Trump Again Mocks Biden For Wearing Mask, Protecting Others

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have repeatedly called on Americans to wear a mask in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. “All Americans have a responsibility to protect themselves, their families, and their communities,” said the CDC director. Wearing a mask doesn’t primarily protect the mask-wearer—it protects others. As Joe Biden has made clear, wearing a mask isn’t just a symbol, it’s an active part of good citizenship

“Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months, at a minimum. Every governor should mandate mandatory mask-wearing,” said Biden. Doing so could save at least 40,000 American lives, according to the latest estimates.

So, of course, Donald Trump is mocking Biden for wearing a mask. Because, after all, why would anyone do something for other people? Trump is attacking Biden because he’s simply incapable of inconveniencing himself in the slightest to protect American lives. Continue reading.

Biden calls Trump ‘a toxic presence’ who is encouraging violence in America

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Joe Biden excoriated President Trump on Monday as a threat to the safety of all Americans, saying he was a “toxic presence” who has encouraged violence in the nation’s streets even as he has faltered in handling the coronavirus pandemic.

The direct repudiation of Trump came as Biden and the president launched into a caustic debate over violent protests that have escalated across the country in recent days, thrusting the presidential campaign into a new and more combustible phase centered on which man represents the biggest danger to America.

For his most extensive remarks since violence has broken out in recent days, Biden traveled to Pittsburgh and struck a centrist note, condemning both the destruction in the streets and Trump for creating a culture that he said has exacerbated it. Continue reading.

The Memo: GOP seeks to detoxify Trump at convention

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Donald Trump isn’t a racist, a sexist or a xenophobe.

At least, that was the message that was written between the lines on the second night of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.

The GOP is having to spend a lot of time trying to prove what Trump isn’t — an effort that tells its own story about negative perceptions of the president and the degree to which he is languishing in the polls.

Tuesday night’s programming featured an early tribute to Trump from Jon Ponder, a Black man who was convicted of bank robbery before reforming his life and founding an organization to help rehabilitate ex-prisoners. Trump pardoned Ponder before the cameras at the White House. Continue reading

Lincoln Project expands GOP target list, winning Trump ire

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The former GOP operatives behind The Lincoln Project are expanding their list of Republican targets, infuriating allies of President Trump‘s and national Republicans scrambling to preserve the GOP majority in the Senate.

In addition to a relentless negative ad campaign against Trump, the group has so far spent more than $1.3 million attacking Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), who is among the most vulnerable GOP senators up for reelection. That’s by far the most they’ve spent on any Senate candidate.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings reveal The Lincoln Project has also targeted more than a half-dozen other Republicans up for reelection in 2020, including Sens. Cory Gardner (Colo), Martha McSally (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham(S.C.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), John Cornyn (Texas) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Continue reading.

Trump assails Rep. Dingell, citing her late husband, amid wave of attacks on Dems

The tweets came at the end of one of the president’s most vitriolic weeks.

President Donald Trump on Saturday launched a vitriolic attack on his perceived enemies, including the widow of a prominent Democratic congressman, days after he was acquitted in his impeachment trial.

Trump took to Twitter on Saturday afternoon to heap scorn on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), the widow of the late Rep. John Dingell, among others.

“@RepDebDingell, who called me, tears flowing, to thank me for rolling out the maximum ‘Red Carpet’ for the funeral of her husband, then voted against me on the partisan Impeachmen Hoax, said ‘everybody (Dems) wants to get out of town. This has been, in my whole career, one of… …the worst weeks ever.’ She could have had a much better week if Crazy Nancy, who is the most overrated person in politics (going to lose the House a second time), didn’t bring the phony & corrupt Impeachment Hoax,” Trump tweeted. Continue reading.

‘He’s a cult leader’: Trump primary opponent explains how the president keeps a stranglehold on the Republican Party

AlterNet logoNo one will ever mistake former Republican Joe Walsh for a centrist, let alone a liberal or a progressive: the former Illinois congressman was very active in the Tea Party movement during the Barack Obama years. But Walsh seems to have done some soul-searching in recent months; he’s still hard-right politically but now expresses regrets over some of the ugly things he said and did in the past — for example, promoting the racist birther conspiracy theory (which claimed that Obama was really born in Africa rather than the U.S.). And Walsh, in a February 6 op-ed for the Washington Post, warns against the cult-like tendencies of President Donald Trump’s unwavering devotees.

Many Trumpistas now detest Walsh because he is challenging Trump via a GOP presidential primary — that is, if they even know he is running for president. In his op-ed, Walsh acknowledges, “My chances are slim — don’t worry, I know. It’s been made even tougher by the party canceling primaries to shield the president from being challenged — and by Fox News and the rest of Trump’s lapdog conservative media denying me airtime.”

But Walsh goes on to explain why he’s seeking the 2020 Republican presidential nomination: a need for Americans on the right to stand up to Trumpism. And the more he has challenged Trump via his primary run, Walsh stresses, the more he sees how cult-like Trump’s sycophants are. For example, Walsh notes, he recently spoke at a GOP caucus in Iowa, where fellow Republicans wouldn’t listen to a word he had to say. Continue reading.

Trump celebrates end of impeachment with angry, raw and vindictive 62-minute White House rant

Washington Post logoHe spoke without a teleprompter. He cursed in the East Room. He called the House speaker a “horrible person.” He lorded his power over a room full of deferential Republicans. He mocked a former GOP presidential nominee and his 2016 Democratic rival. He played the victim again and again.

Two days after President Trump delivered what aides called an “optimistic” State of the Union address that made no mention of his historic impeachment, he ranted for more than an hour at the White House on Thursday in a “celebration” of his Senate acquittal a day earlier. But the mood — at least his mood — was not particularly celebratory.

Trump was angry, raw, vindictive, aggrieved — reflecting the id of a president who has seethed for months with rage against his enemies. This was the State of Trump.

Watch: Suspicious substance investigated outside Schiff’s office

Capitol Police closed off the hallway outside Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s office Thursday due to reports of a suspicious substance. The media was kept from approaching the corridor, but some lawmakers and staff were allowed through.

View the video here.

Trump lied at rally about phone call with Rep. Debbie Dingell after her husband’s death

‘I didn’t call him. He called me,’ Michigan congresswoman says, after Trump implied her husband might have gone to hell

President Donald Trump lied on Wednesday about the nature of a phone call with Rep. Debbie Dingell in February after the death of her husband, former Rep. John Dingell, she said in an interview Thursday.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, Trump told his version of the story to a crowd of more than 9,000 people as he lambasted Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, for voting to impeach him that night.

Last winter, the president ensured that John Dingell, a World War II veteran who served 60 years in the House from 1955 to 2015, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery and ordered federal buildings across the country to lower their flags. Continue reading

Trump writes the GOP impeachment playbook: Scorched earth. But will it work?

Washington Post logoPresident Trump on Thursday excoriated an unidentified whistleblower and the White House aides who informed their complaint as “almost a spy” and likened their work to treason — part of a scorched-earth strategy he is directing for the Republican Party at the outset of an impeachment showdown.

Trump has acted impulsively and indignantly as he wages an all-out political war to defend himself from allegations that he abused his power to solicit foreign interference in his 2020 reelection bid.

And in a testament to how completely he controls the Republican Party, many GOP officeholders and conservative media figures have followed Trump’s cues by joining his attempts either to attack the anonymous whistleblower, discredit the explosive accounts in their complaint, or malign the media for covering it.

View the complete September 26 article by Robert Costa and Philip Rucker on The Washington Post website here.