Replies to post #491201 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Trump urges police to break laws for him, as he again sets the stage for denying America the result of an election, in case.
And Vance continues on his dishonest way of misrepresenting Harris's border responsibilities.

"The Psychopath in Chief"

Updated Sept. 6, 2024, 7:47 p.m. ET 21 minutes ago

Election Live Updates: Trump Suggests Police Officers Should Watch for Voter Fraud

His suggestion, if followed through on, could run afoul of multiple state laws and raise accusations of voter intimidation. The presence of uniformed officers at the polls has a fraught history in the United States.

Michael Gold Here’s the latest on the presidential race.

Former President Donald J. Trump, addressing the national board of the Fraternal Order of Police in Charlotte, N.C., encouraged police officers to “watch for voter fraud” in November, a push that, if followed through on, could run afoul of multiple state laws and raise accusations of voter intimidation.

As he referenced his repeatedly debunked claims of widespread election fraud, Mr. Trump suggested that police officers could intimidate people out of conducting supposed voter fraud. “You can keep it down just by watching, because, believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge,” he said.

The group of police officers he spoke to, the largest police labor group with more than 370,000 members, had announced earlier on Friday that it was endorsing him. This is the organization’s third time supporting Mr. Trump.

His stop came hours after he summoned journalists to the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, recounting in detail multiple sexual harassment allegations against him and lashing out at the women who made them. Those remarks followed a court appearance in connection with the civil verdict against him in a case brought by E. Jean Carroll, a New York writer. Mr. Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll.

Also on Friday, his sentencing in a separate case, the criminal trial in which he was convicted of falsifying business records, was delayed until after the election.

Here’s what else to know:

Cheneys for Harris: Dick Cheney, the vice president under President George W. Bush and one of the most influential and hawkish conservatives in the modern Republican Party, will be voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, his daughter Liz Cheney said on Friday. Ms. Cheney, the once high-ranking Republican from Wyoming ousted from Congress after her break with Mr. Trump, had said earlier this week that she would be casting her vote for Ms. Harris.

An appeal to Latino voters: Ms. Harris focused on the economy in talking with Univision Radio, her first interview with Spanish-language news media since she became the Democratic nominee. Democratic candidates often center on immigration when reaching out to Latino voters, but for years polls have shown that the top issue for the electorate has been the economy. She hyped her efforts to build up Latino-owned small businesses, cut insulin costs and stop price gouging.

Jewish voters: JD Vance declined to denounce Tucker Carlson for praising and airing the views of a Holocaust revisionist, who claimed the Nazis’ killing of almost six million Jews was not premeditated. Mr. Vance, who is scheduled to sit for an interview with Mr. Carlson later this month, “doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture but he obviously does not share the views” of Mr. Carlson’s guest, his campaign said. Mr. Trump on Thursday addressed a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, repeating his criticism of Jewish Americans who support Democrats.

The financial numbers are in: Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign in August raised almost triple what Mr. Trump’s campaign took in. The haul by the Harris campaign and allied party committees, $361 million, gives the Democrats a substantial cash advantage over Mr. Trump, who raised $130 million last month. August, Ms. Harris’s first full month as a presidential candidate, was the Democrats’ best fund-raising period of the campaign.

On school shootings and guns: Democrats quickly seized on comments that Mr. Vance made at a campaign event in Phoenix on Thursday, when he called school shootings an unfortunate “fact of life” and proposed increased security measures in schools. Here’s what all of the candidates said after the deadly shooting in Georgia this week and where they stand on guns.

Harris-Trump debate: Both campaigns are preparing for a presidential debate on Tuesday, hosted by ABC News. It will be voters’ first time seeing Ms. Harris contend with Mr. Trump since she became the Democratic presidential nominee.

Nick Corasaniti, Maggie Haberman, Simon J. Levien and Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting.


Sept. 6, 2024, 7:28 p.m. ET40 minutes ago

Chris Cameron

Michigan's secretary of state took the fight over whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s name can be removed from the state's ballot to the Michigan Supreme Court late Friday, filing a motion to stay an appeals court decision earlier in the day that would allow his name to be dropped. The motion asked that a decision be made by Monday as the state has to certify which candidates will be on the ballot before printing them. Early voting in Michigan begins on Oct. 26.

“It must be emphasized that Kennedy is a candidate for president,” the filing said. “And so his presence or absence from the ballot affects every ballot in the state. No county can start preparing its ballots until this case and the appeals are completed.”

