Category: 2020 Election

What the Kenosha shooter tells us about Donald Trump’s America

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Events this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, are no surprise. They follow an all-too familiar social script in America.

On Wednesday, a 17-year-old  named Kyle Rittenhouse traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin from his home in Antioch, Illinois, not far away. Rittenhouse did this in response to online appeals from a right-wing militia group to “protect” businesses, property and lives in Kenosha from “rioters.” In reality, the protests in Kenosha over the last week have come in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man who was unarmed and shot seven times in front of his children. Blake is reportedly now paralyzed and handcuffed to a hospital bed. There are credible reports that at least some of the violence in Kenosha has been committed by white supremacists or other right-wing agitators who are trying to discredit and undermine peaceful protests against police brutality and other forms of social injustice.

Rittenhouse was armed with an AR-15 military-style rifle. Under the laws of Illinois, where he lives, Rittenhouse is too young to own such a weapon. He also violated the law by traveling across state lines with a firearm. Continue reading.

The G.O.P. argues that only Trump can stop the chaos. But he’s already in charge.

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The America that many speakers described on Wednesday at the Republican National Convention did not sound like a desirable place: fractious, violent, functionally lawless in some pockets.

But their case that only President Trump could shield Americans from this fate was complicated by a nettlesome fact: He is in charge, at present — at the controls of government through the purportedly real-time conditions these supporters outlined. And they would all like to keep him there.

“America,” Vice President Mike Pence told a Republican convention crowd sternly from Fort McHenry in Baltimore, “needs four more years of President Donald Trump.” Continue reading.

The Hatch Act, the law Trump flouted at the RNC, explained

The Hatch Act is designed to protect the rule of law. Trump flouts it openly.

The United States prohibits most federal employees from engaging in certain political activity — especially if those employees are engaged in fundamentally nonpartisan activity such as diplomacy — in order to prevent abuse of power and corruption. On Tuesday night, however, the Trump administration flouted these limits by holding part of the Republican National Convention at the White House and broadcasting a partisan speech by the nation’s top diplomat.

The Hatch Act of 1939 imposes strict limits on most federal civilian workers who want to engage in political activity, and some Cabinet departments augment these statutory limits with additional policies intended to maintain a clear wall of separation between partisan politics and nonpartisan government functions.

These restrictions on government workers exist for two interlocking reasons. As the Supreme Court explained in United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers (1973), “it is in the best interest of the country, indeed essential, that federal service should depend upon meritorious performance rather than political service.” But if civil servants are free to engage in political activities, presidential appointees could reward loyal partisans and punish civil servants who favor the party that does not control the White House. Continue reading.

Fact-checking President Trump’s acceptance speech at the GOP convention

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President Trump ended the Republican National Convention on Thursday with a tidal wave of tall tales, false claims and revisionist history. Here are 25 claims by the president that caught our attention, along with seven claims by speakers earlier in the evening. As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios for a roundup of claims made in convention events.

“America has tested more [for the novel coronavirus] than every country in Europe put together, and more than every nation in the Western Hemisphere combined. We have conducted 40 million more tests than the next closest nation.”

— Trump

Trump is talking about raw numbers, which is misleading. (And if you believe China, Beijing actually exceeds the number of tests, 90 million to 79 million for the United States.)

The key indicator is tests per capita, which gives a read on the share of the population that has contracted the novel coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19. The United States still lags major countries such as Russia and is tied with Britain in terms of number of tests per million people. Continue reading.

Minnesota Leaders Call Out Trump’s COVID-19 Failures as Pence Visited Duluth

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA – Ahead of Vice President Pence’s visit to Duluth, Minnesota Friday, DFL Party leaders held a press call slamming the Trump admin’s failed response to the coronavirus pandemic, his divisive rhetoric, and the harmful impacts of his policies on Minnesotans. Featured on the call were DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin, General President of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Joseph Sellers, Duluth Mayor Emily Larson, North East Area Labor Council President Alan Netland, nurse Chris Rubesch, and Duluth resident Beth McCuskey. 

Excerpts from the call:

Joseph Sellers, General President of Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers: “[The Trump administration] doesn’t feel the way we do. They can’t understand it. They can’t relate to the issues that we experience as working families. Joe Biden does. We at SMART call Vice President Biden, ‘Blue Collar Biden,’ why? Because he does. He understands workers. He understands working issues. He understands working family issues, and he can relate to us. Our country is not a company where the mantra is, ‘You’re fired, and you’re fired and you’re fired.’ This administration’s cavalier attitude has collapsed our economy for the 22nd time, more than a million unemployment insurance claims were filed. This administration is disconnected from the pain and the suffering of workers.”

