Subterms
Texas
The state is crucial for Republicans if they want to retain the presidency. Their opponents are hoping the young and people of color can help them to victory More
Six months into the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump tweeted a rare statement of condolences, as the confirmed death toll in the US climbed past 183,000.But the expression of regret was not for victims of Covid-19. Instead the president memorialized a member of a far-right group killed in Portland, Oregon on Saturday night.“Rest in peace Jay,” the president tweeted, referring to Aaron “Jay” Danielson, shot dead in clashes after a convoy of Trump supporters drove through an anti-racism protest.Trump is not often given to expressions of sympathy or understanding. But going back to the days when he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to call for the deaths of five wrongfully accused Black men in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, he has shown a lifelong penchant for inserting himself at raw public moments to inflame racist hatreds and fears.The difference now is that Trump is president, and that penchant has become the centerpiece of his re-election strategy. That much is plain from his Twitter feed, which on Sunday included footage of a Black man assaulting a white woman on a subway platform, apropos of nothing.“I think he only means to agitate things,” said Karen Bass, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. “He is campaigning. It’s clear his campaign is all about ‘law and order’, it’s a throwback to the past, and he’s going to do everything to disrupt law and order in this time.”It has been three years since Trump defended the “very fine people” among the white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia. It has been only two months since he branded anti-racist protesters “terrorists” and two weeks since he tweeted that “the history and culture of our great country [is] being ripped apart” with the removal of statues to Confederate leaders and generals.Trump has announced that he will visit Kenosha on Tuesday. The Wisconsin city has been the scene of protests after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, four times in the back as Blake reached into a car in which his children were sitting.Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who was both a Trump admirer and a self-styled law enforcement enthusiast, brought a semi-automatic rifle to the scene of protests in the city and killed two people, prosecutors say.Trump has expressed his support: on Friday the president “liked” a tweet thread beginning: “Kyle Rittenhouse is a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump.”Of the caravan of trucks flying Trump flags that drove into the anti-racism protests in Portland on Saturday, spraying mace and firing paintballs, Trump tweeted: “GREAT PATRIOTS!”A suspect held in the death of Danielson reportedly described himself as a supporter of “antifa”, a broad label applied to “anti-fascist” groups that Trump and the far right have accused of unsubstantiated acts of violence. Danielson was identified as a “friend and supporter” of the Patriot Prayer group, whose founder, a former Republican candidate for US Senate, has condemned white supremacy but which attracts white supremacist sympathizers.Trump’s planned Kenosha visit was seen by Bass and others as likely to inflame tensions at a time when calls for calm and mutual understanding are needed.“I think his visit has one purpose, and one purpose only, and that is to agitate things and to make things worse,” Bass said.For others, Trump’s plan to visit Kenosha was ominously reminiscent of visits to scenes of other conflicts critics say he has fomented with incendiary tweets and by cheerleading violent actors.After a white gunman who warned of a “Hispanic invasion” killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas last year, Trump visited despite urging from local officials not to. At the scene, Trump boasted about progress on his border wall.A year earlier, Trump paid a similarly controversial visit to Pittsburgh, where a gunman who accused Jews of “committing genocide to his people” killed 11 at a synagogue.Joe Biden has directly tied Trump’s rhetoric to such incidents of violence, and accused the president of unleashing “the deepest, darkest forces in this nation”.“How far is it from Trump’s saying this ‘is an invasion’ to the shooter in El Paso declaring ‘this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas’?” Biden has tweeted. “Not far at all.”The Democratic nominee for president planned to visit Pittsburgh on Monday, “to lay out a core question voters face in this election: are you safe in Donald Trump’s America?”In released excerpts of his speech, he said: “This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can’t stop the violence – because for years he has fomented it.”Trump, Biden added, “may believe mouthing the words ‘law and order’ makes him strong, but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows you how weak he is.”Writing for the Daily Beast, the columnist Michael Tomasky said trying to convince voters that Biden represents chaos would not work. The piece was titled “White People Aren’t as Racist or Stupid as Trump Thinks”.But four years ago, Trump showed he knew white voters, who made up 74% of the 2016 electorate, better than a lot of people. They voted 54%-39% for Trump, putting him where he is today. More
