Last weekend, Donald Trump delivered what even he admitted was a “dark” speech.

Beyond the usual nonsense about America ceasing to exist if he loses, he called immigrants here illegally “vile animals” and “monsters” who “will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.” The supposed enemy of censorship said that the media, including Fox News, shouldn’t “be allowed” to cover Kamala Harris’ speech on immigration. He called Harris “mentally disabled.” And he mused that if police were allowed an hour of “real rough, nasty,” unrestrained violence against shoplifters, the problem would go away.

As strange as it sounds, Trump’s increasingly repugnant rhetoric is an effort to win over undecided voters.

This might seem like an odd thing to say given that pundits (including me) have said the presidential race is extremely close and that few undecided voters remain — and given that such voters are usually thought of as moderates who dislike extremist politics. That’s true. But there’s a difference between people who have decided to vote but aren’t sure for whom, and those who know which candidate they support but haven’t decided whether to vote at all.

It’s like the difference between a film buff who will definitely go to the movies this weekend but isn’t sure what to see, and someone who is interested in one movie but isn’t sure it’s worth the effort to go to the theater. Why not just wait for it to show up on Netflix?

It turns out that there are a lot more wait-for-Netflix voters than indecisive-film-buff voters.

Ron Brownstein wrote an illuminating exploration of all this for the Atlantic. Among campaign professionals, people who have to be convinced that they should back a specific candidate are called “persuadable voters.” Those who have to be motivated to vote at all are called “irregular voters.”

Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric probably turns off most persuadable voters. But it may be just the ticket to move a subgroup of irregular voters.

Plenty of decent, knowledgeable people decline to vote regularly for various reasons, but most of the irregulars — especially those whom Trump and his boosters are hoping to motivate — are low-information voters. Most of what they hear about politics comes from social media “influencers” such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

If you’re not normally inclined to vote, policy differences aren’t going to motivate you to do so. But being told America’s very existence depends on it might.

That’s precisely what Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) and prominent Trump supporter, told his 200 million followers on Saturday. “Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election,” Musk wrote. “Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!”

Now, I think this is dangerous nonsense. But if you didn’t know that, it would be a pretty compelling reason to vote.

As Brownstein notes, the media are fairly obsessed with voters who swing from one party to another. We’ve seen countless focus groups and interviews with such people. But they’re a tiny fraction of potential voters compared with those who don’t normally vote at all.

Even in 2020, the highest-turnout national election in more than a century, a third of eligible voters — about 80 million people — stayed home. All else being equal, if Trump or Harris could disproportionately turn out even a tenth of such people, it would be enough for a landslide.

I don’t have a lot of respect or admiration for the sort of low-information voters who have to be duped into voting with apocalyptic and demonizing bilge. But I have greater contempt for the voters and especially the leaders who condone the strategy even though they know better. Let’s call them the “normies.”

Trump’s normie defenders in elected office and the media dismiss his irresponsible rhetoric and conspiracy theories as an unfortunate distraction. The closest they get to criticizing him for it is to say he should “stick to the issues.” But many contort themselves into suggesting that Trump has valid points.

As a result, Trump can take normie voters and politicians for granted because they’re cheap dates who will support him no matter what. This empowers him to expand his coalition to people motivated by his celebrations of bigotry, crudeness and violence.

The normies make up the majority of the electorate because they vote reliably. And because Trump can rely on so many of them to vote for him no matter what he says, it’s the normies who could make Trump’s grotesquerie a winning strategy.

@JonahDispatch

The Pentagon announced on Monday that it is sending a “few thousand” U.S. personnel to the Middle East to support Air Force squadrons a day after President Biden vowed not to send combat troops to the region. 

Speaking at a press gaggle with reporters on Monday, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said the U.S. was sending a “few thousand” more troops to the Middle East to bolster security and to defend Israel, if needed.

Biden gave a firm “no” when asked Sunday if he planned to deploy additional combat troops to the Middle East.

This increased presence is to include multiple warplane squadrons, complimenting the F-15s, F-16s, A-10s and F-22s already stationed in the region. 

ISRAEL WILL LAUNCH ‘LIMITED’ GROUND INVASION IN LEBANON ‘IMMINENTLY’ US OFFICIAL SAYS

The planes were initially supposed to rotate in and replace the squadrons stationed there. Instead, both the current and new squadrons are to remain in place to double the available airpower because of increased tensions in the region and concern that Iran might respond to Israel’s killing of Hezbollah’s leader last week in Lebanon.

Singh said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has “increased the readiness of additional U.S. forces to deploy, elevating our preparedness to respond to various contingencies. And DOD (Department of Defense) maintains robust and integrated air-defense capabilities across the Middle East, ensuring the protection of U.S. forces operating in the region.”

The few thousand additional personnel are not combat troops but rather maintenance crews and those who can help with the air defense mission and refueling. The additional forces would raise the total number of U.S. personnel in the region to as many as 43,000.

The Pentagon’s announcement follows word that Israel has already launched limited raids across its northern border into Lebanon amid an anticipated wider ground invasion.

