Category: 2020 Election
Trump unloads in morning interviews as U.S. struggles to tame virus
With Covid-19 threatening the president’s reelection effort, he stoked culture wars and railed against China.
President Donald Trump let loose in a pair of lengthy radio interviews Tuesday morning, weighing in on foreign affairs and cultural flashpoints while continuing to speak dismissively of the rampant coronavirus threat.
Much of the president’s remarks centered on the return of sports amid the pandemic, as he railed against athletes who refuse to stand during the national anthem and rallied for college football to resume in the fall.
“These football players are very young, strong people and — physically. I mean, they’re physically in extraordinary shape,” Trump told Fox Sports Radio’s Clay Travis in a more-than-20-minute conversation. Continue reading.
Trump: If Biden Wins, You’ll ‘Have To Learn To Speak Chinese’
“If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States,” the president claimed in an interview.
President Donald Trump continued his xenophobic warnings about China on Tuesday, claiming that if he loses the election, everyone in the U.S. will have to learn to speak Chinese.
“Look, China will own the United States if this election is lost by Donald Trump,” he said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States. You’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese, you want to know the truth.”
Demonizing China has been central to Trump’s reelection campaign ever since the coronavirus pandemic took hold. The president and his allies have attempted to shift attention away from the White House’s actions by blaming China for the global pandemic. Continue reading.
Five Ways Trump And GOP Officials Are Undermining The Election Process
There has long been conflict in the United States over who gets to vote and how. In the years since Barack Obama’s election as president, those voting debates have become increasingly partisan, with Republican elected officials often pushing measures like requiring photo IDs that make it harder for people to vote, and Democratic officials advancing provisions like same-day registration that make it easier to vote.
That long-running conflict over voting has reached a new, more critical phase for two reasons. First, the outbreak of COVID-19 means that people might be risking their health if they opt to vote in person. Secondly, Donald Trump, unlike previous presidents, regularly breaks with democratic norms and values and is now openly suggesting that he might manipulate the electoral system to help him win a second term.
“Trump aides exploring executive actions to curb voting by mail,” was the headline of an article in Politico last weekend (that was a news article, not an opinion piece). Politico’s reporting found that the White House was considering using executive actions to insert itself into the election process, which is usually run by states, including finding ways to make it harder for people to vote by mail. Continue reading.
Democrats roll out prime time convention speakers
Washington — The Democratic National Convention Committee has unveiled its list of primetime speakers for the convention next week, rolling out a lineup that unites the party’s progressive wings with the Democratic establishment.
The Democratic National Convention is set to kick off August 17 and will feature four nights of speakers who will address supporters remotely from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Nightly keynote speeches will be given by Michelle Obama on Monday, Jill Biden on Tuesday and Barack Obama on Wednesday. On Thursday, Joe Biden will formally accept his party’s presidential nomination with a speech.
The gathering, which has been roiled by the coronavirus crisis, begins Monday and will feature Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who went head-to-head with Biden in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination after the party’s vast field of candidates narrowed. Continue reading.
DFL Party Statement on Joe Biden’s Selection of Kamala Harris as Running Mate
SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Today, DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement on Joe Biden’s selection of Senator Kamala Harris to be his running mate:
“I could not be more excited to join DFLers across Minnesota in voting for Joe Biden for President and Kamala Harris for Vice President of the United States of America. Senator Harris has dedicated her life to serving the American people, fighting for working families, and building a more just and equitable country. As the daughter of immigrants and the first Black woman to serve California as Attorney General and in the United States Senate, I know that Kamala Harris can help heal the divisions across our nation that Donald Trump has spent his life exacerbating.
“The truth is, Donald Trump has failed the American people. One in ten American workers are out of a job, over 5.1 million Americans have been infected by COVID-19, and over 160,000 are dead. Senator Harris is a fighter with a record of taking on powerful people and special interests and winning, from big banks to big oil companies to predatory for-profit colleges. I have no doubt that Harris will be a tremendous leader in the fight against the historic corruption, mismanagement, and incompetence of the Trump administration.”
Trump is sabotaging the mail — and it threatens to undermine the election
Donald Trump has had a vendetta against the U.S. Postal Service throughout his time in office, but it only took center stage after he realized that the Postal Service would be an essential part of the elections because voting by mail is more important during the coronavirus pandemic. But while Trump’s efforts to destroy the Postal Service have only ramped up in the past couple months, destroying things is one of his areas of greatest competence, so there’s very real worry about voting by mail in November, and, as a result, about the elections as a whole.
“It seems like they’re just trying to turn customers away from the post office,” the president of the Cincinnati American Postal Workers Union local told The New York Times. A West Virginia American Postal Workers Union (APWU) local president had a related view, saying: “It’s like they’re setting us up for failure.”
Trump installed Louis DeJoy, a major Republican donor with no postal experience, as postmaster general, to do the damage, and DeJoy has moved quickly. Friday night, news broke that DeJoy had ”overhauled” top Postal Service leadership and consolidated power around himself. That followed DeJoy cutting overtime and changing policies to make it more likely that mail would be delivered late. Some routes have missed delivery altogether under DeJoy’s program of sabotage. Continue reading.
Touched A Nerve? Trump Flips Out After Anthony Scaramucci Delivers Warning On Fox News
The former White House communications director said the GOP could become “a minority party for a generation” because of Trump.
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired by President Donald Trump after just 10 days on the job in 2017, delivered a warning to Republicans on Fox News on Sunday night. And Trump was not happy about it, kicking off a Twitter feud between the two ex-allies.
The fireworks began when Scaramucci appeared on Steve Hilton’s show “The Next Revolution” to rip into Trump’s presidency for an “upside-down” economy and politicizing the coronavirus pandemic.
Then, he warned that the Republican Party under Trump was shrinking its own base ― and that would have repercussions for years to come. Continue reading.
In the middle of a pandemic, Trump gives Americans a glimpse of his criminal mind
On Saturday Donald Trump claimed he would impose (apparently by some hidden appropriations power that he does not Constitutionally possess) a “payroll tax holiday,” which would purportedly defer the payroll tax for certain employed Americans through December, as a means of financial assistance for individuals and families coping with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. This action appears patently illegal, as the power to levy taxes or change the tax code resides in the Congress under Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, but let’s for the moment pretend it is legal and Trump does have the authority to declare such a “holiday” through the end of the year.
All of this means is exactly what his “order” says–that the taxes are deferred through December. As Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo points out here, those taxes are still due next year, and in fact many workers would find themselves socked with exorbitant and unexpected tax bills next year assuming their employers don’t choose to simply withhold the tax themselves, since they’re responsible for seeing that it gets paid.
As noted here by Rocky Mengle of Kiplinger: Continue reading.
Trump’s Social Security payroll tax holiday is the first shot in a class and generational war
Trump says he’ll eliminate Social Security tax next year, should he be reelected — and that would likely mean the end of the federal entitlement system as we’ve known it
President Trump’s memorandum to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin ordering that he suspend Social Security taxes for some employers and their employees for the rest of this year makes no sense if the goal is to offset economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic.
But it makes a lot of sense if it is to undermine Social Security and stir up class and generational warfare, which is clearly the goal of both Trump and his close ally, Stephen Moore, who has railed against the whole idea of Social Security for years.
Step back and look at the big picture — and listen to Trump say that he’ll eliminate Social Security tax next year should he be reelected — and you realize that if Trump prevails, it would likely mean the end of Social Security as we’ve known it. Continue reading.