Republicans are set to hold their own part digital, part in-person convention Aug. 24-27 as the party officially nominates President Trump as its presidential candidate. Continue reading “What We Know So Far About The Unconventional 2020 RNC”
House Passes Bill Reversing Postal Service Changes During Rare Session
WASHINGTON (AP) — With heated debate over mail delays, the House approved legislation in a rare Saturday session that would reverse recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations and send $25 billion to shore up the agency ahead of the November election. Continue reading “House Passes Bill Reversing Postal Service Changes During Rare Session”
Lara Trump Slams DNC For ‘Dismal’ And ‘Depressing’ Vision Of America
Trump campaign senior adviser Lara Trump on Saturday slammed the recent Democratic National Convention for presenting what she called a “dismal” vision of America’s future, that she said would not be repeated at the Republican party’s convention next week.
“What we saw last week from the Democrats, really their entire convention was about bashing Donald Trump, and it was a dark, dismal and really depressing vision of America I think that they presented,” she told NBC in a Saturday Weekend Today interview. Lara Trump is also President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law.
“We are going to have the opposite,” Lara Trump said. “Ours will be hopeful and inspirational and patriotic.” She said that she wanted Republicans at the end of the convention to be convinced “that America continues to be the greatest, most exceptional nation in the world.”
Her comments echo those made by Trump when on Friday he called the Democratic convention the “darkest and angriest and gloomiest” in the country’s history in remarks to a conservative group in Virginia.
Both of the Trumps remarks come after a four-day virtual Democratic convention that culminated Thursday as former Vice President Joe Biden accepted the party’s presidential nomination and speakers throughout the week suggested that President Trump was unfit to carry the country through the coronavirus pandemic which has killed more than 170,000 people in the United States.
Biden on Thursday urged voters to choose what he called “a path of hope and light.”
“If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness,” Biden said.
The senior adviser said of the RNC, that Trump will be a part of each of its four nights as speakers praise his work over the past three and a half years.
“President Trump is the American dream,” she said.
Lara Trump’s remarks sharply contrast the sentiments of the likes of former First Lady Michelle Obama who delivered a fiery keynote speech last week and told Americans that “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” and suggested that the President “is clearly in over his head.”
“He cannot meet this moment,” the former First Lady said. “He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”
Trump Baselessly Accuses ‘Deep State’ At FDA Of Delaying Clinical Trials For COVID Vaccine
President Donald Trump on Saturday baselessly accused the “deep state” at the Federal Drug Administration of purposely making it difficult for drug companies to get people to participate in clinical trials as a deliberate tactic to delay a COVID-19 vaccine until after the election.
The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives! @SteveFDA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2020
“Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd,” Trump wrote, as though the speed of vaccine testing was a targeted attempt to impede his re-election or slow his chance for a victory lap.
While Trump began the tweet with his sweeping — and customary — accusation against the alleged “deep state” that conspiracy theories suggest is embedded in government agencies and actively working against his re-election, Trump concluded the tweet by directly tagging the account of FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, who he had nominated for the job last year.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Saturday called Trump’s tweet “a very dangerous statement,” adding that “even for him, it went beyond the pale.”
“The FDA has a responsibility to approve drugs, judging on their safety and their efficacy, not by a declaration from the White House about speed and politicizing the FDA,” Pelosi said at a rare Saturday news conference ahead of a House vote.
The tweet intensifies past efforts by the President to attack scientists within his administration for challenging his opinions and sometimes untenable timelines. Trump has continuously criticized top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony S. Fauci who is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for not endorsing his opinions about resuming in-person learning and sports games.
In another tweet Saturday, Trump doubled down on his attack on the FDA for its decision to withdraw authorization for emergency use of hydroxychloroquine a treatment for COVID-19 suggesting that “many doctors and scientists disagree with this!”
The President has routinely appeared to reject and undercut recommendations from genuine health experts in favor of sharing unsubstantiated claims from unreliable sources that claim to align with science but in fact have often contributed to the spread of false information about the coronavirus.
In one instance last month, Trump retweeted the viral video of a woman who belonged to a group called “America’s Frontline Doctors” who falsely promoted hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for COVID-19. Further examination of the doctor’s credentials showed that she had history of making false statements — including a claim that endometriosis is caused by sex with demons in dreams.
Pelosi Calls Out Trump For ‘Suppress The Vote Tactic’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Saturday warned voters to ignore President Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to attack both the US Postal Service and the legitimacy of voting by mail, saying that it is all “designed to suppress the vote.”
