Tricked by Elon and Trump???

Surely not!

In Michigan, canvassers and paid door knockers for the former president, contracted by a firm associated with America PAC, have been subjected to poor working conditions: A number of them have been driven around in the back of a seatless U-Haul van, according to video obtained by WIRED, and threatened that their lodging at a local motel wouldn’t be paid for if they didn’t meet canvassing quotas. One door knocker alleges that they didn’t even know they were signing up for anything having to do with Musk or Trump.

  Wired

OK, that one maybe deserves shit. What did they think they were signing up for?

“I knew nothing of the job, or much of the job description, other than going door to door and asking the voters who are they voting for,” says a door knocker who was one of the people in the back of the van and who is requesting anonymity because they signed a nondisclosure agreement. “Then, after I signed over an NDA, is when I found out we are for Republicans and with Trump.”

Okay, that's shitty. But, read the fine print, people. Ask questions.

The Trump campaign has largely outsourced its field operation in Michigan to Musk, a move that has come under heavy criticism. [...] Blitz Canvassing has also reportedly had issues with fake door knocks being flagged by Campaign Sidekick, the glitchy app used by America PAC. In Nevada and Arizona, up to a quarter of the door interactions were flagged as potential fakes within the app, according to The Guardian.

[...]

The contract these [Michigan] door knockers signed with Blitz Canvassing, which is a subcontractor of Musk’s America PAC, says they are “expected to maintain a 17-22% engagement rate during the campaign,” which is a high target relative to the number of people who typically open their door for a stranger. A group of out-of-state America PAC canvassers were told during a recent team meeting that if they didn’t hit their targets, which the door knocker says were more than 1,000 a week on total doors knocked, the organization would stop paying for their motel rooms.

[...]

Field organizing normally does not work this way. The gold standard for door knocking apps is MiniVAN, and transportation usually involves carpooling with other volunteers or campaign staff offering a ride—preferably, with seat belts.

[...]

“We were all told our transportation would be handled and we’d be in rental cars. It turned out to be U-Haul vans, and I felt embarrassed and played,” the door knocker tells WIRED.

You were.

UPDATE 11/03/2024:  Played big.

Who could have seen that coming?

Grift from the Trump campaign???

A Trump campaign worker has been fired after trying to blow the whistle on what she called “grift and greed” by top campaign officials—and an alleged “bugging” plot, the Daily Beast has learned.

The worker, whose identity the Beast is withholding, wrote an explosive email after she was fired detailing her concerns about how the campaign’s most senior leaders, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, appear to be funneling millions of dollars to companies which, she alleges, are overcharging Donald Trump.

  Daily Beast

Turn-about is fair play?

Even more sensationally, the woman also wrote in her email that campaign employees became convinced that leadership had installed “a listening device in a cut out hole” to a conference room at campaign headquarters in South Florida to eavesdrop on private conversations by their colleagues.

Wouldn't surprise me. But conspiracy theories breed paranoia and more conspiracy theories, so the Trump world is riddled with paranoia.

“There are napkins stuffed in all the gaps in the conference room now. It seems like they’re willing to go to extremes.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's little secret

Yeah?  The 119th Congress convenes January 3, 2025.  Electoral votes are counted January 6. What if Democrats take back the House and Hakeem Jeffries is the Speaker?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10/29/2024:

Believe it or don't.  It's a 50-50 prospect.  On the one hand, why would that be a secret?  And on the other, it wouldn't be the first time Trump pretended he had some special, secret knowledge you should be excitedly waiting to hear.

Here's your election fraud

And just as you probably guessed, as usual, it's from Republicans.  Sometimes with the help of the Russians.

Blatant.  Shameless.

Of course the supposed poll worker is black.

If it was a MAGA supporting organization, some people could be heading to prison for a very long time. Pennsylvania has numerous safeguards and checks in place so that large scale voter registration fraud will be caught. Republicans are desperate to win Pennsylvania for Trump, so they either may have engaged in illegal activity for Trump, or the paid organization was engaged in fraud for profit.

  PoliticusUSA

And the king of irony projection weighs in...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Who's surprised?

Grifting cheaters hired grifting cheaters to work for them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Amen

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Aha! Another reason he had a large crowd

2. "I’d love to bring you up on stage for my Butler rally!" was the subject line of a September 2 fundraising email from Trump. He sent similar messages on 9/10, 9/28, and 10/1.

3. Trump held his rally in Butler on Saturday, and the only person he introduced on stage was Elon Musk.  

There was no sign of a contest winner at any time during Trump's lengthy appearance at the rally — from the moment Trump took the stage to when he left almost two hours later.

