Republished with permission from Steve Schmidt

Donald Trump had more meltdowns yesterday. Many more. But what else is new?

During a rally in Detroit, when his microphone glitched, he paced for 20 minutes on stage, and then raged against the A/V company, threatening to sue them:

Now what happens is I won’t pay the bill for this stupid company that rented us this crap. I won’t pay the bill and then we’ll have a story that Trump didn’t pay the bill to a contractor. No, when they do that kind of a job, don’t pay the bill. That’s terrible.

If it goes out again, I’ll sue the ass off that company. We’re gonna sue ‘em.

Yesterday morning, during an interview on the “Dan Bongino Show,” he spoke about his astonishment over the “schlonging” of Harvey Weinstein:

I was so amazed that Harvey Weinstein got schlonged. He got hit as hard as you can get hit. Because he was sort of the king of the woke, right? And yet he got it. And I figured that maybe he wouldn’t get hit so hard.

He also menaced “60 Minutes” during this same interview with lawsuit threats for daring to interview Kamala Harris:

So I think I’m going to sue them actually. I think so. No, you know what, they can’t defend it and if they do and even if they win it’s going to be very embarrassing.

It’s a very embarrassing moment for them, but the media is not pressing it. It’s so bad they should lose their license and take ’60 Minutes’ off the air.

On Truth Social he went on to say that:

In normal times, what happened on 60 Minutes, (deceptively ‘doctoring’ her answers), would be THE END OF ANYONE’S CAMPAIGN! Kamala is slow, incoherent, and is in no way qualified to be President of the United States. RELEASE THE TAPES FOR THE GOOD OF AMERICA. We can do it the nice way, or the hard way!

With 17 days to go, Trump appears to be cracking under the strains of his lies, delusions and advanced age. Increasingly, he is intellectually incontinent, disheveled, and utterly nonsensical. His interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Mickelthwait at the Economic Club of Chicago earlier this week was a mix of barstool bluster and lunacy.

Trump exposed himself as someone who truly knows absolutely nothing about how either the American or global economy functions, but none of this is new information. It is part of a pattern that demonstrates unfitness at a spectacular level. Trump is exactly what he appears to be—a catastrophe in waiting.

Yet, yesterday was different for me. While I followed the news and kept track of the latest insanities, there was an envelope sitting on my desk. Inside of it was my ballot. Soon, I’ll use it to take a stand. Mine will be an American one.

Yes, I will be voting against Trump, MAGA and the idiotized fascism both embody, but I will also be voting for something.

I will be voting for the concept of E Pluribus Unum.

I will be voting for the idea that all men and women are created equal and endowed by a creator with rights that are inalienable and include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I will cast a vote with deep gratitude for my ancestors, who spent a final night together in the only country they had ever known before leaving with everything and nothing for an idea in a place they had never seen or visited. I will vote with awe for their courage, grit and stamina. I will keep faith with what they believed in and passed down to me.

I will vote to protect the women I love from the stripping of their rights, dignity, agency, and liberty by a cabal of hypocrites, religious fanatics, and abusive men, led by an adjudicated rapist who is worshipped as an instrument of God by his followers.

I will vote for my daughters and their daughters not yet born. I’ll vote for a restoration of their full rights against a dogma of malice, control and madness that is steeped in the delusions of fundamentalist grifters who claim divinity, while practicing the pursuit of wealth and power.   

The polls say that Trump has an enormous advantage with men. What a sign of weakness. Trump is a pathetic figure even more than he is an abhorrent one. When the manhood of a nation idolizes softness, it is always a sign of rot, corruption and impending disaster. Trump is a philosopher of loserdom. He is a grievance busker who has created a community of pinched men—many young—who have heard the siren song of easy excuses and constant rationales for failure that Trump sells like snake oil. Everyone is a victim under the MAGA small tent, and so long as Trump gets to take as much as he wants, he’ll allow a small group of religious nut jobs and fraudsters to prey on America’s women to sate America’s newly empowered fanatics.

It is up to America’s sons, brothers, husbands, fathers and grandfathers to put a stop to an assault on our moms, sisters, wives, daughters and granddaughters by an out-of-control political party that long ago embraced a dogma of big government that includes placing women into a position of submission because that’s how God wants it. 

No thanks.

I can’t wait to fill out my ballot.