Mary Trump says GOP convention ‘disturbing to watch,’ calls portrayal of preside

The president’s niece said on MSNBC that she was appalled to see her uncle described as a caring family man.

President Donald Trump’s wife and children spoke on the first three nights of the Republican National Convention — and his niece showed up for the grand finale.

Mary Trump, who wrote a devastating best-selling tell-all book about the president and his family, joined an MSNBC panel for the final night of the convention, where she mocked its portrayal of the president as a solid family man.

“The idea of passing him off like a great family man is like trying to pass him off as a great businessman,” Trump said. Continue reading.

I’m a veteran — and I’m sick of Trump lying about what he did for my health care

Veterans Choice was passed and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2014.

My pride in my service as a veteran comes from the values the Marines instilled in me. One of those values is honesty, and I feel personally exploited by Donald Trump’s incessant lying about having passed Veterans Choice.

That lying comes close to stolen valor, claiming credit for something that he had nothing to do with, and it is a claim he has reportedly made 150 times so far, with no signs of stopping.

It needs to stop. Continue reading.

Protesters gather outside the White House as Trump speaks to GOP convention

Demonstrators rallied in Black Lives Matter Plaza as the president accepted the Republican nomination on the South Lawn.

Hundreds of protesters — some wielding air horns and whistles — gathered outside the White House on Thursday night as President Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination on the South Lawn.

The demonstration followed calls on social media for protesters to try to disrupt the president’s outdoor speech by making lots of noise. Federal officials erected extra fencing around the White House this week apparently to keep protesters farther away.

Reporters at the protest site described the mood as festive ahead of the speech and said there was a police presence but no sign of a large federal response. Continue reading.

Fox’s Chris Wallace slams Trump for ‘flat’ RNC speech and ‘2000 people in close quarters on the south lawn’

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Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, the face of the conservative cable network, decimated President Donald Trump’s Thursday night renomination acceptance speech both for its delivery and for holding the Republican National Convention at the White House while taking no protections against the coronavirus.

Glossing over that the RNC and Trump campaign had “Trump 2020” spelled out in fireworks over the National Mall, Wallace said, “there certainly were impressive fireworks on the mall but I have to say I was surprised at the lack of fireworks in the President’s speech tonight.”

“First of all, it was far too long. 70 minutes exactly,” he lamented. “And I thought at times it felt more like a State of the Union speech, like a campaign speech. The President went through all of his accomplishments during his first term and there are a great number and they are considerable, and then, as you say, he went after Joe Biden and he had some good lines,” Wallace said, before enumerating a few. Continue reading.

Jim Jordan attacks Democrats for wanting to make sure every vote is counted

Jordan sought to defend Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s changes to the Postal Service, which could cause voters to be disenfranchised.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) attacked his House Democratic colleagues for wanting to make sure every vote in the 2020 election is counted.

Jordan made the attack during a congressional hearing on Monday with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, whose changes to the U.S. Postal Service operative procedure have caused so many delays that even the service is warning Americans their mail-in ballots may not be counted due to slowdowns.

“We know what this is about. We all know what this is about,” Jordan said, referring to the hearing the House Oversight Committee was holding to demand answers from DeJoy about why mail has been delayed since he took the helm of the agency. Continue reading.

Trump DOJ Targets Democratic Governors For COVID-19 Outbreaks In Veterans Homes

“This really does smell,” said one former Civil Rights Division official who worries the Justice Department is weaponizing its power for political purposes.

President Donald Trump’s top civil rights official at the Department of Justice announced this week that he was considering launching investigations into how state-owned nursing homes responded to the coronavirus. The four states he targeted all have Democratic governors. This highly unusual public announcement of potential investigations raised alarm bells among Civil Rights Division alumni and Democrats that DOJ’s move was motivated by partisan politics. 