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
Joe Biden has blown his chance to win over Kristen, to be found selling home-baked cakes and pies at a farmer’s market in Forest county, northern Wisconsin.The 46-year-old was once a fan of Barack Obama, voting for him twice before switching her allegiance to Donald Trump four years ago. Kristen, who doesn’t want her last name used, was minded to back Trump again in November but was holding off to see who Biden chose as his vice-presidential running mate.“The person I think should be the vice-presidential candidate is Michelle Obama. Nothing to do with her gender, nothing to do with her skin colour. I could care less. She could be purple. But I think she’s got a solid head on her shoulders. She’s not reactionary. She’s thoughtful. I don’t think she rushes to judgment,” she said.Ultimately, Kristen wants to see Michelle Obama as president. She was not happy that Biden chose Kamala Harris, saying the decision was influenced by “the racial climate”.So Kristen is likely to stick with Trump even if she struggles to offer a persuasive reason to vote for him again.“When you don’t have a good choice, you go with the least worst choice. Trump versus Clinton, he was the least worst option and it wasn’t saying much. When you’re the least worst option, that doesn’t mean you’re the pretty girl at the prom. It just means there wasn’t anyone else showing up to dance with,” she said.“Same with Biden. When dumb and dumber are running, it doesn’t matter who wins. I don’t think Trump is going to up his game but Biden, I just don’t think he has the tools in his chest to handle anything.”Kristen votes in a county that swung heavily to Trump in 2016 along with large parts of rural Wisconsin. That delivered the state to the president by fewer than 23,000 votes, a margin of just 0.77%, and with it the electoral college votes, alongside extremely close victories in Michigan and Pennsylvania, to put him in the White House. More
The Observer
US politics
‘Two visions of the US’: Trump and Biden offer contrasts on race, Covid and economy
The Democratic and Republican national conventions offered two radically different diagnoses of the problems confronting America More
In one of the worst cities for evictions in the US, North Charleston, South Carolina, state representative Marvin Pendarvis’s push for more tenant protections is personal.When he was just 12, his family was evicted from their North Charleston home and the memory still haunts him.“I can remember being served with an eviction notice,” Pendarvis said. “I can remember having our belongings put out on the street.”The 30-year-old Democrat has worked to improve renter protections since entering politics, but the issue has taken on new urgency because of the coronavirus pandemic, economic crisis and racial injustice protests.Housing advocates across the country are bracing for a surge in evictions after the expiration of federal programs to help the unemployed during the pandemic. The firm Stout Risius Ross predicted 185,000 evictions could be filed in South Carolina in the next four months. Those most at risk of eviction are low-income women of color.After Pendarvis was evicted in the early 2000s, he and his sisters moved frequently to live with different family members and friends.“It’s hard to be engaged in academics, it’s hard to be engaged in anything, when you know that all of your friends are going back home at the end of the day and you don’t know where you’re going yet,” Pendarvis said. “Sometimes you wish the school day would last as long as possible … just because you know that for those few hours, six, seven hours of the day, that you’ll be fed, you’ll be housed and you’ll feel safe and comfortable.”Pendarvis said after he spoke publicly about being evicted, a handful of politicians contacted him to share similar experiences.Ultimately though, South Carolina’s political class – like that of much of the US – is more representative of landlords than renters.That’s what I look at as my role: to try to bring awareness to people and show them evictions are happeningThe state’s governor, Henry McMaster, is a landlord and has collected rent from his more than 200 tenants through the pandemic, according to the Post and Courier newspaper. It was the state supreme court, not its politicians, that passed a now-expired coronavirus eviction moratorium.“It’s just not gotten the attention it needs to address it in a meaningful way through politics,” Pendarvis said. “That’s what I look at as my role: to try to bring awareness to people and show them evictions are happening.”Pendarvis has been publicizing individual cases of eviction to local media, advising residents in his capacity as a practicing attorney and pushing legislation to address issues which disproportionately affect the city he represents.