Category: 2020 Election

Tenants Say They Weren’t Told Interviews Were For RNC Video, Are Anti-Trump

The New Yorkers, interviewed by a federal housing official, didn’t know they’d be featured at the Republican National Convention, The New York Times reported.

Three New York City tenants who were featured in a video at the Republican National Convention this week said they had no idea their interviews would be used for that purpose — and none of them support President Donald Trump. 

Lynne Patton — the Trump-appointed head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development region that includes New York — interviewed residents on video about conditions in their buildings. Three of those residents said they didn’t know their interviews were for the RNC, reported The New York Times. 

“I am not a Trump supporter,” Claudia Perez, one of the tenants in the video, told the Times. The clip, which aired Thursday, criticized New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Trump’s longtime target.  Continue reading.

Trump Asked For A Chance To Fix America’s “Chaos” In 2016. He’s Asking For The Same After Four Years As President.

The president and many of the Republicans who spoke at this week’s RNC detailed America’s major cities as drowning in violence, but placed blame elsewhere.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump said America was a mess in 2016 and four years later, running for reelection as president, he has the same message: America is a mess.

In his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination on the final night of the party’s convention Thursday, Trump described a country that, while overcoming some challenges, is still facing chaos and “mayhem” across its major cities. Republicans who spoke before Trump, both on Thursday night and in the days before, described “mobs” taking over cities and censoring Americans’ speech and law enforcement officers in constant danger. It’s the very thing Trump pledged to rid the country of four years ago when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, promising the restoration of “law and order.”

“Nobody knows the system better than me,” he said then of America’s “rigged” politics, “which is why I alone can fix it.” Continue reading.

Carter Center, pushing for fair elections, turns focus to US

The Carter Center, an organization founded by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, has worked for decades to ensure fair elections in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

It’s now turning its focus to the United States.

The Atlanta-based center said Friday that it has launched an initiative meant to strengthen and build confidence in the U.S. election system. It has observed over 110 elections in 39 countries since 1989 but now feels compelled to take on the problems at home, it says.

The center notes that while the U.S. has fallen short of some international election standards before, it’s only in the last decade that the center would describe the country’s democracy as “backsliding.” Continue reading.

Top general says no role for military in presidential vote

The U.S. armed forces will have no role in carrying out the election process or resolving a disputed vote, the top U.S. military officer told Congress in comments released Friday.

The comments from Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, underscore the extraordinary political environment in America, where the president has declared without evidence that the expected surge in mail-in ballots will make the vote “inaccurate and fraudulent,” and has suggested he might not accept the election results if he loses. 

Trump’s repeated complaints questioning the election’s validity have triggered unprecedented worries about the potential for chaos surrounding the election results. Some have speculated that the military might be called upon to get involved, either by Trump trying to use it to help his reelection prospects or as, Democratic challenger Joe Biden has suggested, to remove Trump from the White House if he refuses to accept defeat. The military has adamantly sought to tamp down that speculation and is zealously protective of its historically nonpartisan nature. Continue reading.

Senior White House official gave a horrifying reply about the danger of COVID-19 spread

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A White House official’s flippant response to concerns about the maskless crowds of attendees at the Republican National Convention—and the GOP’s ignoring of the coronavirus’s horrific toll—have sparked widespred outrage this week.

“Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually,” a senior White House official told CNN‘s Jim Acosta Thursday.

Reporting on the fourth night of the convention, Acosta said, “We not only heard a lot of gaslighting tonight, we possibly saw and witnessed some superspreading from this event.” Continue reading.

Joe Biden: Let’s Get Back in the Game

How Trump inoculates his supporters against reality

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Donald Trump has failed at almost every venture he has undertaken. That started long before his presidency, with a string of business failures. Nevertheless, he has excelled as a con artist. That is demonstrated by the question that has haunted so many of us over the last four years: why are his supporters so loyal, no matter what he says or does?

A lot of ink has been spilled over that question. Much of it has focused on what makes his supporters so vulnerable to a con job. But in an expansion of his term “epistemic closure,” the writer Julian Sanchez has provided us with insight into how Trump inoculates his followers from reality, truth, and facts.

Continue reading “How Trump inoculates his supporters against reality”

Ex-wife gets restraining order against MN GOP spokesperson Jack Tomczak

As of July, the Republican Party of Minnesota has a new communications director.

His name is Jack Tomczak. You may remember him from the annals of angry white guy radio, before he departed abruptly from KTLK’s “Up and at ‘Em” morning show in 2016. His cohost, Andrew Lee, apologized to their audience but remained mum about the reason. 

After that, Tomczak was a co-host on the Up and At ‘Em podcast, then spent a couple years as a field director with Americans for Prosperity, the Koch family-backed political advocacy outfit.

Tomczak also previously worked for current GOP U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer’s failed 2010 bid for governor, and for ex-GOP U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, whom he later criticized for being “erratic” and “irrational.” Continue reading.

Secret Service copes with coronavirus cases in aftermath of Trump appearances

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When President Trump gave a speech to a group of sheriffs in Tampa late last month, his decision to travel forceda large contingent of Secret Service agents to head to a state that was then battling one of the worst coronavirus surges in the nation.

Even before Air Force One touched down on July 31, the fallout was apparent: Five Secret Service agents already on the ground had to be replaced after one tested positive for the coronavirus and the others working in proximity were presumed to be infected, according to people familiar with the situation.

The previously unreported episode is one of a series of examples of how Trump’s insistence on traveling and holding campaign-style events amid the pandemic has heightened the risks for the people who safeguard his life, intensifying the strain on the Secret Service. Continue reading.

Trump desecrates a public monument in the finale to a convention of lies

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THE REALITY-SHOW president turned his party’s convention this week into a spectacle befitting his true expertise. The televised festival of exaggerations showed voters a warped version of this country, in which circumstances are both far worse and far better than the facts support — depending on what makes President Trump look best.

His acceptance speech Thursday night, a seemingly endless recital of by-now familiar falsehoods, was notable principally for when and how it took place: before a crowd of more than 1,000 mostly unmasked people on a White House lawn festooned with campaign insignia. Mr. Trump managed to merge contempt for public health with desecration of a public monument, the final and most jarring of the convention’s exploitations of the perks of public office for political purposes. Earlier in the week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke from Jerusalem, where he was traveling on government business, and the president granted a surprise pardon and staged an on-screen naturalization ceremony, two of whose participants-turned-props weren’t even aware they’d be starring on national TV.

The speech elevated the darkest themes of the convention. The Republican National Committee chose not even to adopt a platform this cycle. In other words, the party no longer stands for anything. So it was unsurprising that, relying on a mixture of hyperbole and lies, both Mr. Trump and the speakers preceding him highlighted what they’re against. Joe Biden, Mr. Trump said, is a “Trojan horse for socialism” in whose America “no one will be safe.” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) summed it up earlier in the week: “The woke-topians will . . . disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.” All this scaremongering was accompanied by outright slander of Mr. Biden, against whom Republicans leveled unsubstantiated corruption charges — and whose record and platform alike Mr. Trump distorted into almost a parody of radicalism. Continue reading.