4. Was it all a scam? The Trump campaign seems sensitive to this criticism. The bottom of Trump's October 1 email promoting the Butler contest invites supporters to "MEET OUR PREVIOUS CONTEST WINNERS." It includes a photo of Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and two supporters at the Miami Grand Prix held in May..

5. But there could not have been a contest to meet Trump at the Miami Grand Prix because, according to USA Today, the race organizers "did not disclose before the race if Trump would attend for security reasons." A database of Trump's fundraising appeals contains no mention of the Miami event.

6. Trump has a history of promoting dubious and outright fraudulent contests. Popular Information identified more than a dozen of them during the 2020 campaign.

7. In 2022, the Washington Post reported on a contest for a meal with Trump in New Orleans that no one won.

Everything the man does is a scame.  Apparently his supporters don't care, or don't realize they're falling for it each and every time.

..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's voter turnout angle

Targeting irregular voters, teaching supporters to surveil polling places and bombarding states with voting-related lawsuits – this is the machine the Trump campaign has built for an election that many expect to hinge on just tens of thousands of ballots cast across seven battleground states.

  CNN

And that is something that needs to be rectified in order to have a more democratic country.

The approach marks a stark contrast to how Trump won the Grand Rapids metro area and other battlegrounds eight years ago, when voter outreach efforts were coordinated by the Republican Party and organized out of regional field offices. And it’s one that has attracted plenty of detractors among GOP strategists, who say they see little evidence of the sophisticated political apparatus the Trump campaign claims is in motion. They worry too much emphasis has been placed on people who are disengaged from politics and on appeasing Trump’s fixation with relitigating the 2020 election.

[...]

The campaign’s untraditional strategy was on display when conservative commentator Tucker Carlson came to Grand Rapids last month. He urged his audience to download an app – 10xVotes – that promises to help them find the non-voting conservatives among their family and friends. Days later, the Michigan state party chairman also plugged 10xVotes when he rolled into Traverse City, Michigan, alongside Trump running mate JD Vance.

[...]

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign and Republican Party are suing the state of Michigan to keep local Veteran Affairs offices and other federal outposts from offering voter registration.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

Their choices of images to go with the narrative are ... interesting!

Good god!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Whaaat?

In Trump's rallies lately, he's been saying he - no, "we" - lost "by a whisker" in 2020, or in one case by "just a little bit."  So why would JD Vance not admit it in the VP debate?  And why won't Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, admit it?

Hell yes!  Thousands of them are sitting in prison because they cared enough to attack the Capitol.  Millions are interested in fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power, which means the loser steps down quietly, if not graciously.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Un-fucking-believable

You have to hear it to believe it.

What words does he know that will get a rise out of his supporters?  Never mind that beyond being untrue, it makes no sense.

This Pennsylvania rally may be the most lunatic of all Trump's speeches, and that's saying a lot.  Check it out.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11:33 am:

2016 Trump gang still in Russia propaganda business

[A] group of former Trump advisers and operatives have quietly helped build a pro-Russian website that frequently spreads debunked conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine, election fraud and vaccines.

Working alongside contributors for Kremlin state media, the former Donald Trump policy aide George Papadopoulos, his wife, Simona Mangiante, and others have become editorial board members of the website Intelligencer, which is increasingly becoming a source of news for those in the rightwing ecosystem.

  Pressway

You remember Papadopoulos - Trump's early 2016 foreign policy aide who was drunkenly giving info to an Australian diplomat, which started the Russian collusion investigations, and whom Trump claimed was no more than a coffee boy. BTW, he pled guilty in 2018 to lying to the FBI about contacts with Joseph Mifsud, the professor who was linked to the Kremlin and offered dirt on Hillary Clinton. Remember all that?

The site appears to have launched at the end of 2023 – and nearly half of Intelligencer’s board members are either former aides, surrogates or fake electors for Trump’s previous two campaigns.

[...]

Intelligencer appears to be gaining in popularity. It recently had its best month for internet traffic, with an increase of nearly 300% during August, according to data from Similarweb, and its articles have been shared on social media by the conspiracist Alex Jones, former Trump White House staffer Garrett Ziegler and former Trump aide Roger Stone.

“Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has increasingly been forced to rely on networks of proxies and influencers whose conspiracist ‘brand’ generates income and audiences through social media monetization and some of whom Russia has now been caught covertly subsidizing,” [Emma Briant, an associate professor of news and political communication at Monash University in Australia,] said.

The website’s opaque ownership structure makes it difficult to understand its financial backing, and there is no direct evidence of Kremlin funding. There is no corporate entity listed anywhere on the website, just a business address in Los Angeles.

