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Tag: Democrats
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Watch: Former President Obama bashes Trump, makes case for Harris, calls for unity in DNC speech
Watch: Former President Obama bashes Trump, makes case for Harris, calls for unity in DNC speech – CBS News
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Watch: President Biden delivers DNC address
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Watch: President Biden delivers DNC address – CBS News
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This You? Donald Trump Trashes Tim Walz For George Floyd Protests After Praising MN Governor’s Response In Leaked 2020 Audio
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More of Donald Trump‘s “flip-flopping” went viral after he bashed Kamala Harris‘ running mate, Tim Walz, for the same thing he previously supported on tape and claimed credit for. The current “hateration” in question: Trump backtracking about Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s handling of the unrest that followed George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
Source: Michael Ciaglo/Andrew Harnik / Getty
However, recently resurfaced audio recordings reveal that Trump’s current criticism is more misinformation from the “fake news” felon himself. CNN previously reported a full transcript of the detailed call between Trump and US governors.
Trump’s 2020 Praise Of Walz: A Conveniently Forgotten History
Trump and his campaign have recently claimed that Walz “let Minneapolis burn.” Let’s rewind to June 1, 2020, when protests erupted across the country following the harrowing death of George Floyd, a Black man whose life was brutally taken by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Amidst the nationwide uproar, Minneapolis became ground zero for protests, some of which turned violent as the city grappled with deep-seated anger and grief.
Listen to the audio here where Trump praises Walz:
During this time, Donald Trump was quick to praise Governor Walz for his handling of the protests. According to AP News, a phone call that included top officials like Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Attorney General William Barr, Trump told Walz, “What they did in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately.”
Yes, you read that right.
Trump, who now claims that Walz “let rioters burn Minneapolis,” was singing an entirely different tune back when the heat was on. Newsone states that Trump even went so far as to call Walz “an excellent guy” during that call.
Fast forward to the 2024 presidential campaign, and Trump, along with his running mate JD Vance, is suddenly criticizing Walz for supposedly allowing Minneapolis to burn during the protests. But here’s the kicker: that same audio recording, which Trump and the GOP are conveniently ignoring, directly contradicts these claims.
“Governor Walz allowed Minneapolis to burn for days, despite President Trump’s offer to deploy soldiers and cries for help from the liberal Mayor of Minneapolis,” said Leavitt.
However, according to the phone call, Trump was praising Walz for deploying the National Guard. Trump himself claimed credit for in a 2024 fundraiser, despite the fact that it was Walz who gave the official order.
This attempt to rewrite history isn’t just disingenuous; it’s a blatant attempt to mislead voters as Trump and his team scramble to discredit Walz, who has been tapped as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 election.
The GOP’s current claims are nothing more than desperate attempts at damage control. What a PR mess.
Republicans like House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and House GOP Chair Elise Stefanik have also jumped on the bandwagon.
Newsone reports that Trump’s VP, JD Vance, ever eager to play the race card, questioned whether Black business leaders in Minneapolis were grateful that Walz supposedly allowed their businesses to burn.
But again, the receipts—aka that 2020 audio—tell a different story.
Truth Is Out, But Will It Matter?
So, what’s the takeaway from all this? Simply put, Trump’s attempt to backtrack on his OWN recorded words is just another case of political opportunism. But thanks to modern technology and a few vigilant social media users, the truth is out there for anyone willing to see it.
As the 2024 election heats up, it’s CONTINUOSLY proven that clearly the GOP is willing to bend, twist, and outright break the truth to suit their narrative. But the truth has a way of coming to light—whether they like it or not.
For Trump and his team, the message is clear: You can’t rewrite history when the receipts are only a click away.
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Lauryn Bass
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Joy Ride: Upbeat Dems Are Spreading Optimism to a Divided (and Newly Delighted) Nation
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The joy squad has rattled not only Team Trump but right-wing pundits as well. Even Fox News attack dog Jesse Watters, who has also been known to criticize Harris’s laugh, has voiced frustration about his own mother’s newfound infatuation with the vice president, insisting his mother is “a Kamala fanatic. Keeps talking about joy.”
Third, warmth breeds warmth. It’s called positive reinforcement. Projecting an air of positivity tends to make others (in this case: potential voters) feel positive themselves. And one can feel this energy in the big-time crowds, the spontaneous chants, and the sheer giddiness that has returned to the hustings.
Fourth, the nation has had fear fatigue for so long that the Dems’ campaign has brought waves of relief, hope, promise, and rejuvenated political engagement.
Eight years of MAGA gloom—with a global pandemic in the midst of it—had enveloped the country in a dark cloak. In 2016, Trump won the presidency by mining a deep vein of discontent among the electorate. He constantly spoke of grievance. He spread fear. He helped usher in a national mood of loathing: loathing of a so-called deep state, loathing of the establishment, and loathing of the Other. And he did it by fanning long-simmering resentments among his base—resentments that, at their roots, were often the result of legitimate concerns. Yet, at times, those resentments sprang from a kind of paranoid self-loathing embedded in the belief that the American Dream was somehow unavailable to a huge swath of American voters. From his inaugural address (“This American carnage stops right here”) to his January 6, 2021 call for insurrection (“Stop the steal!”) to four years of social media ranting at Joe Biden and the American judicial process on social media (“The legal system in our country has been corrupted & politicized at a level never seen before”), Trump figuratively polluted the American political atmosphere. When Biden initially handed the reins to Harris and voters responded so enthusiastically, they were evidently starving for a break from the drumbeat, seeking a more optimistic message, even if many may not have realized it at the time. They were primed for the positive.
