Trump fired the Secretary of Defense on Monday: Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, called Mr. Esper five minutes before the president’s Twitter post to tell him he had been fired. Mr. Esper was still at the Pentagon cleaning out his desk on Monday afternoon when Mr. Miller arrived, administration officials said.
Trump official Emily W. Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, has refused to issue a letter of “ascertainment,” which allows Mr. Biden’s transition team to begin the transfer of power. An official “said it would be strange for President Trump to send some kind of a signal to allow the transition to start while he is still engaged in court fights.”
Habberman writes in the Friday New York Times: “He knows it’s over,” one adviser said. But instead of conceding, they said, he is floating one improbable scenario after another for staying in office while he contemplates his uncertain post-presidency future. There is no grand strategy at play, according to interviews with a half-dozen advisers and people close to the president. Mr. Trump is simply trying to survive from one news cycle to the next, seeing how far he can push his case against his defeat and ensure the continued support of his Republican base.
Also in the New York Times: “The first small cracks have begun to appear in the Republican wall of support for President Trump and his unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, with a growing number of elected officials and party leaders signaling on Thursday that they would indulge Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories for only so long. A few were willing to openly contradict him.” These include the Governor of Ohio, Carl Rove, Grassley, and John Bolton.
Edsal: Many of those I questioned see this discrepancy as stemming from Trump’s individual personality and characterological deficiencies — what they call his narcissism and his sociopathy. Others offer a more starkly political interpretation: that the refusal to accept Biden’s victory stems from the frustration of a Republican Party struggling to remain competitive in the face of an increasingly multicultural electorate. In the end, it appears to be a mixture of both.
Legal Challenges
Leading Republicans rallied on Monday around President Trump’s refusal to concede the election, declining to challenge the false narrative that it was stolen from him or to recognize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
President Trump suffered multiple legal setbacks in three key swing states on Friday, choking off many of his last-ditch efforts to use the courts to delay or block President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Tom Nichols on Never Trumpers: I believe that if all of us had caved, Trump would now be much closer to victory, not just at the polls, but over the Constitution itself. Many of us instead held firm and made the case for democracy and the rule of law from the right flank against our own tribe…. when Trump is gone (whether after this election or in 2024), I will continue to oppose everyone who had anything to do with inflicting this scar on American history, long after the members of the Trump family are finally bankrupt, in rehab, in jail, or living in seclusion in Manhattan among the neighbors who already despise them.
Current and former Trump Administration officials reach out to Ron Suskind to share their concerns anonymously: They are worried that the president could use the power of the government — the one they all serve or served within — to keep himself in office or to create favorable terms for negotiating his exit from the White House. Like many other experts inside and outside the government, they are also concerned about foreign adversaries using the internet to sow chaos, exacerbate divisions and undermine our democratic process…. They are loath to give up too many precise details, but it’s not hard to speculate from what we already know. Disruption would most likely begin on Election Day morning somewhere on the East Coast, where polls open first. Miami and Philadelphia (already convulsed this week after another police shooting), in big swing states, would be likely locations. It could be anything, maybe violent, maybe not, started by anyone, or something planned and executed by any number of organizations, almost all of them on the right fringe, many adoring of Mr. Trump. The options are vast and test the imagination.
The F.B.I., meanwhile, is bracing for huge challenges. “We are all-hands-on-deck for the foreseeable future,” the F.B.I. official I mentioned earlier told me. “We’ve been talking to our state and local counterparts and gearing up for the expectation that it’s going to be a significant law-enforcement challenge for probably weeks or months,” this official said. “It feels pretty terrifying.”
Echoing this, Trump said on a rally on Saturday: “We’re going to be waiting. Nov. 3 is going to come and go, and we’re not going to know. And you’re going to have bedlam in our country.”
Pre-Election Day
Here is a round up of election street action that started over the weekend, including Trump carvans block traffic in New York and New Jersey on Sunday.
An early voting rally in North Carolina was pepper sprayed by police, including children and elderly.
