Category: 2020 Election

Trump Faces Mounting Defections From a Once-Loyal Group: Older White Voters

New York Times logoNo Democrat has won or broken even with voters over 65 in two decades. But seniors’ dismay about President Trump could change that.

Clifford Wagner, an 80-year-old Republican in Tucson, Ariz., never cared for President Trump.

He supported Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential primary race and cast a protest vote in the general election for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee. An Air Force veteran, Mr. Wagner described the Trump presidency as a mortifying experience: His friends in Europe and Japan tell him the United States has become “the laughingstock of the world.”

This year, Mr. Wagner said he would register his opposition to Mr. Trump more emphatically than he did in 2016. He plans to vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, and hopes the election is a ruinous one for the Republican Party. Continue reading.

A field guide to Trump’s dangerous rhetoric

All leaders are demagogues. You may not realize this, because we’ve come to associate the word “demagogue” with only dangerous populist leaders. But in Greek, the word just means “leader of the people” (dēmos “the people” + agōgos “leading”).

Some demagogues are good, and some are dangerous. The fundamental difference between leaders who are good demagogues and leaders who are dangerous demagogues is found in the answer to this simple question: Are they accountable for their words and actions?

Obviously, an unaccountable leader is dangerous in any political community. Continue reading.

A new dilemma for Trump’s team: Preventing super-spreader churches

Courting religious voters, the president fought for churches to open up quickly after the shutdowns. The consequences include coronavirus clusters tied to churches.

One month after President Donald Trump ordered the nation’s governors to immediately reopen churches, his administration is facing a difficult dilemma.

Clusters of Covid-19 cases are surfacing in counties across the U.S. where in-person religious services have resumed, triggering questions about whether his administration should reassess its campaign to treat houses of worship the same as other essential businesses, or leave them alone and risk additional transmission of the deadly coronavirus — including in communities that are largely supportive of the president.

An outbreak at a Pentecostal church in Oregon, where hundreds of worshipers resumed gathering over Memorial Day weekend, forced an entire county to return to phase one of its reopening after local officials traced 258 cases of Covid-19 back to the facility. In West Virginia, six health departments across the state have reported coronavirus outbreaks linked to churches. One of them, a Baptist church in Greenbrier County, had 34 congregants test positive for the virus. And in Texas, which hit an all-time high of new cases last week, health officials have received numerous reports of church-related exposures. Continue reading.

‘He would have been briefed instantaneously’: WH veteran slams Trump’s comical BountyGate denials‘He would have been briefed instantaneously’: WH veteran slams Trump’s comical BountyGate denials

AlterNet logoDavid Gergen, who you probably know as an analyst for CNN, also served as an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. So he knows how a (functional, anyway) administration operates.

And he’s calling extreeeeeeme bullshit on the Trump administration’s new claim that Donald Trump and Mike Pence were never briefed about the bounties Russia reportedly placed on our soldiers in Afghanistan:

CNN’s ANA CABRERA: “The White House is now denying the president was briefed on this, but if the New York Times‘ reporting is accurate, this would mean the president was briefed on this in late March. In early May he announced the U.S. had a great friendship with Russia. And later that same month, he reiterated his desire to invite Russia into the G-7. David, you have worked in four White Houses. Why wouldn’t a president have been briefed on intelligence like this?”

Continue reading.

Biden And Trump: A Contrast Stark As Life Or Death

Protecting the lives and health of citizens ought to be the most basic duty of any government. But the Trump administration, abnormal and toxic, is evidently determined to inflict illness and death on as many Americans as possible.

Consider what President Donald Trump and his minions have done over the past few days (not to mention the past several months). Owing to their feckless insistence on reopening the economy, the coronavirus has again surged across the country, from Florida to Texas to California, infecting tens of thousands — many of whom will soon need care in overburdened hospitals. Yet the federal government has simultaneously announced a drastic cutback in testing funds. They’re suppressing the numbers rather than the disease.

