Month: September 2020

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This year’s election will be like none other. Already, groups like the Transition Integrity Project are war-gaming out what sort of chaos might follow Election Day. The acting president is setting expectations among his followers that whoever leads the unofficial electoral vote count at the end of the day on November 3rd is the real winner for Real Americans™, knowing mailed ballots arriving later (or counted later) could flip early results. He has urged his partisans to vote on Election Day and avoid voting by mail even as RNC chapters around the country promote absentee ballots as they always do.

Here in North Carolina, local boards are already working overtime to prepare for the expected flood of absentee ballots. The goal is to have as many as possible returned and processed by Election Day. When the State Board of Elections loads early vote totals on its web site after 7:30 p.m. November 3, those absentee-by-mail votes will appear there along with the totals from 2-1/2 weeks of early voting. Election Day numbers will update through the evening. Sadly, many states do not allow processing/counting of absentee ballots before Election Day. There will be chaos. Trump will scream fraud whatever happens.

So , it is a good thing some Democrats are already setting counter-expectations that Election Day this year could be Election Week (Politico):

Michigan’s secretary of state said on Sunday her state’s full results of the Nov. 3 elections won’t be available on Election Day, advising voters it could take a week for a final tally.

“We should be prepared for this to be closer to an election week as opposed to an election day,” Jocelyn Benson said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “The bottom line is we are not going to have the full results and a counting of all of our ballots on election night. We already know that. We’ve asked the legislature to make changes to the laws to give us more ability to be prepared and count those ballots more efficiently.”

Michigan is one of the states that does not allow processing of absentee ballots until Election Day itself.

“If it takes a few extra days to ensure we have a full and accurate counting as a result of every race, that’s what it’s going to take,” Benson said. “We’re going to be transparent throughout that whole process to make sure every citizen knows exactly where we are in the counting process and how many more ballots we have to get through.”

She said yes when asked by NBC host Chuck Todd whether she was concerned over candidates being falsely declared as the winner on election night.

“To me, that’s just going to be another example of the type of misinformation and disinformation that we’re seeing multiple ways from multiple platforms and voices in this election cycle,” Benson said. “So, we are going to counter that misinformation with truth and accuracy.”

That starts by Democrats and ballot access advocates loudly and regularly proclaiming that Election Day falls during Election Week this year. Hell, Election Day might even fall in the last weeks of Election Quarter. One of the 643,000 absentee ballots North Carolina began mailing out on Friday was mine.

Via @ElectProject Dems have big advantage in NC absentee ballot requests. Here's breakdown:

Democrats – 337,362 (52.4%)
Republicans -103,620 (16.1%)
No Party Affiliation – 200,359 (31.1%)https://t.co/CkEfNwjhky pic.twitter.com/pYECYVK3gh

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) September 4, 2020

My ballot arrived in my mailbox on Saturday. I have no idea how they made that happen, since a letter mailed here in the Cesspool of Sin first has to go to South Carolina for sorting. (Long story.) I’m told the local Board may have staff members in the parking lot accepting absentee ballots today. Guess what I’m doing later?

Happy Election Quarter!

Update (2:30 EDT): Staff is working at Election Services today, but their ballot drop off drive-thru will not open until Tuesday at 8 a.m. A couple of dozen people have already tried to return ballots today.

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On this Labor Day 2020, Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris head to Wisconsin for some campaigning among the cheeseheads, beavers, and cows. Joe Biden visited Kenosha last week to meet with the family of Jacob Blake, the Black man shot seven times by police there in August. Both Donald Trump and Biden campaigns need a win there, but Trump needs it more. Polls indicate his path to 270 electoral votes is narrower (NYT):

If he holds every other state he captured in 2016, the president must win at least one of the three pivotal Big Ten states to claim re-election: Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. With his campaign increasingly concerned about his ability to win again in Michigan, where it has cut its advertising, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania loom even larger. And if Mr. Biden can run just slightly stronger in the state of his birth and early childhood than Mrs. Clinton did and win Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump’s hopes may rest entirely on Wisconsin.

