Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Charlie Kirk badgers Christian pastors to do more to elect Donald Trump

      by

      At a three-day political training session for pastors in a Dallas suburb this month, Charlie Kirk – the powerful rightwing activist and executive director of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) – railed at faith leaders, who he complained had not been doing enough to get Donald Trump elected, and begged them to enlist congregants into “deployments” to swing states.“‘But, but Charlie, I don’t think Trump is a very good role model for our church,’” said Kirk, imitating pastors who have shied away from Trump. “I have no patience for you any more, people. I am sick of this.”The conference featured a lineup of rightwing speakers, including Mike Flynn, the conspiracy theorist and retired lieutenant general, and Kirk himself, whose keynote speech at the Friday gala closed out the conference. Promising to help pastors “mobilize the body of Christ to take meaningful action”, the three-day training conference, for “active pastors and wives only”, cost $199 a pastor and $49 a wife.The event, called Igniting the Remnant Pastors, comes as the Trump campaign – and its allies in the rightwing movement, including TPUSA and America First Policy Institute – have vowed to turn out evangelicals in the 2024 election, viewing them as key to the low-propensity voting bloc they need to win in November. If Kirk’s address offers a window into the strategy, it looks something like this: urging and sometimes shaming church leaders into becoming unofficial Trump surrogates who will in turn mobilize their congregants to door-knock in key swing states.Kirk opened his remarks by denouncing the press for focusing on Kamala Harris’s presidential bid. He called Harris “the most unlikable” person to run for president and “super dumb”. The media, he complained, had failed to sufficiently cover the shooting at the Trump rally, when the former president’s ear was grazed by a bullet. The audience might be feeling like things had gotten rough for their presidential candidate, but that couldn’t stop them, Kirk said.“We fought with the trial, and we fought with the indictments, and we fought through, you know, the debate, and Trump almost got shot. I need a rest – I totally get that, but get over it,” Kirk admonished his audience. “Because we are at war in this country for the future of this civilization.”The speech struck Karen Goll, a researcher who focuses on the Christian right for the group Documented, as dire – even for Kirk, who is known for his fiery rhetoric. In his remarks, Goll wrote in an email, Kirk deployed “provocative language in the hopes that pastors will use their pulpit and the multiplication power of their congregation to deliver the election for Trump”.During his remarks, Kirk lauded the TPUSA-backed primary campaign in Arizona which ousted Maricopa county’s Republican head of elections, Steven Richer, who drew the ire of the far right for refuting Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen there. “[Richer] was close with Biden, talking about how the election was not stolen,” said Kirk. Defeating Richter was, Kirk said, “a red pill or a promising development”.Finally, Kirk called on the room of pastors to mobilize congregants to “chase ballots” in swing states, promising free lodging and stipends.Although electioneering and other forms of partisan political activism by non-profits and churches are technically barred by a 1954 law, the rule is rarely enforced. And in 2023 remarks, Trump vowed to end those restrictions.“Our goal is to have 10,000 out-of-state patriots flood Arizona and flood Wisconsin,” said Kirk, echoing Trump when he added, “in a way that we’ve never seen before.” More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Feel the groove: Trump keeps on dancing – does it help his cause?

