Category: Joe Biden

Trump’s smile falls from his face as his attempt to get a foreign leader to attack Biden backfires

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In a now-infamous phone call, President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to insert himself into American politics by announcing an investigation of his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. That call and the scheme surrounding it led to Democrats impeach Trump, alleging that he had corruptly leveraged his office and congressionally approved funds to benefit his own political campaign.

Trump appeared to be taking a shot at similar gambit, if on a much smaller and less elaborate scale, on Friday during a televised call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While discussing a new plan for Israel to normalize relations with Sudan on speakerphone in front of reporters, Trump tried to goad Netanyahu into attacking Biden. Continue reading.

An expert in nonverbal communication watched the Trump-Biden debate with the sound turned down – here’s what he saw

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden met on Oct. 22 for the final debate in the 2020 election and, like the first debate, it was unusual.

COVID-19 forced social distancing and largely took the studio audience, with their laughter, cheering and booing out of the equation. 

What’s more, with norm-breaking interruptions and stealing of speaking time an inherent part of Donald Trump’s debate strategy, the contentious crosstalk between the two candidates and the moderator made long sections of the candidates’ first debate nearly impossible to hear or follow. The threat of having the microphone cut off effectively muted this aggression.

But is what they say as important as we think? Continue reading.

Trump’s Confession On Obamacare Bolsters Biden

Trying to figure out what is going on in Donald Trump’s head is truly an exercise in futility, and today it’s just downright bonkers. Apparently Trump believes that sharing snippets of Leslie Stahl’s attempt to interview him for 60 Minutes is going to show that … she’s mean and he’s brilliant? Is there really no one in the White House who is willing to tell him when he has a really, really bad idea?

It was a tremendous gift to Joe Biden, though, that Trump decided to release these videos in plenty of time for last night’s debate. Especially when it comes to the Supreme Court and Obamacare. “I hope that they end it,” he said. “It will be so good if they end it.” Serving it up on a silver platter there. But there’s more. “It’ll be so good if they end it,” he said, “because we will come up with a plan.” Stahl: “Will?”

That’s after Trump insisted that his plan “is fully developed; it’s going to be announced very, very soon.” It’s not. Because the only thing that has ever mattered is that President Barack Obama’s signature achievement be erased. There is no plan. There never will be a plan. He never meant for there to be a plan. Continue reading.

A 19-year-old with a van full of guns and explosives plotted to assassinate Biden, federal officials say

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As it was becoming clear in March that Joe Biden would be the Democratic presidential nominee, Alexander Hillel Treisman started to map out his plot to assassinate the former vice president, federal authorities say.

“Should I kill Joe Biden?” Treisman wrote in a caption to a meme he posted in April.

It didn’t appear to be an idle threat, the feds say. Continue reading.

5 takeaways from the final 2020 presidential debate

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After a mostly unwatchable first debate, then a canceled second one, we got a heated but relatively substantive final matchup between Joe Biden and President Trump on Thursday in Nashville.

Below, some takeaways.

1. Trump offers no course correction on coronavirus

For weeks now, perhaps the biggest question has been whether Trump, whose presidency is on the line as the clock ticks down toward Nov. 3, might actually try something different from what has earned him his current deficit in national polls. Continue reading.

Trump did what he came to do in Nashville, but Biden was ready for what came at him

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With time running out and trailing in the polls, President Trump needed the strongest possible showing in his final debate against Joe Biden. But in the face of a series of attacks, the former vice president parried the president with a strong performance that is likely to leave the presidential campaign little changed from where it was at the start.

Trump arrived knowing that a repeat of the performance in the first debate would cost him and seemed determined to present a different face. Biden came in knowing that simply holding his own would amount to a victory.

Supporters of both candidates were cheered by what they saw during the 90 minutes at Belmont University in Nashville. But if, at worst, the debate was judged a draw, that alone would be less than the president needed politically. Continue reading.

Shift in tone dominates at final Trump-Biden clash

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President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Thursday clashed for a final time before Election Day, exchanging blows on the public health and economic crises facing the country in what was a decidedly more orderly — though still at times personal — contest than the first debate.

The proceedings, which took place in Nashville, Tenn., were aided in part by a mute button that allowed each candidate to speak uninterrupted for two minutes about each of the six topics before the two men could go back and forth.

Trump showed more discipline as the debate opened, adopting a muted tone as he fielded questions on the coronavirus pandemic during the first segment. Advisers had lamented that his aggressive approach in the first debate, where he regularly interrupted Biden and challenged moderator Chris Wallace, was ineffective and turned off undecided voters. Continue reading.

Trump aims for adulation. Biden goes virtual. The two presidential candidates are running vastly different campaigns as Election Day nears

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With two weeks left before the close of voting, President Trump flew to the far northwest corner of Pennsylvania for a large rally where he aired grievances against the news media, complained that the pandemic had damaged his campaign and portrayed Democrats as purveyors of drugs and crime — all as a sea of loyal supporters in red MAGA hats cheered him on.

While Trump on Tuesday appealed in person to his most ardent fans with divisive themes, Joe Biden’s campaign beamed in to the nation’s living rooms during the World Series with a much broader audience in mind. “There is only one America. No Democratic rivers, no Republican mountains,” the actor Sam Elliott intoned as he narrated a commercial for Biden in his signature gravelly voice. Biden, meanwhile, was at home as the ad aired, eschewing public events to prepare for Thursday’s debate.

The split screen underlined the starkly different strategies Trump and Biden have deployed in the final stage of the presidential race. Trump has been spending heaps of cash staging crowded rallies designed to motivate his most fervent fans, despite the advice of public health officials to avoid large gatherings. Biden, who is leading in the polls, has been holding smaller, less expensive events and investing aggressively in television ads and virtual gatherings designed to persuade a wide audience that he can unify a divided country. Continue reading.

Obama blasts Trump on coronavirus response

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NOTE: This article is provided free of charge by The Washington Post.

Former president Barack Obama delivered an emphatic rebuke of President Trump and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic during campaign stops for Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Wednesday.

At a speech in Philadelphia, Obama said his successor has endangered the country and is “incapable of taking the job seriously.”

“Eight months into this pandemic, cases are rising again across this country,” Obama said. “Donald Trump isn’t suddenly going to protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself,” Continue reading.

Retired Navy admiral behind bin Laden raid says he voted for Biden

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William McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

McRaven, who served as commander of U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014, wrote that he has already voted for Biden in Texas, where early voting began last week.

McRaven describes himself in the op-ed as “pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative.” Continue reading.