Trump 46: Chief Fuckopotamus And #BunkerBitch

[fraurosena]

2 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The replies in this thread are great:

 

$79,- for an ugly plaster figurine? Good grief...

His egomania is evident in the desperately-wanna-be admired imagery: Note how his likeness is larger than the presidents. And see how it’s a complete bust, as only Washington has on Mount Rushmore... Trump really wants people to believe he’s on par with Washington.

The ‘Keep America Great’ sign at the bottom is just nauseating.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

15 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The replies in this thread are great:

 

My two favorite replies under spoiler:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

What the hell did Teddy Roosevelt ever do to him?

[47of74]

Someone else also got creative with the fuck face walk of shame

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hadn't heard about this forthcoming book. It looks interesting. The Herald has done some great reporting.

 

[Ozlsn]

Going to be honest, this tweet really concerns me. This is laying the groundwork to refuse to accept the results of the election which he's now thinking he might lose. 

It probably doesn't help that I read this article yesterday, which is titled "This model forecast the US's current unrest a decade ago. It now says 'civil war'". 

Spoiler

These trends in the indicators have continued in recent years, Mr Fiertz says. Looking at other countries that have collapsed, he sees a pattern of several indicators steadily worsening before a sudden shock "overwhelms the system".

"It could be a pandemic or a loss in a war or perceived abuse by public security forces," he said.

"And normally, prior to this worsening process, a country would be able to adapt to, to deal with that. But because of this long-term buildup of vulnerabilities, it cannot."

"It happens slowly and then very suddenly."

Whichever side loses could dispute election outcome

Professor Goldstone predicts the real problems will begin after July 31, when Americans' $600 a week COVID-19 unemployment welfare expires.

"Social tensions likely continue to grow as we move to November," he said.

"The risks of violence in November are very high."

November is the US presidential election — now less than five months away. As the big date nears, the tone of predictions are darkening. Both Republicans and Democrats see a loss as a cataclysm — not just a setback, but the end of America. Four more years of Trump would 'destroy democracy', one side says. The other claims that Biden would destroy the economy as well as 'law and order'. The Trump campaign has launched an 'Army for Trump' website to "recruit and mobilise Americans ... committed to fighting to re-elect President Trump."

"There's a real risk that, if the election is close, whichever side loses will be strongly motivated to mobilise people to challenge the result," Professor Goldstone said.

 

[Cartmann99]

Series of tweets about the church Trump's bitching and moaning at tomorrow.

Scroll down to the last tweet if you want to see the video.

Spoiler

 

All that was missing was the announcer telling the audience to call in the next ten minutes to receive some completely useless bullshit absolutely free*!

*Except for shipping and handling of course.

[47of74]

Yeah Petty’s family wasn’t down with fuck face using his music 

Quote

The family of the late Tom Petty has filed a cease and desist notice to the Trump campaign after one of the musician's songs was played at the President's campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Petty's 1989 hit "I Won't Back Down" was played on Saturday evening at the rally, which drew a smaller-than-expected crowd of supporters.

"Trump was in no way authorized to use this song to further a campaign that leaves too many Americans and common sense behind," the family said in a tweet Saturday. 

"Both the late Tom Petty and his family firmly stand against racism and discrimination of any kind. Tom Petty would never want a song of his used for a campaign of hate. He liked to bring people together," according to the tweet.

 

[clueliss]

I was tempted  to put this in the covid19  thread I’m putting it here instead  for obvious reasons

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[fraurosena]

 

Trump’s Rally Was a ‘Disaster.’ But It Wasn’t Even His Biggest One.

Quote

Shortly after Saturday night’s less-than-packed rally in Oklahoma, President Donald Trump was handed pieces of printed paper that aides thought would cheer him up.

The pages, according to an individual involved in the matter, included a collation of various copy-and-pasted live tweets by some of the president’s most prominent allies and diehard fans lauding Trump’s speech and celebrating the event as an unmitigated triumph against Joe Biden. 

The effort at ego-soothing, which came despite numerous Trump campaign and White House officials privately conceding that the Tulsa gathering had been a clear-cut debacle, didn’t have its intended outcome. The president barely skimmed the papers. And he was visibly downbeat as he rode back to Washington, D.C., aboard Air Force One, having come to the realization that—by the very metrics set by himself and his own campaign—his rally had failed. 

According to three people with knowledge of the matter, the president’s mood had been foul even before he hit the stage—as he took stock of the wide empty space in the arena. Some advisers were genuinely surprised that he was able to seem as buoyant as he did during the speech itself.

Soon after the rally ended, the facade was dropped. President Trump complained to top advisers about being put in a position where the media could mock him. He ordered his team to immediately find out what went wrong. And two of the sources said the president suggested there would be major consequences for campaign staff if this wasn’t “fixed” and if he saw too many empty seats at his next coronavirus-era mega-rally.

Among various Trump associates and staff—as well as GOP veterans—the blame was directed at Michael Glassner, the campaign's chief operating officer, and Brad Parscale, the campaign manager.

“It was a disaster and I think the reality is that it's not a good way to start a general election campaign,” said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist who leads the pro-Trump group Great America PAC, who also said Trump had “no message” and was “rambling” during the speech. “If I were the president…I’d get a campaign manager who is running a campaign, not companies outside of it…My sense is [Brad Parscale’s] making way too much money…It's not my style to criticize a campaign manager, having run one myself, I know how difficult it can be, but in this case, something is not working and something has to change.”

However, multiple sources familiar with the reaction from Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has tremendous power over the direction of the campaign, said that Parscale and Glassner's jobs were safe as of Monday.

