Happy Thursday.

Today begins The Stream’s 40 days of fasting and prayer for the election. Look for some prayer guides and other reflections among our materials during this time. We are already getting emails from Streamers confirming they’re taking part and what they’ll be fasting. Let us know what you’re planning, too. Let’s do this!

Three Keys 40 Days Out from Election

#1: Will Prayers Keep Donald Trump Alive?

The major key to this election — as dire and unbelievable as it sounds for the United States of America — is whether intercession will keep Donald Trump alive. Because there’s little reason to believe the Secret Service under the Biden-Harris administration will.

On yesterday’s Afternoon Tea, we broke down the findings of a bipartisan Senate investigation into the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. We’ve seen little evidence the Secret Service has moved to address the systemic failures with the urgency the situation requires, even as Trump suggests the military has thwarted other attempts on his life.

But according to a whistleblower, the Secret Service did force Trump to cancel a rally in Wisconsin, saying it “did not have sufficient assets” to secure the event. (Keeping Trump off the campaign trail. Where else have we seen that? Oh, yeah. With the DOJ’s lawfare campaign. So we might have some reasons not to take this completely at face value.)

We also have a member of the Cabinet secretary saying Trump should be “extinguished for good.” To say nothing of the sense there is a mole in the Department of Homeland Security or the Secret Service.

Biden’s Secretary of Commerce: "Let's extinguish Trump for good.” pic.twitter.com/WLbZHKMaH9

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 25, 2024

Yesterday on The View, when Whoopi Goldberg compared Trump to a bug, Joe Biden pretended to squash the bug.

Whoopi compares Trump to a bug, Biden pretends to kill the bug

pic.twitter.com/0dPk7LHtde

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) September 25, 2024

If any harm comes to Trump, all bets are off concerning the election. Which is why one of the fervent prayers during these 40 days of fasting is for Trump to be protected. I don’t think he would argue that previous prayers are what spared him in Butler and on his golf course.

By the way, Trump announced Wednesday that he’ll be returning to that same Butler field for a rally on October 5.

#2: Will Cheating Be Kept in Check?

This is not about who gets the nod of the most voters; it’s about who collects the most ballots, who is delivering the ballots, and who is counting those ballots — and how many of those ballots are illegitimate. A free and fair election means a Trump landslide. Kamala Harris lags far behind where both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were at this point in 2016 and 2020. And given how bad Harris is at campaigning, her fortunes will likely fade.

Unfortunately, the ground is already being prepped for another Venezuela-like outcome. The Washington Post is the latest major news outlet to declare how it may look like Trump wins on election night, but it may take days to count mail-in ballots to know for sure. Translation: Once again, Democrats will find a way to pump enough bogus ballots into the system to try to snatch the election away from the voters.

Another front in the fix: The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) — representing the people who will transport mail-in ballots — has sent a letter to members calling Trump an “existential threat to our union and our contract.” What do you think union members in red districts will see as not only their duty, but in their personal interest to do when it comes to delivering mail-in ballots? In a swing state like Georgia, where 11,000 votes made the difference in 2020, you don’t have to “misplace” very many ballots to impact the race. And how many of those were later found in ditches and other places after Election Night in 2020?

One sign this is the underhanded motivation? The letter was signed by Georgia’s NALC President Don Griggs. However, Griggs insisted to The Federalist he had nothing to do with the letter and it was sent out without his permission by the national office. “I had no idea they were sending out a letter with my name,” he said. “I never would have sent anything out like that.”

The 2024 race is “Too Big to Rig” versus “Keep Trump Out No Matter What It Takes.”

#3: Will J.D. Vance Shred Tim Walz in Vice Presidential Debate?

Usually the vice presidential debates are a sideshow. But this time, because Walz has been hiding from interviews, Vance is a relative newcomer, and the stakes are sky-high, the Oct. 1 debate takes center stage.

Let me say now, five days out, that there is a very real possibility we will see a whipping so severe, it will not only impact the race, it may give the regime second thoughts about trying to take out Trump.

Did anyone see how Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels carved up the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday Night Football this week? Even when the Bengals had Daniels in their grasp, he slipped away and gained crucial yardage. That’s what Vance is going to do to Walz and the biased debate moderators. Not only will Vance connect on long bombs, he will score on blitzes where Walz and moderators think they have him trapped.

If you’ve been catching Vance’s interviews with hostile reporters and hosts, you know what I’m talking about. He doesn’t just neutralize their gotcha questions, he turns them into effective counter-attacks. And like Daniels, he makes it look easy — and makes his foes look foolish.

It’s brutal. It’s lethal.

Meanwhile, Walz, with no help from anybody, has shown himself to be buffoonish and a low-rent habitual liar, open to so many avenues of attack it’s hard to imagine him getting much past “Thank you for inviting me” before the wheels come off. Plus, he’s got to defend Kamala Harris and her criminal incompetence, which even Perry Mason couldn’t pull off.

I believe the stage is set for J.D. Vance to make Trump’s K.O. of Joe Biden in their debate in June look like tea at the Ritz — a performance so dominant that smarter minds within the reigning Deep State regime will start to worry that he’d be an even tougher foe in office than Trump.

In any event, this will likely be the one vice presidential debate in history that moves the election needle. And in a race as close as this one, that could be the difference.

Along the Stream

The Stream posted a question on X the other day:

Serious question: If you need ID to register to vote, and you carry it with you to get your polling location, supposing you drive, what's the problem with showing it? Wouldn't that just confirm the information used to register matches the voter showing up to vote?

— The Stream (@Streamdotorg) September 23, 2024

The tweet got me wondering: Are you following us on X? No? Why not? More and more cool stuff is going into our X feed beyond just posting our stories. Please give it a look, a follow — and when so inspired, a repost. Thanks!

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.