OK To Not Vote For Trump If You're GOP, Christian: Fmr. DHS Official | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Here's Donald Trump's most irresponsible theory yet about Joe Biden

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/27/politics/donald-trump-joe-biden-debates-drugs/index.html

 President Donald Trump has spent a lot of breath -- and tweets -- attempting to cast former Vice President Joe Biden as a doddering old man who doesn't really know what's going on.

"Biden can't put two sentences together," Trump told "Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace last month. "They wheel him out, he's goes up, he repeats -- they ask him questions, he reads a teleprompter, and then he goes back into his basement."

In the wake of a strong speech by Biden at the Democratic National Convention last week, Trump appears to have swapped out the "Biden's out of it!" attack for one even more bizarre.

Just to be clear as to what's going on here: The President of the United States is suggesting that the Democratic nominee against him -- and the man who spent almost a decade as the vice president -- is (or was) using some sort of drugs to enhance his debate performances. Pressed by York on a) what, exactly he was saying and b) what proof he had to make such a bold claim, Trump responded this way:

 "I don't know how he could have been so incompetent in his debate performances and then all of a sudden be OK against Bernie. My point is, if you go back and watch some of those numerous debates, he was so bad. He wasn't even coherent. And against Bernie, he was. And we're calling for a drug test ...

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson stuns with comment on Kenosha shootings

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/27/media/fox-news-tucker-carlson-kenosha-shootings/index.html

Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday suggested it was not surprising that a teenager arrested in connection to a shooting allegedly took up arms and tried to "maintain order" during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

"How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?" Carlson asked on his prime time television program.

"He just justified murder," added Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times Magazine reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 Project.

 

 

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Doc Rivers Delivers Emotional Speech On Jacob Blake

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Here are 5 takeaways from the RNC's third night

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/26/politics/rnc-highlights-day-3/index.html

 Uniform through-lines have sometimes been hard to detect at this week's convention, which has veered between fatalistic warnings about Democrats, denial about coronavirus and general economic optimism.

One consistent, however: every speaker has offered a view of the President that, no matter how divorced from reality, is the view he's always wanted to see depicted on television.

 

"I've watched Donald Trump charm the Chancellor of Germany," Trump's former ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, said -- a bold claim for arguably the most powerful woman in in the world.

If the claim stretched credulity, it was nonetheless exactly the person Trump wants to be.

Jacob Blake is not a ‘child rapist’

 https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/26/facebook-posts/jacob-blake-not-child-rapist/

If Your Time is short

• Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot in the back by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wis., on Aug. 23. There is no evidence that Blake is a “child rapist.”

• Court records show that Blake has been charged with one felony count of third-degree sexual assault related to an alleged incident of domestic abuse. Under Wisconsin law, sex with a minor is not one of the offenses included in that charge.

Why Did The Police Shoot Jacob Blake? | The Daily Social Distancing Show

Daniel Dale on RNC claims: Hard for me to know where to start

Pence reinvents Trump's presidency on a disorienting night of crises

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/27/politics/mike-pence-republican-convention-analysis/index.html

 Even by the standards of 2020, it was a disorienting night. Adding to the awfulness of another police shooting of a Black man and the shooting of two protesters (by an apparent Trump supporter) and the pandemic about to claim its 180,000th American victim, a monstrous hurricane tore towards the Gulf Coast.

The RNC has had some effective moments -- especially in highlighting the stories of regular Americans from lobstermen to farmers who say they have benefited from Trump's economic policies. Democrats may have missed an opportunity in not doing more to highlight such inspiring stories.

But for the third night in a row the convention offered a vision of a far different country than the one currently staggering through a cataclysmic year. It was a tale of a resurgent economy, a deadly virus defeated and a benevolent and wise President who was a champion of Black Americans, an empathetic counselor of professional women and a guardian of constitutional values worthy of mention in the same breath as the Founders.

At the Republican National Convention, You Might Think COVID-19 Was Over

 https://time.com/5883905/republican-convention-coronavirus-trump-pence/

 When Vice President Mike Pence took the stage Wednesday night, his speech was a striking example of the Trump Administration’s attempts to reframe the history of the pandemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide and nearly ground the American economy to a halt. “Thanks to the courage and compassion of the American people, we are slowing the spread, we are protecting the vulnerable, and we are saving lives, and we are opening up American again,” Pence said, speaking at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, MD. “Because of the strong foundation that President Trump poured in our first three years, we’ve already gained back 9.3 million jobs in the last three months alone.”

 Pence was named chair of the White House coronavirus task force in late February. Experts point to the failure to set up a speedy and functional testing and tracing system, the inconsistent guidance coming from the White House on mask-wearing and other crucial mitigation measures, and the early push to reopen states as costly missteps in the Trump Administration’s response to the virus. In August, more than six months after COVID-19 began sweeping through the U.S., the country continues to lead the world in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and number of deaths. Americans have experienced unemployment rates unseen since the Great Depression. The U.S. will almost certainly surpass 200,000 deaths from the virus before the election. Until a vaccine is approved, testing delays are hampering reopening throughout the country.

 The alternative history spun out during the convention portrays COVID-19 as an unpredictable lightning strike sent from China against a U.S. left unprepared by the previous administration. But Trump had already been in office for three years when the pandemic washed ashore—mostly through Europe—and Trump’s White House had stripped away an office for pandemic response and ignored plans developed after the 2014 Ebola outbreak. More damaging, Trump repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the virus as it spread in American cities through the spring, and when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Americans cover their faces in April, Trump said he himself would not.

Israeli diplomat confirms Turkey giving citizenship to Hamas members

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-diplomat-confirms-turkey-giving-citizenship-to-hamas-members/

 An Israeli diplomat on Wednesday confirmed reports that Turkey is granting citizenship to a dozen members of the Hamas terrorist group.

“Some are in the process, some already got (the documents), but we are talking about around a dozen,” Roey Gilad, chargé d’affaires at Israel’s embassy in Turkey, told the Reuters news agency.

Gilad asserted that the Hamas members receiving Turkish passports were financing and organizing terror operations. 

 2012. (AP Photo, file)

An Israeli diplomat on Wednesday confirmed reports that Turkey is granting citizenship to a dozen members of the Hamas terrorist group.

“Some are in the process, some already got (the documents), but we are talking about around a dozen,” Roey Gilad, chargé d’affaires at Israel’s embassy in Turkey, told the Reuters news agency.

Gilad said Israel has evidence of the phenomenon.

“We have already one document that we will present to the government in copy,” he said. “Judging by the last experience we had by presenting a well-based portfolio to the government… and getting no reply, I must say I don’t have high hopes that something will be done this time.”

Gilad asserted that the Hamas members receiving Turkish passports were financing and organizing terror operations.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan met on Saturday with a Hamas delegation that included politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh and the terror group’s No. 2, Saleh al-Arouri — a top military commander who has a $5 million US bounty on his head.

The meeting was harshly condemned by the US State Department, but the Turkish Foreign Ministry rejected the criticism, accusing Washington of “serving Israel’s interests.”