Pence and Harris head to different parts of the state, one redder, the other bluer.

The vice president is speaking to employees at the Dairyland Power Cooperative in La Crosse, a heavily white Mississippi River city at the western edge of the state. Ms. Harris, who is making her first trip to a battleground state since joining the Democratic ticket, is visiting with union workers and leaders as well as African-American businesspeople and pastors in Milwaukee, the Black hub of the state.

What has Texas senator Ted Cruz got to do with Wisconsin, you didn’t ask? Well, the Republican, sometime-thespian and Dr. Seuss fan is peeved that the cast of The Princess Bride is reuniting for a script read to raise money for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (CNN):

Donors to the Wisconsin Democrats will receive invitations to a livestream on September 13 at7 pm ET for a script read of William Goldman’s 1987 cult classic. The star-studded cast, including Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Carol Kane, Chris Sarandon, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal and director Rob Reiner have agreed to join the virtual table read. A cast Q&A will be moderated by Patton Oswalt after the performance.”

Anything you donate will be used to ensure that Trump loses Wisconsin, and thereby the White House,” the donation page says.

The event sent Cruz’s torture machine to 50. In a tweet Saturday, Cruz called The Princess Bride “perfect” and said he wishes it would stay out of “Hollywood politics.”

Democrats’ Wisconsin state chair Ben Wikler invited Cruz to join the party.

Join us! Just think—you can say to Trump: “Hello. My name is Rafael Cruz. You insulted my father. Prepare to lose.”https://t.co/n6dj4iHQIh

— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) September 5, 2020

Cruz has been known to quote lines from the film and to imitate the actors.

Crystal in 2015 called Cruz’s impression “a little creepy,” but said he should “have fun storming the White House,” even though a win “would take a miracle.”

Cruz did not get one, Trump did. Let’s hope it takes another miracle for Trump to win Wisconsin again.

Enjoy your Labor Day.

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From the “you can’t make this up files”:

The authorities rescued numerous people from the waters of Lake Travis in Texas on Saturday after at least four boats sank at an event promoted as a Trump Boat Parade, officials said.

The Sheriff’s Office in Travis County received “multiple” calls of boats in distress starting at 12:15 p.m. local time, a spokeswoman, Kristen Dark, said.

Christa Stedman, a spokeswoman for Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services, said no injuries had been reported.

Firefighters pulled “numerous” people out of the water, said Braden Frame, president of the Lake Travis Fire Fighters Association. It was not clear how many had needed rescuing, he said.

People deserting their sinking ships in the Trump Boat parade? Really?

So Trump had some time on his hands after he blew off the WWI ceremony for those “loser” marines at Belleau Woods, so he did a little shopping:

After Donald Trump’s planned trip to a French cemetery for fallen Marines was canceled in November 2018, the U.S. leader had some extra time on his hands in a mansion filled with artwork. The next day, he went art shopping — or the presidential equivalent.

Trump fancied several of the pieces in the U.S. ambassador’s historic residence in Paris, where he was staying, and on a whim had them removed and loaded onto Air Force One, according to people familiar with the matter. The works — a portrait, a bust, and a set of silver figurines — were brought back to the White House.

The decision to cancel Trump’s visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside Paris is under new scrutiny after the Atlantic magazine on Thursday published a bombshell report that Trump belittled the American servicemen buried there, part of a broader history of disparaging certain people who’ve served in the military. Trump has vehemently denied making the comments about “suckers” and “losers” in the armed forces.

Never previously reported is Trump’s spur-of-the-moment art caper before leaving the ambassador’s residence.

The incident was met with a mixture of amusement and astonishment at the time, but caused headaches for White House and State Department staffers, according to several people familiar with the episode who asked not to be identified due to its sensitivity.

