Deranged Trump Calls to Jail All of His Political Enemies

Donald Trump is still setting the stage to claim a stolen election in November.

Over the weekend, the Republican presidential nominee called for the imprisonment of his enemies, demanding that those involved with what he considers election interference should be prosecuted and jailed.

“CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday. “It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”

That’s a convenient reversal of where Trump was just last week, when he admitted that he lost the 2020 presidential election “by a whisker.”

“We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T!” Trump continued, warning his followers to not support people in positions of authority overseeing the upcoming election. “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

Trump’s tirade did not, however, refer to himself, despite the fact that he’s criminally charged with election subversion in Washington, D.C., and Georgia. Legal experts believe that Trump’s own admission of losing the 2020 election could damn his chances of surviving his January 6 trial, a case that was considered practically dead after the Supreme Court granted the former president wide-ranging immunity in July.

Donald Trump’s campaign team is worried that he’s going to mess up in his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday.

The staffers reportedly don’t know if a “happy Trump” or “angry Trump” will show up  at the National Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, where ABC News will be hosting the debate, according to unnamed sources who spoke to The Guardian.

If Trump is frustrated, he may resort to personal insults, taking aim at Harris’s race and gender and hurting voters’ perceptions, which some of his fellow Republicans have criticized as counterproductive. Trump could also go into one of his angry rants, which gets his MAGA base excited but could alienate independent and swing voters.

After President Biden’s poor showing in June’s debate with Trump, Biden faced criticism and pressure that led to him dropping out of the race. Harris’s entry to the top of the Democratic debate has reversed Trump’s momentum, making his campaign desperate for a winning attack line or other means to regain their polling edge.

So Trump’s team hopes that a strong, winning performance can improve his standing. Ever since Harris entered the race, the Trump-Vance campaign has floundered, with damaging revelations about Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance. His comments about people without children and his inability to interact normally with the public have not helped the campaign’s prospects.

Meanwhile, Harris’s selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz seems like a masterstroke in comparison, thanks to Walz’s strong record as a teacher and military veteran. The Democratic vice presidential candidate has also produced some powerful sound bites and hit Republicans hard with one of the strongest and simplest Democratic attack lines in years: calling them weird.

Like in June’s debate, each candidate’s microphones will be muted when it’s not their turn to speak, which is a relief to Trump staffers who think his interruptions will make him look bad. Unlike with Biden, Harris will have rhetorical skills that she honed in her days as a prosecutor, which could easily rattle a convicted felon showing signs of cognitive decline.

Nikki Haley is now working in communications—and she’s going to tweet whatever she wants.

On Friday, the failed Republican presidential candidate went deep in the archives to mock conservative pundit Lauren Chen, who was implicated this week in a Justice Department indictment on a massive Russian disinformation scheme.

A company Chen co-founded, Tenet Media, was found to have been funded by Russia as part of “a scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” And just a few days after the indictment, Tenet Media shuttered its doors.

“Karma’s a bitch,” Haley posted on X (formerly Twitter), quoting a Chen post from 2023 where the pundit said Haley “should move to Ukraine and run for its presidency then,” referencing Haley stating her support for Ukraine at a CNN town hall.

In addition to Tenet Media folding as a result of the indictment and the consequent negative publicity, Chen also lost her job at another conservative media outlet, Blaze Media. Meanwhile, Haley, who withdrew from the presidential race in March and subsequently endorsed Donald Trump, just took a job at a public affairs firm.

Tenet Media, which worked with right-wing influencers like Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, and Benny Johnson, is now a black mark on the résumé of Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan, the company’s other founder. Being singled out as a useful tool for a Russian disinformation campaign is not going to land her a cushy new job, unlike Nikki Haley.

Despite the funny tweet, it’s worth remembering that Haley is still backing Trump, who isn’t exactly a staunch supporter of Ukraine himself. But, seeing as she isn’t working in politics anymore, she can collect her P.R. paycheck and not have to worry about being called out herself.

Florida is reportedly sending police officers to the homes of people who signed a petition supporting an abortion rights ballot initiative.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration has begun investigating thousands of verified signatures that helped to put a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion on the ballot in November. The amendment would overturn Florida’s current six-week abortion ban.

Petition organizers collected about 100,000 more signatures than they needed, surpassing the 900,000 that are required by the state and ensuring that their policy would be on the ballot. Now the Department of State’s spokesperson Ryan Ash claims that his agency has “uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions.”

Supervisors in Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach, Osceola, Alachua, and Broward counties have been requested to gather around 36,000 signatures for state review, according to the Tampa Bay Times. One supervisor with 16 years of experience told the Times that the state’s request was entirely unprecedented. Not only had the state requested signatures that had already been verified, but they did so for a validated petition, not a rejected petition, which are typically the basis of fraud investigations.

Multiple residents in Lee County have reported being visited by law enforcement following up on their petition signatures.

Fort Myers resident Isaac Menasche shared in a Facebook post Wednesday that a “detective investigating petition fraud” had come to his home.

“I had indeed signed a petition seeking to have the right to an abortion placed on the ballot in Florida. I remembered doing so and the circumstances surrounding it,” wrote Menasche, noting that he doesn’t usually sign petitions.

“The experience left me shaken. What troubled me was he had a folder on me containing my personal information—about 10 pages. I saw a copy of my drivers license and copy of the petition I signed. It was obvious to me that a significant effort was exerted to determine if indeed I had signed the petition.”

Menasche wrote that it was “troubling” that such resources were being allocated to the investigation and wondered if the same would have been done for a less divisive issue than abortion.

Florida state Representative Anna Eskamani responded to the reported police encounter in a post on Facebook Friday.

“This is unhinged and undemocratic behavior being pushed by Governor Ron DeSantis in an effort to continue our state’s near total abortion ban,” Eskamani wrote. “It’s clear voter intimidation and plain corruption—continue to call it out and fight back.”

At his press conference Friday in New York, Donald Trump not only complained heavily about the defamation judgment that he’s appealing, but also about his own lawyers.

Trump said, “I have all of this legal talent, but legal talent cannot overcome rigged judges, they can’t overcome a 4 percent Republican area, and I’m disappointed in my legal talent, I’ll be honest with you. They’re good, they’re good people. They’re talented people.”

After that, however, Trump went off on a tangent about some kind of dress involved in his defamation trial, wondering why his lawyers didn’t mention it, as it somehow exonerated him.

Later in the press conference, Trump criticized one of his lawyers for telling him not to attend the defamation trial in 2023, and seemed unsure if it took place while he was still president.

The attacks on his own lawyers were a small part of Trump’s incoherent ramblings during his Friday press conference, from his bizarre choice to mention other sexual assault allegations against him to attacking E. Jean Carroll and basically inviting another lawsuit. It could all be more examples of his increasing cognitive decline, or his famously thin skin.

Either way, maybe the former president should avoid attacking his lawyers, considering they may be the only people standing between him and actual legal consequences for his actions. Then again, the Supreme Court did give him a huge favor with its immunity ruling earlier this summer, which was a big reason why his hush money sentencing was delayed for a second time. Still, keeping his mouth shut and focusing on his campaign would be the smart thing to do for Trump, but that’s never been his strong suit, and his campaign knows it.