The Republican Party has announced that it will have no platform. The announcement looks like something Donald Trump would write. It is one page of bullet points (but without bullets). It tries to blame everything on the media and “the failed policies of the Obama-Biden administration” (so much for being a “positive” convention).
Bottom line: the RNC’s official platform is to “strongly” and “enthusiastically” support Donald Trump and everything he does.
The GOP is no longer a political party. Any pretense of actually governing is gone. The have no ideals or beliefs. They are now merely a cult of personality for Trump.
Republicans on Fox News are downplaying Biden’s speech, saying that any idiot can read a speech off a teleprompter.
I guess Donald Trump doesn’t qualify as even an idiot.
Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump (who is a “senior advisor” in the administration) told NBC News that the president will be part of the GOP convention “every single night”. We’ll see how he does.
Lara Trump’s entire interview was interesting. She led with the Republican talking point about Biden reading from a teleprompter. She promised that the GOP convention would be “hopeful and inspirational, and positive”, … and then immediately started bashing the Democrats. The only positive thing she said was when she was praising Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, but polls show that Americans don’t believe that by a margin of 58.4 to 39.9 percent.
Joe Biden’s convention keynote speech impressed everyone, even pundits who oppose him. Yes, that even includes Fox News hosts. Chris Wallace said “it was an enormously effective speech”). Dana Perino was even more effusive, saying “[Biden] just hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth”. Even Laura Ingraham — one of Trump’s strongest supporters at Fox — told Trump Jr. “He did beat expectations, Don. I mean, people were expecting him to flub every line and have a senior moment,” which surprised the younger Trump enough he abruptly stopped smiling.
Watch the smile disappear from Jr’s face as Laura Ingraham says Joe Biden exceeded expectations. It almost looks like he’s about to cry pic.twitter.com/p3XVncSOYZ
Karl Rove, the architect of Dubya’s two election victories, said “it was a very good speech” and that he’d be worried if he were a GOP strategist working on this year’s presidential campaign. The speech even got positive reviews from the Drudge Report, who ran with the headline “Biden Barn Burner” saying “Joe wows critics” and linking to commentary that he “crushed expectations”.
I think it is safe to say that Donald Trump also knew it was a great speech, because it (almost) shut him up. For his only tweet, Trump stopped using ALL CAPS and posted while Biden was still speaking, which probably means he couldn’t bring himself to finish listening to it. Remember also that Trump typically accuses others of the very things which he himself is terribly guilty (this will be even more significant when you watch the short video at the end of this post).
In 47 years, Joe did none of the things of which he now speaks. He will never change, just words!
As another sign of his panic, Trump is now obsessing about next week’s Republican convention, which still doesn’t have much of a speaker’s list. Maybe he believes he should be the only speaker?
I wanted to share one thing that we discussed after the show was over. Both of us we were caught off guard by how emotionally attached we were last night to this candidacy. We had sort of expected to feel this reluctant, begrudging support for the Democratic nominee, to have been left in a tough spot between one normal bad choice and one existentially bad one. But that isn’t what happened. Joe Biden has me energized. And frankly, that he has both Charlie and I reflecting on whether maybe in the past we were just…in the wrong…
Trump does have a serious problem. Chris Wallace said “Remember Donald Trump has been talking for months about Joe Biden as mentally shot, a captive from the left.” But Wallace concluded “[Biden] blew a hole — a big hole in that characterization.” If Trump can’t demonize Biden as old and feeble, or a socialist puppet, what can he run on? The economy, which is now in the toilet with no chance of it recovering before the election? Even worse, if Trump loses the right-wing media, he will probably also lose his GOP enablers (who will then no longer fear him).
Due to the crippling of the Post Office, other blatant attempts of voter suppression, and (of course) the pandemic, voting has gotten more confusing and complicated. But the vote has never been more important.
Luckily, there is help. Two websites, vote.org and represent.us, provide state-by-state information on how to vote so that your vote will count, and how to vote safely.
Protect our democracy. Pass these two sites on to everyone you know.
Congresswoman Barbara Jordan‘s speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. She was the first Black and the first woman to deliver a keynote address.
Coincidentally, she was my Congresswoman; I first saw her when she gave a talk at my high school. If she had not been stricken by debilitating illnesses, perhaps she would have gone on to be president, and I would have gladly worked my ass off to help elect her. At the very least, she would have made a fantastic Supreme Court justice.
The final report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2016 election has been released. Even the public redacted version “confirms that Donald Trump and his campaign operatives solicited, welcomed and benefited from Russian assistance.”