The story unfolded like this: While in Paris with other world leaders to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I, Trump stayed at the official residence of U.S. Ambassador Jamie McCourt, the palatial Hôtel de Pontalba. The mansion, in Paris’s chic 8th arrondissement, dates to 1842. It has served as a flagship of the State Department’s “Art in Embassies” cultural diplomacy program, and is open to tours.

The president’s planned visit to the Belleau Wood cemetery was canceled when rainy weather grounded the presidential helicopter, according to a redacted email the White House released to rebut the Atlantic story. The U.S. Secret Service ruled out a motorcade for the 56-mile drive, according to two people familiar with the matter.

That left Trump with about six hours of free time in the ambassador’s residence.

The next day, Trump pointed out a Benjamin Franklin bust, a Franklin portrait and a set of figurines of Greek mythical characters, and insisted the pieces come back with him to Washington.

McCourt, the ambassador, was startled, but didn’t object, according to people briefed on the incident. Trump later quipped that the envoy would get the art back “in six years,” when his potential second term in office would be winding down.

The art, worth about $750,000 according to one of the people familiar with the episode, was loaded aboard Air Force One while Trump visited another cemetery before the flight back to Washington.

“The President brought these beautiful, historical pieces, which belong to the American people, back to the United States to be prominently displayed in the People’s House,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in response to questions from Bloomberg News.

Trump’s move prompted some hair-pulling and a furious exchange of emails back home between the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations and White House officials who organized the art transfer. Ultimately, because the art is U.S. government property, the move was deemed legal.

Trump, who once used his charity to purchase a large portrait of himself, is known to display in his private West Wing dining room mementos from various official trips and encounters. Over time that’s included a pair of shoes gifted by musician Kanye West and an Ultimate Fighting Championship belt.

A senior White House official said presidents are permitted to display personal gifts from Americans or heads of state while they’re in office, but must purchase them if they want to keep the presents after they depart.

The figurines that caught Trump’s eye found a new home on the fireplace mantel in the Oval Office. Depicting Greek gods, they date to the early 20th century and were made by Neapolitan artist Luigi Avolio, who was trying to pass them off as sculptures from the 16th or 17th centuries, according to London-based art dealer Patricia Wengraf.

In an “Antiques Roadshow” moment, Wengraf described the figurines as “20th century fakes of wannabe 17th century sculptures,” and of little value.

The French art-collection episode comes with a curious footnote. After White House art curators examined the pieces Trump brought home, the president was told that the Franklin bust was a replica. He joked that he liked the fake better than the original, two people familiar with the episode said.

The Franklin portrait snagged from Paris was also a copy — of the one Joseph Siffred Duplessis painted in France in 1785, which was then held by the National Portrait Gallery a mile from the White House.

The curators removed a different portrait of the founding father from the Oval Office and borrowed the original Duplessis from the gallery. That one now hangs in the Oval, not the replica Trump ferried out of France.

Trump has no knowledge of or interest in art. He did this because he could.

I hope they count the silverware if Trump does leave office in January.

Michael Cohen says in his new book that the main reason Trump likes Putin so much is because he admires his ability to run Russia like it’s his own business and because he thinks Putin is the richest man in the world:

Trump loved Putin, Cohen wrote, because the Russian leader had the ability “to take over an entire nation and run it like it was his personal company — like the Trump Organization, in fact.” …

According to Cohen, Trump’s sycophantic praise of the Russian leader during the 2016 campaign began as a way to suck up and ensure access to the oligarch’s money after he lost the election. But he claims Trump came to understand that Putin’s hatred of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, dating to her support for the 2011 protest movement in Russia, could also help Trump amass more power in the United States.

“What appeared to be collusion was really a confluence of shared interests in harming Hillary Clinton in any way possible, up to and including interfering in the American election — a subject that caused Trump precisely zero unease,” Cohen writes.

Cohen’s book, however, does not reveal much in the way of new details surrounding the investigations by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and others into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

A senior White House official dismissed Cohen’s commentary on Russia as baseless, arguing that numerous investigations found “no collusion” between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Cohen asserts that another reason that Trump consistently praised Putin was to fulfill his long-held desire to slap his name on a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow.

