Politics Now - USA

And so the president is trying to provoke a race war on the streets of America. “We’ve arrived at a moment in this campaign,” Biden said during a visit to a rehabilitated Pittsburgh steel mill Monday, that “we all knew . . . we’d get to — the moment when Donald Trump would be so desperate, he’d do anything to hold on to power.” AD After violence claimed lives on both sides of the divide between racial-justice demonstrators and Trump supporters in recent days, Biden said Trump “fans the flames” of violence. “He can’t stop the violence because, for years, he’s fomented it.” AD Biden quoted from departing Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s acknowledgment that “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is” for the president. Said Biden: “He’s rooting for chaos and violence.” When the president’s supporters, often armed, drive into cities to provoke racial-justice demonstrators, Trump calls them “GREAT PATRIOTS!” His convention glorified vigilantes who took u...

Then act vigorously on those concerns, and be confident that if you do, Trump is toast. AD Coming out of the conventions, the Trump campaign is trying its best to create the illusion of momentum. Trump, who has an undeniable talent for creating and exploiting chaos, has seized on his “LAW & ORDER” theme as a way to fire up his base and obscure his abysmal performance on the covid-19 pandemic. Recent polling suggests that Biden’s huge lead has become slightly less huge. AD Historically, it takes at least a week or two to know whether the conventions had any lasting impact on voters’ intentions. And Biden’s present lead in the national polls — an average of 6.9 percent, according to RealClearPolitics — remains massive by recent election standards. But it is good to remember that no lead is unassailable, and that the race is considerably closer in swing states. The first order of business for the Biden campaign is to shower attention on the traditionally Democratic states that tipped ...

Morris Gulett, a neo-Nazi leader who created an outpost of the Aryan Nations in Louisiana, has donated at least $2,000 to President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, according to data collected by Popular Information. He has donated at least 29 times since 2017, and the Trump campaign was reportedly made aware of the donations in 2018 by The Forward. Popular Information detailed donations from several others, including businessman Peter Zieve, who was sued by Washington state over accusations of discriminating against minority employees. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The Trump campaign has accepted thousands of dollars from racist extremists, including a neo-Nazi leader who runs an outpost of the Aryan Nations in Louisiana. According to data collected by Popular Information, a politics newsletter written by journalist Judd Legum, Morris Gulet, the leader of the Louisiana chapter of Aryan Nations, has donated at least $2,000 to the Trump campaign since De...

Joe Biden at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia in 2014. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The theme of this week’s presidential campaign news cycle—and maybe the theme of the entire next month, until the debates create additional Pundit Content—is whether Donald Trump can win back white voters by presenting himself as the candidate who’s tough enough to enforce “law and order.” Advertisement The first part of this strategy is to wildly exaggerate the amount of property damage and rioting and general unlivability associated with civil rights protests in major cities. The second part is to suggest that only someone as strong as Trump is can end the unrest—something he routinely threatens to do by unleashing the full attacking power of the police, various federal law enforcement agencies, and the military. The final night of the Republican National Convention was an attempt to support this strategy by presenting Trump as the chosen candidate of America’s true-blue tough guys, with the p...

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in a campaign speech on Monday pushed back against claims that he has a "soft spot" for rioters while accusing President Trump of having "fomented" violence in office. Biden spoke from Pennsylvania on Monday for a speech focused on the question of whether "you really feel safer under" Trump, and in the address, he condemned looting and rioting amid unrest in Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin. "Rioting is not protesting," Biden said. "Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction." The Democratic presidential nominee accused Trump of "stroking violence in our cities" and being unable to "stop the violence because for years he's fomented it," saying, "You know me. You know my he...

The United States Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors Chairman, Robert M. Duncan, is a director of the Mitch McConnell-allied Senate Leadership Fund Super PAC, as paperwork filed Monday confirmed. The ties between Duncan and McConnell deepen concerns about the integrity of what will likely be an election largely conducted with mail-in ballots, which has also been complicated by issues with a Republican-led gutting of the USPS. Duncan’s ties to the $130 million Senate Leadership Fund is just one of the chairman’s ties to prominent Republicans. Moreover, nearly all of the people on the Trump-nominated USPS board of governors have ties to the Trump administration. The Postal Services’ board of governors is tasked with overseeing the USPS and “directs the exercise of the powers of the Postal Service, directs and controls its expenditures, reviews its practices, conducts long-range planning, approves officer compensation and sets policies on all postal matters,” according to the USPS w...

