Trumpland Dispatches: Helter Skelter, Hillary’s Emails, Court Packing, and Voter Fraud
With roughly three weeks remaining until election day, the president’s re-election campaign isn’t going well. Elected Republicans are trying to do the delicate dance involving distancing themselves from Dear Leader while not alienating The Base.
Incumbent Republicans, from the President on down, are looking at polling that can only be described as portending a disaster.
(Reminder: As always, the polls that really count are tabulated ballots. Make sure yours is one of them.)
The ‘running the country’ part of the chief executive’s job has largely been put on hold, with the notable exception of using government resources to bolster the Trump campaign.
What little governance taking place is more helter skelter than focused.
From Politico:
As his presidency lurches toward a climactic judgment on Nov. 3, the little things lately have rarely gone more pervasively or embarrassingly wrong — at a time when public confidence in Trump’s handling of the big things is hardly robust.
The initial reaction might be, So what’s new here? But recent days, in the wake of Trump being stricken with coronavirus, have highlighted just how the lurching improvisation that is a familiar phenomenon around Trump has entered a different phase. The professionals around the president aren’t merely laboring to contain and channel the disruptive politician they work for. Very often they are amplifying the chaos.
That’s in part because, as his first term comes to a close, the professionals around Trump are not all that professional. It is now the exception in key staff and Cabinet posts to have people whose experience would be commensurate with that of people who have typically held those jobs in previous administrations of both parties. This major weakness has been revealing itself in a barrage of minor errors that summon Casey Stengel’s incredulous question about the 1962 New York Mets: Can’t anybody here play this game?
A rally on the south lawn of the White House on Saturday featured the US Marine band. Attendees were paid $150, given matching attire, required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and in some instances had their travel expenses covered. Two thousand people were expected to hear a speech on law and order; only four hundred showed up.
https://twitter.com/AngrierWHStaff/status/1315641168542269441?s=20
President Donald Trump’s desperation is palpable. A New York Times article about his COVID-19 hospital stay revealed discussions about turning his departure into a media event:
In several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering: When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer. He ultimately did not go ahead with the stunt.
The administration is still working hard on a scheme to send senior citizens credit card looking coupons signed by the President offering a $200 discount on prescriptions. Funding for the $8 billion program has delayed implementation, since officials are struggling to find a legal way to tap Medicare’s Trust fund before election day..
Attorney General Bill Barr's failure to indict any of Trump’s perceived enemies was enough to trigger an outburst by the president while being interviewed on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, responding to pressure from the White House, has promised to “release” Hillary Clinton’s emails, which have largely been public in reacted form for months and failed to suggest any illegal activity. Oh, and Hillary Clinton ran for president in the last election.
The Fox News Trumposphere has been pushing a dishonest narrative, touting intelligence documents the administration declassified last month on the eve of the first presidential debate. This was supposed to be the smoking gun proving that Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration sought to frame Trump with a Russian collusion scandal.
From CNN:
But when examined closely the documents indicate no such thing. In fact, by the Trump administration's own admission, they are based on unverified Russian intelligence that could be totally bogus. Which is to say that the President and Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are hyping and disseminating information that originates from a foreign adversary to bludgeon top Democratic officials.
As was true in the 2016 election, the news media’s desire for “both sides” coverage has generated the most viable path for Republicans to follow.
The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the GOP’s rush to replace her has been twisted into a hypocritical debate over Republican insistence that Democrats are seeking to pack the court.
Suddenly the burning issue for both the media and Republicans is whether or not former Vice President Biden supports expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court.
https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1315278394884489216?s=20
Vice President Mike Pence used the issue to side step a question during last week’s debate about a peaceful transition of power.
One thing you can count on with today’s GOP; if they’re insisting that something is a scandal, a quick Google search will confirm that something is part of their recent past.
https://twitter.com/SamBerger_DC/status/1315041361847103489?s=20
From 2015 to 2017, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to seat any of President Obama’s 100+ nominations for federal judges. Then he raced to fill them after Trump was elected. They did the same with Merrick Garland’s seat.
Somehow, Republicans’ pledge to leave the Supreme Court with 8 Justices if Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election has been forgotten.
This "court packing" malarkey is the Hillary's emails of 2020--a distraction by the GOP to divert attention from their own wrong-doing that the media has fallen for hook, line and sinker. There’s one party (hint: not Democrats) that’s made tinkering with state supreme court size in the last decade: Oklahoma (2017), Georgia & Arizona (2016), Washington (2013), Montana & Florida (2011), and Iowa (2010).
The real bottom line here is that the Constitution gives the Congress, not the President, the power to determine the number of justices on the Supreme Court. It’s been changed before (there were originally six) and it can be changed again.
***
Speaking of diversions, I want to point out that the party making the accusations about voter fraud in California is, in fact, engaging in the practice itself.
Unofficial voter ballot drop boxes are appearing all over the state.
The California GOP is placing them across the state, including in the densely populated areas of Los Angeles, Fresno, and Orange counties, The Orange County Register reports.
From the Washington Post:
The metal boxes have popped up around Southern California in recent weeks, from churches to gun stores to gyms. On the front, an authoritative-looking sign beckons to voters: “Official ballot drop-off box.”
The California GOP has pushed voters to pop their mail-in ballots inside. Social media posts have advertised their locations, and one regional field director posted a photo to Twitter on Friday showing him holding a ballot in front of one of the boxes.
“Doing my part and voting early,” Jordan Tygh wrote in the now-deleted tweet, which was reviewed by The Washington Post before it was removed. “DM me for convenient locations to drop your ballot off at!”
But those containers, which were first reported by the Orange County Register and KCAL, are not county-authorized ballot drop-off sites. In fact, the unofficial boxes are against the law, state officials said Sunday.
Word…
https://twitter.com/girlsreallyrule/status/1315657083908427777?s=20
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