Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 150 Shares179 Views

    in Elections

    Donald Trump makes baseless claim that 'dark shadows' are controlling Joe Biden

    Donald Trump

    Fox News interviewer says president’s bizarre suggestion ‘sounds like a conspiracy theory’

    Play Video

    0:59

    ‘Dark shadows’ are controlling Joe Biden, claims Trump – video

    Donald Trump’s appetite for baseless conspiracy theories scaled new heights on Monday when he alleged that people in “dark shadows” are controlling Democratic rival Joe Biden.
    The US president made a mysterious claim about “thugs” in “dark uniforms” flying into Washington and also compared police brutality against African Americans to golfers cracking under pressure.
    With the presidential election just two months away, Trump was interviewed at the White House by Laura Ingraham, a host on the conservative Fox News network. “Who do you think is pulling Biden’s strings?” she asked. “Is it former Obama people?”
    The president replied: “People that you’ve never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows. People that –”

    Jason Campbell
    (@JasonSCampbell)
    Donald Trump says “people that are in the dark shadows” and “people you haven’t heard of” are ‘pulling the strings’ for Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/tjLpVMSRCO

    September 1, 2020

    Even Ingraham, evidently sympathetic to Trump, interjected: “What does that mean? That sounds like a conspiracy theory. Dark shadows. What is that?”
    Trump insisted: “There are people that are on the streets, there are people that are controlling the streets.”
    The conversation then took an even stranger turn. “We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend,” the president said. “And in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that.”
    A puzzled Ingraham pressed for details. Trump deflected cryptically: “I’ll tell you some time. It’s under investigation right now.”
    But he added that his witness, heading to the Republican national convention, had reported seeing “a lot of people were on the plane to do big damage”. Trump’s claim appeared baffling in the absence of further evidence.
    The president is notorious for pushing the “birther” conspiracy theory about Barack Obama and recently declining to denounce the antisemitic QAnon movement.
    In the interview with Ingraham, Trump also continued his racially divisive rhetoric, describing Black Lives Matter as a “Marxist organisation”. He said: “The first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter, I said, ‘That’s a terrible name. It’s so discriminatory’. It’s bad for Black people. It’s bad for everybody.”
    The president is due to visit Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday despite a warning from state governor Tony Evers that he is only likely to enflame tensions. The city has witnessed deadly unrest after Jacob Blake, an African American man, was shot seven times in the back by police and left paralysed from the waist down.
    Trump, who is pushing law and order as a reelection campaign theme, told Ingraham: “The police are under siege because of things – they can do 10,000 great acts, which is what they do, and one bad apple, or a choker – you know, a choker. They choke.”
    He added: “Shooting the guy in the back many times. I mean, couldn’t you have done something different, couldn’t you have wrestled him? You know, I mean, in the meantime, he might’ve been going for a weapon. And you know there’s a whole big thing there. But they choke, just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot putt.”
    Ingraham hastily interrupted, like a publicist anxious to rescue the president from disaster. “You’re not comparing it to golf,” she said. “Because of course that’s what the media would say.”
    Democrats seized on the president’s remark. Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, tweeted: “You know things are bad when Laura Ingraham has to save President Trump from saying stupid things.”

    Topics

    Donald Trump

    US elections 2020

    Joe Biden

    news

    Share on Facebook

    Share on Twitter

    Share via Email

    Share on LinkedIn

    Share on Pinterest

    Share on WhatsApp

    Share on Messenger

    Reuse this content More

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    Barr reportedly removes national security official ahead of elections

    The move comes after John Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist, told Congress his office would no longer give verbal briefings on election securityThe US attorney general, William Barr, has reportedly removed the head of a section of the justice department entrusted with ensuring the legality of federal counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities.The removal of deputy assistant attorney general Brad Wiegmann, first reported by ABC News, has not been explained, but it comes amid rising Democratic concerns that Barr and his justice department will seek to influence the conduct of the November elections in Donald Trump’s favour. Continue reading… More

  • 138 Shares129 Views

    in Elections

    Activist Ady Barkan tells top Republican to apologise over doctored video

    The progressive activist Ady Barkan, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or motor neurone disease), said a top Republican in Congress owes “the entire disability community an apology” for spreading a digitally altered video of Barkan, who speaks through a computer, interviewing the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.Steve Scalise, from Louisiana and the second-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, tweeted a doctored video in which Biden appeared to tell Barkan he wanted to “defund” the police – a lie Donald Trump and his supporters have used in the presidential campaign.In fact, Biden told Barkan he supports policing reform such as sending social services counselors on some calls, instead of police officers.“And by the way, the idea, though,” Biden told Barkan, “that’s not the same as getting rid of or defunding all the police.”The video tweeted by Scalise puts words into Barkan’s mouth, making him say, as he never did: “Do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding for police?”Biden answers “Yes, absolutely.”“These are not my words,” Barkan tweeted at Scalise. “I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology.”Twitter flagged the video, alerting users it is a fake. Scalise deleted it from his Twitter timeline on Sunday night.“While Joe Biden clearly said ‘yes,’ twice, to the question of his support to redirect money away from police, we will honor the request of [Barkan] and remove the portion of his interview from our video,” the congressman tweeted.Scalise’s office said it was fine to manipulate the video, which spokeswoman Lauren Fine told the Washington Post had been “condensed … to the essence of what he was asking, as is common practice for clips run on TV and social media, no matter the speaker”.But splicing words into speech – not to speak of splicing computer-generated words into the digitized speech of a disabled person – is not “common practice” in any medium, on the part of any agent or outlet not seeking to deliberately mislead.The few instances in which media organizations have broadcast video later revealed to be edited in a way that leaves out important context have caused outrage on both sides of the aisle.Republicans led by Trump have been especially aggressive, branding the media “fake news” and the “enemy of the people” for accurately reporting information that does not reflect well on the administration.In May, Trump called for the NBC host Chuck Todd to be fired after his show broadcast a truncated clip of the attorney general, William Barr, answering a question about the former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The clip left off the end of Barr’s answer. NBC apologized and issued a correction.Barkan endorsed Biden at the Democratic convention, calling Trump an “existential threat” and demanding access to quality healthcare for all.“We live in the richest country in history and yet we do not guarantee this most basic human right,” he said. “Everyone living in America should get the healthcare they need regardless of their employment status or ability to pay.” More

