In this week’s edition of The Josh Marshall Podcast we discuss the Democratic fretfest and barreling toward election day. Watch after the jump …
Trump Losing on ‘Law and Order’
It’s easy to get lost in the big muddy river of polling data and headlines. But before we get further into the day I wanted to discuss a new group of polls that came out yesterday. This was the first batch of quality polls entirely after the GOP convention. The upshot of really all of them is that “law and order” is not only not helping Trump cut into Biden’s lead. Trump appears to be losing that debate on its own terms. When pollsters ask voters which candidate they trust more to handle civil unrest, protests or crime, they’re picking Biden.
WH Defends Trump’s Call For Supporters To Try To Vote Twice. NC Says Not So Fast.
The White House appeared to support a statement made by President Donald Trump on Wednesday urging his supporters to vote twice — a move that would be illegal.
“The president is not suggesting anyone do anything unlawful,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted in a Fox News interview early Thursday, even as the President repeatedly said at an event in North Carolina on Wednesday that voters should send in an absentee ballot early “and then go and vote.”
Continue reading “WH Defends Trump’s Call For Supporters To Try To Vote Twice. NC Says Not So Fast.”
House Oversight Calls For Probe Into Potential Hatch Act Violations At RNC
The House Oversight Committee on Thursday demanded that the Office of Special Counsel investigate reports of “multiple, repeated violations” of the Hatch Act by the Trump administration during the Republican National Convention last week. Continue reading “House Oversight Calls For Probe Into Potential Hatch Act Violations At RNC”
Trump Admin: The COVID Vaccine Will Be Ready By January, But Also By The Election
With the parade of dates for when the Trump administration anticipates seeing a COVID-19 vaccine (October 2020, November 2020, or by the end of this year, or by January 2021, or later in 2021), you can be forgiven for experiencing some confusion.
Continue reading “Trump Admin: The COVID Vaccine Will Be Ready By January, But Also By The Election”
Facebook To Block New Political Advertising In Week Ahead Of Election Day
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the social media company will ban new political ads for the week leading up to Election Day.
The announcement came as the tech executive expressed concerns about how Facebook could be used to manipulate the election in a public post. Zuckerberg said he was “worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country.”
Zuckerberg warned Facebook employees and users that the upcoming election would not be “business as usual,” since more voters than ever before are projected be voting by mail amid the coronavirus pandemic and ballots will continue to be counted well after election night likely delaying final results.
“It’s important that we prepare for this possibility in advance and understand that there could be a period of intense claims and counter-claims as the final results are counted,” Zuckerberg said. “This could be a very heated period.”
Facebook has adopted a relatively modest approach to curbing misinformation on its platform especially as it pertains to the President, who has weaponized social media to stoke fear, sow doubt about the legitimacy of the election and promote false conspiracies on a broad range of issues.
Facebook has shied away from taking the kind of posture put in place by Twitter, whose CEO Jack Dorsey late last year announced plans to ban all political ads on the platform.
Just about a year ahead of the election, in fall 2019, Zuckerberg said he didn’t think it was “right” for a company to “censor politicians or the news in a democracy.” He said at the time that his attitudes were not intended to “help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.”
More recently, amid increasing pressure to buckle down on misinformation across Facebook, especially pertaining to the upcoming election, Zuckerberg said he did not believe it was the responsibility of social media companies to be the “arbiter of truth.”
Thursday’s announcement of a ban on new political advertising amounts to PR optics — an appeasement strategy for Zuckerberg to take some kind of action, but he is perhaps reluctant to make a move bold enough to put a dent in Trump’s campaign objectives. Curbing political ads out just one week before the election is unlikely to have the kind of far-reaching effects that the social media company’s chief executive would likely have its users believe, since many voters will cast their ballots several weeks ahead of the election.
“I generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims,” Zuckerberg said. He added that any ads that began running before the final week ahead of the election will be permitted to continue and advertisers will have the freedom to adjust their targeting during that time.
The company also said it plans to work with election officials to remove false claims about polling conditions in the final 72 hours of the campaign and after Election Day until a winner has been determined.
Nearly 100 Current And Former GOP Leaders Poised To Endorse Biden
Nearly 100 current and former Republican leaders in a group called “Republicans and Independents for Biden” are slated to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Thursday.
Continue reading “Nearly 100 Current And Former GOP Leaders Poised To Endorse Biden”
Black Man Suffocated After Police Put ‘Spit Hood’ Over His Head
The man who suffocated after police in New York’s third-largest city put a “spit hood” over his head was the loving father of five adult children, had some mental health issues but was harmless, and had just arrived in Rochester for a visit with his brother, his aunt said.
Daniel Prude, 41, known to his big Chicago-based family by the nickname “Rell,” died March 30 after he was taken off life support, seven days after the encounter with police in Rochester. Prude, who is Black, was from Chicago.
Continue reading “Black Man Suffocated After Police Put ‘Spit Hood’ Over His Head”
Grifters All the Way Down
This post may take a few deep breaths because it’s hard to have any sympathy for Kyle Rittenhouse. But it’s not about sympathy. TPM Reader BG raises some important legal points – a couple of which had occurred to me as well – about his legal representation. I’ll note as a separate or related matter that Rittenhouse is being represented by a couple of wingnut hucksters, one of whom, Lin Wood, is the celeb right wing lawyer who’s been filing nuisance lawsuits against myriad news organizations on behalf of Nicholas Sandman. From BG …
Rittenhouse is 17, which means he can be a child in need of assistance (CINA) in most states.
He will also be charged as an adult, almost certainly.
Three points:
Barr Says Supposed ‘Epidemic’ Of Police Shooting Black Men Is ‘False Narrative’
Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday that police shootings of Black Americans often aren’t racially motivated and are much less common than portrayed by recent nationwide protests that have called for an end to police violence.
“I don’t think there are two justice systems,” Barr told CNN in an interview where he largely defended President Donald Trump’s law and order campaign message and gushing praise of law enforcement who have employed aggressive tactics to quell social unrest in the aftermath of recent police killings of Black people. “I think the narrative that the police are in some epidemic of shooting unarmed black men is simply a false narrative and also the narrative that’s based on race.”
The comments come as President Donald Trump on Monday compared the Kenosha police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, to a golfer missing a three-foot putt at a tournament, saying, among the “10,000 great acts” by the police, sometimes an officer can “choke” during an arrest. Blake was shot seven times in the back by police.
While Trump has made race-baiting a key feature of his campaign for re-election, Barr has pushed to undermine the message of racial justice demanded by protesters. On Monday, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that he had been in talks with Barr who apparently confirmed that the Justice Department was “working on” efforts to arrest leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement.
In July, Barr told members of the House Judiciary Committee in testimony that the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police was “a shocking event,” and that the police killing of “unarmed” black men is “fortunately quite rare.”
Barr appeared to acknowledge on Wednesday that there are “some situations” where statistics “would suggest” that Black people are treated differently, but he quickly added the caveat that he doesn’t think the distinction is “necessarily racism.”
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has positioned himself in direct opposition with both Barr and Trump, calling on Americans during the Democratic National Convention last month to support him in a fight to wipe out the “stain” of racism that has plagued the country.
When asked about the recent police violence that resulted in the severe injury of Jacob Blake and death of Breonna Taylor, Biden told reporters at an event in Wilmington, Delaware on Wednesday, that the officers involved in both of those shootings should be charged.
“I do think there’s a minimum need to be charged,” Biden said, later adding: “let’s make sure justice is done.”