The final days before Tuesday’s U.S. election saw the release of a questionable Kamala Harris-friendly poll, the flouting—in Harris’ favour—of important equal-time broadcasting rules, and claims the euthanizing of a squirrel by New York State could help Donald Trump win. Yes, you read that right.
That’s nuts
Starting, naturally, with the most surreal… A wave of social media fury was prompted after Democrat-controlled New York State raided the home of a pet owner—reportedly treating him like a “terrorist”—after a single complaint, seized a seven-year-old grey rescue squirrel and online sensation named Peanut, alongside his racoon friend ‘Fred,’ and later put the pair down in order to test them for rabies.
The case quickly became a political dividing line, with Trump supporters insisting it was indicative of how the Democrats would continue to run the country, invasively concerning themselves more with what citizens are doing in their own homes than with the crucial issues of state.
Even senior politicians got into the fray, including Republican Senator Thomas O’Mara, who jibed:
Everything else our government looks the other way on as far as illegal immigrants but then come down on someone harboring a squirrel.
And Trump himself was “fired up” about Peanut’s death, according to his running-mate J.D. Vance. Meanwhile, ‘Never Trump’ Washington Post writer Jen Rubin poured more fuel on the fire by writing online (in a post that was later deleted): “The MAGA squirrel deserved to die.”
Rules are made for breaking
Likewise, Trump’s team must ironically have been more than a little pleased by a move by one of America’s biggest broadcasters clearly designed to help the Democrats.
Harris appeared on NBC’s late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live, despite executive producer Lorne Michaels’ previous insistence that neither of the two candidates would make an appearance “because of election laws and the equal time provisions.”
Brendan Carr, commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, attacked this as “a clear and blatant effort to evade the … Equal Time rule,” which is designed to “avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct.”
And NBC clearly knew they had done wrong, later having to give the Trump campaign free commercial time during Sunday’s NASCAR coverage. The Republican candidate used the time to warn that electing Harris would cause a “depression,” and told voters to “go and vote.”
In polls we trust?
New polling would suggest that Trump hopes this message is particularly heard in Iowa.
Figures from Des Moines Register/Mediacom now put Harris ahead in the state, which Trump easily won in both 2016 and 2020. Really, these results appear laughable.
Trump bashed them as “fake,” adding that the polls are “corrupt,” while even Democratic officials have stressed they are not reading too much into the release.
And after talking to senior figures from the party, Politico noted that “few Democrats believe that Harris stands a chance in Iowa,” among other such states.
Far from being the easy victory Harris’ team hopes it will be, some experts believe this election will be one of the closest in decades. While Rasmussen Reports’ latest official poll has Trump up by three percentage points, Mark Mitchell, head pollster for Rasmussen, reportedly says Trump could win a landslide victory—highlighting just how divided America has become.
Around 80 million Americans are understood to have already cast their ballots in early voting, with many millions more set to vote when polls open tomorrow, on November 5th.