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Republican who 'swift boated' John Kerry to run pro-Trump Super Pac

    The Republican strategist who orchestrated the “swift boating” of John Kerry in 2004 is behind a new effort to aid Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.Chris LaCivita will run a Super Pac called Preserve America, beginning with a $30m ad campaign in key states, based on Trump’s law-and-order message. According to Politico, the casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus are among Republican mega-donors funding the group.Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was a group that emerged in August 2004, as Kerry, a Vietnam veteran who became an anti-war campaigner and then a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, challenged George W Bush in the polls.Swift boats were small river craft used by the US navy in Vietnam. Kerry, later secretary of state under Barack Obama, captained one.Reporting for the Guardian, Julian Borger wrote: “John Kerry’s Vietnam war record has been trashed in a series of advertisements and a book by a group … who claim that Kerry inflicted injuries on himself and falsified his field reports to win his medals and ultimately get out of Vietnam after four months of combat.”He added: “It is a potentially devastating multi-media assault on a presidential candidate. It also turns out to be largely untrue.”The effort achieved sufficient levels of infamy – and was sufficiently successful – that in US politics at least its name became a verb.As the New York Times put it in 2008, “swift boat” became “the synonym for the nastiest of campaign smears, a shadow that hangs over the presidential race as pundits wait to proclaim that the swift boating has begun and candidates declare that they will not be swift boated.”LaCivita’s website describes him as “a former Marine who was wounded in combat … a fierce competitor with a proven track record of winning difficult campaigns at every level of the ballot”.Politico quoted him and embedded ads accusing Biden of being weak on law and order, a key Republican tactic as the campaign hots up and a president who has watched a pandemic kill more than 180,000 and crater the economy seeks political distraction.“The radical leftwing mob is trying to destroy our country from within and Joe Biden is too weak to stop them,” LaCivita said. “It’s a concern shared by a growing number of Americans and we intend to spread their message far and wide.”Somewhat ironically, news of the swift boat veteran’s return came as Military Times released a poll showing “a slight but significant preference” for Biden among US servicemen.Trump claims strong support in the US military. The new poll showed Biden up 43% to 37%, slightly below his lead in most national polling averages.On Saturday, Biden addressed the National Guard Association. In a shot at Trump’s words and actions against protesters in cities including Kenosha, Wisconsin; Portland, Oregon; and Washington DC, he said he would “never put you in the middle of politics, or personal vendettas.“I’ll never use the military as a prop or as a private militia to violate rights of fellow citizens. That’s not law and order. You don’t deserve that.” More

  • 175 Shares149 Views

    in Elections

    'We're not taking it any more': Jacob Blake's family lead Washington rally – video

    Play Video

    3:22

    The family of Wisconsin shooting victim Jacob Blake condemned racism and demanded criminal justice reform as they spoke in front of thousands at the Commitment March in Washington DC. Earlier this week Blake was shot multiple times in the back by police, leaving him paralysed. The protest, announced in early June following the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, marked the anniversary of the demonstration at which Martin Luther King gave his historic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
    Tens of thousands join Get Your Knee Off Our Necks march in Washington DC
    US politics live

    Topics

    Black Lives Matter movement

    Race

    US policing

    US politics More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Elections

    America reacts to Donald Trump's RNC acceptance speech – live

    Trump paints Biden as ‘radical’ candidate and danger to US
    Jacob Blake’s father says his paralysed son is handcuffed in hospital
    Louisiana city wakes up to hurricane aftermath
    1,124 new coronavirus deaths and 45,561 new cases in US yesterday
    Sign up for our First Thing newsletter

    LIVE
    Updated More

  • 213 Shares99 Views

    in Elections

    Protesters try to drown out Donald Trump's acceptance speech on last day of RNC – video highlights

    Play Video

    3:48

    Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday, as protesters outside the White House did their best to drown out his speech. Here are highlights of the last night of the 2020 Republican national convention
    RNC: Trump paints Biden as a ‘radical’ candidate and a danger to America
    Trump unleashes diatribe of falsehoods and baseless attacks in RNC finale
    America reacts to Donald Trump’s RNC acceptance speech – US politics live

    Topics

    Republican national convention 2020

    Donald Trump

    Republicans More