SOUTH CANADA, PRE-NUP, ART OF THE DEAL

“I’ll take BRIBE for $5,000, Alex,” say at least 35% of those on the voter rolls. President Trump’s dividend promised to every adult American, called the “Trump Dividend,” if the midterm elections result in House and Senate majorities for the GOP has been a reasonably hot topic in some news outlets following his Midterm Convention promise in Dallas. However, for the most part it resulted in a ‘ho-hum’ response, being seen as just more Trumpian hot air to Americans who have become immune to his antics. Of course, nobody will get a dime, regardless of their balloting, and as critics have pointed out such a bribe would cost the treasury around $1.3 trillion. Incidentally, those same critics jumped on the news that ‘holiday’ cash gifts of $45,000 each were given to Natalie Harp, Margo Martin, and a couple of other aides — his money or OUR money? As The Swamp on Substack posted, “No, it’s not a shakedown. Vote GOP, and we give you money. Mob bosses do that, too.”

VP Vance defined the ‘bribe’ on Fox News as a “dividend for American workers” to be funded by tariff revenue. “We’re taking in an extraordinary amount of revenue because the president of the United States is actually standing up to both foreign companies but also foreign countries who have been taking advantage of America’s workers for pretty much my entire life,” Vance explained. Marc Short, board chair of former VP Mike Pence’s think tank, Advancing American Freedom, said, “The president is a performer and having the pageantry of the convention [in Dallas], he’s going to throw out something,” — a “departure from Trump’s pledge of fiscal responsibility and conservative economics.” Former US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s snide remarks echoed those of many others: “$5,000 for the peasants will be in the mail after the election only if you vote Republican, along with those DOGE [$5,000] and tariff [$2,000] money checks.” Afterwards, Trump dared to propose yet another $500 rebate for nearly a million people he claims were “wrongly overcharged” under Obamacare. The president’s promises of cash payments in the past have never materialized, and we have to remember him once bragging that he could be the “best communist” in history because all he’d have to do is promise people free stuff and then never deliver.

A post on The Onion: “Trump promises to take $5,000 from every American if Democrats win midterms.” Isn’t he doing that already? And, leave it to Andy Borowitz to address the pie-in-the-sky dividend: “Calling it an effort to ‘restore sanity,’ on Thursday Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney offered every adult American $6,000 to vote against Republicans in the midterms. ‘If you oust the Republicans, you’ll receive a check for $6,000,’ he said at a press conference. ‘And to be clear, we’re talking American dollars, not Canadian.’ The prime minister’s announcement seemed unlikely to make Donald Trump increase his own offer, since $5,000 would be the most he has ever paid to a non-pornstar. Carney concluded his press conference by unveiling a new map of North America with the United States renamed ‘South Canada.‘”

Trump’s Dallas Midterms Convention will be remembered as an early Halloween celebration for its rows and rows of attendees dressed as empty auditorium seats, which didn’t fool the Orange King by a long shot. He announced on social media, a full house, packed to the rafters, breaking attendance records with crowds waiting outside, and beating the NFL in tv ratings. House Speaker Johnson told NewsMax’s Finnerty the arena was full, even as the cameras panned the interior to video the Halloween celebrants. Not fooling around, Liz Landers of PBS News posted a video of the half-full 20,000-seat basketball arena, and former Democratic staffer Aaron Fritschner posted on X, “Capacity-wise they could have held this in a high school gym.” Several pundits observed that the hot Texas sun may have discouraged many who had waited in a long entry line, with many needing medical attention from EMTs. The number of empty seats must have made the convention organizers realize that a bullet was dodged in not being able to book the Dallas Cowboys‘ 80,000-seat football stadium as Trump had proposed initially.

