Tag: Donald Trump

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Trump Greeted By Boos And Chants Of ‘Vote Him Out’ At SCOTUS

Donald Trump (screen capture)
I doubt Donald Trump is accustomed to being this close to his opposition. Arriving at the United States Supreme Court to pay respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Donald was greeted with boos and a chorus of “vote him out!” Quite the visceral moment…

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Trump Refuses To Commit To Peaceful Transfer Of Power: ‘Get Rid Of The Ballots’

Donald Trump (screen capture)
During a press conference at the White House today, Donald Trump was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power in January should Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden win. White House correspondent Brian Karem asked the Donald directly if he would make such a commitment but Trump demured saying, “Well, we’re gonna have to see what happens, you know that. I have been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster and-and…” Trump responded as Karem interjected. Attempting to get a clear answer, Karem asked again, “I understand that, but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure there is a peaceful transfer of power?” “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very transfer – we’ll have a very peaceful,” Trump said. “There won’t be a transfer frankly, there will be a continuation. The ballots are out of control, you know it, and you know who knows it better than anybody else, the Democrats know it better than anybody else. Go ahead.”

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Cindy McCain, Widow Of 2008 GOP Nominee, Endorses Joe Biden For Prez

Cindy McCain (photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore – CC License)
From NPR:

Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain, is the latest prominent conservative to urge Republicans to cross party lines and support Joe Biden for president.

“There’s only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation, and that is Joe Biden,” she tweeted Tuesday evening.

McCain’s endorsement comes nearly a month after she contributed to a video that aired during the Democratic National Convention that detailed the friendship between her late husband and the Democratic presidential nominee.

Ms. McCain says she hopes she can encourage disillusioned voters in Arizona, which her late husband spent years representing in the Senate, to consider Biden over Trump amid the country’s current woes. In response, Trump predictably clapped back on Twitter saying he hardly knows Cindy McCain: “Joe Biden was John McCain’s lapdog. So many BAD decisions on Endless Wars & the V.A., which I brought from a horror show to HIGH APPROVAL. Never a fan of John. Cindy can have Sleepy Joe!”

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Mitt Romney Won’t Block Senate Floor Vote For Supreme Court Nominee

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)
Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah has announced he will not block a floor vote for Donald Trump’s nominee to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court before the upcoming presidential election. From NPR:

Romney issued a statement Tuesday that he intends “to follow the Constitution and precedent in considering the President’s nominee, and if the nominee reaches the Senate floor he intends “to vote based upon their qualifications.”

Romney’s support for moving ahead means that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is all but certain to have the 51 votes he needs to take up the nomination. Just two GOP senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said they oppose taking up the president’s nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a presidential election year.

Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee for president, has been one of the few Republicans in the Senate to oppose Trump. In his statement, he asserted that the “historical precedent” of election-year nominations is that the Senate “generally does not confirm an opposing party’s nominee but does confirm a nominee of its own.”

“If the nominee reaches the Senate floor, I intend to vote based upon their qualifications,” concludes Romney’s statement. In 2016, nearly nine months before the presidential election, Senate Republicans refused to vote on President Obama’s nominee for the high court, Merrick Garland, claiming it was “too close to the election.” At the time, nothing was mentioned about ‘opposing party’ nominees. Trump has tweeted that he will announce his nominee to replace Ginsburg on Saturday. We are now just 42 days before the 2020 election day.

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Judge Throws Out Trump Lawsuit To Stop Mail-In Voting In Nevada

Donald Trump

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) lost today in a legal court fight meant to derail mail-in voting in Nevada for the 2020 presidential election. From Talking Points Memo:

U.S. District Judge James Mahan on Monday threw out the Trump campaign’s lawsuit over Nevada’s vote-by-mail measure that directs all local elections officials to send mail-in ballots to all of the registered voters in the state.

Mahan ruled that the Trump campaign, along with the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Nevada GOP, “make no showing” of an unfair advantage against GOP candidates caused by the measure, known as Assembly Bill 4 (AB 4).

The judge described the plaintiffs’ claims–that voting by mail hurts Republicans and that mail-in ballots illegally distort the vote count–as “generalized and speculative.”

“Plaintiffs never describe how their member voters will be harmed by vote dilution where other voters will not,” Mahan wrote. Republican candidates “face no harms that are unique from their electoral opponents.”

Trump has repeatedly attacked AB 4 in his attempts to undermine and suppress the vote in the battleground state. In sowing seeds of doubt, the Donald continually alleges – without any evidence – that Democrats (but not Republicans) would somehow cheat with mail-in voting. And yet the last time there was any voter fraud of note actually found, it was on behalf of a North Carolina Republican candidate back in 2018. Several states – including Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington – have handled their elections via mail-in ballots for years with no irregularities reported.

