Tag: Joe Biden

Trump, Biden tactical battle intensifies

The Hill logoThe Trump and Biden campaigns are battling for every advantage over the air waves and on the ground with less than 90 days to go before the presidential election.

The pandemic has forced the campaigns to get creative in finding new ways to reach voters.

President Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) are undertaking an aggressive ground strategy by sending mask-wearing field staffers to knock on doors to counter Democrat Joe Biden’s onslaught of over-the-air advertisements. Continue reading.

US intelligence says Russia seeking to ‘denigrate’ Biden

The Hill logoThe top U.S. counterintelligence official announced Friday a series of foreign threats facing the 2020 presidential election, warning in particular that Russia is using a range of measures to “primarily denigrate” former Vice President Joe Biden while China prefers that President Trump not win reelection.

William Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, pointed to China, Russia and Iran as the three primary foreign threats to the U.S. presidential race, cautioning that they are seeking to “sway voters’ preferences and perspectives,” sow discord and “undermine the American people’s confidence in our democratic process.”

“Many foreign actors have a preference for who wins the election, which they express through a range of overt and private statements; covert influence efforts are rarer. We are primarily concerned about the ongoing and potential activity by China, Russia, and Iran,” Evanina said in a statement. Continue reading.

Russia is trying to ‘denigrate’ Biden while China prefers ‘unpredictable’ Trump not be reelected, senior U.S. intelligence official says

Washington Post logoRussia is “using a range of measures” to interfere in the 2020 election and has enlisted a pro-Russian lawmaker from Ukraine — who has met with President Trump’s personal lawyer — “to undermine former vice president [Joe] Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party,” a top U.S. intelligence official said in a statement Friday.

The remarks by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, were some of the most detailed to date about foreign interference in the presidential race and come after earlier criticism from Democratic lawmakers that Evanina had not shared with the public some of the alarming intelligence he gave them in classified briefings.

Evanina also said that the government of China does not want Trump to win reelection in November, seeing the incumbent as “unpredictable.” Evanina described China’s efforts to date as largely rhetorical and aimed at shaping policy and criticizing the Trump administration for actions Beijing sees as harmful to its long-term strategic interests. Continue reading.

Club for Growth launches anti-Biden ad blitz

The conservative group will spend $5 million on ads across three battleground states next week.

The anti-tax Club for Growth is launching a multimillion dollar ad campaign going after Joe Biden, as Republicans find themselves overwhelmed by liberal outside groups in the presidential race.

The conservative organization is preparing a $5 million advertising campaign attacking the former vice president for opposing school choice. Officials with the group say the investment could grow in the weeks to come. The commercials will start on Monday and air for a week in three key swing states: Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

President Donald Trump has been swamped by liberal outside groups in recent weeks. According to outside spending data tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics, pro-Biden groups have outspent their conservative counterparts more than two to one, $91.2 million to $44.7 million. The White House-sanctioned pro-Trump super PAC, America First Action, has also been outraised and outspent by its main Democratic counterpart, Priorities USA Action. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson: It’s ‘probably illegal’ for Biden to only consider women of color for vice president

AlterNet logoFox News host Tucker Carlson, who once dismissed white supremacy as a “hoax” and “not a real problem,” falsely claimed on Monday that it was “probably illegal” for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to only consider women of color for the vice presidency.

Carlson — who has long used his show to push white grievance politics and echo white nationalist and white supremacist talking points — singled out three Black women on Biden’s short-list for attack, even though the former vice president has also considered white women candidates. Among the names were three senators: Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Biden has since said he would pick a woman of color, but his list is not limited to Black women, with Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who is of Asian descent, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., who is Latinx, reportedly under consideration. Continue reading.

The Lincoln Project’s plan for preserving the union: Drive Trump out of office by driving him nuts

Washington Post logoYour house is on fire. Do you care who the firemen are?

That is a central question of the 2020 election. Donald Trump has managed to do one thing no other president has done: Bring Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives, boomers and millennials together in unprecedented numbers to try to defeat him in November. For Americans who believe the president is a raging threat to democracy, purity tests are out. Results are in.

Which explains the spectacular rise of the Lincoln Project, a group of Republican Never Trumpers who have moved rent free into the president’s head. Their viral videos and tweets mocking his leadership, his intelligence and his patriotism — aimed both at Republican voters who are wavering and Trump himself — have attracted millions of dollars, via donors from both parties. More than 10,000 people showed up for a virtual town hall last month. Lifelong Democrats are organizing fundraisers for the project. Continue reading.

Too Big to Contest

Trump has hinted the election won’t be legitimate because of cheating. Democratic activists say a decisive victory would overrule his objections.

EMBOLDENED BY SURGING polling advantages and alarmed at President Donald Trump’s taunting talk about delaying the elections, many Democrats are changing their goal for this November.

It’s not sufficient to just win enough Electoral College votes to elect Democrat Joe Biden as the next president, their argument goes. They have to wallop Trump – widening the Democrats’ political footprint after four tumultuous years and discouraging Trump from trying to challenge the election results.

Democratic activists and state party officials emphasize that they aren’t taking anything for granted. And many rank-and-file Democrats feel burned by 2016, when political prognosticators – but not polls, which were fairly accurate – predicted an easy win by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Continue reading.

Biden Tells Americans To Ignore Trump, Heed Public Health Experts

Republicans, led by Donald Trump, have been pushing for schools to reopen this fall, even as concerns about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic remain high.

More recently, Trump, along with several high-profile conservatives, began boosting the profile of a Houston-based pediatrician and minister who claimed, according to the Daily Beast, that she had “successfully treated hundreds of patients with hydroxychloroquine,” an unproven drug that Trump has repeatedly pushed as a cure for COVID-19 — an attempt to undermine health officials who say sending kids back to school so soon is unwise or dangerous.

On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden recommended that Americans listen to public health experts over Trump and the doctor he promoted, chastising Trump’s tweets, which frequently contain false or misleading information about the ongoing threat from the virus. Continue reading.

Biden says he hasn’t been tested for coronavirus

The Democratic candidate made the acknowledgment at an in-person campaign event in Delaware.

Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he hadn’t yet been tested for coronavirus.

Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, made the acknowledgment when a reporter asked whether he could meet potential running mates in person to vet them. He was speaking at an in-person campaign event in Wilmington, Del., where he also urged more testing and contact tracing to combat the spread of Covid-19.

Biden wouldn‘t elaborate on his vetting process for a potential running mate, but said that he would “have a choice in the first week in August.“ Continue reading.

Voters Are Starting To Doubt Trump’s Reelection Chances

For months now, President Trump has trailed Joe Biden in the polls. First, it was only a 5- or 6-percentage-point gap, but since the middle of June, that margin has widened to anywhere from 8 to 9 points, according to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average.

But until very recently, voters didn’t seem all that convinced that Biden could win. In poll after poll, comparatively more voters said they thought Trump would win reelection in November. Now, though, that view may be shifting.

Over the past two and a half months, the share of voters who said they expect Trump to win has fallen from about 45 percent to around 40 percent in polling by The Economist/YouGov, as the chart below shows, while Biden’s share has slowly ticked up to where Trump’s numbers are. (Roughly a fifth of respondents still say they’re “not sure.”) Continue reading.