Daily Dose of Democracy posted on its site: “America’s wannabe dictator took center stage and forced the lemmings in attendance to pledge allegiance to ‘the greatest president in the history of the United States’ while also promising to ‘cheat like hell’ to make sure Republicans don’t lose in November. Uh, okay. Any Republicans who were hoping this week’s ‘midterm convention’ would somehow be more than a gratuitous spectacle of sycophants worshipping at the altar of their god-king just got an answer.” Trump raised his right hand, asking the attendees to do likewise, as he led them in a mock version of the Pledge of Allegiance, to pledge “if I am registered or not, I am going to cheat like hell like they [Democrats] do.” “You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell, you know that? Okay? And I don’t want that to happen to  you, so please go vote,” the president concluded. VP Vance supposedly was given the biggest speaking slot on the last night of the convention, attempting to give a keynote address to bolster his 2028 presidential aspirations. He followed Trump’s speech and managed to give a 40-minute oration before Trump again took his microphone, spewing his inanities, and insuring that  the cameras focused on him. “We’ve got to take care of business this November, then we’ll worry about what comes next,” said Vance the greeter, standing at the gates of hell.

“I just love that we have an administration that treats the American voter like one of his [Trump’s] ex-wives. ‘How much money to make you happy? There you go.’ Like, I don’t think it’s wise,” comedian Roy Wood, formerly of The Daily Show remarked on CNN. The show’s anchor, John Berman joked, “You think that voters should get to spin a prenup with presidents?” Wood is now host of CNN’s American adaptation of the news and entertainment panel show, Have I Got News For You. Likening Trump to a surly divorcee who confuses his constituents with his marriages, Wood suggested how the prez could improve his outlandish bribe of $5,000 for voting in the Republican column. “I’m waiting on my money, so why not just give us half the money up front? Ain’t that the art of the deal?”

The Swamp on Substack says it’s never a good sign when the vendors offer cut-price merchandise before the headliner has left the building, and especially when the event wasn’t sold out as claimed. Sell-out Republicans have finally seen the writing on the wall, so they avoided the president’s self-promoted adulation fest, or quickly headed for the exits in the hopes of salvaging their political careers by Election Day. As for the swag vendors, t-shirts were half price on the second day of the convention,  although a shirt featuring a younger Trump as a Marlboro Man, astride a spirited horse sold out on the first day — $47 a pop! Food vendors were selling stale hot dogs along with a syrup enhanced cola for $25, with a small pre-packaged salad for only $12 extra. No complaints about ‘affordability’ here. Of course, the real eating, drinking and money-raising action was taking place in the private dining rooms and hotel suites for the GOP powerbrokers.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise reportedly was headliner at one of the week’s more fascinating fundraisers at the Highland Park home of billionaire mega donor, Harlan Crow, well-known for his buddying with certain Supreme Court justices. For the privilege of seeing Scalise host a fireside chat in Crow’s digs, guests ponied up $10,000 to $100,000, the side attractions being Crow’s library of thousands of rare books and manuscripts — not to mention the sculpture garden known as ‘The Garden of Evil‘ which is graced with statues of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and others. Nothing says Republican fundraising like a garden full of dead dictators. So while the convention floor at the American Airlines Center offered an excess of Trump’s presence, the real business of Trump-a-palooza was happening elsewhere in Dallas, along with ‘affordable’ cover charges.

Travis Gettys writes on Raw Story, “President Donald Trump seems to want to drag the United States down with him once he shuffles off this mortal coil, according to historian Alan Elrod.” Dark warnings were in evidence at last week’s Trump-a-palooza regarding the nation’s future if Republicans lose in the November midterms, with Trump encouraging his followers to cheat or risk hellfire, observes Elrod, a politics and history professor, in his column for Liberal Currents. “Trump’s speech came off more like a sermon [a la Jim Jones] from Jonestown. My own overriding thought was: ‘This speech was like some sort of performance art piece of a live entombing of a mad king and his most loyal followers.‘” Trump is constantly referencing legacy issues like the ballroom, the border wall, and global tariffs, while teasing a campaign for an unconstitutional third term in office, and as Elrod notes, his lavish praise for some women who had attended more than 200 of his rallies is reminiscent of the ancient Egyptian practice of ‘retainer sacrifice.’