Pretending that the virus is receding, as Vice President Mike Pence instructed Republican governors to do, isn’t destructive enough for them, however. In addition to ensuring that more and more Americans become sick and cannot be tested or traced, Trump’s policy aims to deprive them of health insurance at a time of grave peril. This week, the president sent his government lawyers to the Supreme Court for another attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act, just when Americans are losing their jobs and the health insurance upon which they and their families depend. Continue reading.

‘Saying the quiet part out loud’: Trump suggests $5 billion weapons contract awarded to boost 2020 chances in Wisconsin

AlterNet logoSeveral shipbuilding companies may have grounds to file formal complaints with the U.S. Navy and the Government Accountability Office after President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested a multi-billion dollar weapons contract was awarded to a Wisconsin company because of its status location in a key 2020 battleground state.

Speaking to workers at Fincantieri Marinette Marine on Thursday, Trump said the company was selected for the $5.5 billion contract to build 10 guided-missile frigates because of the speed and maneuverability of its existing ships—and because of the company’s location in a swing state.

“I hear the maneuverability is one of the big factors that you were chosen for the contract,” the president said. “The other is your location in Wisconsin, if you want to know the truth.” Continue reading.

Trump Campaign Recruiting Voter Suppression ‘Army’ Across States

Eight state Republican parties are actively recruiting for Donald Trump’s 2020 Election Day voter suppression efforts.

Trump’s reelection campaign and its allies are aiming to recruit up to 50,000 volunteers to challenge any votes and voters they deem suspicious in targeted states, as the New York Times reported recently. This is part of a $20 million effort to undermine voting rights and make it difficult to participate in the November election.

The effort comes, the paper noted, after the expiration of a decades-old court order prohibiting the Republican Party from suppressing minority voting under the guise of preventing fraud. Continue reading.

Multiple news organizations confirm Russian cash-for-corpses bounties for murders of American soldiers

AlterNet logoOn the last day of February, the United States signed a preliminary agreement with the Taliban that was intended to bring to an end to two decades of conflict and U. S. military occupation in Afghanistan. However, despite an extended round of chest-thumping by Donald Trump,  it took only two days for that agreement to prove the weakest of weak tea, as violence resumed and the Taliban ordered its fighters right back into the fray. Since then, there has been attempts to negotiate a series of interim agreements that would build toward an actual working agreement, but the negotiations haven’t even seriously begun. Officially, the blame for that failure has been on COVID-19 and the pandemic that’s spread around the globe. But on Friday, The New York Times reported another reason why things might not be settling down: Russia paid bounties for militants to attack American forces.

Now The Washington Post has confirmed that story and provided additional details. That includes how Moscow’s bounties on American troops are intended to “muddy the negotiations on Afghanistan” and keep the United States involved in this long, costly, and distracting effort. Which leaves Russia free to attack Ukraine, romp through the Middle East, and generally have its way around the world—all while Donald Trump defends their actions and makes regular phone calls to Vladimir Putin.

As the earlier story made clear, Trump has known about Russia’s contract killing of American soldiers since at least March. That hasn’t prevented Trump from launching into an argument that Russia deserves to be re-admitted to the G7 and that Putin should be invited to the next meeting of the economic organization. Trump was on the phone with the Russian autocrat earlier this month to renew that invitation over the objections of both Canada and the U. K. Continue reading.

Pence postpones Florida, Arizona campaign events as coronavirus cases spike

Florida reported 9,585 new infections while Arizona recorded 3,591.

Vice President Mike Pence has postponed campaign events in Florida and Arizona “out of an abundance of caution” as both states experience a spike in coronavirus cases, a Trump campaign spokesperson confirmed Saturday.

Pence was set to make stops in each state this coming week as a part of his “Faith in America” tour, and will also not appear at an additional Florida event Thursday organized by pro-Trump group America First Policies.

The White House confirmed Pence will still travel to both states to meet with governors and their health care teams, as well as travel to Texas on Sunday where he is scheduled to speak at a Dallas church led by Pastor Robert Jeffress, an ally of President Donald Trump and a member of Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board. Continue reading.

Workers removed thousands of social distancing stickers before Trump’s Tulsa rally, according to video and a person familiar with the set-up