Trump's call to halt vote counts is his most brazen swipe at democracy yet

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/04/politics/election-2020-donald-trump-joe-biden-voting-speech/index.html

President Donald Trump's demand for vote counting to stop in an election that is still undecided may have been his most extreme and dangerous assault on the institutions of democracy yet in a presidency replete with them.

Trump appeared in the East Room of the White House early on Wednesday morning to claim falsely that he had already beaten Democrat Joe Biden, and the election was being stolen from him in a massive act of fraud. He vowed to mount a challenge in the Supreme Court and declared that he had already won states that were still counting votes, including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

The election has not yet been won, and the President and the former vice president are still locked in a tight battle for the decisive states with millions of votes still being counted.

Trump's remarks essentially amounted to a demand for the legally cast votes of American citizens not to be recorded in a historic act of disenfranchisement. And they brought closer the potential constitutional nightmare that many have feared since Trump started to tarnish an election that he apparently worried he could lose months ago. His rhetorical broadside was also notable because it came at a moment of huge tension in a deeply divided nation -- a time when a president, even one whose political fate is in the process of being written -- could be expected to call for calm.

Trump claims victory with many states still undeclared, hints at possible Supreme Court case

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-claims-victory-states-undecided-supreme-court-white-house

 President Trump declared victory in multiple key battleground states early Wednesday, even though it remained unclear who had the votes to win, as Trump hinted the White House would push the Supreme Court to rule over disputed ballots, warning that a “very sad group of people” was trying to “disenfranchise” voters.

Trump Is Wrong About Military Distribution of a COVID-19 Vaccine

 https://reason.com/2020/10/23/trump-is-wrong-about-military-distribution-of-a-covid-19-vaccine/

"For the overwhelming majority of Americans," Paul Mango of the Department of Health and Human Services told The New York Times, "there will be no federal official who touches any of this vaccine before it's injected into Americans."

In July, McClatchy reported that the military commands responsible for homeland defense and the National Guard have not even been asked to prepare a plan for the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine

 

 

 

Despite Trump’s claims, the Dept. of Defense doesn’t plan to lead vaccine distribution

 https://fortune.com/2020/10/23/trump-biden-last-debate-covid-vaccine-military/

President Donald Trump doubled down on his optimism that a COVID-19 vaccine for the masses is just around the corner during Thursday night’s final presidential debate with former Vice President Joe Biden. That flies in the face of what most experts, including senior Trump administration officials, have said, as debate moderator Kristen Welker noted.

But Trump insisted that he believes in a more accelerated timeline that can be boosted by the U.S. military, which would ostensibly help deploy tens of millions of doses to the general population once a vaccine clears regulatory hurdles.

 

 

 

'Where's the Vaccine?' Doctors Blast Trump's Coronavirus Promises Ahead of Election Day

 https://www.newsweek.com/wheres-vaccine-doctors-blast-trumps-coronavirus-promises-ahead-election-day-1543757

President Donald Trump and White House advisers have said for months that hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses would be "ready to go" by Election Day. But three days out, health experts are saying COVID-19 vaccinations were just another dubious campaign promise.

CNN's final 2020 Electoral College outlook: A remarkably stable race comes to an end

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/02/politics/electoral-college-outlook/index.html

Trump's path to 270 is dependent upon an explosive Election Day turnout to make up for the advantage Biden appears to have in the record breaking early, mail-in and absentee vote. In our final outlook, Trump has 20 states totaling 125 electoral votes solidly in his tally. If you add Texas' 38 electoral votes currently leaning his way, the President is at 163 electoral votes.

We currently have six states and one congressional district in Maine as pure toss-up battlegrounds totaling 96 electoral votes.

It is clear that Trump's path to reelection is far narrower than Biden's, but it remains a viable one. And, while 2020 is a fundamentally different political environment than 2016, he showed the ability to pave such a path just four years ago.

Birx Delivers Stark Warning to White House on Eve of Election Day

 https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/02/world/covid-19-coronavirus-updates?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

 Dr. Deborah L. Birx, who has carefully straddled the line between science and politics as she helps lead the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, delivered a stark private warning on Monday, telling White House officials that the pandemic is entering a new and “deadly phase” that demands a more aggressive approach.

The warning — sent in a private memo to White House officials as the nation — amounted to a direct contradiction of President Trump’s repeated false assertions that the pandemic is “rounding the corner.” In it, Dr. Birx suggested Mr. Trump and his advisers were spending too much time focusing on lockdowns, and not enough on controlling the virus.

Video altered to make it look like Biden greeted wrong state - Trump is desparate

 https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-video-altered-58124115393828f85cd496514bba4726

 CLAIM: Video shows Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden mistakenly saying “Hello, Minnesota” at a campaign event in Tampa, Florida.

 AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The sign behind Biden in this video has been edited to add the words “Tampa, Florida” and remove the words “TEXT MN to 30330.” The podium has also been edited to add “FL” instead of “MN.” Original video from this event confirms that Biden was in Minnesota and addressed the correct state in his greeting.

The video had more than a million views on Twitter on Sunday and was spreading quickly the weekend before the U.S. presidential election. However, the words on the sign and the podium in this video have been manipulated. Several sources prove that Biden did not address the wrong state in his greeting and he was indeed in Minnesota.

 

Who is the boss? - a father's story

 I have a story to tell, and it’s an important one – the question once arose, “can we simply push aside the 5th commandment?” This might seem like an odd question, but the question arose during an odd experience under strange circumstances. The Rosh Yeshiva is always known as the more influential leader– even greater than the Yeshiva. With that said, my son was studying Torah at well-known Yeshiva in New York.

