Trump and Pence attempt a campaign reset as public trust falters

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/18/politics/us-election-donald-trump-joe-biden-coronavirus/index.html

President Donald Trump attempted to right his faltering reelection campaign this week, looking to stem the steady decline of his poll numbers and shore up eroding support within his key voting bloc -- non-college-educated White voters -- by redefining his fight against Joe Biden and shaking up his campaign team after a series of stumbles.

Trump spent little time trying to lead America out of its coronavirus crisis this week, which was bookended by an erratic Rose Garden press conference Tuesday and a sharply worded campaign speech by Vice President Mike Pence in Wisconsin Friday afternoon. Clearly losing the battle on messaging, the President and his team sought to reframe the 2020 election as a choice between their agenda of "freedom and opportunity" and what Pence claimed is Biden's vision of an America under "growing control of the state" -- a future he said would lead to "socialism and decline."

Their aim -- in keeping with the President's relentless push to reopen the US economy regardless of the human cost -- is to get Americans to focus on anything other than the raging virus while distracting from the administration's flawed effort to control it earlier this year, a diversionary tactic that has not worked so far.

 

McCarthy warns if GOP doesn't win in November, Democrats 'will change the rules of the game'

https://www.foxnews.com/media/kevin-mccarthy-2020-election-dems-change-rules

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told "Hannity" Thursday that it is crucial for Republicans to win big the fall because otherwise, as he put it, "I don't know if we'll ever have an opportunity to win it again."

"They will change the rules of the game," McCarthy told host Sean Hannity. "How we vote, they will change -- you know in California, they allow people who are not even citizens to vote in school board races. You know, in California, they lowered the voting age to 17. Do you know, in California, that you could turn your ballot in 17 days after the election?

 We want to focus on bringing this country back," the top House Republican went on. "Rebuilding it, restoring it, and renewing it, and that means and law and order and justice."

In that vein, McCarthy said he would introduce legislation that would strip federal funding from states and cities whose leaders do not enforce laws against vandalism of public property.

"This is to protect American statues because what we want to do is tell the history," he said. "When you watch [San Francisco's] St. [Junipero] Serra [statue] get torn down or you watch Ulysses S. Grant's [statue vandalized], you watch Christopher Columbus, you watch Frederick Douglass, this is a real challenge because we have local officials who have a responsibility for the rule of law.

‘The Prodfather’: Orthodox rabbi with unorthodox criminal solutions

AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s false security on kids and COVID-19

https://apnews.com/573acbe835b0025551ff90c1a1e2b6e8

 President Donald Trump may be giving parents a false sense of security when it comes to kids and COVID-19.

In remarks Monday, Trump expressed a desire to have K-12 schools reopen in the fall in “full blast” while minimizing the risk that children and adults who are around them may face from the coronavirus.

TRUMP, on children: “They’ve come out of this at a level that’s really inconceivable. By the way, the regular flu, other flus, other things, SARS or H1N1, any of them, if you look at the young people they were affected like everybody else, but for whatever reason with respect to COVID, the numbers are very, very low.”

 

THE FACTS: Although it’s true that children are less likely than adults to develop COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has nevertheless counted more than 86,000 infections by the virus in Americans younger than 18.

Fact check: Trump makes at least 19 false or misleading claims in wild anti-Biden monologue

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/14/politics/fact-check-trump-biden-speech-rose-garden/index.html

President Donald Trump has long been fond of turning supposedly official events into de facto campaign rallies. Even by his own standards, though, his Tuesday speech was extreme.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, at what was billed as a "press conference" in which he would give remarks about China, Trump delivered a rambling 52-minute monologue filled with pre-scripted attacks on Democratic opponent Joe Biden.

As usual, Trump's comments were filled with egregious lies and other false claims. We haven't yet had a chance to comb through the entire transcript, but here is a list of the 19 false or misleading claims we have counted so far:

 

GOP to Trump: Change tune on mail-in voting or risk ugly November

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/16/politics/republican-reaction-trump-mail-in-voting/index.html

 Republican officials throughout the country are reacting with growing alarm to President Donald Trump's attacks on mail-in ballots, saying his unsubstantiated claims of mass voting fraud are already corroding the views of GOP voters, who may ultimately choose not to vote at all if they can't make it to the polls come November.

Behind the scenes, top Republicans are urging senior Trump campaign officials to press the President to change his messaging and embrace mail-in voting, warning that the party could lose the battle for control of Congress and the White House if he doesn't change his tune, according to multiple GOP sources. Trump officials, sources said, are fully aware of the concerns.

