Tag: Trump has to lie to better his re-election chances

Trump campaign mounts challenges in four states as narrow margins raise stakes for battles over which ballots will count

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President Trump’s reelection campaign said Wednesday that it would launch a legal blitz to try to halt vote-counting in Pennsylvania and Michigan, would seek a recount in Wisconsin and challenged the handling of ballots in Georgia, threatening to draw out the final results of the razor-thin White House contest.

The campaign’s aggressive legal posture while the presidential race remains unresolved underscored how the close margins in key states have raised the stakes for litigation over which ballots will count. It comes after Trump, who has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the election, pledged to get the courts to determine its outcome.

Democrats said they were unfazed by what they said was legal posturing by the president’s campaign. They said they were well-prepared to fend off any lawsuits or appeals.

‘Amazing’: Watch this stunning fact check on Trump’s claims about economic recovery

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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was astonished by a detailed analysis of the economic pain suffered by many American workers — but not all of them.

“Morning Joe” contributor Steve Rattner, a former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, brought charts to fact check claims by President Donald Trump and his advisers about the recovery since the coronavirus pandemic destroyed the U.S. economy.

“The pace of job recovery is actually slowing fairly dramatically,” Rattner said. “One other small point, the 8.4 percent unemployment rate is really 9.1 percent — the Department of Labor said there was a misclassification error, so that number isn’t as good either. Let’s turn to this question whether we’re dealing with a broad-based recovery of jobs or something more narrow. What you can see on the next chart are the disparities in how different Americans have fared. This is because the pandemic or the economic crisis didn’t hit every industry equally, travel, recreation, restaurants, so on, where people of color, lower income, women work and it was hit disproportionately hard.”

Continue reading.

Tenants Say They Weren’t Told Interviews Were For RNC Video, Are Anti-Trump

The New Yorkers, interviewed by a federal housing official, didn’t know they’d be featured at the Republican National Convention, The New York Times reported.

Three New York City tenants who were featured in a video at the Republican National Convention this week said they had no idea their interviews would be used for that purpose — and none of them support President Donald Trump. 

Lynne Patton — the Trump-appointed head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development region that includes New York — interviewed residents on video about conditions in their buildings. Three of those residents said they didn’t know their interviews were for the RNC, reported The New York Times. 

“I am not a Trump supporter,” Claudia Perez, one of the tenants in the video, told the Times. The clip, which aired Thursday, criticized New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Trump’s longtime target.  Continue reading.

Pam Bondi’s Convention Performance Reached New Level Of Absurdity

You might have thought it would be hard to outdo the absurdity of Kimberly Guilfoyle screaming at the top of her lungs to an empty auditorium on the opening night of the Republican National Convention. But on Tuesday, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi reached new heights of absurdity in the second night of the event in a speech filled with unfettered hypocrisy.

Bondi returned to a theme of the Trump campaign that has largely been absent from the convention thus far: Joe Biden’s supposed corruption. As one of Trump’s lawyers during the impeachment trial, she tried to press the case against Biden at the center of the president’s high crimes. Trump tried to get Ukraine to investigate allegations that Biden, as vice president, corruptly sought to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to protect his son, who was working on the board of the energy company Burisma in the region.

The allegations against the Bidens have been repeatedly debunked. It was Trump’s demand that Ukraine investigate the matter that was deemed impeachable by the Democratic-led House of Representatives. Even one Senate Republican, Mitt Romney, agreed. Continue reading.

Trump Invents Baseless Explanation For California’s Power Outages

Democrats have “intentionally implemented” rolling blackouts, the president claimed.

President Donald Trump attempted to politicize a series of power outages in California on Tuesday, saying without any evidence that Democrats have “intentionally implemented” them and suggested that Green New Deal proposals were somehow to blame. 

“In California, Democrats have intentionally implemented rolling blackouts — forcing Americans in the dark. Democrats are unable to keep up with energy demand,” he tweeted about the power outages, which are the most widespread the state has experienced in decades. 

A statewide heatwave is putting a strain on the state’s electrical grid, forcing power outages for hundreds of thousands of Californians, but that has nothing to do with Democrats or any other political party. The widespread blackouts have been carried out by the California Independent System Operator, a nonprofit that manages most of the state’s power.  Continue reading.

Fact check: Trump falsely claims Obama left him ‘nothing’ in the national stockpile

Trump has repeatedly said an empty stockpile hampered his pandemic response. Budget cuts had affected it, but shelves weren’t bare, former officials said.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly complained that he inherited an empty national stockpile from the Obama administration, hamstringing his pandemic response because of a lack of emergency supplies.

“The cupboard was bare. The other administration, the last administration, left us nothing,” Trump told ABC News’ David Muir on Tuesday. “We didn’t have ventilators. We didn’t have medical equipment. The tests were broken — you saw that. We had broken tests. They left us nothing. We’ve taken it and we’ve built an incredible stockpile, a stockpile like we’ve never had before.”

It’s a sweeping claim Trump has made several times when faced with criticism that the government was slow to help states hit hard by the coronavirus and in dire need to supplies like personal protective equipment for front line workers and ventilators for an influx of patients — and one that former Obama administration and past news reports dispute. Continue reading.

Azar faulted workers’ ‘home and social’ conditions for meatpacking outbreaks

On a call with members of Congress, health secretary defended conditions inside the meat plants, three participants say.

The country’s top health official downplayed concerns over the public health conditions inside meatpacking plants, suggesting on a call with lawmakers that workers were more likely to catch coronavirus based on their social interactions and group living situations, three participants said.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar told a bipartisan group that he believed infected employees were bringing the virus into processing plants where a rash of cases have killed at least 20 workers and forced nearly two-dozen plants to close, according to three people on the April 28 call.

Those infections, he said, were linked more to the “home and social” aspects of workers’ lives rather than the conditions inside the facilities, alarming some on the call who interpreted his remarks as faulting workers for the outbreaks, the people said. Continue reading.