In Pennsylvania, more liberal counties say they will start counting mail in ballots as soon as the law allows, which is early Election Day morning, while conservative counties say they will wait to even start until after Election Day.
About the “poll watchers” Trump’s team has been coaching: If the president decides to contest the election’s results, his campaign could let loose a blizzard of misleading, decontextualized video clips as “proof” that the vote can’t be trusted…. But the poll watchers’ real influence may not be felt until they go home and start uploading their videos. Three Democratic strategists who are involved in post-election “scenario planning” told me that—barring a blowout on Election Night—Americans should expect a last-ditch disinformation blitz from Trump and his allies to create the impression of wide-scale cheating.
Election Night
Trump’s first statement came at 12:44am Wednesday morning: We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Poles are closed!
The map was static from mid-day Wednesday through Saturday morning.
Around 4am Friday morning Biden overtook Trump in Georgia, though the margins are so close the race could take weeks before a final call.
Trump gave remarks Thursday evening from the briefing room of the White House.
This from the fivethirtyeight liveblog, posted after Trump’s speech, seems to be true for most news orgs this week: one part of Trump’s reelection strategy has been actively trying to delegitimize the result for weeks, months now (even dating back to 2016, when he won). The outcome of the 2020 presidential election is not yet known, and it won’t become clear until we have results in Pennsylvania and Arizona, but since Trump made it clear that he would take this route, we talked over how we would handle things in the FiveThirtyEight newsroom.
Here’s where we landed: If Trump falsely or prematurely declares victory or tries to delegitimize the result … our priorities would be (i) don’t let Trump’s false/premature claim dominate our coverage or alter our framing of the night, while (ii) still making clear to readers why the claim is false/premature and carries no legal power. Those continue to be our guiding principles.
America is now a different country. Nearly half of the voters have seen Trump in all of his splendor—his infantile tirades, his disastrous and lethal policies, his contempt for democracy in all its forms—and they decided that they wanted more of it. His voters can no longer hide behind excuses about the corruption of Hillary Clinton or their willingness to take a chance on an unproven political novice. They cannot feign ignorance about how Trump would rule. They know, and they have embraced him.
Tom Nichols: America is now a different country. Nearly half of the voters have seen Trump in all of his splendor—his infantile tirades, his disastrous and lethal policies, his contempt for democracy in all its forms—and they decided that they wanted more of it. His voters can no longer hide behind excuses about the corruption of Hillary Clinton or their willingness to take a chance on an unproven political novice. They cannot feign ignorance about how Trump would rule. They know, and they have embraced him.
November 7
Saturday at 11:24am CNN became the first network to call Pennsylvania and the Election for Biden.
Trump was golfing at his Virginia course when the news broke. He neglected to offer a concession all of Saturday.
Celebrations erupted all over the country, and the world.
Here is the Time’s account of Trump reaction to the news on Saturday.
Nate Silver’s take: just because of that blue shift — and the red shift that occurred in states where mail votes were counted first — that doesn’t mean the presidential race was all that close in the end. Joe Biden’s win was on the tighter side of the likely range of outcomes suggested by polls, but it was a thoroughly convincing one judged on its own merits.
Barrett was voted on and sworn in on Monday evening.
DHS is expelling unaccompanied migrant children to Mexico in violation of our agreements with Mexico: Rumors of children from other countries being expelled into Mexico have swirled among nonprofit workers advocating for child welfare in Mexico and the United States. But locating any such children has been difficult because of spotty reporting from Mexican government authorities.
But an email from the U.S. Border Patrol’s assistant chief, Eduardo Sanchez, obtained by The New York Times, makes it clear that such transfers have not only occurred, but that they are a clear violation of U.S. policy.
New York Times reports on Barr’s DOJ giving preferable treatment to a Turkish bank with ties to Jared Kushner.
