat a week before election day? I don’t hink so. It’s a political ploy to blow upon the embers of racism and nativism, and he is using the military again as a political prop to advance his own agenda."
So what’s going to be his next stunt? He’s heading back to Montana, thinking that yet another vile Trump rally will help him bring down Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, on Tuesday.
Associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith knows better. Montana’s a big state with a small population, but Smith knows them all. She tells us that Tester will win by five points.
Smith is also convinced that the voters in North Dakota won’t be swayed by any more base Trumpisms and that they will keep Democrat Heidi Heitkamp in office, and that the same will hold true in Missouri for Sen. Claire McCaskill.
ASR Smith also says that charismatic Congressman Beto O’Rourke will oust Sen. Ted Cruz, the Tea Party’s man in the Lone Star State.