[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #779

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 14:15 schreef riazop het volgende:

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Biden is niet dement, wel een ongeinspireerde oude zak

benieuwd of de kiezers daarvoor massaal naar de stembus zullen gaan.
ik vermoed dat de meesten wel wat beters hebben te doen

twitter:

morphonios twitterde op donderdag 04-06-2020 om 04:34:55 This man isn't a protester. He was just a guy sitting at a traffic light when cops shot his car with a tear gas round. He got out to yell at them because his pregnant wife is in the vehicle. So they opened fire on them. https://t.co/gFAsxwi97x reageer retweet

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 14:17 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Generaal Milley heeft door dat hij gesuckered is door Trump.

twitter:

McFaul twitterde op donderdag 04-06-2020 om 07:01:28 Wow. Trump is losing them. https://t.co/NsiNjrKYVh reageer retweet

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 14:17 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Generaal Milley heeft door dat hij gesuckered is door Trump.

twitter:

McFaul twitterde op donderdag 04-06-2020 om 07:01:28 Wow. Trump is losing them. https://t.co/NsiNjrKYVh reageer retweet

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 14:21 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

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Grappig, was dat niet dezelfde generaal die stoer in uniform door de straten van DC liep?

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 14:20 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Ach, het voordeel voor Biden is dan ook dat mensen niets zo zeer naar de stembus gaan omdat ze op de banken staan voor hem, maar meer omdat ze de huidige president weg willen hebben.

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 14:21 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

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Grappig, was dat niet dezelfde generaal die stoer in uniform door de straten van DC liep?

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 14:25 schreef riazop het volgende:

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Hoeveel mensen gaan er straks, in wsl kloteweer, in een rij staan, om....ja waarom eigenlijk? Om de ene zeventiger voor de andere in te wisselen?

Lijkt me geen winnende strategie voor Biden.

twitter:

USDOL twitterde op donderdag 04-06-2020 om 14:30:14 Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims

Initial claims were 1,877,000 for the week ending 5/30 (-249,000).

Insured unemployment was 21,487,000 for the week ending 5/23 (+649,000).

https://t.co/ys7Eg5LKAW reageer retweet

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 12:35 schreef VoMy het volgende:

twitter:

LibsInAmerica twitterde op donderdag 04-06-2020 om 00:53:37 Could someone explain why NYPD is breaking into a jewelry store? @:NYCMayor? Anyone?

https://t.co/nMeNpbYot6 reageer retweet

Hoe beoordelen we dit? Fake? Niet wat het lijkt? Precies wat het lijkt?

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 15:29 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:
Weer 1,8 miljoen jobless claims erbij. Je zou toch verwachten dat dat wel enigzins moet stoppen nu.

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 15:38 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Volgens mij lopen er ook juist wat steunmaatregelen weer af zo langzamerhand. Veelal betekent het weer opengooien van de economie ook eigenlijk juist dat bedrijven geen aanspraak meer kunnen maken op steunmaatregelen, met als gevolg dat de tent gesloten moet worden.
Wat het opengooien vaak ook juist niet betekent is dat iedereen zo maar en masse weer aan het consumeren slaat. Economie is ook vertrouwen en als corona nog welig tiert en er overal protesten en onrusten zijn heeft dat ook wel z'n uitwerking op het consumentenvertrouwen.

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 15:38 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Volgens mij lopen er ook juist wat steunmaatregelen weer af zo langzamerhand. Veelal betekent het weer opengooien van de economie ook eigenlijk juist dat bedrijven geen aanspraak meer kunnen maken op steunmaatregelen, met als gevolg dat de tent gesloten moet worden.
Wat het opengooien vaak ook juist niet betekent is dat iedereen zo maar en masse weer aan het consumeren slaat. Economie is ook vertrouwen en als corona nog welig tiert en er overal protesten en onrusten zijn heeft dat ook wel z'n uitwerking op het consumentenvertrouwen.

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Trump defaults to his safe space: Energizing the MAGA base
The president’s return to the roots of his political strategy is on full display as crises pile up ahead of the election.

His message was more strategic than symbolic: As President Donald Trump waved a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church this week, like an auctioneer brandishing a rare book, he signaled that in the five months remaining between now and Election Day he will be singularly focused on his core supporters — and whatever energizes them most.

