Category: 2020 Election

Michigan pollster: Trump’s Bible photo op caused immediate drop in support

President Donald Trump’s support among Michigan voters took a sharp dive in polls taken immediately after protesters were forcefully removed so Trump could have his photo taken holding a Bible outside a historic church.

Two surveys of Michigan voters taken by Lansing polling firm EPIC-MRA found a widening gap between Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden after protests against police brutality began outside the White House and across the country. One poll conducted from May 30 to June 3 found Biden leading by 12 percentage points, but the second poll, which started and ended just one day later, recorded a 16-point lead for the former vice president.

EPIC-MRA pollster Bernie Porn attributed the quick drop to public backlash and negative press resulting from Trump’s staged photo on June 1. The two polls collected responses from separate samples of 600 likely Michigan voters and both had a 4% margin of error. Continue reading.

Supreme Court to decide the future of the Electoral College

Many Americans are surprised to learn that in U.S. presidential elections, the members of the Electoral College do not necessarily have to pick the candidate the voters in their state favored.

Or do they?

This month the Supreme Court will rule on the independent powers of electors, which will determine the meaning of the Electoral College in contemporary American politics. Continue reading.

Pence Says All 50 States Reopening In ‘Responsible Manner.’ Fauci Says Otherwise.

The Wall Street Journal published the vice president’s propaganda about the coronavirus. Here’s what he got wrong.

Vice President Mike Pence painted a rosy ― and misleading ― portrait of the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus and the current state of the crisis in an op-ed published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.

In one section, Pence, whom President Donald Trump appointed in late February to lead the White House’s coronavirus task force, praised all 50 states for beginning to reopen in a “safe and responsible manner.”

But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the lead infectious disease expert on the task force, suggested that isn’t the case during an interview with NPR earlier Tuesday. Continue reading.

Trump praises scientists for nonexistent AIDS vaccine, predicts COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2020

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he believes there will be a vaccine for the coronavirus ready by the end of this year, and incorrectly stated that scientists and doctors developed a vaccine for AIDS, the most advanced stage of HIV.

“These are the people, the best, the smartest, the most brilliant anywhere, and they’ve come up with the AIDS vaccine. They’ve come up with — or the AIDS, and, as you know, there’s various things and now various companies involved. But the therapeutic for AIDS,” Trump said from the White House Rose Garden.

The president was delivering remarks as he signed an executive order on policing, prompted by weeks of nationwide protests against police brutality and racism in the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. Continue reading.

Trump’s push for major infrastructure bill faces GOP opposition

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s election-year push for a $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill to boost the struggling economy faces strong opposition from Senate Republicans.

GOP senators are warning that Trump’s expected proposal is too “rich” and would be a “heavy lift” in Congress, especially considering significant policy differences between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

House Democratic leaders have vowed to approve a surface transportation bill with a price tag around $500 billion over five years by the end of this month, which could put pressure on the GOP-led Senate. The House Transportation Committee is scheduled to start marking up that bill Wednesday. Continue reading.

Trump Falsely Claims Obama ‘Never Even Tried’ to Address Police Misconduct

New York Times logoAs President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday encouraging changes to policing, he falsely accused his predecessor, President Barack Obama, of choosing not to tackle the issue. Here’s a fact-check.

WHAT WAS SAID
“President Obama and Vice President Biden never even tried to fix this during their eight-year period. The reason they didn’t try is because they had no idea how to do it. And it is a complex situation.”

False. The Obama administration tried to address police misconduct in numerous ways, and some of those efforts have been reversed or limited by the Trump administration.

“The assertion that the Trump administration has done more than the Obama administration is ridiculous,” said Barry Friedman, a law professor and director of the Policing Project at New York University School of Law. “The Obama administration has taken a number of critical steps in police reform.” Continue reading.

Trump knows he’s losing his grip on his base

AlterNet logoIt was pretty stunning to see NASCAR — an emblem of Donald Trump’s core support — decide to ban the Confederate flag from all events and properties.

It shouldn’t be stunning, of course, because the flag is a symbol of white supremacy. But Trump world has embraced it for years, because, well, they embrace white supremacists. The action came days after the only black NASCAR driver, Bubba Wallace, wore a t-shirt that read “I Can’t Breathe” and “Black Lives Matter” and a NASCAR official, Kirk Price, who is black, took a knee during the national anthem.

For perhaps the first time since his presidency began, Trump, in the wake of the enormous response to George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, is seeing some in his own base — and the icons and institutions that demarcate his base — appearing to pull away from him, at least on the issue of police brutality against African-Americans but perhaps on more. Continue reading.

Forget vaccines and treatments. The very stable genius has a foolproof coronavirus cure.

Washington Post logoForget vaccines and treatments. The very stable genius has a foolproof cure for the pandemic.

“If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,” President Trump said at the White House Monday.

Precisely! And if I stop weighing myself right now, I will gain very few pounds, if any. What we don’t know cannot possibly hurt us. This is very much a part of Trump’s governing philosophy.

If he stops John Bolton’s book from being published, there will be very few damaging revelations, if any. Continue reading.

Trump tries to plot a political comeback based on the economy. Biden says not so fast.

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s advisers are trying to plot a political turnaround centered on his stewardship of the economy, seeking to exploit a rare issue on which voters trust him as much as Joe Biden and vowing to usher in the “great American comeback” after the country plunged into a financial free fall on his watch.

Biden, under growing pressure from Democratic allies to wage a more aggressive rebuttal, plans to sharpen his economic focus in coming weeks with the rollout of new proposals to stimulate job creation, according to a senior campaign adviser. The campaign also plans to intensify its drive to remind voters of Trump’s sluggish response to the novel coronavirus and the unemployment spike that followed.

The dueling efforts come less than five months before Election Day. By almost every indicator, Trump’s bid for a second term is in peril, with Biden sprinting out to leads in battleground states and into competition in some conservative strongholds. But in a twist, the economy, which has been a bellwether in the modern history of presidential races, is one major domain where voters still give Trump encouraging marks, bolstered by occasional bright spots like Tuesday’s report that retail sales jumped 17.7 percent in May. Continue reading.

Trump-friendly pollster gives him bad news as signs show some of his supporters are ‘exhausted’

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump blew his lid when CNN came out with a devastating poll showing him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 campaign by a stunning 14-points. The poll was so unsettling, it seemed, that he demanded the network retract it (a request CNN promptly laughed off).

But on Monday, Trump got similarly bad news from a much friendlier source. Just the News, an outlet started by media ally John Solomon, released a new survey with longtime pro-Trump pollster Scott Rasmussen.

According to this poll, Trump is 12 points behind Biden, 36-48. This is pretty devastating — it’s in territory that essentially guarantees the electoral college won’t save Trump, and even wide bands of a margin of error don’t help him much. It’s just one poll, of course — but in combination with the CNN survey and many others showing Trump’s approval falling, things are looking bleak for the president. It remains possible he could recover from these depths, but it’s clear he needs a change of course. Continue reading.