Category: 2020 Election

Is Minnesota really in play?

No Republican has carried Minnesota since 1972. But Trump’s team is increasingly confident about his chances in the state — even more so than in Wisconsin — and they’re dwarfing Biden’s television advertising budget there over the coming weeks.

We recently spoke to first-term Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips, who tells us Democrats should be taking very seriously the possibility of losing his state’s 10 electoral votes — the same number Wisconsin offers. He also called on Biden to visit his suburban Minneapolis district as soon as possible.

If there’s anywhere Trump’s “law and order” message resonates, it could be Minnesota, an overwhelmingly white state where daily protests continue more than 100 days after George Floyd’s death. History suggests Trump has an uphill climb there for sure, but it’s worth remembering that he only lost the state by 45,000 votes four years ago. Continue reading.

California’s GOP Senate leader was under quarantine. She spoke with no mask at a huge prayer event anyway.

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In front of thousands of worshipers packed shoulder-to-shoulder outside the Capitol, California Senate Minority Leader Shannon Grove (R) grabbed the microphone on Sunday and promised the huge church event would have a real impact.

“I declare that after all of this is over tonight, the remnant, the residue of this worship will saturate this ground and seep into that building,” Grove told the crowd, the Sacramento Bee reported.

But state leaders are warning the event’s impact could actually be a mass coronavirus outbreak. Although Grove’s permit allowed 1,000 people and required social distancing, the California Highway Patrol said three times as many showed up; videos showed virtually no social distancing or masks in the crowd. Continue reading.

Trump set to spend more on ads in Minnesota than Michigan or Wisconsin in 2020 homestretch

President Donald Trump’s campaign is currently planning to spend more money on advertising in Minnesota than in either Wisconsin or Michigan during the final stretch of the 2020 race, a significant shift in strategy as its path to 270 electoral votes narrows.

Trump’s campaign is slated to pour more than $14 million into Minnesota between the beginning of September through Election Day, compared to $12.6 million in Michigan and $8.3 million in Wisconsin, according to Advertising Analytics, a media tracking firm. The sums include ads booked to run on TV, radio and online.

It’s a reversal from the previous three months, when the president’s campaign had devoted more money to Michigan and Wisconsin, two Upper Midwest battlegrounds that Trump surprisingly carried in 2016, but where he has seen his standing slip. The Trump campaign still has more ad money reserved, about $15 million, in another key swing state they took from the Democratic column in 2016, Pennsylvania. Continue reading.

A GOP county chair asked Trump to wear a mask to his rally. Instead, Trump mocked pandemic restrictions.

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Hours before President Trump arrived in Winston-Salem, N.C., for a campaign rally on Tuesday, the county’s top Republican official issued a warning: The president better be wearing a mask.

“It’s been ordered by the governor,” David Plyler, a Trump supporter and GOP chair of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, told the Winston-Salem Journal. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in North Carolina, do as the governor says.”

But when the president emerged Tuesday evening to address a cheering group of supporters, his face was fully exposed, a likely violation of the state’s coronavirus rules. Continue reading.

Campaign of contrasts: Trump’s raucous crowds vs. Biden’s distanced gatherings

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LONDONDERRY, N.H. — When the announcer at President Trump’s recent rally here urged a packed airplane hangar of supporters to don their masks, a cacophonous round of boos erupted, followed by defiance. No matter that the attendees’ chairs were inches apart, their temperatures had not been taken and masks were required by the state.

Joe Biden, meanwhile, has barely left his home without a mask for months, and he makes a point of keeping voters — when he encounters any — at a distance from himself and one another. Events at drive-in theaters have been kept under 50 — people, not cars — to respect state guidelines.

This contrast continued Tuesday, when Trump flew to Florida and North Carolina, addressing crowds in both places, while Biden’s camp announced by 9:30 a.m. that he would make no public appearances all day. It’s a likely snapshot of the race’s final eight weeks: one campaign fueled by in-person events, raucous gatherings and defiant crowds flouting health rules; the other driven by quiet, small-bore events with everyone masked and spaced apart. Continue reading.