That left Trump officials with the task of pretending that the president wasn’t pissed off at all. On Sunday, Trump campaign comms director Tim Murtaugh denounced the “trolls thinking they hacked rally” tickets, and pinned the low headcount on “media-stoked fear” for families who wanted to attend. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was reduced to boasting about the rally’s television ratings. And one source familiar with the situation, in trying to explain the porous attendance, was forced to concede that the campaign had made a massive mistake in fairly basic event planning operations. According to the source, the president’s team did not spend the usual amount of money doing advertising and outreach for the rally because it thought ticket demand was organically high—seemingly unaware that Trump-trolling teens and K-Pop fans and Tik Tok users were wildly and artificially inflating it. 

 

But even with those missteps, the lackluster rally attendance came as cracks appear to be forming in one of the president’s key political assets—his formidable, and for a time unmatched, grassroots appeal—and as his Democratic rival overtakes him in an area dominated by Trump in 2016: small-dollar fundraising.

As Trump was on stage in Tulsa, his campaign filed its most recent financial report with the Federal Election Commission, revealing that it had brought in just under $25 million last month, well short of the nearly $37 million in receipts reported by the Biden campaign. The real concerns for the Trump campaign, though, were in the details. For the second time in three months, Biden’s campaign reported beating Trump’s in small dollar donations, both in terms of gross receipts—Biden more than tripled the $5.4 million that Trump brought in in May from donations of under $200—and as a share of total individual contributions. All told, 38.2 percent of individual donations to the Trump campaign in May came via contributions of less than $200, compared to 47.2 percent for Biden.

In addition to its campaign contributions, the Trump campaign leans heavily on a joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee that also regularly reports robust income from small-dollar donations. That committee hasn’t yet reported its fundraising totals for the second quarter of the year, though it will likely boost Trump’s small-dollar fundraising numbers considerably when it does.

A direct comparison of the two candidates’ campaigns, though, reveals that Biden has closed the gap considerably as his campaign has dramatically scaled up its grassroots fundraising.

Even as a coronavirus-induced recession hammered American pocketbooks, Biden’s small dollar fundraising has exploded. His campaign brought in nearly $20 million from donations of under $200 in March, according to its FEC filings. That was more than the Trump campaign has ever reported raising from small-dollar contributions in a single reporting period. And Biden has largely kept up the momentum. In March, an aide said, his average donation was $40; by April it was $32, and by May it was $30. The campaign had tripled the number of online donors since February.

Trump’s political machine has been driven largely by those small-dollar donors since he declared his presidential candidacy in 2015. For that first run, Trump himself provided tens of millions of dollars of his own money, but to the extent that the campaign leaned on its donors during his run against Hillary Clinton, those donors were overwhelmingly giving small sums.

That was a stark contrast to Clinton, who relied on larger “itemized” donations of more than $200. In all but one financial reporting period, Clinton’s campaign brought in less than a third of its individual campaign contributions from donations under that threshold. Trump, meanwhile, was consistently bringing in more than 60 percent of his individual donations from small-dollar contributors.

A Trump campaign official said on Monday evening, that they had "a robust digital fundraising operation built since 2016, and it has only continued to grow,” adding that the “Biden campaign is structured completely differently and the comparison disregards the tremendous amount of support we have received from small dollar donors over the years." The official noted, for example, that the totals being reflected on finance reports did not include "anyone who purchases an item from our store, or engages with one of our emails.”

Trump and the GOP’s mammoth grassroots fundraising hauls have been a great point of pride—and a significant talking point—for the president and his lieutenants, who’ve used it over and over to bash Biden as a weak candidate with severely dampened enthusiasm among even hardened Democratic voters. It’s also yet another data point that the president’s top aides say they print on paper, as they do with his fan-tweets, to hand to Trump to help stroke his ego.

For now, the president’s senior officials will also have to settle for bragging about Trump’s headcount for the online viewership.

“President Trump is eager to keep hitting the campaign trail and holding more rallies to speak directly to the American people,” Murtaugh said in a statement to The Daily Beast on Monday. “Thousands of supporters turned out in Tulsa, even in the face of media-stoked hysteria about the coronavirus and the potential for violent protests. As of Monday morning, more than 11.3 million people had watched the President’s rally online, which doesn’t even count television viewership. This is an enormous audience that Joe Biden couldn’t even begin to dream of from his basement.”

 

[fraurosena]

It looks like Lindsey is feeling the fear of defeat and is attempting to distance himself as best he can. This is the second time within a week that he's 'disagreeing' with Trump. 

Sorry Lindsey, too little, much, much too late. 

 

[fraurosena]

There he goes putting his foot in his mouth again...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

He's nervous about Bolton's book...

[clueliss]

Rats fleeing the sinking ship (and Graham's worried because the current trend could be a signal of other issues for November - like losing more House seats and perhaps the Senate Majority)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump increasingly preoccupied with defending his physical and mental health"

Spoiler

The early June meeting in the Cabinet Room was intended as a general update on President Trump’s reelection campaign, but the president had other topics on his mind.

Trump had taken a cognitive screening test as part of his 2018 physical, and now, more than two years later, he brought up the 10-minute exam. He waxed on about how he’d dazzled the proctors with his stellar performance, according to two people familiar with his comments. He walked the room of about two dozen White House and reelection officials through some of the questions he said he’d aced, such as being able to repeat five words in order.

At the time, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment — which includes animal pictures and other simple queries aimed at detecting mild cognitive impairment such as dementia — was intended to quell questions about Trump’s mental fitness. But in recalling it, Trump said he thought presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden would never be able to pass it and suggested challenging him to take the test, said the people familiar with Trump’s comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private details.