Election 2020
The Supreme Court ruled that Wisconsin cannot extend the deadline for receiving ballots from November 3 to November 6. The case was decided by the 5 conservative justices. The argument seems to be that they don’t want single judges–a federal appeals court judge in this case–changing election rules while the election is ongoing. Gorsuch: “No one doubts that conducting a national election amid a pandemic poses serious challenges. But none of that means individual judges may improvise with their own election rules in place of those the people’s representatives have adopted.”
Last week the court deadlocked, with Roberts on the liberal side, on a similar case in Pennsylvania. Roberts explains the distinction: “While the Pennsylvania applications implicated the authority of state courts to apply their own constitutions to election regulations, this case involves federal intrusion on state lawmaking processes. Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin.”
Kavanaugh’s portions of the rulings are raising eyebrows.
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday to allow the extension of the deadline for return of ballots in Pennsylvania.
Edsall in the Times: The reality is that in order to remain competitive, the party has been forced to adopt policies and strategies designed to restrict and constrain the majority electorate: voter suppression, gerrymandering, dependence on an Electoral College that favors small, rural states, and legislation designed to weaken and defund the labor movement.
In this context, it’s not a surprise that Trump and his partisan allies would be guided by an “anti-democracy attitude” that “has so taken hold that it could actually undo a presidential election.” What is more surprising is that it possibly could succeed.
Examples of voter suppression measures in Pennsylvania.
Frum writes this week: We are hearing louder and louder voices on the Republican side questioning whether universal voting rights should even theoretically be guaranteed by the American constitutional system…. The U.S. Constitution in many ways protects minorities against majorities. In the Trump era, we see instead politicians like Lee trying to pretend that minorities are majorities—and to grab the powers that legitimately belong to majorities away from them.
That’s the thing that needs to stop. That’s the thing that needs to change. And if Trump and his allies seem in these final days to act more frantically, more abusively, than usual, perhaps it is because they sense that the change is coming.
A new report on Child separation says that 545 children have been permanently separated from their parents.
Election 2020
The Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 allowing Pennsylvania to count ballots received until November 6. Roberts sided with the liberals: In its Sept. 17 ruling, the divided state Supreme Court said ballots must be postmarked by the time polls close and be received by county election boards at 5 p.m. on Nov. 6, three days after the Nov. 3 election.
There is some reporting this week about Russia hacking into American election systems: The discovery of the hacks came as American intelligence agencies, infiltrating Russian networks themselves, have pieced together details of what they believe are Russia’s plans to interfere in the presidential race in its final days or immediately after the election on Nov. 3. … American officials expect that if the presidential race is not called on election night, Russian groups could use their knowledge of the local computer systems to deface websites, release nonpublic information or take similar steps that could sow chaos and doubts about the integrity of the results, according to officials briefed on the intelligence. Such steps could fuel Mr. Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the vote is “rigged” and that he can be defeated only if his opponents cheat.
Barrett was voted on and sworn in on Monday evening at a White House event that was turned into a campaign ad for Trump.
DHS is expelling unaccompanied migrant children to Mexico in violation of our agreements with Mexico: Rumors of children from other countries being expelled into Mexico have swirled among nonprofit workers advocating for child welfare in Mexico and the United States. But locating any such children has been difficult because of spotty reporting from Mexican government authorities.
But an email from the U.S. Border Patrol’s assistant chief, Eduardo Sanchez, obtained by The New York Times, makes it clear that such transfers have not only occurred, but that they are a clear violation of U.S. policy.
New York Times reports on Barr’s DOJ giving preferable treatment to a Turkish bank.
Election 2020
The Supreme Court ruled that Wisconsin cannot extend the deadline for receiving ballots from November 3 to November 6. The case was decided by the 5 conservative justices. The argument seems to be that they don’t want single judges–a federal appeals court judge in this case–changing election rules while the election is ongoing. Gorsuch: “No one doubts that conducting a national election amid a pandemic poses serious challenges. But none of that means individual judges may improvise with their own election rules in place of those the people’s representatives have adopted.”
