Category: 2020 Election

As Trump leans into attacks on mail voting, GOP officials confront signs of Republican turnout crisis

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s unfounded attacks on mail balloting are discouraging his own supporters from embracing the practice, according to polls and Republican leaders across the country, prompting growing alarm that one of the central strategies of his campaign is threatening GOP prospects in November.

Multiple public surveys show a growing divide between Democrats and Republicans about the security of voting by mail, with Republicans saying they are far less likely to trust it in November. In addition, party leaders in several states said they are encountering resistance among GOP voters who are being encouraged to vote absentee while also seeing the president describe mail voting as “rigged” and “fraudulent.”

As a result, state and local Republicans across the country fear they are falling dramatically behind in a practice that is expected to be key to voter turnout this year. Through mailers and Facebook ads, they are racing to promote absentee balloting among their own. Continue reading.

Minnesota Farmers Sound Off on Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Jason Lewis’ Past Comments That We Should Let Farms Fail

Agriculture Community Upset by Former Congressman’s Claim that America has “Glamorized” Farming

SAINT PAUL, MN — After the Star Tribune shared previously unreported comments made by Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Jason Lewis on farming — including that America has “glamorized” farming and saying that it was “naive” for members of Congress to run on “not one more farm going under” — Minnesota farmers and members of the agriculture community are rightfully outraged. Lewis suggested that we should let farms fail and that the government should not try to help them stay afloat during rough times.

Jason Lewis was part of a public access television show called Face-to-Face. On the show, Lewis also said that “it’s amazing how we hold these commodities up as though they’re gold or God,” and that “the government shouldn’t have anything to do with farming.”

Minnesota farmers are speaking out:

Continue reading “Minnesota Farmers Sound Off on Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Jason Lewis’ Past Comments That We Should Let Farms Fail”

Meet the disturbing Trump aide who admitted he wanted the president to be ‘more of a fascist’

AlterNet logoWhen CNN wanted to feature a stridently pro-Trump pundit in 2019,  they often turned to Steve Cortes — whose willingness to defend President Donald Trump at every turn stood in stark contrast to the views expressed by conservative CNN pundits like S.E. Cupp and Republican strategist Ana Navarro. Cortes is now a senior adviser for Trump’s reelection campaign, and an article by the Daily Beast’s Scott Bixby exposes some of his more extreme views.

Navarro and Cupp are conservative but not far-right; Cortes is far-right, and Bixby offers some examples in his August 3 article. Trump drew widespread criticism when, on June 1, protesters in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. were violently removed by law enforcement so that Trump could walk from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo-op; in Cortes’ view, Trump hasn’t been harsh enough with protesters.

On the June 25 broadcast of his program, “The Steve Cortes Show,” Cortes remarked, “If Trump were the fascist that they pretend that he is, wouldn’t he have cracked down much, much harder on the unrest in the American streets? To be quite honest, you know — when there were people being bloodied, cops being attacked, businesses being smashed — I could have used a tad bit more of a fascist Trump.” Continue reading.

Prosecutors hint at probe into ‘possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization’

The Hill logoThe Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday hinted that its subpoena for President Trump‘s tax returns is part of an investigation into “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization,” including potential fraud allegations detailed in media reports in recent years.

In response to the latest legal challenge by Trump’s attorneys, New York County prosecutors said that news reports about the president’s financial history provide sufficient justification for requesting the extensive amount of information from the accounting firm Mazars in their grand jury investigation.

“In light of these public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization, there was nothing facially improper (or even particularly unusual) about the Mazars Subpoena, which [was] issued in connection with a complex financial investigation, requesting eight years of records from an accounting firm,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing submitted Monday.nContinue reading. Continue reading.

Tyranny expert explains how Donald Trump has ‘ceded the election’ but is creating a crisis to ‘cling to power’

AlterNet logoThis week, as the economy revealed that the U.S. GDP cratered, President Donald Trump teased putting a hold on the November election. While it is unclear if the president was attempting to distract from the economy in freefall or his falling poll numbers.

Historian and expert on authoritarian regimes, Professor Timothy Snyder, authored of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, describing the key ways to spot authoritarianism.