The impact could be detrimental to the GOP up and down the ticket, according to a bevy of Republican election officials, field operatives, pollsters and lawmakers who are watching the matter closely. Every vote will count in critical battleground states, they argue, fearful that deterring GOP voters from choosing a convenient option to cast their ballots could ultimately sway the outcome of races that are decided by a couple of percentage points.

The Trump Tax/Financials/Mazar's subpoena case was back in court in NY today. Here's how it went.

Second University of Minnesota study shows no hydroxychloroquine benefit in COVID-19 fight

https://www.startribune.com/second-u-study-shows-no-hydroxychloroquine-benefit-in-covid-19-fight/571791202/

 

An anti-malaria drug that doctors hoped would work against COVID-19, and that President Donald Trump championed and said he took himself, has failed to show substantial benefit in a second University of Minnesota trial.

U researchers compared 491 people with early symptoms of COVID-19 — with one group taking hydroxychloroquine for five days and the other taking a non-medicating placebo — and found no measurable differences in their outcomes.

Death rates of .4% were identical in the groups. Hospitalizations and persistent symptoms over 14 days were slightly more common in the placebo group, but not by a significant difference. Mostly mild side effects such as nausea were reported by 43% of patients taking the drug vs. 22% taking placebos.

The study adds to a volume of evidence that discourages the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 — including the first trial result that the U published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month that showed that the drug offered no protection for people who likely had been exposed to the virus and were at risk for infection.

White House: 'The science should not stand in the way' of reopening schools – live

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/jul/16/coronavirus-us-covid-donald-trump-anthony-fauci-joe-biden-live-updates

 

Following White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s suggestion that “The science should not stand in the way” of schools reopening, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) issued a scathing statement criticizing the administration’s response to the coronavirus crisis.

“Now the Trump administration wants to further risk the lives of teachers, children, staff, and their families just to soothe the president’s ego,” said Lily Adams, a DNC spokesperson. “This president would rather accept conspiracy theories and reject science than listen to public health experts. He can’t be trusted to make decisions about the lives of America’s children and their families.”

AP Fact Check: Trump Team's False Comfort on Schools, Virus

https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-politics/ap-fact-check-trump-teams-false-comfort-schools-virus

 President Donald Trump's aides are misrepresenting the record on kids and the coronavirus as they push for schools to reopen. 

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday inaccurately characterized what the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said on the matter. A day earlier, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also was wrong in stating that the research shows there is no danger "in any way" if kids are in school. 

No such conclusion has been reached. 

Their comments came as Trump continued to spread falsehoods about a pandemic that is taking a disproportionate hit on the U.S. and is not under control.

 

How a Struggling Company Won $1.6 Billion to Make a Coronavirus Vaccine

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/health/coronavirus-vaccine-novavax.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Novavax just received the Trump administration’s largest vaccine contract. In the Maryland company’s 33-year history, it has never brought a vaccine to market.

 

Even Donald Trump knows he is in deep, deep trouble in the 2020 race

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/16/politics/donald-trump-brad-parscale-2020-campaign/index.html

 

While there's long been a massive disconnect between Trump's public bluster and private worries, anger and anxiety, the demotion of Parscale is a shining example of that chasm. The truth that any politician knows is that you don't get rid of your campaign manager unless things are not going well. And you especially don't get rid of your campaign manager 111 days before the election -- unless things are going REALLY badly.

Which, for Trump, they are. Remarkably so. A new Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday showed former Vice President Joe Biden with a massive 52% to 37% lead over the incumbent. An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll also released Wednesday showed Biden up 11 on Trump. Polling in swing states like Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin show Biden comfortably ahead -- and there's even polling in typically red states like Arizona, Texas and Georgia that suggest Biden is competitive with Trump in those places.

Trump Is Waging a Losing War Against the Bad News of COVID-19

https://time.com/5867511/trump-coronavirus-bad-news/

 

Throughout the pandemic, President Trump has repeatedly contradicted the advice of his public health officials, and the CDC in particular, in a bid to control the messaging about the virus to Americans. When the CDC issued new guidelines for Americans to cover their faces on April 3, Trump emphasized it was “voluntary” and said he wouldn’t be wearing a mask, and was not seen wearing one in public until last week. When Trump started pushing hard for the economy to reopen in May, he stopped holding daily task force briefings. After the CDC released guidelines about schools reopening, Trump said they were impractical and pushed hard for all schools to return to in-person classes.

Megachurch pastor says he's suspending worship services