The Donald Trump Score Card

Fear mongering and pessimism were the themes on the first day of the RNC convention, similar to the American Carnage inaugural speech of Trump in 2017.

Trump claimed the Democrats were using the coronavirus to steal the election from him and insinuated a fight in the courts after the election.

Speakers included the recycled Nikki Haley and Kimberly Guilfoyle formerly of Fox.



2020 R.N.C. Live Updates: Donald Trump Jr. and Tim Scott Address the Convention
Nikki Haley, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Steve Scalise also spoke. In a speech earlier in the day, President Trump baselessly accused Democrats of “using Covid to steal the election.”

2020 R.N.C. Live Updates: Donald Trump Jr. and Tim Scott Address the Convention

excerpt:

"Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who brandished guns at peaceful protesters, made a fear-mongering pitch.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who threatened peaceful protesters in June, echoed President Trump’s claims that Democratic policies would put Americans’ lives in danger and made several false claims about those policies.

Most notably, Ms. McCloskey said that Democrats wanted to “abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning,” which is not true.

Mr. Trump and his supporters have inaccurately described a regulation issued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2015, casting it as a threat to the lifestyles of white suburbanites. The Trump administration indefinitely delayed implementing it in 2018.

The regulation required communities that received federal housing funding to have plans to ensure housing access regardless of race, but “it doesn’t dictate how they have to do that,” Julián Castro, who was the secretary of housing and urban development when the regulation was finalized, said Monday night, calling the misrepresentations “a shameful, deceitful and calculated ploy to drum up racial resentment and white fear.”"

 

Guilfoyle gets noisy.

 

The Trump administration used the anti-communism Cuban ploy during the first day of the RNC convention to try to garner votes from southern Florida, painting Biden as a radical leftist communist similar to the elements of Cuba during the cold war era of the 1960's..The convention featured Maximo Alvarez, a Cuban-American businessman who appealed to anti-communist sentiment

Trump has used this type of Cuban-communist flavored ploy before when he supported a truther claim that Cruz's father was involved with Oswald and the assassination of JFK.

The anti-communist ploy has become outdated and has lost traction over the past 20 years in Florida. The last hoorah was the Elian Gonzalez saga of the late 90's.

 

Republican claim that this is the future of policing if Biden is elected.

 

It will probably work

 

Herman Cain might have participated in this super-spreader gala also if he hadn't died of the coronavirus.


Revved up by Sturgis Rally, COVID-19 infections move fast, far
Four states have reported a total of 81 cases among people who attended rally
Associated Press
August 24, 2020

Revved up by Sturgis Rally, COVID-19 infections move fast, far

excerpt:

"South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has defied calls to cancel large gatherings and opposes requirements to wear masks. She welcomed the event, which in previous years brought in about $800 million in tourist spending, according to the state's Department of Tourism.

“I sat at a bar elbow-to-elbow with guys. No one was wearing masks,” said Stephen Sample, a rallygoer who rode back to Arizona last week.

He had visited a bar where health authorities later issued warnings — One-Eyed Jack's Saloon — but said he had not had any COVID-19 symptoms. He discussed quarantining with his wife after he returned, but decided against it."

 

The impeachment attempt on governor DeWine is the first in Ohio in about a hundred years.


Republican Lawmakers in Ohio File Articles of Impeachment Against Governor for ‘Eroding’ Freedoms During Pandemic
Jerry Lambe
Aug 24th, 2020, 3:23 pm

Republican Lawmakers in Ohio File Articles of Impeachment Against Governor for ‘Eroding’ Freedoms During Pandemic

excerpt:

"The lawmakers listed 10 articles of impeachment, accusing DeWine of assuming “dictatorial powers over the people,” violating separation of powers by permitting the Department of Health issue orders “tantamount to creating new laws,” and violating his oath of office by having “conspired with Secretary of State Frank LaRose to cancel the March 17, 2020, primary election.”

Under Ohio’s state Constitution, the House of Representatives have the sole power to impeach the governor if a majority of its members vote to advance the measure. Similar to the federal impeachment framework, a trial would be conducted in the Ohio Senate, where at least two-thirds of the senators would have to vote in favor of impeachment for DeWine to be removed from office.

