Category: 2020 Election

Trump Returns To Campaign Trail With A Familiar Message In A Changing World

In his first big campaign event since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, President Trump reached back into his culture war playbook to paint an image of a left-wing extremist dystopia that will take hold if he is defeated and Democratic opponent Joe Biden is elected this November.

“If the Democrats gain power, then the rioters will be in charge and no one will be safe and no one will have control,” Trump said to a crowd, which numbered in the thousands but failed to fill an arena in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday night and was far smaller than Trump’s campaign promised. “Joe Biden is not the leader of his party. Joe Biden is a helpless puppet of the radical left.”

But then Trump seemed to undercut that message, saying of Biden, “He’s not radical left” and that “he was never radical left. But now he’s controlled by the radical left.” Continue reading.

Trump Had Promised a Huge Rally in Tulsa. He Spoke to a Half-Empty Arena.

Things didn’t quite go as President Donald Trump had planned in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday for his first campaign rally since March. Days earlier, Trump had said “we’re either close to or over 1 million people wanting to go” to the rally. “Nobody has heard of numbers like this,” he boasted. “We expect to have a record-setting crowd. We’ve never had an empty seat, and we certainly won’t in Oklahoma.” When Saturday night rolled around, though, there were plenty of empty seats at the 19,000-capacity arena in Tulsa. [Update, June 21, 2020, at 10 a.m.: Even saying “half-empty” may be an exaggeration. Andrew Little, the public information officer for the Tulsa Fire Department, told Forbes that attendance at the rally was just under 6,200 people. Update, June 21, 2020, at 1:30 p.m.: A Trump campaign official said 12,000 people entered the arena.]

Trump’s campaign had expected such a huge crowd that the president planned to give a speech to an overflow group of supporters outside of the rally. But the outdoor portion ended up being canceled as there were barely any people there. A “campaign source” told CNN that they were afraid of angering Trump because of the thin crowds. In canceling the outside speech, the campaign blamed protesters, saying they “interfered with supporters” and blocked “access to metal detectors, which prevented people from entering the rally.” Reporters on the ground, though, noted that there weren’t really a lot of protesters in Tulsa on Saturday. Continue reading.

Trump makes defiant return to campaign stage amid controversies

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Saturday made a defiant return to the campaign stage under a number of dark clouds looming over his presidency, seeking a reset in his reelection campaign even as the event itself was overshadowed by controversy.

Trump’s 90-minute speech was heavy on the same grievances and boasts that have been a hallmark of his campaign style for years. But Saturday’s rally came after a three-month hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, which is still widespread around the country.

“I stand before you today to declare the silent majority is stronger than ever before,” Trump told a boisterous crowd in Tulsa, Okla. Continue reading.

Trump Cancels Tulsa Overflow Speech After No One Shows Up

Trump canceled a planned speech to the overflow crowd for his rally in Tulsa after the crowd was smaller than expected.

Trump announced the cancelation at the last minute:

Will Steakin

✔@wsteaks

President Trump will no longer deliver a planned address to the overflow crowd outside the BOK Center at his Tulsa rally, a Trump campaign source tells @ABC News.

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Continue reading “Trump Cancels Tulsa Overflow Speech After No One Shows Up”

Trump makes defiant return to campaign stage amid controversies

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Saturday made a defiant return to the campaign stage under a number of dark clouds looming over his presidency, seeking a reset in his reelection campaign even as the event itself was overshadowed by controversy.

Trump’s 90-minute speech was heavy on the same grievances and boasts that have been a hallmark of his campaign style for years. But Saturday’s rally came after a three-month hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, which is still widespread around the country.

“I stand before you today to declare the silent majority is stronger than ever before,” Trump told a boisterous crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Continue reading.

Trump faces avalanche of criticism after his rude behavior is caught on video

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump was excoriated on social media after turning his attention to Twitter during a roundtable Thursday afternoon on the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic as one attendee detailed the hardships faced by her small business due to the outbreak.

“Get off your phone and pay attention!” tweeted author Jason Cranford Teague.

The president began scrolling through his phone as a business owner described how the pandemic has affected her company’s operations, including the need for added runners and phone operators to handle social distancing requirements. Continue reading.

Trump intends to renew effort to end DACA protections for young undocumented immigrants

Washington Post logoPresident Trump on Friday promised to renew his effort to end the Obama-era program that protects undocumented immigrants brought here as children from deportation, a day after the Supreme Court ruled to keep it in place.

In a morning tweet, Trump seized on the fact that the 5-4 decision did not address the merits of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA program, but rather said that the administration had not provided proper legal justification for ending it.

“The Supreme Court asked us to resubmit on DACA, nothing was lost or won. They ‘punted,’ much like in a football game (where hopefully they would stand for our great American Flag). We will be submitting enhanced papers shortly in order to properly fulfil the Supreme Court’s ruling & request of yesterday,” Trump wrote. Continue reading.

Why some Trump supporters are starting to realize he’s delusional

AlterNet logoTrump will almost certainly get an emotional boost from an adoring crowd at his rally in Tulsa. But perhaps for the first time in his privileged life, reality is beginning to challenge the delusional world he has created for himself. As a result, he just keeps making things worse.

The president has been so eager to reopen the economy that he is ensuring an ongoing rise in the number of people contracting COVID-19. As experts are warning, the U.S. isn’t experiencing a second wave of the virus—the first wave never ended.

Because Trump views every relationship as a transaction, he seemed to have turned over his Twitter account on Thursday night to someone who could help him bribe voters in swing states. The president’s account sent out 21 tweets bragging about the money he sent to various states from the Department of Transportation. For example, Colorado got over $60 million, Nevada $50 million, North Carolina $25 million, and Texas $80 million. The list goes on. Nothing is more typical of how this president operates than to think he can use federal taxpayer dollars to boost his chances of reelection. Continue reading.

Republicans brush off Bolton’s bombshells

The Hill logoSenate Republicans faced another Trump-related crisis on Thursday, a day after media outlets reported bombshell claims by former national security adviser John Bolton in his new memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.”

Privately, however, GOP senators who spoke to The Hill expressed little doubt that what Bolton has written about his interactions with President Trump are by and large true.

It didn’t come as a shock to them that Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy American soybeans and other farm commodities to help him win reelection, or that he didn’t know that Britain was a nuclear power, or that he spent most of the time in his intelligence briefings airing his own views instead of listening to what experts had to say, or that he intervened to lighten penalties on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE. Continue reading.

GOP fears Biden’s low-key campaign is paying off

The Hill logoJoe Biden hasn’t held a press conference in 77 days, but Democrats aren’t feeling much pressure to put their presumptive presidential nominee front and center at the moment.

Biden has, for the most part, kept a low profile throughout the coronavirus pandemic and weeks of demonstrations for racial justice across the country. Over that time, Biden has built up a healthy lead in the polls and emerged as the heavy favorite for now to be the next president.

Meanwhile, Republicans have watched with growing alarm as President Trump’s polling numbers have fallen to frightening new lows for an incumbent. Continue reading.