The seeming non sequitur was part of Trump’s growing preoccupation in recent weeks over perceptions of his mental and physical health, at a time when critics have mocked him for episodes in which they say he has appeared frail or confused. The attacks Trump has previously levied against Biden — dismissing the former vice president as “Sleepy Joe,” secreted away in his basement and enfeebled — have boomeranged back on him, as opponents have seized on Trump’s own missteps to raise concerns.

Another sign of Trump’s unease came Saturday night in Tulsa, when the president devoted more than 14 minutes to regaling a campaign rally crowd with the tale of “the ramp and the water.” Eager to dismiss questions about his fitness after he struggled with a glass of water and walked unsteadily down a ramp following his June 13 commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Trump offered a revisionist history.

The ramp on that sunny day, Trump asserted, was as slippery as “an ice-skating rink.” But he “ran down” it nonetheless, he claimed, despite video evidence showing him shuffling down the incline haltingly. As for the water, Trump said, he used two hands to drink because he didn’t want to spill on his expensive silk tie.

“Anyway, that’s a long story, but here’s the story,” the president said, finally winding down. “I’ve lived with the ramp and the water since I left West Point.”

He had previously obsessed about the episode to aides in private and during a Wall Street Journal interview, when he brought the incident up unprompted and offered to produce the leather-bottom shoes he had been wearing that day, which he said were “not good” for ramps.

“In the middle of the worst economy in a century and with more than a hundred thousand Americans dead this guy is primarily concerned with not looking weak,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), referring to the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic. “And his endless, bottomless insecurity was onstage, in three dimensions, during that storytelling moment, for everyone to see. I’ve seen a lot of crazy things in the last four years but that display of juvenile behavior and self-regard will go in the Trump time capsule.”

In recent weeks, Trump has fixated on Biden’s physical and mental acuity, aides said, casting about for ways to attack his Democratic rival and stewing over media coverage that he believes makes him look weak or feeble.

Last week, Trump and his campaign team lobbied the presidential debate commission to have four debates, because they believe Biden will look weaker and will make more mistakes than Trump on the debate stage.

The president has encouraged advisers to attack Biden over his mental acuity, White House officials said, but some worry that doing so too aggressively could backfire and hurt him among senior citizens.

“For someone so obsessed with appearing strong, Donald Trump shows us every day just how weak he is,” Biden press secretary TJ Ducklo said in a statement Monday. “ … Donald Trump doesn’t care about the health or economic prosperity of the American people. He only cares about himself.”

Trump is attuned to any portrayal of him as weak. He was furious earlier this month after news leaked that he and his family were rushed to a secure underground bunker as protesters converged on the White House in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed in Minneapolis police custody. He initially falsely claimed that he had simply visited the bunker to inspect it.

Trump has also refused to wear a mask during the coronavirus pandemic, despite his own government’s guidelines, and has regularly suggested that Biden and others who wear them are showing weakness or fear.

Flying to Tulsa on Air Force One Saturday, the president was fuming to aides about the small crowd size of his rally — about 6,000 people in a 19,000-seat arena — another form of weakness in his mind.

Trump’s critics have seized on his agita, taking every opportunity to needle him publicly. Last week, the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump Republican group, launched a new 45-second ad that begins, “Something’s wrong with Donald Trump.”

“He’s shaky, weak, trouble speaking, trouble walking,” the narrator continues as grainy images flash by, including of Trump at West Point. “The most powerful office in the world needs more than a weak, unfit, shaky president.”

Less than 24-hours after the Tulsa rally, the group pushed out another video, mocking his smaller-than-expected turnout, and hitting similar themes: “Sad, weak, low-energy,” says the narrator. “Just like your presidency, just like you.”

Mike Murphy, a vocal Trump critic who is now a strategic adviser to Republican Voters Against Trump, said Trump’s obsession with never seeming weak belies a deeper insecurity, making this particular line of attack particularly devastating.

“And now the strong guy — the strength image — is melting and we found out how weak and needy he is,” Murphy said. “If it’s ‘Sleepy Joe,’ we have ‘Weak, Needy Donald’ and that is his kryptonite.”

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, has been running a similar playbook against Biden. The campaign released an ad last week called “Fortitude” that mocked some of Biden’s missteps.

“Joe Biden is slipping . . . Biden is clearly diminished,” the narrator says, against the backdrop of Biden seeming to stumble through remarks. “Joe Biden does not have the strength, the stamina and mental fortitude required to lead this country.”

White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews rejected the idea that Trump shares any of the physical or mental weaknesses that he accuses Biden of possessing.

“I challenge anyone who absurdly questions this president’s health to spend one day trying to keep up with his rigorous schedule,” Matthews said in an email statement. “This president never stops — whether it’s working early in the morning or late into the evening.” (GreyhoundFan comment -- so watching 16 hours of TV and eating fast food is now considered "working"?)

Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, said the challenge for the Trump team now is that they “always put themselves into this everything is the biggest ever, the greatest ever” box, making it difficult for Trump to countenance even the slight hint of weakness on his part. “What we’re seeing over the past few weeks is really the issue of what gets under his skin.”

Heye said that while he didn’t think the initial coverage of the West Point ramp or water drinking was particularly problematic, the president clearly did. “He has been rattled by the reaction to it, and it’s because it speaks to that issue of strength,” Heye said.