“Do we have any reason to believe that Mr. Trump would accept the outcome of the election?” asked the Yale professor. “The tweet of July 30th was a very clear statement, but he has literally, dozens of times before said he wouldn’t. There is nothing in his career that indicates he actually likes democracy. In this particular tweet, we have a dangerous mixture, where he’s talking about a problem he created himself, insofar as we do have problems with voting in the U.S. They have to do with things like African-Americans not being enfranchised, they have to do with the things of foreign intervention. And even the problems he mentioned, which is postal voting, which is good and of itself, that might be slowed down because of his own postmaster general. So, he’s talking about problems he caused himself, then claiming they’re an emergency, and using that as a reason to claim power himself. That’s a manufactured emergency and that is, in fact, a prime historical fascist tactic.” Continue reading.

Trump keeps promising an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system that never arrives

Washington Post logoIt was a bold claim when President Trump said that he was about to produce an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system, at last doing away with the Affordable Care Act, which he has long promised to abolish.

“We’re signing a health-care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health-care plan,” Trump pledged in a July 19 interview with “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace.

Now, with the two weeks expiring Sunday, there is no evidence that the administration has designed a replacement for the 2010 health-care law. Instead, there is a sense of familiarity. Continue reading.

House Dems seek to hold suburbs as Trump’s slide worries GOP

WASHINGTON — In a suburban Houston congressional district that backed President Donald Trump in 2016, a twice-elected Republican sheriff is battling a Democrat who’s the son of an immigrant from India. To Democrats, that smells like an opportunity.

Things are flipped in central New York, where freshman Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi faces the Republican he ousted two years ago from a district near Syracuse that includes smaller cities like Binghamton and Utica. Trump won there easily, and Republicans say his place atop the ticket will help propel Claudia Tenney back to Congress.

The tale of two districts 1,600 miles apart spotlights that many pivotal House races hinge on suburban voters. While some like Brindisi’s have a more rural, blue collar feel than the diverse, better educated one outside Houston, an overriding factor will be how Trump is viewed in the district.

And that’s a problem for the GOP. Continue reading.

Republican National Committee disputes GOP convention spokesperson’s claim that Trump’s renomination will be closed to media

Washington Post logoThe Republican National Committee says no final decision has been made about whether President Trump’s renomination will be held in private at the GOP convention in Charlotte, contradicting previous reports that restrictions on crowd size during the coronavirus pandemic would prevent the news media from attending.

Two RNC officials insisted Sunday that they are still working through the logistics and press coverage options, a break with a statement reportedly made by a GOP convention spokesperson the previous day.

“We are still working through logistics and press coverage options,” one of the officials said in a statement Sunday. Neither of the officials was authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Continue reading.

How the Trump campaign came to court QAnon, the online conspiracy movement identified by the FBI as a violent threat

Washington Post logoOutside the Las Vegas Convention Center, Kayleigh McEnany raised a microphone to a mega-fan and asked what it felt like to be acknowledged by President Trump at his February rally in Sin City.

At the time a spokeswoman for Trump’s reelection campaign, McEnany nodded as the supporter said the shout-out was most meaningful because of the words on the shirt he was wearing, which he read aloud: “Where we go one, we go all,” the motto of QAnon conspiracy theorists who believe Trump is battling a cabal of deep-state saboteurs who worship Satan and traffic children for sex.

McEnany, who has since become the White House press secretary, continued, asking the supporter, “If you could say one thing to the president, what would you say?” Continue reading.

Republican Senate Candidate Jason Lewis’ Previously Unreported Comments Show He Would Let Minnesota Farms Fail

Lewis: “The Government Shouldn’t Have Anything to do With Farming”

Republican U.S. Senate candidate for Minnesota, Jason Lewis, repeatedly puts his own rigid ideology ahead of Minnesotans. Newly-released reporting by the Star Tribune reveals a series of demeaning comments Lewis made about the farming community and their importance to Minnesota and our nation.

In video footage reported on by the Star Tribune, Lewis claimed that America “glamorized” farming, opposed farm safety nets, and said the government “shouldn’t have anything to do with farming.” Lewis made these comments while a co-host on a public affairs television show called Face-to-Face. Continue reading “Republican Senate Candidate Jason Lewis’ Previously Unreported Comments Show He Would Let Minnesota Farms Fail”