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      in US Politics

      Trump fails to denounce an accused killer – which comes as little surprise

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      Donald Trump has the blind devotion of a rabid sports fan. His team can do no wrong. The opposition are liars and cheats.So maybe no one was surprised on Monday when he appeared to defend an accused murderer.At the White House press briefing, Trump was asked about Kyle Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old charged with killing two people and injuring another with an AR-15-style rifle during protests against the police shooting of an African American man in Kenosha, Wisconsin.Rittenhouse sat in the front row of a Trump rally this year and has become a darling of conservative media. Jesse Kelly, a radio host, reportedly said that “with a couple pelts on the wall” Rittenhouse “is gonna have to fight off hot conservative chicks with a bat”, while the columnist Ann Coulter said she wanted him “as my president”.Such signals from the base ensure that Trump’s loyalty is guaranteed. Asked if he will condemn the actions of vigilantes like Rittenhouse, the president demurred: “We’re looking at all of it. And that was an interesting situation. You saw the same tape as I saw. And he was trying to get away from them, I guess; it looks like. And he fell, and then they very violently attacked him. And it was something that we’re looking at right now and it’s under investigation.”And in another startling remark, Trump could not bring himself to say political violence is wrong. “I guess he was in very big trouble,” he said. “He probably would have been killed but it’s under investigation.”It was a moment that evoked memories of Charlottesville in 2017, when Trump drew moral equivalence between white nationalists and civil rights protesters. It will probably cause less of a stir, given the numbing effect of the past four years; recently Trump declined to condemn the QAnon conspiracy theory because its followers are on his side.Eric Swalwell, a Democratic congressman, observed on Twitter: “Mass shooters finally have a president who speaks for them.”“Law and order”, it seems, only applies to Trump’s perceived foes, not his supporters nor the half dozen aides to his 2016 campaign who now have criminal convictions. The president, due to visit Kenosha on Tuesday, is yet to speak to the family of Jacob Blake, who was shot and paralysed from the waist down.Moments earlier at Monday’s briefing, Trump was also asked about his own supporters riding pickup trucks into downtown Portland, Oregon, on Saturday and firing paintball guns and pepper spray. He said: “Paint is a defensive mechanism. Paint is not bullets.”A member of a far-right group was killed in the Portland clashes, prompting Trump to tweet a message of condolence: “Rest in peace Jay.” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, often a thorn in Trump’s side, tried several times to follow up but he refused to answer and moved to the next question.Monday’s briefing also featured a long diatribe against “leftwing rioters” and “antifa” who share “the same agenda” as Democratic nominee Joe Biden, waging a “war on law enforcement” and threatening to “destroy our suburbs”.In what may have been classic projection, Trump said: “When you surrender to the mob, you don’t get freedom; you get fascism. That’s what happens in all cases. You take a look at Venezuela. Look what’s going on there and other places.“Biden is using mafia talking points: the mob will leave you alone if you give them what you want … In America we will never surrender to mob rule because if the mob rules, America is dead.”He lambasted Democratic governors and mayors for unrest happening on his own watch. The divide-and-rule appeal to tribalism is naked and obvious but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. Just as in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was constantly asked to respond to Trump’s latest outrage rather than setting out her own agenda, Biden earlier on Monday was forced to issue a rebuttal to the president’s Nixonian law-and-order hammer.That meant another day distracting from the coronavirus pandemic – burning cars and mayhem in streets attract TV cameras more readily than an invisible microbe that has been around for months – and from his attempts to sabotage the postal service and election. Like a rabid sports fan, Trump is much more comfortable on home turf. More

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      in Elections

      Barr reportedly removes national security official ahead of elections

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      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

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      in US Politics

      'Rest in peace Jay': sympathy for the far right foretells Trump's election strategy

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      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

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      in Elections

      Activist Ady Barkan tells top Republican to apologise over doctored video

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      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

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      in Elections

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

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      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