Last week the court deadlocked, with Roberts on the liberal side, on a similar case in Pennsylvania. Roberts explains the distinction: “While the Pennsylvania applications implicated the authority of state courts to apply their own constitutions to election regulations, this case involves federal intrusion on state lawmaking processes. Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin.” Kavanaugh’s portions of the rulings are raising eyebrows.
Edsall in the Times: The reality is that in order to remain competitive, the party has been forced to adopt policies and strategies designed to restrict and constrain the majority electorate: voter suppression, gerrymandering, dependence on an Electoral College that favors small, rural states, and legislation designed to weaken and defund the labor movement.
In this context, it’s not a surprise that Trump and his partisan allies would be guided by an “anti-democracy attitude” that “has so taken hold that it could actually undo a presidential election.” What is more surprising is that it possibly could succeed.
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday to allow the extension of the deadline for return of ballots.
Frum writes this week: We are hearing louder and louder voices on the Republican side questioning whether universal voting rights should even theoretically be guaranteed by the American constitutional system…. The U.S. Constitution in many ways protects minorities against majorities. In the Trump era, we see instead politicians like Lee trying to pretend that minorities are majorities—and to grab the powers that legitimately belong to majorities away from them.
That’s the thing that needs to stop. That’s the thing that needs to change. And if Trump and his allies seem in these final days to act more frantically, more abusively, than usual, perhaps it is because they sense that the change is coming.
Closing Arguments & Predictions:
Tom Nichols on Never Trumpers: I believe that if all of us had caved, Trump would now be much closer to victory, not just at the polls, but over the Constitution itself. Many of us instead held firm and made the case for democracy and the rule of law from the right flank against our own tribe…. when Trump is gone (whether after this election or in 2024), I will continue to oppose everyone who had anything to do with inflicting this scar on American history, long after the members of the Trump family are finally bankrupt, in rehab, in jail, or living in seclusion in Manhattan among the neighbors who already despise them.
Current and former Trump Administration officials reach out to Ron Suskind to share their concerns anonymously: They are worried that the president could use the power of the government — the one they all serve or served within — to keep himself in office or to create favorable terms for negotiating his exit from the White House. Like many other experts inside and outside the government, they are also concerned about foreign adversaries using the internet to sow chaos, exacerbate divisions and undermine our democratic process…. They are loath to give up too many precise details, but it’s not hard to speculate from what we already know. Disruption would most likely begin on Election Day morning somewhere on the East Coast, where polls open first. Miami and Philadelphia (already convulsed this week after another police shooting), in big swing states, would be likely locations. It could be anything, maybe violent, maybe not, started by anyone, or something planned and executed by any number of organizations, almost all of them on the right fringe, many adoring of Mr. Trump. The options are vast and test the imagination.
The F.B.I., meanwhile, is bracing for huge challenges. “We are all-hands-on-deck for the foreseeable future,” the F.B.I. official I mentioned earlier told me. “We’ve been talking to our state and local counterparts and gearing up for the expectation that it’s going to be a significant law-enforcement challenge for probably weeks or months,” this official said. “It feels pretty terrifying.”
Echoing this, Trump said on a rally on Saturday: “We’re going to be waiting. Nov. 3 is going to come and go, and we’re not going to know. And you’re going to have bedlam in our country.”
The Barrett confirmation hearings began on Monday. It was over in the judiciary committee by Thursday. All Democrat boycotted the final vote.
The FBI announced that Iran was behind a series of election interference emails sent to Democrats.
Election 2020
Early voting started in many states this this week and there were a lot of stories about long lines at least during the first days.
Zoe Tillman of Buzfeed news covered a judge dissent in a voting access case this week: Judge Karen Nelson Moore of the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit wrote a scathing dissent in a case about how Tennessee handles absentee voting — she disagreed with her two colleagues in the majority who rejected a challenge to the state’s signature match rules for mail-in ballots. But Moore’s dissent went further, criticizing judges across the US who have sided with states seeking to limit mail-in voting this year. “Hiding behind closed courthouse doors does not change the fact that ruling by ruling, many courts are chipping away at votes that ought to be counted. It is a disgrace to the federal courts’ foundational role in ensuring democracy’s function, and a betrayal to the persons that wish to participate in it fully,” Moore wrote.