Cohen says the Trump Tower plans called for a 120-story building in Red Square, including 30 floors devoted to a five-star hotel with an Ivanka Trump-branded spa and Trump restaurants, and 230 high-end condominiums for Russian oligarchs and leaders.

The plan, Cohen adds, was to give the penthouse apartment to the Russian president for free, in part “as a way to suck up to Putin.”

“The whole idea of patriotism and treason became irrelevant in his mind,” Cohen writes. “Trump was using the campaign to make money for himself: of course he was.”

Trump would later publicly insist that he had no business dealings with Russia. But Cohen writes extensively of his own efforts beginning in the fall of 2015 — several months after Trump had declared his candidacy — to make the Moscow project a reality.

The project fell to Cohen, he writes, because Trump’s children all disliked Felix Sater, the colorful Russian American developer who served as the Trump Organization’s liaison with Russians interested in the project.

Nevertheless, Cohen says the whole family was aware of the project, even as candidate Trump publicly said he had no ties to Russia. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, who is now a senior White House adviser, even selected the proposed tower’s high-end finishes, Cohen writes.

Ivanka and her lawyers have previously described her involvement in the Russia project as minimal, noting that she never visited the prospective site.

That rumor that Putin is the richest man in the world isn’t some Trump delusion. Fortune Magazine had this headline a couple of years ago. I’m sure Trump admires the fact that PUtin was able to strip out some much of his country’s wealth for himself.

Following up from Tom’s post below:

NEW: In upcoming book, Michael Cohen writes Donald Trump's disdain for Obama was so extreme he hired a "Faux-Bama" to participate in a video in which he "ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him." He includes this photo: https://t.co/LGrqsUUrY2 pic.twitter.com/otwYW8VSmQ

— Pervaiz Shallwani (@Pervaizistan) September 6, 2020

Here’s the video:

According to Breitbart back in 2013:

Trump made the video, which his political operatives (who provided the video to Breitbart News) say cost $100,000 to produce, for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. It was supposed to air at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Tampa last August. Unexpected bad weather threw the convention off schedule, and the Romney campaign never ended up publishing it, though a clip leaked to NBC News’ Today Show in September. 

Trump allies say Romney’s top political adviser Stuart Stevens and his partner at political consulting group SSG-DC Russ Schriefer made the decision to axe the video.

In the video, an actor who portrayed Obama visits Trump’s office in New York.

“It looks like you’ve never really managed people before,” Trump says. “You’ve never run a business. Who hired you?”

The video went through several other memorable moments of Obama’s first term before Trump wrapped up the review with his signature line: “President Obama, you’re fired.”

While the video has some comedic value now, Trump believes it highlights how some political operatives waste resources while being out of touch with voters.

During his Faith and Freedom Coalition speech last month in Washington, Trump said he felt “slighted” by the Romney campaign.

“I think it would have brought down the house,” Trump added.

Stevens tells it differently, saying he thinks what happened is “pretty straightforward.”

“It was made for the Convention and was scheduled for Monday night,” Stevens told Breitbart News. “Of course, as it turned out, there was not a Monday night program, which created huge, huge scheduling problems, as you will well remember. We had to cancel numerous speakers and drop multiple program elements.”

Stevens added that the campaign may have shown it at fundraisers.

“It was not a length that could be aired in a time slot on television IE wasn’t a 30 or a 60 second,” Stevens said. “We made scores of different videos that had different uses. It was very good of Mr. Trump to help out but he was always great to work with in the campaign.”

Trump’s team notes that Stevens and Schriefer gave New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie the keynote slot; Christie did not mention Romney until the 16-minute mark of his address. SSG-DC worked for Christie back in 2009 in his successful bid for the New Jersey governorship, and they are now working for him again.

Sam Nunberg, a political operative who works with Trump, said he believes Stevens and Schrieffer “used Romney’s primary win to promote Christie. Plain and simple. And in doing so, they broke promises that were made to many during the primary, including Mr. Trump.” 