Barr’s removal of career national security official, weeks before election, raises concerns A little-known office in the Justice Department has lost its long-time chief. Current and former national security officials are raising concerns over Attorney General William Barr's recent decision to remove the head of a Justice Department office that helps ensure federal counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities are legal – and replace him with a political appointee with relatively limited experience. "It's very alarming," said Katrina Mulligan, who worked for the Obama administration in several national security roles and then, after President Donald Trump's inauguration, joined the Office of Law and Policy in the Justice Department's National Security Division. For much of the past decade, that little-known office has been led by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brad Wiegmann, a 23-year career public servant, not a political appointee. But two weeks ago,...

Former White House counsel Don McGahn called for presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner's security clearance to be downgraded over "serious" concerns in his background check, according to a new book. President Donald Trump overruled career officials in 2018 to grant Kushner a top-secret security clearance despite concerns raised by intelligence officials and the White House. A memo obtained by Times reporter Michael Schmidt for his new book "Donald Trump v. The United States" shows that McGahn argued that Kushner's clearance should be downgraded over those concerns, according to an excerpt published by Axios. Advertisement: "The information you were briefed on one week ago and subsequently relayed to me, raises serious additional concerns about whether this individual ought to retain a top security clearance until such issues can be investigated and resolved," McGahn wrote in a memo to then-White House chief of staff John Kelly following a routine F...

President Donald Trump supporters attend a rally and car parade Saturday, Aug. 29, 2020, from Clackamas to Portland, Ore. Photo : Paula Bronstein ( AP ) The president of American terrorists is doing that thing in which he celebrates violence against American protesters. Advertisement On Sunday, the president of people who believe that pajamas are appropriate to wear to Walmart called for federal forces to quell protests in American cities while a group of pickup-driving Trump loyalists, deputized by their whiteness, were captured firing paint and pellet guns at protesters in Portland, Ore. The violence, perpetrated by those who came to a protest armed with pellet and paint guns, ended with one person being shot and killed. “The victim appeared to be a white man who was bearing the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group in Portland that has regularly been getting in fisticuffs with protestors on the streets.” Literally a band of white folks went on a “Trump cruise rally” (and no,...

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has claimed Donald Trump did not see the video of Trump supporters in Portland, Oregon, firing paintballs and pepper spray at counter-protesters over the weekend — even though the president retweeted a video of such scenes on Sunday. "I don't think the president has seen that video. Nor have I," Ms McEnany told reporters at a press conference on Monday, a comment that strains credulity considering Mr Trump's retweet of and comment on a video from New York Times correspondent Mike Baker showing exactly that. "But if you're going to ask about paintballs, it's incredible that for 90 days I've stood at this podium talking about officers who have [had] lasers flashed in their eyes in an attempt to blind them, commercial grade fireworks being thrown at them," Ms McEnany said, referring to the pockets of violence against police that has marked some protests against police brutality in the wake of several shoo...

Sen. Angus King Angus KingUSDA commits to trade aid for lobster industry using coronavirus coffers Filibuster fight looms if Democrats retake Senate US trade deal with EU a boon for lobster industry struggling under China tariffs MORE (I-Maine) on Monday blasted Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe John Lee RatcliffeRatcliffe defends end of election security briefings, accuses lawmakers of leaks Wolf says DHS will still brief Congress on election security Rubio says congressional oversight of intelligence faces 'historic crisis' following DNI announcement MORE’s announcement that his office will no longer deliver in-person election security briefings to Congress, saying it “looks like a pre-cover-up.” “I can’t get into the head of these people, but we have a president who never likes to hear the word ‘Russia,’ at least not in the context of the relationships or of Russia meddling in our elections,” King told CNN. “I hate to say this but it looks like a pre-cover-up....