The phrase “Make America Great Again” has always been about going backward. And in 2016, Trump deftly picked the electoral lock because we were at an anomalous hinge point in history when a slim majority of Americans were so afraid of what the future represented (technology, climate change, the global economy, shifts in migration), that they voted to get into a time machine. But this 248-year American experiment in representative democracy, for the most part, has been about progress, about embracing the future. And we may, in fact, be rerouting ourselves to that tried-and-true path of progress as we see raucous crowds roar in call-and-response cadence, when Harris declares at her rallies: “We’re not going back.”
While there will be battles royale during the next three months over ideology, policy, and personal biographies, I believe this election will fundamentally boil down to a contest between the future and the past, between joy and anger. Indeed, many experts are seeing a surge in young people joining the voter rolls and becoming engaged, offering their opinions, loud and clear. They will certainly play a decisive role in the outcome. The question in this race, at the end of day, will be whether people at the ballot box are inclined to happily embrace tomorrow or bitterly claw back to visions of yesterday.
Which is to say: What’s happening with the Harris-Walz campaign feels fresh and authentic—and different. It feels more like a movement than a moment. And Republican attacks about the ticket being “communist” or “socialist” just feel hackneyed. We’ve seen all of this before. And whatever we feel about politics, most of us are just exhausted by the old and desperate for something new.
As that respected political sage Stephen Stills once observed:
There’s something happening here
But what it is ain’t exactly clear…
Maybe it’s joy. And maybe that simple human feeling can change a nation’s future.
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Mark McKinnon
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Kamala Harris Is Doing In-Person “Chemistry” Tests With Her Top VP Candidates
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Presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is reportedly meeting with her top vice president contenders on Sunday to test how well they get on. At least three of the finalists Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona—are scheduled to meet with Vice President Harris in what is being described as a “chemistry test,” per the New York Times.
The in-person chats are the apparent last step in the weeks-long search to choose who will join Harris on her historic 2024 ticket. The campaign has said they will announce the pick ahead of Harris’s scheduled rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday. The event will mark the duo’s first combined stop before touring seven swing states in just four days, according to Politico reporting.
It’s unclear if others in the veepstakes mix—like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky—had already met with Harris or were also on the docket.
This final test is “one that Ms. Harris is expected to put considerable stock in,” the Times writes. “Aides and associates have said that she often prioritizes personal rapport with her staff and advisers.”
These more intimate meetings come after an accelerated vetting process by the Harris campaign, and information found in that process, according to one of the finalists, has been shared with the potential VPs. A kind of public vetting process has played out in media interviews, on social media, and in the halls of Congress, too.
On Friday, Philadelphia mayor Cherelle Parker’s team published a tweet and video that appeared to show that Pennsylvania’s governor, Shapiro, was the VP pick. At first, the video seemed like an accidental leak of insider information before Harris’s choice was made public. A source close to Parker quickly told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the mayor was showing her support for Shapiro, but wasn’t announcing anything conclusive.
While the campaign’s choice to hold its first full-ticket event in Philadelphia could be seen as an Easter egg, a Harris aide “cautioned against reading too much into the first city chosen for the tour,” Politico reported.
Shapiro’s position at the helm of a key 2024 battleground state has put him on top of the veepstakes. The governor, 51, drew national attention in 2020 when, as attorney general, he handled then-President Donald Trump’s slew of election fraud lawsuits against the state. Plus, he’s got lots of experience winning tough elections—when he took the governor’s office, Shapiro made history again by winning more votes than any Pennsylvania governor ever had.
His road to the ticket has also been filled with controversy.
The director of the National Women’s Defense League critiqued Shapiro’s handling of a sexual harassment complaint against his aide when saying he “should have done a better job” in that situation. (A spokesperson told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star that the governor and his administration “take every allegation of discrimination and harassment extremely seriously and have robust procedures in place to thoroughly investigate all reports.”)
Shapiro’s past views and current positions on the war in Palestine have come under intense pressure from progressives. In a 1993 article he wrote while in college, Shapiro claimed that Palestinians were “too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own.” This week, he told reporters that his views have changed.
While he’s called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “one of the worst leaders of all time,” his handling of campus anti-war protests has led some progressives to worry about how he would handle the issue as the president’s close ally.
Before Walz joined public office in 2007, he was a member of the Army National Guard and a longtime school teacher and football coach. Walz’s recent uptick in national name recognition has come from conversational and blunt interviews in which the Minnesotan talks openly about his family and community. He’s spoken about his family’s use of IVF and critiqued the GOP’s attacks on reproductive care.
The Minnesota governor has been a leading advocate of calling Trump and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, simply “weird.”
“We do not like what has happened, when you can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner with your uncle because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary,” Walz said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird.”