      by

      Amid the lies, the vindictiveness, the dystopian portrayal of an America in decline, one aspect of Donald Trump’s political rallies tends to get overlooked: the dancing.At many campaign stops, the former president engages in what has become a signature dance: to the tune of Village People’s YMCA, Trump pumps his arms alternately, while staring blankly into the crowd.Unusually for a dance performance, there is a sort of malevolence to Trump’s movements. It’s rare to see someone dancing with a scowl on their face. But his supporters love it. A compilation video of Trump dancing proved a big hit at the Republican national convention, where it was played on big screens to fawning supporters every night. But why does Trump do this? And is his dancing any good?No it is not, said Brandon Chow, the founder of Hip Hop Dance Junkies, a company with dance schools in several states across the US.“On a scale of one to 10, I would say three. Three or four max,” Chow said.“The arms are there, the arms are very stiff, though – they’re not really moving. It’s literally him with his fists tight and his arms to his side. I mean, there is no movement where he’s leaving his comfort zone or his space. He’s literally just stepping in place, side to side, hips swaying.”View image in fullscreenChow, who predominantly deals in one-on-one coaching, suggested Trump could incorporate his feet more, and experiment with other arm movements.“He should get more steps involved, as opposed to stepping in place. Or if you aren’t going to travel outside of your zone, at least get some arms going instead of locking them to your sides, maybe even just, like a hand in the air every now and then, or doing an arm wave, or a turn or something. It just seems very repetitive, like it’s a robot staying in place,” Chow said.Marjorie Hershey, professor emeritus of political science at Indiana University Bloomington, said Trump’s characteristic performance is less an irrepressible expression of glee and more a way for him to show his supporters, and his party, who is boss.“It’s a sign of his need for power and control: that if he can lie with impunity, if he can dance oddly whenever he wants to, that’s a sign that, basically, he has enough power to be able to do whatever he pleases without anybody being able to stop him,” Hershey said.“Goodness knows he’s not in control of his dancing, but the fact that he feels this is a sign he’s cool, and it’s something he feels perfectly at ease to demonstrate, shows how he thinks he’s in total control of the Republican party: and he’s right.”View image in fullscreenIt is uncommon to see national leaders dance in public. And when they do, it hasn’t always proved to be a political benefit.Theresa May, while prime minister of the UK, became a figure of fun in August 2018 after performing an odd, stilted dance in front of a group of scouts in Nairobi. A couple of months later, at the Conservative party conference, May attempted to reclaim the narrative by dancing on to the stage to the tune of Abba’s Dancing Queen. The routine was widely panned.Boris Yeltsin, the former president of Russia, was known as someone who enjoyed a good time. During a campaign stop in 1996, he appeared on stage with a rock band and performed a spirited dance composition, which incorporated sashaying hips, under-knee claps, and a fists-clenched, arm pumping motion. Yeltsin won re-election, although questions were raised about the legitimacy of the vote.Barack Obama rarely danced while in office, but in a 2007 appearance on the Ellen show, while running for the Democratic presidential nomination, the former president briefly sashayed along to Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love. To the untrained eye, Obama appeared to display significantly more rhythm than Trump, May or Yeltsin.Joe Biden has had his own issues with musical performance. At a concert to celebrate Juneteenth earlier this year, the president stood frozen in place, arms rigid at his sides, as other people danced beside him.View image in fullscreenUnlike Yeltsin or Obama, Trump never looks to be enjoying himself while dancing. A review of at least 20 videos of Trump performing his signature dance at campaign rallies and, this week, during an interview with the questionable internet personality Adin Ross, failed to find a single instance of Trump smiling.“I would love to see him smile while he dances,” said Rhonda Malkin, a former member of the Rockettes dance troupe and the owner of Fusion Exercise and Professional Dance Coaching, who has tutored scores of professional dancers.Malkin said she suspected Trump was uninterested in a career in dance, but if he were, “he probably should work on his footwork”.“If he’s into moving his hands, then he should move his feet accordingly, with either a side-to-side motion or a step touch,” Malkin said. A step touch involves the dancer stepping one foot to the left or the right, and bringing the other foot next to it. The move is then repeated in the opposite direction.Trump may not have time to work on his footwork, or even arm movements, given he is facing, for the first time in months, serious challenges in his bid to win a second presidential term. Trump has fallen behind Kamala Harris in an average of national polls, as Harris has galvanized previously weary Democratic supporters.View image in fullscreenHe continues to face legal issues, too. He is due to be sentenced on 16 September after being found guilty on 34 felony fraud charges, while a judge presiding over Trump’s election interference case in Washington recently rejected his efforts to throw out the case. In context Trump’s continued jigs seem almost defiant – and now Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, has proved a huge hit, whereas JD Vance, Trump’s VP choice, has faced questions over past remarks and actions.In that context, at least Trump can rely on his ever-adoring base – the type of supporter who is thrilled when the former president does his idiosyncratic dance on stage, and believes Trump can do no wrong.“This does not look like a typical political attachment of even strong partisans to a candidate. I just haven’t seen before mentions of a candidate as the second coming of Christ, or that somehow he was divinely protected from a stray bullet by God,” Hershey said.Trump, Hershey said, has spent years “fundamentally fearmongering” about immigration, crime and “the other” to secure his relationship with his fans. The dancing, however lackluster it may be, is just some rather odd icing on a largely disgruntled cake. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      New York Times says it received hacked Trump campaign documents

