Category: 2020 Election

How Barr’s ‘enormous blind spot’ led to Trump’s ‘botched’ firing of SDNY prosecutor — and backed the president into a corner: NYT reporter

AlterNet logoNew York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman on Sunday broke down the Trump administration’s “botched” firing of Geoffrey Berman, telling CNN’s John King that Attorney General Bill Barr’s “enormous blind spot when it comes to politics” put Donald Trump in jeopardy.

Berman, the former U.S. attorney for the Souther District of New York who oversaw the prosecution of Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen, resigned from his post Saturday following a public standoff with Barr. On Friday, Berman contradicted Barr after the attorney general claimed he “stepped down” from his position following a meeting at a Manhattan hotel.

“I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate,” Berman said Friday. Continue reading.

‘You guys look silly’: Fox News’ Chris Wallace annihilates Trump spokeswoman for ‘denying reality’ in Tulsa debacle

AlterNet logoFox News host Chris Wallace challenged Trump 2020 campaign spokesperson Mercedes Schlapp for making “campaign speeches” during an interview on Sunday.

On his Fox News Sunday program, Wallace noted that President Donald Trump’s Tulsa rally on Saturday had been sparsely attended despite the fact that the president claimed nearly a million people had requested tickets.

“We all saw the pictures last night,” Wallace explained. “The arena was no more than two-thirds full. And the outdoor rally was cancelled because there was no overflow crowd. What happened?” Continue reading.

Donald Trump’s Empty Campaign Rally in Tulsa

In some ways, what Donald Trump didn’t say on Saturday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at a rally that was billed as his big post-pandemic return to the campaign trail, matters more than what he did. In more than ninety minutes onstage, not one mention of the murder of George Floyd. Not one mention of the murder of Breonna Taylor. Barely a mention of the hundred and nineteen thousand Americans killed by covid-19, or of the tens of millions thrown out of work, facing uncertain futures for themselves and their families. This is the President who was, just a few weeks ago, supposedly considering a big speech on race and unity. Instead, on Saturday, Trump did a cool twenty minutes on his experience of walking down a slippery ramp after delivering the graduation speech at West Point last weekend. He also bragged about the stock market; called covid-19 the “kung flu”; accused Representative Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia, of wanting to turn America into a failed state “just like the country from where she came”; and said that he instructed a military officer during negotiations with Boeing not to put anything “in writing,” because he wanted to potentially skip out on paying a multimillion-dollar order-cancellation fee for new Air Force One planes. Continue reading “Donald Trump’s Empty Campaign Rally in Tulsa”

Biden adviser blasts Trump for Tulsa rally

Symone Sanders assails Trump for talking about slowing down coronavirus testing.

Symone Sanders, senior adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, slammed into President Donald Trump’s Saturday return rally, saying it set a dangerous example amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Sanders on “Fox News Sunday” decried Trump’s statement during the Tulsa rally that he asked the administration to slow down coronavirus testing to contain optics of a growing outbreak. She also lambasted Trump for holding a rally in a confined, indoor space — creating conditions that health experts say are highly conducive to transmitting the disease.

“The most damning thing from that rally last night, Chris, was, in fact, the president’s admission that he quote unquote said to his people to slow down the testing,” Sanders told host Chris Wallace. “This is an appalling attempt to lessen the numbers only to make them look good.” Continue reading.

The Memo: Trump’s 2020 path gets steeper

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s path to reelection is getting steeper and steeper.

The coronavirus, the economic devastation it has caused and a spate of street protests amid racial strife have all taken their toll on a president whose approval ratings were mediocre to begin with.

“There is no question [Joe] Biden is ahead today,” Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who is also a columnist for The Hill, said of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Continue reading.

5 takeaways from Trump’s Tulsa rally

Washington Post logoPresident Trump held his first campaign rally in three months Saturday. Here are the takeaways from it.

1. Trump elevates violent rhetoric against protesters

A day before the rally, he tweeted this:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!

372K

Twitter Ads info and privacy
194K people are talking about this

The White House tried to say Trump was making threats only about violent protesters, but the tweet clearly includes “protesters.” Continue reading.

Trump’s rally looked like his vision of America: Limited and pitiless

Washington Post logoThe president paused for dramatic effect before he walked onstage at his Tulsa rally. He was silhouetted under a blue and white “Make America Great Again” banner and against an American flag. And in the few seconds that he stood basking in adulation, he resembled a giant black rectangle. A massive, inanimate void.

When he emerged into the light, he walked into the cheering embrace of a mostly unmasked crowd bedecked in red Trump hats and MAGA T-shirts, along with the occasional QAnon tank top and “Don’t Tread on Me” pullover.

It’s tempting to say it was a crowd that didn’t look anything like America because it appeared to be so lacking in diversity — so overwhelmingly white. But, in fact, the crowd looked precisely like America does in more than a few suburbs, counties and hollers. In churches and offices. In the president’s inner circle. There were only a few brown faces sprinkled directly behind the president’s lectern, along with a small cluster of them under “Black Voices for Trump” signs. Continue reading.

Trump, GOP place big bet on economy for 2020

The Hill logoRepublicans are betting on the economy as they try to hold on to the Senate and the White House in November.

The spread of the coronavirus and the subsequent economic fallout have rattled the party’s 2020 message and sparked a round of dismal poll numbers for President Trump and Republicans in key battleground races.

But GOP senators are hoping a potential upswing in growth heading into the fall, combined with fundamental policy differences that contrast with Democrats, will allow them to save a key piece of their campaign strategy. Continue reading.

DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin’s Statement on Jason Lewis’ History of Sowing Divisiveness and Racist Comments

Lewis set to denounce police reform in front of Minneapolis Third Precinct Police Headquarters

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Today, DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement on Republican Senate candidate Jason Lewis’ history of spreading divisiveness and partisanship, including past comments disparaging communities of color.

This comes as Lewis is set to hold a press conference this afternoon denouncing the need for police reform and denying the systemic racism that is embedded in our country.

Lewis has repeatedly circulated a false claim commonly pushed by white supremacists that white people are disproportionately killed by Black people, and he used his past conservative talk show to declare that “White Lives Matter.”

“Once again, Jason Lewis proves he’s not interested in finding solutions to problems we face, but rather exploits them for his own partisan gain,” said DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin “He denies any wrongdoing in our systems, and ignores Minnesotans’ demands for reform. Lewis has repeatedly demeaned communities of color, and his ignorant views of the Black community prove he is unfit to serve all Minnesotans in the U.S. Senate.”

The DFL has previously highlighted Lewis’ racist comments such as claiming that the problem in the Black community is the “gangsta culture,” saying that Black people on welfare “traded one plantation for another,” and comparing progressive income tax brackets to slavery.