New York Times on the same issue: The Texas case is one of at least eight major election disputes around the country in which Federal District Court judges sided with civil rights groups and Democrats in voting cases only to be stayed by the federal appeals courts, whose ranks Mr. Trump has done more to populate than any president in more than 40 years.
Rudy Giuliani perpetrated a bizarre hack-and-leak scheme this week about supposedly stolen emails of Hunter Biden. The most interesting thing is that Twitter and Facebook took strong moves to keep the Russia-backed story from spreading on their sites.
At a Biden Town Hall on ABC, the moderator asked: Mr. Vice President, if you lose, what will that say to you about where America is today?
BIDEN: Well, it could say that I’m a lousy candidate, and I didn’t do a good job. But I think — I hope that it doesn’t say that we are as racially, ethnically, and religiously at odds with one another as it appears the President wants us to be. Usually, you know, the President, in my view, with all due respect, it’s been divide and conquer, the way he does better if he splits us and where there’s division.
And I think people need hope. I think — look, George, I’ve never been more optimistic of the prospects for this country than I am today. And I really mean that. I think the people are ready. They understand what’s at stake. And it’s not about Democrat or Republican.
Monday evening Trump left the hospital and returned to the White House. He staged dramatic video where he ripped his mask off when he stood on the portico.
This by Tim Miller for The Bulwark sums up the moment: That heave gave him the stamina to move into a dramatic extended salute lasting 23 interminable seconds. He salutes with D-list caudillo energy, channeling an aging Pinochet or Trujillo in their last gasps of power. Throughout the salute he holds an aggressive glare. Then he steps back and looks deep into the distance. Fully embracing his posture as the leader of a death cult, Trump turns and enters the White House. Without a mask.
The New York Times webpage on Tuesday night shows why there is simply too much news to be covered here. Future historians reading this blog will need to do some digging in the actual newspapers and official records for this week.
Suffice to say, 14 people now have COVID in Trump’s orbit: The disarray was at the same time spreading across Washington. Almost the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, including its chairman, Gen. Mark A. Milley, went into quarantine on Tuesday after coming in contact with Adm. Charles W. Ray, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, who tested positive for the coronavirus. Late in the day, the stock market took a dive when Mr. Trump abruptly called off talks for a congressional coronavirus relief bill after the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, said such a stimulus was badly needed.
Election 2020
President Trump berated his own cabinet officers on Thursday for not prosecuting or implicating his political enemies, lashing out even as he announced that he hoped to return to the campaign trail on Saturday just nine days after he tested positive for the coronavirus.
Barr and Pompeo are using their offices to support Trump’s reelection. Pompeo promised this week to release Clinton state department emails: “We’ve got the emails,” Mr. Pompeo said. “We’re getting them out. We’re going to get all this information out so the American people can see it.”
He made no effort to suggest that releasing them was unconnected to the political campaign. “We’re doing it as fast as we can,” he added. “I certainly think there’ll be more to see before the election.”
Polls show Biden’s lead increasing, including in the sun belt states: f Mr. Biden wins by simply flipping back the Democratic-leaning Great Lakes states, Mr. Trump and his allies can pin the blame on the virus. But if Mr. Trump loses across the South and West, it would force a much deeper introspection on the right about Trump and Trumpism — and their electoral future in the fastest-growing and most diverse part of the country.
The Trump campaign is also pushing hardball tactics: The campaign is trying to shape the voting process in many ways. Following the president’s lead, it has undertaken a legal and rhetorical assault on mail-in balloting, claiming with no evidence that it is rife with fraud. It is also pushing the boundaries of traditional poll monitoring in ways that many Democrats believe amount to voter intimidation. And it has put legal pressure on states to aggressively purge their voter rolls. …campaign officials have said they will put 50,000 poll watchers and electoral observers on the ground, including at least 1,600 in Philadelphia alone.