      by

      The New York Times has confirmed it received the same or similar trove of Donald Trump presidential campaign documents as other media outlets did, after Microsoft confirmed that a “high-ranking official” at a presidential campaign was a hacking target.For the third US election in a row, hacked campaign information by a foreign power is now likely to feature as potential disruption. The Trump campaign has said its email systems were breached by hackers working for Iran.Politico reported getting emails from someone who identified themselves only as “Robert” and sent internal campaign communications and a 271-page-long research dossier on Trump’s running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, that was part of his vetting process. The news organisation said the Vance profile was “based on publicly available information”.On Monday, two Democratic lawmakers with experience on intelligence and security committees called for information about the latest breach to be released publicly.The California Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell posted on social media that he was seeking a briefing on the breach, and that while he considered Trump “the most despicable person ever to seek office” – someone who had also called for hacking in the past – “that doesn’t mean America ever tolerates foreign interference.”Adam Schiff, the Democrat of California, urged Department of Homeland Security officials to declassify information on the foreign nature of the hack.Schiff said the US intelligence community “moved much too slow to properly identity the hacking and dumping scheme carried out by Russia” in 2016 and “should act quickly here”.He also said that in that year: “The Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference, took advantage of it and then sought to deny it, much to the detriment of the country.”The Trump campaign’s announcement that its systems had been breached came after news organizations asked questions about Vance when he was a candidate for vice-president that appeared to come from internal vetting documents.The Washington Post said it had received a 271-page document marked “privileged & confidential” from an anonymous AOL customer known as Robert. Politico later said it had been receiving documents from someone who called themselves Robert since 22 July.Trump has said that only publicly available information was taken from its systems. “They were only able to get publicly available information but, nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing anything of this nature,” he posted on Saturday evening. “Iran and others will stop at nothing.”A Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said: “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”While Microsoft has not confirmed that the Trump campaign was the target, it has said that an Iranian group run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was behind a June attack on a presidential campaign.But the hack of the Trump campaign will serve as a warning that the last three months of the 2024 election could be as bumpy as the previous two elections. In 2016 the Hillary Clinton campaign was hacked, allegedly by Russian agents, and hundreds of emails were published by WikiLeaks. Twelve Russian military intelligence officers were later indicted for their alleged roles in interfering in the US election.In 2020, the contents of a laptop later confirmed as belonging to Hunter Biden were released and became subject of a controversy, not only for its salacious leaked content but for a letter signed by former intelligence officials claiming that the leak had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.On Saturday, a spokesman for the national security council said Joe Biden’s administration “strongly condemns any foreign government or entity who attempts to interfere in our electoral process or seeks to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions”. The FBI has yet to comment. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘A different level than 2020’: Trump’s plan to steal election is taking shape

