Tag: Trump re-election

Trump is going buck wild with racism — and it’s only going to get worse

AlterNet logoRacism is all he’s got.

Everything else Donald Trump was going to run on this summer and fall has evaporated. The “booming” economy? (Which he inherited from Barack Obama in the first place.) The U.S. has the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression and the situation is about to get exponentially worse as unemployment benefits expire. And no, “reopening” is not a solution, since the data makes clear that consumers have little interest in shopping or eating out during a pandemic.

And then there was Trump’s plan to hold big rallies to make himself look like he’s got momentum, while Joe Biden campaigns in responsible ways that don’t spread the coronavirus. Not only was that plan sociopathic, it’s also not working. Trump’s big comeback rally in Tulsa was a hilarious failure, with only a third of the arena filled. Now Trump has canceled a rally in Alabama, citing coronavirus fears. It’s just as likely that the campaign was scared of more empty seats — even some of his most ardent followers would rather root for him at home rather than risk getting sick. Continue reading.

Scoop: Trump regrets Kushner advice

Axios logoPresident Trump has told people in recent days that he regrets following some of son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner’s political advice — including supporting criminal justice reform — and will stick closer to his own instincts, three people with direct knowledge of the president’s thinking tell Axios.

Behind the scenes: One person who spoke with the president interpreted his thinking this way: “No more of Jared’s woke s***.” Another said Trump has indicated that following Kushner’s advice has harmed him politically.

Why it matters: This could be the final straw for federal police reform legislation this year, and it could usher in even more incendiary campaign tactics between now and November. Continue reading.

Trump lets slip that he fears he’s going to lose: ’Some people don’t love me’

AlterNet logoIn an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, President Donald Trump had a revealing moment in which he seemed to admit that he’s likely to lose his bid for re-election in November.

Hannity asked the president about a minor slip-up when former Vice President Joe Biden accidentally said “million” when he meant “thousand,” which Trump suggested was evidence of Biden’s mental incapacity. (He didn’t acknowledge that he repeatedly makes verbal gaffes at least as serious as Biden’s.)

“Here’s a guy, he doesn’t talk, nobody hears him,” Trump said. “Whenever he does talk, he can’t put two sentences together. I don’t want to be nice or un-nice, OK, but, I mean, the man can’t speak. And he’s gonna be your president because some people don’t love me, maybe.” [Empasis added.] Continue reading.

Trump Retreats to His Hannity Bunker

Beaten by the pandemic and down in the polls, a President and his propagandist create an alternate reality.

June began poorly for President Trump, and it’s ending worse. Despite Trump’s optimistic pronouncements about the coronavirus, the pandemic is surging across the American South and West. His poll numbers against Joe Biden are cratering. His former national-security adviser is selling a book that calls him a corrupt fool who’s unfit for office. The number of jobless Americans continues to climb. But, luckily, there are some things Trump can still count on—like the Fox News host Sean Hannity.

On Thursday night, with America deep in a crisis that shows no sign of easing, Trump appeared at a Fox News “town hall” led by Hannity. It was a reassuringly safe space for the President. There was not a single mention of the terrifying spike of covid-19 cases in Texas or Arizona or anywhere else. No one so much as alluded to the hundred and twenty-five thousand or so Americans who have already died from the disease. And Hannity—Trump’s close friend and confidant, who has been called his shadow White House chief of staff—refrained from citing the recent wave of national polls, including one by Fox, that show Trump losing to Biden by double-digit percentage points. The audience of Trump superfans, many of whom wore pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” gear, obliged as well. When Hannity got around to taking questions from them, twenty-five minutes into the forty-three-minute broadcast, a woman named Linda asked Trump, “What do you think is your greatest accomplishment?”

Hannity’s latest in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign was perfectly predictable, of course. The TV host, who is paid twenty-five million dollars a year by Fox, is so reliable a wingman to the President that my colleague Jane Mayer reported that Trump bragged he was a ten out of ten on the loyalty scale. Before the 2018 midterms, the President had Hannity appear onstage at his big preëlection rally, a faux pas even for Fox that earned Hannity a reprimand from his bosses. Before Thursday’s event, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump hosted Hannity as his guest on Marine One, and photographers snapped a picture of U.S. Marine guards saluting as Hannity walked on the tarmac to the plane’s steps. In a pre-town-hall interview, at a Wisconsin airplane hangar, the two looked like co-stars in a buddy movie; they were even dressed in matching long red ties and dark suits. When the show got going, Trump saluted Hannity as a “great journalist.” Hannity’s show is the Fox bunker that Trump runs to when everything is going wrong. Continue reading

Worries over Trump’s ‘mental acuity’ after ‘complete gibberish’ interview on Fox News

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s fitness to hold office was called into question after the broadcasting on Thursday evening of a town hall that had been pre-recorded with Fox News personality Sean Hannity.

Trump falsely claimed there would not be any COVID-19 cases were it not for testing to detect the pandemic. Trump also predicted Joe Biden would win the 2020 presidential race and bragged about being “the most perfect person.”

And Trump flopped after being asked his priorities for a second term. Continue reading.

Fox News panel struggles to cope with the network’s own devastating new polling on Trump

AlterNet logoThere’s a new Fox News poll out surveying key swing state opinions about the 2020 race for the White House, and it paints a bleak picture for President Donald Trump’s chances:

As CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out, Biden doesn’t need to win a single one of these states to prevail in the election. If Biden wins any of these states, he’s most likely already surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next president. I wouldn’t bet on him winning all four states; the idea that Biden will win Texas, in particular, seems farfetched — if not impossible — despite what this poll found. But Biden’s 9-point lead in Florida should be particularly concerning for Trump. The president absolutely needs to hold the Sunshine State to maintain his grip on the presidency, and this poll — as well as many others — makes it look like a real challenge for Trump.

In the face of this grim news for the president, a Fox News panel struggled to spin the findings to offer comfort to its Trump-loving viewers. The result was an outright comedic display of searching for caveats and extraneous considerations to avoid grappling with the truth. Of course, despite this poll, and many others like it, Trump could still win. Major upsets do happen in politics. But there’s no comfort to be found in these results for the president. Continue reading.

Trump World boils over as campaign hits skids

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s allies are urging him to change his tone and key figures in the campaign’s orbit are pointing fingers over who is to blame for the president’s spiraling poll numbers with just over four months to go until Election Day.

There is frustration in Trump World over the president’s lack of discipline and his confrontational tone during a time of high anxiety over the coronavirus and civil unrest around the death of George Floyd while in police custody.

Some Trump allies are worried that campaign manager Brad Parscale is in over his head. And there is sniping between pro-Trump outside groups about whether their money is best spent propping up Trump or tearing down presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. 

Here’s why Trump still has a shot at a surprise victory in November

AlterNet logoAs the coronavirus death toll continues to increase in the United States and American cities are being rocked by huge “Justice for George Floyd” protests, President Donald Trump is not looking good in the polls. One poll after another has found Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee — some of them by double digits. But journalist Daniel Strauss, in an article published by The Guardian on June 24, stresses that there is still a chance that Trump will somehow manage to pull off a surprise victory in November.

“If Donald Trump wins the 2020 election and returns to the White House, it won’t be by a landslide,” Strauss explains. “And if he’s going to win at all, he will need the U.S. economy to rebound, to see suburban voters swing back in his direction, and overwhelm voters with a sense of optimism about another term under Trump. That’s the verdict of about a dozen Republican veteran political strategists and operatives spoken to by the Guardian.”

Trump’s campaign has been favoring a rally-the-base approach. But Strauss notes that according to the GOP strategists the Guardian interviewed, the MAGA base alone will not get Trump reelected. Continue reading.

Trump’s Arizona trip: A tale of 3 failures

AlterNet logoAfter his debacle in Tulsa, a huge failure with an abysmal turnout and what may still have been a super-spreader event for a deadly virus, Donald Trump needs to set low expectations. Instead, he is back out on the campaign trail Tuesday, making his third trip in five months to Arizona — a state that on Monday reported another record day for COVID-19 hospitalizations — to tout what he calls a major milestone on the long road to achieve his No. 1 campaign promise, building a “big, beautiful wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border. Despite what Trump celebrated as the “212th plus mile of completion” in a Monday tweet complaining about Fox News’ coverage of his failed border wall, what the president won’t admit on his premature victory lap is that there has still only been three miles of new border construction since he took office.

Trump’s latest trip to Arizona succinctly illustrates the current state of his failed presidency. His biggest campaign promise is a bust and the coronavirus keeps spreading in a state that seems to have bungled the pandemic nearly as badly as the federal government.

The president is set to first visit a portion of the border in Yuma County, where new coronavirus cases climbed by more 100 once again on Monday, before heading to a Phoenix megachurch for an indoor rally with youthful supporters. He’ll be joined at both stops by Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who polled as the lowest-ranked executive for his response to the pandemic after he issued an executive order preventing municipalities in the state from imposing stay-at-home orders back in April. Ducey’s own statewide restrictions expired in mid-May and Arizona now appears to be among the worst places nationwide for COVID-19 spread. On Sunday, the state surpassed 50,000 coronavirus cases. Continue reading.

There’s a Reason Trump Is Fighting Hard for Arizona

New York Times logoJoe Biden’s path to the White House could be through fed-up suburbanites and young Latinos.

PHOENIX — At the start of 2020, optimistic Democrats already thought this might be the year when a presidential election turned Arizona blue again.

Many suburban moderates were fed up with President Trump; in 2018, they sent a Democrat to the Senate from their state for the first time in more than three decades. Young Latino voters — who now make up 24 percent of eligible voters in Arizona — were casting ballots at record rates, angered by the president’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. And the party was fielding a strong candidate for November’s Senate race.

Now, four months until Election Day, that optimism is hardening into sustained confidence. Continue reading.