[...]

Show hosts and guests frequently deny climate change, discuss culture war issues in the US, espouse pro-Russian viewpoints on the war in Ukraine, and spread conspiracy theories about Covid-19.

[...]

Many of the articles promote debunked conspiracy theories about vaccines and fraud in the 2020 presidential election, as well as stories that are aggressively anti-Ukrainian.

[...]

[Papadopoulos' wife, Simona Mangiante,along with fellow board member Igor Lopatonok, appears to have parlayed this work into a new documentary about the Hunter Biden laptop saga called Hunter’s Laptop: Requiem for Ukraine. According to social media posts, the documentary premiered on 5 September at the Trump International hotel in Chicago.

[...]

According to invitations for the Hunter Biden documentary premiere, the event was hosted by the Christian Orthodox Coalition, an organization which claims to educate Orthodox Christians on social and cultural issues. Four of the organization’s board members are also board members of Intelligencer, including Papadopoulos, Mangiante and Lopatonok.

[...]

Three other editorial board members also have close connections to the Trump campaigns. Leah Hoopes and Greg Stenstrom, both from Pennsylvania, have written a book falsely alleging the 2020 election was stolen. Both of them have been litigants in court cases challenging the results of the election in Pennsylvania, and Hoopes was one of Pennsylvania’s fake electors, who falsely signed paperwork saying that Trump had won the election.

[...]

“Intelligencer appears to be one of several [Russia-friendly] operations targeting the upcoming US elections, leveraging a network of far-right figures and disinformation tactics,” Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said.

[...]

“With an editorial board that reads like a who’s who of Putinist propaganda, Intelligencer is not your usual Russian ‘fake news’ site,” Briant said. “We may see more efforts like Intelligencer, which brings together cohorts of recognizable pro-Russian writers and consolidates their effort into a respectable-looking ‘news’ platform aiming to promote Russia’s influence in the US election and beyond.”

[...]

Eliason said that the website is funded out of pocket and the contributors contribute pieces because it “because it makes sense to them”.

Well, that's all that matters, surely.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The best people

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Promise them anything

[W]e’ve reached a point in the presidential race in which [Trump], frustrated by his standing in the polls, fearing a possible defeat and feeling increasingly desperate, is starting to blurt out all kinds of ideas without vetting or forethought.

  MSNBC

To be fair, this isn't the start of him blurting out ideas without vetting or forethought. The ideas are just getting more and more unlikely.

Earlier this week, for example, Trump published an item to his social media platform vowing that he’ll cut consumers car insurance bills in half. Can he do that? No. Does he have any meaningful ideas about pursuing such a goal? No. Has he mentioned it since? No. Will anyone remember this a month from now? Probably not.

[...]

Indeed, it’s been difficult to keep up with the flurry of random ideas the GOP nominee has blurted out lately. Remember the plan for free IVF? How about defraying the costs of child-care expenses with imaginary tariff money? What about the proposal to amend the 25th Amendment? Or the avalanche of multitrillion-dollar tax cuts that collapse under minimal scrutiny?

[...]

I haven’t the foggiest idea what proposal Trump might come up with next, but with 46 days remaining before Election Day, it’s a safe bet the list will be long and nonsensical.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09/22/2024:

Sure

It's obvious: just switch 2 letters.  It should read

TEAMUTINY

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Disgusting person

“I’m going to go there in the next two weeks. I’m going to Springfield,” the GOP presidential nominee told supporters in Uniondale, New York.

“You may never see me again, but that’s OK. Got to do what I got to do,” he added. “‘Whatever happened to Trump?’ ‘Well, he never got out of Springfield.’”

Trump was speaking just one day after Springfield’s Republican Mayor Rob Rue said a Trump visit would be “an extreme strain on our resources.”

[...]

DeWine said there have been at least 33 bomb threats in Springfield since Trump’s remarks at the presidential debate.

[...]

The claims have been denounced as bogus by local officials, and a police report that Vance’s campaign cited in support of the outlandish theory turned out to be about a missing cat that was ultimately found in their owner’s basement.

[...]

Trump also said he is going to Aurora, Colorado, another city he targeted over its Venezuelan community. In the debate, he repeated debunked rumors that a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex in the city.

  Daily Beast

He doesn't care who or how many get hurt because of him. Are they going to stage a(nother?) fake assassination attempt while he's there?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09/26/2024: 

Assume Higgins will be bragging about it.

UPDATE 10/08/2024:

Effing nuts

This whole thing is absolutely nuts.  But it's hard not to notice he names Lincoln in comparison to how badly he's been treated, and then says, "I even got shot."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A "very important" Space National Guard

LOL  He's talking to a National Guard unit, so he gets cheers when he mentions this brilliant idea.  Why?  They're already in the National Guard. Do they want a different assignment? 

