Category: 2020 Election

Beyond His Engorged Ego, Trump Sees Nothing

That Associated Press photo of a disheveled, exhausted Boss Trump trudging across the White House lawn with his tie undone clutching MAGA hat in his hand appears destined to become the classic portrait of his reign of misrule: the beginning of the end.

As usual, the debacle in Tulsa, with its acres of empty blue seats, was everybody’s fault but Donald J. Trump’s. A classic case of over-promising and under-delivering. “We’ve never had an empty seat, and we certainly won’t in Oklahoma,” Trump had boasted. Oops!

Hundreds of thousands were anticipated; maybe 10,000 showed. Maybe. The Big Crybaby’s campaign alibis that non-violent protesters scared his supporters away from the Tulsa rally. Protesters and the news media that is, which unfairly publicized rising Covid-19 infections there and across Oklahoma. Continue reading.

Trump family seeks to block book by president’s niece that calls him ‘World’s Most Dangerous Man’

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s brother on Tuesday petitioned a New York court to block the publication of a book by Mary L. Trump that describes the president, her uncle, as the “world’s most dangerous man.”

Presales of the book, slated for publication on July 28, have soared to the top of bestseller lists on the basis of a description from publisher Simon & Schuster that it will reveal decades of family secrets, including a “nightmare of traumas” that explain the psychology of the man who is now president.

President Trump told the Axios news service earlier this week that Mary Trump is “not allowed” to write the book, because she signed a nondisclosure agreement in 2001 that settled her suit against him and his siblings over her inheritance from her grandfather Fred Trump Sr., the president’s father. President Trump said the agreement was a “very powerful one” that “covers everything.” Continue reading.

With Tweets, Videos and Rhetoric, Trump Pushes Anew to Divide Americans by Race

New York Times logoPresident Trump is leaning hard into his decades-long habit of falsely portraying some black Americans as dangerous or lawless. And he is doing it during one of the most tumultuous periods in decades.

President Trump has repeatedly pushed inflammatory language, material and policies in recent days that seek to divide Americans by race as he tries to appeal to his predominantly white base of voters four months before Election Day rather than try to broaden his support.

Trailing in national polls and surveys of crucial battleground states, and stricken by a disappointing return to the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has leaned hard into his decades-long habit of falsely portraying some black Americans as dangerous or lawless. And he has chosen to do so at one of the most tumultuous periods in decades as Americans protest recent episodes of police brutality against black people that have highlighted the nation’s long history of racial injustice.

Over the last few days the president has tweeted context-free videos of random incidents involving black people attacking white people and baselessly argued that President Barack Obama, the country’s first black leader, committed “treason.” In an interviewwith the Catholic News Agency that was posted online on Monday, Mr. Trump said he planned to sign an order to protect national monuments at a time when statues of Confederate generals are being torn down across the country. Continue reading.

Steve Schmidt Unloads On The White House For Covering Up Trump’s Declining Health

Former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt ripped the White House on Tuesday for running a massive cover-up of Donald Trump’s declining physical and mental health.

During an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Schmidt said the president’s health is clearly deteriorating before our eyes, pointing out that Trump “routinely slurs” and is “often confused.”

“The enfeeblement of the president is something we’re all watching happen before our eyes,” Schmidt said. “The Donald Trump of 2020 is a different Donald Trump than he was in 2016.” Continue reading.

In Arizona, Trump Boasts About His Wall and Repeats Unfounded Predictions of Voter Fraud

New York Times logoHis main target was voting by mail, suggesting that mail carriers would be robbed as they delivered ballots.

President Trump traveled to the southwestern border on Tuesday to lift his flagging re-election campaign with a renewed anti-immigrant appeal, bragging about the progress his administration has made in constructing a “big, beautiful wall” before predicting to a group of students at a Phoenix mega church that the election could be stolen in a huge fraud.

In a visit with handpicked border officials and Republican allies in Yuma, Ariz., Mr. Trump sought to revive the issue at the heart of his 2016 victory: his portrayal of immigrants as a threat to the economic and personal security of Americans, and his promise to close the United States off from much of the world.

“My administration has done more than any administration in history to secure our southern border,” Mr. Trump boasted, citing the completion of about 220 miles of what he called a “powerful new” wall on the border. “It’s the most powerful and comprehensive border wall structure anywhere in the world.” Continue reading.

Democrats wrestle with how hard to go after Trump’s scandals

House Democrats have spent much of the year averting their gaze — and their most powerful investigative weapons — from a mounting list of President Donald Trump’s scandals. But new ones keep popping up whether they like it or not.

Now a debate is bubbling up inside the Democratic Caucus about just how aggressively to confront Trump’s latest alleged abuses, particularly just four months before an election in which the president has damaged himself with near-daily unforced errors and seen his standing slide in national polls. Democrats are also eager to avoid stomping on their own election year agenda.

The House has already deployed its strongest check on the president — impeachment — with no appetite among Democratic leadership or the rank and file to pursue the all-consuming process again, this time amid a global pandemic and national debate over police brutality and institutional racism. Continue reading.

4 Years Later, Only 3 New Miles of ‘Wall’ And Not A Single Peso From Mexico

Trump visited Arizona to tout 212 miles of new fence — but only three were built where there was previously no barrier.

WASHINGTON ― Four years after promising a 2,000-mile “Great Wall” made of reinforced concrete and paid for by Mexico, President Donald Trump took a victory lap for securing three new miles of steel fence that was paid for by raiding the military budget.

“This is the most powerful and comprehensive border wall structure anywhere in the world,” Trump said Tuesday during a visit to the Mexican border at Yuma, Arizona, where he said 212 miles have been built and that close to 500 would be finished by the end of the year. “Our border has never been more secure.”

In fact, only three of those 212 miles are along parts of the border that previously had no barrier. The rest have replaced existing fencing, a process that began under President George W. Bush and continued under President Barack Obama. Continue reading.

Trump Spends Rally Downplaying Coronavirus And Making Racist Jokes

Speaking in a state where coronavirus cases are surging enough to repeatedly set new daily infection records, President Donald Trump told a crowd of young Arizona supporters that everything was under control.

“Someday it’ll be recognized by history,” he said of his pandemic response while speaking at a campaign-style event at Dream City Church, hosted by the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA.

This is “hopefully the end of the pandemic,” Trump told an audience of about 3,000 college students, most of whom did not wear masks.

There’s little to indicate that. Arizona is one of several states that, with Trump’s urging, followed an aggressive reopening schedule. Now it’s averaging about 2,500 new cases daily, a 94% increase from last Monday. Infections are rising in more than half of the U.S. states, with other alarming surges in Texas and Florida. Continue reading.

Trump Riffs on Coronavirus and Calls It ‘Kung Flu’ Again in Arizona Speech

President Donald Trump once again riffed on the names for the coronavirus during his Tuesday event in Arizona, once again referring to it as the “kung flu.”

The president first said that during his Tulsa rally this past Saturday, and on Monday Kayleigh McEnany repeatedly defended the president as reporters confronted her with questions like “Why does he use racist phrases like ‘kung flu?’”

One reporter even noted that a few months ago Kellyanne Conway made a point of saying that this particular phrase was “highly offensive.” Continue reading.