The president’s brief appearance outside the historic chapel across from the White House on Monday, a move he later claimed “many religious leaders loved,” was an unmistakable sign — one of several this week — that Trump is defaulting to his most familiar strategy, where his every move is intended to excite or rile the GOP base. In the past 72 hours, he’s made back-to-back visits to religious sites, vowed to protect his supporters’ Second Amendment rights amid protests against police brutality and late-night violence — blaming the “lamestream media” for inciting those nationwide demonstrations — suggested mail-in voting is part of a Democratic scheme to rig the 2020 election and threatened to send active-duty military into America’s communities while declaring himself a “law and order president.”

“You know, they want to take your guns away,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday, boasting that gun sales have spiked “in the last three, four days” amid his own calls for law and order. “They want security and they want safety.”

The base-only strategy is a gamble for Trump, whose campaign spent much of the past year trying to build up good will with suburban swing voters — knowing their disapproval alone could cost him reelection. But the base is also his safe space. If all that matters to Trump is that his dedicated supporters turn out in November, he can replace rosy language about national unity with appeals to their worries — above the six-figure Covid-19 death count or the images of protesters being forcibly dispersed by police. Instead, he’s focusing on images of burning churches and badly beaten shop owners that he’s been quick to blame on “rioters, looters and anarchists.”

“He should be out there saying, ‘If another building burns, I’m going to send in the 101st Airborne,’” said a Republican close to the White House, who expressed concern that Trump “hasn’t been tough enough on reopening the economy or enforcing the rule of law for everyone.”

Trump supporters’ disappointment with his response to the violent outbreaks that have occurred during otherwise peaceful protests over the police killing of George Floyd is the primary reason the president has made overt gestures to his base in recent days, according to an outside adviser to his 2020 campaign. The president was furious after several conservative pundits sarcastically questioned his whereabouts at the start of the week while he remained out of public view following a weekend of protests, the adviser said. It wasn’t until Monday evening that Trump, in remarks from the White House Rose Garden, seriously threatened military force if the widespread violence didn’t stop. Conservative author Ann Coulter at one point mocked Trump for being preoccupied with “some very promising Joe Scarborough leads,” referring to the president’s repeated attempts to link the MSNBC host to the 2001 death of a staffer.

As Trump faced criticism from corners of his base for what allies perceived as a lackluster response to rioting, polls also showed him losing ground with his religious supporters — including white evangelicals, a demographic far more likely to align with Trump than his challenger, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

A Morning Consult poll conducted over the weekend, when the president‘s public appearance was focused on the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., found that only 27 percent of evangelical Christians viewed his response to the nationwide protests as excellent or good. The only group to give the president a net positive rating was respondents who voted for him in 2016, while a majority of both independents and suburban women rated his handling of the protests poorly.

Last month, the president responded to the plateau in his support from white evangelicals and white Catholics by leaning into demands to reopen houses of worship across the country, despite warnings from top U.S. health officials that crowded church services could exacerbate the spread of Covid-19. He doubled down in his outreach to religious groups this week with his controversial visit to the centuries-old St. John’s Church — known as the “Church of the Presidents” for hosting every president since James Madison — and subsequent trip to lay a ceremonial wreath at a Washington shrine to Saint John Paul II.

In his interview with Kilmeade, which came after White House officials denied Trump’s visit to St. John’s was merely a photo opportunity, the president seemed to confirm that he’d achieved his desired outcome: “Most religious leaders loved it. I heard Franklin Graham this morning thought it was great.”

But the visit was also emblematic of the troubles Trump could face as he targets his base with divisive language, partisan red meat and a strategic commingling of politics and religion.

After police used forceful tactics — including what eyewitnesses called tear gas but officials described as smoke canisters and pepper balls — to clear protesters away from the perimeter of St. John’s ahead of Trump’s visit, several White House allies expressed dismay at the episode. One accused Trump of treating “the word of God as a political prop” and potentially violating the constitutional rights of peaceful protesters who had gathered in the area before curfew.

“There is no right to riot, no right to destroy others’ property and no right to throw rocks at police. But there is a fundamental — a constitutional — right to protest, and I’m against clearing out peaceful protests for a photo op,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said in a statement.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican who has worked closely with the president and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner on the administration’s outreach to African Americans, said: “If your question is, ‘Should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo-op? The answer is no.”

The president’s actions in recent days also struck a nerve with his former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, who excoriated Trump in a rare statement on Wednesday for deliberately trying “to divide us.” The retired four-star general resigned from the Trump administration in Feb. 2018 after clashing with the president over his attempt to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try,” said Mattis, who is widely revered in military circles. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”

Trump’s inner circle is still debating whether a base-only strategy for the remainder of the election is a prudent approach, particularly as he struggles with suburban women and college-educated voters, many of whom turned away from the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections and have shown little desire to return to the party of Trump in recent polling.

