Summary
Here’s a summary of today’s events:
- Trump attempts to save himself in battleground states as Covid cases surge. With little more than two weeks to reverse his dismal standing in the polls, and amid a coronavirus resurgence that could sink his pursuit of a second term, Donald Trump has embarked on a tour of battleground states.
- National guard spy plane monitored George Floyd protest in Sacramento suburb. A peaceful protest in a sleepy and affluent suburb that is home to the head of the California national guard was among four demonstrations monitored by national guard spy planes, according to a newspaper report.
- Buttigieg to Fox News Sunday: Barrett nomination puts my marriage in danger. Pete Buttigieg, a former challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination and a member of Joe Biden’s transition team, believes his own marriage is under threat from Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.
- Gretchen Whitmer: Trump ‘inciting domestic terrorism’ with ‘Lock her up!’ rally chant. The governor of Michigan, who was the subject of a rightwing plot to kidnap and possibly kill her over coronavirus lockdown measures, has accused Trump of “inspiring and incentivizing domestic terrorism”.
- US power in Asia Pacific falls amid mishandling of Covid, Australia’s Lowy Institute finds. The United States remains the top power in the Indo-Pacific but has suffered the biggest relative fall in its standing in the region over the past year, partly because of the loss of prestige over the mishandling of Covid-19, according to the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index.
- Midwest Covid surge may be linked to Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. According to the Washington Post, a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota may be linked to a Covid-19 outbreak in the upper Midwest.
- Iran hails lifting of 13-year UN arms embargo as ‘momentous day’. Iranian officials have hailed the lifting of a 13-year UN arms embargo on their military as a momentous day, claiming they were once again free to buy and sell conventional weapons in an effort to strengthen their country’s security.
The Washington Post is already looking ahead to the contest to become the Republican party’s presidential nominee in 2024, regardless of whether Donald Trump sinks or swims on 3 November.
In an opinion piece Sunday penned by the respected political analyst and talk show host Hugh Hewitt, the newspaper lists 20 names of prominent and not-so-prominent Republican governors, senators, congressmen and women and two Trumps – Don Jr and Ivanka – he thinks are likely to throw hats into what promises to be a crowded ring.
Some of the names are to be expected, vice-president Mike Pence and former challengers Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, both currently US senators, among them.
Others have served in the Trump administration, such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
And then there are some, including several friends and close allies of the president, considered “rising stars”, including governors Ron DeSantis (Florida) and Kristi Noem (South Dakota), and senators Rick Scott, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Tim Scott, Pat Toomey and Ben Sasse, with whom Trump is currently feuding.
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Hewitt writes, quoting the Amity Island police chief Martin Brody from the movie Jaws. “Republicans are going to need bigger stages than even 2015’s massive debate venues.” He says the race will begin in earnest on the morning of 4 November.
Interestingly, Hewitt notes the field could drop by two if Trump loses next month. His theory? Donald Trump seeks revenge after his defeat by Joe Biden and runs again for a second term in 2024, prompting his children to drop out of the race and try again in 2028.
Donald Trump has arrived at the Orange County home of Palmer Luckey, the 28-year-old tech entrepreneur who designed the Oculus Rift head-mounted virtual reality display, for tonight’s private fundraiser.
A White House pool report sets the scene as both critics and supporters have rallied nearby:
En route, the motorcade passed a half dozen Biden supporters holding a sign that read: “Honk if you vote Democrat.”
As the motorcade drove through Newport Beach, thousands of Trump supporters lined the streets. The throng of supporters included people with hoisting U.S. flags, Trump flags and Trump placards. Many people wore MAGA hats and other Trump apparel.
Some chanted “USA” as the motorcade passed.
A large crowd lined the street outisde the fundraiser in Newport Beach, apparently waiting to get into the residence. Scores of people shouted at disparaging comments about the news media as the pool exited the press vans and walked passed them.
Several men yelled: “Fake news!”
A man called out: “Where’s Hunter!”
Another man yelled: “The computer is real” and “Don’t spin this event.”
An older woman sitting in a golf cart called out: “The lying press has arrived.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sunday reported 53,157 new coronavirus cases, taking the total to 8,081,489. The number of deaths has risen by 593 to 218,511, the health protection agency said.
The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
A peaceful protest in a sleepy and affluent suburb that is home to the head of the California national guard was among four demonstrations monitored by national guard spy planes, according to a Los Angeles Times report.
