Tag: 2020 RNC convention

Fact Checking Trump’s Convention: His Neglect Let Tens Of Thousands Die

The first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention highlighted Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, with a video montage listing the various ways the administration purportedly intervened to save lives and several frontline workers, some of whom contracted COVID-19, praising Trump directly (notably while standing close together without masks).

Trump has praised himself repeatedly for his coronavirus response, saying he took actions that prevented millions of deaths.

However, public health experts disagree, saying Trump wasted the entire months of January of February during which he could have taken action to slow the spread of the coronavirus, choosing instead to publicly downplay the virus and claim without any evidence that it would just “miraculously” disappear.

A Washington Post report from April said the administration wasted 70 days from Jan. 3, when it was first warned that the coronavirus posed a threat to the United States, before it finally decided to take action. Continue reading.

An ‘Apprentice’ producer and a TV-obsessed president: Inside the GOP’s convention scramble

After Donald Trump blew up the GOP’s convention for the second time, aides sat before a blank whiteboard and started over — with only four weeks to go.

President Donald Trump had just pulled the plug on plans for an in-person convention bash in Jacksonville, Fla., when a handful of his top political aides met in a conference room in suburban Washington, sitting in front of a blank whiteboard.

Their task seemed overwhelming: To plan out a four-day convention in four weeks — an undertaking that typically takes a year or more. It was the second time this summer that the president had blown up the GOP’s convention.

The group — which included lead convention planner and ex-White House official Tony Sayegh, deputy campaign manager Justin Clark, head of presidential operations Max Miller, and the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump — had no set budget. They had no speakers lineup and no venue. In short, they had to figure out from scratch what the whole thing should look like. Continue reading.

A GOP convention surprise: Trump goes all-in on race

The president tried hard to soften his image on race. But can four nights of testimonials make up for four years of stoking racial divisions?

Tim Scott waxed about his family arc — “from cotton to Congress in one lifetime” — and invoked George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Nikki Haley spoke of her Indian roots and alluded to her decision to take down the Confederate flag. Herschel Walker said he’s seen “racism up close” — and it’s not Donald Trump.

For a president credibly accused of stoking racial fears and divisions throughout his term, Trump, with his choice of speakers, leaned hard into the topic during the first night of his convention on Monday. One Republican after another defended Trump’s record on race, while highlighting Joe Biden’s race-related gaffes and history pushing the 1994 crime bill.

All told, it was a surprising amount of attention paid to an issue typically associated with Democrats. Continue reading.

GOP seeks to boost Senate hopes with convention

The Hill logo

Republicans are looking to their national convention to boost their most vulnerable Senate incumbents and help preserve their increasingly tenuous majority in the chamber.

With President Trump’s poll numbers sagging in recent months and the political fortunes of several GOP Senate incumbents largely following suit, Republicans believe that any post-convention bump for the president will also lift up their party’s senators as they head into the crucial final stretch of the 2020 election cycle.

“Obviously it’s a Trump-centric convention, but if the party puts forward something that can reframe the national conversation, yeah, the senators will get a bump,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican consultant and former campaign adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “It won’t just be for Trump. It’ll help all Republicans.” Continue reading.

Trump’s D.C. Hotel Jacked Up Its Prices as Trump Began Plotting a D.C.-Based Convention

The president hasn’t committed to giving his acceptance speech at the White House. But his nearby hotel has conspicuously begun charging way more for the weekend it’s scheduled.

As President Donald Trump hints that he plans to deliver his nomination speech from the White House on Aug. 27, the hotel bearing his name down the street is making a power play of its own: spiking its room rates by more than 60 percent for those convention dates. 

Listings for rooms at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., via Hotels.com, show rooms for one adult on the night of the address starting at $795 and running as high as $2,070.

That price tag represents a massive increase from the $495 starting rate currently offered for the dates one week following and one week prior. For three days before Trump’s scheduled speech—which were originally scheduled to be the dates of the GOP convention in Charlotte, North Carolina—the hotel is charging $695 a night for its cheapest room. The hotel will begin charging $795 that Thursday, and continue through the weekend, before dropping back to $495 on Monday. Continue reading.

Republican National Committee disputes GOP convention spokesperson’s claim that Trump’s renomination will be closed to media

Washington Post logoThe Republican National Committee says no final decision has been made about whether President Trump’s renomination will be held in private at the GOP convention in Charlotte, contradicting previous reports that restrictions on crowd size during the coronavirus pandemic would prevent the news media from attending.

Two RNC officials insisted Sunday that they are still working through the logistics and press coverage options, a break with a statement reportedly made by a GOP convention spokesperson the previous day.

“We are still working through logistics and press coverage options,” one of the officials said in a statement Sunday. Neither of the officials was authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Continue reading.

‘Mugged by Reality,’ Trump Finds Denial Won’t Stop the Pandemic

New York Times logoA president who once claimed that “the worst days of the pandemic are behind us” now acknowledges that it has surged through much of the country and will “get worse before it gets better.”

WASHINGTON — He insisted that it was safe, that people could go back to work, that schools could reopen, that he could hold packed indoor campaign rallies, that he could even hold a full-fledged, boisterous, bunting-filled nominating convention as if all were well.

Only now, it is all crashing down around President Trump. The president who shunned masks and pressured states to reopen and promised a return to the campaign trail finds himself canceling rallies, scrapping his grand convention, urging Americans to stay away from crowded bars and at long last embracing, if only halfheartedly, wearing masks.

It may not be the death of denial, but it is a moment when denial no longer appears to be a viable strategy for Mr. Trump. For more than three years in office, he proved strikingly successful at bending much of the political world to his own vision of reality, but after six months the coronavirus pandemic is turning out to be the one stubborn, inalterable fact of life that he cannot simply force into submission through sheer will. Continue reading.

Trump’s unpaid security bills are finally catching up with him as Florida sheriff reveals he can’t secure RNC convention

AlterNet logoRepublicans have one month to pull off their convention in Florida, where the coronavirus has gotten so bad that some municipalities are starting to talk about shutting down again.

Politico reported Monday that the sheriff of Jacksonville, Florida is in a particularly difficult spot as the convention day approaches. He explained that the “lack of clear plans, adequate funding and enough law enforcement officers” means he can no longer provide security for the event.

“As we’re talking today, we are still not close to having some kind of plan that we can work with that makes me comfortable that we’re going to keep that event and the community safe,” said Duval County Sheriff Mike Williams. “It’s not my event to plan, but I can just tell you that what has been proposed in my opinion is not achievable right now … from a law enforcement standpoint, from a security standpoint.” Continue reading.