“The report also details extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign operatives and people tied to the Kremlin.” And remember, this is the report from the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans.
One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself. Their aim is to sow chaos, discord, and distrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to claim that the Russian investigation is a hoax. I think a more appropriate word would be treason.
We know that Trump will do anything — including giving valuable information to our enemies, commuting the sentences of his henchmen, and committing other illegal acts — to stay in power. This must end, and the guilty parties must be punished.
In the 1997 film “The Postman,” set in post-apocalyptic America, Kevin Costner plays a drifter trying to restore order to the United States by providing one essential service, mail delivery. In the story, hate crimes, racially motivated attacks and a plague have caused the breakdown of society as we know it. In his quest to restore order and dignity to the nation, the Postman tries to recruit other postal workers to help rebuild the U.S. government. But Costner’s character is opposed by the evil General Bethlehem, who is fighting to suppress the postal carriers so he can establish a totalitarian government. Fortunately, our hero, gaining inspiration from the motto, “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night,” fights on against Bethlehem and saves the country.
Not surprisingly, the movie was panned by critics and was a financial disaster. I mean really, racial strife and a plague so bad that it threatened our society? And even if that happened, who would try to destroy the Postal Service? Where do they come up with these crazy plots?
His conclusion is inescapable:
Today, as we struggle with social upheaval, soaring debt, record unemployment, a runaway pandemic, and rising threats from China and Russia, President Trump is actively working to undermine every major institution in this country. He has planted the seeds of doubt in the minds of many Americans that our institutions aren’t functioning properly. And, if the president doesn’t trust the intelligence community, law enforcement, the press, the military, the Supreme Court, the medical professionals, election officials and the postal workers, then why should we? And if Americans stop believing in the system of institutions, then what is left but chaos and who can bring order out of chaos: only Trump. It is the theme of every autocrat who ever seized power or tried to hold onto it.
A new ad from the Republican Voters Against Trump features the former Chief of Staff for Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
He published an even more damning article in the Washington Post today. He says that Trump turned DHS “into a tool used for his political benefit.” In particular there was “a near-total focus on issues that he said were central to his reelection”.
“What we saw week in and week out, for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying. We would go in to try to talk to him about a pressing national security issue — cyberattack, terrorism threat — he wasn’t interested in those things.”
“Trump showed vanishingly little interest in subjects of vital national security interest, including cybersecurity, domestic terrorism and malicious foreign interference in U.S. affairs.”
Even worse was the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. “In his cavalier disregard for the seriousness of the threat, Trump failed to make effective use of the federal crisis response system painstakingly built after 9/11. Years of DHS planning for a pandemic threat have been largely wasted. Meanwhile, more than 165,000 Americans have died.”
Even though he is still a Republican, he says that he has to support Joe Biden for president because he knows that Biden will keep us safe. And four more years of Trump “are unthinkable”.
Donald Trump’s attempt to throw the election by destroying the US Post Office is already backfiring. Here are articles from a number of key swing states:
Arizona Republic: “Postal Service warns 46 states about ballot delays”
Miami Herald: “USPS warns Florida some of its mail ballots could be rejected”
Remember that 91% of Americans have a favorable view of the US Post Office, which is higher than that of any other federal agency. Many Trump supporters depend on the USPS for medicines, social security checks, or other critical needs.
Donald Trump has nothing left to run his campaign on, except fear and hatred. As they say, will he be able to fool America twice? If he does, then shame on us.
President Trump, of course, long ago redefined what constitutes normal in the White House, but with 77 days left in a campaign that polls show he is losing, he is pushing all the boundaries at once. At the same time the champion of birtherism is again scraping the raw edges of America’s divisions over race, gender and national origin, he is propelling fringe ideas into mainstream conversation. And now, running as the incumbent, he has levers of power available to help salvage a flagging campaign.
Yet what once would have caused jaws to drop barely seems to register for long at this point because it is so quickly overshadowed by the next norm-busting statement or action.
At 11:09 p.m., just 15 minutes after posting on Twitter a statement mourning the death of his younger brother, he retweeted a message urging the abandonment of cities that he, as president, represents. “Leave Democrat cities,” the message read. “Let them rot.”
Filed in Hypocrisy|Comments Off on Welcome to the Future!
I assume that only people who have been avoiding the news don’t know that the Republicans are trying to throw the election by screwing with the US Postal Service. Trump has literally admitted it.
