Trump’s Escalating Violent Rhetoric is Straight Out of the Autocrat’s Playbook

His menacing words toward Mark Milley and Letitia James should not be shrugged off

Margaret Sullivan / Guardian UK 06 October 23

Twice in the past two weeks, Donald Trump has suggested violent consequences for those who dare to cross him.

Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff? He deserves to be executed, Trump charged. Milley’s backchannel communications, intended to reassure Chinese military leaders before and after the 2020 election, amounted to a treasonous act “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

And Letitia James, the New York attorney general who filed a damaging civil fraud case against Trump? He didn’t stop at calling her “corrupt and racist”.

“I don’t think the people of this country are going to stand for it … This is a disgrace. And you ought to go after this attorney general,” he said publicly on his way into the courtroom this week.

As always, Trump walks right up to the line. He didn’t quite say “execute Milley” or “assassinate Letitia James”. But he comes perilously close, and some prominent legal experts think he has moved past free speech and into criminality.

“Trump’s first amendment freedom of speech includes the right to express his racist views about anyone, including attorney general Letitia James,” wrote Lawrence Tribe, the Harvard Law School emeritus professor. “But he has no right to foment violence against her. He crossed the line into criminal threats when he said ‘you ought to go after this attorney general.’”

But because we all are so inured to the former president’s reckless behavior and irresponsible rhetoric, most people seem to have shrugged off these shocking words as simply more of the same. Merely Trump being Trump.

Violence makes good sense to Trump’s devoted followers, as they memorably demonstrated on 6 January 2021 by storming the US Capitol.

To the crimson-capped choir, Trump’s words are gospel.

“Treason is treason. There’s only one cure for treason – being put to death,” parroted one Trump supporter in Iowa when asked by an NBC News reporter about Milley.

For the rest of us, it’s important to understand this rhetoric for what it is – a crucial tool of a political leader plowing the ground for the authoritarian regime he intends to lead.

“There’s a whole playbook” for would-be autocrats involving such threats, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on authoritarianism, told me recently on my Substack podcast, American Crisis.

The would-be autocrat “tries to demonstrate that democracy has failed and what you’re left with is crime, anarchy and no way to control it – so you create an appetite for a strongman”.

And she added, they paint the picture that violence is not merely necessary to fight back. It’s actually good, a necessary way of reasserting control against corruption.

Ben-Ghiat develops the theme in her 2020 book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.

“In the tradition of the fascists,” she writes, “Trump uses his rallies to train his followers to see violence in a positive light.”

As the Republican frontrunner ramps up his 2024 presidential campaign and defends himself against myriad legal challenges, his violent talk is escalating. In California recently, for example, he trashed the state’s crime rates, promising that when he’s in charge, shoplifters won’t be tolerated.

Blood will flow.

“Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store,” he said at the California Republican fall convention. The crowd, of course, cheered him on.

Fox News and its imitators are right there to help him with the messaging.

“Trump decries corruption, ‘election fraud’ at NYC civil fraud trial” went the headline on the rightwing network’s story about his remarks on his way to court. Those distancing quotation marks around election fraud, no doubt, are supposed to communicate that Fox learned its lesson after paying Dominion Voting Systems $787m in a recent defamation settlement over spreading lies about the 2020 election.

As that Fox headline suggests, Trump’s aggression is all about fighting corruption and fraud with whatever weapons are available.

At this point, that crowd of true believers and media amplifiers are a lost cause.

But the rest of us – reasonable citizens and the reality-based press – ought to understand what this violent rhetoric really means. And what it may help to accomplish.

The goal is to throw out American democracy and move to something none of us should want.

Republicans turn on Gaetz: ED medication, sexually explicit videos, and energy drinks?

 

Matt Gaetz likes to brag about all the young girls he slept with. 

By Laura Clawson for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday, October 05, 2023 at 12:13:18p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

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Rep. Matt Gaetz engineered the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker this week, and while his fellow House Republicans are training most of their ire on Democrats for not bailing McCarthy out, there is some anger left over for Gaetz.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, some Republicans suggested Gaetz should be expelled from the party conference. Rep. Garret Graves said action against Gaetz would be “pursued in the conference,” while Rep. Mike Lawler told reporters he backed the move, and also that he’d like to have hit Gaetz “square between the eyes” with the speaker’s gavel. Rep. Don Bacon also backed expulsion, saying Gaetz is “not a Republican.”

