Category: 2020 Election

Tulsa health official: Trump rally ‘likely’ source of virus surge

“In the past few days, we’ve seen almost 500 new cases,” Dr. Bruce Dart said.

OKLAHOMA CITY — President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa in late June that drew thousands of participants and large protests “likely contributed” to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said Wednesday.

Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases on Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases on Tuesday. By comparison, during the week before the June 20 Trump rally, there were 76 cases on Monday and 96 on Tuesday.

Although the health department’s policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may have contracted the virus, Dart said those large gatherings “more than likely” contributed to the spike. Continue reading.

A President Who Makes Us Puke—Just Like He Was Hired To Do

Donald Trump was the purge agent his supporters wanted, but can he do more than flush out the system?

Probably you used to keep a bottle in your bathroom at home, or your parents did. The stuff is called ipecac, and it is what physicians call an emetic.

The idea was that if someone swallowed something bad, like a poisonous plant or the wrong pills, they could be treated with a couple spoonfuls of this to induce something unpleasant but good: rapid and forceful vomiting.

It is not intended as an insult to President Donald Trump to observe that he is the political equivalent of ipecac syrup. Looked at in a certain light, it is closer to a compliment. Continue reading.

NYC closes down stretch of Fifth Avenue at Trump Tower to paint Black Lives Matter mural

When the Black Lives Matter mural was announced, the president called it a “symbol of hate.”

New York City on Thursday shut down a block of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower to paint a Black Lives Matter mural.

The mural, between 56th and 57th streets, was called a “symbol of hate” by President Donald Trump, who said it would be “denigrating” Fifth Avenue, known for expensive apartments and luxury shopping.

City workers closed the street Thursday morning, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, along with the Rev. Al Sharpton, joined in and helped paint, NBC New York reported. Continue reading.

Trump could lose and not leave. But Cabinet members who try to help face prison.

Washington Post logoCriminal statutes bar ousted federal officials from exercising authority they don’t have.

With November fast approaching, here’s a recurring question that can’t easily be dismissed as alarmist fretting or grim humor: What if President Trump loses his bid for reelection but refuses to concede and instead clings to power? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed this concern last year, saying “we have to inoculate against that.” So did Trump’s prison-bound former lawyer Michael Cohen. Testifying before Congress, Cohen said, “I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” Even Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic rival, doesn’t discount the possibility that Trump would make himself difficult to dislodge, but he suggested that others in government would get the job done: “I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced that they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”

If Trump does try to hang on to a presidency he’s lost, however, he can’t actually do very much all by himself. Running the executive branch requires help. Thankfully, there are laws that stop others from using the authorities of the executive branch on behalf of anyone other than the legitimate president. If William P. Barr, for example, tried to exercise the powers of the attorney general after a Trump loss, he could be subject to criminal prosecution.

The circumstances matter. If Trump legitimately wins on Election Day, he wins — so be it. And if he loses, well, American tradition calls for a peaceful transfer of power to one’s successor. But given Trump’s rampant tradition-busting, there’s more than a little reason to worry that he’ll continue to reassert baseless claims that there was election fraud via mail-in ballots or foreign election interference favoring the Democrats, even after he has failed to persuade lawfully constituted authorities of such fantasies. Whatever Trump’s excuse, it would require little imagination to suppose that he would claim some need to retain power at least long enough to investigate whatever election irregularity he’s claiming, such that, come Jan. 20, 2021, he and Biden would be advancing competing claims to be America’s legitimate president.

Kellyanne Conway’s ‘Creepy’ Comments Get Turned Against Trump In Biting New Ad New spot from progressive group MeidasTouch turns an attack on Biden back at

New spot from progressive group MeidasTouch turns an attack on Biden back at Trump.

Kellyanne Conway’s recent attack on Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden just received a makeover that turns it back on President Donald Trump.

Conway, who is counselor to the president, said Biden had made “a lot of really creepy statements” and some of those statements “make me very uncomfortable.”

A new video from the progressive PAC MeidasTouch combined her comments with footage of some of Trump’s creepier moments: Continue reading.

