Behind the Curtain: Inside Trump's slump

 https://www.axios.com/2024/08/11/trump-slump-assassination-attempt-2024-election

Don't buy the public bravado. Former President Trump's advisers are deeply rattled by his meandering, mean and often middling public performances since the failed assassination attempt.

They're pleading with him to adopt a new "hard-hitting" stump speech to define Vice President Harris as liberal and weak, advisers tell us. And praying he'll stop the recidivistic pull to simply improvise haphazardly.

Why it matters: Trump, who looked and felt like a clear front-runner heading into last month's Republican convention, has fumed, stewed and stumbled in private and public ever since.

Re: Trump's Betrayal of Profamily Agenda & Supporters

BSD

Aug. 11. '24

My point is that we DO ACTUALLY HAVE A choice - right now. We can still decide about whether or not we render Trump even worse than he'd be without his base enabling his leftward plunge.

By continuing to pledge Trump support, money and votes, and by confirming Trump's perception that his conservative base is a herd of useful idiots - who will encourage him as he continues to betray them - we ourselves thereby render Trump even worse - ie., we render the Lesser Evil even more "Evil" - and less of a "Lesser"...

Rational consideration would mandate that we ought to loudly protest his betrayals on morality issues -- and condition any assistance to Trump, while he still needs us, on meaningful shifts in his morality policy and personnel, specifically on LGB issues.

And, at best, his Ever-Trumper Amen-Chorus ought to just remain silent, if they can't bring themselves to actually do anything productive. Right now, their self-adulatory hot air isn't convincing many of the fence-sitters, but it is encouraging Trump to disregard fears from his right flank.

Most of the pro-Trump ululations by (formerly) rightwing desperates do nothing -- but egg Trump on - ever leftward.

When we collectively grasp that obvious fact, we'll have some hope of gaining traction.

Rabbi Leiter

Harris campaign fires back at Trump after he accuses her of faking ‘massive’ crowd sizes

 https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4823215-harris-campaign-fires-back-at-trump-after-he-accuses-her-of-faking-massive-crowd-sizes/

Vice President Harris’s campaign fired back at former President Trump after he accused her, without evidence, of using artificial intelligence to create false depictions of “massive” crowds at her rallies.

“1) This is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan,” the KamalaHQ account wrote on the social platform X, responding to a screenshot of Trump’s post attacking Harris’s “fake” crowd. “2) Trump has still not campaigned in a swing state in over a week… Low energy?”

Israeli intel believes Iran will attack directly within days

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-814292

This represents a shift from recent assessments, which suggested that international pressure was restraining Iran from launching a direct attack against Israel.

Trump Falsely Claims Kamala Harris' Rally Crowd Was 'Fake' And AI-Generated - Delusional

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/11/trump-falsely-claims-kamala-harris-rally-crowd-was-fake-and-ai-generated/

Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed a crowd that gathered to see Vice President Kamala Harris arrive at a Michigan airport for a campaign rally was “fake,” insisting her campaign used artificial intelligence to mask the fact that “there was nobody there”—a claim refuted by images, videos and accounts of the event

Killing the Iran nuclear deal was one of Trump's biggest failures

 https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-nuclear-deal/

To fully understand the enormity of Trump’s decision to leave the Iran deal, consider this: When the U.S. and Iran were complying with the deal, it was estimated that it would take Iran about one year to produce enough fissile material (in this case, weapons grade uranium) for a nuclear bomb (known as the “breakout” time). The states negotiating with Iran (the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and Germany) assessed that this would be enough time to respond to possible violations and prevent Iran from producing a bomb. Even if Iran were to acquire sufficient fissile material, it could still take another year for Iran to make a deliverable nuclear weapon. As of May, 2018, the deal was working and considered (by most) to be a great success.

Then President Trump unilaterally left the deal, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” And now we are in a much worse place. Iran says it has no intent to produce nuclear weapons and U.S. intelligence sees no current efforts by Tehran to weaponize, yet Tehran is believed to be not one year but just weeks from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb if it chooses to do so.

Trump doubles down on scary helicopter trip story

 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c985enjgdy9o

Mr Brown, 90, told US media he had never shared a helicopter with Trump, adding: "I don't think I'd want to ride on the same helicopter with him."

He also denied he said anything disparaging about Ms Harris.

