Tag: Trump campaign

More Than Just a Tweet: Trump’s Campaign to Undercut Democracy

New York Times logoFloating the idea of delaying the election was the latest step in the president’s running effort to discredit the election, risking long-term damage to public trust in the system.

Nothing in the Constitution gives President Trump the power to delay the November election, and even fellow Republicans dismissed it out of hand when he broached it on Thursday. But that was not the point. With a possible defeat looming, the point was to tell Americans that they should not trust their own democracy.

The idea of putting off the vote was the culmination of months of discrediting an election that polls suggest Mr. Trump is currently losing by a wide margin. He has repeatedly predicted “RIGGED ELECTIONS” and a “substantially fraudulent” vote and “the most corrupt election in the history of our country,” all based on false, unfounded or exaggerated claims.

It is the kind of language resonant of conspiracy theorists, cranks and defeated candidates, not an incumbent living in the White House. Never before has a sitting president of the United States sought to undermine public faith in the election system the way Mr. Trump has. He has refused to commit to respecting the results and, even after his election-delay trial balloon was panned by Republican allies, he raised the specter on Thursday evening of months of lawsuits challenging the outcome. Continue reading.

Fox News host is quickly back-peddling after spreading dangerous QAnon nonsense on air

AlterNet logoFox News host Jesse Watters has walked back comments he made praising the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory during a Saturday interview with Eric Trump.

Watters called QAnon a “fringe group” — which he does not “support or believe in” — in a statement to Mediaite one day after he praised it for uncovering “a lot of great stuff.”

QAnon is a conspiracy theory that started on the imageboard 4chan in which a would-be secret operative with classified information posts clues to followers about the “deep state” and a baseless plot by President Donald Trump to destroy a global sex trafficking ring allegedly involving high-profile Democrats and their celebrity supporters. Continue reading.

Trump supporters fume at the president’s campaign for spamming them with ‘sleazy’ text messages

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is frantically spamming its supporters with text messages — and many of them are absolutely sick of it.

As flagged by Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch, several pro-Trump figures took to Twitter over the weekend to voice their displeasure with the Trump campaign’s texting strategy, which involves sending out panicky missives several times a day letting supporters know that they’re “failing” the president by not donating more money.

“You FAILED to use your 5x match,” reads one text message. “It EXPIRED… Why did you let us down? LAST CHANCE.” Continue reading.

Maine brewery cancels on Lara Trump after accusing campaign of lying about ‘Women for Trump’ event

AlterNet logoA Trump campaign event in Maine was canceled Tuesday after the owner said he was lied to by the campaign about the scope of the event.

Brad and Nancy Nadeau, the owners of Stars and Stripes Brewing, told the Bangor Daily News on Tuesday that they were alerted to the facts from a campaign news release calling them the “first stop” for a “Women for Trump” bus tour that will cross a few states in the northeast, ending in New Hampshire two days after it begins.

“The Nadeaus said on Tuesday they had initially been told that some members of the campaign were going to come in for a beer while getting pizza from an adjacent restaurant,” the report explained. “Brad Nadeau said he was told late Monday that Lara Trump, the Republican president’s daughter-in-law, would be there and reporters may come as well, but he did not know it would be a formal event.” Continue reading.

The Memo: Trump’s grip on GOP loosens as polls sink

The Hill logoPresident Trump faces the prospect of growing dissent within his own party unless he can arrest his slide in the polls.

Trump has fallen a significant distance behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in recent weeks, as the coronavirus has become resurgent. Republicans are eyeing their electoral futures with increasing nervousness.

“Are they worried about Trump’s approval rating? Absolutely, because many of them know they cannot significantly outperform the president. If you are in a swing state or in a swing district, you need the president to be at least competitive,” said one former Republican member of Congress, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. Continue reading.

Trump official despairs at his train wreck Chris Wallace interview

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s already-infamous Fox News interview with Chris Wallace is causing fresh headaches for the president’s re-election campaign.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, a senior Trump official said that there was no “rational reason” for the president to do an interview with Wallace, who is widely regarded as one of the sharpest and best-prepared interviewers in the news media.