Graves claimed, without evidence, that Gaetz “just got schooled by AOC and others; he was totally manipulated into doing this.” As if Republicans can’t manufacture their own disarray.

None of this was quite as startling as what Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin had to say about Gaetz, though.

Mullin, who overlapped with Gaetz in the House for several years, cited the investigation into Gaetz related to sex trafficking of a teenager and echoed the 2021 reports that Gaetz bragged about his sexual escapades on the House floor:

This is a guy that didn’t have, the media didn’t give the time of day to after he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl, and there’s a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him—because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor, that all of us had walked away, of the girls that he had slept with. He would brag about how he would crush [erectile dysfunction] medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night—this is obviously before he got married—and so, when that accusation came out, no one defended him and no one on the media would give him the time of the day.

All of a sudden, he found fame because he opposed the speaker of the House back in November, and he’s always stayed there. And he was never going to leave until he got this last moment of fame by going after a motion to vacate.

Those are some very specific allegations about the ED medicine and energy drinks. Gaetz, for what it’s worth, called it “a lie from someone who doesn’t know me and who is coping with the death of the political career of his friend Kevin.”

Mullin wasn't done. In a Newsmax interview, he again referred to “the stuff [Gaetz] would show on the floor and the stuff he would brag about on the floor,” and described Gaetz referring to now-South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as a “fine ---- … and you can put the B-word in place there.” Mullin also wasn’t the only Republican pointing to Gaetz’s sexual habits. Former Mike Pence chief of staff Marc Short, who is also a former chief of staff for the House Republican Caucus, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Matt Gaetz, to say he came here as a fiscal crusader—it’s more likely he came here for the teenage interns on Capitol Hill, to be honest.”

The fact that these allegations and characterizations of Gaetz are bubbling up suggests that even if no one has the nerve to try to get him expelled from the Republican conference—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene warned against it earlier in the week—or if such an effort fails, he will face continuing rumors and digs. As many people commented on social media following the Mullin comments, Gaetz may be about to get the Madison Cawthorn treatment, with one rumor, allegation, or video after another emerging to damage a Republican who’s become inconvenient to his party. Gaetz should probably be trying to remember what he has told which Republicans about his sexual habits—and if his bragging might come back to bite him.

So sexual predator Gaetz brings down the former speaker, pictured here in happier times, and Jim Jordan declares his candidacy.  Remember Jordan's link to a sexual cover-up?  This photo could one day be captioned "The good old days."

Donald Trump is having a bad week, and it shows

 

By Laura Clawson for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday, October 04, 2023 at 2:10:09p MDT

 

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Donald Trump has spent much of the week alternating between sitting in the New York court where his business practices are on (civil) trial, ranting to the media outside the court, and ranting on Truth Social. He doesn’t seem like he’s having fun.

His habitual glower in the courtroom tells the story:

Sometimes he switches that up briefly to look outraged, like he wants to start berating the judge in person:

But he can’t do that. Even Trump knows it wouldn’t go over well to yell at a judge to his face. That feeling of powerlessness, though, at having to sit and listen to things that he doesn’t like without being able to yell at anyone? That must be a very unfamiliar feeling.

Trump’s need to assert himself and push his own narrative comes out in his Truth Social posts and when he speaks to the media on his way in and out of court.

“Just arrived at the Witch Hunt Trial taking place in the very badly failing (so sadly!) State of New York, where people and companies are fleeing by the thousands. Corrupt Attorney General, Letitia James, is a big reason for this,” he posted on Truth Social Wednesday morning. “Statute 63(12) is meant to be used for Consumer Fraud. It has never been used before on a ‘case’ such as this, especially since I did absolutely nothing wrong. I borrowed money, paid it back, in full, and got sued, years later, with a trial RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY CAMPAIGN. I am not even entitled, under any circumstances, to a JURY. This Witch Hunt cannot be allowed to continue. It is Election Interference and the start of Communism right here in America!”

