Robin Messing

Tim Walz should not have played the nice guy with J.D. Vance during the debate. He was debating a monster who has dressed himself up as a smooth politician. Walz should have knocked Vance out at the beginning. It is too late to advise Walz on how he should have handled Vance’s claim that Haitians in Springfield Ohio were eating cats and dogs, but I hope this analysis will help Democratic candidates running for Congress in any debates they may have against Republican opponents who have pushed the same lie and have not retracted their statements with a sincere apology to the Haitian community. I am writing this while thinking about the race for the NY19 District between Democrat Josh Shapiro and his Republican opponent, Marc Molinaro. This post will include some details specific to that race. I will use red letters to indicate parts that are spefic to the Molinaro/Riley race. Other Democratic candidates will have to adjust these passages accordingly.

Instead of playing the non-confrontational nice guy during the debate, Walz should have looked Vance straight in the eye and said:

Donald Trump has used the Justice Department to go after his political enemies in the past, and he will do so with greater gusto and efficiency if he is elected again. Let's first look at his past abuse of the Justice Department. Then we'll look at his promise to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies. And finally we'll contrast that with Joe Biden's Justice Department which the Republicans accuse of going after Biden's political enemies.

I guess falsely accusing Haitian Immigrants who are LEGALLY in Springfield Ohio of eating cats and dogs is not enough for Marc Molinaro Now he is demonizing undocumented immigrants by tweeting out an article from Fox News.

600,000 murderers, rapists, criminals who shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t get free housing and healthcare, and should be deported. @JoshRileyUE’s policy puts illegal immigrants ahead of us. https://t.co/w16pwUuOCS

— Marc Molinaro #NY19 (@marcmolinaro) September 28, 2024

The article states:

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants with sex offenses and homicide convictions could be loose on the streets, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data provided to lawmakers this week.

The agency provided data to Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, about national data for illegal immigrants with criminal charges or convictions. The data, as of July 2024, is broken down by those in detention, and those who are not in detention -- known as the non-detained docket.  The non-detained docket includes illegal immigrants who have final orders of removal or are going through removal proceedings but are not detained in ICE custody. There are currently more than 7 million people on that docket.

The data says that, among those not in detention, there are 425,431 convicted criminals and 222,141 with pending criminal charges.

ICE NON-DETAINED DOCKET EXPLODES TO 7.4M CASES

Those include 62,231 convicted of assault, 14,301 convicted of burglary, 56,533 with drug convictions and 13,099 convicted of homicide. An additional 2,521 have kidnapping convictions and 15,811 have sexual assault convictions.

My bullshit detector went off immediately. This is how I responded to Molinaro's tweet. I've made few minor changes for consistency and to correct the spelling and grammar in my tweet.

I have designed five flyers that could be used in Josh Riley's campaing for the NY

I have included my information sources for each flyer. These sources are often on the third page, so they obviously won't fit on a two-page flyer. That's fine. Most people won't want to see the sources anyway. I am including them so you can provide them to anyone who questions the facts in these flyers.

My Congressman, Marc Molinaro, has made the demonization of undocumented immigrants one of his main focuses in his battle to win re-election against his Democratic opponent, Josh Riley, in New York's 19th Congressional District. This has become standard fare for the Republican Party.

There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants in our country. You are bound to have some extremely violent criminals in any population of that size. Whenever an undocumented immigrant is responsible for a particularly heinous rape or murder, you can count on Republicans to scream, “LOOK AT THAT. THESE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE HORRIBLE, AND IF IT WEREN’T FOR OUR DEMOCRATIC OPPONENTS, THEIR VICTIMS WOULD STILL BE ALIVE.”

This group demonization is particularly unwarranted since immigrants do not commit violent crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans. In fact, a Cato Institute study of homicides in Texas found that “illegal immigrants were 26 percent less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of homicide.” This makes intuitive sense because undocumented immigrants WANT to keep a low profile. They try not to attract the attention of the police because they know that they are likely to be deported if they are caught committing crimes.

