Category: 2020 Election

Trump Retreats to His Hannity Bunker

Beaten by the pandemic and down in the polls, a President and his propagandist create an alternate reality.

June began poorly for President Trump, and it’s ending worse. Despite Trump’s optimistic pronouncements about the coronavirus, the pandemic is surging across the American South and West. His poll numbers against Joe Biden are cratering. His former national-security adviser is selling a book that calls him a corrupt fool who’s unfit for office. The number of jobless Americans continues to climb. But, luckily, there are some things Trump can still count on—like the Fox News host Sean Hannity.

On Thursday night, with America deep in a crisis that shows no sign of easing, Trump appeared at a Fox News “town hall” led by Hannity. It was a reassuringly safe space for the President. There was not a single mention of the terrifying spike of covid-19 cases in Texas or Arizona or anywhere else. No one so much as alluded to the hundred and twenty-five thousand or so Americans who have already died from the disease. And Hannity—Trump’s close friend and confidant, who has been called his shadow White House chief of staff—refrained from citing the recent wave of national polls, including one by Fox, that show Trump losing to Biden by double-digit percentage points. The audience of Trump superfans, many of whom wore pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” gear, obliged as well. When Hannity got around to taking questions from them, twenty-five minutes into the forty-three-minute broadcast, a woman named Linda asked Trump, “What do you think is your greatest accomplishment?”

Hannity’s latest in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign was perfectly predictable, of course. The TV host, who is paid twenty-five million dollars a year by Fox, is so reliable a wingman to the President that my colleague Jane Mayer reported that Trump bragged he was a ten out of ten on the loyalty scale. Before the 2018 midterms, the President had Hannity appear onstage at his big preëlection rally, a faux pas even for Fox that earned Hannity a reprimand from his bosses. Before Thursday’s event, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump hosted Hannity as his guest on Marine One, and photographers snapped a picture of U.S. Marine guards saluting as Hannity walked on the tarmac to the plane’s steps. In a pre-town-hall interview, at a Wisconsin airplane hangar, the two looked like co-stars in a buddy movie; they were even dressed in matching long red ties and dark suits. When the show got going, Trump saluted Hannity as a “great journalist.” Hannity’s show is the Fox bunker that Trump runs to when everything is going wrong. Continue reading

Democrats vow complacency won’t be issue as Biden builds lead

The Hill logoDemocrats are warning their party can’t afford to be complacent as polls show presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden surging ahead of President Trump in the polls. 

While Biden now enjoys a larger lead than the one held by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at this point of the 2016 race, the nightmares of Trump’s comeback in that cycle haunt Democratic donors. 

Some say the disappointment of that loss will keep the party on guard in 2020. Continue reading.

Worries over Trump’s ‘mental acuity’ after ‘complete gibberish’ interview on Fox News

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s fitness to hold office was called into question after the broadcasting on Thursday evening of a town hall that had been pre-recorded with Fox News personality Sean Hannity.

Trump falsely claimed there would not be any COVID-19 cases were it not for testing to detect the pandemic. Trump also predicted Joe Biden would win the 2020 presidential race and bragged about being “the most perfect person.”

And Trump flopped after being asked his priorities for a second term. Continue reading.

Fox News panel struggles to cope with the network’s own devastating new polling on Trump

AlterNet logoThere’s a new Fox News poll out surveying key swing state opinions about the 2020 race for the White House, and it paints a bleak picture for President Donald Trump’s chances:

As CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out, Biden doesn’t need to win a single one of these states to prevail in the election. If Biden wins any of these states, he’s most likely already surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next president. I wouldn’t bet on him winning all four states; the idea that Biden will win Texas, in particular, seems farfetched — if not impossible — despite what this poll found. But Biden’s 9-point lead in Florida should be particularly concerning for Trump. The president absolutely needs to hold the Sunshine State to maintain his grip on the presidency, and this poll — as well as many others — makes it look like a real challenge for Trump.

In the face of this grim news for the president, a Fox News panel struggled to spin the findings to offer comfort to its Trump-loving viewers. The result was an outright comedic display of searching for caveats and extraneous considerations to avoid grappling with the truth. Of course, despite this poll, and many others like it, Trump could still win. Major upsets do happen in politics. But there’s no comfort to be found in these results for the president. Continue reading.

