Tag: Donald Trump

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Chicago Mayor Sends Coded ‘F*** You’ To Trump

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (screen capture)
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday called out Donald Trump for trying to “foment violence” and offered a coded response for tweets that appeared to threaten Minneapolis rioters protesting the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. From the Chicago Sun-Times:

“We see the game he’s playing because it’s so transparent and he’s not very good at it. He wants to show failures on the part of Democratic local leaders to throw red meat to his base. His goal is to polarize, to destabilize local government and inflame racist urges. And we can absolutely not let him prevail,” Lightfoot said.

“I will code what I really want to say to Donald Trump. It’s two words: It begins with F and ends with YOU.”

On Thursday night, President Trump took to Twitter as protesters surrounded a Minneapolis police station and set fire to it.

He characterized the protesters as “THUGS” and tweeted, “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

On Friday, Lightfoot accused the president with whom she has clashed repeatedly of attempting to “foment violence.” She made no apologies for the vulgar reference that ran contrary to the advice of former First Lady Michelle Obama’s infamous line that, “When they go low, we go high.”

“I am not Michelle Obama,” the mayor said.

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Twitter Tags Trump Tweets With Fact-Checking Label

Donald Trump (image via Flickr/WhiteHouse – public domain)
Over the past three years, Donald Trump’s Twitter habit has put the social media platform in the uncomfortable position of balancing First Amendment rights of expression (by Trump) versus his endless stream of fact-free statements causing the spread of disinformation. For instance, over the past week Trump has tweeted unfounded accusations that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was somehow involved in the death of a former intern. Even the spouse of the deceased aide publicly begged the CEO of Twitter to remove the tweets but to no avail. Today, for the first time, Twitter applied a fact-checking label to some of Trump’s tweets claiming mail-in ballots would lead to overwhelming voter fraud. The label, which reads “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” links to news reports about the Donald’s unsubstantiated claims. A spokesperson for Twitter, Katie Rosborough, told the Washington Post the tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.”

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Poll: Biden Leads Trump By 5 In Swing State Minnesota

L-R Former Vice President Joe Biden, Donald Trump
A new Star Tribune-MPR News-KARE 11 Minnesota poll shows former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by 5 points in the swing state of Minnesota Via the Minnesota Star-Tribune:

The survey, which was released on Monday, found that 49 percent of registered Minnesota voters favor Biden in a head-to-head matchup against the president. Forty-four percent said they’d back Trump, while 7 percent said they remained undecided.

The poll indicates that Biden and Trump are in a dead heat among independents, with 42 percent backing Trump and 41 percent the former vice president. Among independent voters, 17 percent said they were undecided.

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Trump Twitter Rant: “Barack Was Always Playing Golf!”

Donald Trump

Predictably, Donald Trump has become triggered by the fact folks noticed he took time to play golf on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. First, he lashed out at a campaign ad regarding his golf habit. Then, as he’s done many times in the past, he turned his focus on his predecessor claiming Obama was “always” playing golf. Many on social media criticized the Donald for his bad timing as the coronavirus death toll nears 100,000. Plus, the obvious hypocrisy after frequently harping on President Obama playing golf during his 8 years in the White House. Note – at this point in his administration, Obama had played 70 rounds of golf over more than three years. To date, Trump has played golf or visited one of his golf properties 251 times. “Sleepy Joe’s representatives have just put out an ad saying that I went to play golf (exercise) today. They think I should stay in the White House at all times. What they didn’t say is that it’s the first time I’ve played golf in almost 3 months, that Biden was constantly…vacationing, relaxing & making shady deals with other countries, & that Barack was always playing golf, doing much of his traveling in a fume spewing 747 to play golf in Hawaii – Once even teeing off immediately after announcing the gruesome death of a great young man by ISIS!”

Please remember that when it comes to Trump’s hypocrisy, there’s always a tweet:

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NY Times Prints 1000 COVID Obituaries On Front Page

(image via New York Times)
The front page of today’s New York Times lists one-sentence obituaries of 1,000 people who have died from the COVID-19 pandemic here in the United States. With the death toll about to cross the 100,000 mark, those names represent a scant 1 percent of those lost in just over 3 months – an average of 1,100 deaths a day. From the New York Times:

Instead of the articles, photographs or graphics that normally appear on the front page of The New York Times, on Sunday, there is just a list: a long, solemn list of people whose lives were lost to the coronavirus pandemic.

As the death toll from Covid-19 in the United States approaches 100,000, a number expected to be reached in the coming days, editors at The Times have been planning how to mark the grim milestone.

Marc Lacey, National editor, had warned Tom Bodkin, chief creative officer of The Times, that the milestone was coming. “I wanted something that people would look back on in 100 years to understand the toll of what we’re living through,” Mr. Lacey said in an email.

There’s an interactive article on the Times‘ website expounding on the list of those lost and included on the front page. As the Times was prepping its cover story yesterday, Donald Trump played golf at his National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. According to reports, he is playing another round of golf again today. CNN notes this is his 358th visit to one of his properties and his 266th trip to one of his golf clubs since he took office in January 2017. The Biden campaign noted the widely divergent perspectives on the gravity of the COVID-19 threat.

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Trump Plays Golf As U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Approach 100K

According to Bloomberg News (and other sources), Donald Trump headed to the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Virginia today.

President Donald Trump headed to the golf course for the first time in over two months, engaging in his personal passion as well as attempting to show how the country can return to normal after stay-at-home orders taken against the coronavirus.

Trump arrived at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Virginia around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. He was spotted earlier wearing a white polo shirt and signature white “Make America Great Again” cap. The White House doesn’t always confirm Trump’s activities while at his golf courses.