Sept. 6, 2024, 7:02 p.m. ET1 hour ago

Jazmine Ulloa

In San Diego on Friday, JD Vance was asked if a second Trump administration would reinstate its policy of separating families at the border. The practice drew an international outcry and remains deeply unpopular with American voters, including with many Republicans and independents. Vance dodged the question before pivoting to his usual critiques of Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she refuses to enforce border laws. “Look, every time that somebody’s arrested for a crime, that’s family separation,” he said. “You’ve got to prosecute criminals, and you have to enforce the law.”

SAN DIEGO — Asked Vance whether a second Trump admin would reinstate family separation policies:

“Look, every time that somebody’s arrested for a crime, that’s family separation… you’ve got to prosecute criminals, and you have to enforce the law” pic.twitter.com/oLkui1ANg9

— Alec Hernández (@AlecAHernandez) September 6, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/06/us/harris-trump-election

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Trump warms up for debate by threatening to jail election officials

"The Psychopath in Chief
[...]How do we deal with a person whose core impulse in every part of his life is to deny, deceive, deflect, disparage, and double-down every time he is challenged? And what precisely is the danger such a person poses if he also happens to be the leader of the free world, during a crisis in which thousands of people are dying every day, with no letup in sight?
[...]Like many other Trump critics, I believed that he was driven by an insatiable narcissistic hunger to be loved, accepted, admired, and praised. That remains prima facie true, but it deflects attention from what drives Trump more deeply: the need to dominate. His primary goal is to win at any cost and the end always justifies the means. Ultimately, he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks or feels. For Trump, the choice between dominating and being loved — saving himself or saving others — is no contest."

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 10:52 AM EDT, Mon September 9, 2024

VIDEOs

CNN — Donald Trump limbered up for his debate with Kamala Harris by showing the extremism that risks playing into the vice president’s claim that he’s an “unserious man” who is an “extremely serious” threat if he’s returned to the White House.

Harris prepares for the showdown she’s long sought with Trump as he takes more informal approach
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/08/politics/kamala-harris-donald-trump-debate

Trump warned he will jail election officials .. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/08/politics/trump-threatens-prosecution-2024-election-officials/index.html .. he considers cheats; is complaining Pennsylvania’s voting is a fraud; vowed to pardon January 6 rioters; railed against women who accused him of sexual misconduct; and spent hours in recent days on sometimes incoherent rants that raised questions about his state of mind.

But new polling ahead of Tuesday’s showdown in Philadelphia shows the race tied up nationally, suggesting Harris’ momentum after replacing President Joe Biden on the ticket hasn’t resulted in a commanding edge.

The tightness of the contest shows both Trump’s enduring appeal to tens of millions of Americans as he seeks a political comeback and the huge task facing Harris as she tries to save an election Democrats seemed doomed to lose before Biden bowed out.

That makes Tuesday’s debate — the first since June’s consequential clash on CNN that eventually ended Biden’s campaign — the most critical scheduled event before Election Day.

Why Harris needs ‘superhuman focus’ in facing Trump

The way each candidate is preparing highlights the different paths Americans can choose in November and the sharp contrast in the style of the presidency that will ensue if Harris or Trump are at the Oval Office desk.

Harris is holed up in Pittsburgh with staff to hone her skills for the test of facing Trump in a debate. Her choice of Pennsylvania for prep stresses the critical importance of a state she almost certainly needs to win to take the presidency. A source told CNN that her advisers are working out how she’ll deal with a rule that a candidate’s mic will be muted while their rival speaks. The vice president had pushed to overturn the restriction in the hope she could use her skills as a former prosecutor to dress down Trump in real time. But she told reporters, “I’m ready,” as she went for a stroll in the Steel City on Sunday with her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Inside Kamala Harris’ yearslong crash course in foreign diplomacy
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/08/politics/kamala-harris-foreign-diplomacy

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reflected on Harris’ challenge as she tries to engage Americans who want to know more about her while dealing with a sometimes-unhinged force of nature like Trump. “It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” Buttigieg said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It’s no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off. It’s because he’s a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him.”

A New York Times/Siena College poll published Sunday showed that 28% of likely voters need to know more about Harris, as opposed to just 9% who say the same of her rival. This presents possible room for growth for the vice president. But she is also facing pressure to explain policy reversals on issues such as immigration and fracking while showing more precision than she did in some testy interviews early in her vice presidency. And her unwillingness to submit to major media interviews — apart from one last month on CNN — means that a candidate who has sometimes struggled to articulate coherent arguments in high-pressure and spontaneous situations is coming into the debate without much recent experience of adversarial political combat.

Trump is still struggling to stick to the GOP script

Trump’s Republican supporters have been pleading with him for days to drill down on issues such as the economy, immigration and national security and to avoid petulant behavior that could play into Harris’ argument that it’s time for the country to move on from the bitterness and chaos he represents for many voters. The GOP theory is that Harris, as a key member of an unpopular administration, is ill suited to act as an agent of political change.

