Category: 2020 Election

Morning Joe busts Trump’s long history of racism in damning supercut video

AlterNet logoMSNBC’s Joe Scarborough blew up President Donald Trump’s attempts to portray Joe Biden as racist.

The president pounced on Biden’s suggestion that the Latino community was diverse, “unlike the African American community with notable exceptions,” and the former vice president was forced to clarify his remarks in a series of tweets.

Trump claimed Biden “totally disparaged and insulted” Black Americans, but the “Morning Joe” host laughed off those allegations as ridiculous given the president’s history. Continue reading.

Trump denounced for ‘attempt to gut Social Security’ after he announces plan to unilaterally suspend payroll tax

AlterNet logoAn advocacy group representing more than four million American retirees warned Thursday that President Donald Trump took a dangerous step toward “single-handedly” dismantling Social Security by announcing he plans to sign an executive order suspending collection of the payroll tax as early as Friday afternoon.

With congressional negotiations over the next Covid-19 stimulus package still at an impasse, Trump told reporters Thursday that executive orders to suspend the payroll tax, extend boosted unemployment benefits, and reestablish an expired eviction moratorium are “being drawn now” despite questions over whether the president has the authority to unilaterally take any of those actions.

Trump said he expects to sign the orders “tomorrow afternoon or maybe the following morning” if White House negotiators and Democratic leaders don’t reach a deal. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have rejected the idea of cutting the payroll tax, the primary funding mechanism for Social Security. Continue reading.

At the Census Bureau, a Technical Memo Raises Alarms Over Politics

New York Times logoA directive orders experts to find ways to tally undocumented residents. Some fear the end result will be a skewed allotment of seats in the House of Representatives.

WASHINGTON — A Census Bureau memorandum on creating a state-by-state estimate of people illegally in the country is raising new fears of a politicized census — this time involving the population totals that will be used to reapportion the House of Representatives next year.

The memo, issued Monday, orders an internal task force to explore statistical methods of compiling an accurate estimate of noncitizens. It says the aim is to carry out President Trump’s July mandate to exclude undocumented residents from population totals used to determine how many House seats each state is entitled to. The directive, which is being challenged in court, is widely seen as an effort to shift some House seats to Republicans during reapportionment next spring.

Some experts inside and outside the bureau see the memorandum as the precursor to an effort to manipulate population figures to give Republicans an even greater edge in reapportionment. In essence, they say, they fear that the methods the bureau is being asked to devise will create a road map for the Trump administration to tailor the numbers for maximum political benefit. Continue reading.

Trump launches delusional and bewildering rant against Biden: ‘He’s against God!’

AlterNet logoFew ever accuse President Donald Trump of subtlety. But in a new speech in Cleveland on Thursday, he let loose with a particularly wild rant against his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, that was over-the-top, even for him.

It’s worth just quoting in full:

He’s following the radical left agenda. Take away your guns. Destroy your Second Amendment. No religion! No anything! Hurt the Bible! Hurt God! He’s against God! He’s against guns! He’s against energy, our kind of energy. Uh, I don’t think he’s going to do too well in Ohio.

Many people pointed out that there’s much more evidence that Biden is a committed Christian than there is for Trump. But almost that seems to miss several key points about how wild this is:  Continue reading.

‘A lying draft dodger’: Republican military veterans slam Trump and declare their support for Biden in a scathing attack ad

AlterNet logoThe Lincoln Project is not the only right-wing group that has been running ads slamming President Donald Trump; the group Republicans Voters Against Trump has been running anti-Trump ads as well. And a new RVAT ad, Ed Mazza reports in HuffPost, features Republican military veterans who do not want to see Trump reelected and are supporting former Vice President Joe Biden.

The ad, Mazza notes, will air on Fox News later this month during the 2020 Republican National Convention. And it will air in key battleground states that include Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona — all of which Trump won in 2016. Recent polls have shown Biden to be quite competitive in those states as well as in Michigan, where Trump’s campaign has suspended its advertising following an abundance of polls showing Biden with a double-digit lead.

In the ad, one of the veterans says of Trump, “We’re looking at a lying draft dodger who berates those who serve our country honorably, rewards those who do not.” Continue reading.

