The Roundup

Both Donald Trump and Truth Social decline further, Trump talks to Elon Musk in a live glitch-filled chat, old photos of J.D. Vance dressed in drag surfaces, Barron Trump 2044, and more!

How Kamala Harris Can Still Lose the Election Despite Winning the Popular Vote

Given the current lovefest and good vibes surrounding Kamala Harris and Tim Walz with Donald Trump's popularity sinking in the polls, it would be tempting to say that Harris has this election in the bag. Not so fast. Apparently there is a GOP plan to have certain electors refuse to certify the election in order to ensure that Donald Trump will become the 47th president. It sounds like the same election shenanigans that plagued the recent elections in Russia and Venezuela. You can read more about this nefarious plot right here.

Donald Trump Declines Further

Donald held a rally in Montana last Friday that was even more unhinged than his previous speech at Mar-a-Lago. It has gotten to the point where you have to question whether Trump is suffering from dementia just like his late father Fred. The basic gist is that Trump had planned his campaign around taking on Joe Biden and now that someone else is on the Democratic ticket, he can't handle the sudden change at all. He seems incapable of pivoting his campaign to taking on a new opponent. He even spoke about his unrealistic fantasy where Biden would go to the upcoming DNC Convention in Chicago demanding to be nominated for president then announcing that he will next debate Trump. This video has the highlights from Trump's speech and it's not pretty.

The high likelihood that Donald Trump has dementia is yet another reason why Trump should have never gotten the Republican nomination in the first place. (Besides his role in the coup attempt on January 6, 2021 and the fact that he's a convicted felon.) The fact that he is the Republican nominee whose name will be on the ballot on Election Day is a massive failure on a number of levels. His wife and grown children have failed to get medical intervention where Trump would be placed in an assisted living situation that specializes in patients with dementia instead of allowing him to continue to freely play president over the past four years. The Republican leadership (especially Mitch McConnell) failed to stand up to Trump when they needed to. Had they allowed Trump's second impeachment to go through in 2021, he would’ve been prohibited from ever holding public office again. But they decided to put party over country and here we are. The corporate-owned mainstream media, who should be holding Trump's feet to the fire and questioning whether he has dementia but, instead, they were willing to openly question whether Joe Biden is too senile to be reelected. Now that Biden is out of the race the mainstream media is still largely too timid to question whether Trump has cognitive issues so severe that it would affect his ability to serve in the nation's highest office. They really want Trump back in order to boost sales and ratings with Trump's cognitive health and the rest of America be damned!

The Death Watch on Truth Social Continues

Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, has reported that its recent second-quarter revenue has plunged 30% from a year earlier to just $836,900. At this point it's only a matter of time before Truth Social goes the way of Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Magazine, Trump Ice bottled water, Trump Taj Mahal, and numerous other Trump businesses that have gone belly-up over the years. One could even make bets as to whether Truth Social will make it to Election Day or if it will go kaput in either late 2024 or early-to-mid 2025. Since Truth Social's identity is so tied up with Donald Trump, it's more likely that it will go belly-up if Trump loses the election in November.

The latest news about Truth Social proves once again that everything Donald Trump touches eventually dies.

Another Famous Person Endorses Kamala Harris

Former professional wrestler, Hollywood actor, and governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura issued this tweet on Twitter/X where he wrote: “Ask yourselves this question…How bad can Donald Trump and his cult of Republicans be if they can drive a true independent like me to endorse the Harris/Walz ticket? Take a moment to think about that.”

He makes a very good point. The situation in this country has become really dire if Ventura is supporting the Democrats. For me it's Trump's threats to rule as a dictator, that we will never have to vote again if we elect him, and the implementation of Project 2025 that have all convinced me to support Kamala Harris and TimWalz.

Donald Trump Returns to Twitter/X

As many of you may already know, Donald Trump was a very frequent user of Twitter where he spewed hateful stuff. It continued throughout his presidency. It came to an end after the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 and Trump was banned from Twitter. He unsuccessfully sued to be reinstated but then he became involved in his Truth Social startup. After Elon Musk purchased Twitter he reinstated Donald Trump's account but Trump preferred to remain on Truth Social, until this week.