Republicans Revive 2018 Strategy, Hoping for Better Result: Scare Voters

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President Trump and his party are using a playbook that aims to alarm people about crime in their backyards. It didn’t work in 2018, but both parties think it could resonate more this year.

By the time Republicans were done with Sharice Davids in 2018, she barely recognized herself. In ads that blanketed her suburban Kansas City district during her congressional race, she was portrayed as “the candidate of the liberal mob,” an enemy of the police, a threat to children, and an ally of “radical left-wing protesters.”

As flabbergasted as she was by the strategy then, she said she was surprised Republicans were at it again, only this time in the presidential election.

“It didn’t work last time,” said Ms. Davids, who won her race by 10 points and is favored to be re-elected to a second term in November. As a former mixed martial arts fighter who learned the importance of developing new techniques in combat, she said her opponents’ attacks seem stale. “I haven’t seen any evolution. The skill set looks the same.” Continue reading.

Justice Dept. intervenes on behalf of Trump in defamation case brought by woman who accused him of rape

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The Justice Department on Tuesday intervened in the defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says President Trump raped her years ago, moving the matter to federal court and signaling it wants to make the U.S. government — rather than Trump himself — the defendant in the case.

In filings in federal court in Manhattan, the Justice Department asserted that Trump was “acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States” when he denied during interviews in 2019 that he had raped journalist E. Jean Carroll more than two decades ago in a New York City department store. Carroll sued Trump over that denial in November.

The maneuver removes the case — at least for now — from state court in New York, where a judge last month had rejected Trump’s bid for a delay and put Carroll’s team back on course to seek a DNA sample and an under-oath interview from the president. It also means that Justice Department lawyers will be essentially aiding Trump’s defense, and taxpayers could be on the hook for any potential damages, if the U.S. government is allowed to stand in for Trump. Winning damages against the government, though, would be more unlikely than in a suit against Trump, as the notion of “sovereign immunity” gives the government and its employees broad protection from lawsuits. Continue reading.

Trump detests Christians — and he deceived pastors and mocked them after they left Trump Tower: Michael Cohen’s ‘Disloyal’

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Michael Cohen’s book about his years as Donald Trump’s fixer is a clarion call to Christians to wake up and recognize that the man many of them revere as a heavenly agent is a religious fraud who loathes them and mocks their faith.

In Disloyal, published today, Cohen shows how Trump is a master deceiver. He quotes Trump calling Christianity and its religious practices “bullshit,” soon after he masterfully posed as a fervent believer. In truth, Cohen writes, Trump’s religion is unbridled lust for money and power at any cost to others.

“Can you believe that people believe that bullshit,” Trump said after pastors prayed over him.

Cohen’s insider stories add significant depth to my own documenting of Trump’s repeated and public denouncements of Christians as “fools,” “idiots,” and “schmucks.” Continue reading.

Census Bureau stops layoffs after judge’s restraining order

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The U.S. Census Bureau said Tuesday in court papers that it will refrain from laying off some census takers while also restoring some quality-control functions.

The announcement comes after U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh issued a temporary restraining order Saturday, blocking the administration’s plans that would have curtailed census efforts.

ABC News reported that the statistical agency said it would prevent further layoffs of some census-takers who were in the late phases of making head counts of every U.S. resident, some of whom are still being assigned homes to visit, before a court hearing for a preliminary injunction is held Sept. 17. Continue reading.

What Trump officials really say — and don’t say — in denying that he disparaged fallen troops

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The White House is in full denial mode about the damning report first published last week in the Atlantic that President Trump had repeatedly denigrated members of the military and the nation’s war dead.

But as allies — and one prominent erstwhile ally — stepped forward to offer versions of events similar to the line touted by the White House, it’s worth emphasizing that not all denials are created equal. Some address only specific aspects of the report, while leaving open the possibility that others are true or that such things were said at other points. Others vouch for Trump while very notably declining to address anything specific.

Since Monday, the White House has emphasized comments by two people in particular: Zach Fuentes, a top former White House aide and ally of John Kelly, and John Bolton, the former Trump national security adviser who wrote a scathing tell-all about his time in the White House. Let’s look at what they and others have said. Continue reading.