Category: 2020 Election

‘It’s despicable’: New report finds the Trump administration mysteriously siphoned millions from a 9/11 health fund

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On 9/11, many political officials—people like Donald Trump and Mike Pence—make appearances around the country. They make speeches and take solemn photographs near memorials. They make it a point to remind people how brave our country’s police and fire departments and other first responders are. Now The New York Daily News has a depressingly explosive story about the Trump administration’s way of remembering.

According to the report, millions of dollars have been withheld from the Fire Department of New York’s (FDNY) World Trade Center Health Program, a program that was set up exclusively for them and which “tracks and treats FDNY firefighters and medics suffering from 9/11 related illnesses.” How much money? Where has it gone? Why have they done it? All of these questions have been pursued since the beginning of the Trump administration when the program’s director, Dr. David Prezant, first started seeing hundreds of thousands of dollars being “docked” by the U.S. Treasury.

Prezant says there has never been an explanation, never even a warning that this money, which goes to serve the men and women who have suffered and continue to suffer from serious medical issues on behalf of serving our country, was being withheld. It is important to note here that more people have died from 9/11-related illnesses than died on 9/11. No fewer than 200 firefighters have died due to their exposure to the tragedies of 9/11. Continue reading.

Top prosecutor on Barr’s investigation of the Russia probe just resigned out of fear of political influence: report

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Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy has been an important figure in the U.S. Department of Justice, serving as an aide to John Durham in his Russia investigation. But Dannehy, the Hartford Courant reported Friday, has resigned from that probe.

The Courant’s Edmund H. Mahony reports that Dannehy, according to her colleagues, is stepping down “at least partly out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done.”

Mahony explain “Dannehy, a highly regarded prosecutor who has worked with or for Durham for decades, informed colleagues in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Haven of her resignation from the Department of Justice by e-mail Thursday evening. The short e-mail was a brief farewell message and said nothing about political pressure, her work for Durham or what the Durham team has produced, according to people who received it.” Continue reading.

#EndorseThis: Can Donald Recite The Pledge Of Allegiance? Melania Didn’t Even Try

Only weeks ago, Donald Trump (and many of his eager minions) accused Democrats of eliminating the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance at their convention. That was a fairly typical lie from an impious politician who is constantly trying to persuade gullible Christians of his fervent religiosity. (He doesn’t know a single Bible verse either, but never mind. They don’t.)

Flash forward to the commemoration of 9/11 on its 19th anniversary at Shanksville, PA, where Flight 93 crashed on that tragic day. Donald and Melania Trump showed up, stood there dutifully while an announcer recited the pledge, and…flubbed. Watch the video and it’s clear that Trump doesn’t really know all the words. He conspicuously omits “under God.” As for Melania, she doesn’t care enough to even move her lips.

Can they get anything right? Yeah, that’s a stupid question. Continue reading.

How Trump Could Win

The President consistently trails Joe Biden in polls, but political strategists from both parties suggest that he still has routes to re-election.

Among the categories of professionals that Donald Trump seems intent on obliterating, one is Republican political strategists. The figures who guided his political rise in 2016 have been much diminished, because of criminal indictment (Steve Bannon), criminal prosecution (Roger Stone), incompetence (Brad Parscale), or domestic ruptures (Kellyanne Conway). Trump’s campaign does not have many strategists, nor, it has often seemed, much strategy. At the Republican National Convention, the idea of a second Trump term remained so undefined that the Party did not even offer a formal platform. Asked by the Times’ Peter Baker what he meant to do with a second term, Trump said, “I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done.” The President has long succeeded by creating an environment of constant chaos; now his campaign seems to be drowning in it.

The professionals who remain at Trump reëlection headquarters are, with fewer than sixty days until the election, faced with a challenging set of statistics. For months, Joe Biden has led in national polls by at least seven percentage points. In order to win the Electoral College, Trump would need to beat Biden in about half of six swing states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona. He trails Biden in all of them, though the margin in North Carolina and Florida is under two per cent. About forty-two per cent of Americans approve of the job he has done as President, a number that has remained fairly constant throughout his Presidency, but fifty-four per cent now disapprove, which puts him behind the ratings of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan at similar points in their reëlection campaigns—though well ahead of George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. In other words, Trump looks likely to be either the least popular incumbent to win reëlection in the modern polling era or the most popular one to lose it. Continue reading.

