Angelina Katsanis/POLITICO via AP Images
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe speaks at a Trump campaign rally in Madison Square Garden on October 27, 2024. During his remarks, he mentioned supposed Black "buddies" with whom he had "carved watermelon."
Trump may yet be his own worst enemy. The disgusting one-liners by Trump’s warm-up act, Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” could sink Trump’s campaign all by itself.
The comment pulled out every major Puerto Rican entertainer to endorse Harris, including Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez. There are 500,000 Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania, and Philly has America’s second largest Puerto Rican population after New York.
The Trump campaign ineptly tried to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s routine. Maybe the island of garbage is Trump.
In his shift to full-on fascism, Trump keeps escalating his threats to use the full power of the state to punish political enemies. In the 2016 election, some voters could kid themselves that Trump didn’t literally mean what he said. But he did. And Trump spent much of his term exasperated that many of his appointees refused to carry out his more outlandish commands.
His generals reminded him that their oath was to the Constitution. His first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, refused to direct the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Sessions’ successor, Bill Barr, who served as Trump’s enabler time after time, finally drew the line at Trump’s claims of a stolen election, and Trump fired him.
The deep state, otherwise known as the American constitutional system, had just enough life in it to contain Trump’s worst dictatorial impulses and demands. Very conservative Republicans in his administration, from his former generals to his Wall Street appointees and his own vice president, salvaged American democracy, just barely.
Trump will not make the same mistake twice. He will find appointees who are far more extremist and who are pure toadies. Trump’s recent rallies have offered a taste of fascism. If he is elected, he will deliver fascism full-on.
Will voters finally take notice?
I think they will—if Harris does what she needs to do in the final week.
Polls and focus groups suggest that a Republican message asking voters if they are better off than four years ago plays to Trump’s advantage, while a Democratic message warning of Trump’s racist and authoritarian character helps only marginally.
But that dynamic could shift somewhat as Trump becomes more explicitly fascist. As I’ve written, a key audience here is women, who are likely to be offended more on a personal level by Trump’s sheer bullying and by Republican threats to their health, than by the abstract label of fascism. Even before this past weekend, Harris was doing better among women than Biden in 2020 or Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Michelle Obama has been particularly eloquent on this point. Speaking in Kalamazoo, Michigan, addressing men, she said, “Women standing up for what is best for us can make the difference in this election. So let us use our voices in these final days to make it plain to the men in our lives that we need to stand not with Trump, but with us.”
For Harris, the challenge is to undermine Trump’s claims on the economy and to connect that to the threat that he represents as an autocrat. Harris gains by pointing out that many of his top appointees have refused to support him, including half his cabinet and former top military officials. She also gains by pointing out Trump’s past efforts to weaken Social Security and Medicare in order to finance tax cuts for billionaires. She needs to connect this message to a more powerful and better focused one on what her administration will do to enhance the prosperity of ordinary Americans.
Many commentators have expressed alarm at Trump’s plans, right out of the fascist playbook, to foment MAGA vigilantes to harass poll workers and try to delay the vote count certification. But unlike in 2020, when Trump allies controlled the government, the Justice Department today is in friendly hands and has a broad array of strategies to nip vigilantism in the bud, including sending in federal marshals where necessary.
At the state level, election administration is also in mostly friendly hands, with five of the seven swing states having Democratic governors and two (Nevada and Georgia) with anti-MAGA governors.
“Officials and civil society have been preparing for years for all manner of Trump’s desperate antics and are ready for them,” says Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy. “But it remains the case that the best protection for our democratic system is voters turning out en masse to reject Trump’s assault on it.”
If Harris wins, she will not be deprived of the presidency by vigilante tactics. But first she needs to win. And if Trump wins, America is not likely to get the do-over that we got in 2020 and 2024. The greater likelihood would be fascism for keeps. But thanks to Trump, Harris may spare us this fate.