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Katie Herchenroeder
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Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg Just Shattered Cher’s Record for Fire Island Fundraising
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On a sticky August Friday afternoon on Fire Island, New York City’s second most illustrious summer weekend destination, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and First Secretary of Transportation Gentleman Chasten Buttigieg held the most successful fundraiser in the island’s history, according to event co-chair and former 18-year treasurer of the Democratic National Committee Andrew Tobias. He said the fundraiser brought in $310,000, beating the $200,000 haul for an event Cher showed up to in 2016.
The inherent contrasts of the 2024 campaign — prosecutor vs. criminal, future vs. past, and, as the event’s host Marius Meland pointed out, woman vs. man — were embodied by the environs. The event took place in the Pines, a historically gay neighborhood that served as the setting for the 2022 romantic comedy Fire Island. En route to the event, secret service agents appeared to waylay hunks in bikini cut swimsuits to smuggle Emhoff on and off the island. (“We can’t walk on the boardwalk because someone’s getting on a boat?” said an annoyed man holding what looked to be a to-go cocktail.) Hanging over the entrance of Meland and his partner Eng Kian Ooi’s home was a large painting of an unusually sexy Narcissus. The house, designed by Studio 54 architecture firm Bromley Caldari, was purchased with a fortune made from the sale of Law360 to LexisNexis and from Meland’s current work in AI. Buttigieg and Emhoff were dressed formally — “Business casual on a Friday on Fire Island…thanks, team!” said Emhoff with affectionate sarcasm — while the well tanned and polo-shirted crowd cheered. A campaign staffer bridged the divide in an increasingly damp linen suit worn over a tank top.
Attendees paid between $250 and $10,000 to be there, according to marketing executive Barry Lowenthal. (The floor for a photo with Emhoff and Buttigieg: $5,000, Lowenthal told VF.) Though President Biden was referred to with gratitude — “Look what he just did!” someone said of the hostage exchange that freed Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich — everyone Vanity Fair spoke with expressed great enthusiasm over the change in ticket. Nowhere was this vibe shift more evident than in attendance: the event had initially been conceived as an event to raise money for President Biden, but after Vice President Kamala Harris declared her candidacy, the event was rejiggered—and it sold out.
Kian Ooi confessed he and Meland were titillated by the thought of the event as a test run for Emhoff and Buttigieg as, respectively, First and Second Gentlemen, if Buttigieg’s husband Pete were chosen as Harris’s running mate. But the consensus of attendees was that any of the reported finalists — Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, or Buttigieg — would be great. “People think decisions like this are like choosing betweens doors, and behind one is a dragon and the other is a million dollars,” Tobias said. “But usually it’s like $800,000 is behind one door and €800,000 is behind the other.”
The VP contender who came up the most was Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, even though she has withdrawn herself from contention. Ninety-eight-year-old Jack Kabin (who made the fortuitous real estate purchase of a $22,000 home in the Pines in 1972), said, “Of course I want it to be Pete. But America isn’t ready for a gay Vice President.” The undeniable intrusion of identity politics into the election has been both negative (Former President Donald Trump suggesting HBCU alumnus and AKA member Harris “happened to turn Black”) and positive (the millions of dollars raised in Zoom fundraisers like “Black Men for Harris” and “White Women for Harris”). Lowenthal suggested a theme for this event: “Gays for Harris.”
For Lowenthal and other donors, the stakes of the election and choice to support Harris are clear; when Lowenthal went to Florida for the winter, someone shouted the f-slur at him. At the event on Fire Island, Buttigieg told a story of the 24-hour notice he and Pete had before finding out they were going to adopt their twins: While their son Gus was on a ventilator in the first hours of his life, Emhoff and Vice President Harris FaceTimed into the children’s hospital to talk to the the Buttigieges. The spouses became close during the 2020 primary despite being on opposite sides of Team Pete and the KHive, and Harris ended up administering the oath of office to Pete Buttigieg for his cabinet appointment in 2021. Emhoff reminded the crowd he practiced law for 30 years and that a threat to Griswold and its promise of right to privacy — and attendant right to “to do what you want in your home with who you love,” as Emhoff put it, including be married to them—have been forecasted in the concurring decision on Dobbs written by Justice Clarence Thomas.
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Anna Peele
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VP Harris Has Secured Enough Democratic Delegate Votes To Become Party’s Nominee – KXL
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2024, during an event with NCAA college athletes. This is her first public appearance since President Joe Biden endorsed her to be the next presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris says she’s ready for the fight against Republican Donald Trump after securing enough votes from Democratic delegates to become her party’s presidential nominee.
The Democratic Party chair announced Friday that Harris had the votes.
The online voting process doesn’t end until Monday, but Harris’ campaign marked the moment Friday when she crossed the threshold to have the majority of delegates’ votes.
Harris says she’s “honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee.”
Harris is poised to be the first woman of color at the top of a major party’s ticket.
The Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago begins Aug. 19.
More about:
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Grant McHill
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Who Will Be Kamala Harris’s Veep Pick? Here Are the Finalists
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Vice President Kamala Harris is slated to pick her running mate by next week—the latest step in the Democratic Party’s newly energized bid to stay in the White House come November.