Reaching under his lectern in Tulsa during his reenactment episode Saturday, the president pulled out a glass of water and brought it to his lips with one hand, raising it to the crowd between sips as if toasting an achievement. Then he tossed it away to his side as his supporters roared with delight.

“Trump! Trump!” the crowd chanted in response. “Four more years! Four more years!”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The attempts at distraction are becoming more frantic: "Trump, without evidence, accuses Obama of ‘treason’"

Spoiler

President Trump on Monday accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, of treason, without offering any evidence or details to back up his claim.

Trump made the accusation in an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network. The president has frequently accused others of “treason,” but Monday marked the first time that he has leveled that claim against the man who preceded him in the Oval Office.

“On Obama and the spying situation, this idea that they were spying on your campaign — you’ve been asked before about what crime would have been potentially been committed,” Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody said.

“Treason,” Trump responded. He added: “It’s treason. Look, when I came out a long time ago, I said they’ve been spying on our campaign. ... It turns out I was right. Let’s see what happens to them now.”

Trump mentioned Attorney General William P. Barr and U.S. Attorney of Connecticut John Durham, who was tapped by Barr last year to investigate the origins of the 2016 election interference probe that has overshadowed Trump’s presidency.

“Let’s see what they come up with,” he said.

Despite Trump’s assertions that the FBI under Obama wiretapped the phones at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said last year he found no evidence of that. But that has not stopped Trump from continuing to make the baseless claim.

In an exchange with reporters in the White House briefing room last month, Trump was pressed for more information on the scheme he has taken to calling “Obamagate.” What crime, a reporter asked him, was he accusing the former president of committing?

“You know what the crime is,” Trump responded, providing no details. “The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers -- except yours.”

 

[clueliss]

I had crawled under a news coverage rock while on furlough.  I saw a couple of the West Point clips the other night.  The ramp thing didn't bug me as much as the water glass bit.  Because what the heck was wrong with his hand/arm that he had to bring the other hand over to lift the glass?

[GreyhoundFan]

"As Trump slumps, his campaign fixes on a target: Women"

Spoiler

Before the coronavirus pandemic shut down Tampa’s hotels and put her out of work, Audrey Scaglione said she expected to vote for Donald Trump a second time. Now the contract food service worker finds herself struggling to decide.

“I’m just really unsure right now,” said Scaglione, who says she leans Republican but also previously voted for Barack Obama. “It is so hard to tell. I don’t think I can.”

She has not heard much from former vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic choice for president, and has few kind words for Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a close Trump ally, who has done little to improve a byzantine unemployment benefit system she spent months navigating.

And then there is the president himself. “If he would just stop tweeting,” she said, “I think everything would be a little bit better.”

Scaglione’s dilemma has become a burgeoning obsession for Republican strategists, who have watched a perilous fall in support for Trump’s reelection over the past few months. The shift has resulted in an advantage of five to six points in key Midwestern swing states that offered Biden only marginal leads at the start of the year.

At the core of the erosion is a dramatic abandonment of Trump by key demographic groups. The rebellion by college-educated women against the president in 2018, which gave Democrats control of the U.S. House via victories in the suburbs, has begun to register more deeply in recent months among non-college-educated and older women.

Trump’s weekend rally in Tulsa, which focused more on his personal grievances than on solutions to America’s pressing problems, reinforced the sentiments that political strategists say have driven women to desert him.

“These women really describe their lives as filled with exhausting chaos,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who is advising the Biden campaign and who traced the recent shifts to Trump’s pandemic response. “It is something new every day. And they want someone who will lead them through this, not someone who will make it more chaotic.”

Just 4½ months from the election, an already historic partisan gender gap appears to be solidifying, with Biden enjoying a 23-point lead over Trump among female voters, up from the 14-point edge for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to a Washington Post average of current national polls, 2016 exit polling and a Pew survey of confirmed voters.

Trump still has an advantage among white non-college-educated women, winning them by 14 points, compared with college-educated women, whom Biden wins by 28 points. But both groups have moved in the Democrats’ direction since 2016, by 11 points among those without college degrees and 12 points among those with degrees.

Nationwide, Trump resides well south of the 46 percent of the popular vote he received in 2016, and his campaign has concluded that growing his support among women is critical to making up the difference. His team has launched an effort to attract a “Women for Trump” volunteer base and expand a large push to reach out to women who are not engaged in politics.

At the White House, Trump has repeatedly been shown polls in which Biden holds a considerable lead among women and seniors in swing states, according to advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. GOP Senate strategists have watched a similar erosion in down-ballot races, forcing candidates from North Carolina to Maine to Colorado to redouble their efforts to shore up their support.

Trump’s ability to follow his advisers’ guidance to win back the lost support has been uneven, and at times his moves have been counterproductive, Republican strategists say. Last week’s White House roundtable on senior issues, and another on police reform — “We grieve together, and we heal together,” the president said — are exactly the sort of efforts Trump’s political advisers want to see.

But days later he was back to threatening protesters before his Saturday rally in Tulsa, where he returned to a set of contradictory, divisive themes. He used highly charged racial language — calling protesters “thugs,” a hypothetical criminal “hombre” and covid-19 the “Kung flu.” He said he had told his advisers to “slow the testing down” to reduce the numbers of confirmed positive coronavirus cases, and he returned to defending Confederate monuments as part of the country’s “great heritage.”

Such inconsistency has become a feature of Trump’s responses to recent crises. He promoted an unproven drug to treat covid-19 and mused about injecting disinfectant, just as his reelection team prepared an ad campaign defending his record on the coronavirus. He called for “domination” of street protests and oversaw a forced clearing of a peaceful gathering outside the White House the same week his campaign released a video tribute to the demonstrations against police misconduct.

