EXCELLENT — Dr Stacey Patton: Trump’s White House Address Primed His Followers to Cheat, Riot and Reject a Republican Midterm Loss

Dr. Stacey Patton — a black award-winning journalist, historian, author, and college professor — is so right on! Blessed are the wise and courageous truth-tellers and warriors for justice and fierce love! May then inform and inspire us all! — Molly

By Dr Stacey Patton

Did Y’all watch Donald Trump’s hot mess of a prime-time address from the White House last night? I did. And it was basically a televised séance for the 2020 election.

Can y’all believe that six years later, this Orange Menace is still standing over that rotted political corpse with a Ouija board and Rudy Giuliani’s old hair dye, begging it to rise from the dead and tell America that he actually won that election?

Btw, where is Rudy?

Any body seen that melting gargoyle lately? I wonder if he’s out there somewhere still hiding from creditors, hoarding bottles of Just For Men, and waiting for Daddy Trump to remember he exists.

Anyway, I watched that hot mess last night. And as I listened to Trump’s lies I kept thinking, “Sir. It is 2026. Why the hell are you still out here talking about that election?” It made no sense.

I mean, look at the state of this country. Food, housing, and healthcare costs too damn much. Hospitals are closing. Infrastructure in this country is shitty. Student loans are crushing people and families are losing benefits. Universities are being bullied into submission. Civil servants are being purged while journalists, judges and political opponents are under attack.

The country is at war. Then there’s a ceasefire. No, we at war again. The Strait of Hormuz done closed. Wait—it’s open! Never mind Y’all, it’s closed again.

People are being snatched, terrorized and shot in broad daylight by masked ICE agents. Folks are worried about their jobs, retirement, health care, their children’s futures, and whether democracy will survive the Trump regime.

The republic is falling and this man had the gall to drag everybody into primetime so he could roll out of his grievance crypt to reopen a cold case of his wounded ego. He told us, once again, that an election he lost six years ago was somehow stolen by China, undocumented immigrants, voting machines, mailboxes, invisible ballots and everybody except the millions of Americans who simply got sick of his corrupt ass.

But of course he did. His lie was not retrospective. It was preparatory. Consider the backdrop of his speech.

His Justice Department has been suing states for access to statewide voter-registration records, including sensitive personal information. In March, his regime ordered federal agencies to construct new citizenship-verification systems using DHS and Social Security data, and thank goodness federal courts blocked key parts of that effort to seize greater control over voter rolls and mail ballots in June and July. He is also attacking independent media, dismantling the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission and using federal homeland-security funding to pressure states into adopting Washington’s rules for determining who qualifies as a legitimate voter.

Predictably, much of the mainstream news coverage of the speech has remained trapped in the familiar fact-checking frame by asking questions like: Was China involved? Are noncitizens actually voting? What did the intelligence documents say? Which networks carried the speech?

This kind of reporting obscures the larger strategy which is designed to condition the public before Election Day. This was not an election-security address to the American people. It was a preemptive alibi designed to create a pretext for exerting federal control over the elections and to prime his followers to reject any election outcome that does not keep him and the Republicans in power.

Trump knows the Republicans are vulnerable. So he is planting the lie early. If his party wins, it will have been a beautiful election, a perfect election, maybe the most secure and greatest election anybody has ever seen in all of human history. Many people are saying it, very smart people, election people.

But if the Republicans lose, suddenly Xi Jinping, Tyrone and n’em from Atlanta and somebody’s undocumented abuela formed an international criminal syndicate at the public library.

Y’all, this is what authoritarian propaganda looks like. It does not wait until after defeat to invent the conspiracy. It conditions the public beforehand to demonize the opposition, reject any result the leader does not like, and convince the public that only your victory can be legit. Trump is not waiting to lose before attacking the results. He is trying to poison public confidence before voting even begins. And I want Y’all to please notice the audacity of a man who tried to overturn an American election now lecturing the nation about election integrity. That’s like an arsonist calling a press conference about smoke-detector safety.

Several major networks, ABC, NBC and CNN, refused to air the speech live, and naturally Trump treated that as further evidence of a conspiracy. Because narcissists do not recognize editorial judgment and concerns about the spread of misinformation. They only recognize obedience and betrayal.

When it was all said and done, America did not receive a presidential address last night. What we got was advance notice that Donald Trump intends to put the 2026 election on trial before a single ballot is counted. He essentially said that not only will a Republican defeat be evidence of fraud, the media will be treated as conspirators and election officials who certify the results will be treated like enemy combatants.

