Tag: Donald Trump

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News Round-Up: September 2, 2020

Paleontologist and Crossfit athlete Francesc Gascó (photo: Lee Faircloth)
Some news stories you might have missed: • InstaHunks: Paleontologist Francesc Gascó (above) says good night from Madrid. You can follow him on the Gram of Insta here. • MetroWeekly: A Missouri man, Freddie Doyle, has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for attempting to shoot patrons of an LGBTQ bar in St. Louis with an AR-15-style rifle. After being apprehended, Doyle told police he would “have killed those faggots” if he had more time. • Fox News: New polling from three battleground states show Joe Biden leading Donald Trump.

ARIZONA – Joe Biden 49% Donald Trump 40%

NORTH CAROLINA – Joe Biden 50% Donald Trump 46%

WISCONSIN – Joe Biden 50% Donald Trump 42%

• Washington Blade: Openly gay Mayor Alex Morse of Holyoke fell short in his attempt to unseat longtime Congressman Richard Neal. In the weeks leading up to the primary, Morse became the target of an ugly, homophobic smear campaign. • New York Times: Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, will travel Thursday to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to visit a city still reeling from the Aug. 23 police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake. The Bidens will be meeting with Mr. Blake’s father and other family members during the trip. During Donald Trump’s recent visit, the president did not mention Mr. Blake, who was paralyzed in the shooting, or speak with his family. • New Music: Out artist Michael Fairman’s music video for “Other Side” depicts some of the biggest social issues of 2020 including the Covid-19 pandemic, the call to stomp out systemic racism, domestic violence, LGBTQ equality, and the rights of the disabled. A new artist to me, Fairman’s packing some serious vocals (and biceps) here.

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Podcast: Cher Stumps For Biden, LGBTQ Icon Honored By Her State, New Music From NIKO

The Randy Report podcast

The Randy Report podcast delivers the week's top stories in a quick, convenient podcast - 'the 60 Minutes of gay news - only shorter' In this week’s podcast: • The Trump campaign claims the Donald is the “most pro-gay president in American history” – but don’t fall for that • A federal court rules in favor of a gay couple granting their daughter her legal US citizenship • Scientists discover an HIV strain resistant to PrEP • LGBTQ icon Marsha P Johnson gets honored in her home state • The one and only Cher raises $2 million for Joe Biden hosting an LGBTQ fund-raiser • Out singer/songwriter NIKO dropped his newest single “Try” dedicated to his partner All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report

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Trump Rants Over Alleged Mystery Medical Procedure

Donald Trump
From Raw Story:

President Donald Trump moaned about renewed speculation about his sudden visit last year to the Walter Reed Medical Center.

New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt reports in his new book that Vice President Mike Pence was put on standby in November 2019 when the president was rushed on a Saturday afternoon to the military hospital, which the White House later explained as routine testing, but others have speculated was more serious.

Schmidt’s book claims Pence was placed on standby if the president had to undergo a medical procedure that would require anesthesia, although he didn’t specify the sourcing of that claim.

In other Trump news, folks were gagging as Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham last night that there are people in black uniforms on planes controlling the streets and compared police officers who shoot civilians to a golfer who ‘chokes’ on a three-foot putt. Watch the clips below and make up your own mind.

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Trump Ignored Warnings Of Rising Infections While Urging States To Reopen

Donald Trump
Yahoo News reports Donald Trump ignored warnings from the White House coronavirus task force about rising infection rates for months.

Even as President Trump spurred states to lift lockdown measures and resume normal economic activity in the early summer, reports from his own White House coronavirus task force were presenting regular evidence that infections were rising in many parts of the country.

Critics have maintained that by not acting on evidence that the virus was not in remission, Trump and his advisers only prolonged the nation’s battle with the pandemic, which has killed more than 180,000 Americans to date.

The task force reports are customarily not made public, but eight of them from June and July had been requested late last month by the coronavirus subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee.

The subcommittee is headed by Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., a leading House Democrat who is also a close ally of Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president. Biden has made the absence of a national plan to deal with the coronavirus a centerpiece of his campaign.