      by

      There wasn’t anything particularly controversial about Georgia’s presidential primary in March this year. Donald Trump won the Republican contest – picking up a little more than 400,000 more votes than Nikki Haley, who had long dropped out of the race.Nonetheless, two Republicans on the five-person Fulton county election board refused to certify the election.Julie Adams and Michael Heekin didn’t point to specific irregularities. Instead, they said they needed more information from election administrators, like chain-of-custody documents for ballots. Adams and Heekin were outvoted.But it didn’t end there. In May, Adams, who is a part of an election activist network founded by Cleta Mitchell, voted against certifying another Georgia primary election. Again, despite no irregularities, she said she needed more information. With the backing of a group closely aligned with Donald Trump, Adams had also recently sued the Fulton county board, asking a judge to declare that she and other commissioners could choose not to certify the election.It was an unusual request – verification of ballot totals happens in the extensive process that leads up to certification and state laws generally do not permit those responsible for certifying them the discretion to investigate.In early August, the Republican-controlled state election board in Georgia adopted a new rule that essentially gave Adams what she wanted. It requires local election board members to conduct an undefined “reasonable inquiry” into any discrepancies before they can certify the election. There are concerns that officials could use that discretion to hold up certification of the election.The episode in Fulton county, and the new rule in Georgia, could be an alarming dress rehearsal for how Donald Trump and his allies will try to challenge the election results in November if he loses.Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to accepting the election results, declining multiple times to do so during a 27 June debate. He has suggested that Christians would “never have to vote again” if he wins. The anti-democratic sentiment has been echoed by other prominent conservatives, including Mike Howell, the director of the oversight project at the Heritage Foundation, who said earlier this year there was a “0% chance of a free and fair election”.“I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election,” he said at a Heritage Foundation event this summer.The effort poses a challenge that again would test the strength of the US’s voting system and its democratic institutions. It could probably stretch from little-known county election officials to the Congress.In some ways, Trump’s attempt to challenge the election result in 2024 could look a lot like his effort in 2020. It has begun months before election day with the seeding of doubt about the integrity of the election and could continue after.There are two key differences.First, Trump may be better prepared. Mitchell, a close Trump ally, has spent the last few years building up a network of activists focused on local boards of elections. And the Republican National Committee’s election litigation team is now being led by Christina Bobb, an election denier who is now facing criminal charges for her efforts to overturn the 2020 race. The RNC claims it is recruiting an army of 100,000 poll observers who could provide significant disruption during voting and counting.“I think we saw efforts by Republicans in 2020 that were pretty ham-handed,” said Marc Elias, a top Democratic voting rights lawyer. “I worry that there will be both legal and extralegal efforts by Republicans to keep ballots from being counted.”But more significantly, the idea that the 2020 election was stolen has moved from the fringes to being a pillar of the Republican party. A January poll from PRRI found that 66% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen. “The most important thing we have to do is protect the vote. You have to keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and, frankly, it’s the only thing they do well,” Trump said in a prerecorded video that played all four nights during the Republican national convention in July.The belief in stolen elections, Elias said, was “no longer the provenance of crazy people like Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell. This is no longer the province of people who thought that there were bamboo filaments in paper or mythical sea creatures involved in the election with Venezuelan dictators.“It has become now the standard position of the Republican party.”Seeds of doubt in 2020 to bloom in 2024Trump began seeding doubt in 2020 by pointing to mail-in voting as evidence the election was being stolen months beforehand. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, many states were quickly changing the rules around voting by mail, allowing expanded access because it was not clear if it would be safe to vote in person on election day.This year, Americans are unlikely to use mail-in voting at the same levels they did during the pandemic, and Republicans are now encouraging their supporters to take advantage of it. But Trump and allies are using a new messaging tactic in its place: that there are scores of non-citizens and other ineligible people on the voter rolls.Mitchell has played a key role in leading a coalition of groups that has pushed the false idea that there is a serious threat of non-citizens voting in US elections. Her coalition has supported federal legislation championed by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and others to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Such a restriction would probably do little to prevent fraud, which is exceedingly rare. Instead, it would probably make it harder for millions of eligible voters to cast a ballot. Nearly one in 10 eligible voters – 21 million Americans – lack easy access to proof of citizenship documents, according to one study released earlier this year.Even though Johnson’s congressional bill passed the House, it will probably go nowhere in the Senate. But it helps create an impression that something is amiss with American elections. To make matters worse, when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, Republicans also immediately sought to suggest her candidacy was illegitimate, calling the effort a “coup”.A constellation of groups – including the RNC, the Public Interest Legal Foundation and United Sovereign Americans – has also filed several lawsuits in various states to create the false impression that voter rolls are not properly being cleaned in several swing states. These lawsuits use misleading methodology and legal claims to suggest that there are a suspiciously large number of people registered in certain jurisdictions. Among other issues, they compare up-to-date voter registration information and outdated data from the American Community Survey.View image in fullscreen“They’re hanging the hooks to later hang their hat on,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the top voting rights expert at the Brennan Center.