Three things I'm thinking about today

1. Trump's unhinged DJ set in Pennsylvania last night 2. Kamala considering Joe Rogan's podcast 3. Our toothless "warning" to Israel

Good evening Cappers. We’re exactly three weeks out from election day, and as my favorite NYC weather account loves to say on humid days, the vibes are getting uncomfortable out there.

There’s a whole lot going on in politics news, so in lieu of a deep dive today I’m going to discuss three things that are on my mind right now.

1. Trump swaying to “November Rain” after two people fainted at his town hall

Last year we learned that Trump moonlights as a DJ at Mar-a-Lago since leaving office, playing showtunes and Celine Dion hits from his iPad on Thursday nights while people try to eat dinner. This could be a considered charming hobby for an elderly retiree, except that this one is also a narcissistic fascist barreling towards the presidency again.

With that context in mind, let’s take a look at what happened in Pennsylvania last night. Trump was supposed to be conducting a town hall in the suburbs. But after two people fainted within the first half hour of him answering questions, he decided to stop taking questions entirely and just…vibe out to his playlist for the remainder of the event. “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music,” he said after answering only five questions about economic policy. “Let’s make it into a music—who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”

The crowd appeared confused as they were left to stand there and watch Trump bop around to a litany of situationally inappropriate songs he’d apparently chosen himself, including “November Rain,” “Hallelujah,” “Ave Maria,” and “Nothing Compares to U.” A great playlist for a funeral, perhaps, or a tough break-up, but not for a town hall in a swing state three weeks before an election. (Playing Sinead O’Connor, who once compared Trump to a “biblical devil,” is also certainly a choice.)

I linked to several videos above to convey the full experience of how weird this all was. But if there’s one clip that really captures it perfectly, it’s this one of Trump swaying to the intense guitar solo in “November Rain” as some dead-eyed guy claps along behind him. It should go without saying that if any other presidential candidate in the history of the nation acted like this at a town hall—I’m recalling the months of coverage of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline—it would be the end of their campaign. Instead, we’re getting mild, sane-washing headlines about how quirky this moment was. We’re frogs in boiling water.

2. Kamala is considering going on Joe Rogan’s podcast

We know that Kamala Harris has a big problem with men, who currently prefer Trump by double digits across several swing states. Even bringing on Tim Walz, who makes adorable and deeply Midwestern videos about fixing cars, has not managed to fix Kamala’s problem with white dudes. So she’s reportedly mulling an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which has tens of millions of predominantly male listeners.

This could be seen as a smart move, as Rogan is the most popular podcaster in the world. He’s a self-described “free thinker” and “moderate” who loves to play both sides on issues, and he tends to be pretty kind to his subjects. Of course, as Anna Merlan pointed out in her deep dive for The Guardian, Rogan is also an unhinged conspiracy theorist who’s swung pretty far to the right since his early days of simple contrarianism. But this pretty much tracks with Harris’s strategy of late, which is to court the right rather than the left: She recently said the difference between the Biden administration and hers would be that she’d appoint a Republican to her cabinet; she’s embraced Dick Cheney; she refused to let a Palestinian speak on stage at the DNC, and so on.

In courting the center-right, though, Kamala risks further sacrificing the left, which she very much needs in full to have a fighting chance in November. This brings me to my next point.

3. Israel is burning people alive in hospitals with IVs still in their arms

The U.S. government’s complicity in the Gaza genocide is morally repugnant. Every day we see pictures, videos, first-hand accounts, and actual reporting about the worst human atrocities imaginable—children being deliberately shot in the head by snipers, Israel openly planning to starve hundreds of thousands of Gazans, hospital patients being burned alive with IVs in their arms. And today the Biden Administration inexplicably responded by demanding that Israel “take major steps to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza within 30 days” or face “consequences” regarding our military support.

Let’s unpack this: We are sending billions of dollars worth of bombs and military aid to Israel, which they are using to mass murder civilians (and also journalists) to cover it up. This has nothing to do with eliminating Hamas or “freeing the hostages,” as we all know, and everything to do with Netanyahu needing an endless war to stay in power and avoid corruption charges. And our response is to give Israel 30 days—til after the election, notably—to start letting more aid in, or we’ll consider doing something about it.

How many thousands of people are we sentencing to die for the next 30 days because it’s supposedly untenable for a presidential candidate to condemn what Israel’s doing or for the president to do something about it? While Harris is busy courting Republican men, she’s also losing young voters, specifically because of her moral cowardice on Israel. The latest polls in Michigan, the epicenter of outrage over Gaza, show Harris in a dead heat with Trump. Could she win that critical swing state, and bolster her support among Gen Z and progressives, if she took a moral stand against genocide? Would the Zionists she lost necessarily outweigh the voters she gained?

I refuse to believe that we have no choice in this country ever but to elect presidents who continue to write blank checks to a genocidal maniac so that he can continue to exterminate hundreds of thousands of people to save his own career. There has to be another reality.

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I’m sorry to end on this deeply bleak note, but that’s where I’m at tonight.