Top Trump Aide Makes Terrifying Threat at Madison Square Garden Rally

At Donald Trump’s rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden Sunday, one speaker took a bigoted swipe at Muslims—and he holds an important position in the Trump campaign.

Howard Lutnick, the CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and a co-chair of the Trump campaign’s transition team, told the crowd why they should vote for the former president and, raising a fist, invoked Islamophobia.

“So, the first thing: We must elect Donald J. Trump president because we must crush jihad,” Lutnick shouted to cheers.

Lutnick’s use of the word “jihad” in this context is an allusion to bigoted views about Islam. The term is widely mistranslated as “holy war,” when the literal Arabic translation is “to strive” or “to struggle.” In a religious context, the word is used to describe a person’s internal or external struggle to do good deeds.

The comments undermine the Trump campaign’s recent efforts to woo Arab American and Muslim voters, particularly in the battleground state of Michigan. Trump has a narrow lead among Arab American voters over Kamala Harris, and has found an opening due to the Harris campaign’s neglect of the community.

Harris has campaigned in Michigan with former Representative Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, drawing the ire of the state’s Arab American community, which includes 90,000 Iraqi Americans who remember the elder Cheney’s support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 as well as his daughter’s reputation for supporting torture and anti-Muslim bigotry.

The state also boasts large Lebanese and Palestinian communities who are seeing the Biden administration’s staunch support for Israel’s brutal bombing campaign in Gaza and Lebanon as the Biden administration continues to make no progress on a cease-fire or arms embargo. At the Democratic National Convention in August, Harris’s campaign neglected to highlight Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim voices on the stage.

But Harris has some good news in Arizona, where last week more than 100 Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders in the southwestern battleground state signed a letter supporting her campaign. The vice president’s campaign will have to hope that statements like Lutnick’s, as well as Trump’s own bigoted record on Islam and Muslims, will help her win over more of the crucial vote. 

JD Vance was called out for lying … again. 

The Ohio senator was caught trying to create a conspiracy theory about retired Gen. John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, who said last week that Trump fits into the “general definition of fascist.”

During an interview with Jake Tapper Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, Vance was faced with his own creative interpretation of Kelly’s decision to sound the alarm against Trump.

“You said the other day, quote, ‘I guarantee John Kelly talked to somebody on Kamala Harris’s campaign beforehand,’ before he did this interview,” Tapper said. “I’ve spoken with people in John Kelly’s circle, and I’ve spoken with people in the Kamala Harris campaign, they say there’s been no communication the entire time, so where did that come from?” 

“Oh, I’m highly skeptical of that, Jake,” Vance replied. “You know the way that these attacks work, you know the way that these people are often vetted by a campaign before something goes out there—”

“So, you made it up?” Tapper interjected. 

“No, I said that the American media and the American Democratic Party apparatus works a certain way,” Vance said. “If it comes out that John Kelly never even spoke with a person in the Kamala Harris orbit—”

“I’m telling you that,” Tapper insisted. 

“You’re telling me that based on secondhand conversations with John Kelly,” Vance said. 

“If it is true that he never spoke with anyone in Kamala Harris’s orbit, I’m happy to apologize to John Kelly for misstating how he delivered this news to The Atlantic magazine,” he added.

To cast attention far away from his lie, Vance then suggested that Kelly had a “particular ideological motive” for going to Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whom he said had “encouraged” the invasion of Iraq with “dishonest” journalism. 

During his interview with CNN, Vance also tried to defend Trump’s remarks calling Democrats “the enemy within” and threatening to send the military after American citizens by pretending Trump had never said that at all, and then claimed Trump’s threats were taken “out of context.” 

Trump has “said publicly that he wants to use the military to go after ‘the enemy within,’ which is the American people,” Tapper explained.

“He did not say that, Jake,” Vance responded. “He said that he was going to send the military after the American people? Show me the quote where he said that.”

For the record, here’s the quote from earlier this month: “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the—and it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

But Trump hasn’t just said “enemy from within” once, he’s said it at nearly every speaking event for the past two weeks, adding more and more context to exactly whom he views as the “enemy from within.” 

The Republican presidential candidate has used the term to describe Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, suggesting that “enemy from within” referred to his political rivals. In an interview with Joe Rogan on Friday, Trump used the phrase again, referring to people who disagree with his politics as “people that are really bad, people that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful.”

Vance went on the defensive anyway. “He said that he wanted to use the military to go after far-left lunatics who are rioting, and … he also called them ‘the enemy within,’” Vance insisted Sunday.

“He separately, in a totally different context, in a totally different conversation, said that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff were threats to this country,” Vance continued, conveniently leaving out that Trump had used the exact same language about both—the very definition of taking something out of context.

But it took barely a few hours before Trump repeated the phrase again Sunday night, at a rally in New York City, adding even more context.

“A massive, crooked, vicious radical left machine that runs the Democratic Party,” Trump said. “They’re just vessels.”

“And when I say the ‘enemy from within,’ the other side goes crazy. Becomes a soundb—‘Ohh, how can he say?’ No, they’ve done very bad things to this country. They are indeed the enemy from within,” Trump whined.  

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is suing Elon Musk over the billionaire’s election interference plot.