“It’s all part of creating sort of a pretext to say, ‘Oh, we need to throw out this set of ballots’ or ‘We can’t really know who the real winner is,’” said Ben Berwick, a lawyer at the non-profit Protect Democracy who works on voting rights issues. “I think much of it won’t stick, but I think the point is to have enough of it stick to create enough uncertainty for that critical post-election period.”‘Tricky legal questions and room for shenanigans’Any effort to challenge the election results will probably start at the local level.Just as there was in 2020, there’s likely to be a period of uncertainty after election day when votes are still being counted in key swing states. Two of those, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, still do not allow election officials to begin to process mail-in ballots until election day.“I’m definitely concerned that you’re gonna have a lot of efforts to disturb the process of counting those votes, if we go into the late evening, early hours of the next day and all of that,” said Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University who specializes in election law.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe observers amassed by Mitchell and the RNC could have a significant role. In 2020, chaotic confrontations at polling sites offered misleading evidence that Trump and allies used in their effort to try to overturn the election. Trump’s effort to challenge the election results in Arizona, for example, was undergirded by affidavits from observers and poll watchers who falsely claimed they saw ballots being rejected because of the type of pen voters were using.In Georgia, Trump pointed to reports from observers in Atlanta falsely claiming they were removed from the facility where mail-in ballots were counted. In Michigan, Trump’s team used as evidence an “incident report” from an election observer who falsely said she heard workers giving instructions to count a rejected ballot.Accusations of fraud may find a receptive audience at county boards responsible for certifying elections. Until 2020, no one gave much thought to these positions, sometimes filled by elected officials and other times by little-known party loyalists. In 2020, Trump’s campaign made a strong effort to try to delay certification at the local and state level as part of his effort to overturn the election.In Wayne county, home of Detroit, Trump personally called two Republican canvassers on the board responsible for certifying the vote there. The two officials briefly refused to certify, then reversed themselves and did. At the state level, Aaron Van Langevelde, a Republican on the state board of canvassers, faced pressure not to certify the vote, but decided to anyway.In Wisconsin, Republicans nearly got the state supreme court to block certification of the state’s election. In Arizona, Trump called the then governor, Doug Ducey, as he was certifying the vote amid a pressure campaign to stop the certification of votes there.Since 2020, there have been at least 20 instances in eight states of election officials refusing to certify election results.The first red flag came in 2022, when county commissioners in Otero county, New Mexico, refused to certify the results of a primary election, citing vague concerns about voting equipment. The secretary of state eventually went to court to force the commissioners to certify the election.In July of this year, two Republicans on the county commission in Washoe county, Nevada – a key county in a battleground state – refused to certify its primary vote, setting off alarms. The commissioners who refused to certify eventually reversed themselves. Nevada’s secretary of state, Cisco Aguilar, has since asked the state supreme court to clarify that county commissioners have an obligation to certify votes.Sometimes election officials who refuse to certify have pointed to mistakes that happened during the election, even though they did not affect the outcome. In other cases, like Adams’s in Georgia, officials have refused to certify to protest about what they view as unfair laws.While courts would probably force recalcitrant officials to certify the vote, significant damage could still be caused.“You can force certification through legal mechanisms, [but] those events tend to be like rocket fuel for conspiracy theories and misinformation and undermining confidence in the election. So there’s damage done even where certification is eventually forced,” said Berwick, the Protect Democracy lawyer.The timeline for certifying the vote is important because, under federal law, states must have an official election result by 11 December, six days before the electoral college meets. Delaying certification efforts at the local level could put states at risk of missing that deadline.“If we get past that deadline, it opens up a lot of questions, like tricky legal questions and room for shenanigans,” Berwick said.Pildes, the NYU professor, said that while he was concerned about efforts to block certification at the local level, he was confident that state courts could resolve any disputes by the time the electors meet.A new law, the Electoral Count Reform Act, should provide a significant new layer of protection against election subversion. The bipartisan bill passed Congress at the end of 2022.The law makes it so that Trump and his allies cannot repeat what they did in 2020 and submit false slates of electors from key swing states. Significantly, it says that the slate of electors submitted by a state’s executive is the legitimate slate and raises the threshold in both houses of Congress to object to the electoral result.While the law controls what Congress must do once it receives certificates from electors, it doesn’t have much to say about what must happen in the lead-up to the electoral college vote. That could leave a lot of wriggle room for Trump and allies to try to slow down certification and go to court to try to force states to miss their certification deadline.Prepared for challengesAfter Donald Trump nearly succeeded in overturning the 2020 election, is the US better prepared to stop a similar effort in 2024?Lawyers and other activists say they are ready, having spent the last four years studying and understanding the vulnerabilities that Trump and allies targeted in 2020. Any effort to block certification is likely to be swiftly challenged in courts, where Trump has already been unsuccessful dozens of times.The new Electoral Count Reform Act should offer additional safeguards should there be an effort such as there was in 2020 to get Congress to stop its certification of the voteYet it would be a mistake to dismiss the threat altogether. The same pressure points that existed in 2020 exist in 2024, and in some places election deniers have been elevated to positions of power.“This has started earlier in the cycle and is louder and is more consistent,” said Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center. “That is all just at a different level than it was before 2020.” More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Elon’s politics: how Musk became a driver of elections misinformation