Rep. Vitale said in May that he refused to wear a mask because he believes the image of God is “seen the most by our faces.” On Monday, Vitale said he did not believe that impeachment went far enough. He called for DeWine to be charged with crimes against humanity."

 

Guilfoyle is now the girlfriend of Trump's son, Donald, and in Trump's orbit.

She tested positive for the coronavirus just ahead of Trump's 4th of July event at a time when Trump and his son Donald were dismissing distancing guidelines of Trump's own administration.

 

Trump has already torn the country apart.



Kimberly Guilfoyle gives dark convention address warning of Democratic destruction of country
By Max Greenwood
08/24/20 10:19 PM EDT

Kimberly Guilfoyle gives dark convention address warning of Democratic destruction of country

excerpt:

"Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host and top surrogate of President Trump, delivered a grim, forceful speech at the Republican National Convention on Monday, accusing Democrats of working to “destroy this country” and “enslave” Americans with a “liberal victim ideology.”

The speech, delivered in a near-constant shout, painted a dark picture of the United States if former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), win the White House in November."

 

"Ohio man..." Giving Florida man a run for the money.

Proof...

 

Watcher's of trump junior's speech(not me) said he seemed high. the word cocaine was mentioned.

I know several conservatives who went on an organized group trip tp Cuba, before trump reimposed the embargo, and enjoyed it. They liked the 50s style cars because that's the era they want to return to.

 

No wonder Gavin Newsome divorced her.

 

With who, five cubans?

 

Law and Order president's son was on coke.... Seems logical.

 

It's questionable whether those who have refused to wear a face covering or engage in social distance because they feel it's an infringement of their personal liberty will be willing to be vaccinated.

In the past, Trump has fueled the anti-vaxxer movement by chiming with some of the narratives about vaccines allegedly being damaging or actually causing the illnesses that they prevent.

For the coronavirus, though, he's not taken such a stance and said that he would be vaccinated when one becomes available. The fact that a coronavirus remedy is important to his reelection doesn't give him the luxury of dismissing it like other vaccines.

Trump is clearly counting on the science community (which he has also belittled in the past) to produce a cure while still being dismissive about social distancing and face coverings which will probably still be needed even when vaccines become available due to no vaccine being 100% effective and a portion of the public that will likely refuse to be vaccinated.



Experts see progress on a COVID vaccine, but worry about who gets it first and how it gets to them
Public confidence in effectiveness and delivery of COVID vaccines must be established for battle against the pandemic to succeed, says our panel.
Elizabeth Weise, and Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY
August 25, 2020

COVID vaccine update: Experts see progress but worry over logistics

excerpt:

"Finally, the public needs to remember that life isn’t going to suddenly zip back to the way it was in January, when we all lived blissfully unaware of the virus or its effects, the experts said.

It’s not likely any vaccine will be 100% effective and it could be that people who are immunized might still get sick, but less severely.

“I think we’d have the chance of having a vaccine that substantially blunts the frequency of severe disease and therefore reduces mortality,” said Schaffner.

That alone will be a huge win, but the need to keep wearing masks and socially distance might still be there.

“I don’t think we’ve communicated that,” he said.":

 

In addition to Gavin Newsome, Kimberly Guilfoyle is also divorced from Eric Villency.

She was dating Donald Trump, Jr. before he had finalized his divorce.

 

Kimberly Guilfoyle made it known at the her convention speech that her voice can shatter a wine glass like Ella Fitzgerald, or even a picture window.

 

Presidential candidates usually don't recover from large deficits in a summer approaching the election. Bush was an exception in 1988. Atwater painted Dukakis as an east-coast liberal soft on crime. Trump's campaign during the summer of 2020 has strong similarities to Bush's 1988 campaign with an increased emphasis on fear of crime and less on the 2016 saving the left-behinders of the Great Recession.

Four years later, Bush lost the election partly due to civil unrest related to the LA riots (which he had initially dismissed as teenage hoodlum activity) and a faltering economy, similar to the situation in 2020 where Trump is facing civil unrest (that he hasn't dismissed but rather amplified) and a deadly pandemic (that he has dismissed).