Continue reading “Minnesota Leaders Call Out Trump’s COVID-19 Failures as Pence Visited Duluth”

RNC vs. DNC Ratings: Kamala Harris Draws 5.7 Million More Viewers Than Mike Pence

Someone start playing the Rocky theme music because the DNC’s ratings might have just delivered the knockout punch to the RNC score. Viewership for the Republican National Convention fell on its third night, in sharp contrast to the gains the DNC saw last week for Night 3. 

According to early Nielsen numbers, about 15.7 million viewers watched the Republican National Convention during the 10 p.m. hour across six networks: Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, and CBS. That’s down about 2.3 million viewers from the previous night, which featured a speech from First Lady Melania Trump. By comparison, the Democratic National Convention pulled 21.4 million viewers across those same six networks on Night 3, which was up 2.2 million from its previous night’s viewership numbers.

The RNC’s big Night 3 speaker was President Donald Trump‘s running mate and Vice President Mike Pence. Pence spoke about the administration’s support of the families in the path of hurricane Laura and its dedication to the American armed forces and veterans, and he praised Trump’s response to the outbreak of COVID-19. Continue reading.

Instead of Evolving as President, Trump Has Bent the Job to His Will

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In a 40-minute phone call this week, Mr. Trump struggled to describe how he has changed in office. “I think I’ve just become more guarded than I was four years ago,” he said.

WASHINGTON — For a man on the edge of history, President Trump sounded calm and relaxed. If he believes that he is on the verge of losing, he betrayed no sign of it. Instead, he trotted out one of his favorite polls, boasted about his popularity with Republican voters and talked about his convention’s television ratings.

His presidency, he declared in an interview this week, has produced “an incredible result.” The stock markets are “pretty amazing,” the Republican National Convention has been “very successful,” and he has “done a very good job” of handling the coronavirus pandemic even though more than 180,000 Americans are dead. At the same time, he said, he has endured “terrible things” by his “maniac” opponents.

After nearly four years in office, Mr. Trump heads into the fall campaign with a striking blend of braggadocio and grievance, a man of extremes who claims one moment to have accomplished more than virtually any other president even as he complains moments later that he has also suffered more than any of them. He inhabits a world of his own making, sometimes untethered from the reality recognized by others. He has imposed his will on Washington and the world like no one else. Continue reading.

Trump draws fewer viewers than Biden for convention speech

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President Trump‘s convention speech drew fewer views than former Vice President Joe Biden‘s, according to preliminary numbers released by Nielsen Media Research. 

Trump accepted his party’s nomination from the south lawn of the White House on Thursday night.

An estimated 19.9 million Americans watched Trump’s speech on television, while Democratic nominee Joe Biden drew 21.7 million viewers the week before. Continue reading.

The Malign Fantasy of Donald Trump’s Convention

Using the White House as his prop, the President makes war on Joe Biden, and pretends the pandemic is all but defeated.

For four years, Donald Trump has been asking us to believe the unbelievable, to accept the unthinkable, to replace harsh realities with simple fantasies. On Thursday night, using the White House as a gaudy backdrop, the President made his case to the American people for four more years. His speech capping the Republican National Convention was long, acerbic, untruthful, and surprisingly muted in comparison to the grandeur of the setting, which no chief executive before him has dared to appropriate in such a partisan way. “We will make America greater than ever before,” he promised.

Even for a salesman like Trump, it was never going to be an easy deal to close, what with a deadly pandemic, mass unemployment, nationwide protests over racial injustice, and even a killer hurricane smashing into the Gulf Coast hours before his speech. Some seventy per cent of Americans currently believe that the country is on the wrong track, according to recent polls. Who can blame them?

This should be devastating context for a President, any President, seeking reëlection, a true picture of American carnage to replace the false one that Trump conjured four years ago. Yet the strategy of Trump and his team is now clear: to talk about how bad things would be in Joe Biden’s America, a violent socialist ruin in which freedom itself will no longer exist and rampaging protesters, like those now committing “rioting, looting, arson, and violence” in “Democrat-run cities,” will be coming soon to a suburb near you. “The hard truth is, you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Vice-President Mike Pence said on Wednesday night. “No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said on Thursday night. To say this sounded a bit off in actual America, Trump’s America, does not do justice to the bizarre dissonance of this year’s Republican Convention. Continue reading.