“I get a call every day – literally – a call or an email or a text or a Facebook message or a tweet from someone in my district, and even beyond my district, that is dealing with eviction,” Pendarvis said. “Or someone who has been laid off from their job and they’re looking at what to do with unemployment and what’s going to happen with that.”As a representative for a 41,000-person district, which is 51% Black, the racial injustice protests that have roiled America this summer further focused his efforts to fight for improvements to housing law, healthcare and food insecurity in the state.I came to the conclusion I’ve got to do morePendarvis participated in the protests and said they inspired him to re-evaluate his work. He also became a father for the first time in April and asked himself what he wanted to tell his son he was doing in the summer of 2020.“I came to the conclusion I’ve got to do more,” he said.This summer’s racial equality protests formed in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but it was the police killing of another Black man, Walter Scott, that catalyzed Pendarvis’s entry into public service.A few months after Pendarvis graduated law school, Scott was shot dead while running away from a police officer who had pulled him over for a traffic violation. Three months later, a white teenager killed nine black people in a church in downtown Charleston.“You had two really, really traumatic events that took place in our city that shook me and forced me to think about my role in addressing some of the issues that led to what happened,” Pendarvis said.He ran for city council, lost, and decided to try again in 2019. But a statehouse representative resigned in 2017 and Pendarvis successfully campaigned for the seat. He was re-elected in 2018 and decisively won the Democratic primary in June. He does not face a Republican challenger in November.Pendarvis thinks the US needs to do much more to be sure that after the virus is under control, citizens aren’t further burdened by lingering health disparities, unemployment and food insecurity.Pendarvis said: “My community is going to be decimated after this virus from an economic standpoint and even a health standpoint, and the question is how do we ensure they are able to recover properly?” More
Now disgraced, Jerry Falwell Jr once announced that Donald Trump was entitled to an extra two years on the job as “reparations” for a “failed coup”, meaning the Mueller investigation. Joe Biden has gone so far as to predict the president will try to steal the election.Trump and his backers openly speak of four terms in office. “If you really want to drive them crazy, say 12 more years,” the president cackles, despite express constitutional strictures to the contrary.Even as doubts surrounding its legitimacy grow, the election assumes ever greater significance. Michael Schmidt’s first book is aptly subtitled: “Inside the Struggle to Stop a President.”The Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter chronicles what he has seen from his “front-row seat”. It was Schmidt who broke news of Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email while secretary of state, and of James Comey authoring a memo that detailed the president ordering him to end the FBI investigation of Gen Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.Hindering Trump is one thing, stopping him something elseSchmidt argues persuasively that the Trump presidency has highlighted the fragility of American democracy, and that Trump views the rule of law as something for others. More precisely, the president believes prison is meant for his political adversaries but not so much for his convicted cronies and for himself, never. Schmidt documents how Trump sought to prosecute Clinton and Comey: literally and seriously.A central premise of Donald Trump v the United States is that those who have sought to thwart the president have failed. Comey is no longer FBI director, Gen John Kelly is no longer White House chief of staff. Donald McGahn, Trump’s first White House counsel, is back in private practice.Trump usually gets what he wants. Jared Kushner, for example, holds a “top secret” security clearance despite persistent objections from senior White House staff and the intelligence community. After all others refused, Trump personally granted his son-in-law his clearance. Hindering Trump is one thing, stopping him something else. Over on Capitol Hill, according to Schmidt, Trump has “routinely outflanked the Democratic lawmakers investigating him”, while Republican leaders have emerged as “Trump’s public defenders”. Career civil servants, including those at the Food and Drug Administration, are “maligned” as part of a ‘Deep State’.” So what if a pandemic rages?Similarly, Trump targets journalists as “fake news” and as “enemies of the people”, a term popularized by Joseph Stalin. As one administration insider has said, it’s all a “bit” reminiscent of the “late” Weimar Republic.Schmidt frames his book as a four-act play, Comey and McGahn the central actors, a quote from King Lear as prelude. Chapters weave context with drama, even as they inform.The reader is continuously reminded of how many days remained before a particular event, such as “Donald Trump is sworn in as president”, “the appointment of special counsel Robert S Mueller III” or the “release of the Mueller Report”. It difficult to forget what came next. Donald Trump v the United States is laden with direct quotes and attribution. It is credible and intriguing. Beyond that, it is also unsettling.Schmidt details McGahn’s cooperation with the special counsel. Here, he recalls a conversation for the ages, with McGahn while he was still White House counsel and Mueller’s investigation was months away from its end.