The sheep-like loyalty of Trump supporters is starting to backfire

AlterNet logoDonald Trump thinks his voters are morons. This universal truth was once again demonstrated this week by a Facebook ad working Trump’s new statue-oriented campaign strategy. The ad declared, “WE WILL PROTECT THIS” and featured a photo of … no, not some racist-loser Confederate general astride a horse but “Cristo Redentor,” the famous statue of Jesus Christ that sits atop Mount Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro, which, for those keeping track, is not in the United States but in Brazil, a sovereign nation in a different continent.

It’s small story in the grand scheme of things, but one that illustrates yet again that Trump doesn’t really see Republican voters or politicians as fellow travelers, allies or even really as a “base” to whom he owes fealty. Trump sees Republicans primarily as marks, to be fleeced for all they’re worth and then abandoned the second he sees no value in them. Trump’s burning hatred for any American who didn’t vote for him is well documented, but just as true and just as disturbing is his utter disregard for the lives or well-being of people who did support him, and continue to do so.

Recent months have borne this out in remarkable ways, starting, of course, with the way that Trump’s pressure on Republican governors to end coronavirus restrictions prematurely has led to exactly the consequences he was warned about: People in those states are getting sick at eye-popping rates. In Florida, where Trumpian Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed hard to reopen no matter how many people die, ICUs are quickly filling up, with 56 reporting themselves at capacity and another 35 right on their heels. Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has been similarly Trump-pleasing in his rush to reopen, is setting record highs for viral transmission, with upwards of 10,000 positive tests reported in a day. Continue reading.

Finger-pointing, gridlock spark frustration in Senate

The Hill logoElection-year gridlock is gripping the Senate and sparking deep frustration amongst lawmakers.

Senators have watched as recent legislative priorities like police reform have unraveled, negotiations on funding the government hit a wall and pleas to move quickly on coronavirus relief went unanswered.

With the November election increasingly looming over the Capitol, chances are drying up. Continue reading.

Trump Flack Insists Americans ‘Undoubtedly’ Better Off Than In 2016

Trump’s campaign press secretary Hogan Gidley claimed on Wednesday that Americans were better off than they were three years ago. The Fox & Friends co-host interviewing him disputed that claim.

Gidley said in the interview that Trump plans to use an outdoor campaign rally in New Hampshire on Saturday to boast about his accomplishments.

“It answers the age-old question: Are you better off now than you were before?” he said to Fox News. “And the answer, undoubtedly, is yes.” Continue reading.

GOP-Friendly Pollster Finds Biden Leading By Ten Points

One of the nation’s most reliably GOP-leaning pollsters on Wednesday released the results of its first weekly poll for the 2020 presidential election. They showed Joe Biden leading Donald Trump.

The Rasmussen Reports survey of 5,000 “likely voters,” conducted July 5-7, found that 50 percent support Joe Biden, 40 percent support Donald Trump, and 6 percent are undecided.

Among Republicans, Trump had just 74 percent support, compared to 79 percent support for Biden among Democrats. Trump has often claimed to have a 95 percent approval rating among members of his party.

What Will Trump’s Rally in New Hampshire Be Like? It’s Anyone’s Guess

New York Times logoThe governor, a Republican, isn’t attending. It isn’t clear how many other G.O.P. elected officials will come. The turnout could be low, or expansive. And fears of the virus hang over the event.

Three days before President Trump’s latest rally, in a state that Hillary Clinton narrowly won in 2016, the only thing that seems clear is that the president’s team has no idea what to expect.

Mr. Trump’s campaign is planning an event at an airport hangar in Portsmouth, N.H. But the state’s governor, Chris Sununu, a Republican, has said he will not be attending. It isn’t clear how many other Republican elected officials will come. The number of attendees could be low, or it could be expansive. There could be lots of people drifting in from Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts.

Campaign officials believe they will be able to prevent the kind of ticket prank that helped turn Mr. Trump’s rally last month in Tulsa, Okla., into a far smaller event than expected — but they still cannot say for sure. And most significantly, there is the looming threat of the coronavirus spreading in a crowd where attendees will be in relatively close quarters, despite being mostly outdoors. Continue reading.