"That's so far-fetched, it's unbelievable," he told local TV station KRON. "I could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way.

"She's a good friend a long time ago, absolutely beautiful woman, smart as all hell, very successful, electorally speaking.

"He was doing what Donald does best, his creative fiction."

"Brotherhood is problematic

 The Torah describes totally rejecting certain nations because they didn't provide provisions to the Jews when they got out of Egypt

However the Or HaChaim notes we learn that they are considered family from Moshe's message to Sichon. There is a major problem with this because it is noted in the Torah from this verse that these nations did in fact provide provisions

The possible explanation is that while these nations were in fact family and had sold provisions to the Jews - they were not happy that the Jews got out of Egypt. Instead of joyfully greeting their long lost relatives they grudgingly were willing to help but only for cash or to hire someone to curse the Jews, This lack of true family feelings was the problem

Amid global criticism, Israel names 19 it says it killed in terror HQ at Gaza school

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-slammed-globally-after-hamas-claims-at-least-90-dead-in-strike-on-gaza-school/

According to the IDF, the strike was carried out using three “precision munitions” against the two terror groups’ command room embedded within a mosque at the Taba’een school complex.

Trump stokes fears with ‘unconstitutional’ Harris talk

 https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4821089-donald-trump-kamala-harris-unconstitutional/

Trump has repeatedly sought to cast Harris replacing President Biden as the Democratic nominee as nefarious, likening it to a “coup” and in recent days claiming it may be unconstitutional because she was not atop the ballot in the primary process. 

Biden and other Democrats, as well as some Republican Trump critics, have suggested the former president’s rhetoric is intended to cast doubt on November’s results should Harris prevail.

“We know one thing for sure. Trump never loses. And so if he’s not the winner of 2024 as in 2020, it must be because he was treated unfairly, yet again,” former Trump national security adviser John Bolton said on CNN.

Trump Mixes-Up Black Men on Chopper Ride, Threatens to Sue

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-mixed-up-willie-brown-for-former-sen-nate-holden-in-helicopter-story-says-holden?ref=home?ref=home+

Former President Donald Trump wasn’t completely lying about his near-death helicopter experience after all, but the 2024 Republican presidential nominee did get a few details mixed-up.

For one, the Black man Trump mistook for former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was actually former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, Nate Holden.

“I guess we all look alike,” said Holden in an interview with Politico. He added, “Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco. I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”

Trump’s Dramatic Helicopter Story Is BS Says Supposed Fellow Survivor - More lies from Trump

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-dramatic-helicopter-story-is-nonsense-kamala-harris-ex-willie-brown-says?ref=home?ref=home

Every aspect of Trump’s account is wrong, according to Brown.

The 90-year-old told The New York Times that he’d never ridden a helicopter with Trump, nor had he ever been close to death during any trip in a chopper. “You know me well enough to know that if I almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it!”

Trump's New GOP Platform Is a Massive Win for LGBT Americans

 https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-new-gop-platform-massive-win-lgbt-americans-opinion-1924048

For years, a key goal of gay Republicans and their allies has been the removal of the GOP's anti-gay-marriage plank from its official platform. While Trump made history as the first president to take office accepting gay marriage, the Republican platform he formally ran on in 2016 explicitly endorsed "traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman" and specifically denounced the Supreme Court cases enshrining gay marriage as the law of the land. And in 2020, Republicans essentially recycled the 2016 platform and ran on it again, rather than produce a new one, citing the pandemic's disruptions.

In the new 2024 platform Republicans just released, this language is nowhere to be found. The document says nothing about gay marriage at all. There is no endorsement of "traditional marriage," no call to overturn the Supreme Court's decisions, or anything else. The absence of a formal position implies that Republican candidates are officially free to adopt their own position on the issue, a tacit statement that the GOP has no problem with candidates and politicians who, like Trump, have embraced gay marriage.

Trump pushes new GOP platform softening party’s positions on abortion and same-sex marriage

 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-pushes-new-gop-platform-softening-partys-positions-abortion-sex-rcna160730

At the urging of former President Donald Trump and his allies, the Republican Party is set to abandon a decadeslong push for a federal abortion ban and soften its stance on same-sex marriage in its platform, according to changes made in a draft policy platform passed Monday morning ahead of next week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.