It also follows recent Israeli strikes into Lebanon and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a significant escalation in the war in the Middle East, this time between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist organization and proxy of Iran. Israel is also engaged in an ongoing war in the south against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian terrorist group sparked the conflict with its bloody incursion into southern Israel in October 2023.

Austin announced Sunday he was temporarily extending the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group and its embarked air wing in the region. A U.S. official said the extension would be for about a month. 

HEZBOLLAH SAYS IT WILL CHOOSE NASRALLAH’S SUCCESSOR ‘AT THE EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY’

A second U.S. carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman, sailed from Virginia last week and is en route to Europe. It will head to the Mediterranean Sea and again provide a two-carrier presence in the broader region. It’s not expected to arrive for at least another week.

An IDF tank fires during exercises close to the Lebanese border on Sept 30, 2024. (IDF Spokesman’s Unit)

Biden told reporters on Monday, “I’m more aware than you might know” about reports that Israel is planning a limited ground campaign in Lebanon after nearly a year of trading attacks with Hezbollah in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, and he said he wants an immediate cease-fire.

When asked about the reports, Biden said he was “comfortable with them stopping” and that “We should have a cease-fire now.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

California has sued a Humboldt County hospital after a patient said she was denied an emergency abortion earlier this year even as she feared for her life because of miscarriage risks.

Fifteen weeks pregnant with twins, Anna Nusslock rushed to Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka in February, in pain and severely bleeding after her water broke far too soon, according to a lawsuit California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed against the Catholic hospital on Monday. The suit accuses Providence hospital of violating multiple California laws by denying Nusslock abortion care and seeks a court order ensuring that no other patients are denied emergency abortions.

At the hospital, Nusslock said she was diagnosed with a premature rupture of the membrane of the amniotic sac — a dangerous complication in which an abortion is a recommended treatment.

Doctors deemed that one of the twins would not survive, and that the other’s chances were extremely low. They agreed Nusslock needed an abortion as soon as possible to stave off an infection or hemorrhage, the lawsuit says.

But Nusslock said she was told that because of “hospital policy” an abortion couldn’t be done because her life was not at enough risk and since one twin still had traceable “heart tones.” A doctor suggested she take a helicopter to a hospital nearly 300 miles south in San Francisco and warned that she would die if she tried to make the nearly five hour drive instead, she said.

A nurse handed her a bucket full of towels for the road to help with the bleeding, the suit alleges, and she ended up spontaneously delivering one of the twins and hemorrhaging at Mad River Community Hospital, located 12 miles away on California’s rural North Coast.

“I’ll never forget looking at my doctor, tears streaming down my face, my heart shattered into a million pieces and just pleading with her, ‘Don’t let me die,’ ” Nusslock said at a press conference at the attorney general’s office in Sacramento on Monday. “My daughters deserved better, and I deserved better.”

The case exposes gaps in abortion care in California, home to the nation’s strongest reproductive rights protections, where abortion access is enshrined in the state constitution, even after the U.S. Supreme Court revoked a federal right to the procedure in 2022 that resulted in abortion bans in Republican-led states.

“Here in California, where we’re proud to be a beacon of reproductive justice, we’ve got a hospital policy reminiscent of heartbeat laws in extremist red states,” Bonta said Monday. “Even in California, a champion for reproductive freedom, we are not immune from practices like the one we’re seeing today, and we will not stand by as it occurs.”

Bonta alleges that Providence hospital violated California’s Emergency Services Law — which mandates care at emergency rooms regardless of any ethical concerns from providers — as well as business discrimination laws and fraudulent business practices laws.

A spokesperson for Providence said the company is reviewing the lawsuit’s allegations.

“Providence is deeply committed to the health and wellness of women and pregnant patients and provides emergency services to all who walk through our doors in accordance with state and federal law. We are heartbroken over Nusslock’s experience earlier this year,” said Bryan Kawasaki, director of national communications.

Religious affiliated hospitals cannot be forced to perform elective abortions, but California law requires emergency health care providers to provide medical services to patients “in danger of loss of life or serious injury or illness.”

The law makes no religious exception for abortion services when a hospital like the one Nusslock went to operates an emergency department.

Nusslock and her husband had been trying to have a baby for years — saying “there’s nothing more we want in this world” than to be parents. They experienced multiple miscarriages. After finding out she was pregnant with twins, she said they were cautiously optimistic. They bought matching baby outfits; decorated their nursery and dreamed of taking them to a pumpkin patch for holiday photos.

Her grief turned into anger once she recovered from the rupture and emergency abortion, and she reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union about what actions she could take to keep other mothers from experiencing the same. The ACLU directed her to the attorney general’s office.

“I am here today to tell my story for one simple reason, because I don’t want other people in my community to experience the same life threatening trauma that I experienced,” Nusslock said after she took a deep breath standing behind a podium alongside Bonta and her attorney.

Bonta — who called Nusslock’s case “tragic and infuriating” — urged the court to work as quickly as possible as Mad River Community Hospital, where Nusslock ultimately received her abortion, plans to close its labor and delivery units next month.

“The next person in Anna’s situation will face an agonizing choice of risking a multi-hour drive to another hospital or waiting until they are close enough to death for Providence to intervene,” Bonta said.