The planes flew over several cities in early June, to monitor street protests following the police killing of George Floyd, triggering concerns the military was improperly gathering intelligence on US citizens, the newspaper reported.
Three reconnaissance planes watched demonstrations in Minneapolis, Phoenix and Washington DC that drew large crowds and were marred by violence. But the target of the fourth plane was the prosperous Sacramento suburb of El Dorado Hills, where much smaller rallies were entirely peaceful, the Times said.
Local and state authorities have not explained how and why that neighborhood was chosen when other cities that saw property destruction and street clashes amid large protests, including Los Angeles and Oakland, were not.
Twitter has removed a “misleading” tweet by a top US coronavirus adviser for violating its Covid-19 information policy.
Dr Scott Atlas has downplayed the importance of masks in stopping the spread of infection – despite the health experts widely endorsing the containment measure. On Sunday, he tweeted: “Masks work? NO.”
Twitter Inc removed the tweet on Sunday, saying it violated its misleading information policy on Covid-19, which targets statements that have been confirmed to be false or misleading by subject-matter experts.
Donald Trump’s advisor – whose views align with the president’s own on mask-wearing, if not with the medical establishment – has been criticized by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for spreading misinformation.
“Everything he says is false,” Robert Redfield said about Atlas, NBC reported. Redfield later confirmed he had been talking about Atlas.
Biden: ‘This guy’s gone around the bend if he thinks we’ve turned the corner'
Joe Biden urged North Carolina residents to cast ballots as soon as possible at a drive-in rally on Sunday in Durham, part of the Research Triangle region that is a traditional Democratic stronghold.
“Go vote today and don’t just vote for me and Senator Harris,” the former vice-president said in his 20-minute remarks at Riverside High School. “You’ve got a Governor’s race and a Senate race. A record number of black women on the ballot, Congress and Lt Governor, Labor Commissioner and the courts. Folks they’re ready to deliver for North Carolina families. So vote, vote. It’s time.”
Biden also criticized Donald Trump for saying over the weekend that the United States had “turned the corner” in the coronavirus pandemic, noting that the rate of new cases across the country has risen to the highest level in months.
“As my grandfather would say, ‘This guy’s gone around the bend if he thinks we’ve turned the corner,’” Biden said. “Things are getting worse, and he continues to lie to us about circumstances.”
Biden’s pick for vice president, California senator Kamala Harris, canceled in-person events over the weekend as a precaution after an aide tested positive for Covid-19. She will return to the campaign trail on Monday with a visit to Florida to mark that state’s first day of early in-person voting.
North Carolina, a battleground state where 1.4m (or 20%) of the state’s registered voters had already voted as of Sunday morning, is considered criticial to Donald Trump’s re-election hopes.
Updated
Healthcare workers and high-risk populations will be prioritized for vaccination against the coronavirus in New York when a candidate is approved, governor Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday.
He announced details of a preliminary five-stage vaccine rollout plan – here’s a summary:
- Phase 1: healthcare workers in patient-care settings, long-term care facility workers and some long-term care residents
- Phase 2: first responders, school staff, other public-facing frontline workers and people whose health conditions put them at extreme risk
- Phase 3: people over 65
- Phase 4: all other essential workers
- Phase 5: healthy adults and children
Prioritization would also vary by geographic location based on the prevalence of the virus, the governor said.
Midwest Covid surge may be linked to Sturgis Motorcycle Rally
According to the Washington Post, a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota may be linked to a Covid-19 outbreak in the upper Midwest:
Within weeks of the gathering, the Dakotas, along with Wyoming, Minnesota and Montana, were leading the nation in new coronavirus infections per capita.
Public health officials confirmed to the Post that so far, more than 330 coronavirus cases have been officially tied to the rally, resulting in at least one death. Experts also warned that the spread will likely worsen in the fall and winter months. One epidemiologist called the rally and other public gatherings that violate CDC recommendations “the weakest link in the chain” that eventually becomes “a risk to everybody”.
“Holding a half-million-person rally in the midst of a pandemic is emblematic of a nation as a whole that maybe isn’t taking [the novel coronavirus] as seriously as we should,” said Josh Michaud of the Kaiser Family Foundation
Analysts also blame state Republican officials’ response to the outbreak. South Dakota does not enforce any regulations to combat the spread of the virus.
