An expert in nonverbal communication watched the Trump-Biden debate with the sound turned down – here’s what he saw

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden met on Oct. 22 for the final debate in the 2020 election and, like the first debate, it was unusual.

COVID-19 forced social distancing and largely took the studio audience, with their laughter, cheering and booing out of the equation. 

What’s more, with norm-breaking interruptions and stealing of speaking time an inherent part of Donald Trump’s debate strategy, the contentious crosstalk between the two candidates and the moderator made long sections of the candidates’ first debate nearly impossible to hear or follow. The threat of having the microphone cut off effectively muted this aggression.

But is what they say as important as we think? Continue reading.

Trump did it again — the same blackmail scheme that got him impeached

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Back thousands of years ago, in February of 2020, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a “moderate” Republican, justified her vote to acquit Donald Trump at his impeachment trial — despite the mountains of evidence of guilt — by claiming that Trump had learned his lesson. 

“I believe that the president has learned from this case,” Collins told CBS news anchor Norah O’Donnell at the time. “The president has been impeached — that’s a pretty big lesson.”

That excuse was preposterous at the time, making it sound like Trump was a child who had his hand in the cookie jar, not a 73-year-old man caught abusing his powers of office to blackmail the Ukrainian president into propping up conspiracy theories about Joe Biden. But it was also hilariously predictable that Trump, who is incapable of learning or growing as a person, would absorb any moral lessons from being impeached. Continue reading.

Trump squeezed by cash crunch in final election sprint

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President Trump’s campaign faces a significant cash deficit against Democratic nominee Joe Biden less than two weeks out from Election Day, a stunning reversal of fortunes for a campaign that was once awash in cash.

Biden’s campaign came into October with more than $177 million in the bank, while the Trump campaign entered the final month with only $63.1 million. That’s a massive turn of events for the Trump campaign, which has raised and spent more than $1 billion this cycle. Trump started the year with more than $100 million in the bank, compared to less than $10 million for Biden.

The president’s grassroots fundraising and cash position once looked insurmountable, but now the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will enter the final stretch with more cash on hand than the incumbent president’s campaign. Continue reading.

Trump’s Confession On Obamacare Bolsters Biden

Trying to figure out what is going on in Donald Trump’s head is truly an exercise in futility, and today it’s just downright bonkers. Apparently Trump believes that sharing snippets of Leslie Stahl’s attempt to interview him for 60 Minutes is going to show that … she’s mean and he’s brilliant? Is there really no one in the White House who is willing to tell him when he has a really, really bad idea?

It was a tremendous gift to Joe Biden, though, that Trump decided to release these videos in plenty of time for last night’s debate. Especially when it comes to the Supreme Court and Obamacare. “I hope that they end it,” he said. “It will be so good if they end it.” Serving it up on a silver platter there. But there’s more. “It’ll be so good if they end it,” he said, “because we will come up with a plan.” Stahl: “Will?”

That’s after Trump insisted that his plan “is fully developed; it’s going to be announced very, very soon.” It’s not. Because the only thing that has ever mattered is that President Barack Obama’s signature achievement be erased. There is no plan. There never will be a plan. He never meant for there to be a plan. Continue reading.

GOP’s Wisconsin Foxconn has exploded — with zero manufacturing jobs and a $400 million deficit

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From the beginning, the Republican-promoted, Trump-boasting, former Gov. Scott Walker-lying Foxconn deal with Wisconsin sounded like a mega-scam. It was clear to anyone with a reading level above elementary school that the “incentives” used to bring the Taiwanese electronics giant into the Badger State were so much more lucrative than anything Foxconn could provide in economic stimulus. The math didn’t add up. In fact, some estimates put the timeframe it would take Wisconsin to get out of the red on the deal at … 25 years.

Then, over the course of the next few weeks and months and years, it became clear that Foxconn wasn’t going to do any of the things it said it might do, because frankly, it didn’t have to do them to get that sweet Wisconsin taxpayer money. Invisible hand of the market and all that. This left lots of vacant space where Trump and then Gov.-Scott Walker took gold-shoveled photos at. Most of 2019 was spent with Wisconsin officials, having been left holding the bag of bunk that newly un-elected Scott Walker created, trying to renegotiate with Foxconn. Something that Foxconn officials, having experienced the pathetic dealmaking of the previous Republican administration, seem most interested in delaying. Possibly in the hope of finding another set of GOP marks with which to renegotiate.

Then on Oct. 12, The Verge reported that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) denied Foxconn’s application for tax subsidies. The argument is that Foxconn hasn’t even built anything that was originally agreed upon. Continue reading.

Trump Says Immigrant Children He Orphaned Are ’So Well Taken Care Of’

Donald Trump on Thursday night defended his administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their families with no way of reuniting them, claiming they are “so well taken care of.”

Asked at the final presidential debate about the 545 detained immigrant kids taken forcibly from their parents at the southern U.S. border under his administration’s zero-tolerance policy, whose families the Trump administration has been unable to locate, Trump first suggested without proof that some had been brought into the country by “coyotes.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden quickly refuted that argument, noting that the kids in question had come over with their families before being separated by border officials. Continue reading.

A 19-year-old with a van full of guns and explosives plotted to assassinate Biden, federal officials say

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As it was becoming clear in March that Joe Biden would be the Democratic presidential nominee, Alexander Hillel Treisman started to map out his plot to assassinate the former vice president, federal authorities say.

“Should I kill Joe Biden?” Treisman wrote in a caption to a meme he posted in April.

It didn’t appear to be an idle threat, the feds say. Continue reading.

Ratcliffe’s warning on foreign interference with US voters provokes skepticism

Democrats disagree with intelligence chief that Iran was out to hurt President Donald Trump

The director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, in a hastily assembled news conference late Wednesday with FBI and Homeland Security officials, said that Iran and Russia had managed to steal voter registration information and were targeting voters, spreading disinformation intended to harm President Donald Trump.

But Ratcliffe’s warnings immediately drew skeptical reactions from Democratic lawmakers, some of whom had been briefed in private about the interference. They specifically disputed that the actions by Iran were intended to harm Trump.

Instead of listening to Ratcliffe, the House Homeland Security Committee said in its Twitter feed that Americans should listen to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Wray and Krebs stood with Ratcliffe at the Wednesday evening press briefing. Continue reading.

Trump Issues Order Giving Him More Leeway to Hire and Fire Federal Workers

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The move would give the president greater freedom to weed out what he sees as a “deep state” bureaucracy. The executive order, which could be rescinded if he is not re-elected, was condemned by civil service unions.

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed an executive order this week that could substantially expand his ability to hire and fire tens of thousands of federal workers during a second term, potentially allowing him to weed out what he sees as a “deep state” bureaucracy working to undermine him.

The executive order, issued late Wednesday and described by one prominent federal union leader as “the most profound undermining of the Civil Service in our lifetimes,” would allow federal agencies to go through their employee rosters and reclassify certain workers in a way that would strip them of job protections that now cover most federal employees.

The White House, in a statement that accompanied the executive order, said the new employee classification was justified because under current rules “removing poor performers, even from these critical positions, is time-consuming and difficult.” Continue reading.