Elon Musk invited Trump to speak with him live on Twitter/X and it happened on Monday. It was also plagued with technical glitches where some people couldn't tune in at all.

At one point in the conversation Trump told Musk that if he loses the election he and Musk can meet again in Venezuela. Why Venezuela? Trump said that Venezuela has a lower crime rate than the US but it also helps that Venezuela has no extradition treaty with the US so theoretically Trump could spend the rest of his life in style. There are concerns that his mentioning of going to Venezuela could make Trump a potential flight risk since he has many criminal cases that he will face in the future.

While Trump made a few posts on his Twitter/X account in the hours before his live chat with Musk, his account has become silent once again as it looks like Trump is focusing all of his online attention on Truth Social. If Truth Social goes belly-up, expect Trump to take up tweeting on Twitter/X once again.

More Exits From Twitter/X

While Donald Trump may have briefly returned to Twitter/X for that online chat with Elon Musk, other politicians are starting to distance themselves from that platform. In the UK the Labour Party MPs have announced that they are either leaving Twitter/X or are dramatically scaling back their participation on that platform. The reasons they cited included Musk's post proclaiming that civil war is inevitable in the wake of a series far-right riots that took place in England and Northern Ireland. One of the Labour MPs, Josh Simons said this:

What matters about Musk is not only what he said, but how he changed X’s algorithms. He’s turned X into a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups seeking to corrupt our public sphere. Nobody should have that power.

A Blast From J.D. Vance's Past

This week some skeletons from J.D. Vance’s past have come out of the closet to online viral fame.

Look I don't know if these pictures were taken at a Halloween party or if he did this on a dare from some friends or if he had participated in some kind of a cross-dressing drag queen contest and I don't care. I don't even care if he had once performed as a drag queen in nightclubs. The issue isn't that he had dressed in women's clothes at least once in his life. The real issue is that he has advocated banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors and has called LGBTQ people “groomers” while there are pictures where he had dressed in women's clothes in the past.

Why was it okay for him to wear women's clothes at least once in his life but it's not okay for someone else who was born a biological male to do the same? The self-hatred in J.D. Vance is very strong here and, combined with his political power and influence, it has the potential to ruin the lives of countless LGBTQ people who only want to live their lives in peace.

He also shouldn't be calling people “groomers” when he has an old high school photo like the next one below that's interesting enough for The Daily Mail to publish.

The Corporate-Owned Mainstream Media is Just as Bad on International News as They are on the US Presidential Election

A few months ago I wrote about how corporate-owned media is bad for journalism and democracy. I had focused exclusively on how the media had been deferential towards Donald Trump in the name of ratings and profits.

It turns out that one such corporate-owned newspaper is just as bad on reporting international news. Recently Ukraine has made a major breakthrough in going into Russia taking over the border area of Kursk. Apparently The New York Times hasn't been paying any attention to the news coverage of Ukraine taking over Kursk because it published an article with this headline: Putin Has Victory in His Grasp.

That headline looks like something that the old Soviet newspaper Pravada would've run back in the 1970s or 1980s (Brezhnev Has Victory Over Afghanistan in His Grasp). It has long been an open secret that The New York Times is in Donald Trump's corner but now they are writing about Vladimir Putin winning the war against Ukraine despite what is currently happening to Kursk. There are two possible explanations: 1) Donald Trump is close to Vladimir Putin and he admires the Russian dictator so The Times is publishing this in an effort to continue to gain access to Trump as a reward for writing nice things about his BFF or 2) The New York Times really admires Vladimir Putin so much that the article represents The Times’ desire for Russia to conquer Ukraine so they could write lots of articles about the aftermath and sell more papers. Whatever the reason, it shows how dishonest The New York Times have become and people should just boycott it entirely.

The Social Media Trolls are on the Loose

Some of these trolls sound like they are human in that they answer people's statements. This person complains about how Kamala Harris doesn't listen to people. Someone asks her if she originally voted for Biden in the primary and she admits that she doesn't vote and hasn't voted since she read a certain book in college.