“They were disloyal, just like their prize client Christie,” he claimed.

Stevens disagrees with Trump’s team’s assessment of their work with Christie.

Stevens is all over the place with his new book and the work he does for The Lincoln Project. I’m sure he’d be happy to say what actually happened.

A new CBS battleground poll is out with some national and Wisconsin numbers that show the race essentially unchanged since last month:

The years of Democrats having to clean up the economic messes Republicans inevitably leave behind have taken a toll. And it’s frustrating since the economy always does better when they are in office. No good deed goes unpunished I guess…

A moving excerpt from Donald Trump Jr’s book “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us”

(Yes, that is the actual title of the book.)

“Meanwhile, it also took two months for me to realize the enormity of what my father had accomplished, and the weight of the job that he’d won. It was the day before the inauguration, and we were driving into Arlington National Cemetery, where he was to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I rarely get emotional, if ever. I guess you’d call me hyper-rational, stoic. Yet, as we drove past the rows of white grave markers, in the gravity of the moment, I had a deep sense of the importance of the presidency and a love of our country. I was never prouder of my father than when I watched as he stood before the tomb, his hand over his heart, while the Army bugler played ‘Taps.’ 

“In that moment, I also thought of all the attacks we’d already suffered as a family, and about all the sacrifices we’d have to make to help my father succeed—voluntarily giving up a huge chunk of our business and all international deals to avoid the appearance that we were ‘profiting off the office.'”

Nobody knows the trouble they’ve seen.

Thus writeth former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen:

(CNN) Before Donald Trump ever sought the Oval Office, he was preoccupied by its occupant President Barack Obama, publicly questioning his birthplace and privately describing him as “a Manchurian candidate” who obtained his Ivy League degrees only by way of affirmative action, according to a new book by Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen.

Trump’s disdain for Obama was so extreme that he took his fixation a step further, according to Cohen: Trump hired a “Faux-Bama” to participate in a video in which Trump “ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him.”

This man has the nuclear codes.

In 2015, after Trump called Mexicans criminals & rapists, he dismissed concerns he’d alienated Latinos. "Plus, I will never get the Hispanic vote," Trump allegedly told Cohen. "Like the blacks, they're too stupid to vote for Trump. They're not my people." https://t.co/QanuowYHBP

— Pervaiz Shallwani (@Pervaizistan) September 6, 2020

Cohen on Trump’s hair routine, described as a "three-step" combover designed to disguise "unsightly scars on his scalp from a failed hair-implant operation in the 1980s." https://t.co/QanuowYHBP

— Pervaiz Shallwani (@Pervaizistan) September 6, 2020

CNN’s Erica Orden continues:

Writing that he once witnessed Trump shortly after he showered, Cohen recalls that “when his hair wasn’t done, his strands of dyed-golden hair reached below his shoulders along the right side of his head and on his back, like a balding Allman Brother or strung out old ’60s hippie.”

Cohen’s book “Disloyal: A Memoir” goes on sale Tuesday. If I were Michael Cohen, I’d watch my back. And place the “insurance” in a safe place.

Is there a bigger head case who is not in a straitjacket?

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Among the acting president’s most faithful constituencies are evangelical Christians. Some believe Donald Trump was sent by God to be president. A people raised from youth to worship Jesus as king were already primed to accept an earthly one. For some reason unearthly reason, they chose Trump.

After an Atlantic article — confirmed by reports from the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and Fox News — reported that Trump considers those willing to sacrifice their lives for their country “losers” and “suckers,” evangelicals must consider the likelihood that Trump sees their Savior the same way. Their base narrative is that Jesus sacrificed his life in atonement for their sins. The Romans simply carried out the crucifixion. Giving his life on a cross was the culmination of Christ’s mission on Earth.

What a loser. “I don’t get it. What was in it for him?” Trump might say.