Jim Gaffigan is reviewing what happened and what he learned after his "Twitter rant" about President Donald Trump last week. In a lengthy post to Facebook Sunday, the actor and comedian, 54, said he felt liberated but also threatened. He said it was "refreshing to let four years of frustration boil over" toward "passionate Trump friends, relatives and peers," but it didn't come without backlash. Though many agreed with Gaffigan, others didn't – and the comedian said those opposers let themselves be known, including a commenter he shared an image of with the message "Unsubscribed - you'll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Enjoy." "The image that is connected to this post is one of the many messages I received that are quasi threatening or flat out threatening," Gaffigan explained. "We all know Trump is not a unifier but remember he and his cronies stoke hatred and violence. He may say he is the Law...

Democrats accused President Donald Trump of trying to inflame racial tensions and incite violence to benefit his campaign after he praised supporters who clashed with protesters during a deadly night in Portland, announced he will travel to Kenosha amid anger over the shooting of another Black man by police and retweeted a video of a Black man pushing a white woman on a subway platform. Trump unleashed a flurry of tweets and retweets the day after a man identified as a supporter of a right-wing group was shot and killed in Portland. Within his Twitter storm, Trump retweeted a video originally posted by a user called “I’m with Groyper” that shows a scuffle on a subway platform that ends in an unidentified Black man pushing a bystander, a white woman, into a subway car. The Groypers are a movement of white nationalist and far-right activists akin to the alt-right. Read more: Netanyahu may be just as corrupt and disruptive, but he’s no match for Trump in terms of crazy Author and former s...

Sooner or later, even though the investigation into the president’s involvement with the Russian ratfcking in the 2016 election had been swept out of the news cycle by all manner of fresh hell, when last we left the saga, there was an unmistakable feeling that there had been a careeRosensteinist in the woodpile. On Sunday, The New York Times handed us a big old clue. But law enforcement officials never fully investigated Mr. Trump’s own relationship with Russia, even though some career F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators thought his ties posed such a national security threat that they took the extraordinary step of opening an inquiry into them. Within days, the former deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein curtailed the investigation without telling the bureau, all but ensuring it would go nowhere... Mr. Rosenstein concluded the F.B.I. lacked sufficient reason to conduct an investigation into the president’s links to a foreign adversary. Mr. Rosenstein determined that the inves...

The latest Military Times poll shows a continued decline in active-duty service members’ views of President Donald Trump and a slight but significant preference for former Vice President Joe Biden in the upcoming November election among troops surveyed. The results, collected before the political conventions earlier this month, appear to undercut claims from the president that his support among military members is strong thanks to big defense budget increases in recent years and promised moves to draw down troops from overseas conflict zones. But the Military Times Polls, surveying active-duty troops in partnership with the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University, have seen a steady drop in troops’ opinion of the commander in chief since his election four years ago. In the latest results — based on 1,018 active-duty troops surveyed in late July and early August — nearly half of respondents (49.9 percent) had an unfavorable view of the president, compa...

The administration has already begun to implement some policies along these lines, according to current and former officials as well as experts, particularly with regard to testing. The approach’s chief proponent is Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, who joined the White House earlier this month as a pandemic adviser. He has advocated that the United States adopt the model Sweden has used to respond to the virus outbreak, according to these officials, which relies on lifting restrictions so the healthy can build up immunity to the disease rather than limiting social and business interactions to prevent the virus from spreading. AD AD Sweden’s handling of the pandemic has been heavily criticized by public health officials and infectious-disease experts as reckless — the country has among the highest infection and death rates in the world. It also hasn’t escaped the deep economic problems resulting from the pandemic. But Sweden’s approach has...

If Donald Trump had got his way I wouldn’t be speaking to Yusef Salaam right now. “Had his ad taken full effect we would have been hanging from trees in Central Park,” Salaam says matter-of-factly. “People wanted our blood running in the streets.” You’ve probably seen the ad in question: it’s infamous. In 1989, a white investment banker was raped and left for dead in Central Park. Five black and brown teenagers, including 15-year-old Salaam, were charged with her rape. Two weeks after the attack, before any of the kids had faced trial, Trump took out a full-page advert in multiple New York papers calling for the death penalty. His inflammatory stunt is credited with prejudicing public opinion and contributing to the Central Park Five – now known as the Exonerated Five – going to prison for something they didn’t do. The boys’ story was retold last year in the Emmy-winning Netflix drama When They See Us, directed by Ava DuVernay. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The advert taken out in the NY ...