Democracy Will Be Saved By The Grassroots, Not The Establishment

Leading up to the election, regular Americans at town halls are doing the work of establishment journalists by asking a weakened Trump tough questions and exposing his lies.

In this week’s episode of Democracy-ish, Danielle and I dissect how average Americans, like 56-year-old construction worker Ramiro Gonzalez, are picking up the slack and doing the work of corporate media in challenging and exposing Trump at various town halls across America.

At a Univision Town Hall, Gonzalez asked Trump point blank about his incitement of a violent insurrection which led to a viral moment in which Trump gaslit the audience and promoted a fictitious narrative that made the audience roll their eyes. Gonzalez stood undeterred and gave a look that reflected the feelings of the majority of America who are utterly disgusted by this 78-year-old vulgarian who must permanently retire to a prison cell or insane asylum.

(Ramiro Gonzalez is all of us)

However, Trump can’t gaslight America on his own. Working in tandem with him to mainstream his authoritarian tendencies are Fox “News” and right-wing media. Earlier today on Dan Bongino’s show, Trump repeated the nonsense that Jan 6th wasn’t violent and compared the violent MAGA insurrectionists to innocent Japanese Americans who were interned during WW2. What he forgot to mention was that last week he openly invoked the Alien Sedition Act, which was used to target Japanese Americans, as a weapon against migrants and foreign-born individuals in the U.S.

As Trump continues to peter out during the final month of the campaign, canceling engagements, waddling like a penguin for 39 minutes instead of answering questions at a rally, and spreading lies about January 6th, VP Kamala Harris is going into the Lion’s Den. During her tense “interview” with Bret Baier at Fox, she exposed his selective use of a Trump clip that omitted his reference to Americans as “the enemy of within.” She unleashed her prosecutorial chops and forced Baier and Fox to do something so rare that it made headline news: they apologized.

Even as corporate media engages in verbal gymnastics to sanitize Trump’s descent to full-blown fascism, the people are dancing to a different tune. In Georgia and North Carolina, there is momentum and record turnout, often led by Black women on the ground. Speaking of Black women who aren’t messing around, Judge Chutkan unsealed nearly 1,900 pages of secret evidence by special counsel Jack Smith. The October hits keep coming, and Trump doesn’t look like he has the stamina to absorb the blows.

Pedal to the metal until election day.