In the days since President Joe Biden bowed out of the race and endorsed Harris in his stead, the political-pundit class and everyday Americans have been throwing out their guesses for who will join the presumptive Democratic nominee’s historic 2024 ticket. The Harris campaign is expected to announce its VP pick by Tuesday. The duo will make their first combined campaign stop in Philadelphia, before touring seven swing states in four days, according to Politico. “Harris is planning to interview potential vice presidential nominees in the upcoming days,” the outlet reported earlier this week; when asked if she’d made her pick yet, Harris responded, “not yet.”
Before Biden had even dropped out of the race, people began questioning who Harris ought to pick as her running mate, with many positing, both jokingly and not, that she would pick a white man—an assumption that drew backlash from those questioning why another woman or person of color couldn’t join the team.
By the middle of last week, Harris’s team had reportedly requested vetting materials from numerous top Democrats, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, US senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, and Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina governor Roy Cooper were previously under consideration, but both have since bowed out.
While other Democrats beyond this list could theoretically get tapped, three potential candidates are reportedly the current front-runners: Kelly, Shapiro, and Walz.
Senator Mark Kelly
First elected to the Senate in a 2020 special election, Kelly is a Navy veteran and former astronaut from the Grand Canyon state.
Choosing Kelly would mean a West Coast–heavy ticket. However, the senator has firsthand experience working on immigration policy from a border state. Plus, his past wins with Latino voters could help secure that bloc. Kelly has also been a vocal supporter of abortion access, and recently switched his stance and endorsed pro-union legislation.
Long before running for office, Kelly stood beside his wife, former US representative Gabby Giffords, after she survived an assassination attempt in 2011 that left six dead and several injured. Kelly’s experience with supporting a powerful woman in office could benefit him as a running mate for Harris, who has already faced deeply misogynistic and racist attacks from the right. According to recent polling on the veepstakes, Kelly is the most well-known of the picks, and holds high favorability.
Following Harris’s campaign announcement, Kelly shared on X that he believed she was the candidate to defeat former president Donald Trump, adding, “Gabby and I will do everything we can to elect her President of the United States.” When asked about his spot in the veepstakes, Kelly said that it “ain’t about me.”
Governor Josh Shapiro
As Pennsylvania attorney general during the 2020 election cycle, Shapiro repeatedly—and successfully—fought lawsuits filed by Trump and his legal team after he lost the state to Biden. “I went to court against Donald Trump 43 times and won every single time because I stayed focused on the law and I stayed focused on applying the law without fear or favor,” Shapiro told New York magazine earlier this year.
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Katie Herchenroeder
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Democrats Are Having Fun?
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When’s the last time you saw Democrats having fun the way they did in Atlanta Tuesday night—looking like they actually wanted to be there, looking like they had the wind at their backs? “We have a fight in front of us, and we are the underdogs in this race,” Kamala Harris acknowledged to a fired-up rally crowd of supporters Tuesday. But, she said, “the momentum in this race is shifting.”
That much seemed clear as she spoke in the swing state. With Megan thee Stallion and Quavo providing star power and Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock rousing his home audience, Harris was greeted with remarkable enthusiasm when she took the stage. The vice president gave the stump speech she’s used a couple times now since replacing Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee, including during a rally last week in Wisconsin. After she ran through the “perpetrators of all kinds” she took down as a prosecutor, the audience could barely wait for her to get to the signature line of her early campaign before they started cheering: “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type!” But it was a new epilogue that provided the line of the night. Noting that Trump has begun waffling on debating her but has lobbed personal attacks on her from his own rally stage and on social media, Harris addressed her opponent directly: “Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage,” she said. “Because, as the saying goes, if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.”
Trump—not too long ago looking like he would be cake walking to victory in November—appears to be caught flat-footed, still struggling to find a line of attack against his new opponent. “She’s plain weird,” Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Tuesday, trying to repurpose the dig Democrats have recently adopted against him, JD Vance, and other Republicans. “I don’t need concerts or entertainers,” he posted after Harris’s rally, calling her “Crazy Kamala.” “I just have to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” His allies aren’t doing much better: Some of their attacks against her have seemed like accidental pro-Harris ads, while others have reinforced the Democrats’ “Republicans are weird”angle: “When a man votes for a woman,” the Fox News host Jesse Watters riffed recently, “he actually transitions into a woman.”
Harris’s honeymoon won’t last forever, of course. Trump and the Republicans will refine their attacks or at least intensify them. And the Harris coalition—currently unified and enthusiastic—still has divides that can be brought back to the fore by her choice of a running mate and as she lays out the particulars of her agenda. Even as her movement soars, political reality still exerts a gravitational pull. And yet, it’s worth appreciating what’s happening here, something remarkable, because of who Harris is and what she represents. But it’s also something remarkably straightforward: Surveys had consistently shown Americans to be gloomy about the prospects of a Biden-Trump rematch, with Democrats, in particular, telling pollsters again and again and again that they believed Biden needed to pass the torch. For months, even after his dreadful debate performance, Biden and his party tried to swim against that current of popular opinion—insisting they knew better or even that the polls were wrong.