Claire Malone of 530 explains how the 36 point partisan divide in American politics make the reality bubbles of post-election inevitable: During the first debate, the president waffled on whether he would concede defeat, falling back on his go-to line about the fraudulent — and unfounded — dangers of mail voting. If he actually does this post-Election Day, media organizations will be forced to grapple with reporting on the news of the day — the president’s words — and battling misinformation and mistrust. It’s more than the press had to contend with in 2000, and it’s an unwinnable scenario. But it’s the reality of our 36-point world.
Another New York Times tax expose was released Friday night: the president’s long-hidden tax records, obtained by The New York Times, also reveal this: how he engineered a sudden financial windfall — more than $21 million in what experts describe as highly unusual one-off payments from the Las Vegas hotel he owns with his friend the casino mogul Phil Ruffin…. Unless the payments were for actual business expenses, he said, claiming a tax deduction for them would be illegal. If they were not legitimate and were also used to fund Mr. Trump’s presidential run, they could be considered illegal campaign contributions.
Sunday evening the investigative reporters for the New York Times who have been studying Trump’s taxes released a major story after receiving access to Trump’s tax returns: “The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office.” There are many key findings, starting with the fact he paid no income tax for 10 years, and only $750 in 2016 and 2017. He is also financially insecure with a lot of debt: Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.
Some caveats: They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
-his financial condition when he announced his run for president in 2015 lends some credence to the notion that his long-shot campaign was at least in part a gambit to reanimate the marketability of his name. -within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans — obligations for which he is personally responsible — will come due.
His properties have become bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking face time, access or favor; the records for the first time put precise dollar figures on those transactions. When he took office, Mr. Trump said he would pursue no new foreign deals as president. Even so, in his first two years in the White House, his revenue from abroad totaled $73 million.
There are new details about his audit, which stem from a tax windfall he orchestrated when he declared a loss from the Atlantic City casino: If the auditors ultimately disallow Mr. Trump’s $72.9 million federal refund, he will be forced to return that money with interest, and possibly penalties, a total that could exceed $100 million.
Election 2020
In the first Biden-Trump debate Tuesday night, Trump was asked to condemn white supremacists and right wing militias. First he asked the moderator to be specific, and when the Proud Boys were named he said “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by!”
Frum on the debate: Trump yelled, threatened, interrupted—and changed nothing. All he did was confirm the horror and the revulsion of the large American majority that has already begun to cast its ballots against him.
Correction: Trump did one thing. On the Cleveland stage, Trump communicated that he will seize any opportunity to disrupt the vote, and resist the outcome. He communicated more forcefully than ever that the only security the country has for a constitutional future is that Biden wins by the largest possible margin.
GOP leaders distanced themselves from Trump’s remarks: Tim Scott: “White supremacy should be denounced at every turn. I think he misspoke, I think he should correct it. If he doesn’t correct it I guess he didn’t misspeak.” McConnell: “With regard to the white supremacy issue, I want to associate myself with the remarks of Tim Scott,” Mr. McConnell said. “He said it was unacceptable not to condemn white supremacists and so I do so in the strongest possible way.”
COVID-19
New York Times reports: Top White House officials pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this summer to play down the risk of sending children back to school… also tried to circumvent the C.D.C. in a search for alternate data showing that the pandemic was weakening and posed little danger to children.
Thursday night news broke that Hope Hicks tested positive for COVID-19. Early Friday morning, at 12:54am, Trump tweeted: Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!
Jonathan Swan in Politico Saturday late afternoon: What is the actual state of President Trump’s health — now and over the past 24 hours?
Why it matters: It’s one of the most high-stakes questions in the world, and I cannot answer it, despite having spent since 5 a.m. on Friday on my phone with sources inside and close to the White House.
On Friday night, we chose not to publish information we’d learned from well-placed sources who told us the president had experienced a fever and was worse than the White House was letting on. minutes after the doctors’ press conference, something extraordinary happened that crystallized this White House’s credibility gap, and made a mockery of any reporter trying to responsibly cover this president’s condition.