In reality, Trump’s attorneys failed to ask for a jury trial, and Judge Arthur Engoron has already disagreed with the “did absolutely nothing wrong” part, finding before the trial even started that Trump and the Trump Organization committed fraud for years.

This followed his Monday tantrum outside the courtroom, during which he repeatedly attacked Engoron, James, and Engoron’s law clerk, as well as his Truth Social post attacking the clerk, which led Engoron to caution everyone involved in the case, “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I won't tolerate it in my courtroom.”

Significantly, Trump’s Wednesday Truth Social rant didn’t directly target Engoron or court staff. Maybe even he realized that disobeying Engoron on this would be a very bad idea.

Three days into the trial, he’s looking rough, unmoored, and unhappy:

And after having told a Florida judge that he would be in New York all week attending the trial, Trump is reportedly heading back to Florida Wednesday afternoon. Apparently he couldn’t stick it out for a full week—which bodes poorly for his ability to tolerate his upcoming criminal trials.

Blistering statement from Trump's former White House chief of staff is perfect 2024 Biden attack ad

Former US Chief of Staff John Kelly looks on as former US President Donald Trump meets with North Korean defectors in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC on February 2, 2018.

By Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday, October 03, 2023 at 1:32:14p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

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Republicans and former Trump allies just keep spewing ready-made 2024 Joe Biden ads, and Team Biden keeps capitalizing.

Several weeks ago, for instance, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina—both running in the Republican presidential primary—dunked on Biden for being pro-union. Team Biden spliced the clips together and tweeted it out on Biden's campaign account with one simple word: "Yes."

It wasn't the first ad like this, and it won't be the last. Remember this summer when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia made the case that Biden is "actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on"? Daily Kos' Joan McCarter spotted that Biden campaign ad from a mile away, and then—voilà!—there it was.

Well, hold on to your hats, folks, because here comes the attack ad portion of Biden's 2024 campaign, courtesy of former Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. And truly, there is simply no way to do justice to Kelly's observations about Trump without including the whole damn statement secured by CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”

Indeed.

Until now, reports about several of these instances, such as Trump calling fallen service members "suckers," had been hotly disputed by Trump allies. But Kelly, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general and Trump's longest-serving chief of staff, put that debate to rest with his on-the-record statement.  

While acting as commander in chief of the U.S. military, Trump called POWs, wounded soldiers, and troops who make the ultimate sacrifice "suckers” and “losers.”

Trump is also a bona fide cult leader who commands the votes of some 45% of this country.

His cultists drank the Kool Aid, and in Trump's view, they are all suckers in waiting who would drink more at his direction—no matter what the concoction. That’s exactly what Trump did on Jan. 6, 2021, when he sicced his mob of supporters on the U.S. Capitol, and that’s exactly what he is already priming his faithful to do again in 2024 if he isn’t elected to another term.

The only downside to Kelly’s comments for Team Biden is that they weren’t made on camera. Still, if and when the time comes for a Biden-Trump rematch, Kelly’s statements can be skillfully employed in several well-made ads alongside footage of Trump’s previous remarks about liking “people who weren’t captured,” which was a 2015 reference to the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a former POW.

Such an ad won’t peel away any Trump cultists, but it could demoralize soft Republican voters while simultaneously motivating anti-Trumpers to get to the polls—even if they are not exactly enthused about casting a vote for Biden. That’s a valuable part of the not-Trump coalition Biden needs to recreate in 2024 to win reelection.

Trump "rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France." -John Kelly

WHO IS TOO OLD TO BE PRESIDENT? Donald Trump is unraveling, and the media is covering it up

By Mark Sumner for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, October 02, 2023 at 11:57:08a MDT

 

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During a speech on Sunday night, Donald Trump repeatedly spoke as if Barack Obama were the current president. It wasn’t the first time. In recent speeches, Trump has also claimed to have beaten both Obama and George W. Bush in 2016. That’s when he wasn’t promising to use irrigation ditches to bring water to bathrooms or keep California’s forests damp.