He already created a Space Force (which was a wonderful Steve Carell TV series, btw).  Now we need a Space National Guard.  What will they do?  Does America own a piece of space they'll be covering?  We have an Air National Guard, don't we? 

Also, I wonder what cut he gets of the grift from Newsmax scams advertised on screen every time he gives a talk.  Probably the biggest cut.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 07:08 am:  

Donation black hole

Anyone who has spent time reviewing Donald Trump’s campaign spending reports would quickly conclude they’re a governance nightmare. There is so little disclosure about what happened to the billions raised in 2020 and 2024 that donors (and maybe even the former president himself) can’t possibly know how it was spent.

Federal Election Commission campaign disclosure reports from 2020 show that much of the money donated to the Trump campaign went into a legal and financial black hole reportedly controlled by Trump family members and close associates.

[...]

During the 2020 election, almost $516 million of the over $780 million spent by the Trump campaign was directed to American Made Media Consultants, a Delaware-based private company created in 2018 that masked the identities of who ultimately received donor dollars [...] How A.M.M.C. spent the money was a mystery even to Mr. Trump’s campaign team.

[...]

None of the expenses were itemized or otherwise explained aside from anodyne descriptions including “placed media,” “SMS advertising” and “online advertising.” F.E.C. rules require candidates to fully and accurately disclose the final recipients of their campaign disbursements, which is usually understood to include when payments are made through a vendor such as A.M.M.C.

[...]

A.M.M.C.’s first president was reported to be Lara Trump, the wife of Mr. Trump’s son Eric. The New York Times reported that A.M.M.C. had a treasurer who was also the chief financial officer of Mr. Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, signed off on the plan to set up A.M.M.C., and one of Eric Trump’s deputies from the Trump Organization was involved in running it.

Ms. Trump is now co-chair of the Republican National Committee, which, soon after her arrival, announced it would link up with the Trump campaign for joint fund-raising. The joint entity prioritizes a PAC that pays Mr. Trump’s legal fees over the R.N.C.

[...]

This election, the Trump campaign and four of its PACs have paid Red Curve Solutions, another private company, at least $18 million. The Campaign Legal Center says Red Curve appears to pay Mr. Trump’s legal bills and then gets reimbursed by the PACs. (The law is murky on what types of legal bills can be paid by campaigns, but some are allowed.)

[...]

What percentage of donor contributions go to lawyers defending Mr. Trump? It’s impossible to know.

In June, NBC revealed the existence of a new mystery company, called Launchpad Strategies. Launchpad took in almost $15 million in Trump political cash via the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee and the Trump National Committee. Little is known about this new group. It was created in 2023 and the Trump campaign says it is related to fund-raising. We don’t know who owns it, who runs it or where the $15 million went.

  NYT

We have a good guess.

Biden’s campaign also spent donor cash on legal bills, though apparently in far smaller quantities. It paid over $1 million for attorneys during a special counsel probe of the president’s handling of classified documents.

[...]

[F]rom early March through July of this year, the Biden and now Harris campaign outspent the Trump campaign three to one on advertising. By late May, the Democratic campaign had opened 200 field offices and hired 1,000 staff members in key states. The Trump campaign didn’t open its first office in the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania until June. The Biden campaign had 24 there in April.

That's normally how campaign contributions would be spent.

Donors should demand more information about how their money is spent. But that would most likely offend the Trump family and confidants running the campaign. And the whole point of donating to Mr. Trump is to get on his good side.

[...]

The Federal Election Commission should demand that all campaigns disclose recipients of more than $200 in campaign cash. At least that’s what the law says. Campaign Legal Center tried to get the F.E.C. to enforce disclosure rules on the Trump campaign. The commissioners voted 3 to 3 to dismiss the matter, and federal courts have declined to step in. The legal center has appealed the case to the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

All Trump has to do with lawsuits is appeal them to the Supreme Court, where he owns several judges.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Kamala's team's Twitter account is always good

Yikes!  This picture.  I assume he's out golfing.  I now understand why he wears so much makeup for the cameras. 

Also, he has the creepy eyes of a chicken.  I mean, an actual chicken.

He tries to be nice to people.  LOL.  He's doing a "free poll" - what other kind is there?  Oh, maybe he's thinking about the cost to HIM for taking polls.

He'd rather keep it on policy.  But "they want to put you in jail for NOTHING." 

When comedians' crowds start thinning, it's probably a sign they don't have any new (or good) material.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 08/22/2024: