Vote for Kamala Harris
The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 121 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast
Tuesday is election day, and if you live in a state where your vote matters, I urge you to vote for Kamala Harris. Not because I love Harris, but because she’s obviously a better alternative than Donald Trump. Trump is one of the worst possible people to elect as President. And if you won’t take my word for it, just ask the people who actually worked with him.
John Kelly, his former chief of staff and four-star Marine Corps general says Trump is a fascist and governs like a dictator. I know it’s easy to dismiss accusations of fascism because the Left loves to call everything fascist, but Kelly actually looked it up. He defined it as “far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy.” And Kelly, who worked very closely with Trump, says that’s what he’s going for. Mark Milley, the former Chairman of the joint chiefs, says Trump is “the most dangerous person to this country.” James Mattis, Trump’s first defense secretary, says he agrees with Milley, and that “the threat is high.” Another of his defense secretaries, Mark Esper, says Trump is a threat to democracy and everything else that makes America great, and that Trump would likely use the military against US citizens. Mike Pence refuses to endorse him. So do other cabinet officials such as Dan Coats, his director of national intelligence and two former National Security Advisors - John Bolton and H.R. McMaster. Numerous other executive branch officials have spoken out against Trump or endorsed Harris, and the vast majority have declined to endorse him. When NBC News reached out to 44 of Trump’s former cabinet officials, only 4 said they supported his reelection.
This is actually a big deal! Jonathan Chait recently wrote “Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and almost every president in history, has had zero high-level officials from her Cabinet describe her as fascistic or otherwise fundamentally unfit for high office. The number of Trump officials who have made this claim about him is extraordinary.” Think about that for a minute. George W. Bush lied us into a war and started a campaign of secret torture prisons, and even he didn’t have his own people coming out against him. How bad do you have to be for your own cabinet officials to look at you and be like “man, this guy is such an asshole, I need to go public about it.” Trump is so bad that even Dick Cheney - yes, that Dick Cheney - thinks he’s too authoritarian.
The standard retort is “if he’s so bad, why wasn’t his first term a complete disaster?” Well, his first term wasn’t great! Lest we forget, here are a few things he did: took bribes out in the open, in the form of foreign governments booking his hotels and golf clubs for exorbitant rates, imposed a travel ban against a handful of countries for arbitrary reasons, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and then did nothing to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, tried to extort Ukraine into making up fake allegations against Joe Biden, ordered protesters tear-gassed so he could go take a photo holding up a bible, issued pardons for his toadies and a handful of corrupt politicians, and tried to steal a fucking election.
But his second term would be even worse! In his first term, he had all the people I mentioned a minute ago. That’s not going to be the case in a second term. To the extent that he’s capable of learning, Trump has learned his lesson and now prioritizes loyalty above all else. There won’t be any Mark Milley or James Mattis in a second term. Instead there will be Tucker Carlson and the MyPillow guy. J.D. Vance is not going to defend the Constitution. For fuck’s sake, Trump recently listed Aileen Cannon, the corrupt Federal judge who dismissed his election stealing case, as a potential pick for attorney general. Just last week he said he’ll let RFK, Jr. “go wild” on food and medicine. Can you imagine a worse person to put in charge of regulating food and medicine? He’s not going to have any smart, sane people to talk him out of his crazy plan to put 20% tariffs on all imported goods or deport 20 million illegal immigrants?
Here are a few things Trump tried to do in his first term through executive order, but was either talked out of or prevented by his staff: ban Muslims from entering the country, withdraw from NATO, fire the special counsel investigating him, completely close the Southern border (including commercial trucks), revoke the security clearances of his critics, cut off aid to South Korea and Japan, assassinate the president of Syria, replace the Fed chair with a loyalist, and just stop granting birthright citizenship. This is the kind of shit we’ll get in a second Trump term. Even if it’s not successful, it’s very bad to have the president pushing the boundaries this way! Presidents pushing the boundaries of the law with the help of complaint judges are how we got secret CIA torture prisons, warrantless mass surveillance, and government control over farmers growing their own crops to feed to their own livestock.
On the other hand, I expect a Harris presidency to be mostly a continuation of the Biden presidency. Certainly not ideal, but actually not that bad! Things are pretty good! The stock market is at an all-time high. After a covid-related increase, inflation is down to the normal 2% level. Unemployment is 4.1%, near record lows. Apartment construction is at a 50-year high. GDP growth is healthy. Wages are up. Carbon emissions are down. New businesses are being formed at almost twice the rate of 2019. Yahoo finance just gave Biden an A grade on the economy.
Sure, there are some problems, most notably the cost of housing, but Harris is the only one proposing any actual solution. She just gave a speech about how we need to cut red tape and increase supply. Trump went full NIMBY and warned that democrats would “destroy the suburbs” if they required any changes to local zoning laws. Healthcare costs too much, but neither candidate has any plan to address that effectively. Childcare is expensive, but Harris wants to give parents a refundable tax credit (basically a UBI for parents) so they can either afford childcare or take some time off work. Trump has no plan. Trump has no plan for anything. He’s just going to do whatever he thinks benefits him personally.
It’s not entirely one-sided. If Trump wins, then next episode I’ll have some sort of take on the upside of a Trump presidency, including things like potentially cutting regulations and letting big tech do its thing. Harris wants to do some very stupid things like price controls and “racial equity.” But on balance, especially after factoring in that Congress will almost certainly be Republican, the right choice is obviously Harris. So please don’t be nihilistic about this and don’t try to draw some false equivalency or put your own moral purity above the actual consequences. This election has real stakes, and I urge you to seriously consider them before casting your vote or encouraging others to do so.