Kushner has urged Trump to balance his law-and-order message with displays of empathy while responding to protests and the national conversation about systemic racism — hoping his father-in-law can still salvage his campaign’s broader effort to peel off a slice of black voters in November. Others warned Trump to tread carefully with his language after a particularly problematic tweet in which he quoted 1960s-era Miami police chief Walter Headley, an advocate of harsh policing in black communities, according to a Trump campaign official familiar with the matter. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump wrote on Twitter last Thursday.

Still, there are some who think the president’s renewed focus on his base — and the tactics he’s employed to make supporters feel connected to him — is a much-needed course correction after months of trying to court voters with an anti-socialism message that has proved more difficult to pin to Biden than other Democratic candidates.

One former administration official suggested that Trump should test an array of messages — about stay-at-home orders in response to the coronavirus pandemic, rioters and looters and “Democratic governors' blatant hostility toward religious Americans" — until he finds one that sticks with his base, much like the “no collusion, no obstruction” slogan Trump flooded campaign rallies and advertisements with during the special counsel investigation.

It was that approach that Trump appeared to embrace in an interview with his former press secretary late Wednesday. Asked whether Americans need their president to provide comfort in this moment of chaos, Trump instead replied, “Right now, I think the nation needs law and order.”

twitter:

neal_katyal twitterde op donderdag 04-06-2020 om 15:29:16 Trump may claim to love the Generals, but they sure don’t seem to love him back. https://t.co/pNxoCPeEaX reageer retweet

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 18:23 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

neal_katyal twitterde op donderdag 04-06-2020 om 15:29:16 Trump may claim to love the Generals, but they sure don’t seem to love him back. https://t.co/pNxoCPeEaX reageer retweet

Nog een generaal die wel even zijn ei kwijt wil:

A Moment of National Shame and Peril—and Hope

We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of American democracy, but there is still a way to stop the descent.

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President Trump will sign an executive order Thursday instructing agencies to waive long-standing environmental laws to speed up federal approval for new mines, highways, pipelines and other projects given the current “economic emergency,” according to four people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in advance of the formal announcement.

Declaring an economic emergency allows the president to invoke a section of federal law “where emergency circumstances make it necessary to take an action with significant environmental impact without” observing normal requirements imposed by laws such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. These laws require agencies to solicit public input on proposed projects and analyze in detail how federal decisions could harm the environment.

EPA won't tighten limits on soot, despite link between air pollution and covid-19 illnesses

One senior administration official said Thursday that the move would help the nation recover from the economic losses it has suffered since the covid-19 outbreak. Waiving these requirements will “expedite construction of highways and other projects designed for environmental, energy, transportation, natural resource, and other uses,” one official said in an email.

But Trump’s desire to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act predates the eruption of the pandemic in the United States. In early January, the president proposed fundamental changes to 50-year-old regulations to narrow its scope. Those changes would mean that communities would have less control over some projects built in their neighborhoods. Environmental groups, tribal activists and others have used the law to delay or block infrastructure, mining, logging and drilling projects since it was signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970.

Those proposed changes are under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget and could be finalized within weeks.

The order Trump is expected to sign Thursday will also accelerate civil works projects overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and instruct the Interior, Agriculture and Defense departments to use their authorities to speed up projects on federal lands.

Just in the past month, Trump signed an executive order instructing agencies to ease regulatory requirements whenever possible to bolster the economy. The energy industry has argued these steps provide critical aid to businesses during the current downturn.

“Removing bureaucratic barriers that stifle economic growth is paramount to getting American energy workers back in their jobs and spurring business investment that gets our economy moving again,” said AXPC CEO Anne Bradbury, whose group represents America’s shale industry and large producers of oil and gas, “We value the importance of these reforms now, and underscore the need for finalizing rules across regulatory agencies that will implement permanent reforms.”

But Thomas Jensen, a partner at the firm Perkins Coie, said in an email that any decisions made in response to the executive order could be challenged in court. He noted that the National Environmental Policy Act was enacted 50 years ago partly to prevent arbitrary federal decisions such as building highways through parks and communities of color, and that the current administration cannot simply set aside laws aimed at protecting vulnerable Americans or the environment.

twitter:

JakeSherman twitterde op donderdag 04-06-2020 om 18:05:01 🚨🚨MURKOWSKI to @pkcapitol about mattis piece: “I was really thankful. I thought Gen Mattis’ words were true and honest and necessary and overdue.”

She says she’s “struggling” over whether she can support trump. reageer retweet