Republicans across the country have been struggling with the resulting vertigo, as they try not to alienate Trump while at the same time avoiding any mention of the president in their own campaigns, in hopes of polling ahead of him on Election Day.

“The entire lack of message discipline is the biggest frustration for all the campaigns,” said Scott Reed, the political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is mostly supporting Republican candidates. “A lot of these Senate campaigns are starting to do their own things, and I don’t mean cut from the president. I mean just do their own initiatives.”

The game plan inside the White House and the campaign is to keep Trump on track, pushing him out on the road as soon as possible to directly connect with supporters in hopes of re-creating the atmosphere from the final months of the 2016 campaign, when Trump’s Twitter account stayed on message, he outsourced his advertising choices and he stuck to script at rallies.

“You have to transition to the fact that the president is basically doing what he needs to do to stop the spread of coronavirus, rebuild the country, and now he will have to restore peace and help us heal,” said one campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the strategy.

Republican strategists close to the president say he has to convince women that his handling of the coronavirus has been better than they currently believe — and that he has saved lives and the economy. In recent polling shown to the president, a majority said that he did not respond quickly enough or that the government had not done enough on the health front.

White House adviser Jared Kushner has talked to allies about promoting an agenda that is more amenable to many suburban voters, and some Trump advisers are considering a push on topics such as school choice. Advisers are discussing sending to swing states Trump surrogates who are less polarizing than the president himself, such as his daughter and senior adviser Ivanka Trump.

In places such as Florida, they want to tout school choice while pitching Trump’s “law and order” stance against protesters’ call to “defund the police,” according to a campaign adviser. They believe that classic Republican positions, if properly handled, have the potential to expand Trump’s appeal beyond his base and to bring more independent women back into the fold, particularly if a contrast is established with Biden’s liberal proposals.

Publicly, the Trump campaign refuses to admit any vulnerability among female voters, pointing to its multiple outreach programs and the fact that the female share of donors has risen to nearly half from just over a quarter in 2016, according to internal campaign reports. The campaign hosts virtual “Moms Night In” organizing events as well as state-specific calls, dubbed “Mom Talks,” with female supporters to discuss Trump’s efforts to address the pandemic.

“What women want is a safe and strong America, opportunity for a better tomorrow, more money in their pockets and lower taxes,” Trump campaign spokesman Ken Farnaso said. “President Trump has a proven track record of success on those issues compared to Biden’s dismal five-decade-long track record of record-slow economic growth, high taxes and failed globalist policies.”

The job for Trump is complicated by Biden’s relative strength among many of the voters Clinton struggled to win over in 2016. Suburban women are more favorable toward Biden than they were toward Clinton in May 2016, with Biden at 56 percent favorable compared with 42 percent who were favorable toward Clinton then, according to a May Washington Post-ABC News poll.

As a result, Trump has been devoting a significant share of his advertising to try to change how those voters view Biden, often by attacking attributes that make him more appealing to women.

“You have to figure out how to bang up Biden. The guy has not taken a lick of oppo for months,” Republican strategist Josh Holmes, a close adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said in an implicit criticism of the Trump campaign. “There has to be a sustained effort as to why he is not fit to be president of the United States.”

The Trump campaign has spent more than $1 million in recent weeks on Facebook ads about Social Security, according to tracking by Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic firm. Many of the spots have overwhelmingly targeted women, according to ­Facebook, with messages such as: “PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS KEPT HIS PROMISE TO PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY. Sleepy Joe Biden and the rest of the radical democrats will DESTROY Social Security.”

The ad is misleading. Biden has vowed no cuts for the program in his current campaign, saying he would instead increase revenue for it by raising taxes on high-income earners and would expand benefits for some seniors. Trump has similarly promised to protect the program, but he also has proposed cuts to elements of it that support disabled workers.

Other attacks on Biden have focused on his mental fitness, his policies toward China and his track record on civil rights. Such messaging is likely to continue in the coming months, mirroring the campaign that Republicans ran in 2018 casting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as a liberal ideologue — Democrats largely won those races — as well as the 2016 campaign.

Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, has been gingerly trying to avoid easy characterizations that could decrease women’s support, most recently by rejecting the call to “defund the police” and instead proposing an increase in federal funding to improve their training. Many of his public comments have expressed sympathy for victims of police abuse and for protesters’ right to peacefully gather. His campaign has said since its inception that Trump’s character is lacking, a political argument to which it believes women are more receptive — and its frequent tagline “Enough” is meant to signal exhaustion at presidential chaos.

“He is positioning himself as a centrist grandpa who wants to give you a hug and bring you some ice cream,” Republican strategist Corry Bliss said. “We can’t let that happen.”

In the meantime, the Trump campaign continues to dispute the public polling showing that the president has a problem with women.

“I continue to say the president actually performs better with women today than he did in 2016,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in an April appearance on Fox News.

The network had just conducted a poll in Michigan and Pennsylvania that found Trump trailing Biden among women by 20 and 21 points, respectively. Trump lost women to Clinton in 2016 by 11 points in Michigan and 13 points in Pennsylvania, according to national exit polls.

“Polls can be skewed in so many different ways. I just don’t believe it,” Parscale said.

The more pressing challenge, he continued, was to “overcome the media’s biased message.”

 

[PsyD2013]

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment which Bunker Bitch bragged about acing, is a screening instrument.  The psychologist in me would love to see the results of a full neuropsychologist exam.  Watching him raise the glass was concerning to me as well as the forward leaning shuffle down the ramp.  I'm going to have to watch Faux (gag) to see if he has that forward lean when he is walking on a flat surface as well as watch his hands for trembling.  Something is not right with him. 