A Glimmer of Hope for Trump? How Bush Mounted a Comeback in 1988
Adam Nagourney
August 22, 2020, 12:00 PM EDT

A Glimmer of Hope for Trump? How Bush Mounted a Comeback in 1988

excerpt:

"George H.W. Bush was in trouble. It was July 1988 and Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president, was on a roll after his party’s convention in Atlanta. A Gallup poll showed Bush trailing by 17 points.

But he had a road map to victory.

One month earlier, Bush’s top aides had gathered at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington, deliberately out of sight and away from campaign headquarters, to review a thick binder of polling and focus group data. The campaign’s research showed that Dukakis’ record was not well-known and that some of his liberal positions, in particular supporting prison furloughs and opposing the death penalty, could swamp him in a general election.

Using the plan laid out in that room, the Bush campaign proceeded, as Lee Atwater, the campaign manager, put it, “to strip the bark off the little bastard,” beginning in force with Bush’s hammer of a speech at the Republican National Convention in August through Election Day.

Bush not only overcame Dukakis’ summer polling advantage, but defeated him handily: by a margin of 53% to 46%. He won 40 states.

In many ways, with Atwater as its dark prince of strategy, the Bush campaign of 1988 marked the birth of the modern-day negative campaign. Most memorably, Republicans plastered Dukakis, then the governor of Massachusetts, with the case of Willie Horton, an African American man who raped a white Maryland woman and stabbed her boyfriend while on a Massachusetts prison furlough program.

As President Donald Trump faces similarly daunting poll deficits in his contest with Joe Biden, he is running one of the harshest campaigns since Bush defeated Dukakis, and Republicans are looking back at the 1988 race as a beacon of hope in a bleak political landscape. For all of the differences between the Democratic nominees in 1988 and today, Dukakis’ collapse in the face of an onslaught by Bush has long stood as a lesson in how quickly public opinion can change, how summer polls can prove ephemeral and how an artfully executed party convention can help turn around a struggling campaign."

 

Spain is now experiencing a surge like the U.S. did during the summer.


Protests erupted in Wisconsin. Republicans tried to rewrite Trump’s record. And the U.S. now has company as a coronavirus outlier.
By David Leonhardt
August 25, 2020

Virus Laggards

excerpt:

"Lack of a clear national message.

Spain’s prime minister — Pedro Sánchez, of the Socialist Workers’ Party — has not promoted medical disinformation, as President Trump has. Yet Sánchez has recently handed back control of virus policy to regional governments, instead of continuing to provide clear leadership about how people should behave. “In the past month, regions have announced new measures almost weekly, and they have often differed,” Raphael Minder, who’s based in Madrid for The Times, told me.

Last week, Sánchez went on vacation and didn’t address the public as the crisis mounted, Rodrigo Orihuela of Bloomberg reported.

Premature reopening.

Spanish officials, like their American counterparts, made the mistake of thinking they could help the economy by prioritizing it over public health. Bars and nightclubs reopened. British tourists — a major source of revenue — were allowed to travel to Spain without restriction, in what María Ramírez of El Diario called “a desperate attempt to save the summer season.”

In truth, the only way to help the economy is to control the virus. “We wanted to return to normality too quickly,” Magda Campins, a Barcelona doctor, told El País.

Not enough testing and contact tracing.

The shortages have made it “difficult for health authorities to identify and isolate potential virus carriers,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

As I’ve written before, there is a set of consistent lessons from around the world about how to beat back the virus: Mass testing. Rapid quarantines, contact tracing and, when necessary, lockdowns. Limited social gatherings, especially indoors. Widespread mask wearing.

After taking these steps, many countries, including Canada, Australia and much of Europe and Asia, have the virus under control. Spain itself followed this strategy in the spring and also sharply reduced new cases (as you can see in the chart above) — before lifting its state of emergency on June 21 and reopening less carefully than its neighbors.

Since then, it has joined the U.S. as a classic exception that proves the rule."

 

In April, Trump called upon states to do their job at increasing coronavirus testing and bragged that he would ramp up testing to 5 million per day.

By the summer, he was dismissing testing because he thought it was making him look bad.


Trump says US will be able to run 5 million coronavirus tests per day 'very soon,' despite shortages across states