Perhaps when Trump tells evangelicals he is one of them he is acting that too. Trump does not believe in sacrifice.

https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1302381954340454400?s=20

“He who dies with the most toys, wins.”

American Boomers rejected their parents’ notions of sacrifice, Sara Robinson writes on Facebook. Considering the “greed is good” 1980s followed on the heels of the “Me Decade” 1970s and the “do your own thing” 1960s, she might be right. The once ubiquitous “He who dies with the most toys, wins.” bumper stickers certainly suggest so, as does spread of the aberrant theology of the prosperity gospel among Christian megachurches. (Donald surely approves.)

But the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 (and Trump’s assessment that military service is for “dopes and babies“) forces us to reconsider our relationship with sacrifice, Robinson posted on Saturday:

All of us have been forced to make massive sacrifices. Beyond nearly 200,000 dead and a million more who will likely never be the same again, we’ve halted careers, shuttered businesses, taken over the education of our kids, masked up, stayed home, canceled trips and parties and weddings, scrounged office space in our basements and closets, taken back household tasks — it seems like every day demands another damn sacrifice. And we’re doing it for each other — so our neighbors live, the numbers in our county and state stay low, the hospitals don’t get swamped, and all the people we newly realize we’re so dependent on — or who are dependent on us — can continue to stay well.

We aren’t using the word yet, but we all sure as hell know in our hearts now what sacrifice means. We are, for the first time in about 60 years, remembering that there are circumstances where the rights of the community can and should override the rights of individuals. (And we are increasingly furious at the selfish individualist stragglers who refuse to get with the program of communal safety.) We’re not happy about it, but this is what the moment demands. So we do it. Not because it makes us richer or raises our status or wins us love. But because it’s necessary. And because it’s the right thing to do.

As we adjust to this new ethic, it’s natural that we’d put some extra focus on the institution that’s been keeping the flame of sacrifice alive all this time. My feed today is full of friends remembering their family members who served. With each story, I hear them saying to themselves: “I come from people whose lives had meaning because they sacrificed for the good of this nation. I am made of that same stuff, and I am capable of the same sacrifices. And on the strength of their example, I will rise to this moment, too.”

We’re obviously furious with Trump because we can’t ignore it: he’s spent four years continually demeaning the sacrifices of this country’s many generations of heroes. But, perhaps less consciously, we’re also enraged because if he can’t see those very publicly-recognized sacrifices — the monuments to which dot every block of Washington, DC — there’s no way he even registers the hard sacrifices every one of us has been making this year. If he can’t understand why your dad left his family to go to war — or why we all hush with reverence at that memory — it’s damn certain that the sacrifices you make this week to scrape up the September rent and keep the kids fed do not register with him at all. If he can’t understand the meaning of the 209,000 who died in the aftermath of the Normandy invasion, the thousand deaths we’ll sustain today will be completely beyond him.

We are entering an era when much more will be asked of us as a country. This pandemic has exposed weaknesses in every aspect of our economy and culture that will require drastic efforts over the next decade to fix. We are on the cusp of a national re-making on a scale not seen since the 1940s. I have zero doubt that we will be better and stronger for it in the long run; but the years ahead are going to require more adaptation, more irrevocable loss, and yes — a great deal more sacrifice for the greater good, which is rapidly becoming the thrumming bass line that underscores every beat of this New Normal we’re learning to dance to.

Sacrifice, doing for others, not military strength, is at the heart of the gospel evangelicals will again speak of with reverence this morning.

At the King Jesus International Ministry in Miami in January, Trump boasted about the drone strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad. Michael David Layne, 62, an Army veteran who attends King Jesus church, equated Trump’s death-from-above assassination with “strong leadership” and “solid Christian values.”

“He might be a little rough around the edges for some people,” Layne said, “but he says it like it is, and if some of the things he says or the actions he takes upset some people it doesn’t make him less of a man of God.”

Considering that Trump considers risking one’s life for one’s country for losers, Christian veterans might ask themselves whether their earthly king thinks their heavenly one is a loser too.

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