Tag: 2020 RNC convention

Trump Called Kimberly Guilfoyle After Her Roaring RNC Speech, Compared Her to Eva Perón

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After Kimberly Guilfoyle’s RNC speech became a target of memes and talk-show mockery, sources confirm President Trump called her and said, “That was fantastic…so amazing.”

On Monday night, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for the Trump reelection effort and girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., delivered a booming, scenery-chewing speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention that immediately went viral. 

It concluded, her arms outstretched, with Guilfoyle’s bellowed vow, “The. Best. Is. Yet. To. Come!”

CNN personalities were flabbergasted by it, with correspondent Dana Bash remarking, “Oh, my goodness. I just feel like that was so intense, and so dark.” Late Show host Stephen Colbert mocked the pretaped address as a series of “very nuanced screams.” Continue reading.

St. Louis couple indicted for waving guns at protesters

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI — A grand jury on Tuesday indicted the St. Louis couple who displayed guns while hundreds of racial injustice protesters marched on their private street.

Al Watkins, an attorney for the couple, confirmed to The Associated Press the indictments against Mark McCloskey, 63, and Patricia McCloskey, 61. A spokeswoman for Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner declined comment.

The McCloskeys, who are both attorneys, have become folk heroes among some conservatives. They argue that they were simply exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms, and were protected by Missouri’s castle doctrine law that allows the use of deadly force against intruders. The case has caught the attention of President Donald Trump, and Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has said he will pardon the couple if they are convicted. Continue reading.

Jim Gaffigan, Popular Comedian, Breaks Silence To Torch Trump On Twitter

Jim Gaffigan is an award-winning, well-regarded, popular comedian. Part of Gaffigan’s appeal is his family-friendly comedy, that he writes and works on with his wife and frequently centers around food and Gaffigan’s obsessions with food. Gaffigan has a large family, which includes five children, leading to my favorite Gaffigan joke: “If you want to know what it’s like to have a fourth, just imagine you’re drowning … and then someone hands you a baby.” Gaffigan is also devoutly Catholic, and was asked by the Roman Catholic Church to do warmup for the World Meeting of Families back in 2015, when he opened for the Pope—yes, that Pope.

If you’ve ever listened to Gaffigan interviewed or watched his act, he tends to stay away from talking politics. He’s not averse to saying that he is in general liberal, but he also doesn’t do much joking when it comes to the current political climate. However, on Thursday night, Gaffigan seems to have become fed up with the titanic levels of hypocrisy on display and the depressing level of pig-headedness shown by people pretending that what Trump is saying and doing is anything besides grotesque. So Gaffigan went online, and went off.

It began innocuously enough.

Continue reading.

How the G.O.P. Stretched Hard to Defend Trump on Race and Gender

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Never before has a convention by a major party felt compelled to call such a diverse array of speakers to defend the character of a sitting president.

The Republican convention this week marked an extraordinary effort to recast President Trump’s image on issues of race and gender, with the party stretching to find African-Americans who would testify that Mr. Trump is not racist, and lining up women to describe him as sensitive and empathetic — qualities he rarely displays in public.

This vouching for Mr. Trump, as he was nominated for a second term, was without precedent. Never before has a convention by either major party felt compelled to call such a diverse array of speakers to defend the character of a sitting president.

And it was done with a crucial political goal in mind: making a divisive leader appear more palatable to white moderate voters, who have turned against the Trump-led G.O.P. in recent elections, while also trying to peel away some nonwhite voters from Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee. Continue reading.

‘The whole thing was a sham:’ RNC features Trump at naturalization ceremony

The Republican National Convention featured a naturalization ceremony that President Trump presided over. A ceremony that turned heads as hundreds of thousands of immigrants await their own ceremonies and are falling victim to backlogs. It was considered a stunt by some activists as the Trump administration continues to separate migrant families, turn away asylum seekers at the border and is still trying to dismantle DACA. MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez is joined by Alida Garcia of FWD.US and Lindsay Toczylowski, the Executive Director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. View the video here.

Tenants Say They Weren’t Told Interviews Were For RNC Video, Are Anti-Trump

The New Yorkers, interviewed by a federal housing official, didn’t know they’d be featured at the Republican National Convention, The New York Times reported.

Three New York City tenants who were featured in a video at the Republican National Convention this week said they had no idea their interviews would be used for that purpose — and none of them support President Donald Trump. 

