The President answered a question about his history of racism at Thursday night’s presidential debate by telling moderator Kristen Welker, whose mother is Black, “I am the least racist person in this room.”
“I can’t even see the audience because it’s so dark, but I don’t care,” he added.
Continue reading “Trump’s Last Hurrah Was Saturated With Racist Appeals”
President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden squared off in their final presidential debate Thursday night, less than two weeks before Election Day.
Trump, while restraining himself from the verbal rampage he subjected the audience to during the first debate, gave a very Trumpian performance: lots of hard-to-follow conspiracy theories, and heretofore unfulfilled promises about health care plans. Biden largely dismissed Trump’s confusing accusations about his son, Hunter Biden, and had a chance to talk about his plans for multiple uninterrupted minutes.
While the night doesn’t immediately seem like a needle-mover (which is bad news for Trump), both candidates got a chance to deliver the closing arguments of their campaigns. For Biden, it was a promise to rebuild the country and a vow to restore “the soul of the nation.” For Trump, it was accusations that the Biden family is a “criminal enterprise” that can’t be trusted.
Follow along with the TPM staff below:
This debate went like how I expected the first debate to go: Biden better on the merits but both guys playing to their preferred ways of speaking to the public, their core audiences. Trump wasn’t out of control like he was in the first debate. I thought he might be just as feral; but he wasn’t. I got that wrong.
But that’s a crazy standard. In the first debate Trump showed his absolutely worst self, someone who simply has no business being President. It pushed him from clearly losing to landslide defeat territory. Trump held it together for the first twenty minutes before sliding into conspiracy theories and nonsense. But he never got near the fusillade of petulance and predation we saw three weeks ago. He was better here. But so was Biden.
Biden was sharper in this debate than three weeks ago. I’m not sure whether that’s because he was barely allowed to speak and constantly interrupted last time. But he was better.
President Donald Trump, who spends much of his time in the right-wing fever swamps of Twitter and TV, has come to speak the language — a reality on full display during the last presidential debate of 2020.
But for those of us who don’t live in those worlds, it can be impossible to figure out what he’s talking about.
Back in June we wrote about something called the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal rule-about-rules that seeks to ensure that non-legislative changes to the way the government operates are instituted fairly: With proper notice to the public, a chance to solicit feedback, and due consideration for people who may be harmed.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe again tried to declassify documents that cast doubt on Russia’s 2016 attempt to help President Donald Trump win the election just hours before a 2020 presidential debate, according to Reuters.
Continue reading “Report: Ratcliffe Trying To Pull Off Another Pre-Debate Russia Doc Dump”
The Trump campaign is conducting video surveillance of Philadelphia voters turning in mail-in ballots at drop boxes, according to a New York Times report. Then the campaign is using that footage to make accusations of impropriety when a voter turns in two or three ballots, according to the new report.
Continue reading “NYT: Trump Campaign Is Video-Surveilling Philadelphia Ballot Drop Boxes”
Cost-cutting changes at the U.S. Postal Service championed by the new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy this year created “significant negative service impacts across the country,” an investigation from the Postal Service’s inspector general concluded this week.
Continue reading “DeJoy’s Cost-Cutting Moves Heaped Problems Upon More Problems At USPS, IG Says”
Yet another election dispute in a potentially critical swing state has landed at the Supreme Court’s door step.
Continue reading “GOP Asks SCOTUS To Reinstate Tighter Ballot Deadlines In Critical Swing State”