In light of Gretchen Whitmer’s comments today about the plot to kidnap her and Donald Trump’s reaction to it, here’s a taste and a link to Lois Beckett’s piece today on guns, power and far-right thought…
Josh Horwitz has been an American gun control activist for nearly 30 years. In 2009, he co-wrote a book warning that the idea of armed revolt against the government was at the center of the US gun rights movement.
Now, after a year that has seen heavily armed men show up at state capitols in Virginia, Michigan, Idaho and elsewhere to confront Democratic lawmakers over gun control and coronavirus restrictions, more Americans are taking gun owners’ rhetoric about “tyrants” seriously. Some of the same armed protesters who showed up at Michigan’s state house and at a pro-gun rally this summer were charged last week with conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s governor and put her on trial for tyranny.
Other members of the “boogaloo” movement have allegedly murdered law enforcement officers in California and plotted acts of violence across the country in hopes of sparking a civil war.
Horowitz spoke to the Guardian about how mainstream the idea of insurrection has become in American politics, and why lawmakers have failed to challenge it for decades.
In Las Vegas, Donald Trump has decided to go to church. Here’s the latest pool report:
Motorcade arrived at the International Church of Las Vegas at 9.14am PT.
Pool did not see POTUS enter the church.
From the church website: “ICLV is a multicultural, healing, prophetic church all about giving the grace of Jesus to Las Vegas. Where sin abounds, let grace abound much more. We are passionate about bringing the grace and love of Jesus Christ to the hurting in our community and around the world through passionate worship, sacrificial giving, and an impartation of the Spirit of God.”
“Where sin abounds”, eh? I refer to my single Greatest Hit (which should make for a short and cheap cash-in album 10 years from now).
ouch on @guardian live feed pic.twitter.com/ZdQghTpnYE
— David Ziggy Greene / S&H illustrated reports (@SaHreports) June 2, 2020
Updated
More now from Republican chair Ronna McDaniel’s interview with ABC, the one in which, depressingly predictably, she declined to condemn the QAnon conspiracy theory. Which… tells you a lot about the Republican base.
McDaniel was also asked about a spat between Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, one of the GOP figures with an eye on a White House run in 2024, and the man in the Oval Office now, Donald J Trump. This is some of what Sasse told his constituents about Trump this week:
It isn’t just that he fails to lead our allies, it’s that we – the United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership. The way he treats women and spends like a – a drunken sailor. The ways I criticized President Obama for that kind of spending, I’ve criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His – his family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He flirted with white supremacists.
Sasse also said he feared a Republican “bloodbath” in the Senate – which Democrats look likely to retake. Oddly enough, McDaniel wasn’t having it:
“Everything that Ben Sasse said in that recording does not resemble the president that has lead our country out of this pandemic. He’s lead us to a great economy before this. … And the president has unprecedented approval with the Republican party.
“Ben’s been there for a long time. It’s not surprising. It’s the only time he gets news is when he criticises this president. But the party, and the energy we’re seeing on the ground, and the rallies, and what we’re seeing for this president is unprecedented in terms of the support he’s receiving from Republicans across the country.”
Implausibly, but also entirely to standard for election year boilerplate, McDaniel also said she was “not worried about Washington Beltway politics”. Asked if she was “starting to see Republican senators running on a separate track from President Trump?”, she said: “I’m not. I think all of them have been running those similar races along.
“Here’s what I’m going to tell you. I am seeing more enthusiasm than I saw in 2016. I study the data every day. We know that our voters are going to turn out on election day. They don’t trust the mail-in balloting as much. They are getting out in these early vote states right now. We want them to get out. We want them to turn in their absentee votes.
“But we are seeing this huge energy and we are seeing really great numbers coming out for the president. And this is a race. And any Republican that doesn’t recognize that running with the president is going to help them is hurting themselves in the long run.”
A couple of Covid-19 updates from around the states. Seven deaths from the virus were reported in New York yesterday, while of the 128,763 tests recorded, 1,390 were positive (1.08% of total). New York governor Andrew Cuomo also said the state’s ski resorts can reopen from 6 November, but indoor facilities such as restaurants and cafes will operate at 50% capacity and ski lifts can only be shared by members of the same party.
