Putting children in cages. Making it deliberate US policy to separate thousands of parents from their kids, hundreds of them never to be reunited. Threatening, at various times, to use nuclear weapons, or “fire and fury,” to annihilate North Korea and Iran. Conducting this game of nuclear chicken via tweet. Pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord and putting a wrecking ball to any and every regulation intended to tackle global warming. Muzzling EPA scientists and ordering government agencies to distort key scientific data. Threatening to withhold FEMA funds from California following vast, climate-change-related wildfires. Throwing rolls of paper towels to desperate Puerto Ricans after a hurricane wrecked their island, and then trying to withhold disaster relief funds because he was in a political spat with officials there. Reveling in other people’s humiliation. Cozying up to the killers of Jamal Khashoggi. Mocking a disabled journalist. Repeatedly praising the police shooting, by rubber bullets, of another journalist. Calling out federal forces to attack racial justice demonstrators. Unleashing chemical agents against protesters just to clear a path so that he could have a photo-op. Applauding a vigilante killer. Labeling major American cities “anarchist jurisdictions” and denying vital federal dollars to their health systems. Refusing to back economic support for cities, for public transit systems, for schools, and risking the country’s economic well-being and the educational future of millions of children. Pushing to slash food stamps for the hungry. Continually attacking the Affordable Care Act and rolling back health care access for millions of Americans. Nominating judges who will eviscerate women’s rights, environmental and workplace regulations, and voting rights.
Claiming to be a billionaire but paying almost no federal income taxes. Milking his time in power to secure huge financial perks for his businesses. Refusing to abide by lawfully issued congressional subpoenas. Pushing the dictatorial idea that a president is literally outside the rule of law. Talking about young soldiers whose lives were lost as “losers and suckers.” Barring immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries. Locking down the border and forcing asylum seekers to wait in fetid, dangerous, disease-ridden refugee camps in Mexico. Barring all but a few thousand refugees per year. Traveling to Minneapolis and other cities that welcome refugees to direct racist diatribes at these new arrivals. Praising the tiki-torch-carrying racists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. Retweeting white nationalist tweets. Tweeting calls for armed militias to “liberate” states from public health orders. Repeatedly attacking a governor after militiamen hatched a plot to kidnap her and “try” her for treason. Retweeting QAnon conspiracies. Ordering the Department of Justice to intervene to help friends in trouble with the law. Repeatedly urging said DoJ to investigate and imprison his political opponents. Accusing those political opponents, civil servants, and private citizens who end up on his bad side of “treason,” or of being “scum” or “enemies of the people.” Cutting pandemic preparedness funding. Mocking public health measures such as the wearing of masks that experts say would save tens of thousands of lives. Ridiculing doctors and infectious disease specialists. Suggesting Americans inject themselves with bleach and with light rays to counter Covid-19. Holding fanatical maskless rallies in coronavirus hot spots. Blaming “blue states” for high coronavirus death rates. Pitting states and hospital systems against one another in the scramble for vital medical supplies. Walking out of the World Health Organization during a once-in-a-century pandemic. Refusing to commit the United States to cooperative efforts with other countries to develop and distribute Covid-19 vaccines. Mocking political allies from the world’s great democracies. Praising dictators and strongmen. Calling poor, nonwhite countries “shitholes.”
Siding with European fascist parties in an effort to undermine the European Union. Hiring a who’s who of far-right activists to staff US government agencies. Using Russian disinformation in 2016 and 2020. Blackmailing the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on his political opponent. Attacking his own institutions of government for concluding that Russia was sabotaging US political processes. Asking his Homeland Security team why he couldn’t order undocumented immigrants to be shot in the legs to slow them down when they tried to enter the United States. Wondering why he couldn’t build a moat filled with alligators to deter immigrants, and why he couldn’t build spikes atop his great border wall—which the Mexicans never ended up paying for—to impale those attempting to climb it. Raiding billions of dollars from the public purse to fund that wall, despite the refusal of Congress to sign off on the spending. Seeking to deport half a million people with Temporary Protected Status, despite the fact that this would result in roughly a quarter of a million US-citizen children losing their parents. Cutting immigrants off from basic health, food, and housing benefits by changing the “public charge” rules. Sabotaging the Census count. Refusing to accept the notion of a peaceful transfer of power. Attempting to defund the US Postal Service to delay the delivery of mail-in ballots. Plotting to declare “victory” before most votes have been counted. Telling fascist street fighters to “stand back and stand by.” Hiring an army of attorneys instructed to challenge ballot counts anywhere the vote appears close enough to be tweakable by court rulings. Doing everything he can to disempower and disrespect us, the American people.
There is no margin for error here. There is no room for anything but a thumping, indisputable, massive Biden victory.
VOTE.
Sasha AbramskyTwitterSasha Abramsky is The Nation's Western Correspondent. He is the author of several books, including The American Way of Poverty, The House of Twenty Thousand Books, Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World's First Female Sports Superstar, and most recently Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America.