In addition to ongoing attacks on mail-in voting, Pelosi said the President’s recent threat now to install law enforcement officers at the polling stations, is part of Trump’s intimidation “playbook.”
The House Speaker addressed reporters during a rare Saturday news conference ahead of a House vote over a $25 billion bill to provide much-needed support to the USPS and ban operational changes.
“We’ve seen their playbook,” Pelosi said of the Trump administration, adding, that in her view the President’s tweet Thursday seized on an opportunity to intimidate voters by inviting ICE agents or other law enforcement to patrol polling stations and “instill fear in people.”
“It’s scary, but ignore that,” Pelosi continued. “It’s a suppress the vote tactic, as is the suppressing of the ability of the postal system to deliver on its responsibility, to treat ballots as first class mail and to deliver in a timely fashion.”
Pelosi’s comments come just a day after Trump-allied postmaster general Louis DeJoy testified in a hearing hosted by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs where he vowed that the mail service would continue to do its best to expedite the delivery of all mail ballots, even those with a cheaper (and slower) postage class.
While DeJoy sought to distance himself from Trump’s attack on mail-in voting, he said that he believes it to be a safe and reliable way to cast a ballot.
“The Postal Service is fully capable of delivering the nation’s election mail securely and on time,” DeJoy told lawmakers on Friday.
On Saturday, Pelosi addressed clashes and untended dissatisfaction with DeJoy, saying that the postmaster general had expressed “no intention” of replacing letter collection boxes or sorting machinery that were reportedly removed from rotation in a number of American cities in recent weeks.
The Washington Post noted that the mail sorting machines set aside to be decommissioned this year amounted to 13 percent of the postal service’s stock — compared to three percent in 2018 and five percent in 2019.
“Let us remember that it is a service,” Pelosi said in her remarks Saturday. “No business that I can think of would ever be saddled with what we’ve done to the Postal Service.”
McSally Suggests That Supporters ‘Fast A Meal’ To Come Up With Funds For Her Campaign
Arizona Sen. Martha McSally (R) who is trailing in polls behind a Democratic challenger, recently told supporters to “fast a meal” and donate those funds to her campaign.
In an audio recording obtained by Arizona’s Family, the Republican senator who was endorsed by Trump, explained to her audience that more money would be needed to defeat her opponent Mark Kelly whose fundraising efforts have slotted him above her.
“We’re doing our part to catch up, you know, to get our message out. But it takes resources. So, anybody can give, I’m not ashamed to ask, to invest,” McSally pleaded at a recent campaign in northern Arizona. “If you can give a dollar, five dollars, if you can fast a meal and give what that would be.”
Although she has been a top fundraiser among GOP peers, McSally’s $11 million in cash is still just about half the size of Kelly’s $21 million.
McSally’s comments come as many Americans continue to struggle under the financial duress of a COVID-19 economy that has shattered their livelihood.
McSally’s campaign has said the suggestion to skip a meal was a joke.
Caroline Anderegg, a McSally campaign spokeswoman shrugged pushback, calling it a “dumb, non-story” about a candidate. Anderegg told the Arizona Republic that it was “disgusting” that the Senator’s comments were being used to launch “a misleading character assassination.”
“Martha has written checks to people on her block that can’t afford their groceries,” Anderegg said.
Court To Hear Trump’s Bid To Delay Financial Records Subpoena On Sept. 1
A federal appeals court will hear on Sept. 1, President Donald Trump’s emergency request to put on hold a judge’s ruling that would make it possible for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to enforce a subpoena for his tax returns and other financial records.
Bloomberg reported that the New York appellate court also denied Trump’s request to stay the lower court decision while he appeals to halt the release of records.
Vance had previously agreed not to enforce the subpoena until seven days after the district court ruling — that deadline is set to expire next week.
It remains unclear what will happen to the subpoena in the interim between the August 28 deadline and next month’s hearing. Trump could potentially call on the Supreme Court to place an immediate hold on the subpoena.
The ruling, comes after Trump’s lawyers immediately appealed U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero’s decision rejecting an earlier attempt to shield Trump’s tax returns.
Friday’s ruling is the latest development in an effort begun by Vance’s office last year to subpoena accounting firm Mazars USA for eight years of Trump’s personal and business records as well as his tax returns. Prosecutors have said the documents are essential to their investigation into the Trump Organization.
Report: Bannon Claims He’s Been Talking To Trump In Recent Months
Former top adviser to the President, Steve Bannon, claims he has recently been in touch with President Donald Trump.
