Editor's Note: Steve Schmidt is one of the founding members of the Lincoln Project. He is a communications and public affairs strategist who has worked on several Republican campaigns, including John McCain's 2008 bid for the White House, and he is now a regular political contributor to MSNBC. On Friday night, Schmidt argued that the Joe Biden campaign should show Donald Trump no political mercy on his Twitter account over a series of 15 tweets. MaxNewsToday has assembled these tweets and reprinted them as one op-ed for our ongoing segment, Schmidt Storm. His tweetstorm has been edited for accuracy and clarity. I wish Trump and Melania an expeditious recovery and hope very much that they will be in good health as they face electoral humiliation, repudiation and the harsh judgment of the American people on Election Day.
Trump’s lying has become one of the most lethal events in our nation’s history. If U.S. mortality rates were what they are in Germany, more than 150,000 Americans would still be alive. Trump’s cruel disregard for the American people has ravaged our economy, our kids’ educations and fundamental elements of the American way of life. There is no person in America who has done more to spread COVID-19 than Donald Trump, and no one has tried harder to catch it. Trump couldn’t have been more personally reckless than if he went to Sturgis and licked the doorknobs on the porta-johns. He politicized mask wearing and, thus, sentenced tens of thousands to cruel and lonely deaths. He has let loose a national insanity that manifests itself in the lunacy of anti-mask protesters storming Walmarts and supermarkets in spasms of idiocy and craziness.
His political rallies are dangerously delusional events where the advice of public health experts and MD’s is stupidly ignored. Each gathering spreads a disease that kills. It kills here more than anywhere else.
This week has stripped bare the rotting and vile roots of Trumpism. It began with the revelation that the great conman and tax cheat paid $750 in federal taxes and owes more than $400 million to undisclosed lenders, much of it personally guaranteed against no discernible income.
The debate was a moment of national humiliation that disgraced the presidency, the United States and the American people. At the end of the debate, Trump incited extremist militia groups by delivering what they interpreted as a weapons-ready order from the Commander in Chief.
Heavily-armed fascist Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and dozens of white supremacist groups heard a lock-and-load order. Ask them. Believe them. Take them seriously. Trump has threatened the peaceful transition of power and intimated violence should he lose. He has made clear that his loss would be THE evidence of a stolen election.
He has made up false and wild stories about corrupted ballots for the purposes of undermining faith in our election’s integrity. These are unpardonable actions for an American President, and they desecrate the sacrifice of every patriot, from the fields at Lexington and Concord to Gettysburg, Normandy and the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Trump has lied to the country on more than 25,000 occasions, assaulted the rule of law, assailed our institutions, stoked racial animus and has been spectacularly corrupt. He is singularly responsible for one of the great tragedies In American history.
His campaign is imploding. Parscale, Miller, Guilfoyle, Melania, all of them have disgraced themselves and stained the presidency. They are a wretched, corrupt and self-interested gang of incompetents and maliced people, who have done profound damage to this country in four short years.
There should be no political mercy shown toward Trump and Trumpism in this moment. Mr. Vice President, your duty requires you to order your campaign to put its ads back on the air. Trump is out of money. Spend him into the ground.
Georgia is close. Mike Espy is close in Mississippi. The Kansas senate race is close. Trumpism is an authoritarian and UNAMERICAN ideology that teems with menace and intimations of violence. It is a cult of personality led by a lethal liar who lacks intelligence, grace empathy and competence.
Trumpism is a scourge. It is a metastic cancer. We need to crush it. Should Trump be disadvantaged in this moment, then we should rejoice. Pour it on. Vote him out. No let up. The pace and intensity of attacks should be increasing and should not stop until he is humiliated and sent home to face the judgment of history, and in hopefully a good long time, his maker.