Opinion

America’s billionaires would love to have a recession, particularly a really severe one.

In a recent “town hall,” billionaire Elon Musk acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists across the country have predicted: If Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.

Today is the eve of Election Day. It’s tempting to presume there’s nothing left to say, but there always is. What do you want to know? That’s the question I put to followers. I couldn’t reply to all today, but I will try to get to the rest tomorrow before the polls close.

Do you see any warning signs for Kamala Harris? – @Maryqiae

It was just about two years ago to the day ...

I had finished up a last-second voter canvas before the polls closed and started revealing how the 2022 midterm elections would fall.

This is my last column before the election. I am as tired of writing about politics as most Americans are tired of reading, thinking, and hearing about it. The stress of this make-or-break Democracy test feels cruel and unusual. Cruel because of what’s at stake, unusual because it is unrelenting.

For people who inform themselves through fact-based media outlets, the most commonly heard question is: how is this race even close? Of all the craziness we’ve seen and heard, the Nazi-adjacent rhetoric, the venomous threats, the crazed narcissist making the nation’s struggles all about himself, how can half the country still support him? How can half our fellow citizens vote for him, knowing what they know about him? Are they crazy? Are they hateful?

Conspiracist ideology has consumed the Republican Party. At his rally at Madison Square Garden, Trump pledged to demolish the deep state, drive out the globalists, and rout the fake news media. Speaker after speaker referenced the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, a dogma that was once confined to the manifestos of mass shooters, but which is now the Trump campaign’s closing argument for the presidency.

Former Fox host Tucker Carlson, who promoted the Great Replacement over 400 times on his now-defunct show, told the crowd at Madison Square Garden that the political class “despises [the people] and their values and their history and their culture and their customs; really hates them to the point that it’s trying to replace them.”

With less than a week to go, let’s talk about expectations, specifically the widespread expectation that this shouldn’t be a dead-even race.

The idea usually comes from liberals and Democrats, who tend to believe that Donald Trump is such a uniquely dangerous threat to democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law that it boggles their minds to see him running neck-and-neck with Kamala Harris.

We have a week to go before Election Day, and like many of my comrades in the pundit corps, I’m being asked what I think is going to happen. Here are some thoughts, with others on the side.

Donald Trump believes he’s going to lose

I have been a subscriber to The Washington Post for 26 years.

I devoured it each day while riding the Metro from my home in Northern Virginia to the National Press Building in Washington D.C., where Stars and Stripes was published.

The Hartmann Report, this little newsletter that Louise and I started in our living room and our old friend and business partner Nigel helps us administer, hits 100,000 daily readers this weekend. Over 90% of our growth has come about as the result of word-of-mouth; people sharing this newsletter with their friends, relatives, and coworkers. We are so honored to have your trust in our research and hard work, and really appreciate your sharing my articles with others. Thank you!

— The Massive Scale of Trump’s Deportation Plans. Trump and Vance are promising to deport 15 million people from America, a massive undertaking that will require a major departure from our traditions and laws providing for due process. “You go to the red state governors and you say, ‘Give us your National Guard.’ We will deputize them as immigration enforcement officers,” notorious racist and Trump ally Stephen Miller said recently. Those soldiers — not police officers — would then “go around the country arresting illegal immigrants in large-scale raids.” Melissa Gira Grant wrote a brilliant piece about this obscenity for The New Republic that’s well worth a read, and it’s vital to remember that Trump is setting up something that appears inspired by Hitler’s early pogroms of the Jews. What will you do and say when they knock on your door — particularly if you have a last name that sounds Hispanic — and demand to see your citizenship papers? This is the world these bizarre men want to plunge us into, and, tragically, half the country appears to be just fine with it. What the hell has happened to our nation? I lay most of the blame at the feet of the billionaires like Murdoch, etc., who’ve been funding rightwing hate media for decades.

I have heard way more than enough of this grotesque garbage that perhaps we should try to understand what makes the Trump voter tick, and somehow sympathize with their support of an unapologetic loudmouth who is so vile he sees “good people” on both sides of a violent white supremacist rally.

Have you seen or heard any of this crap?

Dear Mr. Musk,

You are hereby on notice that your recent activities in support of Donald Trump could lead to significant personal liability, both civil and criminal.

I grew up in a violent home. You name it, it happened, usually more than once. I was also raised Catholic, complete with Catholic schools, where I learned first-hand how religion could be bent into a cruel and uncaring tool. The upshot is that I’ve never had much faith in organized religion, or in man’s fairness when no one is looking.

When I ran for Congress, imposter syndrome kicked in and I didn’t talk about my early years. Instead, I leaned on my Constitutional law pedigree, a diversion I hoped would highlight my competence and hide my origins. But the truth is, I turned to law because I needed something believe in.