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Trump Alleges Ginsburg’s Dying Wish Was Penned By Democrats

L-R Donald Trump, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
According to NPR’s Nina Totenberg, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dictated this message to her granddaughter Clara Spera just days before her passing: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” This morning, Donald Trump phoned into Fox & Friends, and with no evidence of any kind, alleged that Ginsburg’s dying wish was written by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), or Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “I don’t know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff and Schumer and Pelosi?” said Trump. “I would be more inclined to the second. That came out of the wind, it sounds so beautiful. But that sounds like a Schumer deal, or maybe a Pelosi, or shifty Schiff. So that came out of the wind.” Schiff clapped back in a tweet: “Mr. President, this is low. Even for you. No, I didn’t write Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish to a nation she served so well, and spent her whole life making a more perfect union. But I am going to fight like hell to make it come true. No confirmation before inauguration.”

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Trump: ‘I’m The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Puerto Rico’

(photo: public domain – Flickr/WhiteHouse)
Forty-six days before the presidential election, and with a very tight race in battleground state Florida (I’ll get to that), the Trump administration has suddenly announced a new $13 billion aid package to help rebuild Puerto Rico which was decimated by Hurricane Maria in 2017. The Hill reports the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will award $9.6 billion in grants to help rebuild the Puerto Rico Electrical Power Authority addressing repairs to electrical substations, power generation systems and transmission lines. Additionally, $2 billion will be targeted to rebuilding the U.S. territory’s school buildings and educational facilities. During a press briefing today, Donald Trump told reporters, “I have to say in a very nice way, very respectful way, I’m the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico. Nobody even close.” Hold the phone… You may recall this is the same man who, in November 2018, told congressional leaders he didn’t want anymore relief funds going to Puerto Rico. He also claimed officials in Puerto Rico inflated Hurrican Maria’s death toll in an effort to make him look bad. In June 2019, when Congress was finally able to pass additional relief funds for Puerto Rico, Trump attempted to take credit for the move even though he’d worked to block such funding. At the press event today, Trump tried to say “Democrats don’t want to see” aid to Puerto Rico passed, but the Democratic-led House passed billions in aid to Puerto Rico in February amid Republican objections. Now, I’d sooner bite my tongue than be cynical, but it’s a fact that thousands of Puerto Ricans migrated to Florida after the devastation of Hurricane Maria. And in a race where every vote counts, the timing of this new funding certainly is convenient. Real Clear Politics average of polls in Florida shows Democrat Joe Biden just 1.6 points ahead of the Donald. If Trump loses the Sunshine State’s 29 electoral votes, his path to winning becomes VERY tight.

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Former Pence Aide Endorses Biden, Says Trump Only Concerned With Reelection

Donald Trump smirks during a press event

Donald Trump smirks during a press event
Donald Trump (photo: public domain/Flickr)
Olivia Troye, a former homeland security official who served in Vice President Mike Pence’s office for the coronavirus task force, endorsed Joe Biden for president today. She described her time in the White House (she resigned two months ago) as “terrifying” and said the president “could have saved lives” in his response to the coronavirus pandemic in a video released Thursday. In the video, she says Trump was only concerned with his reelection. From CNN:

A former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence assailed President Donald Trump’s response to the pandemic in a new video Thursday, adding to the growing list of former Trump administration officials who have criticized the President and, in several cases, endorsed his Democratic opponent Joe Biden.

Olivia Troye, who was a homeland security adviser to Pence and his lead staffer on the White House’s coronavirus task force, charged in the two-minute video that Trump failed to protect the American public because he only cared about himself and getting reelected. Troye’s criticism is particularly striking because of her role working on the coronavirus task force, which Pence leads.

“Towards the middle of February, we knew it wasn’t a matter of if Covid would become a big pandemic here, it was a matter of when,” said Troye, who left the White House in late July. “But the President didn’t want to hear that, because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year, and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success?”

At one coronavirus task force meeting, Troye claimed that Trump suggested “maybe this Covid thing is a good thing.”

“I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people,” Troye claimed Trump said at the meeting.

The White House denied Troye’s statements and predictably accused her of being a disgruntled former employee.

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Fact-Checking Trump’s ABC News Townhall

(screen capture via ABC News)
NowThis News fact-checks Donald Trump’s ABC News town hall earlier this week where he took questions from undecided voters. During the session, Trump blamed Joe Biden for not implementing a national face-mask mandate (even though Biden isn’t president) and said he thinks he’s done a “great job” handling the COVID-19 pandemic as the U.S. approaches 200,000 coronavirus-related deaths. This is a terrific quick wrap-up of the event. Hit the play button below.