Category: 2020 Election

Trump pegged as ‘the least masculine’ president in modern times by Naval War College professor in scathing op-ed

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s supporters think of him as the ultimate alpha male, but a scathing op-ed in The Atlantic makes the case that he’s “the least masculine man” to be elected president in modern history.

Tom Nichols, a conservative professor at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, writes that he is baffled that blue-collar white men continue to support Trump even as the president has whiny tantrums about being treated unfairly in the media.

“Courage, honesty, respect, an economy of words, a bit of modesty, and a willingness to take responsibility are all virtues prized by the self-identified class of hard-working men, the stand-up guys, among whom I was raised,” he writes. “And yet, many of these same men expect none of those characteristics from Trump, who is a vain, cowardly, lying, vulgar, jabbering blowhard.” Continue reading.

As Trump removes federal watchdogs, some loyalists replacing them have ‘preposterous’ conflicts

Washington Post logoThe political appointee President Trump installed last week to investigate waste, fraud and abuse at the Transportation Department is the same official in charge of one of the agency’s key divisions.

That means Howard “Skip” Elliott is now running an office charged with investigating his own actions.

Elliott serves simultaneously as the Transportation Department’s inspector general and head of the department’s pipeline and hazardous materials agency, whose mission includes enforcement of safety regulations on nearly 1 million daily shipments of gas, oil and other dangerous compounds. Continue reading.

Trump Tweets and Golfs, but Makes No Mention of Virus’s Toll

New York Times logoCoronavirus deaths in the United States approached a staggering 100,000, a number the president once predicted would never be reached.

WASHINGTON — As President Trump’s motorcade pulled into his golf club in Virginia on an overcast Sunday, a small group of protesters waited outside the entrance. One held up a sign.

“I care do U?” it read. “100,000 dead.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers have said that he does, but he has made scant effort to demonstrate it this Memorial Day weekend. He finally ordered flags lowered to half-staff at the White House only after being badgered to do so by his critics and otherwise took no public notice as the American death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approached a staggering 100,000. Continue reading.

The Memo: Trump agenda rolls on amid pandemic

The Hill logoPresident Trump is pushing on with his agenda even as the coronavirus crisis dominates the political scene.

To critics, he is using the distraction of the COVID-19 pandemic as cover while making policy and personnel moves that would otherwise draw heated controversy.

The president’s defenders counter that he is simply doing what he has always done, pursuing the issues he has advocated since first running for the presidency. Continue reading.

Trump demanded churches re-open after polls found ‘staggering decline’ in support from Christian conservatives

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s declaration that the federal government now deems churches “essential” and they must be allowed to re-open immediately was unexpected, and a stunning display of yet another presidential power grab.

Asked to respond to the President’s remarks moments after being announced, Rhode Island’s Democratic Governor Gina Raimondo replied, “It’s been a while since I’ve been in law school but I don’t know of any executive fiat that he would have to overrule a particular governor, so I’ll have to look into that.”

She was correct: Trump has zero authority to order governors to allow churches to re-open, and zero authority to personally allow them to re-open. Continue reading.

A staggering percentage of top accounts supporting reopen push are bots in ‘a propaganda machine’: report

AlterNet logoRussia’s 2016 campaign in support of Donald Trump included many different means of inserting false information into the national conversation. It featured ads on radio stations in key cities intended to suppress Black support for Hillary Clinton, faux local news sites filled with fabricated stories supporting Trump, and fake Black Lives Matters sites on Facebook meant to increase the fear of rural white voters. There were targeted ads that leveraged online tools to plant false stories directly into critical districts, and direct intrusion into voter databases that did … who knows what. But one key component of the 2016 campaign was a vast army of ‘bot’ accounts, managed by a team of Russian military hackers. That effort filled Twitter, Facebook, and other sites—and in the process became some of the most influential accounts in social media.

Now it appears that it’s happened again. A new study shows that when it comes to forcing workers to go back into offices, stores, and factories, almost half the online voices shouting for the “reopening of America” were, and are, bot accounts. Of the accounts that have tweeted most on this topic, more than half are bots. Of the most influential, almost all are bots. And behind the bots … is someone still unknown.

The report comes out of Carnegie Mellon University. Digging through over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 or the novel coronavirus, researchers focused in on the most influential accounts—those most active, most retweeted, and most liked. Out of the top 1,000 accounts, 62% are bots. Perhaps even more amazing: of the 50 most influential accounts on this topic, 82% are bots. Continue reading.

Trump escalates fight against mail-in voting

The Hill logoPresident Trump this week ratcheted up his attacks on mail-in voting as more states move to increase absentee ballot access due to coronavirus uncertainties.

The president has levied unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud dating back to the 2016 election and has continued to do so even though he was victorious. But he took his complaints a step further in threatening to withhold federal funding from Michigan and Nevada, two potential swing states, as they took different steps to allow residents to vote by mail.

“To really vote, and without fraud, you have to go and you have to vote at the polling place,” Trump said Thursday at a Ford factory in Michigan, arguing that mail-in voting is “wrought with fraud and abuse.” Continue reading.

Obamagate’ is fake — the real scandal is what happened to Hillary Clinton

AlterNet logoPoliticized investigations, interference in elections, and abusive targeting by law enforcement are all the makings of a juicy political scandal. And President Donald Trump would like us to believe that such a scandal, with each of these components, is real and — even if he can’t name any crime that might have been committed — directed at him. That’s why he has promoted the lazy moniker “Obamagate,” an all-encompassing term for the vague allegations of wrongdoing surrounding the conduct of the previous administration and the investigators probing the ties between his campaign and the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election.

On Friday, another arm of the Trump administration revealed yet another inquiry into the “Obamagate” haze. FBI Director Christopher Wray, apparently under pressure from the president himself, has opened an internal review of the handling of the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

But this Trump-driven obsession has thus far proved quite wide of the mark. The only serious wrongdoing uncovered came in the applications for surveillance of Carter Page, who had a low-level and short-lived position advising the Trump campaign. The FBI had legitimate reason to be suspicious of Page — he had previously been the subject of recruitment efforts by Russian intelligence, and some of his ties to Moscow remain unexplained — but DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that officials made voluminous errors when applying to surveil him. Yet Horowitz also found there was no indication of political bias against Page in the decision-making, and that the investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016 more broadly was properly predicated. What errors there were, he found, often stemmed from lack of proper oversight; further work from Horowitz has indicated that the errors in the Page surveillance may be common in the FBI’s conduct, raising yet more troubling questions. Continue reading.

DFL Party Announces 2020 Virtual State Convention with Vice President Biden as Keynote Speaker

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Today, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is announcing its state convention speaking program featuring Vice President Biden as the keynote speaker, a robust set of online training programs and virtual panel discussions, and the convention’s theme: Minnesota Together.

The convention’s agenda will be as follows: Continue reading “DFL Party Announces 2020 Virtual State Convention with Vice President Biden as Keynote Speaker”

CDC Issues Alarming Triple-Fatality Report On COVID-19 Cases At Arkansas Church

The contagion study is released just as Trump is demanding that churches reopen.

COVID-19 cases first contracted by a pastor and his wife ended up spreading to 35 others who attended events at their rural Arkansas church that resulted in three deaths, a troubling report revealed Friday.

An additional 26 cases in the community occurred among people who had contact with those who participated in the church events, according to the study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of them also died.

The study was released the same day President Donald Trump demanded churches and other houses of worship reopen for services amid the coronavirus crisis. He deemed religious services “essential” and threatened to override governors who ignored his orders for health and safety reasons. Legal experts don’t believe he has the authority to do so. Continue reading.