 

[clueliss]

Nothing to see here (per the White House/Secret Service) so get out. (So were they running him to the bunker again?)

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because he always has to be nasty about immigration: "Trump, citing pandemic, orders limits on foreign workers, extends immigration restrictions through December"

Spoiler

President Trump issued a proclamation Monday barring many categories of foreign workers and curbing immigration visas through the end of the year, moves the White House said will protect U.S. workers reeling from job losses amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The ban expands earlier restrictions, adding work visas that many companies use, especially in the technology sector, landscaping services and the forestry industry. It excludes agricultural laborers, health-care professionals supporting the pandemic response and food-service employees, along with some other temporary workers.

The restrictions will prevent foreign workers from filling 525,000 jobs, according to the administration’s estimates. The measures will apply only to applicants seeking to come to the United States, not workers who already are on U.S. soil.

“American workers compete against foreign nationals for jobs in every sector of our economy, including against millions of aliens who enter the United States to perform temporary work,” the proclamation states. “Under ordinary circumstances, properly administered temporary worker programs can provide benefits to the economy. But under the extraordinary circumstances of the economic contraction resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak, certain nonimmigrant visa programs authorizing such employment pose an unusual threat to the employment of American workers.”

Critics of the moves say the president is using the public health crisis to carry out the kind of border closures and immigration overhaul he has long extolled, giving him the opportunity to campaign on the measures in his bid for reelection. Trump in recent months has carried out a broad crackdown at the Mexico border and has barred travelers from China and European nations with large coronavirus outbreaks.

Major U.S. businesses broadly panned the president’s proclamation. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which had lobbied to soften the limits for months, said Trump adopted a “severe and sweeping attempt to restrict legal immigration,” which could hurt the country’s economic recovery amid the pandemic.

“Putting up a ‘not welcome’ sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers won’t help our country, it will hold us back,” said Chamber President Thomas Donohue. “Restrictive changes to our nation’s immigration system will push investment and economic activity abroad, slow growth, and reduce job creation.”

The freeze announced Monday will apply to the H1-B visa category for highly skilled workers, the H-4 visa for their spouses and the L visas companies use to transfer international employees into the United States.

Most H2-B visas — for temporary workers who would stay in the United States for up to three years — also will be suspended, the officials said, with exceptions for food-service employees. The freeze on “cultural exchange” J visas will include exemptions for applicants whose entry is considered to be in the U.S. national interest, a loophole potentially available to the roughly 20,000 people who come to the United States annually as “au pairs” to provide child care for U.S. families.

Visa processing at U.S. consulates abroad already has plunged. State Department visa statistics show the number of nonimmigrant visas issued each month has dropped more than 90 percent since February. Last month, the United States granted just more than 40,000 nonimmigrant visas — which include visas for tourists and other short-term visitors — down from 670,000 in January, the data shows.

Trump administration officials also said Monday that they would issue new regulations denying work authorization to asylum seekers with pending claims for one year, arguing that the humanitarian program is being exploited by migrants seeking better work opportunities in the United States. Administration officials have not said how asylum applicants will be expected to support themselves financially while they await a court decision.

Trump on April 22 ordered a 60-day freeze on several categories of family- and employment-based immigration visas, and that suspension has now been extended through the end of 2020. While U.S. citizens can continue to sponsor spouses and minor children, Trump’s orders will bar most other categories of applicants, affecting more than half of the immigration visas issued in a typical year; last year, approximately 460,000 immigration visas were issued.

Trump’s orders, which the White House has described as “a pause,” do not apply to immigrants already living and working in the United States or to permanent residents seeking to become naturalized citizens.

As part of the April 22 decree, Trump directed federal agencies to study the possible impact of additional restrictions on work visas. The new measures will apply to several categories of J, or “cultural exchange,” visas, including foreign camp counselors, summer school teachers and other short-term workers.

Major businesses for weeks had urged the Trump administration not to adopt additional restrictions on foreign workers, fearing lasting impacts on the labor force at a time when many companies are struggling financially amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump’s move quickly drew sharp rebukes from Apple, Facebook, Google and a wide array of other tech giants, which sounded off through a flurry of Washington-based lobbying groups.

“Today’s executive action stands to upend the ability of U.S. employers — in the tech sector and beyond — to hire the men and women they need to strengthen their workforce, repower the economy and drive innovation,” said Jason Oxman, president of the Information Technology Industry Council.

TechNet President Linda Moore said the new White House policy would “slow innovation and undermine the work the technology industry is doing to help our country recover from unprecedented events.”

Many tech companies had lobbied for years to convince Trump to spare a raft of immigration programs he has since terminated or tried to limit. They supported lawsuits against the president’s earlier travel bans, for example, and vehemently opposed his effort to end the program known as DACA before the Supreme Court ultimately reversed it last week. Some top Silicon Valley executives, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, even have sought to appeal to Trump directly on immigration.

But the president’s order Monday amounts to a direct shot at the industry, which relies on H-1B visas to employ foreign engineers and H-4 visas to secure authorizations for their spouses.

“America’s continued success depends on companies having access to the best talent from around the world,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said in a statement. “Particularly now, we need that talent to help contribute to America’s economic recovery.”

Trump administration officials have defended the restrictions as a sensible measure to protect U.S. workers amid unemployment levels that are the highest since the Great Depression. The measures will be subject to review and modification every 60 days, according to the proclamation.