Lynne Patton — the Trump-appointed head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development region that includes New York — interviewed residents on video about conditions in their buildings. Three of those residents said they didn’t know their interviews were for the RNC, reported The New York Times. 

“I am not a Trump supporter,” Claudia Perez, one of the tenants in the video, told the Times. The clip, which aired Thursday, criticized New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Trump’s longtime target.  Continue reading.

Senior White House official gave a horrifying reply about the danger of COVID-19 spread

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A White House official’s flippant response to concerns about the maskless crowds of attendees at the Republican National Convention—and the GOP’s ignoring of the coronavirus’s horrific toll—have sparked widespred outrage this week.

“Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually,” a senior White House official told CNN‘s Jim Acosta Thursday.

Reporting on the fourth night of the convention, Acosta said, “We not only heard a lot of gaslighting tonight, we possibly saw and witnessed some superspreading from this event.” Continue reading.

Trump desecrates a public monument in the finale to a convention of lies

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THE REALITY-SHOW president turned his party’s convention this week into a spectacle befitting his true expertise. The televised festival of exaggerations showed voters a warped version of this country, in which circumstances are both far worse and far better than the facts support — depending on what makes President Trump look best.

His acceptance speech Thursday night, a seemingly endless recital of by-now familiar falsehoods, was notable principally for when and how it took place: before a crowd of more than 1,000 mostly unmasked people on a White House lawn festooned with campaign insignia. Mr. Trump managed to merge contempt for public health with desecration of a public monument, the final and most jarring of the convention’s exploitations of the perks of public office for political purposes. Earlier in the week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke from Jerusalem, where he was traveling on government business, and the president granted a surprise pardon and staged an on-screen naturalization ceremony, two of whose participants-turned-props weren’t even aware they’d be starring on national TV.

The speech elevated the darkest themes of the convention. The Republican National Committee chose not even to adopt a platform this cycle. In other words, the party no longer stands for anything. So it was unsurprising that, relying on a mixture of hyperbole and lies, both Mr. Trump and the speakers preceding him highlighted what they’re against. Joe Biden, Mr. Trump said, is a “Trojan horse for socialism” in whose America “no one will be safe.” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) summed it up earlier in the week: “The woke-topians will . . . disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.” All this scaremongering was accompanied by outright slander of Mr. Biden, against whom Republicans leveled unsubstantiated corruption charges — and whose record and platform alike Mr. Trump distorted into almost a parody of radicalism. Continue reading.

The Hatch Act, the law Trump flouted at the RNC, explained

The Hatch Act is designed to protect the rule of law. Trump flouts it openly.

The United States prohibits most federal employees from engaging in certain political activity — especially if those employees are engaged in fundamentally nonpartisan activity such as diplomacy — in order to prevent abuse of power and corruption. On Tuesday night, however, the Trump administration flouted these limits by holding part of the Republican National Convention at the White House and broadcasting a partisan speech by the nation’s top diplomat.

The Hatch Act of 1939 imposes strict limits on most federal civilian workers who want to engage in political activity, and some Cabinet departments augment these statutory limits with additional policies intended to maintain a clear wall of separation between partisan politics and nonpartisan government functions.

These restrictions on government workers exist for two interlocking reasons. As the Supreme Court explained in United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers (1973), “it is in the best interest of the country, indeed essential, that federal service should depend upon meritorious performance rather than political service.” But if civil servants are free to engage in political activities, presidential appointees could reward loyal partisans and punish civil servants who favor the party that does not control the White House. Continue reading.

Fact-checking President Trump’s acceptance speech at the GOP convention

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President Trump ended the Republican National Convention on Thursday with a tidal wave of tall tales, false claims and revisionist history. Here are 25 claims by the president that caught our attention, along with seven claims by speakers earlier in the evening. As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios for a roundup of claims made in convention events.

“America has tested more [for the novel coronavirus] than every country in Europe put together, and more than every nation in the Western Hemisphere combined. We have conducted 40 million more tests than the next closest nation.”

— Trump

Trump is talking about raw numbers, which is misleading. (And if you believe China, Beijing actually exceeds the number of tests, 90 million to 79 million for the United States.)

The key indicator is tests per capita, which gives a read on the share of the population that has contracted the novel coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19. The United States still lags major countries such as Russia and is tied with Britain in terms of number of tests per million people. Continue reading.