Krasner on Monday filed a civil lawsuit arguing that Musk and his America PAC have violated Pennsylvania law by operating an illegal, unregulated lottery in the state, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Though several legal experts and the Justice Department have sounded the alarm, Krasner’s lawsuit announced Monday is the first legal challenge that Musk has faced for his $1 million bribe.

“America PAC and Musk must be stopped, immediately, before the upcoming Presidential Election on Nov. 5,” the lawsuit states. “That is because America PAC and Musk hatched their illegal lottery scheme to influence voters in that election.”

The lawsuit avoids the bigger question of whether the whole stunt—encouraging swing-state voters to sign a petition in return for a chance at winning $1 million—violates election law by essentially paying people to register to vote. Instead, Krasner’s legal argument states that Musk is operating an illegal lottery. Under Pennsylvania law, a lottery can only be run by the state and for the benefit of the state’s seniors.

He also argues that Musk’s giveaway isn’t as random as the Trump surrogate states. “Though Musk says that a winner’s selection is ‘random,’ that appears to be false,” Krasner’s lawsuit says. “Multiple winners that have been selected are individuals who have shown up at Trump rallies in Pennsylvania.” More than half of America PAC’s $9 million doled out to voters has gone to Pennsylvanians.

As of Monday morning, Musk has yet to make a statement about Krasner’s suit, but he did retweet a video of himself condemning the partisan “legacy media” and arguing that it should be easier to get rid of a law than make one.

Donald Trump’s campaign is desperately trying to backtrack after a comedian at Trump’s New York rally at Madison Square Garden Sunday made a very racist joke about Puerto Rico.

Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at the rally, immediately drawing backlash from across the political spectrum, even including Republicans like Senator Rick Scott and Representative Maria Elvira Salazar.

On Sunday night, the Trump campaign immediately went into damage control mode, with spokesperson Danielle Alvarez telling CNN, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Then, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt went on Fox and Friends early Monday morning before sunrise, and initially tried to spin the rally as “amazing” and diverse.

“The energy last night was palpable in the room, the spirit. It was happiness and joy. And it was such a diverse group of people in that stadium packed to the house. There wasn’t an empty seat. You had Black Americans, Latino Americans, Jewish Americans, men, women of all ages coming in support of President Trump and unafraid to show it,” Leavitt said.

Steve Doocy then addressed the elephant in the room.

“You know, this morning, the mainstream media has picked up on the comic’s comments, which were offensive, have been denounced by the campaign and everybody else. What went on with that?” Doocy asked Leavitt.

Leavitt tried in vain to distance the campaign from Hinchcliffe’s language.

“Look, it was a comedian who made a joke in poor taste,” she replied. “Obviously, that joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or our campaign. And I think it is sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian rather than the truths that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had.”

But none of the following speakers at the rally Sunday, including Trump himself, condemned or tried to distance the Trump campaign from Hinchcliffe. The comedian himself doubled down, accusing his critics, including Walz, of “having no sense of humor.” It also was a reminder of Trump’s poor record regarding Puerto Rico, and how he mishandled the aftereffects of Hurricane Maria’s devastation of the island in 2017.

Trump’s rally was full of disturbing parallels to a 1939 rally in Madison Square Garden supporting the Nazi Party, and the racism was just the icing on the cake. Americans who oppose such racism, including the many Puerto Ricans living in battleground states, should keep that in mind when they head to the polls.

Even Fox News has raised its eyebrows at podcasting behemoth Joe Rogan’s decision not to interview Vice President Kamala Harris despite penning in a three-hour slot for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

During a Sunday discussion on the network between Fox News host Howard Kurtz and pundit Caroline Downey, the MediaBuzz anchor claimed that it was Rogan who had stiffed the Harris campaign.

Downey argued that the lopsided interview opportunity proved a “net benefit” to Trump’s campaign, since “every TV hit that Kamala Harris does, she comes off more bitter, more angry, and more jaded, whereas Trump comes off as a normal guy.”

“So, you know, Kamala Harris claims she’s trying to cater to the younger generation, but she’s sticking to legacy media interviews for the most part, and she refused to go on Rogan,” Downey said.

But Kurtz was quick to push back on Downey’s behind-the-scenes speculation.

“Well, no, I don’t think that’s true. I think she wanted to go on Joe Rogan, and I don’t think Rogan wanted her,” Kurtz said. “I think it would have been a good thing if she’d gone.”

“So, even though Rogan, I believe, has refused to have Trump on in the past, he seemed largely sympathetic to the former president, and you heard him dismiss the media as a bunch of left-wing Democrats,” the host added.

In recent weeks, Trump has dodged mainstream news appearances, including going so far as to break election tradition by refusing to sit for a 60 Minutes interview in September, which he reportedly backed out of last-minute over fears that the rigorous show would fact-check him.

Instead, Trump has relegated his TV appearances to friendlier, more sycophantic networks, including Fox News, whose anchor Maria Bartiromo did not interrupt or correct Trump when he claimed that the real Election Day threat is the “enemy from within” while suggesting that the military should forcibly involve itself in handling the election results.

But a chat with Rogan—who hosts one of the biggest podcasts in the country for Republican and independent men—has the potential to significantly sway undecided voters for either candidate.