The old fool wasn’t predicting fraud in that speech. He was preparing his followers to excuse interference, reject the results and pull another Jan. 6 if Republicans lose. One thing folks need to understand is that speeches don’t only misinform people, they also create permission structures to justify things like voter suppression, intimidation, official interference, refusal to certify results, and political violence as legitimate acts of “defending” democracy.

And listen Y’all, we also need to connect that ‘election security’ speech to Trump’s massive ICE buildup and continued reign of terror on families and communities. It belongs to the same governing project.

First, you gotta keep telling the country that immigrants are invading us, committing crimes, and stealing elections. Then you hire thousands of federal agents and turn them loose in communities with minimal training and let them treat every person they shoot as acceptable collateral damage in the defense of the homeland. So do you see how his speech supplies the mythology and ICE supplies the muscle? Trump is manufacturing an enemy large enough to justify a federal force powerful enough to terrorize everybody else.

That is how authoritarian power expands its reach. It identifies a disposable population of people, practices brutality on them, trains the public not to care, and then expands the category of people who deserve it. So what we saw last night, was a degenerate president giving ideological cover to an enforcement machine that has just recently left people dead people in Texas, Maine and immigration detention centers across the country.

Y’all, at this point, the kaleidoscopic deviance of this operation is the point. And no, Trump is not engineering all of it by himself. He is the dim-witted, bloated orange mascot riding atop a much larger machine built by lawyers, donors, ideologues, federal appointees, think tanks, data brokers, media propagandists and Republican officials who know exactly what they’re doing.

Every time you turn the tube, the same corrupt pieces rearrange themselves into a fresh little pattern of authoritarian boolshit: voter suppression, federal intimidation, media threats, immigrant scapegoating, conspiracy theories and state violence. Trump may not understand every gear inside the machine. He does not have to because he’s vain and shameless enough to front and sell it, and dangerous enough to let the whole republic burn as long as his name rises above the ashes.

Please go here for the original article: https://drstaceypatton1865.substack.com/p/trumps-white-house-address-primed

“Disrupt, Identify, Defund, Debank, Arrest & Prosecute”: Trump Admin Threatens Leftist Groups

 Excellent, chilling, deeply important interviews!

— Molly

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top White House adviser Stephen Miller are pushing for a global crackdown on leftist organizations. The State Department on Thursday hosted a summit “on the resurgence of political terrorism,” where Miller described the left as “enemies of civilization” and described efforts to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.” Rubio announced the U.S. would soon designate more left-wing groups as terrorist organizations. Also on Thursday, the State Department announced new visa restrictions targeting what it calls “members of Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups.”

“They’re putting political groups in the United States and abroad on the same footing as groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS,” says independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, who has been closely following the Trump administration’s designation of left-wing activism as terrorism.

“This effort to designate left-wing groups as foreign terrorists, using these broad terms like 'antifa,' will allow them to go after people who are not committing violence but who are simply engaging in the political process,” adds former FBI special agent Mike German.

Please go here for the original program and full transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2026/7/17/trump_leftist

Trump’s Election Integrity Speech Lays Groundwork for Midterm Interference: Ari Berman

 An excellent interview with Ari Berman!

— Molly

In a primetime address on Thursday, President Trump accused China of meddling in U.S. elections in his latest effort to spread doubt about the U.S. voting system ahead of the midterm elections in November. Trump announced he was declassifying documents that show what he called “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” but offered no evidence that China or any other country directly interfered with recent elections.

“If Trump was trying to build … a smoking gun case that the 2020 election was stolen, he failed miserably,” says Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. “I am still very concerned that this speech is intended to lay the groundwork for the administration to interfere in the midterms.”

Berman argues that U.S. elections are “secure” and that results are “audited extensively at the state level” and reviewed at the federal level. He says the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden, was “found to be the most secure in American history.”

Please go here for the original interview and full transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2026/7/17/trump_election_claims

EXCELLENT — Matt Moberg: Awe Was the First Church

Photos are by Molly

Awe Was the First Church

I think every human being

eventually has a moment

where they are standing outside in sweatpants

that have lost the will to be pants,

holding a trash bag, a divorce, a parking ticket,

or some other receipt from the universe

that says, “surprise, this too is part of it.”

And then the sky bruises purple.

And the air touches your face

like it knows your whole story.

And suddenly you realize:

all the real is actually unreal.

The dirt.

The breath.

The weird little bones in your hands.

The fact that we are here,

on a floating rock with pollen counts,

paying bills,

missing dead people,

loving living people

who say “leaving now”

while still fully naked and looking for socks.

And still,

the moon clocks in.

