Fact-checking night 2 of the Republican National Convention

 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/16/politics/fact-check-night-2-republican-national-convention/index.html

Facts First: Johnson’s claims about dramatic increases in violence and crime are false, as is the convention video’s claim that there is a problem “everywhere” with “rising crime.” Official data published by the FBI shows violent crime dropped significantly in the US in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, though there were increases in some communities; violent crime is now lower than it was in 2020, President Donald Trump’s last calendar year in office.

Stefanik’s claim of a “violent crime crisis” under Biden is subjective, but she certainly did not acknowledge that the current numbers under Biden are superior to final Trump-era numbers.

Kamala Harris did not call Joe Biden a racist on the debate stage

 https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-9244041620

CLAIM: California Sen. Kamala Harris called former Vice President Joe Biden a racist when they were facing off as potential Democratic candidates for president in 2019.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Harris criticized Biden on certain topics related to race during a debate in June 2019, but she prefaced those remarks with “I do not believe you are a racist.”

Donald Trump's Chances of Winning Election Are Declining

 https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-polling-data-five-thirty-eight-1926226

Donald Trump's chances of winning the November 2024 presidential election are declining, according to a new aggregation of polls.

FiveThirtyEight's poll tracker, which was originally published on July 8 and updated on July 16, shows Joe Biden with a 53 percent chance of winning the election, while Trump has a 46 percent chance.

According to the tracker, Biden is favored to win in 534 out of 1,000 of FiveThirtyEight's simulations of how the election could go, while Trump wins in 462. The poll also shows that the simulations indicate that Biden is on track for a three-point win.

Republicans sell their souls for power

Historian who predicted 9 of the last 10 election results says Democrats shouldn't drop Joe Biden

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/06/30/lichtman-dems-replace-biden/74260967007/

Allan Lichtman, the historian who has correctly forecast the results of nine out of the 10 most recent presidential elections argued on Saturday that replacing President Joe Biden could cost Democrats the 2024 election.  

Lichtman, a professor at American University, rejected the growing chorus of political pundits and Democratic activists who have called on Biden, 81, to bow out of the presidential race after his disastrous debate performance last week against former President Donald Trump. The pivotal moment brought fresh questions about Biden’s age and ability to serve a second term.

“It’s a huge mistake. They're not doctors. They don't know whether Biden is physically capable of carrying out a second term or not,” Lichtman said during an interview with CNN of calls to replace Biden. “This is all foolhardy nonsense.” 

Judge Cannon goes another step too far

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/15/trump-documents-cannon-dismiss-case/

The courts have blessed the tradition, pointing to the 19th-century statute that authorizes the attorney general to “appoint officials … to detect and prosecute crimes against the United States.” The Supreme Court cited the code in U.S. v. Nixon after Watergate; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit confirmed the same thinking in a case about the Iran-contra independent counsel; the D.C. Circuit said in 2019, pursuant to the appointment of Robert S. Mueller III, that “binding precedent” settled the debate. Judge Cannon, meanwhile, looked not to precedent at all. Her only reference was Justice Clarence Thomas’s recent concurring opinion in a Trump immunity case — in which no other justice joined.

JD Vance, Trump’s VP pick, once called him a ‘moral disaster,’ and possibly ‘America’s Hitler’

 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/15/politics/kfile-jd-vance-comments-trump/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

Vance also said that racism and xenophobia played a role in Trump’s rise.

“There is definitely an element of Donald Trump’s support that has its basis in racism, xenophobia, but a lot of these folks are just really hardworking people who are struggling in really important ways,” Vance said in a September 2016 “PBS NewsHour” Interview.

“Definitely some people who voted for Trump were racist and they voted for him for racist reasons,” Vance said in an interview at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.

Speaking with CNN in October 2016, Vance criticized Trump for “actively antagonizing” Black voters, claiming this tactic was a long-standing Republican strategy.

“It’s not just that Donald Trump doesn’t speak to issues of special concern of minority voters or Black voters, it’s that he seems to like actively antagonizing a lot of the Black voters,” Vance said during a panel discussion.

THE TRUMP–VANCE TICKET IS A DISASTER FOR AMERICA’S DEMOCRACY AND ISRAEL’S FUTURE

 https://jstreet.org/press-releases/the-trump-vance-ticket-is-a-disaster-for-americas-democracy-and-israels-future/

“With Trump and Vance in the White House, the Israeli right would have full US support for their wildest fantasies – a judicial coup, West Bank annexation, settlements in Gaza and military confrontations with both Hezbollah and Iran,” said J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami. “Vance will enthusiastically help bulldoze the democratic foundations of our union, embed antisemitic conspiracy theories deeper into our society, and hand victory to Putin in Ukraine. We cannot afford to have Donald Trump and JD Vance in the White House.”

Where JD Vance stands on Ukraine, Israel and China

 https://thehill.com/policy/international/4773538-jd-vance-foreign-policy/

In a speech delivered at the Quincy Institute in May, Vance addressed the contradiction between his conditional support for Ukraine — “ I think we should stop supporting the Ukrainian conflict,” he said — and unconditional support for Israel. 

Trump’s Judge Cannon Found Her Legal Tutor: Clarence Thomas

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/was-it-a-mistake-to-use-a-special-counsel-to-prosecute-donald-trump?ref=home?ref=home

While Judge Cannon’s opinion is weak and might even appear to the cynical as a well-timed audition for an appointment to the Supreme Court should Trump win, there is an aspect of her decision that raises the important question of why DOJ needs any form of special counsel.

We Should Condemn Violence. And Trumpism

 https://www.newsweek.com/we-should-condemn-violence-trumpism-opinion-1925422

There is a narrative being sold that this attempted assassination was the result of unfair or misapplied rhetoric against Trump, as if he is just some peaceful character or a Republican of times past, who we simply have differences of opinion with. Don't buy into it.

What Trump said with his ‘very fine people’ comments vs. what he meant

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/28/what-trump-said-with-his-very-fine-people-comments-vs-what-he-meant/

It is true, as the Snopes headline indicates, that Trump said that he was not talking about the white nationalists when offering praise for some of the participants in Unite the Right. But as The Washington Post’s Fact Checker pointed out in a 2020 assessment of the controversy, it’s not clear that there were any participants who weren’t allied with the white nationalist elements that announced the rally in the first place. The Washington Post reported Aug. 10 that there would be a “white nationalist rally” in Charlottesville; does someone who attends a white nationalist rally deserve rhetorical distance from white nationalism?

Donald Trump’s New Mr. Nice Guy Act Doesn’t Even Last a Day

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-new-unity-platform-doesnt-even-last-a-day?ref=home?ref=home

“As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts — The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count)....

Why Is Snopes.com Helping Trump Clean Up “Very Fine People”?

https://newrepublic.com/article/183082/nopes-trump-very-fine-people 

According to Trump, there were “very fine people” in both of the two groups, which included the people who went to the rally organized by neo-Nazis and people who protested the neo-Nazis. Those were your “sides.” Trump, here, said that within the group of people at the neo-Nazi rally, where “the night before” they were marching with tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us,” there were “very fine people.”