Category: 2020 Election

In secretly recorded audio, President Trump’s sister says he has ‘no principles’ and ‘you can’t trust him’

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Maryanne Trump Barry was serving as a federal judge when she heard her brother, President Trump, suggest on Fox News, “maybe I’ll have to put her at the border” amid a wave of refugees entering the United States. At the time, children were being separated from their parents and put in cramped quarters while court hearings dragged on.

“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”

Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.” Continue reading.

Barr asked Rupert Murdoch to ‘muzzle’ Fox News commentator Napolitano, book claims

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Attorney General William Barr allegedly told Rupert Murdoch to “muzzle” Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano during a meeting last year, according to a forthcoming book written by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter. 

The book, titled, “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth,” is set to be released Tuesday. It claims that Barr made the request to Murdoch during a meeting at the media mogul’s New York home in October 2019, the Guardian reported.

Stelter, citing an unnamed source in his forthcoming book, claims that the president was “was so incensed by the judge’s TV broadcasts that he had implored Barr to send Rupert a message in person … about ‘muzzling the judge’. [Trump] wanted the nation’s top law enforcement official to convey just how atrocious Napolitano’s legal analysis had been.” Continue reading.

Mnuchin Paved Way for Postal Service Shake-Up

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At President Trump’s behest, the Treasury Secretary sought out appointees who would restructure the United States Postal Service.

WASHINGTON — In early February, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin invited two Republican members of the Postal Service’s board of governors to his office to update him on a matter in which he had taken a particular interest — the search for a new postmaster general.

Mr. Mnuchin had made clear before the meeting that he wanted the governors to find someone who would push through the kind of cost-cutting and price increases that President Trump had publicly called for and that Treasury had recommended in a December 2018 report as a way to stem years of multibillion-dollar losses.

It was an unusual meeting at an unusual moment. Continue reading.

Dark vs. light: Trump declares himself the only barrier to ‘anarchy, madness and chaos’

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It took less than 14 hours for President Trump to reinforce the central theme of former vice president Joe Biden’s Democratic convention acceptance speech.

Biden’s speech centered on an unsubtle contrast: the choice between light and dark.

“I give you my word,” Biden said. “If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness.” Continue reading.

Kanye West’s Presidential Campaign Is Both Proceeding and Unraveling

The last 48 hours have presented a series of new challenges for Kanye West’s haphazard campaign for president.

In a span of two days, West was booted from the ballot in five states: Illinois, Montana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. In Illinois, Montana, and West Virginia, it was because he filed an insufficient number of valid signatures. In Wisconsin, it was because West did not file on time. In Ohio, the information and signature on West’s nominating petition and his statement of candidacy did not match those on petitions circulated to be signed.

West has filed in several other states in this week: Louisiana, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Virginia, but it is unclear if he will ultimately qualify to appear on the ballot in all of them. Continue reading.

Internal USPS memo appears to contradict postmaster general’s testimony

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Salon has obtained internal U.S. Postal Service documents that appear to contradict Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s congressional testimony on Friday, in which he told a Senate panel under oath that he was not cutting employee overtime.

The memo, which was provided by a manager to rank-and-file employees, appears to confirm reports that under DeJoy the agency is implementing policies aimed at dramatically curtailing the opportunity for worker overtime, to the point that the memo says flatly on its first page: “Overtime will be eliminated.”

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., asked DeJoy whether he had taken steps to “eliminate” or “curtail” overtime. DeJoy said no. Continue reading.

Trump’s suggestion of deploying law enforcement officials to monitor polls raises specter of voting intimidation

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More than 30 years ago, a Republican Party program that dispatched off-duty police officers to patrol polling places in heavily Black and Latino neighborhoods in New Jersey triggered accusations of voter intimidation, resulting in a federal agreement that restricted for decades how the national GOP could observe voting.

Now, two years after those limits were lifted, President Trump has revived the idea of using law enforcement officers to patrol polling places, invoking tactics historically used to scare voters of color.

In an interview Thursday with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump described law enforcement officers as part of a phalanx of authorities he hopes will monitor voting in November. Continue reading.

Trump’s worst impulses fuel his disastrous week — while the Democrats pull off a big surprise

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Tens of thousands of news cases of COVID-19 are diagnosed in the United States every day, but if you listen to President Donald Trump, it’s easy to forget the pandemic is still raging. He shows little interest. He’s more focused, as ever, on his own personal grievances. Of course, he has the luxury of not worrying much about the virus when his job is secured — at least through January — and everyone around him is subjected to a rigorous testing regime that people at most U.S. schools and workplaces can only dream of.

As the Democratic Party carried out its national convention this week, Trump continued to give in to his self-destructive impulses. It made for a particularly stark contrast. Most of former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign had been carried out under the radar — he hasn’t simply been hiding in his basement, as critics claim, but he hasn’t been clamoring for the spotlight — but it burst on to the national stage for two-plus hours of primetime for four nights in a row. And while the Democrats were, for the most part, organized and professional, Trump was crawling out of his skin at the thought of ceding the country’s attention.

So instead of letting Democrats bask in the traditional uninterrupted flow of media attention given during presidential nominating conventions, Trump demanded to be seen. Continue reading.

A Week That Was Disastrous For Trump, Miraculous For Biden

Tens of thousands of news cases of COVID-19 are diagnosed in the United States every day, but if you listen to President Donald Trump, it’s easy to forget the pandemic is still raging. He shows little interest. He’s more focused, as ever, on his own personal grievances. Of course, he has the luxury of not worrying much about the virus when his job is secured — at least through January — and everyone around him is subjected to a rigorous testing regime that people at most U.S. schools and workplaces can only dream of.

As the Democratic Party carried out its national convention this week, Trump continued to give in to his self-destructive impulses. It made for a particularly stark contrast. Most of former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign had been carried out under the radar — he hasn’t simply been hiding in his basement, as critics claim, but he hasn’t been clamoring for the spotlight — but it burst on to the national stage for two-plus hours of primetime for four nights in a row. And while the Democrats were, for the most part, organized and professional, Trump was crawling out of his skin at the thought of ceding the country’s attention.

So instead of letting Democrats bask in the traditional uninterrupted flow of media attention given during presidential nominating conventions, Trump demanded to be seen. Continue reading.

Facebook Braces Itself for Trump to Cast Doubt on Election Results

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The world’s biggest social network is working out what steps to take should President Trump use its platform to dispute the vote.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook spent years preparing to ward off any tampering on its site ahead of November’s presidential election. Now the social network is getting ready in case President Trump interferes once the vote is over.

Employees at the Silicon Valley company are laying out contingency plans and walking through postelection scenarios that include attempts by Mr. Trump or his campaign to use the platform to delegitimize the results, people with knowledge of Facebook’s plans said.

Facebook is preparing steps to take should Mr. Trump wrongly claim on the site that he won another four-year term, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Facebook is also working through how it might act if Mr. Trump tries to invalidate the results by declaring that the Postal Service lost mail-in ballots or that other groups meddled with the vote, the people said. Continue reading.