It’s not that Trump hasn’t always been an egotistical, vindictive jackass with few concerns for whether his hateful, antisemitic, misogynistic, and racist rants had even a passing encounter with the truth. But this is different. In the 2024 campaign, and in the messages he posts to social media, Trump has been in a confused and addled state, one where he has frequently makes statements that are both incoherent and irreconcilable with reality.

Still, did you hear that President Joe Biden made a “gaffe”? Sure you did. Because the media not only devotes heavy coverage to Biden’s every hesitation or stumble, it goes out of its way to create them even when they don’t exist. All to promote a narrative that Biden is old and losing his grip, while Trump is somehow vigorous. That narrative isn’t just a clear disservice; it’s a signal measure of how willing major media outlets are to coddle Trump, savage Biden, and keep the nation in the dark.

Media Matters has pointed out that despite the barely three-year gap between the two men, Biden’s age gets mentioned almost four times as often. That means it logged 193 mentions on cable news over a four-day period. The media reinforces this with a hawk-like observation of Biden’s every utterance, ready to swoop on any perceived error.

But while the media is razor-focused on how smoothly Biden descends the stairs, this is Donald Trump:

The San Francisco Chronicle’s story about Trump’s speech on Friday focuses first on Trump’s call to shoot shoplifters on sight, but that kind of violent rhetoric is reflective of both Trump and his movement. It’s almost understandable. That’s not true of the points where Trump promises to irrigate bathrooms, claims that electric vehicles make their users “somewhat schizophrenic,” promises to keep the forests wet, or explains why you can’t have electric boats—something that he might want to explain to fishermen who have been using electric trolling motors for decades.

Biden may not always make the most skillful dismount from his bike, but he's not asking his audience to choose between electrocution and being eaten by a shark. The idea that you have to show a photo ID to buy a loaf of bread, that whales are being driven crazy by windmills, and that every EV is made in China aren’t just momentary brain farts. They’re part of Trump’s regular patter, cropping up in various recent speeches.

If there’s any merit in the idea that Trump’s claims regularly represent projection, it’s worth looking at his recent attacks on “deranged” special counsel Jack Smith, a “deranged” New York judge, “crazy” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and “lunatic” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. (Smith also earned a “deranged lunatic,” as if one insult weren’t enough.) In the words of third-graders everywhere at a level of rhetoric Trump surely understands: "I'm rubber, you're glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."

Trump’s recent statements aren’t just mean. They’re not just egotistical and monomaniacal. They are dangerously disconnected from reality. And it should fall on every media outlet to hammer home the senselessness of Trump’s statements. Every bizarre remark should be the focus of heavy media attention that makes clear Trump’s inability to carry on a reasoned conversation that involves real events in the real world.

Instead, we get a Newsweek article called “Joe Biden's Gaffes Are Getting Harder To Ignore,” which covers such huge events as Biden failing to shake someone’s hand at the end of a press conference; Biden saying that he visited the site of the Sept. 11 attacks a day after they occurred, rather than a few days after the attack; and a speech where Biden said nice things about the Congressional Black Caucus even though the event was organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

That article is just one of at least three that Newsweek has run in the last month, each one of which has included experts warning against the “perception that [Biden] is too old to be an effective president” and suggestions such as "Perhaps this trend will embolden someone like Gavin Newsom of California to throw his hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination for 2024.”

The Biden Gaffe Watch is on high alert for moments when they can drop an article title like “‘It Is Evening, Isn’t It?’ An 80-Year-Old President’s Whirlwind Trip,” in The New York Times, or, “Biden Slips On Air Force One Stairs After Staff Try To Prevent Major Falls—As Gaffes Raise Concerns About His Age” in Forbes.

Yes, Forbes got all that into a single headline. The article itself is a dedicated effort of gaffe-watchery, having a timeline that shows Biden making some kind of misstep or misstatement about once every 10 days—including such horrors as fumbling the name of a New Zealand rugby team and using “God save the queen, man” as an expression of his frustration over a silly question about gun violence. And yes, on Biden Gaffe Watch, that counts. If that lengthy list of Biden “blunders” is too much for you, don’t worry. Forbes also has a video.

