What happened
Vice President Kamala Harris has been keeping a low profile in Pittsburgh while preparing for Tuesday's debate. Donald Trump, on social media and in speeches, has "escalated his vows to use the raw power of the state to impose and maintain control and to intimidate and punish anyone he perceives as working against him," The New York Times said.
Who said what
Over the weekend, Trump's rhetoric "turned more ominous with a pledge to prosecute anyone who 'cheats' in the election," The Associated Press said, repeating his false claims that he won in 2020 but was robbed of a second term by fraud. He also urged local police to "watch for the voter fraud," an "apparent attempt to enlist law enforcement that would be legally dubious."
Trump "believes anyone who breaks the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including criminals who engage in election fraud," campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said. Strikingly, Trump himself "has been convicted of 34 felonies" in New York and "charged in both federal and state court with conspiring to fraudulently alter the outcome of the 2020 election," the Times said. And while some of his recent comments "could be discounted as his usual hyperbolic, norm-busting rhetoric, his record in office suggests" they "cannot be treated as unserious or figurative."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
What next?
Journalists aren't going to suddenly start calling Trump an "emotionally unstable" would-be autocrat who's "running because he wants to stay out of prison, get revenge on his enemies, exercise untrammeled power and gain access to even more money," Tom Nichols said at The Atlantic. "But if Trump's comments this weekend are not the first questions at the debate — if his threat to democracy is not the only question — then there is no point in debates at all."
-
Quiz of The Week: 29 November – 5 DecemberQuiz Have you been paying attention to The Week’s news?
-
The week’s best photosIn Pictures A drive in the desert, prayers with pigeons, and more
-
The Week Unwrapped: Will drought fuel global violence?Podcast Plus why did Trump pardon a drug-trafficking president? And are romantic comedies in terminal decline?
-
Trump pardons Texas Democratic congressmanspeed read Rep. Henry Cuellar was charged with accepting foreign bribes tied to Azerbaijan and Mexico
-
‘It is their greed and the pollution from their products that hurt consumers’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Trump targets ‘garbage’ Somalis ahead of ICE raidsSpeed Read The Department of Homeland Security will launch an immigration operation targeting Somali immigrants in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area
-
Hegseth blames ‘fog of war’ for potential war crimespeed read ‘I did not personally see survivors,’ Hegseth said at a Cabinet meeting
-
‘It’s critical that Congress get involved’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Appeals court disqualifies US Attorney Alina HabbaSpeed Read The former personal attorney to President Donald Trump has been unlawfully serving as US attorney for New Jersey, the ruling says
-
The military: When is an order illegal?Feature Trump is making the military’s ‘most senior leaders complicit in his unlawful acts’
-
Ukraine and Rubio rewrite Russia’s peace planFeature The only explanation for this confusing series of events is that ‘rival factions’ within the White House fought over the peace plan ‘and made a mess of it’