Elrod references his colleague, Samantha Hancox-Li, who has a simple theory about Trump’s self-promotion and obsession with legacy and slapping his name on buildings and projects: fear of death. Hancox-Li says, “My current theory of Donald Trump is that he is utterly gripped by the terror of death, and is desperately attempting to leave some mark on the world that history cannot erase — the point of his wars, the annexation threats, the DC vandalism. I think right now he is genuinely fixated on adding new American territory as the brass ring, the thing they’ll never be able to take away from his memory.” Elrod is in agreement, saying, “It’s a macabre but convincing psychological assessment. Rather than making America great again, Trump is inflicting grievous harm on it with tariffs, now upgraded to import bans against select Canadian goods; an illegal war; and a total ransacking of our public and private sectors for the enrichment of his courtiers and his family. And he is going to bury us all with him in a tomb of his own design — a ballroom.”

Trump’s ranting about the impenetrable ballroom project which will hold up to 2,000 people caused Elrod’s thoughts to become dismal. “These are the ramblings of a neurotic, dangerous madman. If Trump is taking America down, if he is going to bury this country, all the good in it and all its prosperity and potential, then he wants his most adoring and loyal retainers with him. He wants his cult locked inside.” Trump die-hards are optimistic about the midterms — to a degree. “It’s going to be fantastic,” insists Melissa Cole from Oklahoma, as she donned a gold sequined MAGA jacket at the Trump-a-palooza. “It has to be fantastic…we’re in a war between good and evil.” Grape or cherry Kool-Ade?

In an essay in The New Republic, former federal appeals court judge Michael Luttig argues that even if Democrats win decisively in the midterms there’s no guarantee the winners will be seated. Yikes! The ghost of Mitch McConnell arises with memories of President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, and the Senate leader’s refusal to hold hearings! Judge Luttig sees a constitutional crisis in the making for January 3, 2027, the date that the 120th Congress should be sworn in, with procedures being disrupted by Speaker Mike Johnson as he fires constitutionalist House Clerk Kevin McCumber, a Republican who goes by the book. Johnson could then install a Trump loyalist who will then leave Democratic members-elect off the roll that determines who gets to organize the new Congress. “From there, it’s writs of mandamus, emergency appeals and weeks or months of a country without a functioning House while the Supreme Court decides whether America is still a democracy,” says Luttig.

Luttig, a Supreme Court ‘finalist’ who lost out to a corrupt and arrogant Samuel Alito, points out Trump’s whining about rigged elections — with Republican acquiescence — and the harping about “nationalizing the voting” to achieve “election integrity” as MAGA blames Democrats and voting non-citizens for widespread fraud that is unproven and discounted with only insignificant occurrences. The Constitution is clear in Luttig’s estimation — that the House cannot refuse to seat anyone who has won a free and fair election on a flimsy pretext, yet he looks askance at a Supreme Court which handed Trump immunity and dodged the Fourteenth Amendment question. Luttig encourages Republicans not to go along with the deviousness, but is not optimistic. The judge writes, “The writing is already on the wall.” And as John Byrne posts on Raw America about that comment, “It’s been there since 2021. Some people just refuse to read it.”

That writing on the wall began on January 6, 2021, and as Steve Schmidt writes on The Warning, “That day was a crime of immense magnitude. The failure of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Merrick Garland and a few hundred political appointees to defend the republic and demand justice on behalf of the American people was a sin. The bill is coming due and soon. Judge Luttig sees it clearly. He has picked January 3rd as the day America dies. Judge Luttig has called his shot. Shouldn’t we speak about this out loud? Or is it already too late? Is there already too much fear to say out loud what could happen? Are we already consigned to whispers? What happens on January 4 when the winners of elections have been declared cheaters, criminals and liars?” Schmidt reminds us that everything is in motion, not a Hollywood movie or a Trump fever dream, and when we consider the unimaginable, we should think about it completely. “After all, delusion is a MAGA trait, not an American one,” he concludes.