Another Trump ally, when asked by The Daily Beast why the president volunteered to be grilled by Wallace, simply responded, “I don’t f*cking know.” Continue reading.

Trump’s Bogus Optimism Won’t Stop Pandemic Or Boost Economy

I have some bad news for anyone concerned about the economy. Very bad news. Donald Trump tweeted last Monday, “The Economy is coming back fast!” Tuesday, he proclaimed: “Things are coming back, and they’re coming back very rapidly. A lot sooner than people thought.”

This is an unmistakable signal that the economy is not coming back rapidly and may not be coming back at all. Whenever Trump boasts of something happening soon, it’s time to settle in for a good, long wait, or maybe just give up hope entirely.

Trump made his claims as the COVID-19 pandemic was saying the opposite. Florida set a record for the most new cases in a single day for any state and broke its own record for most deaths from the virus. California Gov. Gavin Newsom banned indoor operations in bars, restaurants and movie theaters, while closing hair salons, workout facilities and malls. Continue reading.

From ‘Sleepy Joe’ to a destroyer of the ‘American way of life,’ Trump’s attacks on Biden make a dystopian shift

Washington Post logoPresident Trump has launched a slash-and-burn campaign against an exaggerated caricature of his Democratic opponent, casting former vice president Joe Biden as a destroyer of basic freedoms and a threat to voters’ safety who would “let terrorists roam free” and “abolish the American way of life.”

His new dystopian vision, with militant and extreme language not typical in American politics, marks a sharp departure from Trump’s previous effort to cast Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” an establishment politician with deteriorating mental abilities. It marks the latest effort, orchestrated by Trump’s advisers, to shift the conversation from rising coronavirus infections and deteriorating public support for the president’s pandemic response.

In new advertising, tweets and public statements that began to appear earlier this month, Trump has argued that the presumptive Democratic nominee is a harbinger of chaos and destruction, depicting a fantastical scarecrow largely divorced from reality.

Trump Promotes Caricature of What Conservatives Want

New York Times logoA series of events during his White House tenure has made clear that Mr. Trump views the voters he calls “my people” through the lens of what he imagines they like.

Standing in the White House colonnade this week, President Trump told an interviewer that he’s “comfortable” with “freedom of speech” extending to the Confederate flag.

“People love it,” Mr. Trump told Catherine Herridge of CBS News, when she asked about a flag that many Americans equate with the brutal history of slavery in the United States. “I know people that like the Confederate flag, and they’re not thinking about slavery. I just think it’s freedom of speech.”

It was the latest example of Mr. Trump promoting a caricatured view of what he believes his base wants — in this case defending a symbol of oppression that even the state of Mississippi has decided to retire, as well as the U.S. military, which issued new guidance on flags on Friday. Continue reading.

Trump just shook up his campaign. But the GOP can’t shake up what it really needs to: Trump.

Washington Post logoRepublicans have spent three-plus years accommodating his impulses, which now makes a true course-correction extremely difficult.

President Trump on Wednesday night offered perhaps his first concrete acknowledgment of the trouble his 2020 reelection campaign faces, demoting campaign manager Brad Parscale and replacing him with Bill Stepien.

But when it comes to what ails the Trump campaign — and the Trump presidency — the answers are hardly so simple. And Republicans who might take heart in this personnel change have plenty of reason for continued pessimism, in light of recent events.

The 2020 election is nigh, and virtually all signs are bad for the GOP. Trump trailsboth nationally and in every closely decided 2016 swing state. The continued coronavirus pandemic, largely quashed in many Western European countries, is resurgent here in ways that both reflect poorly on Trump’s handling of it and rob him of his supposed electoral silver bullet: the economy. And polls and GOP strategists suggest Trump is not just struggling but also dragging down GOP congressional candidates across the country. Continue reading.