But Trump’s conduct heading into the debate explains the concern he will botch the clear contrast spelled out by Sen. Tom Cotton to CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” The Arkansas Republican said Sunday: “People remember that, when Donald Trump was in office, prices were low, wages were high, we had peace and stability around the world.” He added: “Kamala Harris, as vice president, has brought us record high inflation. We have a wide-open southern border and we have war everywhere you turn around in the world.”

Trump, however, was unwilling to restrain himself in recent days.

Trump threatens prosecution of 2024 election officials if he wins presidency
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/08/politics/trump-threatens-prosecution-2024-election-officials

In the most ominous development, the ex-president on Saturday used his Truth Social network to blast what he called “Cheating and Skullduggery” in 2020 by Democrats, then pivoted to the 2024 election, warning, “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.” He lashed out at “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” who he said would be “prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

There is no evidence that the 2020 election was corrupt. Trump’s multiple legal challenges were thrown out by judges and even his own attorney general, William Barr, said there was no widespread voter fraud. The fact that the ex-president tried to steal the last election makes his warnings that officials who do not echo his view of this one’s fairness an even more serious issue, and it bodes ill for the post-election period in November if Trump loses.

Trump’s warnings also show the consequences of his successful legal gambits in forestalling accountability for his election interference — in a federal case and in Georgia — until after the coming election. If he regains power, he will almost certainly use his restored presidential authority and new legal maneuvers to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith’s case in Washington, DC, district court and to try to prevent the Georgia one from coming to trial.

In another Truth Social post, Trump picked up on an interview by Tucker Carlson to claim with no evidence that 20% of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania are “fraudulent.” This is not the first time that the ex-president has seemed to be preparing a rationale to challenge the 2024 election if he loses.

Trump is not staging mock debates — he’s just venting in public

Trump’s debate prep is the most unorthodox of any modern presidential candidate.

In other public appearances in recent days, the former president has indulged the wilder sides of his character in streams of consciousness that delight many of his supporters but raise questions about whether he has the discipline and clarity of thinking traditionally associated with the presidency.

On Friday, in an extraordinary on-camera appearance in New York, he offered detailed and explicit appraisals of allegations of misconduct against him by women — part of a wider series of claims that he is an innocent victim of the weaponization of justice. His claims seem unlikely to improve his standing among women voters, among whom he trails Harris by 11 points, according to the New York/Times Siena poll.

At a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday, Trump often embarked on confusing digressions — for instance about Al Capone and Hannibal Lecter — and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “chess player.” Trump promised he was the one thing standing between Americans and World War III. And he pledged to pardon people convicted and jailed “by the Harris regime” for trying to overturn the election on January 6, 2021 — a step that would short-circuit the justice system and legal accountability for crimes. In a self-indulgent aside, he praised one of his own speeches as delivered more “brilliantly” than anything since Franklin Roosevelt. His appearance was replete with exaggerations and distortions — although his conspiracy theories and falsehoods come at such a clip that they often escape scrutiny because of their sheer volume.

Trump calls for modifying 25th Amendment to make it possible to remove a vice president
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/07/politics/trump-modify-25th-amendment-harris-biden

At one point, Trump mistakenly referred to SpaceX and Tesla pioneer Elon Musk as “Leon.” When Biden made such slips, Trump and allies frequently argued that the president’s mental acuity was in question. But the 78-year-old Trump’s unrestrained public appearances and apparent belief in fantasies and unproven facts also raise questions about his capacity to serve as commander in chief and the threat he poses to constitutional democracy. His grip on the GOP means, however, that he’s driven anyone likely to raise such concerns out of the party — for instance former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who last week endorsed Harris, as did her father, former vice president Dick Cheney.

Trump’s increasingly close relationship with Musk is also offering a preview of a potential second term for the ex-president. His promise to put Musk in charge of an effort to slash government regulations would mean the world’s richest man getting the chance to reshape federal rules and safeguards at a time when his businesses have massive interests that can be influenced by the government. This would create conflict-of-interest controversies that would dwarf those the Republican nominee encountered in his first term.

Despite fresh evidence of Trump’s turbulent character and the success Harris has had so far in improving on Biden’s performance in the race, the latest polling shows no clear leader between them. Harris has an average of 49% support, while Trump has 47% in the latest CNN Poll of Polls, which includes surveys conducted between August 23 and September 6. The new average is largely unchanged from before the Democratic National Convention, when Harris was averaging 50% to Trump’s 48% among polls conducted between August 1 and 16.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/09/politics/trump-debate-prep-analysis/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc