Ecmondu said,:
"The question is whether trump is helping Asia more than the US. All these fucking debts (20 trillion) are with Asia. If we actually paid back all those debts today, Asia would kick our ass economically! Trump didn’t start the problem, but he’s exaserbated it substantially.,
And the denial of that led to the projected idea that the Democrats sleeping with the Chinese, led to the imbroglio of international interference into US elections, creating the impeachment scenario.
The most revealing answer from Donald Trump’s interview with Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace came in response not to the toughest question posed by Wallace, but to the easiest.
At the conclusion of the interview, Wallace asked Trump how he will regard his years as president.
“I think I was very unfairly treated,” Trump responded. “From before I even won, I was under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.”
Peter Wehner: The president is unraveling
When Wallace interrupted, trying to get Trump to focus on the positive achievements of his presidency—“What about the good parts, sir?”—Trump brushed the question aside, responding, “Russia, Russia, Russia.” The president then complained about the Flynn investigation, the “Russia hoax,” the “Mueller scam,” and the recusal by his then–attorney general, Jeff Sessions. (“Now I feel good because he lost overwhelmingly in the great state of Alabama,” Trump said about the first senator to endorse him in the 2016 Republican primary.)
Donald Trump is a psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man. He is so gripped by his grievances, such a prisoner of his resentments, that even the most benevolent question from an interviewer—what good parts of your presidency would you like to be remembered for?—triggered a gusher of discontent.
But the president still wasn’t done. “Here’s the bottom line,” he said. “I’ve been very unfairly treated, and I don’t say that as paranoid. I’ve been very—everybody says it. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. But there was tremendous evidence right now as to how unfairly treated I was. President Obama and Biden spied on my campaign. It’s never happened in history. If it were the other way around, the people would be in jail for 50 years right now.”
David Frum: This is Trump’s plague now
Just in case his bitterness wasn’t coming through clearly enough, the president added this: “That would be Comey, that would be Brennan, that would be all of this—the two lovers, Strzok and Page, they would be in jail now for many, many years. They would be in jail; it would’ve started two years ago, and they’d be there for 50 years. The fact is, they illegally spied on my campaign. Let’s see what happens. Despite that, I did more than any president in history in the first three and a half years.”
With that, the interview ended.
Such a disposition in almost anyone else—a teacher, a tax accountant, a CEO, a cab driver, a reality-television star—would be unfortunate enough. After all, people who obsess about being wronged are just plain unpleasant to be around: perpetually ungrateful, short-tempered, self-absorbed, never at peace, never at rest.
But Donald Trump isn’t a teacher, a tax accountant, or (any longer) a reality-television star; he is, by virtue of the office he holds, in possession of unmatched power. The fact that he is devoid of any moral sensibilities or admirable human qualities—self-discipline, compassion, empathy, responsibility, courage, honesty, loyalty, prudence, temperance, a desire for justice—means he has no internal moral check; the question Is this the right thing to do? never enters his mind. As a result, he not only nurses his grievances; he acts on them. He lives to exact revenge, to watch his opponents suffer, to inflict pain on those who don’t bend before him. Even former war heroes who have died can’t escape his wrath.
Read: Trump’s America is slipping away
So Donald Trump is a vindictive man who also happens to be commander in chief and head of the executive branch, which includes the Justice Department, and there is no one around the president who will stand up to him. He has surrounded himself with lapdogs.
But the problem doesn’t end there. In a single term, Trump has reshaped the Republican Party through and through, and his dispositional imprint on the GOP is as great as any in modern history, including Ronald Reagan’s.
I say that as a person who was deeply shaped by Reagan and his presidency. My first job in government was working for the Reagan administration, when I was in my 20s. The conservative movement in the 1980s, although hardly flawless, was intellectually serious and politically optimistic. And Reagan himself was a man of personal decency, grace, and class. While often the target of nasty attacks, he maintained a remarkably charitable view of his political adversaries. “Remember, we have no enemies, only opponents,” the former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who worked for Reagan, quotes him as admonishing his staff.
In his farewell address to the nation, Reagan offered an evocative description of America. “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it,” he said. “But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”
A city tall and proud, its people living in harmony and peace, surrounded by walls with open doors; that was Ronald Reagan’s image of America, and Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party.
When Reagan died in 2004, the conservative columnist George Will wrote a moving tribute to his friend, saying of America’s 40th president, “He traveled far, had a grand time all the way, and his cheerfulness was contagious.” Reagan had a “talent for happiness,” according to Will. And he added this: “Reagan in his presidential role made vivid the values, particularly hopefulness and friendliness, that give cohesion and dynamism to this continental nation.”
There were certainly ugly elements on the American right during the Reagan presidency, and Reagan himself was not without flaws. But as president, he set the tone, and the tone was optimism, courtliness and elegance, joie de vivre.
He has since been replaced by the crudest and cruelest man ever to be president. But not just that. One senses in Donald Trump no joy, no delight, no laughter. All the emotions that drive him are negative. There is something repugnant about Trump, yes, but there is also something quite sad about the man. He is a damaged soul.
Adam Serwer: The cruelty is the point
In another time, in a different circumstance, there would perhaps be room to pity such a person. But for now, it is best for the pity to wait. There are other things to which to attend. The American public faces one great and morally urgent task above all others between now and November: to do everything in its power to remove from the presidency a self-pitying man who is shattering the nation and doesn’t even care.
The Ticket: Politics from The Atlantic
Crazy/Genius
TheAtlantic.com Copyright (c) 2020 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.
And:
"Democracy Dies in Darkness
The Plum Line
Opinion
If Biden wins, the post-Trump corruption purge will have to be epic
(Source: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
(Source: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Image without a caption
Opinion by Greg Sargent
Columnist
August 5, 2020 at 4:45 PM EDT
It’s widely understood that if Joe Biden wins the White House, he’ll face monumental tasks in digging us out of our spiraling public health crisis and the economic catastrophe it has unleashed, which could get far worse if Congress’ next rescue package falls short, as it likely will.
But an incoming Biden administration will also face another mission: undertaking a full accounting of the Trump administration’s corruption and the damage it has done to our government and institutions.
That is, if the new administration chooses to accept that mission.
A new report from the Democratic-allied Center for American Progress both lays out an argument for why Biden should indeed take on that mission and offers a suggested road map on how to do that.
The core argument for acting ambitiously to fumigate the Trump administration’s corruption is a straightforward moral hazard one:
A constant of the Trump administration has been escalation in the absence of accountability. If a free pass is provided to those that broke the law and subverted democracy, it will embolden them and any illiberal politicians or administrations in the future to show even greater disregard for the rule of law.
One question that will be tough to answer is: Where to start?
The CAP report suggests beginning with the Justice Department, with a full review of special treatment accorded to Trump allies, such as Roger Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, both of whom Trump championed.
Also worth examining might be the attorney general’s efforts to discredit his own agency’s conclusions about a massive foreign attack on our democracy, as Trump implicitly but relentlessly demanded.
But, crucially, CAP suggests that such a review must not involve the White House at all. It would instead involve career Justice Department officials or the inspector general, and Congress (if it’s controlled by Democrats) would potentially have a major role.
Sign up for The Odds newsletter for election updates from data columnist David Byler
Which immediately highlights an interesting conundrum: to what degree members of a Biden administration could undertake such an internal examination without involving Biden in any way, since that would risk straying into the sort of politicization that is the problem under Trump.
Another area for such fumigation might be the president’s constant attacks on inspectors general and whistleblowers. This is one of the clearest areas in which Trump has sought to wreck one of the most important anti-corruption and pro-accountability innovations of the post-Watergate era.
One answer to this, suggested by CAP, would be to try to reinvigorate the role of IGs. This could of course be done through the act of respecting their independence but also explicitly and actively reaffirming that independence.
CAP also suggests that major agencies should conduct their own internal reviews of corruption that took place under Trump — the Environmental Protection Agency is an obvious candidate — which could theoretically involve inspectors general, revitalizing their role in that way.
Yet another area — not discussed in the CAP report — would entail new legislative safeguards against the sort of relentless financial self-dealing that Trump engaged in. A model is Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) blueprint requiring the IRS to release presidential candidates’ tax returns.
Such an effort would be led out of Congress. But Biden would surely be pressed to bless (and then sign) it.
This is of course a very partial list of what might need to be done. But the very fact that a mainstream outfit such as CAP is already pushing Biden in this way suggests he — and/or members of his administration — may feel great pressure to act along these lines.
Many other stakeholders in Washington who have been glaring at Trump’s contempt for the rule of law from the sidelines for so long will also surely offer their own blueprints, adding to the chatter around what will be a huge national debate, should Biden win.
And yet, having campaigned on a vow of post-Trump reconciliation — and facing the daunting task of unifying a battered country around national solutions to the coronavirus pandemic and a potential economic depression — Biden might feel disinclined from sinking too much political capital into an effort along these lines, which might feel akin to diving right back into Trump’s black hole.
The CAP report tries to address this, arguing that ultimately, it’s more divisive and risky to allow all this corruption to slide, and that in the end, reaffirming the rule of law should itself constitute a unifying act.
Of course, Trump himself will make this as hard as possible. As the report notes, Richard Nixon “resigned from office in disgrace, providing some measure of accountability for his actions.”
By contrast, Trump will steadily rage about any such efforts at an accounting from private life, his Twitter thumbs as active as ever. And GOP opportunists in the Senate who see advocating for the Lost Cause of Trumpism as their path to glory in 2024 will add to the bellowing.
All of which is a reminder of the vast scale of the garbage field we’ll all be digging out from under, should Biden win. And that’s if we’re lucky."
'Trump advisers hesitated to give military options and warned adversaries over fears he might start a war
By Jim Sciutto, Chief National Security Correspondent
Updated 11:10 PM EDT, Thu August 06, 2020
Washington(CNN)Amid escalating tensions with both North Korea and Iran, President Donald Trump’s advisers hesitated to give him military options fearing the President might accidentally take the US to war and deliberately informed their counterparts in both countries that they did not know what the President would do next, multiple former administration officials tell me.
These accounts are contained in my upcoming book, “The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World,” which will be published August 11 by Harper Collins.
Trump’s relationship with Kim Jong Un has blown hot and cold throughout his presidency but in 2017 as the President dubbed Kim “little rocket man” and the North Korean dictator responded by calling Trump a “dotard,” there was a very real fear amongst senior members of the administration that the war of words might culminate in the President launching military action against Pyongyang.
“We used to only think of Kim Jong Un as unpredictable. Now we had Trump as unpredictable,” Joseph Yun, who served as President Trump’s special representative for North Korea policy until 2018, told me. “And I would communicate that.”
Trump’s resistance led intel agencies to brief him less and less on Russia
Yun recalled that during the worsening standoff with North Korea in 2017, the Pentagon hesitated to give the President a broad range of military options, concerned that he might indeed order a major military attack on the North.
“You had to be careful what options you gave him,” he said. “We were being very cautious, because any options you put out there, he could use them.”
That frustrated the White House. “The White House viewed it as ‘Goddamnit! The President is looking for all options!’” Yun recalled. But the Pentagon, under Defense Secretary James Mattis at least, didn’t budge.
Later Trump decided diplomacy was the way forward and met for two historic summits with Kim, even telling a 2018 rally in West Virginia that the “two fell in love.”
A senior White House official told CNN that on North Korea “it was the President who at every turn has encouraged diplomacy over escalation. He took the historic step of meeting with KJU in person to encourage de-escalation.”
‘Is this a joke?’ Pentagon dumbfounded by Iran military options request
Again in 2019, as the President and his team were considering military options against Iran in response to escalating attacks in the Persian Gulf, senior Pentagon officials made clear both to US partners in the region and to Tehran that they could not predict how and where Trump would respond, or if he would respond at all.
“We told allies that we did not know what the President would be willing to do against Iran,” Mick Mulroy, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East until 2019, recalled. “It was possible he could make a decision that would lead to an escalation of the conflict, and that escalation could lead to war, so they needed to relay that to Iran so they realized not even his staff knew what would happen if they attacked another oil facility, for instance.”
From pandering to Putin to abusing allies and ignoring his own advisers, Trump’s phone calls alarm US officials
These warnings were part of a longer-term effort to contain some of the President’s worst impulses when confronted with military action abroad. Earlier, in September 2018, when a handful of mortar shells struck near the US Embassy in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone causing no casualties or serious damage, Pentagon officials were surprised when they received a call from a senior official on the National Security Council demanding military options for the President to retaliate against Iran. That NSC official said the President wanted to know immediately how and when the United States could respond.
“The NSC called us in on a Sunday,” a former senior US official told me. “[The NSC official] was basically telling us we had to have military options against Iran, today, on that day.”
Pentagon officials were dumbfounded. On a conference call with the White House, which included the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Paul Selva, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood, Selva muted the line on the Pentagon’s end and turned to his colleagues in disbelief.
“He said, ‘Is this a joke? They really want us to propose direct military action into Iran, against Iran, based on this?’” the same former senior US official told me." And I said, ‘No, we’ve been dealing with this all morning. Have they spent any time in Iraq?’ This is a constant thing."
When they got off the call, General Selva and Secretary Rood made it clear to their colleagues they would not be providing the White House with any military options unless directed explicitly by the President himself.
“There’s no way we’re going to provide the NSC military options for this,” the former senior US official recalled their saying. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Saudi Crown Prince accused of assassination plot against senior exiled official
That “urgent” request from the White House did not last. “It just died after that,” the official remembered.
A handful of mortars. One forceful demand for military options. Then silence. It was just the first of many times the NSC would reach out to the Pentagon for military options against Iran, without warning and without the normal interagency process to determine if a military response was warranted or wise.
The aftermath of those wayward mortars in September 2018 began a months-long policy-making seesaw with Trump and Iran, alternating between urgency and inaction, threat and retreat. On which side would Trump emerge? And did he have a strategy?
In June 2019, President Trump would balk at retaliation for Iran’s shootdown of a US drone over international airspace, calling off military action with US warplanes already in the air. That September, he also decided against retaliation after an Iranian attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia which temporarily shut down half of Saudi oil production.
“‘Well, [the President] didn’t want to do it, so we’re done,’” Mulroy recalled. “The first time that happened, I think there was kind of a sigh of relief. The second time, I think there was shock. So it’s like ‘What do you mean, we’re not doing anything? I mean, we’ve got to do something.’”
Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator who served as Defense Secretary under President Barack Obama said the situation was unprecedented.
“In all my years dealing with national security and intelligence and foreign policy I’ve never heard any senior military leaders express concern about a president’s decision-making,” Hagel said.
“When I was Secretary of Defense my Pentagon colleagues and I always knew that President Obama had studied the issues, was well informed and wanted our opinions and recommendations. He listened to those charged with national security experience,” he added.
NFL owner and Trump ambassador to UK sparks watchdog inquiry over allegations of racist and sexist remarks and push to promote Trump business
“The President’s foreign policy – particularly in the Middle East, has been defined by taking strong action when necessary (see strikes in Syria in 2018), deescalating to avoid protracted conflicts (draw down in Afghanistan, taking a lesser response to Iran.) However, make no mistake – the President will take decisive action when it warrants to protect US interests,” the senior White House official said.
Trump did eventually take military action against Iran, ordering the killing of the country’s most senior General Qasem Solemaini in a drone strike on Baghdad airport in January of this year. Iran retaliated by striking a US base in Iraq, injuring dozens of US service members, but at least up until now tensions have alleviated. Had the US launched an attack on Iranian soil, many feared an all-out war was possible.
‘It wasn’t a ploy’
Trump’s unpredictability is something that permeated official US interactions with the leaders of countries across the globe—from Iran to Syria to North Korea to Canada and Mexico to NATO allies.
“The general concept was discussed, not as a strategy we deliberately adopted, but rather as something we pointed out as a matter of fact,” said Mulroy. “The thing is, it wasn’t a ploy,” he explained. “I think both allies and enemies realize that his decision process was unpredictable even to those advising him up to and including the secretary of defense and national security adviser.”
Trump’s capriciousness left the advisers responsible for virtually every corner of the globe guessing.
“I had many meetings where my counterparts would ask, ‘Can we really believe what you’re saying? On whose behalf are you speaking?’” said Fiona Hill, President Trump’s former senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council and key witness during the impeachment investigation of the President in November 2019. “This makes the US a capricious partner for anyone who is interacting with us as a collective.”
Trump’s unpredictability was not a national secret. US adversaries were keenly aware that his own advisers and the institutions and agencies they lead were often in the dark about the President’s intentions and therefore sought to take advantage, said Susan Gordon, who served as the United States’ second-highest-ranking intelligence official as principal deputy director of national intelligence.
“Our partners, adversaries, and competitors know we don’t know the next play,” Gordon said.
With any other president or any other administration, such deliberate unpredictability might be seen as a flaw, identifying it as a criticism. But in the view of Trump and his most devout supporters, his unpredictability is a keen negotiator’s strength to be lauded.
“For him, the unpredictability is a card that he liked having,” said Yun.
© 2020 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.’
Trump’s new pre-election threat: A gusher of stimulus turning into a trickle
Lawmakers have left town and Trump aides don’t expect new stimulus talks anytime soon. That leaves the U.S. economy without much of the government aid that had been propping it up.
After a spring and summer bolstered by cash infusions from the federal government of more than $3 trillion, the U.S. economy may have to sink or swim this fall with a relative trickle of support — presenting a significant threat to President Donald Trump’s standing as he heads into a compressed reelection campaign already trailing in the polls.
Negotiations on another large fiscal aid package remained stalled on Monday, and people close to the talks held no hope of any movement this week — perhaps even for the rest of the month. And economists mostly say Trump’s executive actions announced on Saturday would have limited impact, even if they manage to survive potential legal and operational challenges.
For the moment, struggling small businesses are running out of their initial aid with no replenishment in sight. State and local governments face mounting budget shortages that could spur significant layoffs this fall. And schools are waiting on much-needed funding to open safely.
Struggling households bolstered by previous direct federal payments may get no more cash anytime soon. And expanded unemployment benefits may drop substantially — even if Trump’s move survives in court — while millions remain out of work. Trump’s payroll tax deferral could also prove difficult to implement and is, at least for now, only a temporary reprieve rather than a permanent cut.
All of this means that absent a fresh breakthrough on another stimulus bill, an economy that cratered by historic proportions in the first half of the year amid the Covid-19 epidemic will have to continue to snap back without much federal help, at least beyond the easy-money policies put in place by the Federal Reserve.
“We are increasingly concerned that this best-they-can do stimulus from the White House will never make it fully to the execution stage and the economy will be left to sink or swim on its own,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at financial group MUFG. “Washington is either unable or unwilling to provide a lifeline to those who can’t swim like the bankrupt state and local governments and the millions of unemployed who have no jobs to return to.”
With latest executive orders, Trump gets approval from his golf club crowd
White House officials reject this idea and say the executive actions will do a lot to boost the recovery while also putting Democrats on defense politically.
“Besides adding some much needed assistance, I think this moves the ball toward recovery,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said in an interview. “I’m the first to admit there is way too much unemployment out there and we really do need to help people and we came up with a good compromise way to do that.”
Kudlow is framing the payroll tax deferral as a $1,200 wage increase “for the heroes who are working through this whole pandemic. And if after-tax wages go up, that’s an incentive to go back to work. And politically, it may well move us toward negotiations.”
Trump on Saturday moved to circumvent Congress with four executive actions that would attempt to provide $400 per month in extra jobless benefits by redirecting existing federal disaster aid money.
The order says states would have to come up with 25 percent of the money, but Trump later said the federal government would cover the whole payment if struggling states could not. Kudlow said the extra benefit could be even higher — as much as $800 — because the administration would work to repurpose more funds and add to whatever states are able to provide.
But it’s unclear when the benefit would kick in or how long it would last; states were still seeking guidance Monday, and some worried they’d need to build a new system for delivering benefits under this program.
The payroll tax deferral for those making under $104,000 a year would require employers to comply, but would only be a deferral of taxes that would later amount to a giant tax bill. And the eviction moratorium would actually do nothing for the vast majority of the country’s tenants.
“The direct economic effects are likely to be limited in scope, scale and duration,” said Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz. “And this is before you consider the considerable legal uncertainties. The indirect effects are uncertain, depending on whether the orders facilitate or retard congressional compromises.”
Trump’s own senior aides over the weekend acknowledged the shortcomings and potential legal challenges. “Maybe we’re going to go to court on them. We’re going to go ahead with our actions anyways,” Kudlow said on ABC’s “This Week.”
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows conceded that major issues would remain unaddressed. “The downside of executive orders is you can’t address some of the small business incidents that are there,” he said on Sunday on “Full Court Press With Greta Van Susteren.”
“You can’t necessarily get direct payments, because it has to do with appropriations,” he said. “That’s something that the president doesn’t have the ability to do. So, you miss on those two key areas. You miss on money for schools. You miss on any funding for state and local revenue needs that may be out there.”
On CNBC Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reiterated what Trump himself suggested Sunday night and on Twitter on Monday: The White House still wants a larger deal, despite major differences with Democrats on the price tag and what new legislation would include.
“The president is determined to spend what we need to spend,” Mnuchin said. “We’re prepared to put more money on the table.” But he did not say when he might restart talks with Democratic leaders on the Hill, only that “if we can get a fair deal we’re willing to do it this week.”
Meadows is out of Washington this week so talks could prove difficult to restart right away. And many Republicans have expressed concern about spending much more federal money and have an ideological preference to simply let the economy fend for itself.
If no deal is reached and with questions looming over Trump’s executive actions, the economy may wind up without more fiscal support just as the recovery from the depths of the Covid-19 collapse appears to be flagging.
Job creation slowed from 4.8 million in June to 1.8 million in July as fresh virus breakouts spread in multiple states and reopening plans had to be curtailed. So far, the U.S. has added back only around 9 million of the 22 million jobs lost since the crisis began.
Consumer spending began recovering in April, likely bolstered by stimulus checks, but has since leveled off, according to credit card spending data maintained by JPMorgan Chase. Federal data showed a strong 5.6 percent increase in consumer spending in June, but that was down from 8.5 percent in May. Personal income dropped 1.1 percent in June and 4.4 percent in May as federal payments slowed down.
To many analysts, this all suggests that the economy could struggle in the fall if the federal government stops pumping money into the system through stimulus checks, enhanced jobless benefits and other channels.
“It’s unclear where we go from here. The recovery may be ongoing but downside risks absent further stimulus are significant,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. “Expiring support is coming against a backdrop of virus containment that is already slowing down activity. Without additional help, incomes and spending will surely retrench. That in turn will have implications for business profitability and jobs.”
There has been little external pressure to force a deal, partly because the stock market has continued its sharp recovery, despite the lack of action of further stimulus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average remains around 1,600 points below where it was before Covid-19 slammed the U.S. But it’s up roughly 9,000 points since hitting its pandemic low in March.
Market analysts say this is part because second-quarter earnings — though dramatically lower than 2019 — have mostly not come in as badly as feared. And the Fed’s commitment to keep interest rates low and pumping vast sums of money into markets to boost growth is driving investors into stocks.
But part of the market resilience is also an assumption — perhaps an incorrect one — that Republicans and Democrats will ultimately have to make a deal for something around $2 trillion in further stimulus rather than face the election risk of a freshly declining economy. That amount would be halfway between the Democrats’ package of more than $3 trillion and Republicans’ goal of $1 trillion or less.
“The markets perceive this to be a weird political dance in preparation for the election,” said Richard Bernstein, founder of investment firm Richard Bernstein Advisors. “And ultimately there will be a halfway or something close to halfway deal.”
It’s virtually impossible to find analysts who believe a deal won’t ultimately get made.
“Trump’s executive orders will likely force Democrats to come back to the negotiating table with Republicans,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at foreign exchange trading firm OANDA. “Democrats will likely make some big concessions and a deal around the $1.5 trillion level should be reached. The economic recovery will continue and still be fueled by stimulus before and after the election.”
© 2020 POLITICO LLC
Here is Trump’s characterization of VP candidate Kamala Harris-
'“Now you have a — sort of a mad woman, I call her, because she was so angry and such hatred with Justice Kavanaugh,” Trump said. “I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it. She was the angriest of the group. But they were all angry.”
Sweet
This is a similar paradigm to the titter totter relationship between what used to be aptly called 'the experience of politics, now shifting focus to the politics of experience.
I guess Marshall Mc’Luhan said it best, ‘The Media is the Message’
This is why the media’s overexposure does nothing to quell the silent spring down below
By this token, the betting odds can change mercurially, once the vaccine and the protracted stimulus can be ascertained, Trump becomes a certainty.
But let’s see how it works our, and I may be totally off.
I guess the United States Postal Service is now a BLM, Antifa, Communist, org. 
Lol
Fox News
WHITE HOUSEPublished August 16, 2020Last Update 6 hrs ago
White House pushes compromise on post office funding, stimulus checks
Chief of Staff Meadows signals Trump would sign bill with stimulus checks, liability protection for small businesses, PPP extension and post office funding
By Evie Fordham | Fox News
The White House is pushing for a congressional compromise on U.S. Postal Service funding and stimulus checks for individuals as House Democrats decry President Trump’s threat to withhold funding for USPS and link it to the administration’s opposition to universal mail-in voting.
TRUMP SAYS HE’S WILLING TO GIVE USPS MONEY IF DEMS CONCEDE TO ‘SOME’ FUNDING ASKS IN CORONAVIRUS RELIEF PACKAGE
“If my Democrat friends are all upset about this, come back to Washington, D.C.,” White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Let’s go ahead and get a stimulus check out to Americans. Let’s make sure that small businesses are protected with an extended [Payroll Protection] Program and put the postal funding in there. We’ll pass it tomorrow. The president will sign it.”
“This will all go away because what we are seeing is Democrats are trying to use this to their political advantage,” Meadows continued.
The House of Representatives is in recess for the rest of August. However, a senior member of House Democratic leadership told Fox News that it’s a matter of “when not if” they come back this week or next to focus on USPS funding and, possibly, coronavirus relief funding.
NJ GOVERNOR ‘UNEQUIVOCALLY’ SUPPORTS MORE FUNDING FOR POSTAL SYSTEM AFTER MAIL-IN VOTING ANNOUNCEMENT
Meadows insisted that possible voter fraud, not strain on USPS, is what should give Americans pause about choosing the route of universal mail-in voting this November. The Postal Service processes and delivers more than 181 million pieces of first-class mail every day.
Erica Koesler, left, and David Haerle, both of Los Angeles, demonstrate outside a USPS post office, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020, in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Erica Koesler, left, and David Haerle, both of Los Angeles, demonstrate outside a USPS post office, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020, in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
“Even if every single voter voted by mail, we’re talking about a 1.5% difference,” Meadows said. “I was in the room when the Postmaster General said he’s willing to pay overtime to make sure that that happens.”
“What he opposes is universal mail-in ballots where you send millions of ballots out to registered voters across the country, even those that don’t request it,” he said. “Those rolls are not accurate. People move, people die. And yet when we are going to send out ballots all across the country, that’s not just asking for a disaster. It really is knowing that what you’re sending out is inaccurate.”
Such a “disaster” could mean months of not knowing the results of the 2020 presidential election, which could lead to the House, which is currently held by Democrats, deciding who becomes president if neither candidate wins a majority in the electoral college, Meadows said.
Fox News’ John Roberts on Friday asked Trump if he would be willing to offer the $25 billion for the ailing USPS, including $3.5 billion in election resources, should Democrats be willing to cave on some of the demands Trump has voiced.
“Sure, if they give us what we want,” the president said during a press conference. “And it’s not what I want, it’s what the American people want.”
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2020 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. All market data delayed 20 minutes.
"Democracy Dies in Darkness
The Plum Line
Opinion
Did Kayleigh McEnany really just say that — from the White House?

Opinion by Greg Sargent
Columnist
August 19, 2020 at 5:06 PM EDT
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany just had this exchange with a member of the media about President Trump’s ongoing attacks on the legitimacy of vote-by-mail:
REPORTER: Is the president saying if he doesn’t win this election, then he will not accept the results unless he wins?
McENANY: The president has always said he’ll see what happens and make a determination in the aftermath.
McEnany went on to claim that Trump wants “a free election, a fair election,” note that extensive vote-by-mail might undermine public confidence in the results, and insist that this is Trump’s real concern. McEnany somehow managed to make all those claims without doubling over in paroxysms of laughter.
This exchange on Wednesday afternoon came after another one in which a reporter asked McEnany about Trump’s recent claim that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
That reporter asked: “Does the president believe there is any circumstance under which he could lose the election fairly?” McEnany declined to answer, mumbling some nonsense about voter fraud and Trump’s towering popularity.
At risk of sounding overly earnest, can we just point out that all this is particularly heinous coming from the White House press secretary at an official briefing of the White House press corps?
Kayleigh McEnany at the White House on Wednesday. (Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg)
Trump sometimes tweets this sort of thing at 5 a.m. from inside the White House while watching Fox News, and sometimes says it to reporters on the White House grounds. Those examples are terrible, to be sure.
But they are off-the-cuff. In this case, a senior member of his administration delivered this message very deliberately, in obviously scripted remarks, to the body of journalists who are theoretically on-site in the People’s House in order to hold the powerful to account on behalf of the American people — the people whose house it is supposed to be.
Sign up for The Odds newsletter for election updates from data columnist David Byler
“There’s no more direct attack on democracy than saying you’re not going to respect the outcome of an election,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told me.
But as Bookbinder noted, in this case, the White House itself is being used to project such an “anti-democratic” message, in a quasi-official way.
“It’s the People’s House,” Bookbinder said. “Saying there that you might not respect the result of the election does seem particularly galling.”
Indeed, it’s basically like saying: We just might not leave, no matter what the voters say.
“It’s sort of saying, ‘We’re here, and we’re not going anywhere,’” Bookbinder said. “That’s the kind of thing we see in countries where there are coups. It’s not the kind of conversation we have in the United States.”
It is often pointed out that we don’t know how serious Trump is about declaring the election illegitimate if he loses — he’s just trolling the elite liberal media! — or whether Trump will have a hard time getting away with saying that if he does lose. That sort of claim is of a piece with a larger tendency to claim that Trump rarely ends up accomplishing his authoritarian designs.
All of that is debatable at best. But it’s in many ways beside the point. As noted above, Trump is openly declaring right now that the outcome cannot be legitimate if he doesn’t win. He has explicitly said mail balloting, which will be amply employed amid pandemic conditions, will inevitably mean a rigged outcome. He hasn’t bothered to conceal his intention to dismiss ballots arriving after Election Day as illegitimate.
Whatever Trump’s seriousness about carrying this through — and whatever practical success he might be likely to have if he tries — it nonetheless sends a terrible message to his supporters, i.e., that they shouldn’t see our elections as capable of delivering a fair or legitimate outcome in which they come out on the losing side.
To have this delivered officially from the White House itself in this manner only underscores the utter contempt for our political system that Trump and his top officials harbor.
Indeed, this becomes even worse when you consider that Trump plans to deliver his speech accepting the GOP nomination at the GOP convention from the White House lawn.
This may or may not be legal: Even if the president is exempt from the Hatch Act, some experts say members of his administration planning the speech might be legally liable. But this, too, is somewhat beside the point: Legalities aside, what will once again be on display here is the administration’s utter contempt for our political system.
“The purpose of the Hatch Act is that you can’t be using the levers of the federal government to keep yourself in power,” Bookbinder told me. “To use the White House to promote your own reelection, and to use the White House to suggest you might not leave even if you lose, is about as serious an undercutting of the democratic ideals of this country as you can come up with.”
For Trump, this means just another day ending in “Y.” But the rest of us shouldn’t treat it that way."
BBC News
Donald Trump’s sister says he’s an ‘unprincipled phoney’
23 August 2020 US & Canada
US President Donald Trump’s eldest sister, a former federal judge, has said her brother is a liar who “has no principles”, secret recordings reveal.
The critical remarks by Maryanne Trump Barry were recorded by her niece, Mary Trump, who last month published a book excoriating the president.
“His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” Ms Barry is heard saying. “It’s the phoniness and this cruelty.”
Mary Trump said she had taped her aunt to protect herself from litigation.
Mr Trump responded to the latest revelations in a statement issued by the White House, saying: “Every day it’s something else, who cares.”
The recordings were first reported by The Washington Post, after which the Associated Press obtained them.
‘He had somebody take the exams’
In the secret recordings, Ms Barry criticises the Trump administration’s immigration policy, which has led to children being held at migrant detention centres at the border.
“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” she said.
One of the claims made in Mary Trump’s memoir - Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man - is that her uncle paid a friend to take a SAT test for him - a standardised exam which determines university placement.
Ms Barry refers to this in the recording, even suggesting that she remembers the name of the friend involved.
“He got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams,” she said.
Five shocking passages in Mary Trump’s tell-all book
Trump’s parents and siblings: What do we know of them?
Ms Barry has been supportive of her brother Donald and has previously said the two were close. She once told the story of how he had visited her every day she was in hospital following an operation.
“Once would have been enough - the duty call. That’s how love shows, when you go that extra yard.” She also said she “knew better even as a child than to even attempt to compete with Donald”.
Legal fees for Stormy Daniels
A Superior Court judge in California has ordered the president to pay $44,100 (£34,000) to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels.
The sum was awarded to cover her legal fees relating to a non-disclosure agreement over an alleged affair between the two.
Ms Daniels alleges that she and Mr Trump had sex in a hotel room in Lake Tahoe, a resort area between California and Nevada, in 2006.
The president denies the affair.
Ms Daniels said she had signed an agreement to keep quiet about her claims in exchange for $130,000 in October 2016, days before the presidential election.
In a court ruling published online, a judge ruled that despite the case being dismissed, Ms Daniels was “the prevailing party” in the dispute and therefore her costs should be covered.
Copyright © 2020 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
"
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump isn’t telling it like it is.
Instead, as he asks voters for a second term, he has turned the Republican National Convention into a fantasyland version of his presidency. In this carefully curated world, staged by federal officials in Washington and Jerusalem, Trump has defeated the coronavirus, saved the economy, built a border wall, established peace in the Middle East, recalled U.S. forces from theaters of war, and even become a champion of immigrants at a time when he is sharply curtailing their access.
The distance between reality and Trump’s presentation is both a glaring weakness for the president and a gap in which he sees strength heading into the November election.
His successes in life, from gaining fame as a real estate developer when his projects were going bankrupt to hosting a highly rated reality TV show and winning the presidency in part on promises he couldn’t keep, have taught him pretty optics can hide ugly truths effectively, particularly when people want to believe the false narrative. And yet, polls show crucial blocs of the electorate have grown tired of deceptions that cover up death tolls, economic devastation and government by chaos.
So far, the Republican National Convention has provided little reason for them to stop believing their own experience and start believing Trump’s tale.

“Hardship and heartbreak were everywhere,” Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow said of the pandemic during Tuesday night’s session of the GOP convention. "But presidential leadership came swiftly and effectively, with an extraordinary rescue for health and safety to successfully fight the COVID virus.”
Nearly 180,000 Americans died after Trump played down the threat of the disease and accused his Democratic rivals of perpetrating a “hoax” on the public. More than 30 million Americans are out of work because federal, state and local officials eventually shut down commerce to try to contain the outbreak. But the virus continues to spread and kill, and while stocks have rallied on support from the Federal Reserve and Congress, ordinary Americans have not seen the same kind of recovery.
Trump vowed during his first campaign that he would get Mexico to pay for a wall spanning the border between the two countries. Only a small portion of the wall has been built. Trump diverted military funding to try to build more of it. Obviously, Mexico didn’t pay for it. But Trump’s former campaign CEO and others were indicted last week on charges of defrauding donors to a charity that collected money under the auspices of funding construction of the wall. One of his sons, Donald Trump Jr., is quoted in a testimonial on the group’s website.
"Peace in the Middle East. Never-ending wars were finally ended,” another of Trump’s sons, Eric Trump, said. “Promises made, and promises, for the first time, were kept.”
On the same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who would later make an unorthodox speech by a U.S. diplomat to a party convention from foreign soil, pressed Arab-majority countries to make peace with Israel. That’s a clear indication that the Trump administration realizes peace remains elusive in the region. Moreover, thousands of American troops are still deployed to Afghanistan, where the United States has been at war for nearly 20 years, and others are still stationed in Iraq.
“Obvious lie after obvious lie,” Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign said in a statement about the convention’s second night. His deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said the convention is an “alternate reality.”
Ominously for Trump, he has lost political support in suburban parts of swing states and among older voters, who are most susceptible to the coronavirus. Even some of his supporters say that they don’t find him honest.
“He’s not exactly the most trustworthy individual,” Marty Stango, 77, of Florida, told NPR this month while noting that he favors the president over Biden for now. “He definitely will throw out things that are absolute lies.”
Such voters — those who think Trump is dishonest but are inclined to vote for him anyway — help explain why the bottom hasn’t dropped out of his campaign at a time when the vast majority of Americans give him low marks for his handling of the public health and economic crises brought on by the pandemic.
Trump doesn’t hold a lead in any of the pivotal swing states, but he is closer to Biden in most of them than he was to Hillary Clinton at this point in the 2016 election, according to averages of surveys in those states calculated by RealClearPolitics.
One test for persuadable voters is whether they care if the president lives in the real world or one of his own creation.
In his book “The Art of the Deal,” Trump explained his view that most people prefer the latter.
“I play to people’s fantasies,” he wrote. “People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration, and a very effective form of promotion.”
After four years of alternate reality, punctuated by a convention in which hyperbole is a euphemism for outright lying, voters will get to decide whether they think Trump’s exaggerations have helped them — or harmed them."
2020 ELECTION
4 highlights from RNC, Night 1: No platform but reverence for Trump
No policy document. A focus on the Supreme Court. Dystopian predictions if Democrats rule. And 2024 trial balloons.
On the first night of the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump Jr. painted Democrats as “radicals who want to drag us into the dark” and must be crushed.
On the first night of the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump Jr. painted Democrats as “radicals who want to drag us into the dark” and must be crushed.Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
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Aug. 24, 2020, 11:42 PM EDT / Updated Aug. 25, 2020, 8:51 AM EDT
By Sahil Kapur
WASHINGTON — The Republican Party announced it wouldn’t adopt a platform, but it pledged its unwavering support to President Donald Trump as the four-day gathering kicked off Monday.
While the Democratic convention focused on persuasion and de-emphasized base mobilization, the Republican convention so far is focusing on base mobilization and de-emphasizing persuasion.
The president and his allies said the nation is spiraling into chaos and violence, promising that he will work to address it. The convention painted a dark and dystopian vision of the country if he were to lose to the Democratic ticket of former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who were portrayed throughout as beholden to “radicals.”
The effectiveness of the approach remains to be seen, but the mood on opening day was far from the “very optimistic and upbeat convention this week” that Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller previewed Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Download the NBC News app for alerts and all the latest on the Republican convention.
Here are four key Monday takeaways:
The document declared that “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda” — without saying what it is.
The convention was heavy on adulation for a president whose devoted following has trumped issues that the party has previously emphasized, such as free trade and limits on federal authority. He was painted as a benevolent billionaire who put aside a life of luxury to help the country.
An evening speaker depicted Trump as “the bodyguard of Western civilization” against forces that seek to dismantle it. During the ceremonial roll call, when states touted their proudest achievements before casting their votes, Alabama’s delegate boasted that it was home to Trump’s highest approval rating of any state in the nation.
Sprinkled throughout the evening were video montages of ordinary people lavishing praise on the president.
Trump said earlier Monday that if Biden were to win, “the radical left will demand that he appoints super radical left, wild, crazy justices going into the Supreme Court — your American dream will be dead if that happens.”
“It’ll be dead,” he said. “This is so important.”
In the morning, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel praised Trump’s record of having “appointed constitutional conservatives to the federal bench — over 200 of them, including Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.” In the evening, a video tribute touted Trump’s nomination of the two conservative justices.
“They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the police aren’t coming when you call,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.
Biden has said he opposes defunding the police. Other speakers suggested that he would seek to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a left-wing slogan that the Democratic nominee has also rejected.
Said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio: “Democrats refuse to denounce the mob.” But Biden and other Democrats have condemned violence and looting in cities during the George Floyd protests this summer.
Trump, speaking earlier in the day, made a variety of false claims about pre-existing medical conditions (he said he’s protecting them even though he has pushed various initiatives to weaken the guarantees currently in Obamacare) and mail-in voting (drawing a link to fraud that is inconsistent with evidence and expert opinion).
Their speeches represented two potential arcs of the post-Trump Republican Party — one in which culture wars intensify and another in which they are de-emphasized.
The younger Trump represents the first path. He painted Democrats as “radicals who want to drag us into the dark” and must be crushed, claiming that they want to “cancel” the Founding Fathers and that Biden’s Democrats are “coming for our freedom of speech and want to bully us into submission.”
Haley, meanwhile, focused on themes common in a pre-Trump GOP — such as tax cuts, deregulation, battling extremists around the world and ensuring that America doesn’t “apologize” for its values.
“America is not a racist country,” she said. “This is personal for me. I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. They came to America and settled in a small Southern town. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari. I was a brown girl in a black and white world.”
Both strongly endorsed Trump, who has the support of about 90 percent of Republicans in polls.
© 2020 NBC UNIVERSAL
Trump can still win this election
Opinion by Richard Galant, CNN
Updated 1:58 PM EDT, Sun August 30, 2020
Editor’s Note: (Sign up to get our new weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.)
(CNN)Outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, police were using billy clubs and tear gas to beat back anti-Vietnam War protesters. Inside the International Amphitheatre, Sen. Abraham Ribicoff was so enraged by the violence that he put aside his prepared nomination speech and declared, “with George McGovern as President of the United States, we wouldn’t have to have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.”
The convention’s host, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, and other members of the Illinois delegation stood up and shouted insults at the senator from Connecticut. It was an electrifying moment, a rare case of the reality of the streets intruding on the packaged rhetoric of a political convention.
No such unscripted moment was allowed at this week’s carefully orchestrated Republican National Convention, despite the tumult occurring outside: the protests after the shooting of a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Sunday, culminating in the arrest of a 17-year-old charged with killing two protesters; the fierce hurricane slamming into coastal Louisiana; the wildfires consuming homes and forests in California; and the continuing march of a pandemic that has left more than 180,000 Americans dead.
With relentless discipline, wrapped in flag-draped videos, the convention hammered home President Donald Trump’s message: that behind closed doors and contrary to all outward signs, he is an ardent feminist who cares deeply about the problems confronted by Black Americans, that Joe Biden is a “Trojan horse” for radical activists and that a Democratic victory in November would spell the end of the American dream. The fact that in his acceptance speech Trump mostly stuck to the teleprompter script vetted by his advisers suggested to Sarah Isgur that “he believes he is losing this race.”
Covid-19 is under control, Trump asserted, and America is reopening. As if to punctuate that message, he assembled 2,000 people on the White House’s South Lawn with few precautions to prevent it from becoming a super spreader event.
David Gergen called the political use of the historic grounds owned by all Americans “an abomination” and urged: “never again should a sitting president be able to commandeer one of the most sacred sites of our democracy and turn it into a political prop.”
It also presented a dangerous image to viewers, he wrote. “At a time when public health experts are trying to persuade Americans to wear masks and practice social distancing, they saw hundreds upon hundreds without masks and jostling close together.”
The convention’s narrative was jarring, wrote Frida Ghitis: “As America’s 2020 dystopia barreled ahead, the Republican National Convention offered its version of alternative facts, a bubble containing a phony reality where President Donald Trump is a champion of women’s equality, a protector of health care benefits, a defender of pre-existing conditions coverage, and a man of immeasurable compassion.”
Twelve Black speakers were featured on the main stage in support of Trump, noted John Avlon. “Contrast that stat with the number of African Americans who are senior level White House staffers. That would be one – Ja’Ron Smith, a deputy assistant to the President…What about Black Trump cabinet secretaries? That would be one as well: Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.” Trump was lauded at the RNC for backing the careers of women too, but here also his record isn’t strong – it significantly lags presidents such as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Avlon wrote.
‘Quite a show’
In reality show fashion, Trump disrupted the tradition of political conventions by bestowing a presidential pardon, meeting with freed American hostages and staging a naturalization ceremony for prime-time viewers. These segments were designed to depict Trump as a man of empathy, wrote Jamie Poniewozik in The New York Times. “They also smear Vaseline on the lens of his policy positions,” he noted. “His administration has been boldly putting restrictions on legal, not just illegal, immigration – but just look at these five lucky winners!” Which raises the question: “After four years of belligerence, insults and Twitter rages, can you suddenly remake him as Oprah?”
Maybe, wrote Jill Filipovic: “It was quite a show. The Republican Party seems to understand that liberal ideas – racial justice, women’s rights, health care access, diversity, welcoming immigrants – are actually pretty popular in the United States. But in practice they are also often antagonistic to these same ideals… they want to give the appearance of embracing them without actually having to live them.”
It just may work
Americans have seen Donald Trump up close as President for nearly four years and as a reality show star for a lot longer. Their view of him seems unlikely to change in the 70 days before the election. But branding – and rebranding – is what he does.
He particularly needed to after recordings of his sister, retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, speaking damningly about her brother, surfaced a week ago, on the eve of the convention. Dean Obeidallah summed them up: “When a sibling says in confidence that her brother is cruel, lies, and is misleading his base with his phoniness, people should take notice.”
Nonetheless, the RNC featured a parade of people vouching for Trump’s magnificence. It “painted a picture of an administration that had completely eradicated myriad scourges, including Covid-19, ISIS, the Middle East conflict, unemployment, the opioid crisis, criminal over-sentencing, sexism, racism and a swamp that needed draining – and Trump alone deserves all the credit,” wrote SE Cupp. None of it was true, she noted, “nor does it tell the story of Trump’s corruption, incompetence, nepotism, cronyism, abuses of power and lawlessness.”
But many people don’t follow politics closely, and if they’re just tuning in, “they also would have heard speakers paying lip service to issues they care about…bad trade deals, disappearing manufacturing jobs, overregulation, endless wars, violence,” Cupp wrote. “And fear is a powerful motivator – sometimes more than the truth.”
Julian Zelizer pointed out that “much of the country has been worn down by the impact of the pandemic, and many voters may want a leader who can either assuage their fears that the virus still looms or who can divert their attention to other issues altogether.”
Republican strategist Doug Heye agreed: “Anyone who looks at the polls and says he can’t win despite being down a large margin, would be making a foolish mistake… we are divided into nearly equal tribes, with a small advantage to the Democrats, and as we see increasing violence win our streets, Trump knows that he, as President, is given a longer leash and benefit of the doubt if he quells the fiery images. His campaign is keenly aware that many of the voters most likely to respond to Trump’s message on this are the suburban voters he needs.”
To Keith Boykin, Trump’s acceptance speech “may have been the most overtly racist convention speech since Pat Buchanan’s infamous culture war speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention.” Boykin wrote, “Trump amplified the decibel level of what had once been quiet dog whistles into a loud and aggressive bullhorn, warning fearful white Americans that radical left socialists, anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters and flag burners are coming to get you.”
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Will the race gear up with more excitement or enthusiasm? We shall see. It is really very early to tell, but the markers are starting to shed some light.
<<<<>>>><<<<>>><<<>>><<<>><<>><<><><><><>><<>>><<
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Trump goes all in and defends White violence
Opinion by Jennifer Rubin
Columnist
September 1, 2020 at 10:45 AM EDT
The Biden team might have to declare President Trump’s Monday afternoon news conference an “in kind” donation to the former vice president’s campaign. Just hours after Democratic nominee Joe Biden dared Trump to condemn all violence — including White violence — Trump defended the White militia member who allegedly traveled across state lines, killed two people and was charged with murder in Kenosha, Wis. The president suggested this was all in self-defense, the same argument the alleged killer’s attorneys are trying. Trump also argued that the paintball guns his supporters fired at peaceful protesters in Portland, Ore., were fine, because they did not shoot bullets. That made them “defensive.”
POLITICS
Trump Is Heading for a ‘Red Mirage’ Win on Election Night, Bloomberg-Funded Data Firm Says
POLITICS DONALD TRUMP 2020 ELECTION
President Donald Trump could appear to win the November election in an apparent landslide when the first results come in, but lose once counting mail-in ballots is completed days later.
Hawkfish, a data and analytics firm funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has warned that Trump could win a phantom victory on election night because of the time it takes to tabulate votes sent by mail.
The firm’s CEO Josh Mendelsohn told Axios that this result would be a “red mirage” that could pose problems given the president’s attacks on mail-in ballots and accusations of voter fraud by Democrats.
“We are sounding an alarm and saying that this is a very real possibility, that the data is going to show on election night an incredible victory for Donald Trump,” Mendelsohn said.
"When every legitimate vote is tallied and we get to that final day, which will be some day after Election Day, it will in fact show that what happened on election night was exactly that, a mirage.
“It looked like Donald Trump was in the lead and he fundamentally was not when every ballot gets counted,” he said.
Significantly more Democrats than Republicans are expected to vote by mail in this November’s election as Trump’s criticisms of the process have had an impact with GOP voters.
Hawkfish modeled several scenarios for election night, including one where the president would appear to win 408 electoral college votes to former Vice President Joe Biden’s 130. However, when results come in from mail-in ballots, the picture could be very different, with a clear Biden victory a distinct possibility.
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures after delivering his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination on the South Lawn of the White House August 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump gave the speech in front of 1500 invited guests. Trump could appear to win in a landslide on 3 November (Pho
Under Hawkfish’s scenario, the Democrat could beat Trump by 334 electoral college votes to 204 when all the votes are tallied. The count could take four days, however.
President Trump appears to have been preparing for just such an eventuality. He suggested on August 15 that the results of the election may not be known for “months” or “years.”
“Usually at the end of the evening, they say 'Donald Trump has won the election, Donald Trump is your new president,” he said.
“You know what? You’re not going to know this—possibly, if you really did it right—for months or for years. Because these ballots are all going to be lost, they’re all going to be gone,” Trump said.
The president has also questioned the security of mail-in ballots and claimed the system will be open to voter fraud, despite evidence that voting by mail is safe and his own party’s push to expand it.
“Universal mail-in voting is going to be catastrophic, it’s going to make our country the laughing stock of the world,” Trump said at a news conference on 16 August.
“The problem with the mail-in voting, number one, is you’re never going to know when the election is over,” he said.
© 2020 NEWSWEEK
POLITICO
ELECTIONS
Poll: Biden holds narrowed 7-point lead over Trump post-conventions
A USA Today/Suffolk University poll published Tuesday reports that 50 percent of voters prefer Biden and 43 percent favor Trump.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden.
By QUINT FORGEY
09/02/2020 08:39 AM EDT
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a 7-point advantage over President Donald Trump two months out from the November election, according to a new poll conducted in the days after the Republican National Convention.
And while the former vice president still maintains support from at least half of registered voters surveyed, his once double-digit lead in the White House race has diminished by 5 points this summer.
A USA Today/Suffolk University poll published Tuesday reports that 50 percent of voters prefer Biden and 43 percent favor Trump. The June version of the same survey showed Biden ahead of Trump by 12 points, 53-41 percent.
The latest polling results come after the conclusion of Republicans’ nominating convention last week, when Trump excoriated Biden as beholden to the “radical left” wing of the Democratic Party and warned that the “American way of life” would be destroyed were he not reelected.
Biden’s campaign aides have insisted in recent days that they expected a tightening of the race as the general election campaign enters its final stretch, pointing to the political polarization of the country’s electorate.
The USA Today/Suffolk University poll was conducted Aug. 28-31, surveying 1,000 registered voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.l
© 2020 POLITICO LLC
"Democracy Dies in Darkness
Morning Mix
‘He better have an army’: Andrew Cuomo knocks Trump after threat to defund ‘lawless’ cities like New York"
Washington Post. September 4, 2020
Trump told reporters at a White House news conference.
Trump’s extraordinary comments come as several defense officials tell CNN relations between the President and Pentagon leadership are becoming increasingly strained.
They also followed efforts by Trump to convince the public that he had not made a series of reported disparaging remarks about US military personnel and veterans, which were first reported by The Atlantic magazine.
Trump referred to Marines buried at cemetery in France in crude and derogatory terms, a former senior official says
A former senior administration official confirmed to CNN that Trump referred to fallen US service members at the Aisne-Marne cemetery in crude and derogatory terms during a November 2018 trip to France to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Other outlets, including Fox News, have confirmed much of The Atlantic’s reporting, which Trump and the White House vehemently deny.
Some have expressed concern that the President’s Monday accusations against the military’s top brass could have a corrosive effect.
“The President’s comments about the motivations of military leaders not only demeans their service and that of those they lead; he lends credence to the very disdain and thoughtlessness he tries to deny,” retired US Navy Rear Admiral and CNN analyst John Kirby said.
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on Monday’s remarks.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows appeared to attempt to walk back Trump’s comments during an interview with Fox Business on Tuesday, saying the President’s accusations against the “top people at the Pentagon” were not directed specifically at people like Secretary of Defense Mark Esper or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.
“Those comments are not directed specifically at them as much as it is what we all know happens in Washington, DC,” Meadows said, saying “That comment was more directed about the military industrial complex.”
While Trump has publicly disparaged the service of several high-profile veterans such as the late Sen. John McCain and his former Secretary of Defense, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, Monday’s broadside was on a new level targeting leaders he appointed to carry out his orders.
Trump has also repeatedly touted boosting the defense budget as one of his administration’s major accomplishments, citing it as evidence of his support for the military, spending that has also benefited defense contractors.
Top commanders exhausted and worried
CNN has previously reported that relations between Trump and Esper are tense, with Trump believed to be on the verge of replacing him. But, less than two months from the presidential election, the Pentagon’s top commanders are growing increasingly exhausted and worried about their relationship with the President, several defense officials tell CNN.
A critical area of concern is how the Pentagon would respond if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to put US military troops on the streets to deal with civilian protestors as he continues to stoke divisions across the country in the run up to the election. Trump floated the idea last month and, after he first made the threat in June, Esper publicly broke with him by saying he opposed any such move.
To avoid a new showdown with the White House, for the last several weeks, top military officials – including Milley – have been getting regular briefings on civil unrest in major cities across the country. The idea is to be ready with alternative plans for state-activated National Guard and other federal civilian law enforcement rather than have active duty troops potentially clash with protesters, according to several defense officials.
Another issue that could lead to a clash between Trump and military leadership is the $740 billion defense bill that would strip the names of Confederate generals in the face of vocal opposition from Trump who said he’d veto any move.
The entire Joint Chiefs have made it clear they want to eliminate what they see as the divisive symbols of the Confederacy.
Milley did not hold back on the issue in appearance before Congress in July, stating that “those officers turned their back on their oath,” referring to the names on the bases. “It was an act of treason, at the time, against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the US Constitution.”
Military leadership have embarked on several initiatives aimed at improving racial inclusion. Officials say it is vital work to ensure that when troops go to war, they are a cohesive fighting force.
There are also very real concerns about the aftermath of November’s election, particularly if the result is not immediately clear after election night.
Last month Milley told members of Congress that the military will not play a role in the election and won’t help settle any disputes if the results are contested.
“In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. Military,” Milley wrote in a letter to the House Armed services committee.
Top US general tells Congress the military won’t play a role in the 2020 election
“I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military,” Milley wrote.
Despite what Milley stated, should there be some kind of constitutional crisis if the election result is unclear, the military could well be put in a tricky position especially as Trump’s opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, floated the idea they might become involved in an interview in June.
“I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch,” Biden said, referring to the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
On top of that uncertainty there are concerns Trump may launch military action against an adversary before Inauguration Day, regardless of who wins the White House are also front and center for the top brass.
© 2020 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
{The pent up power grab needs release. There are ominous signs, that the accumulated powers can not be rationally grounded, or discharged.} -meno
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M.Cohen Trump attorney says:
Cohen says Trump ‘actually looking to change the Constitution’
In an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen claimed that if President Trump were to win reelection, he would start looking for ways to “change the Constitution” so he could be elected to a third term. Source: CNN
The Guardian - Back to home
Fox News broadcast an interview on Saturday night in which Donald Trump without any evidence accused Joe Biden of taking drugs to get him through debates.
Trump ally who sought to change CDC Covid reports claims he was fighting ‘deep state’
“I think there’s probably – possibly – drugs involved,” Trump told Jeanine Pirro. “That’s what I hear. I mean, there’s possibly drugs. I don’t know how you can go from being so bad where you can’t even get out a sentence … ”
Trump did not finish his own sentence, but he went on to say he was referring to the Democratic presidential nominee’s hesitant performances in early primary debates, before his surge to victory on the back of a win in South Carolina.
“You saw some of those debates with the large number of people on the stage,” Trump said. “He was, I mean, I used to say, ‘How is it possible that he can go forward?”
According to the president, Biden won the nomination because the progressive vote was split.
“And he only won because Elizabeth Warren didn’t drop out,” he said. “Had she dropped out Bernie [Sanders] would’ve won Super Tuesday, every state, and you would’ve had Bernie instead of Biden.”
Trump’s claim came not long after his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, denied claims he used cocaine before speaking at the Republican convention. Remarkably enough, it was also not the first time Trump, 74, has accused Biden, 77, of taking drugs. Speaking to the Washington Examiner last month, the president said: “We’re going to call for a drug test, by the way, because his best performance was against Bernie [in the final debate] … It wasn’t that he was Winston Churchill because he wasn’t, but it was a normal, boring debate. You know, nothing amazing happened. And we are going to call for a drug test because there’s no way – you can’t do that.”
In the Fox interview broadcast told Fox News he would happily “put down very quickly” any leftwing protests. “Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in and we, we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that, because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes, within minutes.”
Trump has sent federal agents to confront protesters, most prominently in Portland. In the Fox interview Trump said it was “retribution” when US Marshals shot dead a suspect in the Portland killing of a member of a rightwing group.
Trump attacks Robert Mueller’s ‘hit squad’ in row over ‘wiped’ phones
Trump and Biden are due to debate in Cleveland on 29 September, in Miami on 15 October and in Nashville on 22 October. The vice-presidential nominees Mike Pence and Kamala Harris will meet in Salt Lake City on 7 October.
Trump is famously teetotal and disapproving of drug use but his political rise has been fueled by a well-documented love for Diet Coke and junk food. Beset by speculation about his physical and cognitive health, earlier this month the president was moved to deny rumours that a “series of ministrokes” prompted a short-notice visit to hospital in Washington last November.
© 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
On drugs
If religion is the opium of the people, and merely a dependency, should not that dependency be instituted if this people do not cohese in maintaining institutional society?
Otherwise, Hegel’s ideals can not be said to be upended!?!
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China Syndrome
America’s China syndrome
As the US presidential election nears, Democrats and Republicans have defined their stances towards Beijing. Sadly for Europe, says Hanns W. Maull, they won’t find a common position.
A new cold war or not – the relationship between America and China is on a downward spiral and the list of contentious issues is getting longer almost by the day. As the US presidential election approaches, Washington has been upping the ante, with leading members of Donald Trump’s team publicly targeting the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology, its habits of gathering intelligence by means fair and foul, and its economic policies. As Bill Barr, the US Attorney General put it in a speech: “The ultimate ambition of China’s rulers isn’t to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States.”
China is playing an important role in the battle for the next presidency and Congress. In the Democratic Party draft election manifesto, China gets 18 mentions, as opposed to seven in 2016, when Hilary Clinton ran for president. Her platform talked about “managing China’s rise” and pressing it to “play by the rules”, while Joe Biden’s is now all for “pushing back” against Beijing. Even in the light of significant continuity, like a call for “a fair system” for global trade, it is a strong signal of how the power equation has shifted in China’s favour.
Democrats warn against a new cold war with China
The Democrats’ platform warns against a new cold war and pledges not to avoid “self-defeating unilateral tariff wars” with China. Yet their strategy does show considerable similarities with the original US containment strategy in the face of the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. Its key elements are to push back “where we have profound economic, security, and human rights concerns about the actions of China’s government”, to cooperate where possible, and to control the risks of confrontation, for example, through arms control.
This also sounds like the European Union’s take on China as “a partner, a competitor and a systemic rival”. Like the Europeans, deemed “natural partners”, the Democrats argue for a comprehensive response, covering economics, military security, and politics. A Biden administration would tackle economic imbalances and China’s unfair trading practices and hold China responsible for its contributions to global warming. It would rely on nuclear deterrence and a robust military posture and challenge China to uphold human rights and democracy.
Biden and the Democratic Party have set out a coherent and comprehensive – if somewhat jaded – grand strategy to restore America’s standing in the world and meet China’s challenge. Trump and the Republicans have not. The Trump team’s recent attacks on China betray the shrill and hysterical edge of an administration caught on the wrong foot by Beijing. America is in bad shape and 72 percent of Americans believe “the country is on the wrong track”. Trump and his Republicans could lose the election, possibly by a landslide, and their call to arms against China is, on the one hand, a desperate attempt to turn the tide.
Trump’s team calls for a crusade against China’s “tyranny”
On the other hand, it is more than just electioneering. Starting with Vice President Mike Pence in October 2018 and culminating in a recent speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump’s current team has called for a crusade by the “free world” against China’s “tyranny”. The previous team of former generals – then Secretary of Defense James Mattis, National Security Adviser H.R. MacMasters and Chief of Staff John Kelly – was relentlessly realist in comparison: America was to preserve peace through strength with allies and partners that “magnify our power.” Pompeo prefers to remain vague about alliances.
Clearly, Trump and his team do not think much of traditional allies and have little faith in dialogue with China. Instead, they appear to view US business as a good partner for their crusade. They have named and shamed American companies that have allegedly cow-towed to Beijing and described business leaders as targets of – and even pawns in – Chinese influence operations. Offering inducements and hinting at punishment for companies that won’t join the crusade, Barr has said he wants “public and private sectors […] to work together [… ] to win the contest for the commanding heights of the global economy.”
Whoever takes office in the White House will need to face China’s challenge to US leadership
Yet such an alliance is unlikely. Despite misgivings, American business has benefitted hugely from engaging with China and shows little interest in cutting back. An even bigger problem for Trump is his lack of credibility as the champion of the “free world”. His administration has failed its allies and undermined American democracy. Trump has routinely broken his oath of office, torn down much of the American diplomatic machine, and destroyed any vestige of consistency – he himself undermined the crusade against China by applauding Xi’s policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and allegedly begging him to support his re-election.
But whoever takes office in the White House in January 2021 will continue to struggle with the gauntlet China has thrown down in a challenge to America’s global leadership. Will Americans rally around their flag to defend their country’s traditional international role? Don’t hold your breath. Some old and new cold warriors would like China to become the common enemy to unite a desperately divided America. But that simply won’t happen. Trump and his Republican followers cannot and will not work with the Democrats – not even on China. That is bad news for Europeans, who will no longer be able to count on US leadership in an ever more tense world. Europeans will have look out for themselves.
© Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) gGmbH. 2020