But now, the Democratic Party is giving the voters what they wanted and are being rewarded for it: About eight in 10 Democrats say they’re pleased with the top of the ticket in a new AP-NORC survey, up from a dismal four in 10 in June. Trump’s lead in national and swing state polls has seemed to narrow or even close, and Democratic fundraising has been off the charts. And then, there is the kind of energy we saw in Atlanta on Tuesday. All cycle, Democrats had been steeling themselves to mount a goal-line stand against Trump. Now, it seems like the Democrats are actually on offense. “This is like Barack Obama 2008 on steroids for me,” one Georgia voter told the Associated Press at the Atlanta rally Tuesday. “I would have voted for President Biden again. But we are ready.”
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Eric Lutz
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Inside the “Big Weirdo” Political Strategy That Democrats Are Using to Taunt Republicans
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Even Republican cheerleader senator Mitch McConnell despairs over his party’s increasing weirdness.
In 2022, explaining away the GOP’s midterm election performance (read: not good!) he basically said, yikes, what can you do? “My view was do the best you can with the cards you’re dealt,” he said of his fellow Republicans. “Now, hopefully, in the next cycle we’ll have quality candidates everywhere and a better outcome.”
McConnell is the guy at the rager who’s telling people that he “came in with those guys, but not, like, with those guys” and hissing through his teeth at his colleagues to “try to act normal.”
No one is immune, no matter their political affiliation. Former president George W. Bush was ahead of the curve in fingering Trump and his cohort as weirdos, a sense of cringe transcending any party loyalties he might have. Officially, he attended Trump’s presidential inauguration in January 2017 to witness the peaceful transfer of power. Unofficially, he reportedly turned to his companions as they left the dais and said, “That was some weird shit.”
TikTok and internet culture aren’t the only fields Harris’s campaign has pulled from. Modern dating parlance lends us the idea of “the ick,” a term so relatable it was recently added to the Cambridge Dictionary.
It’s defined as “a sudden feeling that you dislike someone or something or are no longer attracted to someone because of something they do.”
Once you get the ick, you can’t un-ick. Ever. In dating, that might mean losing someone’s number. In politics, the Democrats are hoping that voters’ ick will translate at the polls. Picture senior Democrats pulling voters aside like they’re their closest girlfriends and muttering, “Really? Him? But he’s so…weird.” Politicos can’t go all in, Walter Masterson style, but they can get away with a deftly wielded light trolling.
Of course, the Unified Theory of Ick (Politics Edition) is nonpartisan, as evidenced by a severe case of the ick being the straw that broke the Biden-reelection-campaign-shaped camel’s back just days ago.
As Lawrence points out, “If you’re making an attack, and then there’s something that happens that reinforces that, it’s really hard to get away from it. The Biden debate, going into it, [Republicans said], ‘he’s old, he’s old, he’s old,’ and then he looked old. There’s just no turning away from that. You can’t get that out of people’s heads.”
Again, it goes both ways: “And so you have Democrats saying, ‘they’re weird freaks, they’re weird freaks, they’re weird freaks,’ and then old clips of JD Vance come out talking about cat ladies and talking about how people without children shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Donald Trump talking about Hannibal Lecter like he’s a real person. All of that stuff just kind of builds on itself until it becomes a part of the zeitgeist.”
Progressive voters are noticing this linguistic shift, and they’re on board.
One person on X wondered why “anyone at all” would vote for a Republican. “Hateful, cruel, misogynistic and like, vibey in a weird unsettling way,” they wrote.
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Kase Wickman
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Letters: Housing bond | Resolving ambiguities | Harris critique | Get serious | Cruel order | Best hope
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Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor.
$20B housing bond
should be voted downThe $20 billion housing bond that will be on the Nov. 5 ballot is like snake oil.
Only as little as 72% of the $20 billion housing bond will be spent to actually build affordable housing for extremely low-income, very low-income, and low-income households. Ten percent can be spent on grants for “transportation, schools, and parks.” Notably, only 80% of the proceeds of the bond issue need to be spent in the county funding the bonds. Thus, Contra Costa County residents could end up paying for parks in San Mateo County.
The decision to place the bond on the ballot was made by the MTC, which includes unelected, unaccountable officials and is therefore like taxation without representation. We can and must do better.
Nick Waranoff
OrindaCritique of Harris
applies to othersRe: “Democrats deserved contest, not coronation” (Page A7, July 25).
In his critique of Kamala Harris, Bret Stephens mentions high staff turnover during her time as vice president and the fact that she failed the bar exam on the first try.
Regarding turnover, he should have started by looking at the mile-long list of senior and mid-level Trump people who quit or were fired.
As for the bar exam, Harris is in good company. Others who took the exam more than once include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Michele Obama, John F, Kennedy Jr., and former California Governors Jerry Brown and Pete Wilson.
He also claims she has been a bad campaigner. He’s entitled to his opinion, but her first speech in Milwaukee looked pretty impressive to me, in contrast to Donald Trump’s 93-minute meandering speech at the Republican convention.
John Walkmeyer
San RamonWe must get serious
after record heatRe: “Last Sunday was hottest day on Earth in recorded history” (Page A2, July 24)
That alarming headline was corrected the next day online: “Sunday was hottest day on the planet – no, wait, it’s Monday.” Things are just starting to warm up.