Every single one of these articles follows the same pattern: Here’s something wrong that Biden said, here are claims that people are really concerned about his age, here are polls saying people think he’s too old, and finally, here are experts chiming in—often by providing quotes from Republican politicians or pundits.

Oh, and if the articles get around to it, they may toss in a paragraph, way down at the very bottom, that mentions Trump is also an old guy.

What the articles never get around to mentioning is that there is a fundamental difference between Biden making an error or a verbal gaffe, and Trump weaving a whole narrative—complete with people calling him “sir,” crazy whales, or killer batteries—that has no relationship to reality.

Imagine if Joe Biden had spewed this nonsense:

“All the currently dry canals [in California] will be brimming and used to irrigate everything, including your own homes and bathrooms and everything. You’re going to be happy, and I’m going to get it done fast. They say that there’s so much water up north that I want to have the overflow areas go into your forests and dampen your forests. Because if you dampen your forests you’re not going to have these forest fires that are burning at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”

And that was just the tip of his weekend inanities. Now, Trump is back in court as he faces a bench trial in New York over the fate of his business empire. The judge in the case is a former New York City cabbie, which means he must be immune to BS, right? He has to be, as Trump has already lost his mind, calling him “a Deranged, Trump Hating Judge, who RAILROADED this FAKE CASE.” And that was just the beginning of Trump’s livid, deluded eight-minute rant. If you’re wondering why Trump is showing up to court when he doesn’t have to, it could be because his business is the only thing he actually cares about, or maybe he just thinks he can raise money off of the court case. The grift remains strong with that one.

Failing to highlight that difference isn’t just bad journalism; it’s intentionally bad journalism designed to create a false equivalence. And that’s being generous.

Hail to the Fraudster in Chief

 'The fact that so many Americans remain fooled by Trump should lead to some serious national soul-searching.' (photo: Mark Peterson/New York Times)

Paul Krugman / The New York Times  

01 October 23

 

Ever since debt was invented in ancient Sumer, there have probably been people enriching themselves through bad investments. The trick is to make these investments using other people’s money.

Suppose, for example, that a wheeler-dealer uses borrowed funds to make risky investments in New Jersey casinos. If the investments somehow end up making money, he can pocket the profits. But if the investments fail, he may — if he’s been tricky about the wording in his loans or manages to persuade his creditors not to go after his other assets — be able to walk away and leave other people holding the bag. That is, it’s heads he wins, tails the creditors lose.

He may also be able to siphon off some of the borrowed money, say by having the casinos pay him or businesses he owns large sums for various services before they go bust.

As readers may have guessed, this isn’t a hypothetical example. It is the story of Donald Trump’s New Jersey casino empire, a venture ending in multiple bankruptcies that was a disaster for outside investors but appears to have been quite profitable for Trump.

The problem for someone who wants to play that game is how to persuade lenders to play along. Why would any people risk their money in such dubious ventures?

Well, there are a couple of ways to pull this off. One, perhaps the main story with those casinos, is sheer power of persuasion, perhaps supported by a cult of personality: Convince lenders that these dubious ventures are actually good investments or that you’re a uniquely effective businessman who can turn straw into gold.

Alternatively, you can try to persuade lenders that they’re safe by offering collateral that seems sufficient to protect them but isn’t, because you’ve inflated the value of the assets you put up and possibly also inflated your personal wealth to make it seem you are both a brilliant businessman and a reliable borrower.

Which is why making false claims about the value of assets you control is illegal. And on Tuesday, Justice Arthur F. Engoron ruled in New York that Trump did, in fact, persistently commit fraud by overvaluing his assets, possibly by as much as $2.2 billion.

Trump and his lawyers offered, as I read it, three main defenses against accusations of fraud.

First, they argued that the value of real estate is, to some extent, subjective. Indeed, if you own a building, you don’t know for sure what it’s worth until you try to sell it.

But while there’s some wiggle room in valuing real estate, it’s limited. And Engoron ruled that Trump went far beyond those limits, creating a “fantasy world” of indefensible valuations. For example, the Trump Organization treated rent-regulated apartments as being worth as much as noncontrolled apartments. The judge made special note of Trump’s claim that he had a 30,000-square-foot residence in New York, when the true number was only 11,000; square footage isn’t subjective.