Biden attacks Trump on health care, warns his administration’s attack on the ACA could hurt millions

Washington Post logoPresumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) mounted a fresh assault on President Trump’s efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, accusing Trump of putting Americans’ lives at risk during a pandemic.

At a campaign trip to the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania and on Capitol Hill, Biden and Pelosi sought to heighten public attention to the sprawling health-care law that brought insurance to millions of Americans.

The remarks were timed to coincide with the filing of legal briefs by the Trump administration and Republican attorneys general in a major lawsuit trying to rescind the ACA. Continue reading.

Trump doesn’t know what the ’19’ in ‘COVID-19’ means

Months into the worst pandemic in a generation, Trump still doesn’t know that the ’19’ in ‘COVID-19’ stands for the year the outbreak began.

Donald Trump on Tuesday said he has no idea what the “19” in “COVID-19” stands for, instead choosing to once again use a racist term for the deadly disease coronavirus causes.

The comment came during a speech in Arizona to members of Turning Point USA — a group of young, Trump-supporting, right-wing activists — in which he rattled off a list of names people had used to refer to coronavirus, including racist terms like “Wuhan” virus and “kung-flu.”

“Kung flu. ‘COVID.’ ‘COVID-19.’ ‘COVID.’ I said, ‘What’s the ’19?’ ‘COVID-19.’ Some people can’t explain what the 19 — give me the — ‘COVID-19.’ I said, ‘That’s an odd name.’ I could give you many, many names,” Trump said. Continue reading.

Mary Trump once stood up to her uncle Donald. Now her book describes a ‘nightmare’ of family dysfunction.

Washington Post logoMary L. Trump was embroiled in a feud over her inheritance two decades ago when her uncle Donald Trump and his siblings punched back in classic style. In an obscure court filing, they belittled her, alleging she “lives primarily off the Trump income” and is “not gainfully employed.”

Actually, Mary Trump had embarked on a new career. She studied patients with schizophrenia at Hillside Hospital on Long Island for at least six months during this period, meeting with an array of people who were delusional, hallucinatory and suicidal.

Over time, she deepened her studies of the disorder, contributed to a book on treating schizophrenia, wrote a dissertation on stalkers, and became a clinical psychologist. But not since she became part of the lawsuit in 2000 against her uncle has she spoken in detail about what she sees as the disorders of Donald Trump. Continue reading.

Trump World boils over as campaign hits skids

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s allies are urging him to change his tone and key figures in the campaign’s orbit are pointing fingers over who is to blame for the president’s spiraling poll numbers with just over four months to go until Election Day.

There is frustration in Trump World over the president’s lack of discipline and his confrontational tone during a time of high anxiety over the coronavirus and civil unrest around the death of George Floyd while in police custody.

Some Trump allies are worried that campaign manager Brad Parscale is in over his head. And there is sniping between pro-Trump outside groups about whether their money is best spent propping up Trump or tearing down presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. 

White House intensifies effort to install Pentagon personnel seen as loyal to Trump

Washington Post logoThe White House is intensifying an effort to hire Pentagon personnel with an undisputed allegiance to President Trump at a moment when his relationship with Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper has become strained, current and former officials said.

The changes in mid-level leadership are poised to create a more avowedly political Defense Department and could erode the influence of Esper, who spoke out against Trump’s proposed deployment of active-duty troops to quell unrest in U.S. cities after the killing of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police

White House officials are now redoubling efforts as Trump complains to aides that he has never had a defense secretary who is fully aligned with his foreign policy views and accuses Pentagon officials of trying to undermine him, according to a senior administration official. Continue reading.

Inside Barr’s Effort to Undermine Prosecutors in N.Y.

New York Times logoThe firing of the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan was foreshadowed by a disagreement over a case linked to President Trump.

Shortly after he became attorney general last year, William P. Barr set out to challenge a signature criminal case that touched President Trump’s inner circle directly, and even the president’s own actions: the prosecution of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer.

The debate between Mr. Barr and the federal prosecutors who brought the case against Mr. Cohen was one of the first signs of a tense relationship that culminated last weekend in the abrupt ouster of Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan. It also foreshadowed Mr. Barr’s intervention in the prosecutions of other associates of Mr. Trump.

By the time Mr. Barr was sworn into office in February, Mr. Cohen, who had paid hush money to an adult film star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, had already pleaded guilty and was set to begin a three-year prison sentence, all of which embarrassed and angered the president. Continue reading.