The White House reporter on pool duty — traveling with the president and delivering official dispatches to reporters at numerous outlets — sent this dispatch, quoting “a source familiar with the president’s health”: The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery. That was a much more worrisome portrait. The source, identified by AP, was White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was shown on camera asking the pool to “go off the record with some of y’all.”
I have tried to get a straight answer from the White House since then about what is going on, and why we are being fed official contradictions.
Here is how the Washington Post described it: The statement from Meadows was originally distributed to the media through a White House pool report and was attributed to “a source familiar with the president’s health.” Two White House officials familiar with the statement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue, later said it was Meadows who spoke with reporters. Meadows was also seen on camera pulling reporters aside to talk after the news conference ended. The Associated Press, which had a reporter at the event, also later identified Meadows as the source of the comment. … Several White House aides also said they also did not have confidence in what they were being told by other officials.
“I can tell you what I am hearing, but I honestly have no idea if it’s right,” said one senior administration official close to the president. “A lot of people aren’t even telling other people in the building the truth.”
Saturday night the White House released staged photos of Trump working — signing blank sheets of paper in two different rooms taken 10 minutes apart. There was also a video of Trump speaking to the camera that was edited to remove his coughs.
By Tuesday, when Romney said he would not block the Supreme Court nomination, Republicans were lined up behind Trump on the effort to replace Ginsburg this year.
Brownstein on how the conservative bloc on the Supreme Court represents an electoral minority and will continue to into 2030s: That could be a recipe for explosive conflict through the coming decade between the priorities of rising generations that compose a growing majority of the population and a court chosen and confirmed by a Republican political coalition that no longer can regularly command majority support from voters. Those confrontations could unfold across a wide array of issues, with a conservative court rejecting or constraining legislation or executive branch actions popular with the emerging generations on questions ranging from climate change and racial equity to women’s rights, gay rights, access to voting — and perhaps most immediately, access to legal abortion.
Wednesday morning the Atlantic published this piece by Bart Gellman:
The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that uncertainty to hold on to power.
We have no precedent or procedure to end this election if Biden seems to carry the Electoral College but Trump refuses to concede. We will have to invent one.
On the idea that the vote tally will shift after election day, he quotes an unnamed Trump campaign official: “There will be a count on Election Night, that count will shift over time, and the results when the final count is given will be challenged as being inaccurate, fraudulent—pick your word.”
The worst case for an orderly count is also considered by some election modelers the likeliest: that Trump will jump ahead on Election Night, based on in-person returns, but his lead will slowly give way to a Biden victory as mail-in votes are tabulated. Josh Mendelsohn, the CEO of the Democratic data-modeling firm Hawkfish, calls this scenario “the red mirage.” The turbulence of that interval, fed by street protests, social media, and Trump’s desperate struggles to lock in his lead, can only be imagined. “Any scenario that you come up with will not be as weird as the reality of it,” the Trump legal adviser said.
Another Trump advisor: “The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,’ ” Lawrence Tabas, the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s chairman went on the record to say: “I’ve mentioned it to [the national Trump campaign], and I hope they’re thinking about it too,” I just don’t think this is the right time for me to be discussing those strategies and approaches, but [direct appointment of electors] is one of the options. It is one of the available legal options set forth in the Constitution. If the process, though, is flawed, and has significant flaws, our public may lose faith and confidence” in the election’s integrity.
Richard Hasen writing in Slate puts the concern this way: The idea is to throw so much muck into the process and cast so much doubt on who is the actual winner in one of those swing states because of supposed massive voter fraud and uncertainty about the rules for absentee ballots that some other actor besides the voter will decide the winner of the election. … The president has been laying the groundwork for these claims for months, and just Tuesday his son, Donald Trump Jr., baselessly suggested that Democrats will “add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election.”
