Category: Joe Biden

Trump is daring us to stop him

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s recent reelection campaign advertisement is straight out of the plot of a horror movie. Just days after he deployed federal officers to the streets of Portland, Oregon, his campaign released a 30-second television spot featuring an elderly white woman watching on her television the news of activists demanding a defunding of police. The woman shakes her head in disapproval as she notices a figure at her door trying to enter her house. She nervously calls 911, but apparently the activists she disapproves of have been so effective in their nefarious demands that the universal emergency hotline Americans rely on now goes unanswered. The vulnerable woman drops her remote control as the intruder enters her home, and we are only left to imagine the horror of what he does to her as the words “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America” appear on the screen. In this dystopian version of America, only Trump promises law and order.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, supports the defunding of American police. He does not, and in fact, in keeping with his historic support for police, Biden has demanded increased funding for law enforcement. But Trump has already proven that he will not let truth get in the way of his desires, and therefore a little more digging on the part of voters and a little more forthright reporting on the part of journalists is necessary to understand exactly who is breaking American laws.

The paramilitary units from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that Trump has deployed to Portland have engaged in disturbing violations of human rights. They have used munitions to injure people, and acted like “thugs and goons” in the words of a Navy Veteran who was beaten with batons and pepper-sprayed in the face. They have arrested and detained people without documentation. Trump has defended their tactics saying the targets “are anarchists. These are not protesters… These are people that hate our country.” Continue reading.

Donald Trump’s suburban horror show

If current numbers hold, the Republican Party will suffer its worst defeat in the suburbs in decades — with implications reaching far beyond November.

Donald Trump says Joe Biden wants to abolish the suburbs. But polls show a different truth: The suburbs want to abolish Donald Trump.

If current numbers hold, the Republican Party will suffer its worst defeat in the suburbs in decades — with implications reaching far beyond November.

It was in the suburbs two years ago that Democrats built their House majority, ripping through Republican-held territory across the country, from Minnesota and Texas to Georgia, Virginia and Illinois. Continue reading.

Trump Flubs Desperate Appeal For ‘Housewives’ Vote

Almost nothing President Donald Trump ever does is subtle. When he tries to appeal to specific voting demographics, he often lacks the finesse to communicate the essential idea that he doesn’t just care about them for their votes — he actually shares their values.

That’s why he can easily espouse bigoted ideas even when trying to court specific groups of voters, such as when he told African-Americans that they are “living in hell in the inner cities” or when he told Jewish voters that supporting Democrats demonstrates “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

So it was little surprise that, when Trump tried on Thursday to reach out to suburban women voters, he botched it: Continue reading.

Scare Tactics: Trump Focuses on Fear to Win

With 100 days to go before the election, Trump is focusing on “law and order” while Biden pitches stability.

TRAILING IN NATIONAL polls by 7-15 points. A persistent pandemic that not only presents a public health crisis, but prevents a crowd-loving candidate from holding big rallies. Double-digit unemployment, civil unrest and a revolt by some members of his own party who formed a SuperPAC to bring him down.

It’s not looking rosy for President Donald Trump as the campaign hits the 100 days-out from the election mark this weekend. And the president – who famously goes with his gut when making both policy and campaign decisions – appears poised to get socked in that very body part in the Nov. 3 election. Democrats waver between a giddily confident belief that they are in the final countdown to Trump’s demise and a worried memory of what happened the last time they underestimated Trump.

“I never say never in politics – (after) four years ago, I live by that rule,” says Stu Rothenberg, an independent political analyst and author of The Rothenberg Political Report. But Trump “has gotten himself into a deep hole, it seems to me. Continue reading.

Democrats: Packets sent to Trump allies are part of foreign plot to damage Biden

The packets were shipped to leading Republicans by a Ukrainian lawmaker who has met with the president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

Top congressional Democrats are sounding the alarm about a series of packets mailed to prominent allies of President Donald Trump — material they say is part of a foreign disinformation plot to damage former vice president Joe Biden, according to new details from a letter the lawmakers delivered to the FBI last week.

The packets, described to POLITICO by two people who have seen the classified portion of the Democrats’ letter, were sent late last year to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and then-White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney

The packets were sent amid a Democratic push to impeach Trump over his effort to pressure Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden and his son Hunter the sources said. Graham and Grassley denied having received the material, and Mulvaney and Nunes declined repeated requests for comment. One person familiar with the matter said the information was not turned over to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment. Continue reading.

Biden says Trump is America’s first ‘racist’ president

Washington Post logoJoe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, on Wednesday called President Trump the country’s first racist to be elected to the White House.

The former vice president’s blunt assessment came during a virtual town hall organized by the Service Employees International Union after a health-care worker expressed concern that Trump continues to blame Asians for the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden signaled that he shared the questioner’s concern that Trump frequently refers to the pandemic as the “China virus,” saying, “the way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening.” Continue reading.

Pushing bogus anti-Biden claim, Trump tripped up by reality

When Trump makes ridiculous claims, is he deliberately trying to deceive the public or does he believe his falsehoods? An answer is coming into focus.

In early 2009, congressional Republicans were eager to condemn the Democratic Recovery Act, which rescued the U.S. economy from the Great Recession. To that end, some on the right came up with a weird claim: the stimulus package included $1 billion to build a magnetic-levitation train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

There was no such provision, but Republicans became so invested in the falsehood that they started to believe it. A California-based journalist sat down with then-Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) in March 2009, and she pointed to the non-existent element of the Democratic plan as proof of its flaws. When the journalist reminded the congresswoman of reality, Bono Mack directed her staff to retrieve the bill. “It’s right there,” the GOP lawmaker said at the time. “Show him.”

A few minutes later, an aide emerged with a copy of the bill and quietly conceded, “It’s not in the bill.” Continue reading.