A source close to the Trump campaign told CNN that Bannon has spoken about talks with Trump as recently as a few months ago.
The revelation comes as Bannon was arrested Thursday and now faces charges of fraud for allegedly dipping into donations made to a campaign to privately fund a wall at the US-Mexico border.
Trump swiftly began to distance himself from his former strategist and the We Build The Wall fundraising campaign within hours of Bannon’s arrest on Thursday.
A second campaign source told CNN that Bannon and Trump spoke “weeks ago” but just for a few minutes. The source said that the two men were unlikely to ever repair their relationship as the President was displeased with Bannon’s involvement in the wall fundraiser.
During a pool spray on Thursday, when asked about Bannon’s arrest, Trump told reporters that he has not been “dealing” with Bannon “at all.”
“I haven’t been dealing with him for a long period of time,” Trump said, adding, that while Bannon was involved in the Trump campaign, Bannon had also worked for Goldman Sachs and “for a lot of companies.”
Trump added that Bannon had also worked “for a small part of the administration, very early on.” The President appeared to show pity for his former strategist calling Bannon’s arrest “sad.”
Bannon had been forced from his seven-month perch in the White House in 2017, after undercutting the President on North Korea policy, among other things.
Also on Thursday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany drilled down on the effort to forge the appearance of distance between the two men.
“President Trump has not been involved with Steve Bannon since the campaign and the early part of the Administration, and he does not know the people involved with this project,” McEnany said in a statement.
But Trump did know at least two of the “We Build the Wall” project organizers — aside from Bannon, former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach had boasted during a New York Times interview in early 2019 of a phone conversation with Trump in which the President gave enthusiastic approval for the project.
ICYMI: Your TPM Weekend News Roundup
Postmaster General In The Hot Seat
- Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced on Tuesday that he would pause his aggressive overhaul of the U.S. Postal Service until after the election, amid an outcry that changes at the agency would hamper mail-in voting in the November election.
- But a former deputy postmaster general told reporters that he was skeptical of DeJoy’s assurances.
- After a call with DeJoy on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that the postal service chief did not plan to replace the famous blue mail collection boxes that have been removed in some parts of the country. She added that DeJoy did not offer a plan for “adequate overtime” to ensure the timely delivery of mail.
- DeJoy appeared Friday before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where he assured lawmakers that the postal service will still prioritize mail-in ballots, even if they didn’t carry first-class postage.
- However, DeJoy said he did not plan to reinstate high-volume mail sorting machines, confirming that those that had been decommissioned will remain so.
- Catch up on all the key moments from DeJoy’s testimony here.
Another Ex-Trump Official Hit With Federal Charges
- We didn’t see this one coming: Former White House strategist and onetime Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon was indicted on Thursday for allegedly personally cashing in on a fundraising effort to build a wall on the U.S.-southern border.
- TPM has been covering the fundraising effort, dubbed “We Build The Wall,” for the past year.
- In a twist of irony, U.S. Postal Service agents arrested Bannon on a yacht off the coast of Connecticut.
- Trump quickly tried to distance himself from both Bannon and the wall-funding effort, telling reporters he thought the news was “sad” but that he hadn’t been associated with Bannon for some time.
- TPM’s Josh Kovensky took a look at another probe Bannon faces — separate from the border wall venture.
- The entire staff live-blogged every twist and turn of the story here.
The Democratic Virtual Convention
- Over the course of four nights this week, Democrats held a virtual convention to officially deliver the nomination to former Vice President Joe Biden.
- Unsurprisingly, amid Trump’s war on mail-in voting, Democrats focused on the importance of voting early.
- The roll-call vote nominating Biden amounted to an endearing tour of the country and its diversity. A plate of calamari during Rhode Island’s time in the spotlight stole the show. But the restaurant’s owner insists the fried squid is strictly bipartisan.
- During Biden’s closing speech, the former veep drew a sharp contrast between Trump and himself. “I’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness,” Biden said.
- Catch up on what you may have missed with our convention recap podcasts. You can find the final episode of the week right here, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
5 Points On Steve Bannon’s Exiled Chinese Billionaire Yacht Buddy
When Stephen Bannon was released from a Manhattan federal courthouse Thursday, he was met with an unexpected sight: a group of protestors waving flags of the New Federal State of China, an effort backed by Bannon and Guo Wengui, the Chinese billionaire on whose yacht Bannon was detained.
Continue reading “5 Points On Steve Bannon’s Exiled Chinese Billionaire Yacht Buddy”