As if on cue, Trump said at a Wednesday afternoon press conference, when asked if he would concede the election: “We’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
Trumps refrain about voter fraud is motivating his supporters: The head of the party in Philadelphia said Wednesday that there would be multiple poll watchers at every site in the city, which would mean at least 1,600 Republican watchers in Philadelphia alone. poll watchers are being instructed in specific detail. In Michigan, for instance, they are being told to record when any paper jams occur, while those in Arizona are being given a detailed breakdown of the state’s voter identification requirements.
The New York Times ran a story about the Pentagon’s uneasiness about being thrust into the election: “senior leaders at the Pentagon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that they were talking among themselves about what to do if Mr. Trump, who will still be president from Election Day to Inauguration Day, invokes the Insurrection Act and tries to send troops into the streets, as he threatened to do during the protests against police brutality and systemic racism.”
Personal Log: our mail in ballots were delivered by the mail man Saturday afternoon, September 26. New Jersey is one of a few states that are mailing ballots to all voters.
McConnell vowed to hold a vote on Trump’s replacement of Ginsburg but would not say if that would happen before or after the election, six weeks away.
By Saturday, Trump called for the Senate to confirm his nomination, and Lindsay Graham reversed his earlier promise to not support a new nominee during an election. Only two GOP senators–Collins and Murkowski–said they will not support a nominee until after the next president takes office: Collins: “In fairness to the American people, who will either be re-electing the president or selecting a new one, the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the president who is elected on Nov. 3.”
Trump held his first indoor rally since Tulsa in June on Sunday night. The city threatened to fine the venue for breaking COIVD restrictions.
Trump said this week of US COVID numbers: “If you take the blue states out,” he said, “we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level.”
Election 2020
In North Carolina, about 3-4% of mail in ballots are being rejected every day due to inconsistencies. In North Carolina: As of September 17, Black voters’ ballots are being rejected at more than four times the rate of white voters
On Monday the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided to block the Green Party from being on the November ballot. It was a 4-3 decision, with the chief justice siding with the liberals.
Many Florida ex-felons cannot vote in this election thanks for a judges panel were five of the six who voted to block them are Trump appointees.
Courts on both sides of the United States issued rulings on Thursday that could expand mail-in voting in the election in November, as the postmaster general privately apologized to state officials for missteps in his agency’s efforts to educate voters on mail-in ballots.
Michael R. Caputo, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, posted a video live on his personal Facebook page in which he said: government scientists were engaging in “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election. “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.” “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get,” “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”
Even Barr got in on the doomsaying this week: Attorney General William P. Barr said in a recent interview that the United States would be “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if President Trump was not re-elected… “I think we were getting into position where we were going to find ourselves irrevocably committed to the socialist path,” Mr. Barr said. “I think if Trump loses this election that that will be the case.”“There’s now a clear fork in the road for our country,”
Bouie: Instead of making a conventional appeal to voters to give him another term in office, Trump is issuing a threat, of sorts: I cannot lose. If I do lose, the election was stolen. Anyone protesting my effort to hold onto power is an insurrectionist. And sometimes, “there has to be retribution.”
Here is a list of recent ways Trump has and is using the federal government to either distort or suppress information in ways that will aid his reelection.
Ignatius writes this week that U.S. Cyber Command is blocking Russian election interference free from political interference from the White House: Thanks to these efforts, it will be “virtually impossible” for the Russians or anyone else to penetrate voting systems in the roughly 8,000 jurisdictions around the country, the defense official said.
Dan Coates, Trump’s former DNI, called for a high level commission to assure Americans of the security of their vote this November: We must firmly, unambiguously reassure all Americans that their vote will be counted, that it will matter, that the people’s will expressed through their votes will not be questioned and will be respected and accepted. The op-ed does not attack Trump specifically, but seems to motivated by concern about Trump’s behavior: Total destruction and sowing salt in the earth of American democracy is a catastrophe well beyond simple defeat and a poison for generations. An electoral victory on these terms would be no victory at all. The judgment of history, reflecting on the death of enlightened democracy, would be harsh.