Then there are the bots. Here is a screenshot of a collection of these bots parroting this nearly identical false message: Tim Walz is going to resign and drop out of the race as Kamala Harris’ running mate.

The Effect of Donald Trump on Everyday Discouse in the US

Donald Trump had never conceded losing in the 2020 election and he still claims to this day that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It definitely has had an effect in the US in ways that one can't even imagine. A woman who works as a nurse said that her hospital system no longer allows them to ask patients who the president is because when they were asked that question as they wake up from surgery, the patients were becoming combative.

Free Palestine Movement and African Americans

Apparently there has been some antagonism between the Free Palestine movement in the United States and the African American community going as far back as the incident at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in January where a group of Free Palestine protesters disrupted a speech that Joe Biden gave to commemorate a horrible shooting that happened at the same church by a white supremacist named Dylann Roof while also denouncing white supremacy. It also doesn't help when some of these pro-Palestinian people use the N-word.

I'm not saying that all of the Free Palestine people are racists but it's not a good look for the movement as a whole when some activists casually drop racial slurs like that. And it certainly doesn't help the Palestinians in Gaza who are literally caught between the fight between Israel and Hamas.

And speaking of the Palestinians in Gaza, an informal canvassing in Gaza showed that they not only prefer Kamala Harris to be the next president of the US but they would prefer anyone over Donald Trump. I can only imagine how those Free Palestine protesters in the US who continue to protest Democratic events would think about that one.

A US Family Defects to Russia

This story began to circulate on Twitter/X last night but it'll probably spread further by the time you read this. An American family and their three children defected to Russia and they received asylum on the grounds that they were fleeing the lack of family and traditional values at home. In this video that was posted on Twitter/X the father thanked Vladimir Putin for making Russia into a “place for families.” According to the Russian news agency TASS, the parents have been identified as Leo and Chantel Hever.

Only time will tell if they regret their move just like the Feenstra family did when they moved from Canada to Russia in order to escape the LGBTQ community only to have a hard time adjusting to their new country. (They are still trying to make a go at living in Russia as of June.)

Barron Trump 2044

Barron Trump is only 18 years old and there's already merchandise available for a potential presidential run in 2044. Of course that's assuming that Barron actually has such political ambitions. (As of this writing Barron hasn't given any interviews and I haven't found any social media accounts that he currently has.) If Barron Trump really decides to make his first run for the White House in 20 years, it's highly likely that his father will be dead and buried by then so we will all be spared from his speeches urging people to vote for his son for president.

The Rise in Neotoddlerism in Modern Protests

I came across this interesting essay called The Rise in Neotoddlerism, which is about the rise of certain types of protests that gain newspaper headlines, such as splattering red paint on statues and violent street protests, and what can be done to stop or seriously curtail them. It's definitely worth reading.

And Finally…

Last year, in my introduction to propaganda article I mentioned that there are two types of Kremlin propaganda—external propaganda that's made in English, which makes it easier to sway people living outside of Russia with false messages, and internal propaganda that's made in Russian for Russian residents only. Internal propaganda takes the form of patriotic pop music as sung by Kremlin-approved singers like Shaman, movies featuring heroic Russians, and TV shows that feature hours of Kremlin propaganda that is shown each day.

There is one other way that Kremlin propagandists reach the average Russians that I hadn't heard of before until I stumbled on this YouTube video. Apparently there are paperback pulp fiction novels featuring heroic Russians fighting their enemies (which includes the US and the UK) that are published with the Kremlin seal of approval. I found a video on YouTube that discusses just a few of the over 1,000 novels that have been published over the past 10 years. The plots are pretty laughable and if weren't for the fact that there's a real-life devastating war going on in Eastern Europe, they would have a campy charm to them. Sadly these novels are yet another way that the Kremlin brainwashes Russians enough to ensure that most Russian citizens aren't going to stage any antiwar protests againt their government's invasion of Ukraine. Here's the video discussing some of these Russian pulp fiction novels.

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