      by

      When Elon Musk took over as owner of Twitter, researchers and elections officials feared a rampant spread of misinformation that would lead to threats and harassment and undermine democracy.Their fears came true – and Musk himself has emerged as one of its main drivers.The tech billionaire has cast doubt on machines that tabulate votes and mail ballots, both common features of US elections. He has repeatedly claimed there is rampant non-citizen voting, a frequent Republican talking point in this election.Musk, the ultra-wealthy owner of Tesla and other tech companies, is scheduled to interview Donald Trump on Monday, where they are sure to find common ground on these election conspiracies. Musk is a vocal supporter of the former US president and current Republican nominee. He has restored the Twitter/X accounts of people banned under previous ownership, dismantling the platform’s fact-checking and safety features. Trump’s X account, which was suspended after the January 6 insurrection, was restored as well, though Trump has not returned actively to the platform.“Electronic voting machines and anything mailed in is too risky. We should mandate paper ballots and in-person voting only,” he wrote on X in July.Maricopa county recorder Stephen Richer responded, asking if he could give Musk a tour of the large Arizona county’s facilities and run through the mail voting processes.“You can go into all the rooms. You can examine all the equipment. You can ask any question you want. We’d love to show you the security steps already in place, which I think are very sound,” Richer said.It wasn’t the only time Richer has sought to correct election misinformation Musk had shared. He previously tried to fix misunderstandings of Arizona voter data and rules for proof of citizenship.Social media platforms overall have taken less aggressive stances on fact-checking election falsehoods after an ongoing campaign by Republican lawmakers and their allies to attack the ways information was flagged by elected officials and researchers and how platforms responded.“I think X really kind of sticks out as a place where that change has been striking, and for it to come from the very top kind of just shows how much of an issue it is,” said Mekela Panditharatne, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s elections & government program.Musk shared a video that used an AI-generated voice for Kamala Harris, which raised concerns that it could fool some people into thinking it was real. Musk and the video creator defended it as parody.He has also written multiple times claiming that non-citizens are voting in US elections, which is illegal except in a few local elections. There are few instances of non-citizens voting, or even registering to vote. In late July, he shared a video of Elizabeth Warren talking about a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented people living in the US. “As I was saying, they’re importing voters,” he said, a nod to “great replacement” theory.Grok, the platform’s artificial intelligence chatbot that Musk has billed as an “anti-woke” antidote to left-biased chatbots, has spread false information that ballot deadlines had passed in nine states, meaning the vice-president couldn’t get on the ballot in those places, which is untrue. Secretaries of state are urging Musk to fix this issue for the chatbot that doesn’t have election information guardrails that other chatbots, like ChatGPT, do.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s important that social media companies, especially those with global reach, correct mistakes of their own making – as in the case of the Grok AI chatbot simply getting the rules wrong,” Minnesota secretary of state Steve Simon told the Washington Post. “Speaking out now will hopefully reduce the risk that any social media company will decline or delay correction of its own mistakes between now and the November election.”Off the platform, a political action committee Musk created is mining personal information from voters in key states in what appears to users to initially look like a voter registration portal, CNBC reported. America Pac, a pro-Trump group backed by Musk’s enormous wealth, is targeting swing states voters. The data scraping is now being investigated by at least two states.Despite his endless claims about election fraud, Musk told the Atlantic this month he would accept the results of the 2024 election – with a caveat.“If there are questions of election integrity, they should be properly investigated and neither be dismissed out of hand nor unreasonably questioned,” he said. “If, after review of the election results, it turns out that Kamala wins, that win should be recognized and not disputed.” More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘She makes us proud’: Harris raises over $12m in California as Pelosi welcomes her home