It is now obvious that the cost of this heat — both in dollars and in human lives — far outstrips the cost of reducing CO2 emissions. Are we going to follow Ben Franklin’s advice: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”? Or John Paul Jones, “I have not yet begun to fight”? We need to get serious, folks.
Cliff Gold
FremontNewsom’s order to
sweep camps is cruelRe: “Newsom orders sweeps of camps” (Page A1, July 26).
The scary truth is most Californians are only a few bad breaks away from homelessness. The unlucky blow may come from a wildfire or, worse, an unexpected medical bill. Insurers profit most off denying coverage, that is, if you were fortunate enough to have health insurance in the first place.
Capitalism turns housing into a scarce commodity and then blames people who lack it. Rather than treating the unhoused as untouchable, we should give them security and more chances. It is the Christian thing to do and a humane imperative.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order to sweep away homeless encampments is cruel. It does nothing to solve the systemic problems that cause homelessness in the first place. And by treating other people like trash, the Ggovernor has proven he’s garbage.
Alan Marling
LivermoreHarris win is best hope
for multiracial societyI was one of 50,000 Black men on a call for Kamala Harris, a day after 44,000 Black women got together. I haven’t seen this level of excitement since Barack Obama in 2008. Black women and men being this energized is how we will win the fight for a multiracial democracy.
The California Donor Table has moved over $60 million to progressive community organizations and candidates. With skyrocketing support from voters of color, we will win the presidency, retain the Senate and win eight contested California House districts to take back the House
Kamala was born at the same Oakland hospital as my son. In 2020, hundreds of us danced in front of her former Berkeley apartment to celebrate her victory. And boy will we party if, natch, when she wins the presidency.
Ludovic Blain
BerkeleyCourts are best place
to resolve ambiguitiesRe: “Eviscerating agencies’ power is dangerous” (Page A6, July 10).
A letter writer complained that the Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimundo now prevents federal administrative agencies from “resolving statutory ambiguities.” But that is exactly how it should be. That’s what courts do.
While agencies may have certain “expertise,” they are not courts. Courts have the expertise to resolve ambiguities in the law; agencies don’t. I don’t want an agency expert to interpret a legal ambiguity; that is not the job of a federal bureaucrat. That expert might be a conservative or liberal who lets his or her worldviews influence a decision.
If an agency finds an ambiguity in the law, have them go to Congress to clarify the issue. That is the job of our representatives.
Douglas Abbott
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Letters To The Editor
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Letters: Remaking U.S. | Back Harris | White wash | Rhetorical game | Free speech
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Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor.
Republican effort to
remake U.S. terrifiesIf you haven’t seen it, you might want to read the synopsis of Project 2025. Essentially it’s a manifesto for Donald Trump to take over every aspect of American lives, but only to benefit him and his loyalists.
They plan to remove government employees and agencies. They have no regard for non-Whites, LGBTQ, abortions, women, foreigners and non-Trumpists. There will be no need for Congress or the Supreme Court because all decisions will come from the demagogue himself and his self-designed army.
Was “1984” a primer for Trump? How much surveillance will there be? How many jails and holding camps will they build for all those in opposition? Will they restore a vigorous execution system?
They want to end American democracy as we know it. If you’re not concerned about this, then study Germany in 1939.
Stuart Shicoff
MartinezBack Harris to beat
Trump at ballot boxPresidents Biden and Obama are the two best presidents I have experienced in my lifetime. I applaud, admire and respect President Biden so much for sacrificing for our good and not focusing on himself. He and his team, including Vice President Harris, pulled us out of an extremely dark time.
In November, we have two choices: democracy vs. dictatorship. It’s time to finally put aside gender and race and focus on the issues that matter to us all.
If you haven’t yet read Project 2025, please read it. There’s a summary on Wikipedia so you don’t have to read 900 pages. It’s Donald Trump’s blueprint for a dictatorship and police state and covers all of the issues that are important to Americans. Kamala Harris is the most qualified and experienced individual who can beat Trump at the ballot box. It’s a no-brainer.
Ramona Krausnick
DublinDemocrats’ whitewashing
of the coercion of BidenAccording to Martha Raddatz, ABC News, senior White House sources recently said that Joe Biden was lashing out at any suggestion of dropping out.
But with a political tidal wave of Democratic elites knocking over his determination to continue running on the basis that he could not win, and after the final assault by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Biden was finally forced to resign from the race. A New York Times opinion piece calls this “a noble patriotic move; a selfless American giving up power willingly for the good of the country.” Coercion is more like it.
This narrative is a Democratic Party line whitewashing reality which we will see repeated ad nauseum.
Stephan Pinto
Walnut CreekGOP’s dangerous
rhetorical game still onRe: “Left is stoking outrage and anger” (Page A9, July 21).
Shaun McCutcheon, chairman of the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, advocates for the shooting of protesters: “Rioters don’t riot where they will be shot.” He says that leftist leaders who were soft on protesters were the causes of the Donald Trump assassination attempt.
This scary kind of thinking confirms the wisdom of voting for the best Democratic candidate in November.
Steve Turnwall
LafayetteUpcoming federal case
pivots on free speechThe case against the Uhuru 3 — Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess, and Jesse Nevel — is a troubling challenge of our most important constitutional right.