At this school, I was under the impression that he’d study Torah and learn how to connect with a mesora that was laid forth by his parents. However, when I learned that Rosh Yeshiva was teaching his own mesora, I found myself disheartened. As an Orthodox Jew, the power of the Rosh Yeshiva is not unknown to me. He’s a considerable influence outside of school as well. In the community, he’s a leader and a policy maker, and he’s often called to act in such capacity. But to make children rebel against their parents? That was unheard of, and it was something that I wasn’t willing to take lightly.

I began to take note of just how closed off this Yeshiva community was from others. There was absolutely no accountability, and as a result, I was treated with contempt. Not to mention, any speak of seeing a gadol together was solemnly rejected. The community believed that survival as a distinct entity necessitates more than just education. In other words, they believed in indoctrination. However, that left parents – like me – scrambling to understand just what our children were being taught and indoctrinated into.

I found myself increasingly perplexed by what was unfolding before me, but I looked to the past to gain clarity. Rabbi Salanter was concerned that without ethical behavior and spiritual warmth, study of the Talmud would become motivated by vanity, and that adherence to the laws would turn into an unfeeling, mechanical process. At that moment, I realized that the Rosh Yeshiva was precisely what Rabbi Salanter envisioned happening one day.

My son has not eaten at my home in over two years, and yet, the Rosh Yeshiva will not permit me and my son to see a mediator. Moreover, the Rosh Yeshiva will not visit a mediator with me either. As a parent, I will fight for my child. I will fight to ensure that my child doesn’t fall victim to such strict indoctrination, and I will not sit idly by while the Rosh Yeshiva calls me “bizarre,” “strange,” and, “someone with poor judgement.” Every parent has a right to inquire about the welfare of their child – even when they’re older. And every parent deserves a satisfactory answer. That’s what I’m here to do.

Hunter Biden saga dominates online debate

 https://www.axios.com/debate-biden-trump-hunter-newswhip-3b54c777-c007-4228-8fc5-9ab9e5f821c4.html

The mainstream media turned away. But online, President Trump's charges about Hunter Biden were by far the dominant storyline about the final presidential debate, according to exclusive NewsWhip data provided to Axios.

• Coverage of business dealings by Joe Biden's son — and pre-debate allegations by one of his former business associates, Tony Bobulinski — garnered more than twice as much online activity (likes, comments, shares) as the runner-up.

• The second-place topic — also pushed by Republicans — was the former vice president's comments on oil and fracking.

Why it matters: The Hunter Biden story — one of Trump's final Hail Marys against Biden — is still blazing away in the conservative media ecosystem, even though it seems to have fizzled on a broader stage.

 The backstory: Trump and his team had high hopes for an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, and Trump had mentioned publicly that it was coming. But when it posted just after the debate, the findings undercut the Republican case by saying available records showed no impropriety by Joe Biden.

MAGA scrambles to repair the Hunter Biden narrative

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/28/trump-conspiracy-theoryhunter-biden-433131

 Weeks ago, when Rudy Giuluani first threw the contents of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop online, he promised a trove of even more damning information 10 days before the election.

Yet with less than a week to go, Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is still moving down the conservative media food chain, looking for takers. 

 The Wall Street Journal and Fox News have both reported finding no evidence that former Vice President Joe Biden benefited from the Hunter Biden business dealings that have drawn scrutiny. More explicitly pro-Trump media outlets — OAN, Breitbart, Newsmax — have mostly shied away from publishing fresher, more salacious allegations. And conservative talking heads — pundits, politicians and loud MAGA Twitter personalities alike — have been more focused on the meta narrative around the laptop, arguing that mainstream media, social media companies and the deep state are conspiring to prevent President Donald Trump’s reelection by suppressing the story.

The story of Hunter Biden and the diminishing returns to disinformation

 https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/10/31/the-story-of-hunter-biden-and-the-diminishing-returns-to-disinformation

DONALD TRUMP’S rally in Martinsburg—his third of the day in Pennsylvania—felt less like a political gathering than a greatest-hits concert of an ageing rocker. Vendors selling T-shirts, buttons and banners lined the streets leading to the airstrip. The talent trotted out all the golden oldies: “Crooked Hillary”, “They’ll confiscate your guns”, “Mexico is paying for the wall”, and abundant derision of a rival band (“Joe Biden and the Democrat socialists”).

 

 

The media has mostly not taken the bait on dubious Biden claims – with some Australia-linked exceptions

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/02/the-media-has-mostly-not-taken-the-bait-on-dubious-biden-claims-with-a-few-australia-linked-exceptions

The big difference between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections is that this time, mainstream media outlets are mostly not taking the bait on a dubiously sourced set of digital materials associated with the Democratic candidate.

Outside the rightwing bubble, the exceptions are disproportionately connected with Australia: Australian writers, Australian outlets, and/or outlets associated with News Corporation, who, like its founder, has Australian origins.

Anyone who reports on leaked digital materials, as I have, knows that it is trivially easy to fake, modify, subtract from or add to, and otherwise mess around with any documents in any cache. Some documents carry indelible marks, such as any emails that are signed with DKIM security signatures, but everything else can be messed with.

In this case, we haven’t seen the originals, just PDF printouts, and the New York Post has not been forthcoming with any detailed or satisfactory account of its own authentication process. It hasn’t said how it determined the authenticity of the cache as a whole, or individual items it has reported on, and has continued handwaving about the FBI subpoena, and the lack of denials from the Biden camp.

'A slap in the face': Keilar slams Trump Jr. for false claim