No applause.

No benefits.

No note from management saying,

“Great work being ancient and luminous again.”

Just the moon,

working nights

like a single mother with no applause,

packing silver lunches

for every dark thing

that still has to rise.

Tell me that isn’t holy.

Tell me there is a better word

than sacred

for the way light keeps returning

with no guarantee

we will actually stop and take note.

I know people who believe in therapy,

probiotics,

tarot,

twelve-step meetings,

manifestation journals,

and waiting exactly eleven minutes

before texting back

so they do not appear emotionally available,

even though their whole nervous system

is standing in the driveway holding flowers.

And underneath all of it,

every ritual,

every doctrine,

every smoothie with chia seeds,

the prayer is the same:

Please let me be loved.

Please let me be forgiven.

Please let this strange little life

mean something

before my lower back

submits its formal resignation.

What is going on?

For real tho—What is this place?

This unbearable tenderness

of being alive long enough

to watch steam lift from coffee in winter

like a soul practicing leaving.

To see your friend laugh so hard

they slap the table

as if joy is a mosquito

they are trying to kill.

To hear a child say “pisghetti”

and, for one shining second,

realize language

has finally been improved.

I know I already noted this in the first piece,

but the older I get,

the less use I have for certainty.

Certainty has never made me pull over

because the sunset looked like God

dropped a jar of peach jam

across the whole midwestern sky

and decided to be lazy

and not clean up.

Certainty has never made me gasp

at rain on hot pavement.

Certainty has never found me

in the cereal aisle,

holding Captain Crunch,

suddenly remembering

that everyone I have ever loved

was made from stardust,

hunger,

and a series of decisions

we probably should have slept on.

No.

It has always been awe.

Awe was the first church.

Before steeples.

Before committees.

Before men got involved

and started making rules about skirts.

Awe was there

with its wild hair

and muddy feet,

saying:

Look.

Look again.

Look until looking

becomes love.

Awe, and soup.

Awe, and someone rubbing your back

when you are sick.

Awe, and old couples at Target

arguing gently about avocados,

as if marriage is not one vow

but ten thousand errands

performed beside the person

who knows exactly

how you like the cart pushed.

Maybe gratitude

was never meant to sound elegant.

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Damn.

That woodpecker is trying

to beat that tree from itself.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Thank you, body,

for continuing to drag me through this world

despite the many slim jims

I have done to you

at gas stations.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Thank you to the dogs

who lose their entire minds

when we come home

as if we have returned from war

and not Walgreens.”

For me, that might be my gospel.

That joy that does not wait for us

to be impressive but only needs us

to come through the door.

Because the truth is,

this life is devastating.

And ridiculous.

One minute you are 22 and invincible,

driving too fast,

eating gas station nachos

with the confidence of a Greek god.

The next minute you are googling,

“Can sneezing cause a hamstring injury?”

and the answer is,

apparently,

“Welcome to the second half of your life.”

But even now—

even tired,

even grieving,

even emotionally held together

by iced coffee, playlists,

and one very specific wolves hoodie—

we keep finding reasons

to stay soft.

We plant tomatoes

even though grief is real.

We bake bread

even though the news is on fire.

We send photos of the sky

to people we love

with captions like,

“LOOK,”

as if beauty is an emergency

and we are all volunteer firefighters.

We keep saying,

“You have to see this,”

because wonder

is the oldest form

of resurrection.

So here’s to the believers

and the atheists

and the agnostics

and the people whose entire theology

is just trying not to cry

in the DMV line.

Here’s to the people clinging to faith.

Here’s to the people clinging to Xanax

and oat milk

and the one group chat

where nobody pretends to be okay.

Here’s to the tender-hearted weirdos.

The accidental mystics.

The ones who can contemplate mortality

for six straight hours

and then become emotionally attached

to a perfect peach.

The ones who know

despair has a mouth,

but so does laughter.

May we never stop being drop-kicked by beauty

in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

May we never become so polished

that we forget how to stand

in the Starbucks line of existence

with our dumb, gorgeous hearts open,

feeling the enormity of it all

rattle around in our bones

like thunder

looking for somewhere to laugh.

And may we remember:

whatever else this is,

whatever mess,

whatever miracle,

whatever cosmic group project

no one was prepped for—

all’ve it is astonishing.

that we are here.

that we have loved enough to be ruined.

that the moon keeps showing up.

that bread exists.

So pass it on.

Tear off a piece

with your bare hands.

Take it in as you take it down.

And then go outside and look at that moon.

— Matt Moberg

http://www.mattmoberg.net/