Under the guise of bogus conspiracy charges and failing to register as “foreign agents” after criticizing the U.S. role in the war in Ukraine, these three have been indicted for using their right to free speech to openly criticize the U.S. government. The outcome of their upcoming trial will be an important moment in history, setting a precedent on whether or not our government can attack its own citizens for exercising their right to free speech.
Progress in this country has come from its citizens speaking their mind and advocating for change, knowing they are protected by their First Amendment right. The outcome in this trial will be extremely important in securing our right to keep speaking freely and pushing for progress.
Eric Swanson
Emeryville[ad_2]
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President Joe Biden on 60 Minutes through the years | 60 Minutes Full Episodes
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President Biden ends 2024 election candidacy | 60 Minutes
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Rep. Kat Cammack on Trump’s RNC address, political discourse
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Trump’s past GOP rivals line up behind him at convention, say he’ll make U.S. ‘safe again’
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MILWAUKEE —Former President Trump’s top rivals in the Republican Party lined up behind the 2024 nominee on Tuesday, promising he would “make America safe again” from violent criminals and dangerous undocumented immigrants who they suggested are invading the nation via an “open” southern border.
After questioning his abilities and integrity during the primaries, they gave full-throated backing to a man they once loudly reviled, saying that unifying behind their former foe was crucial for the nation’s future. Trump, who entered the convention hall to thunderous applause, looked on approvingly as his former opponents urged voters to return him to the White House.
“For more than a year, I said a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris,” said Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. “After seeing the debate, everyone knows it’s true. If we have four more years of Biden or a single day of Harris, our country will be badly worse off. For the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump.”
But Haley said her message was aimed at voters who may have qualms about the former president.
Former Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“We should acknowledge there are some Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time. I happen to know some,” said Haley, whom Trump nicknamed “Birdbrain” during their 2024 primary contest. “My message to them is simple. You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me, I haven’t always agreed with President Trump, but we agree more often than we disagree.”
Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, entered the Milwaukee arena shortly before speeches by Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom he bested in a testy 2024 GOP primary, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, one of his opponents in the 2016 election.
“Let’s send Joe Biden back to his basement and let’s send Donald Trump back to the White House,” said DeSantis, whom Trump nicknamed “Ron DeSanctimonious.” “Our border was safer under the Trump administration and our country was respected when Donald Trump was our commander in chief. Joe Biden has failed this nation.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Haley and DeSantis apparently learned a lesson from Cruz — aka “Lyin’ Ted” — whose failure to endorse Trump after losing to him in the 2016 GOP primary earned him boos at that year’s convention and some enmity from Trump loyalists. He has since fallen back in line with the man who suggested his father was potentially involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The praise of Trump was interspersed with speeches about crime and immigration, and some of the most moving and powerful moments of the night came from families of crime victims.
On Tuesday, Cruz listed the names of Americans allegedly killed by people who are in the country illegally, including Kathryn Steinle, a 32-year-old woman who was shot in 2015 while strolling with her father on the Embarcadero in San Francisco.
“As a result of Joe Biden’s presidency, your family is less safe. Your children are less safe. The country is less safe. But here’s the good news: We can fix it. And when Donald Trump is president, we will fix it,” Cruz said. “We know this because he’s done it before.”
Tuesday night’s convention theme was “Make America Safe Again.”
Speaker after speaker, from politicians to law enforcement officials to people labeled “everyday Americans,” blamed crime in the U.S. in part on an “invasion” of criminals crossing into the country from the southern border with Mexico — though studies for years have shown immigrants are less likely to commit crimes here than natural-born U.S. citizens.
Kari Lake, a prominent 2020 election denier who lost a 2022 bid to become Arizona governor and is now running for the U.S. Senate, blamed “disastrous” Democratic policies for the surge in fentanyl and other opioid deaths in the country and along the southern border — which she said Trump would end.
Kari Lake speaks at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Lake said President Biden and Democrats “have handed over control of my state, Arizona’s border, to the drug cartels,” and that “because of them, criminals and deadly drugs are pouring in and our children are dying.”
Anne Fundner, a mother from California, said her 15-year-old son, Weston, died from fentanyl in 2022 — which she blamed on the “open border” policies of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“This was not an overdose, it was a poisoning. His whole future, everything we ever wanted for him, was ripped away in an instant — and Joe Biden does nothing,” Fundner said.
She said Trump must be elected to help end fentanyl’s scourge on American families like hers. “This fight is not for me. My son is gone,” she said. “This fight is for your children.”
Crime and homelessness are perennial campaign talking points among Republicans, often couched as the result of liberal policies in states such as California.
Republicans claim the title of the “law and order” party, which has been a particularly useful point of political redirection for Trump as he has faced multiple criminal investigations and been convicted of dozens of felonies in recent years.
Democrats dismiss the Republican criticisms as inaccurate or overblown. Cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco do struggle with crime and homelessness issues, Democrats say, but not to the extent Republicans suggest — and cities in red states struggle with similar issues.
Democrats also blasted Republicans for platforming individuals at the RNC who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and siege on the U.S. Capitol.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Officer Michael Fanone, a Capitol Police officer who was injured in that attack, condemned the presence of insurrectionists at the convention.