Marc Molinaro has gone far beyond the normal Republican attacks against undocumented immigrants in his attempts to smear Josh Riley. Molinaro retweeted an image of a Facebook post claiming that Haitian immigrants were butchering and eating dogs and cats as well as ducks and geese in Springfield Ohio. A second image attached to Molinaro's tweet shows a Black man walking down the street carrying two geese.

@JoshRileyue fought for open borders and dismantled our border security.
This crisis - the fentanyl flooding our streets, the rampant crime, and now this - is his to own. pic.twitter.com/n418uJj7TC

— Marc Molinaro #NY19 (@marcmolinaro) September 9, 2024

I have designed flyers for Democratic candidates for the House and Senate to use against their opponents who support Donald Trump. You only have to download these word documents, make some slight changes such as inserting your candidate's name and your Republican opponent's name in the appropriate places. You will also need to make sure the right pronouns match your candidate and your Republican opponent. I have  used bracketing and red letters to make the places that need editing very obvious. It should take you no more than three or four minutes to make the changes and print out a flyer.

I have included my information sources for each flyer. These sources are often on the third page, so they obviously won't fit on a two-page flyer. That's fine. Most people won't want to see the sources anyway. I am including them for the candidates and their supporters in case anyone challenges them on the facts in the flyers.

Dear Mr. Johnson,

I have always had a high opinion of you. You are enormously talented and a great entertainer. And there will NEVER be a better smack talker than you in the wrestling industry. Everything I’ve read about you tells me you are a thoughtful individual and an overall good guy. I was intrigued when you teased the idea a few years ago about running for president, and I would have seriously considered voting for you, depending on your positions during the campaign.

However, when I heard that you regretted endorsing Joe Biden in 2020 and that you would not endorse anyone this time around, my opinion of you dropped like a . . . dropped like a .. . . dropped like a . . . DAMN! What is that word I’m looking for? It was right on the tip of my tongue.

Donald Trump is crying about the Democrats rigging the 2024 election against him through lawfare. And he cried about the Democrats rigging the election in 2020. And he cried about both the general election and the Republican primaries being rigged against him in 2016. I discussed this in great detail in my column Donald Trump's History Of Crying "Rigged Election". 

Now you may be saying to yourself, "Whoa--did you just say that Trump accused REPUBLICANS of rigging the 2016 primaries against him?" Yes, I did. And the Republican he accused most often of this was Ted Cruz. Funny thing. That's not the only thing Trump attacked about Ted Cruz. Trump also attacked Cruz's wife and father. Let's see what we can learn about Cruz by reviewing how he reacted to Trump's bullying.

Numerous Republicans and right wing media outlets have blamed Thomas Crooks' assassination attempt against Donald Trump's on Democrats who have said that Trump is worse than Hitler. Derek Hunter writes in The Hill

If you are willing to call your political opponent literally worse than one of history’s greatest monsters, is it unreasonable to think that at least a handful of your listeners — perhaps a few mentally unstable people with a political obsession — might take you seriously and act to stop the threat?

 

“Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation,” Biden said just three weeks ago. “That is not hyperbole. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He is literally a threat to the America that we stand for.”

If you could go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler sometime in the mid-1930s, you would do it, right? So if Biden and Hillary Clinton believe their own assertions that Trump is an existential threat to our nation and our way of life, then how can they be happy that Trump survived the assassination attempt over the weekend?

The following are posts by Donald Trump as well as questions that Democratic candidates can use to question their opponent’s support of Donald Trump. Feel free to use these posts and my commentary for handouts. You may want to tweek them by changing the word "supports" to "endorsed" if your opponent has publicly endorsed Trump, and you may want to include a blurb at the end to include your name and a reason for voters to vote for you besides just voting against your opponent for being a Trump supporter. Your supporters may want to plaster them on posterboards around town or leave copies in laundromats. Or post images from this article onto your website. Feel free to use any of this to respond to tweets by your opponents. Be creative with how you use this.