A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll published last month found 65 percent of Americans support a temporary halt on nearly all immigration during the pandemic, with 34 percent opposed. Republicans and independents support such restrictions by a wide margin, the poll found, while Democrats were split.

Mark Krikorian, whose Center for Immigration Studies has urged the Trump administration for years to adopt such restrictions, called Trump’s order “a significant victory over corporate interests.”

Krikorian and other restrictionists in the GOP have long argued that guest worker programs displace U.S. workers and drive down their wages. They have been battling pro-business Republicans for control of the party’s immigration platform.

“This is a victory for the immigration hawks within in the White House,” Krikorian said. “Maybe it took the pandemic to help them overcome the pressure from lobbyists to keep the cheap labor coming.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

And I bet that all 19,000 people showed up...

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"As Trump slumps, his campaign fixes on a target: Women"

  Hide contents

Before the coronavirus pandemic shut down Tampa’s hotels and put her out of work, Audrey Scaglione said she expected to vote for Donald Trump a second time. Now the contract food service worker finds herself struggling to decide.

“I’m just really unsure right now,” said Scaglione, who says she leans Republican but also previously voted for Barack Obama. “It is so hard to tell. I don’t think I can.”

She has not heard much from former vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic choice for president, and has few kind words for Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a close Trump ally, who has done little to improve a byzantine unemployment benefit system she spent months navigating.

And then there is the president himself. “If he would just stop tweeting,” she said, “I think everything would be a little bit better.”

Scaglione’s dilemma has become a burgeoning obsession for Republican strategists, who have watched a perilous fall in support for Trump’s reelection over the past few months. The shift has resulted in an advantage of five to six points in key Midwestern swing states that offered Biden only marginal leads at the start of the year.

At the core of the erosion is a dramatic abandonment of Trump by key demographic groups. The rebellion by college-educated women against the president in 2018, which gave Democrats control of the U.S. House via victories in the suburbs, has begun to register more deeply in recent months among non-college-educated and older women.

Trump’s weekend rally in Tulsa, which focused more on his personal grievances than on solutions to America’s pressing problems, reinforced the sentiments that political strategists say have driven women to desert him.

“These women really describe their lives as filled with exhausting chaos,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who is advising the Biden campaign and who traced the recent shifts to Trump’s pandemic response. “It is something new every day. And they want someone who will lead them through this, not someone who will make it more chaotic.”

Just 4½ months from the election, an already historic partisan gender gap appears to be solidifying, with Biden enjoying a 23-point lead over Trump among female voters, up from the 14-point edge for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to a Washington Post average of current national polls, 2016 exit polling and a Pew survey of confirmed voters.

Trump still has an advantage among white non-college-educated women, winning them by 14 points, compared with college-educated women, whom Biden wins by 28 points. But both groups have moved in the Democrats’ direction since 2016, by 11 points among those without college degrees and 12 points among those with degrees.

Nationwide, Trump resides well south of the 46 percent of the popular vote he received in 2016, and his campaign has concluded that growing his support among women is critical to making up the difference. His team has launched an effort to attract a “Women for Trump” volunteer base and expand a large push to reach out to women who are not engaged in politics.

At the White House, Trump has repeatedly been shown polls in which Biden holds a considerable lead among women and seniors in swing states, according to advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. GOP Senate strategists have watched a similar erosion in down-ballot races, forcing candidates from North Carolina to Maine to Colorado to redouble their efforts to shore up their support.

Trump’s ability to follow his advisers’ guidance to win back the lost support has been uneven, and at times his moves have been counterproductive, Republican strategists say. Last week’s White House roundtable on senior issues, and another on police reform — “We grieve together, and we heal together,” the president said — are exactly the sort of efforts Trump’s political advisers want to see.

But days later he was back to threatening protesters before his Saturday rally in Tulsa, where he returned to a set of contradictory, divisive themes. He used highly charged racial language — calling protesters “thugs,” a hypothetical criminal “hombre” and covid-19 the “Kung flu.” He said he had told his advisers to “slow the testing down” to reduce the numbers of confirmed positive coronavirus cases, and he returned to defending Confederate monuments as part of the country’s “great heritage.”

Such inconsistency has become a feature of Trump’s responses to recent crises. He promoted an unproven drug to treat covid-19 and mused about injecting disinfectant, just as his reelection team prepared an ad campaign defending his record on the coronavirus. He called for “domination” of street protests and oversaw a forced clearing of a peaceful gathering outside the White House the same week his campaign released a video tribute to the demonstrations against police misconduct.

Republicans across the country have been struggling with the resulting vertigo, as they try not to alienate Trump while at the same time avoiding any mention of the president in their own campaigns, in hopes of polling ahead of him on Election Day.

“The entire lack of message discipline is the biggest frustration for all the campaigns,” said Scott Reed, the political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is mostly supporting Republican candidates. “A lot of these Senate campaigns are starting to do their own things, and I don’t mean cut from the president. I mean just do their own initiatives.”

The game plan inside the White House and the campaign is to keep Trump on track, pushing him out on the road as soon as possible to directly connect with supporters in hopes of re-creating the atmosphere from the final months of the 2016 campaign, when Trump’s Twitter account stayed on message, he outsourced his advertising choices and he stuck to script at rallies.

“You have to transition to the fact that the president is basically doing what he needs to do to stop the spread of coronavirus, rebuild the country, and now he will have to restore peace and help us heal,” said one campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the strategy.

Republican strategists close to the president say he has to convince women that his handling of the coronavirus has been better than they currently believe — and that he has saved lives and the economy. In recent polling shown to the president, a majority said that he did not respond quickly enough or that the government had not done enough on the health front.