“What happened on January 6th almost cost me my life and brought our democracy to the brink,” Fanone said in a statement. “This is a moment to come together and oppose those who call for violence in politics, but the RNC’s decision to give a platform to the same people who rioted against our democracy on January 6th does the opposite.”
Crime data vary across the country and within individual states.
However, the clearest trend in crime data in recent years nationwide, experts said, is that violent crime is down. Republicans often dismiss such data by saying they are fabricated or the result of lower reporting rates.
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Seema Mehta, Kevin Rector
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Motive still unknown in Trump assassination attempt, new details revealed about ammo purchase
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Motive still unknown in Trump assassination attempt, new details revealed about ammo purchase – CBS News
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How Biden’s campaign is responding to the Trump assassination attempt
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Joe Biden Calls for “Unity” After Trump Assassination Attempt
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“From Fascism, to Hitler, to dictator,” Meuser continued, “so I can easily point that out, but I’m willing to state at the same time, we all need to take responsibility to cool things down. To say what we mean, but don’t say it mean. To not get personal. To have dialogue, rather than attacks.”
NBC’s Dasha Burns, who was reporting live from the Pennsylvania rally, shared that in the moments following the shooting, after she was reunited with her crew, “some people in the crowd started to come to the risers, they started to get heated with the press.”
“This crowd gathered near the media,” she continued, “and started blaming the press for what had just happened—some screaming at journalists and getting pretty aggressive.
Early Sunday morning, Trump released a statement on his social media platform Truth Social, thanking everyone for their thoughts and prayers, writing, “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness. Our love goes out to the other victims and their families. We pray for the recovery of those who were wounded, and hold in our hearts the memory of the citizen who was so horribly killed.”
The attendee who was killed at the rally was 50-year-old Corey Comperatore, according to his sister, Dawn Comperatore Schafer, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. “The hatred for one man took the life of the one man we all love the most,” she said in a brief interview, per reporting from the Times. “We watched him die on the news,” she said. “That’s how we found out. We saw my brother die on the news.”
Just over six minutes into his speech began, witnesses heard the sound of cracking shots, one after the other, as Trump reached for his ear and ducked behind the podium— where he was quickly surrounded by Secret Service agents. He emerged with blood on the right side of his face. Before exiting the stage, Trump raised a fist to the crowd—some of whom raised one in return—and seemed to shout the word “Fight.”
On Truth Social, Trump wrote that a bullet had “pierced the upper part of my right ear,” saying, “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots.”
The shooting suspect, Crooks, from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was a registered Republican, his mother was a Democrat, and his father a Libertarian, according to voter-registration records and Dan Grzybek, who represents the area Crooks lived in on the county council. Crooks had used ActBlue to donate $15 to a liberal group called the Progressive Turnout Project in January 2021, according to campaign finance records.
The Times reported that the AR-type semiautomatic rifle found next to Crooks’s body was “purchased by a family member, possibly his father, according to an official briefed on the investigation.”
Appearing to graduate from high school just two years ago, Crooks reportedly has an incredibly low online social media presence, according to NBC investigative reporter Tom Winter, who also noted that other online forums, like chatrooms, were still being sifted through.
New pieces of information regarding the assassination attempt are continuing to be released as local and federal lawmakers, as well as newsrooms across the country, continue to investigate the shooting.
“Former F.B.I. officials said the bureau’s behavioral analysis unit would try to build out a profile of the gunman to understand his motivations and why he decided to carry out the attempted assassination. The F.B.I., which is running the investigation, will cast a wide net, interviewing friends and family members and scouring the internet for clues he might have left online or in a journal,” the Times’ writes.
“This remains an active and ongoing investigation,” the FBI said in a statement early Sunday.
In a statement immediately following the shooting, Biden called the violence “sick.” Later on, the two leading presidential candidates shared a reportedly “short and respectful” phone call, according to the White House.
Biden’s campaign announced that it would pause “outbound communications,” attempting to take down television ads, a campaign official said. The Democratic National Committee similarly paused both television and billboard ads against Trump.
The Republican National Convention is set to kick off Monday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and, according to Trump and his campaign, he will still be in attendance. “I truly love our Country, and love you all, and look forward to speaking to our Great Nation this week from Wisconsin,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Previously, attempts to ban firearms from the convention sites, where items like tennis balls and gas masks are prohibited, have failed due to concerns over violating state laws or riling up Trump’s base. As Axios noted last month, “Guns will be allowed within walking distance of the Republican National Convention,” but not within the event’s inner security perimeter.
When asked whether there might be changes to guns being allowed in some areas near the convention site, Chief Jeffrey Norman of the Milwaukee police said, “We’re going to see whether there are going to be the opportunities in regards to dealing with that particular challenge,” in an interview with WISN-TV.
In a joint statement released by the Trump campaign and the RNC on Saturday night after the shooting, the teams said that Trump “looks forward to joining you all in Milwaukee as we proceed with our convention to nominate him to serve as the 47th President of the United States.”
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Katie Herchenroeder
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Assailant at Trump rally
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Assailant at Trump rally “neutralized by Secret Service,” law enforcement sources say – CBS News
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