The president’s most recent golf outing was March 8 at the Trump International course in West Palm Beach, Florida. He teed it up with members of the World Series-winning Washington Nationals baseball team, according to images posted by the players on social media. Trump played at the same course on March 7.

In 2014, Trump criticized President Barack Obama for playing golf when there were TWO cases of Ebola in the U.S. As of today, there are 1.6 million cases of COVID-19 which has claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 Americans. And according to the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate has soared to 14.7 percent. But in 2014, when the unemployment rate was 5.8 percent and the Ebola outbreak had been contained, Trump took time to criticize Obama…?

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Trump Rant: “‘Garbage’ Fox News Doing Nothing To Get Me Re-Elected!”

Donald Trump

In a series of tweets today, Donald Trump called out conservative news channel Fox News for “doing nothing” to help his re-election bid this fall. “Many will disagree, but Fox News is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected on November 3rd,” Trump tweeted. “Sure, there are some truly GREAT people on Fox, but you also have some real ‘garbage’ littered all over the network, people like Dummy Juan Williams, Schumerite Chris Hahn, Richard Goodstein, Donna Brazile, Niel Cavuto, and many others,” he continued. “They repeat the worst of the Democrat speaking points, and lies. All of the good is totally nullified, and more. Net Result = BAD! CNN & MSDNC are all in for the Do Nothing Democrats! Fox WAS Great!”

Considering the news network has been extremely pro-Trump during his administration, the virtual backhand was something of a surprise. Among others, former Republican lawmaker Joe Walsh called Trump out for “whining” and tagged Fox News hosts asking if it’s their job to get Trump re-elected. “The biggest crybaby in the history of this planet whines that Fox News isn’t helping him get re-elected. What say you Bret Baier? Is that your job? To help get Trump re-elected? What say you @ Fox News Sunday? Chris Wallace? What say you Dana Perino? Brit Hume?”

Also in TrumpLand today, the Donald offered this word salad when asked about his most recent test for coronavirus: “I tested very positively, in another sense, this morning. I tested positively toward negative, right? No, I tested perfectly this morning — meaning I tested negative. But that’s a way of saying it: positively toward the negative.” America, I give you – the president of the United States.

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How Joe Biden Wins The 2020 Electoral College

Super-smart guy Doug Sosnik, who was White House political director during President Clinton’s successful reelection race, writes for Axios:

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s most likely paths to 270 Electoral College votes:

1. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona: Biden wins all three states — his best option, given the political environment. (see above)

2. Michigan and Pennsylvania + two congressional districts — Nebraska-02 and Maine-02.

3. The Rust Belt: Biden wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

4. Michigan and the Sunbelt: Biden carries Michigan, Arizona and North Carolina.

5. Florida +1: Biden carries Florida, getting him to 261 electoral votes. A win in any of the other battleground states would put him well past 270.

The bottom line … Biden’s best strategy:

• Make putting Michigan out of reach for Trump the top priority. • Lock up Pennsylvania. • Prioritize winning Arizona, Maine-02 and Nebraska-02. • Focus remaining resources on Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida.

Read Doug’s full analysis, “The Post-Political-Realignment Electoral College Map,” here.

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Irony Of The Day: Trump Calls Obama ‘Grossly Incompetent’

L-R Former President Barack Obama, Donald Trump
After Barack Obama offered some veiled criticism of the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic during two virtual commencement addresses he gave on Saturday, Donald Trump responded today calling the former president “grossly incompetent.” For over three years, Obama refrained from any comment on the Trump administration despite Donald Trump blaming the former president for a multitude of issues. Those include claims of “broken tests” for the coronavirus (a virus that didn’t exist when Obama left office) and “bare cupboards” of federal medical supplies three years into the Trump administration. But during an online speech to 2020 graduates, Obama referenced the current efforts to end the coronavirus health threat without using Trump’s name. “More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said during Saturday’s speech. “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.” On Sunday, Trump was asked by reporters about Obama’s comments as he entered the White House. “Look, he was an incompetent president, that’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent,” said Trump. It goes without saying that Obama dealt with H1N1 so well that most Americans forgot about it. He also handled Ebola so expertly that only two people contracted it within the U.S. and they both recovered. And, of course, Obama gave Trump a thriving economy and a comprehensive pandemic response plan. Some conservatives denounced Obama for saying anything at all pointing to a tradition of previous presidents withholding criticism of their successors. But, Trump has spent three years blaming Obama for everything he possibly can, which is also, a break from tradition. My take is: Trump set the tone with his attacks on the previous administration. At some point, you do begin to reap what you sow. So, there’s that…

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Obama: Pandemic Has Torn Back Curtain On Idea Folks In Charge Know What They’re Doing

Former President Barack Obama (screen capture)
During a virtual commencement address to the graduates of 74 historically black colleges and universities across the United States on Saturday, former President Barack Obama took a veiled swipe at the nation’s leaders for the inconsistent handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying “a lot of them are not even pretending to be in charge.” He also referenced the shooting death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, a black man shot in Georgia while jogging through a white neighborhood when two white men attempted to stop him.

“You’re being asked to find your way in the world in the middle of a devastating pandemic and terrible recession. The timing is not ideal. And let’s be honest. A disease like this just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country.

“We see it in the disproportionate impact of covid-19 on our communities, just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog, and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning.

“Injustice like this isn’t new. What is new is that so much of your generation has woken up to the fact that the status quo needs fixing; that the old ways of doing things don’t work; that it doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick; and that our society and democracy only works when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.

“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

Cue the Trump Twitter rant in 3, 2, 1…