Eric Dreiband, the assistant attorney general running the Civil Rights Division, sent letters to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday, requesting documents and information under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) about how public nursing homes in their states responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cuomo and Whitmer said in a joint statement that the inquiries were “nothing more than a transparent politicization of the Department of Justice in the middle of the Republican National Convention.” They called DOJ’s move a “nakedly partisan deflection” and questioned why Republican-run states that, based on federal guidelines, had similar rules about nursing home admissions were not being targeted. Continue reading.

Engel announces contempt proceedings against Pompeo

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The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday announced contempt proceedings against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, saying the country’s top diplomat has ignored the panel’s request to investigate his conduct.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said the committee will begin drafting a resolution to hold the secretary in contempt following his refusal to provide subpoenaed documents related to an investigation into whether he has misused government resources for political reasons.

The accusations of contempt are related to two subpoenas. The first stretches back to a September request to the State Department for documents related to the House impeachment investigation into President Trump’s withholding of military assistance to Ukraine. Continue reading.

Why Trump’s Racist Appeals Might Be Less Effective In 2020 Than They Were In 2016

In the closing days of the 2018 midterms campaign, with the economy on a historic run, President Trump tried to focus Americans’ attention on a caravan of Central American migrants heading toward the United States. He seemed to believe that by highlighting the migrants, he might rally voters back to the GOP in advance of the vote.

In recent weeks, Trump has telegraphed that racialized wedge issues are again a central element of his political strategy and seems to see a consistent political advantage in overt or dog-whistle racist appeals and the condemnation they invariably draw. For example, Trump has promised to protect “the suburban housewife” from lower-income neighbors; threatened to veto a bill that contained a provision to rename military bases named for Confederate leaders; waved off the problem of Black Americans being disproportionately killed by police by saying “so are white people;” focused his campaign advertising on crime and protests; and repeated baseless, racist allegations about Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris.

In using racial appeals, the president is the latest in a generations-long line of politicians tapping into a dangerous vein in American politics. But is there sometimes a political logic to such appeals? They didn’t work in 2018. Democrats would go on to take control of the U.S. House and a bunch of governorships.1 That was a midterm election, though, and this is a contest for the presidency. So, are racialised wedge issues likely to work to the GOP’s advantage in November? Continue reading.

Four at RNC in Charlotte test positive for coronavirus

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Two attendees and two staffers contracted to work at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte have tested positive for the coronavirus, local health officials said Friday.

Mecklenburg County officials said the four people were isolated and that those with whom they came into contact had been alerted. The health department did not say whether any had shown symptoms of the virus. The two staffers were sent home before attending any convention functions.

Charlotte officials had raised concerns over the lack of social distancing measures taken at even the scaled-back convention, where only a few hundred Republicans gathered to formally renominate President Trump and Vice President Pence. Video of the event showed few people wearing masks and many posing close together for photographs. Continue reading.

White House threatens journalist with a ‘dossier’ over report exposing Trump’s self-dealing

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During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump promised that he would “completely isolate” himself from the Trump Organization if elected president. But the Washington Post and other media outlets have done a great deal of reporting on the many ways in which Trump’s properties — from Mar-a-Lago in South Florida to his hotels and golf resorts around the world — have profited from his presidency. Some of that reporting can be found in an article that was written by reporters David A. Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey and Joshua Partlow and published by the Post on Thursday morning, and one of the article’s revelations is that a White House spokesman resented the Post’s investigation so much that he was willing to threaten Fahrenthold with a “dossier.”

In a written statement to the Post, the journalists report, Deere said: “The Washington Post is blatantly interfering with the business relationships of the Trump Organization, and it must stop. Please be advised that we are building up a very large ‘dossier’ on the many false David Fahrenthold and others stories as they are a disgrace to journalism and the American people.”

In that statement, Deere insisted that Trump has “turned over the day-to-day responsibilities of running the company, though he was not required to, (and) has sacrificed billions of dollars.” But Fahrenthold, Dawsey and Partlow, in their article, make it abundantly clear how much Trump’s businesses have profited from Trump’s presidency. Continue reading.