Elon Musk is panicking.
Peter Thiel is panicking.
House and Senate Republicans are panicking.
The crypto bros and their cynical, paid-in-cash lobbyists are panicking.
The authors of Project 2025—within Trump World, at the Heritage Foundation and beyond—are panicking.
Because they all see the 2024 race slipping away.
Trump is "exhausted." Harris is energized.
Trump is "weaving." Harris is focused.
Trump is "retreating" to his safe spaces. Harris is making bold moves and big gains.
Kamala Harris is winning this election
Even as the polls have shown Harris consistently leading Trump nationwide and in the most crucial states, what the polls have failed to capture is the Democrats' lead in enthusiasm and organization.
In a rare October 14 interview with New York magazine, Harris campaign adviser David Plouffe said that, while would take a lot of hard work to "make sure we hit our vote-share target numbers... we’re confident we’re on a trajectory to do that."
So far, he's being proven correct.
Early voting numbers have been off the charts
Between October 15 and 18, more than 1.2 million votes were cast in Georgia. And even though North Carolina is still reeling from Hurricane Helene, more than 350,000 votes were cast on October 18, the first day of early voting—a new record.
Meanwhile, in the week since it was revealed that former Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley called Trump "fascist to the core," the former President has continued his streak of canceling tough interviews, embarrassing himself in friendly venues, and falling asleep in public.
Trump's humiliating himself and his party—and exposing his family members to claims of "elder abuse."
For years, the former president's inability to understand and respond to the most simple questions has been "sane-washed" by The New York Times and other news outlets.
This week, Trump's cognitive decline couldn't be ignored
Trump's recent 39-minute "dance party" at a Town Hall event where he took only 4 questions revealed him as even more "unhinged" than the "Joe Biden" being caricatured on SNL in Dana Carvey's ridiculous and unfair impersonation.
The Washington Post called it "bizarre." So did Rolling Stone, whose headline described it as "The Most Disastrous Dance Party in American Political History."
On October 17, The New York Times published a lengthy article highlighting Trump's increasing incoherence and making clear that his "weaves" were not nearly as brilliant as they sounded in his own head.
In Arizona, Trump told a crowd he wanted to tell “one quick story” about a friend with a car plant in Mexico:
But he never finished his tale. Instead, he lost the thread one minute later as he complained that if he mispronounced one word he would be accused of being “cognitively impaired.” Then, he botched the phrase by saying President Biden was the one who was “cognitively repaired” and referred to the election as three and a half months away, not three and a half weeks.
About 20 minutes later, the Times reported, Trump told the crowd he was wrapping up the speech, then "proceeded to speak for 17 more minutes."
This week, Elon's extremism turned uglier than ever
No one is working harder to elect Donald Trump in 2024 than Elon Musk. And no one will be more humiliated by a Trump defeat than Elon.
As Brian Beutler wrote yesterday:
Musk has made himself a controversial, polarizing, widely disliked figure, much like Donald Trump. I want to see Trump defeated in humiliating fashion. I want to see Elon Musk humiliated almost as much, and for similar reasons. After all, Musk seeks to thrust Trump on the country, so that the two of them can remake the world together.
And no one (other than Trump himself) has spread more racist lies, more disinformation, or more dangerous conspiracy theories than the world's richest illegal immigrant.
As Axios wrote today:
In the heat of this historic election, educated elites who should know better — billionaires, elected officials, journalists — keep falling for fakes, conspiracy theories and outright lies.... Elon Musk, whose takeover of X has enabled fake news slop at scale, is among the most consistent offenders — credulously promoting baseless claims about voter fraud that rack up billions of views.
And Musk isn't doing it by accident. He's doing it out of desperation. He remembers how badly he was humiliated in the midterms when his Twitter bully pulpit didn't turn him into a kingmaker.
This year, he's leaving nothing to chance. He's pouring more than $100 million into the race. He's changing his "Twitter Files" rules—and manipulating the X algorithm—on the fly to spread his unique brand of disinformation.
He's actively promoting the election betting site Polymarket, a Peter Thiel-funded psy op whose central short-term purpose is to create false victory narrative for Trump.
As The Wall Street Journal just reported, Polymarket is as easily manipulated by crypto bros and billionaires as Dogecoin used to be. All it took was $30 million in bets from four accounts (possibly controlled by the same person) to completely distort the odds for a Trump victory.
The Polymarket odds are now being used by Musk and others to promote the "inevitability" of a Trump victory—even as the most recent polling by reliable organizations shows a tilt back toward Harris.
Sorry boys, Kamala is winning this election
Meanwhile, the GOP "shitpolls" are still being released, enough to even tip 538 toward favoring Trump.
As Simon Rosenberg tweeted yesterday:
Rs dropped 5 polls into natl polling averages today, moving 538. That's over 70+ red wave polls, at least 29 different orgs, Polymarket voodoo too. They just keep working the averages, & they keep moving. Just like 2022. And they would only be doing it if they were losing.
Musk's desperation is also on display in his awkward stump appearances for Trump in Pennsylvania and the more-than-doubling of his bribes to voters in swing states, where he is now offering $100 to those willing to sign a pro-gun and pro-free-speech petition.
That petition would make more sense, of course, if Musk wasn't censoring, banning (and shadow-banning) journalists so routinely.
Elon Musk is like Goebbels, Steve Bannon, and Roger Stone rolled into one
When it comes to election interference, Musk's open displays of disinformation, market manipulation, and bribery are bad enough.
Somehow he's getting away with running a Super PAC that's coordinating with the Trump campaign, paying off voters, and pushing massive lies on a social media platform he aggressively manipulates to promote his own tweets and prioritize the content he supports.
Now he's also been exposed as the dark money financier of the worst dirty tricks we've seen yet.
Musk's ugly, antisemitic behavior keeps getting worse
As Huffington Post reported, Musk is currently funding the sickest, most deceptive ads America has ever seen. In video ads and mailings being slammed as antisemitic, he's telling Arab voters in Michigan than Harris is rabidly pro-Israel and "leans on Jewish husband Doug Emhoff to advise on high-level pro-Israel policies." Meanwhile, Musk is targeting Jewish voters in Pennsylvania with ads claiming that "two-faced" Harris is "pandering" to Palestinians.
As Chris Hayes said on MSNBC in this must-watch clip, "It is the grossest, most cynical ploy in an election cycle that’s rotten with cynical ploys."
How low is Musk willing to go?
Two and a half weeks from Election Day, Elon has gone beyond the gutter. He's already swimming in the sewers.
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