Meanwhile in South Carolina, 12 deaths from the virus were recorded and 722 new cases confirmed.
Illinois recorded its most new cases of Covid-19 in a day on Friday, and the state’s governor, JB Pritzker, has put the blame on the Trump administration.
“People are not following the mitigations, because the modeling is so bad at the leadership level, the federal level,” the Democratic governor told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “We are trying to get the word out and you’re trying to continue to convince people to do the right thing but it is the president’s allies in our state, all across the state, who are simply saying to people don’t pay any attention to the mitigations, don’t follow the rules.”
Pritzker blamed Trump personally for the rise. “He’s modeling bad behavior. He doesn’t wear a mask in public. He has rallies where they don’t encourage people to wear masks in public,” Pritzker said. “Truly, this is now rhetoric that people understand, particularly in rural areas in my state, ‘Well, the president doesn’t wear a mask; we don’t need to wear a mask. It’s not that dangerous.’ The truth of the matter is that it is very dangerous.”
Josh Horwitz says the concept of a violent insurrection is at the heart of American gun culture; and that guns will be used to settle political disputes. My colleague Lois Beckett spoke to him about how mainstream the idea of insurrection has become in American politics, and why lawmakers have failed to challenge it for decades.
You argue in your book that the idea of violent insurrection against the American government is at the heart of American gun culture. What do you mean by that?
There’s a belief among some American gun owners that the second amendment is highly individualized and was placed in the constitution as an individual right to fight government tyranny. Therefore, each individual has the right to own whatever and however many weapons they want, free from any government interference. A licensing law or a universal background check law would mean the government knows who’s got a gun. If you believe there’s an individual right to insurrection, you can’t have any gun laws.
The drive to purchase semi-automatic assault weapons, like AR-15s, those weapons are often not purchased for self-defense, but for fear of government tyranny.
When the NRA says, “Vote Freedom First”, it’s not “Vote self-defense first”. They mean you get to decide when the government becomes tyrannical. The problem is that one person’s tyranny is another’s universal healthcare bill.
Is this concept of “insurrection” as the reason Americans should have unrestricted gun rights a very fringe idea?
It’s not every gun owner. But this movement is way larger than people think. And guns are now seen by a large portion of that community as a tool for political dissent.
When National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre says things like, “The guys with the guns make the rules”, or politicians and elected officials say, “We will rely on second amendment remedies”, what they mean is that people with guns will, in fact, set the political agenda and settle political disputes. That is a profoundly undemocratic idea. As Abe Lincoln famously said, “Any appeal from the ballot box to the bullet box must fail.” We are a country based on the rule of law. Guns don’t make you a super citizen with the ability to make special rules or have special political influence because you happen to be armed.
You can read the full article below:
Democratic senator Chris Coons says expanding the supreme court could be one measure enacted by Joe Biden if he wins next month’s presidential election.
If, as expected, Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed by the Republican-held Senate in the coming weeks then the supreme court will have a clear majority of conservative justices. One tactic proposed by Democrats would be to expand the court and appoint more liberal justices. Like Biden, Coons said he would be open to the measure.
“[Republicans are] doing this to get someone on the court just in time, a week after the election, to take away critical health care protections from a majority of Americans, we need to focus on that,” Coons told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “And then if we happen to be in the fact pattern where we have a President Biden who will have to look at what the right steps are to rebalance our federal judiciary.”
Health secretary Alex Azar says that Covid-19 case are on the rise in the US because of “mitigation fatigue” and colder weather.
“Cases are increasing,” Azar said on NBC’s Meet The Press. “We’re seeing this happen because we’re getting colder weather and were losing that natural social distancing that happens from being out of doors.”
When host Chuck Todd asked why it was difficult for Donald Trump to accept the message that public health measures are important to stop the virus - the president has continued holding large rallies - Azar suggested it was not just a problem for America.
“I think it is a difficult message for all Western democracies,” Azar said. “We’re seeing that in Europe, people are tired … we’re so close. Hang in there with us, we are so close.”
Azar attended an indoor Trump rally in Florida, where many did not wear masks. The health secretary admitted the event was problematic. “We encourage people to wear face coverings and I wish everybody there would have worn face coverings and maintained social distancing,” he said.
Whitmer: Trump is incentivising domestic terrorism
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has been speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press about the coronavirus situation in her state, and of course Donald Trump’s encouragement of chants of “Lock her up!” aimed at her at a rally in the state on Saturday.
