Exorcising Trump

On Sunday, Trump spoke in Greensboro, NC, saying, “In nine years, we’ve had the biggest rallies in history—of any country. Every rally’s full. You don’t have any seats that are empty.”

The cameraman then panned around the coliseum, showing some whole sections that were nearly devoid of any human presence.

From his first days as a candidate and decades before that, during his years as a real-estate developer—with a stop for television in between—Trump’s magic has always consisted of being able to get people to believe lies and illusions. He has no other mode in which to work, no actual skills at governing to offer.

He now believes he’s losing. It’s visible at every rally. He is also diminished—his mental acuity is no longer sharp enough to even cast slurs effectively.

“If I don't win this thing after all this talk, I’m in trouble. You, please go and vote,” he said at the same rally in Greensboro where he told attendees in the the half-empty coliseum that it was actually full.

He’s less a gladiator past his prime than he is a malevolent Wizard of Oz hoping no one sees through his sham. His sales pitch now comes down to who-are-you-gonna-believe-me-or-your-lying-eyes untruths delivered to his audience about what they can both see real time. It may be be the purest distillation of the entirety of the theater and lie of Trumpism.

And if people stop believing his lies, he has nothing more up his sleeve. They will abandon him.

His patron, Elon Musk, is in a similar bind. He’s likewise long relied on similar sleight-of-hand promises about when self-driving taxis will debut or how in a few short years Boring Company tunnels would revolutionize interurban transit. Doing more and more damage to the legitimate projects to which he’s managed to attach himself, he now—like Trump—embraces schemes and grifts at a stunning rate: a million-dollar lottery for voters, a get-out-the-vote effort that has already provoked a class-action lawsuit. Musk has gone from clowning on stage with Trump to capering today in a Philadelphia courtroom over what looks like plainly unlawful payola.

Like Trump, he’s facing lawsuits alleging a range of corporate and personal malfeasance. Like Trump, he seems to be angling for an election victory to secure his Get Out of Jail card. They are simultaneously the ludicrous Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the malevolent Leopold and Loeb of twenty-first century American politics, creating a moral vacuum and seeing how far they can take the country into it, even at the cost of human lives.

Both men have made a safe space for their followers’ resentments and their grievances. They’ve put targets on vulnerable people to elevate themselves and their sycophants.

But here at the end of the race, Trump is losing his grip. From bad news in the latest Iowa poll to increased coverage of what is seen as age-related decline, he must work harder and harder to cast magic for his cult. He still has millions of true believers, but everything has been premised on what he could give them. If he loses the election, he can give them nothing.

There are real concerns about what could happen if he wins, and these are justified. He has the backing of enough rogue law enforcement types to unleash mayhem on immigrants (and anyone labeled undesirable) in the U.S. The Supreme Court has supported monstrous executive powers in his favor, and is willing to allow the deaths and disempowerment of women to continue nationwide. Countless facets of state and federal government are currently collaborating with those goals or could be turned to do more damage.

But if he loses, especially if he loses decisively, the picture becomes simpler.

His only ability as a politician has been the canny sense of how to grift the US election system by subverting an existing party, allowing him to win a seat of unlimited power that he had no idea how to use. Without access to those institutions, he will have no path to power.

His only choice will be to disappear or to ride the grift down and down, until his followers grow tired of him or run out of money. Their grievances will not go away, but Americans and their representatives who are more committed to democracy will have time to retrench.

Though deeply corrupt, the rogue members of the Supreme Court can only do so much if Harris wins a clear victory. More importantly, Trump isn’t capable of being commander-in-chief of a handful of rag-tag, second-rate militias, let alone leading widespread insurrection.

The country might be divided enough for civil conflict, but Trump is incapable of running a civil war—as are Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and RFK Jr., let alone the empty suits of Project 2025. It’s a Justice League of losers who can only wreak havoc by sabotaging existing institutions and using them against civilians. We can deny them access.

These last days before the election have been a lumpy, poisonous stew, with key Republicans talking about upending Obamacare, banning fluoride, and targeting or eliminating vaccines—even “joking” about denying women the right to vote. All along, the Trump machine has done little more than scrape up everything at the bottom of the bathroom stall of America to sell as magic sauce. But here at the end, they’re getting desperate. We have one day left to give Trump’s followers reason to think their cause is truly hopeless.

If you believe that Trump is a danger to almost every aspect of the country that you wish for, a country you might admire going forward, then do what you can today and tomorrow to get rid of him.

Those last-minute things include helping to phone bank to get out the vote or to cure ballots, so that real votes that will otherwise get tossed can get counted. Check out Greg Pak’s great list of opportunities here (scroll down to today’s date for links to volunteer).

Or send this Bulwark video to your conservative friends who aren’t MAGA diehards. It lays out the conservative case for Republican friends and family to vote for Harris instead of Trump. I disagree with a lot of his policy opinions, but if he’s sending his political compatriots to vote for Harris, why would I want to argue with him before Wednesday?

Take people to vote, send pizza to people in long lines. Take some joy in the fact that these options remain available for most of us. Embrace the useful tasks and productive chores that can make a real difference.

I’ve spent years going around the world to talk to people who were tortured and couldn’t vote for a decade or more, to people who’d been held in camps where no one knew if they were alive or dead, to whole communities that had been exiled from the rest of society. Here in the final sprint, recall the countless tiny ways you can make a difference today, right now, with just a little time or effort, and take the first steps to end this bleak spell blighting the country.