White House adviser Jared Kushner has talked to allies about promoting an agenda that is more amenable to many suburban voters, and some Trump advisers are considering a push on topics such as school choice. Advisers are discussing sending to swing states Trump surrogates who are less polarizing than the president himself, such as his daughter and senior adviser Ivanka Trump.

In places such as Florida, they want to tout school choice while pitching Trump’s “law and order” stance against protesters’ call to “defund the police,” according to a campaign adviser. They believe that classic Republican positions, if properly handled, have the potential to expand Trump’s appeal beyond his base and to bring more independent women back into the fold, particularly if a contrast is established with Biden’s liberal proposals.

Publicly, the Trump campaign refuses to admit any vulnerability among female voters, pointing to its multiple outreach programs and the fact that the female share of donors has risen to nearly half from just over a quarter in 2016, according to internal campaign reports. The campaign hosts virtual “Moms Night In” organizing events as well as state-specific calls, dubbed “Mom Talks,” with female supporters to discuss Trump’s efforts to address the pandemic.

“What women want is a safe and strong America, opportunity for a better tomorrow, more money in their pockets and lower taxes,” Trump campaign spokesman Ken Farnaso said. “President Trump has a proven track record of success on those issues compared to Biden’s dismal five-decade-long track record of record-slow economic growth, high taxes and failed globalist policies.”

The job for Trump is complicated by Biden’s relative strength among many of the voters Clinton struggled to win over in 2016. Suburban women are more favorable toward Biden than they were toward Clinton in May 2016, with Biden at 56 percent favorable compared with 42 percent who were favorable toward Clinton then, according to a May Washington Post-ABC News poll.

As a result, Trump has been devoting a significant share of his advertising to try to change how those voters view Biden, often by attacking attributes that make him more appealing to women.

“You have to figure out how to bang up Biden. The guy has not taken a lick of oppo for months,” Republican strategist Josh Holmes, a close adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said in an implicit criticism of the Trump campaign. “There has to be a sustained effort as to why he is not fit to be president of the United States.”

The Trump campaign has spent more than $1 million in recent weeks on Facebook ads about Social Security, according to tracking by Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic firm. Many of the spots have overwhelmingly targeted women, according to ­Facebook, with messages such as: “PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS KEPT HIS PROMISE TO PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY. Sleepy Joe Biden and the rest of the radical democrats will DESTROY Social Security.”

The ad is misleading. Biden has vowed no cuts for the program in his current campaign, saying he would instead increase revenue for it by raising taxes on high-income earners and would expand benefits for some seniors. Trump has similarly promised to protect the program, but he also has proposed cuts to elements of it that support disabled workers.

Other attacks on Biden have focused on his mental fitness, his policies toward China and his track record on civil rights. Such messaging is likely to continue in the coming months, mirroring the campaign that Republicans ran in 2018 casting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as a liberal ideologue — Democrats largely won those races — as well as the 2016 campaign.

Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, has been gingerly trying to avoid easy characterizations that could decrease women’s support, most recently by rejecting the call to “defund the police” and instead proposing an increase in federal funding to improve their training. Many of his public comments have expressed sympathy for victims of police abuse and for protesters’ right to peacefully gather. His campaign has said since its inception that Trump’s character is lacking, a political argument to which it believes women are more receptive — and its frequent tagline “Enough” is meant to signal exhaustion at presidential chaos.

“He is positioning himself as a centrist grandpa who wants to give you a hug and bring you some ice cream,” Republican strategist Corry Bliss said. “We can’t let that happen.”

In the meantime, the Trump campaign continues to dispute the public polling showing that the president has a problem with women.

“I continue to say the president actually performs better with women today than he did in 2016,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in an April appearance on Fox News.

The network had just conducted a poll in Michigan and Pennsylvania that found Trump trailing Biden among women by 20 and 21 points, respectively. Trump lost women to Clinton in 2016 by 11 points in Michigan and 13 points in Pennsylvania, according to national exit polls.

“Polls can be skewed in so many different ways. I just don’t believe it,” Parscale said.

The more pressing challenge, he continued, was to “overcome the media’s biased message.”

 

I don't typically speak for women everywhere, but I will in this case.

Trump, please don't target us.  We've got enough problems.

1 hour ago, PsyD2013 said:

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment which Bunker Bitch bragged about acing, is a screening instrument.  The psychologist in me would love to see the results of a full neuropsychologist exam.  Watching him raise the glass was concerning to me as well as the forward leaning shuffle down the ramp.  I'm going to have to watch Faux (gag) to see if he has that forward lean when he is walking on a flat surface as well as watch his hands for trembling.  Something is not right with him. 

 

Isn't the forward lean due to his lifts?

[PsyD2013]

49 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Isn't the forward lean due to his lifts?

It very well could be, but I was looking at the total constellation:  leaning forward, lifting the glass with 2 hands, the slurred words on occasion, and the word salad sentences.  

[HerNameIsBuffy]

5 minutes ago, PsyD2013 said:

It very well could be, but I was looking at the total constellation:  leaning forward, lifting the glass with 2 hands, the slurred words on occasion, and the word salad sentences.  

Oh I agree there is something physically wrong with him.  I can't explain the glass and the word salad...but I've always chalked the slurred words to slipping dentures (my gramma had that problem for a while and it looked exactly like that) and the lean to his lifts.

And ngl, if my plantar fasciitis is acting up I'm quite the turtle going down ramps myself if there is no handrail.  

The glass though ...I'm just a layperson but that looks like a serious symptom of something to me.