“It’s incredibly disturbing,” Whitmer said, “that the president of the United States, 10 days after a plot to kidnap me, put me on trial and execute me was uncovered, the president is at it again and inspiring and incentivising and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism.
“It is wrong. It’s got to end. It is dangerous not just for me and my family, but for public servants everywhere who are doing their jobs and trying to protect their fellow Americans. People of goodwill on both sides of the aisle need to step up and call this out and bring the heat down. This is the United States of America. We do not tolerate actions like that.
“He has given comfort to and that’s why we all have to be in this together.”
Report here – it will update:
Buttigieg: Barrett nomination threatens my marriage
Pete Buttigieg, a former challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination and a member of Joe Biden’s transition team, believes his own marriage is under threat from Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Buttigieg, who married his husband Chasten in 2018, indicated that the court’s 2015 decision that made same-sex marriage legal was among a number of progressive rulings a strong conservative majority could look to overturn.
Republicans are seeking to seat Barrett before the 3 November general election and the Senate judiciary committee will vote this week on forwarding her nomination to a full floor vote.
“Right now as we speak the pre-existing condition [healthcare] coverage of millions of Americans might depend on what is about to happen in the Senate with regard to this justice,” Buttigieg said.
“My marriage might depend on what is about to happen in the Senate with regard to this justice. So many issues are on the line.”
14th amendment rights to same-sex marriage were enshrined in Obergefell v Hodges, the culmination of a years-long fight incorporating challenges from several states, and decided by the landmark 5-4 ruling.
Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said Republicans pushing through Barrett’s nomination days before the election, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, sent the wrong message to voters.
“It’s not in the spirit of our constitution, or our legal system, or political system for them to do this,” he said. “Most Americans believe that the American people ought to have a say. We’re not talking about an election that’s coming up, we’re in the middle of an election, millions of Americans are voting and want their voice to be heard.”
As for Republicans prioritizing the nomination over the pandemic, he added: “There’s an enormous amount of frustration that this Senate can’t even bring itself, with Mitch McConnell, to vote through a Covid relief package. People are suffering, people are hurting, there’s no clear end in sight.
“There’s been a bill we brought to them months ago coming out of the house, they won’t touch it, they won’t do anything but suddenly they have time to rush through a nomination that the American people don’t want.
“Whatever specific word you use for it, wrong is the word I would use.”
Buttigieg defended himself against a claim from Wallace that he had talked about expanding the court to 15 justices during the primaries, so-called court packing.
“My views haven’t changed,” he said. “Bipartisan reform with the purpose of reducing the politicisation of the supreme court is a really promising idea. Let’s also be clear that a president can’t just snap their fingers and do it.”
A CBS News poll says that Joe Biden is leading in two battleground states, Arizona and Wisconsin, both of which were won by Donald Trump in the 2016 election. According to the poll, Biden leads by five percentage points in Wisconsin and three percentage points in Arizona. Both states have large groups of older voters, and Trump’s lead in that demographic has shrunk since 2016. In Arizona, 46% of voters over the age of 65 believe Trump’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has put older people at risk.
The chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, is on ABC’s This Week. Her uncle, Mitt Romney, recently condemned Donald Trump for failing to distance himself from the “absurd and dangerous” QAnon conspiracy theory. McDaniel is asked whether she condemns the conspiracy theory, which has been linked to acts of violence.
McDaniel, dismally, does not condemn QAnon.
“I knew you were going to ask me that question,” she tells host George Stephanopoulos. “I knew it because it’s something the voters are not even thinking about. It’s a fringe group. It’s not part of our party. The vice president said, I dismiss it out of hand. The president said, you know what, I don’t know anything about this group. But, of course, you’re going to ask me about that because it has absolutely nothing to do with this election.”
McDaniel is then asked explicitly if she condemns the group. “Antifa is burning down cities right now,” she says. “I just told you, dismiss them out of hand. They are a fringe group.”
The problem is that QAnon is far from a “fringe group” in the Republican party and several candidates in the very party that McDaniel runs believe in it. Our southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, spoke to one such person for a recent article:
Pelosi: the biggest antidote to Trump's 'poison' is the vote
Pelosi was also asked on ABC about Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Michigan, in which he made light of a plot to kidnap the state’s Democratic governor. The crowd responded to Trump’s comments about Gretchen Whitmer on Saturday with chants of “lock her up”.
