Quotes and Links

A week in review

Fox News anchor Bret Baier interviews Kamala Harris in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, Wednesday, October 16, 2024.

Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of various notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”

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• “There’s a group called ‘White Dudes for Harris’ but I’m not worried about them at all, because their wives and their wives’ lovers are all voting for me.” — Donald Trump, speaking at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner on Thursday evening

• “Trump-Russia was real. The Twitter Files were the hoax.” — David Frum

• “Have you noticed how sharply the polls have shifted in Trump’s favor over the last couple weeks, with these claims that Trump is surging with black and Latino voters and leading in every single swing state according to secret internal polls despite all the Hitler talk? Yes, this race will be far too close. Because unfortunately we do have a fascist groundswell in parts of this country—mainly among white men, let’s be clear, but in small pockets among black and brown men, too.” — Joy Reid

• “I think we have the press to blame for a lot of this.” — The View’s Sunny Hostin, on why Kamala Harris isn’t leading in the polls

• “The Republican Party has turned into a cult. Why? Because of anti-diversity attitudes and big money not wanting to pay taxes.” — Nancy Pelosi, during a sit-down talk at The Royal Institute of International Affairs

• “Have you ever wondered why Germans didn’t do anything about Hitler? Well, the rest of the world is wondering exactly that about Americans and Trump.” — Progressive activist Andrea Junker

• “To be a Democrat one must believe Kamala is smart and Elon is dumb.” — American entrepreneur Balaji S. Srinivasan

• “You are electing Elon Musk if you’re electing Donald Trump.” — MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch

• “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.” — California Coastal Commissioner Gretchen Newsom, on why state officials are no longer allowing SpaceX to launch rockets off the Central California coast

• “How cunning it was of the wily Trump to forego becoming a fascist dictator in his first term and wait until he maybe won a second term. Most power-mad monsters don’t have that kind of patience!” — Walter Kirn

• “At the elite level, political journalists have a basic contempt for Democrats.” — Josh Marshall, founder and editor-in-chief of Talking Points Memo

• “At this particular hour, if you believe the polling, Donald Trump’s gonna put up the best performance with black voters since Richard Nixon back in 1960. Not ‘68, since 1960. That’s 64 years ago. Among Hispanic voters, Donald Trump’s gonna put up the best performance for a Republican since 2004.” — Harry Eten, Senior Political Data Reporter at CNN

• “You got to take responsibility for what happened in your administration.” — Kamala Harris, in her interview with Bret Baier

• “There’s a contradiction between what Democratic women expect aesthetically and sexually out of men and what they demand politically. The result is this uncanny valley of politically emasculated men LARPing as manly macho men.” — Newsweek’s Batya Ungar-Sargon

• “A lot of men think Democrats care more about dudes who want to become women than they do about dudes who just wanna be dudes. No amount of hunting cosplay or cringe videos is gonna change it. The bed is made.” — CNN’s Scott Jennings

• “I could not believe the lie that if I mimicked the patriarchal model of family, I would receive comfort and safety in exchange. That was the lie of fascism.” — The New Yorker’s Emily Witt

• “Everyone who paid attention in high school history class knows that Trump’s anti-immigration language is the language of fascists and white supremacists throughout history.” — Brian Stelter, who failed to mention on CNN that the specific “anti-immigration language” Trump was using was in reference to a couple of savage Tren de Aragua gang members (here illegally) who were recently arrested, and not just a couple of “Hispanic men with face tattoos”

• “[Trump] said that we’ve got these cities and these towns that are being overrun by gangs and the crime is out of control. I absolutely agree with that. And guess what? It’s the MAGA gang, it is the white supremacists that have decided to descend upon places such as Springfield, Ohio.” — Dem. Representative Jasmine Crockett, speaking on MSNBC

• “I’m kind of shocked that the big Dick and Liz Cheney endorsements didn’t give Kamala any noticeable poll bounce, given how beloved the Cheney family has long been among the American people: Like when Dick left office with 24% approval and Liz lost her primary race by 36 points.” — Glenn Greenwald

• “If Trump wins on November 5, it will be because of his support from a majority of white America. As a white American, and a white American man to boot, I’ve got to say, in the immortal words of Pogo: We have met the enemy and he is us.” — Bill Kristol

• “The United States Constitution is actually quite bad.” — Vox’s Ian Millhiser

If you need to get past a paywall, try Archive Today or 12ft.io.

• “Kamala Harris’s Hundred-Day Campaign,” from The New Yorker.

• Another New Yorker piece, this one about the strange death of a Sherlock Holmes fanatic.

• A GQ story about the “Dougherty Gang,” three siblings who went on one of the most bizarre crime sprees in recent memory.

• “‘Leave No Soldier Behind’: The Unsolved Mystery of the Soldier Who Died in the Watchtower,” from Vanity Fair.

• The New York Times: “The University of Michigan Doubled Down on D.E.I. What Went Wrong?”

• Another NYT piece on how the U.S. is currently undergoing a once-in-a-generation overhaul to its nuclear arsenal that could cost more than $1.7 trillion.

• “Shoplifters Gone Wild,” from The Atlantic.