Trump says he watches 7 hours of TV a day — after saying he doesn’t ‘watch very much’

Donald Trump once said he didn’t have enough time to watch television.

Donald Trump on Thursday said he had watched more than seven hours of Fox News programming since Wednesday night, listing off the prime-time shows he tuned in to on the right-wing propaganda network.

“I watched Liz MacDonald — she’s fantastic. I watched Fox Business. I watched Lou Dobbs last night, Sean Hannity last night, Tucker last night, Laura. I watched ‘Fox & Friends’ in the morning,” Trump said at a news conference from the White House, referencing Fox’s prime-time line-up as well as its three-hour-long morning show.

Trump’s constant watching of Fox News — and repeating of its talking points — is well known. Continue reading.

Fauci disagrees with Trump that US rounding ‘final turn’ on pandemic

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Anthony Fauci on Friday said he disagrees with President Trump that the country has rounded “the final turn” on the COVID-19 pandemic, and warned Americans not to get complacent heading into the fall.

Fauci, the federal government’s leading infectious disease expert, was responding to comments made by Trump during a press conference on Thursday, where he defended his comments made to Bob Woodward about deliberately downplaying the severity of the pandemic. 

Trump said the U.S. was “rounding the final turn. And we’re going to have vaccines very soon, maybe much sooner than you think.” Continue reading.

Nora Dannehy, Connecticut prosecutor who was top aide to John Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation, resigns amid concern about pressure from Attorney General William Barr

Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy, a top aide to U.S. Attorney John H. Durham in his Russia investigation, has quietly resigned — at least partly out of concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done, colleagues said.

Dannehy, a highly regarded prosecutor who has worked with or for Durham for decades, informed colleagues in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Haven of her resignation from the Department of Justice by email Thursday evening. The short email was a brief farewell message and said nothing about political pressure, her work for Durham or what the Durham team has produced, according to people who received it.

Durham, who has never even acknowledged that Dannehy was in Washington working for him, had no immediate comment on the resignation. Continue reading.

Today is Election Day

Polls are open from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Here’s a link to information on voting in person: sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/election-day-voting/. Things to remember:

  • Minnesota is a same-day registration state. There’s a link below that will give you the specifics.
  • In Minnesota, your employer must allow you time off to vote.
  • If you’re in line when the polls close at 8:00 PM, you will be allowed to vote.
Continue reading “Today is Election Day”

GOP tries to gut protections for workers in new virus relief bill

‘This proposal is laden with poison pills Republicans know Democrats would never support.’

Senate Republicans on Tuesday released their latest version of a pandemic relief bill. The so-called skinny proposal, known as the “Delivering Immediate Relief to America’s Families, Schools and Small Businesses Act,” omits most of the funds included in the bill passed by the House of Representatives in May. But it contains provisions that would make it harder for workers to sue if they got sick and that would funnel public funds to private and parochial schools.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the bill as “a new targeted proposal, focused on some of the very most urgent healthcare, education, and economic issues.” He noted that it “does not contain every idea our party likes.”

But it does contain two provisions that GOP senators like a lot. Continue reading.

Trump draws fire for saying he downplayed virus to avoid ‘panic’

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President Trump has an explanation for the new revelations that he purposely downplayed the risks of coronavirus: He says he didn’t want to cause panic.

Experts say Trump had another option: He could have calmly, but accurately, explained to Americans the risks associated with the outbreak and what they could do to lessen the danger.

Excerpts released this week from famed journalist Bob Woodward’s upcoming book, “Rage,” have raised questions about whether more lives could have been saved if Trump had, early in the pandemic, shared with Americans all the information about coronavirus he himself had. Continue reading.