JUST IN: Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells @GStephanopoulos Trump’s rhetoric at Michigan rally was “irresponsible.”
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 18, 2020
“The president has to realize that words of the president of the United States weigh a ton … the biggest antidote to his poison is the vote.” https://t.co/qdyRUdx4xE pic.twitter.com/KDp2DiwMVp
“The president has to realize that the words of the president of the United States weigh a ton,” Pelosi said. “And in our political dialogue, to inject fear tactics into it, especially a woman governor and her family, is so irresponsible.”
Pelosi added that she believes the president’s rhetoric is turning voters against him. “But the people have awakened to him, 26 million people already voting,” she said. “The biggest antidote to his poison is the vote.”
House speaker Nancy Pelosi has appeared on ABC’s This Week and warned that a new economic stimulus must be agreed in the next 48 hours with treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin if it is to be passed before the election. Mnuchin spoke on the phone about a possible agreement on Saturday night.
“The 48 only relates to if we want to get it done before the election, which we do,” Pelosi said.
On Saturday night, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hamill, tweeted that Democrats and Republicans were still some distance apart on the stimulus talks. “While there was some encouraging news on testing, there remains work to do to ensure there is a comprehensive testing plan that includes contact tracing and additional measures to address the virus’ disproportionate impact on communities of color,” he wrote.
Lara Trump was also asked about the president’s actions at a rally on Saturday when he attacked Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. More than a dozen men have been charged over a plot to kidnap Whitmer and Donald Trump told the crowd at his rally that “They said she was threatened. And she blamed me. Hopefully you’ll be sending her packing pretty soon.” The crowd responded with chants of “lock her up”.
When asked if the President should tone down his rhetoric against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Trump campaign senior adviser Lara Trump says, "He wasn't doing anything, I don't think, to provoke people to threaten this woman at all. He was having fun at a Trump rally" #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/Hm9GIWeH5d
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) October 18, 2020
Lara Trump defended her father-in-law over the comments during her appearance on CNN. “He wasn’t doing anything, I don’t think, to provoke people to threaten this woman at all,” she said. “He was having fun at a Trump rally”.
I’m not sure how many people think a kidnap plot qualifies as “fun”, but I guess Lara Trump is one of them. You can read more about Trump’s rally below:
Updated
Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and an advisor to his campaign, is on CNN’s State of the Union. During a testy interview with Jake Tapper she is asked about a moment when she appeared to mock Joe Biden over the stutter he overcame as a child.
Trump says she had no idea that Biden had had problems with a stutter when she made the remarks. Instead, she was referring to the fact that “what we see on stage with Joe Biden, Jake, is very clearly a cognitive decline. That’s what I’m referring to. It makes me uncomfortable.”
Tapper reprimands Trump for making allegations about Biden’s mental faculties with no evidence to back them up, and points out that her family have responded with anger when Donald Trump’s cognitive abilities have been questioned.
Donald Trump has defended holding large rallies as Covid-19 cases rise in many states across the US. On Saturday, the president held an event in Wisconsin, a state that broke its record for new daily cases of the virus earlier this week. He was asked about the wisdom of that decision by a local TV station, WTMJ, on Saturday.
“Well, I don’t think [holding a rally sends the wrong message] because I’m not a big shutdown believer,” Trump said.
Trump then spoke out against Wisconsin being shut down, even though the state does not have a complete lockdown.
“If you take a look at your state, which I love very much and, you know, we had a great victory there, but if you take a look at your state, they’ve been shut down and they’ve been locked down and locked up and, you know, they’ve been doing it for a long time and, at some point, you also have to be able to understand the disease,” Trump said.
David Rothkopf, once editor of Foreign Policy, has a new book out called Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump.
The book covers a lot of fascinating ground, from Arnold trying to betray West Point during the Revolutionary War to John Brown’s anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry just before the civil war, which forms the climax of the new Showtime series The Good Lord Bird with Ethan Hawke, as it happens.
But Rothkopf’s book is mostly about the current president, and our reviewer, Charles Kaiser, approves:
One of the most important qualities a good reporter can have is a very low threshold for outrage. Useful, critical coverage of your subject becomes impossible once nonchalance or indifference has inured you to scandal.
