Category: 2020 Election

Reporter Flames Pence For Trump Campaign’s COVID-19 Safety Hypocrisy

“How can you say the campaign is not part of the problem?” asked a CBS News journalist who pointed out few masks and no social distancing at Trump rallies.

A reporter Friday challenged Vice President Mike Pence on the hypocrisy of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign ignoring COVID-19 safety precautions that have been recommended to the public by the White House’s own health experts.

Paula Reid of CBS News asked Pence at the White House coronavirus press conference how the Trump campaign is not “part of the problem” when no one wears masks or practices safe social distancing to help curb the spread of COVID-19 — nor apparently cares if its supporters follow suit.

“It really sounds as if you’re saying, ‘Do as we say, not as we do,’” Reid said. “You’re telling people to listen to local officials, but in Tulsa, you defied local officials to have an event” that resulted in “dozens of Secret Service agents, dozens of campaign staffers now quarantined because of positive results.” Continue reading.

Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says

New York Times logoThe Trump administration has been deliberating for months about what to do about a stunning intelligence assessment.

WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.

The United States concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilize the West or take revenge on turncoats, had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.

Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said. Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion. Continue reading.

Trump urges Barr to prosecute those who damage monuments

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Friday directed Attorney General William Barr to prioritize prosecution for those who damage federal monuments as the administration pushes to protect statues and monuments from vandalism amid ongoing protests against racial inequality and police brutality.

Trump signed an executive order stating that it is U.S. policy “to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate” any person who destroys, damages, vandalizes or desecrates a monument, memorial or statue or who damages, defaces or destroys religious property.

The order also states that it is U.S. policy to withhold federal support from state and local governments who fail to protect public monuments, memorials and statues, and from public spaces tied to state and local governments who do not meet those conditions. Continue reading.

 

Trump is attacking Biden’s verbal slip-up — but here are 10 of his own embarrassing gaffes

AlterNet logoFormer Vice President Joe Biden has a long history of being gaffe-prone, and President Donald Trump is using Biden’s gaffes to claim that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is unfit to be president. He, along with his friends at Fox News, have recently seized on Biden’s relatively minor slip-up of referring to “120 million” COVID-19 deaths when he meant “120 thousand.” But Trump has had plenty of gaffes of his own, all of which demonstrate that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Here are ten of Trump’s most embarrassing gaffes.

1. Trump confused 9/11 with the convenience store ‘7/11’

During his 2016 campaign, Trump confused the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the convenience store chain 7/11. Instead of describing al-Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as 9/11, then-candidate Trump referred to them as “7/11.” Continue reading.

The DOJ is hiding a key memo explaining why Trump wasn’t prosecuted for obstructing justice

AlterNet logoWhen former Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered his final report for the Russia investigation, he declined to deliver a judgment on whether President Donald Trump should be prosecuted for obstructing justice. Attorney General Bill Barr decided to usurp this responsibility, declaring that the facts didn’t warrant bringing such a charge — but he never explained why.

And according to Conor Shaw and Anne Weismann of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Justice Department has now “confirmed the existence of a memo laying out its rationale for not bringing charges against President Trump” but “refuses to make its reasoning public.”

“The Mueller Report catalogued numerous instances in which President Trump may have obstructed the Russia investigation, including by asking associates to curtail it or to fire the special counsel,” Shaw and Weismann explain. “The memo obtained by CREW explains the legal reasoning behind Attorney General Barr’s suspect claim that ‘the evidence developed during the special counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.’ The memorandum is also presumably the supposed vindication of President Trump’s claim, after Barr’s announcement, that there was ‘No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION.’” Continue reading.

Pence tries to put positive spin on pandemic despite surging cases in South and West

Washington Post logoThe Trump administration on Friday claimed “remarkable progress” in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, despite a surge of cases in the South and West and as several Republican governors allied with President Trump are under pressure to impose stricter public health restrictions to gain control of outbreaks in their states.

Vice President Pence held the first public briefing of the coronavirus task force in nearly two months and sought to deliver an upbeat message that is at odds with warnings from public health experts. The vice president also dodged the question of whether people should wear masks in public, as his own administration recommends, and said campaign rallies that pack people together in violation of public health guidance will continue.

Pence offered no new strategies to combat the rapidly spreading virus and minimized record daily case counts in several states as “outbreaks in specific counties.” Continue reading.

Why Bill Barr may have ‘gone too far’ this time in trying to protect Trump

AlterNet logoWhen President Donald Trump was expressing his frustration over former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in 2018, he famously remarked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” — a reference to his infamous far-right attorney who was an ally of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Trump later found an attorney general who, unlike Jeff Sessions, turned out to be the loyalist he was hoping for: Bill Barr.

Journalist Joan Walsh,  in an article this week for The Nation, argues that Trump found his Roy Cohn in Barr. But she said that now Barr is becoming “sloppier” as he becomes “more brazen.”

“Barr’s decline into blatant but ineffectual lawlessness is proof that Trumpism is a degenerative disease,” she said. Continue reading.

State Coronavirus Data Debunk Trump’s False Testing Claims

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have repeatedly attributed the increase in the coronavirus case count in the United States to an increase in testing.

“We’re doing so much testing, so much more than any other country,” Trump said in an interview with CBN News on Monday. “And to be honest with you, when you do more testing, you find more cases. And then they report our cases are through the roof.”

“I would just encourage you all, as we talk about these things, to make sure and continue to explain to your citizens the magnitude of increase in testing,” Pence said on a call with the nation’s governors last week, according to audio obtained by The New York Times. “And that in most of the cases where we are seeing some marginal rise in number, that’s more a result of the extraordinary work you’re doing.” Continue reading.

Barr Tried To Undermine Michael Cohen Case That Implicated Trump

Attorney General Bill Barr directed Justice Department officials to draft legal memos undermining the campaign finance hush money case that brought down Michael Cohen and implicated President Donald Trump, according to a report in the New York Times.

Barr had the Office of Legal Counsel draft the memo, the report said. And the prosecutors reportedly “resisted” the effort. Since the case is finished — and Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 — there isn’t a whole lot Barr could do to affect the case. It may raise questions about whether Trump could be criminally prosecuted for his related conduct once he’s out of office.

The report reveals new depths Barr has undertaken in his crusade to provide Trump the full protection and exoneration he desires from his attorney general. Barr’s efforts on this front, which include his lies and spin about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, his interference in the sentencing of Roger Stone, his push to drop charges against Michael Flynn, and the investigation of the Russia probe led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, have already been extensive and widely criticized. Continue reading.

While Virus Spikes Across America, White House Praises Its Own Response

As the COVID-19 pandemic shows no sign of slowing, Donald Trump is declaring victory.

On Monday, the seven-day average for new coronavirus cases surged 30 percent higher than a week before. On Wednesday, the nation broke its previous record for most new cases in a day, with 36,880. Hospitals in hot spots are running out of beds, and more than half of states are seeing increasing numbers of cases.

The Trump administration has spent the week praising itself for a job well done.

The Washington Post reported that Mike Pence had told Republican senators on Wednesday to pay attention to “encouraging signs,” such as the fact that cases were only increasing in 12 states. The Post debunked this false claim, noting the number of states with increasing infection rates was actually much higher. Continue reading.