“Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism,” read the Times headline.
“A comic kicked off the rally by dismissing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” then mocked Hispanics as failing to use birth control, Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock throwers, and called out a Black man in the audience with a reference to watermelon,” reports the Times.
“Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with ‘pimp handlers.’ A third called her ‘the Antichrist.’ And the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Ms. Harris — the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father — with made-up ethnicity, saying she was vying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president,” reports the Times.
On the second-to-last Sunday before the presidential election, the campaign rally was not about the border, inflation, the economy or any other issue. This was a hate fest. Speakers spewed the kind of hate that you would expect at a Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazi convention. Trump did not condemn the comments during his speech before the crowd. The Trump campaign’s attempt to distance him from some of the hate-filled remarks is disingenuous and only comes after strong criticism.
Yet some voters say they will skip the presidential election or vote for a third party.
Others are undecided or planning to vote for Trump.
How can this be?
This is an urgent appeal to undecided voters and those who are considering skipping the presidential election or voting third party or for Trump. Don’t do it.
Frustrations about inflation, the border, the war in Gaza are understandable but no excuse to skip the election or consider voting for Trump.
Skipping the presidential election, voting third party or voting for Trump is a horrible idea.
Some voters may mistakenly believe that not voting for president is an act of protest. It is not.
The decision not to vote will hurt families, community and our country.
The next president will make decisions that will impact the price of gas, groceries, heating, housing and other everyday necessities.
The next president will make decisions that could determine the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink and whether we will travel over crumbling roads and bridges.
Voting third party is only an act of symbolic protest.
The reality is that either Trump or Harris will get elected president.
That’s why a super PAC with Republican ties has recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in Wisconsin. Republicans believe the Stein campaign and the third-party candidacy of others who would otherwise lean toward Harris could help Trump.
What about the voters who are planning or considering voting for Trump?
While we endorse Kamala Harris for president, we recognize she is an imperfect candidate.
Struggling to strike a balance between being loyal and independent, Harris has been slow to distance herself from the policies and record of President Joe Biden.
But Harris is a leader who can move the country forward.
In addition to her experience and record as an elected official, voters should take a close look at Harris’ plans for America, which include:
• Increase the number of new homes built and the affordable housing supply. Provide first-time homebuyers with up to $25,000 to help with their down payments.
• Grow 25 million new small businesses and expand the startup expense tax deduction for new businesses from $5,000 to $50,000.
• Cut taxes for more than 100 million working and middle class Americans.
• Lower the cost of health care, housing and groceries.
Whether it is on domestic or foreign issues there is a stark difference between Trump and Harris.
Harris has not disparaged Blacks, Latinos, Jews, women and gays. She has not denigrated immigrants and exaggerated their crimes or made up bizarre tales about them eating their pets.
She has not incited an insurrection or threatened to unleash the military on political opponents.
She has not praised dictators and America’s enemies.
There has been no candidate in modern times as unhinged and unfit to be president as Donald Trump.
While America is not electing a pastor to become commander in chief, we should also not be electing a demagogue whose cruelty and chaotic behavior should not be excused as admirable authenticity.
Trump’s words and conduct emboldened the hate rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
His inflammatory rhetoric emboldened white supremacists to march in the racist Unite the Right Rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.
Trump’s lies about the 2020 election emboldened those who believe they had the right to storm the Capitol and call for the hanging of a vice president.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a conservative Republican, called Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6 an impeachable offense.
“I’m not all conflicted about whether what the president did is an impeachable offense. I think it is. Urging an insurrection and people attacking the Capitol as a direct result … is about as close to an impeachable offense as you can imagine, with the possible exception of maybe being an agent for another country,” said McConnell.
There is too much at stake to sit out this election or vote for anyone other than Harris, the only candidate who can stop a man who is described as fascist by his former chief of staff.
Trump has threatened to use the military and the Justice Department against his political opponents. He has threatened to use the Insurrection Act to put down protests. He has threatened to jail reporters and strip the broadcast license of news outlets that anger him.
This is the rhetoric of an aspiring dictator.
Voters should not let their discontent with politics, disillusionment with the Democrats or disagreement with Harris on a particular issue to vote for a dangerous demagogue.
Stop Trump. Vote Harris for president on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
This editorial originally appeared in the Philadelphia Tribune.