This has become a huge problem during Donald Trump’s presidency. Inside the souls of far too many Washington reporters, a never-ending wave of scandals, crimes, indictments and assorted obstructions of justice has washed away this essential capacity for indignation – just when the republic needs it most.
That’s why a book like David Rothkopf’s Traitor still serves a vital purpose, even after dozens of other books and thousands of articles about the president’s felonious behavior. A former senior official in the Clinton administration and editor of Foreign Policy who has taught at Columbia and Georgetown, Rothkopf still has all of the anger a good chronicler of the Trump administration requires.
Updated
Jaime Harrison, the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in South Carolina, has raised a staggering $57m in the third quarter of 2020, a new record for a single Senate race in the southern state, and anywhere else in America for that matter.
But Harrison’s race is also winning attention for a host of other reasons. His opponent is incumbent Lindsey Graham, a close Donald Trump ally and vocal cheerleader for the president. In conservative South Carolina, Graham was meant to be a certainty to retain his seat, especially against a nationally little-known Black Democrat at a time when anti-racism protests have roiled America…
Wisconsin: Trump's hopes fade as 'greatest economy' boast unravels
Coarse, cruel, chaotic. Donald Trump has been called a lot of things. Even some of his supporters have had a hard time embracing the darker aspects of his personality. Until recently they have, however, trusted the president on one one vital issue: the economy.
But with just 16 days to go until the election, there are clear signs that Trump’s claims to have created the “greatest economy we’ve ever had in the history of our country” are unravelling.
Perhaps nowhere is that more worrying for Trump than in Wisconsin.
Losing Wisconsin ended Hillary Clinton’s presidential chances in 2016. Famously she didn’t campaign there, presuming a win that was snatched from her by Trump’s promises to end unfair trade practices that had hurt the state’s dairy industry and to bring back manufacturing jobs.
Until February, Trump could have confidently boasted that he had made good on his promises. Unemployment had fallen to record lows in the state, manufacturing was coming back – albeit at the same, snail-paced crawl that it had under Obama. The headline figures looked good. Then came the coronavirus – a disease that is now ravaging the state and has, in its wake, exposed the fault lines beneath those headline figures.
Good morning…
…and welcome to the morning after the Trump rallies the night before, in which the president went to Michigan and Wisconsin, two swing states, and:
- Accused Joe Biden and the left of wanting to “erase American history” and “purge American values”
- Said Democrats were “anti-American radicals”, which meant moderates had “a moral duty” to join the Republican party
- Said a Joe Biden presidency would spur “the single biggest depression in the history of our country” and “turn Michigan into a refugee camp”
- Said Biden would “shut down the country, delay the vaccine and prolong the [coronavirus] pandemic”
- Asked: “Can you imagine if I lose? I will have lost to the worst candidate in the history of American politics. What do I do?”
- Prompted a chant of “Lock her up” about Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer – the subject of an alleged kidnap or even murder plot by white supremacist terrorists
Whitmer’s digital director, Tori Saylor, urged Trump to stop, writing on Twitter: “Every single time the president does this at a rally, the violent rhetoric towards [the governor] immediately escalates on social media. It has to stop. It just has to.”
That does not seem likely, any more than Trump seems likely to stop holding rallies in states experiencing sharp rises in coronavirus cases without overly insisting on mask-wearing or social distancing or following any other public health advice.
The polls in Michigan and Wisconsin are not good for Trump – nor are they encouraging nationally or in many other battleground states. But the Associated Press, my source for the summary above, also reports on a memo to supporters from Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, which warns about becoming complacent.
The reality is that this race is far closer than some of the punditry we’re seeing on Twitter and on TV would suggest. If we learned anything from 2016, it’s that we cannot underestimate Donald Trump or his ability to claw his way back into contention in the final days of a campaign, through whatever smears or underhanded tactics he has at his disposal.”
Trump will rally in Nevada on Sunday, in Arizona on Monday and in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Biden is in North Carolina today.
One more line from the AP’s fine campaign report: Biden is heavily out-fundraising the president, who is even campaigning in states like Georgia which a Republican would usually expect to win. But on Saturday, Trump claimed he would be “the greatest fundraiser in the history of politics” if he tried … but he didn’t want to make calls and didn’t need the money.”
Here’s Lois Beckett on guns, power and the right. More follows.