“You did a lot of damage to the president,” Schmidt tells McGahn, minutes before a thunderstorm over the White House. “I understand that. You understand that. But [Trump] doesn’t understand that.”McGahn replies: “I damaged the office of the president. I damaged the office.”Schmidt parries: “That’s not it. You damaged him, and he doesn’t understand that.”Ultimately, McGahn responds: “This is the last time we ever talk.”On cue, the rain begins to fall.Equally vivid are exchanges between Comey and his wife, Patrice, she of a keener sense of peril. As he moved toward announcing the FBI’s determination surrounding Clinton’s emails, in late June 2016, she presciently warned: “This is going to be bad for you.”According to Schmidt, Patrice Comey also pleaded, “You’re going to get shot … you’re going to get slammed.” Months later, her husband would tell the Senate judiciary committee it made him “mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election”.The book also clears up the mystery of what happened to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, which if concluded would likely have examined Trump’s broader ties with Moscow. One day it was there, the next day it had vanished.Specifically, the special counsel’s report addressed conspiracy and obstruction of justice but did not discuss related counterintelligence issues. Schmidt reveals that we can blame that on Rod Rosenstein, then deputy attorney general.According to Schmidt, in the hand-off of the FBI investigation to Mueller, in the aftermath of the firing of Comey, Rosenstein deliberately narrowed the special counsel’s remit. The deputy attorney general directed Mueller to concentrate on criminality. Whether Trump was a Russian agent was not on the special counsel’s plate.According to Schmidt, Rosenstein “had foreclosed any deeper inquiry before investigation even began”. This is the same Rosenstein who in spring 2017 suggested he secretly record the president, and that the cabinet consider removing him from office.“The president had bent Washington to his will,” Schmidt writes.The question now is whether the electorate follows. America goes to the polls in little more than nine weeks. More
The documentary film-maker Michael Moore has warned that Donald Trump appears to have such momentum in some battleground states that liberals risk a repeat of 2016 when so many wrote off Trump only to see him grab the White House.“Sorry to have to provide the reality check again,” he said.Moore, who was one of few political observers to predict Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, said that “enthusiasm for Trump is off the charts” in key areas compared with the Democratic party nominee, Joe Biden.“Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC [Democratic National Committee] to pull this off?” Moore posted on Facebook late on Friday.Moore identified opinion polling in battleground states such as Minnesota and Michigan to make a case that the sitting president is running alongside or ahead of his rival.“The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states – but not Michigan. Sound familiar?” Moore wrote, presumably indicating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 race when she made the error of avoiding some states that then swung to Trump.“I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much,” he later added.He continued to voters: “Don’t leave it to the Democrats to get rid of Trump. YOU have to get rid of Trump. WE have to wake up every day for the next 67 days and make sure each of us are going to get a hundred people out to vote. ACT NOW!”Moore cited CNN polling of registered voters this month to assert that “Biden and Trump were in a virtual tie”, including a poll that showed the pair tied at 47% in Minnesota. Moore said that Trump “has closed the gap to 4 points” in Michigan.A national CNN poll this month showed that Biden’s lead over Trump has narrowed nationally, 50% to 46%, while a survey from the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group found Biden and Trump statistically tied at 47% in Minnesota, and Trump narrowly leading Biden in Michigan. The margin of error for the poll, which surveyed 1,048 people, is 2.98%.Moore, a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders’s leftwing candidacy, warned in October 2016 that “Trump’s election is going to be the biggest ‘f*** you’ ever recorded in human history – and it will feel good,” even as Clinton appeared to be sailing to victory.“Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting, and that’s why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump,” Moore warned at that time.Moore’s latest warnings come as Trump said at a campaign event in New Hampshire on Friday night that he supported seeing the first female president of the United States, but recommended his daughter over the Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.“They’re all saying ‘we want Ivanka,’” Trump told his supporters. “I don’t blame them.” More