Second, Trump’s lawyers argued that banks that lent to him got repaid in full, so there was no harm done. Of course, that wasn’t true for lenders caught up in Trump’s earlier bankruptcies. More generally, playing heads-I-win-tails-you-lose based on fraudulent valuations isn’t legal even if sometimes the bets come up heads.

Finally, Trump declared on social media that “my Civil Rights have been taken away from me” and that he borrowed money from “sophisticated Wall Street banks” that presumably wouldn’t have been easily deceived by fraud. If you know anything about Wall Street’s attitudes toward Trump, that’s a real hoot. For years, only one major Wall Street player, Deutsche Bank, was willing to deal with him at all, leading to much puzzlement about that bank’s motives. And eventually Deutsche Bank also pulled the plug, citing concerns about his financial claims. Trump did manage to pay off that debt, although it’s a mystery where he found the cash. But as I just explained, getting lucky is no excuse for fraud.

What’s remarkable about Engoron’s finding that Trump committed large-scale fraud (it’s now a ruling, not a mere accusation) is what it says about the man who became president and the voters who supported him.

Back in 2016, some observers warned conventional political analysts that they were underrating Trump’s chances because they didn’t appreciate how many Americans believed that he was a brilliant businessman — a belief based largely on his role on the reality TV show “The Apprentice.” What we now know is that the old joke was, in Trump’s case, the simple truth: He wasn’t a real business genius; he just played one on TV.

But the truth is that this was obvious, to anyone willing to see, from the beginning of Trump’s political rise.

I’d like to predict that this ruling will finally destroy Trump’s public persona. In reality, however, his supporters will probably brush this ruling off, partly because they’ll view it as the product of a left-wing conspiracy, partly because at this late date, few of those who backed him will be willing to admit that they were taken in by a charlatan.

But they were. And the fact that so many Americans were and remain fooled should lead to some serious national soul-searching.

It turns out telling a 12-year-old she must have her rapist's baby isn't good politics

Republican gubernatorial nominee Daniel Cameron

By Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 10:20:21a MDT

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Last year, Kentucky Republicans imposed a highly restrictive abortion ban on voters by overriding the veto of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. And this year, Beshear is using the ban to dismantle the Republican nominee seeking to unseat him, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

On Sept. 1, Beshear rolled out an ad featuring Jefferson County Prosecutor Erin White castigating Cameron for believing a "9-year-old rape survivor should be forced to give birth." A little over two weeks later, Cameron flip-flopped on his staunch support for the law, telling a radio host he would sign legislation with exceptions for rape and incest if the Republican-led legislature sent it to his desk. The likelihood of that happening is next to zero, and everyone knows it, including Cameron.

 Beshear wasn’t impressed. Now he’s back with a new ad featuring a real life child rape survivor, and it is devastating.

A woman named Hadley recalls being raped by her stepfather at age 12 "after years of sexual abuse."

"Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it's like to stand in my shoes," Hadley says. Then she addresses Cameron directly: "This is to you, Daniel Cameron: To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of the stepfather who raped her is unthinkable," Hadley says, adding that she's speaking out because women and girls need to have options.

"Daniel Cameron would give us none," she concludes.

It's hard to watch, but no viewer can miss the rage on Hadley's face, nor can they deny the righteousness of her cause. Hadley never even uses the word “abortion.” She doesn't have to—everyone knows exactly what she is talking about without weighing down her message with a word Republicans have demonized for decades.

The idea of a Democratic governor using the issue of abortion and reproductive freedom to destroy his Republican opponent in a red state like Kentucky would have been unimaginable just two years ago. But now the center of gravity on the issue has entirely shifted, and here we are.

Republicans across the country should be breathing into a bag as they watch Cameron attempt to deflect Beshear's broadsides. If Beshear wins reelection in November, Democrats in competitive races anywhere in the country will have a new roadmap for how to bury Republicans on abortion for the foreseeable future.

"Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it's like to stand in my shoes."