      by

      Kamala Harris returned home to the San Francisco Bay area for a Sunday fundraiser that drew top California Democrats and captured more than $12m for the conclusion of a swing state tour by the vice-president and her running mate, Tim Walz.Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and California governor Gavin Newsom attended the event in San Francisco at the Fairmont Hotel, where nearly 700 people had purchased tickets that cost at least $3,300 and as much as $500,000.“This is a good day when we welcome Kamala Harris back home to California,” Pelosi said of the former US senator, attorney general and district attorney from the state.“She makes us all so proud. She brings us so much joy. She gives us so much hope,” Pelosi said at the fundraiser. She went on to describe Harris as a person of “great strength” and someone who is “politically very astute”.Harris and Walz, the Minnesota governor, have just finished a tour of multiple political swing states, packing rallies with thousands of people and building on the momentum that has propelled her since she took over at the top of the Democratic ticket.Pelosi, the longtime lawmaker and Washington power broker, is credited with helping usher Joe Biden out of the presidential race.The president, 81, stepped aside last month after a poor debate performance against Donald Trump sparked turmoil within the Democratic party and concerns that he could not beat the former president nor complete a second four-year term.Pelosi’s comments in a television interview suggesting that Biden had not yet decided whether to step aside were viewed as giving an opening to worried Democratic lawmakers to urge him to leave even as Biden said he was staying.Pelosi has praised Biden’s achievements while criticizing his former campaign. On Sunday she connected Harris, 59, to the accomplishments of Biden’s administration.“She knows the issues. She knows the strategy. She has gotten an enormous amount done working with Joe Biden,” Pelosi said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris acknowledged the enthusiasm but cautioned against getting caught up in it.“We can take nothing for granted in this critical moment,” she said, after thanking Pelosi for her friendship and support. “There is so much about the future of our country that has relied on leaders like Nancy Pelosi that have the grit, the determination, the brilliance to know what’s possible and to make it so,” Harris said.“The energy is undeniable,” Harris said of her campaign. “Yes, the crowds are large.”Her campaign hauled in $36m in the 24 hours following Walz’s selection as running mate and raised $310m in July, according to a campaign spokesperson.Harris, making her own case against Trump, said that if Trump got back into office, he would sign a national ban on abortion into law and warned that California would not be immune. Trump has sought to distance himself from Republican efforts to ban abortion, saying it should be up to individual states.Harris noted that some states’ laws don’t include exceptions for rape and incest, and said it’s “immoral”. “When this issue has been on the ballot, the American people have voted for freedom,” Harris said. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump and Vance are unmatched in ‘the Olympics of lying’, says Pete Buttigieg

      by

      The Republican presidential ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance might be slipping in the polls, but remains unmatched in “the Olympics of lying”, according to transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.The senior Democrat was responding Sunday, the final day of the Paris Olympics, to remarks by the Ohio senator criticizing Tim Walz for misstating his military service in an interview six years ago.The Minnesota governor, announced this week as running mate to Democratic candidate and vice-president Kamala Harris, served 24 years in the army national guard, but never in a combat zone, which he seemed to suggest in the 2018 interview.In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Buttigieg assailed Vance, himself a former marine corps journalist, for disparaging Walz’s military record at a rally this week and moments earlier on the same show.“I watched that interview and watched JD Vance present himself as suddenly very particular about precision in speech and very concerned about honesty,” Buttigieg said.“He’s running with Donald Trump, somebody who has set records for lying in public life. He just gave a press conference where fact-checkers estimate that he told 162 distortions or lies. That, frankly, is just impressive in terms of being able to physically do that. It’s like the Olympics of lying.”It was quite the zinger from Buttigieg, a former intelligence officer in the US navy reserve who has established a reputation for eloquent takedowns of Republican political positions.“The fact a veteran wants to go out and disparage another veteran just goes against certainly everything I learned during my time in service,” he said.“The fact they have to go back to find a clip from 2018 to find the one time that he slipped up when he talks about the weapons of war that he carried and said something instead about carrying a weapon in war, it’s kind of an exception that proves the rule in terms of how hard you have to look to find Tim Walz saying anything that isn’t precise and accurate.”On State of the Union, Vance insisted he was not impugning Walz’s military service, but “the fact that he lied about his service for political gain”.“I think that’s what Tim Walz did. That’s what I was criticizing. And, yes, I do think it’s scandalous behavior,” he said.A statement from the Harris-Walz campaign on Saturday turned Vance’s earlier criticism around. “Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country. In fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way,” it said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He did handle weapons of war and believes strongly that only military members trained to carry those deadly weapons should have access to them, unlike Donald Trump and JD Vance who prioritize the gun lobby over our children.”Buttigieg, on CNN, also condemned Vance’s much-maligned commentary that senior Democrats were “a bunch of childless cat ladies”. As part of his clean-up effort for those remarks, Vance claimed Sunday he was not criticizing people for not having children, but for “being anti-child”.“I don’t know which part of that is worse, the lie that he just told when he says he never criticized people for not having kids, because of course he very much did, including Kamala Harris and me and a lot of other people, millions of Americans, in fact, who he disparaged as childless cat ladies,” said Buttigieg, who has two adopted sons with his husband.“The other part, just as troubling, is saying that anybody who disagrees with him is anti-child. It’s part of just who he is, right? He seems incapable of talking about a vision for this country in terms of lifting people up, or building people up, or helping people out.” More