Here’s Trump’s laughable attempt to clean up his gigantic Florida blunder

AlterNet logoI wrote a piece on June 24, 2020, called “Trump Has Destroyed the GOP’s Vote-by-Mail Advantage in Florida.” On Wednesday, August 5, 2020, you got the opportunity to read the same thing in the Washington Post. At some point between these two articles, someone finally got through to Trump and made him understand his error:

As Greg Sargent notes, the campaign’s goal here is “to delegitimize vote-by-mail in states where they think it will hurt Trump, while legitimizing it in places where they think it will help him.” This is a fallback position — an effort at mitigation. As I predicted, Republican voters were not able to make fine distinctions about where mail voting is good and desirable and where it is bad and corrupt. When Trump attacked expanded mail voting in states like Michigan, it made his base reluctant to trust mail voting in states like Florida where the practice has been long established.

Rather than admit a strategic blunder or completely change course, the attempt at a solution involves promoting mail voting where there is a “great infrastructure” and “great Republican Governors” and dissuading it where it is being newly introduced by Democratic governors. Continue reading.

Here’s the major ‘tell’ that reveals exactly what Bill Barr will do to win Trump the election: ex-DOJ spokesperson

AlterNet logoFormer Justice Department lawyer Matt Miller said that Attorney General Bill Barr has a “tell” that Miller thinks reveals what Barr will do about his new attempt at a GOP-run Russia investigation.

The MSNBC panel discussion looked back at Barr’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, where he admitted that the White House government appointees have discussions about the 2020 campaign during Cabinet Meetings. Conducting politics under the government is strictly prohibited.

“He has a tell, and the one that you just showed is an example, where there’s an answer where you expect the attorney general to give,” Miller began. “In the confirmation hearing, the answer you expected him to give was that he would recuse himself from the Russia investigation because of his previous writings on the topic, a memo he had written that was seen as the audition for the job. And he didn’t give that answer, and I think we found out why shortly after, it was because he wanted to interfere in the Mueller probe. He’s wanted to go back and then discredit it afterward.” Continue reading.

Deutsche Bank Turned Over Trump’s Financial Records To Manhattan District Attorney

Deutsche Bank, the German financial powerhouse that loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump Organization when other banks shunned that company, has turned over records of its transactions subpoenaed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, according to the New York Times.

District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., has sought the president’s personal and corporate tax records in court, without revealing much about the alleged crimes under investigation, although he is know to be looking into hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Vance’s prosecutors justified the extensive demand for Trump’s records before a judge in New York state Supreme Court last Monday by citing reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Truomp Organization.”. Continue reading.

Democrats demand Postal Service reverse new rules that have slowed the delivery of absentee ballots

Washington Post logoDemocratic leaders on Capitol Hill told negotiators for President Trump on Wednesday that preserving funding for the U.S. Postal Service and removing new rules that have slowed delivery times are essential ingredients of a new coronavirusrelief bill in a year when millions of Americans plan to vote by mail.

“Elections are sacred,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), told reporters after a meeting with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. “To do cutbacks when ballots, all ballots, have to be counted — we can’t say, ‘Oh, we’ll get 94 percent of them.’ It’s insufficient.”

Schumer said he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told DeJoy, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, that their demands regarding the Postal Service are necessary to striking a deal on broader relief bill that may also include new unemployment benefits and a payroll tax cut. Continue reading.

The founders tried to guard against con artist tyrants — but our democratic republic may end anyway

AlterNet logoOur founding fathers were of an era when slavery and colonization were a direct extension of the “t’was ever thus” of history. To fault them for their failures to live by our current standards (by which they fail miserably) is to miss the point.

So too is praising them for their idealism and vision. Though many were Christians, they knew better than to bring that kind of blind-faith optimism to the crafting of our city on the hill.

Their true genius was in expecting of humankind what humankind inevitably delivers, corruption, backsliding and backlashes, the opposite of the dream of woke enlightenment in which everybody finally sees the light, realizing the truth of love, kindness, generosity, justice and liberty for all. Our founding fathers were cynics, not romanticizers of human nature. Continue reading.