“Rather than being straight with the American people and creating a national plan to fix the problem,” Clyburn said in a statement on Monday morning, “the President and his enablers kept these alarming reports private while publicly downplaying the threat to millions of Americans.”

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Trump’s Convention Speech Draws Fewer Viewers Than Biden

L-R President Donald Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden
I realize I haven’t posted much on this week’s Republican National Convention, mainly because who could possibly keep up with the fact-checking needed to counter the huge amount of misinformation coming from the speakers. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale does a great job of pointing out many of Donald Trump’s lies from his renomination speech last night. By the way, CNN’s Brian Stelter reports news that is sure to burn the Donald: more folks tuned in for former Vice President Joe Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention last week than Trump’s lie-fest on Thursday night.

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Guess What The Top Performing Political Facebook Posts Are?

New York Times tech journalist Kevin Roose explains how Donald Trump could very well win a second term in the White House. Every morning, Roose checks the top-performing Facebook link posts by U.S. pages and shares them via a Twitter account. If you’re a moderate, or land left of center politically, you may not be aware (or see) how Trump’s ‘silent majority’ is still out there. From the New York Times:

Most days, the leader board looks roughly the same: conservative post after conservative post, with the occasional liberal interloper.

But what sticks out, when you dig in to the data, is just how dominant the Facebook right truly is. Pro-Trump political influencers have spent years building a well-oiled media machine that swarms around every major news story, creating a torrent of viral commentary that reliably drowns out both the mainstream media and the liberal opposition.

The result is a kind of parallel media universe that left-of-center Facebook users may never encounter, but that has been stunningly effective in shaping its own version of reality.

Inside the right-wing Facebook bubble, President Trump’s response to Covid-19 has been strong and effective, Joe Biden is barely capable of forming sentences, and Black Lives Matter is a dangerous group of violent looters.

Mr. Trump and his supporters are betting that, despite being behind Mr. Biden in the polls, a “silent majority” will carry him to re-election.

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Donald Trump’s Sister: “He Has No Principles. None. None.”

Donald Trump

Donald Trump during a White House press briefing (public domain)
Quite the bombshell just days before the Republican National Convention. It turns out Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, secretly recorded her aunt and the Donald’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, as a source for her family tell-all book. From the Washington Post:

“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”

Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”

In the weeks since Mary Trump’s tell-all book about her uncle has been released, she’s been questioned about the source of some of the information, such as her allegation that Trump paid a friend to take his SATs to enable him to transfer into the University of Pennsylvania. Nowhere in the book does she say that she recorded conversations with her aunt.

In response to a question from The Washington Post about how she knew the president paid someone to take the SATs, Mary Trump revealed that she had surreptitiously taped 15 hours of face-to-face conversations with Barry in 2018 and 2019. She provided The Post with previously unreleased transcripts and audio excerpts, which include exchanges that are not in her book.

As the Post points out, under New York law, it is legal to tape a conversation with the consent of one party, which in this case was Mary Trump. In the recordings, Judge Barry acknowledges the only thing Donald ever accomplished on his own were the six corporate bankruptcies his companies filed. Click over to the Washington Post to hear the Trumpster’s own sister say he has no principles and how they grew apart because he took credit for her success as a federal judge. The Trump campaign brushed the news aside calling it “sibling rivalry.”

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Dem Convention Highlight – Teen Inspires Millions Sharing His Journey Stuttering

L-R Brayden Harrington, Donald Trump
I thought I posted this early today. By far, my favorite moment of the last night of the Democratic presidential convention was the incredible appearance by 13-year-old Brayden Harrington. The teen spoke at the DNC about how he bonded with Joe Biden because they both have a stutter. “He told me that we were members of the same club — we stutter.”

Just some of the reactions on the Twitter:

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Former DHS Official Warns Of 2nd Term For Trump

Former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, longtime Republican and former Trump official Miles Taylor warned about Donald Trump if he achieves a second term, “You will see the president align with dictators around the world.” Republican Voters Against Trump has released a new Miles Taylor ad in which the former DHS chief of staff revealed he will vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.