Category: 2020 Election

Trump calls mask wearing ‘politically correct,’ Biden calls him a ‘fool’

Washington Post logoPresident Trump dismissed a mask-wearing reporter as being “politically correct” on Tuesday, while the presumptive Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, called him a “fool” for mocking their use.

The president’s refusal to wear a face mask in public, defying recommendations from public health experts, has become a symbol for his supporters resisting stay-at-home orders amid the coronavirus crisis. To wear one then is seen by some as being anti-Trump.

In early April, Trump announced new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that Americans wear face coverings in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus, reversing the administration’s earlier recommendations that masks weren’t necessary. The president was clear, however, that he would not be wearing a mask — even though “it may be good” advice. Continue reading.

Trump’s 2016 campaign brass warns he’s in trouble in 2020

Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie told the president he’s down in swing states, prompting campaign chiefs in Arizona and Florida to travel to D.C.

David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski, two key allies and former political advisers to Donald Trump, went to the White House last week to issue him a warning: The president was slipping badly in swing states, and he needed to do something to fix it.

Three days later, the Trump campaign’s political directors in Arizona and Florida — states the president won in 2016 but where surveys show him lagging — were summoned to the White House Roosevelt Room. The officials offered a detailed rundown of his organization in the battlegrounds and tried to reassure the president that he was on firm ground.

After his May 18 meeting with Bossie and Lewandowski, Trump called his top campaign lieutenants to vent his frustration about his political standing. Continue reading.

Trump doubles down on conspiracy theory about woman’s death, ignoring grieving widower’s plea for peace

Washington Post logoPresident Trump and the White House on Tuesday continued to promote a baseless conspiracy theory about a woman’s 2001 death, ignoring her grieving widower’s plea for peace and putting renewed pressure on social media companies about the president’s toxic use of their platforms.

Twitter issued a public apology to the family of Lori Klausutis, whose death Trump has repeatedly weaponized to attack ­MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. But the social media company rejected a request from her widower, Timothy J. Klausutis, to delete Trump’s conspiracy-laden tweetsaccusing Scarborough of a debunked murder plot, saying his wife “deserves better.”

“We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” Twitter said in a statement Tuesday. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those ­changes in place shortly.” Continue reading.

Twitter fact-checks Trump’s tweets for first time

Axios logoTwitter fact-checked two of President Trump’s unsubstantiated tweets that mail-in ballots in the 2020 election would be fraudulent for the first time on Tuesday, directing users to “get the facts” through news stories that cover the topic.

Why it matters: Twitter and other social media platforms have faced criticism for not doing enough to combat misinformation, especially when its propagated by the president.

  • Twitter’s new approach of labeling misleading tweets was detailed in a blog post about misinformation and the coronavirus earlier this month.
  • Twitter spokesperson Lindsay McCallum said Trump’s tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.”

Continue reading.

Trump Struggle to Stand Still Becomes Increasingly Noticeable

President Trump’s inability to stand still during his Monday visit to Arlington Cemetery – didn’t go unnoticed.

Those paying close attention to the president’s behavior and health have begun to speak openly about both his increasing difficulty in speaking and his swaying when he stands for any length of time. He was clearly unable to find his balance and looked at the risk of collapsing.

Joshua Potash from Queens was just one of the scores of people on Twitter who took notice of the president’s struggle to stay vertical…

“Is the President having trouble standing up straight as the National Anthem begins at Arlington Cemetery (sic), or am I seeing things?”

Continue reading.

Donald Trump’s problems with senior voters started long before the coronavirus

Washington Post logoBiden’s appeal to seniors has flattened

In recent weeks, reporters and political analysts have centered on the challenge that President Trump currently faces with one particular group of voters: seniors. According to the 2016 National Exit Polls, those voters had favored Trump over Hillary Clinton by a 52-45 margin. But now a number of polls (although not every one) show Trump losing this group to Joe Biden, or at least doing worse than in 2016.

The most common explanation is the coronavirus. As one recent New York Times article argued, “The coronavirus crisis and the administration’s halting response to it have cost President Trump support from one of his most crucial constituencies: America’s seniors.” Polls do show seniors increasingly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the virus.

But Trump’s apparent problems with seniors started well before the coronavirus outbreak. Surveys show Biden has been beating Trump among seniors for months. Here’s how we know. Continue reading.

‘How the Trump White House sees you’: President’s economic adviser slammed for calling workers ‘human capital stock’

AlterNet logoIn a remark critics characterized as further evidence that the Trump administration views workers as nothing more than disposable tools of economic growth and corporate profit, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Sunday nonchalantly referred to laid-off employees as “human capital stock” as he pushed people to return to their jobs amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Voicing optimism about the potential for a speedy economic recovery even as U.S. unemployment surges to levels not seen since the Great Depression, Hassett told CNN Sunday that “our capital stock hasn’t been destroyed, our human capital stock is ready to get back to work, and so that there are lots of reasons to believe that we can get going way faster than we have in previous crises.”

Rolling Stone‘s Peter Wade wrote Monday that “the way Hassett used the term so casually lines up with the lack of empathy shown to the victims of the coronavirus by Trump’s administration and Republicans since the crisis began months ago.” Continue reading.

‘Everyone knows he’ll cheat’: Here are 5 ways Trump and his GOP allies could steal the 2020 election

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump and his Republican allies appear to be cooking up some schemes for stealing the 2020 election — each one more worrisome than the last.

Veteran political columnist Michael Tomasky lays out five scenarios for The Daily Beast that could keep Trump in the White House, regardless of how the voting shakes out on Nov. 3.

“Everyone knows he’ll cheat,” Tomasky writes. “Even his supporters know he’ll cheat. His cheating is one of the things they love about him. So that he’ll cheat — while loudly accusing the other side of cheating — is a given. We just don’t know yet exactly how.” Continue reading.

In crucial Florida, some senior voters cast a skeptical eye toward Trump’s reelection

Washington Post logoAllen Lehner was a Republican until Donald Trump became his party’s nominee in 2016. The 74-year-old retiree says he couldn’t bring himself to vote for someone who lied, belittled others, walked out on his bills and mistreated women — but he also couldn’t bring himself to vote for Hillary Clinton. So he didn’t vote.

Trump has done nothing since to entice Lehner back.

Lehner, who now considers himself an independent, says he is frightened by the president’s lack of leadership and maturity amid the nation’s health and economic crisis. Several people in his gated community in Delray Beach, Fla., have gotten sick; at least one has died. He worries about his own health — he has an autoimmune disease — and also about his adult children, including a daughter who has gone back to work and a son whose pay has been cut. Continue reading.

Trump ‘completely blindsided’ Republican officials by threatening to pull GOP convention out of Charlotte

AlterNet logoOne of President Donald Trump’s many targets on Memorial Day Weekend has been North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who he says is moving too slowly on the state’s reopening. Railing against Cooper on Twitter, Trump threatened to pull the 2020 Republican National Conventional out of Charlotte — and CNN is reporting that Republicans involved in the planning of the convention were “completely blindsided” by Trump’s threat.

Trump tweeted, “Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the Arena. In other words, we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat Governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space.”

The president also asserted that Republicans planning to attend the Republican National Convention “must be immediately given an answer by the Governor as to whether or not the space will be allowed to be fully occupied.” Continue reading.