    • 200 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the politics of joy: Democrats are embracing the sunny side | Editorial

      by

      “Thank you for bringing back the joy,” Tim Walz told Kamala Harris in his first speech after agreeing to become her running mate. He has continued to invoke the emotion, describing himself and Ms Harris as “joyful warriors” against opponents who “try and steal the joy”. Donald Trump has attacked Ms Harris’s ready laughter, but the Democrats are embracing an upbeat coconut-and-brat-meme atmosphere while Republicans invoke American carnage.Rarely have two presidential campaigns had such contrasting moods. Asked by a reporter what made him happy, Mr Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, retorted that “I smile at a lot of things including bogus questions from the media”, and that he was “angry about what Kamala Harris has done to this country”. Mr Trump – along with other rightwing populists globally – has channelled fear and rage to extraordinary effect.“Visceral states and feelings appear at the forefront of the political conversation” in this era, writes Manos Tsakiris, director of the University of London’s Centre for the Politics of Feelings. Voters are less rational and more emotional than we like to believe. Feelings may also have different effects upon different parts of society. US research suggests that dissatisfaction with politicians is more likely to send white voters to the polls and minority voters to other forms of activism.In the past, Democrats have tried to counter lies and loathing with facts. Though fear of Mr Trump motivated voters in 2020, warnings about his return have not proved as effective. People can be indifferent or passive in the face of threats such as the climate crisis. (In contrast, deliberative democracy – such as citizens’ assemblies or community activism – can generate a sense of political agency and re-engage them.) Giving people something to fight for, not just against, may be potent. But there is more research on how emotions such as anger affect politics than there is on emotions such as hope.Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat Jair Bolsonaro’s dark vision of Brazil in 2022 with hope, and Rahul Gandhi walked the length of India with a message of love and solidarity, an appeal that cost India’s divisive prime minister, Narendra Modi, his parliamentary majority this year. In Britain, the joy of the Liberal Democrats’ successful election campaign bubbled over. But critiques of “cruel optimism” and “hopium” note that invoking positive emotions can sometimes encourage people to feel good about bad political choices. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos won the Filipino presidency in 2022 with a feelgood social media campaign glamourising his family and his father’s dictatorship.In the US, Ronald Reagan’s sunny “morning in America” advert won plaudits, but Hubert Humphrey’s “politics of joy” didn’t win the Democrat the presidency. For Ms Harris – like Humphrey, a vice-president aspiring to the top job – urging voters to get happy when they’re worrying about bills could be counterproductive. The wrongfooted Trump campaign appears to be pivoting towards attacking her record.Ms Harris seems to recognise the problem, tempering the buoyant mood by acknowledging that grocery prices are too high, for instance. But if a recession hits, striking the right note will be even tougher, and policy will be still more pressing. The Democrats are hoping for the best – but even in a short campaign, vibes will only carry them so far. More