I am combining our daily features of the Campaign Report and the What Now?! news article into one post today.
A new CBS News/YouGov poll finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump nationally, 52% to 42%.
A new University of Maryland Critical Issues poll finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump nationally, 50% to 37%.
A new USC Dornslife poll finds Biden ahead, 52% to 41%.
A new Data for Progress poll finds Biden leading, 53% to 43%.
A new CBS News/YouGov poll in Wisconsin finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump, 50% to 44%.
New polls from Hodas & Associates:
- Michigan: Biden 52%, Trump 41%
- Pennsylvania: Biden 51%, Trump 45%
- Wisconsin: Biden 52%, Trump 44%
From Public Policy Polling:
- Minnesota: Biden 52%, Trump 44%
A new Dallas Morning News poll in Texas finds Donald Trump edging Joe Biden, 48% to 46%, among likely voters. Among registered voters, Biden leads 44% to 43%.
President Trump’s longtime lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, alleges in a new book that Trump made “overt and covert attempts to get Russia to interfere in the 2016 election” and that the future commander in chief was also well aware of Cohen’s hush-money payoff to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during that campaign, the Washington Post reports.
In the book, Cohen lays out an alarming portrait of the constellation of characters orbiting around Trump, likening the arrangement to the mafia and calling himself “one of Trump’s bad guys.” He describes the president, meanwhile, as “a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.”
The memoir also describes episodes of Trump’s alleged racism and his “hatred and contempt” of his predecessor, Barack Obama, the nation’s only African American president.
“Before Donald Trump ever sought the Oval Office, he was preoccupied by its occupant President Barack Obama, publicly questioning his birthplace and privately describing him as ‘a Manchurian candidate’ who obtained his Ivy League degrees only by way of affirmative action, according to a new book by Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen,” CNN reports.
“Trump’s disdain for Obama was so extreme that he took his fixation a step further, according to Cohen: Trump hired a ‘Faux-Bama’ to participate in a video in which Trump ‘ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him.’”
“Cohen’s book, Disloyal: A Memoir, doesn’t name the man who was allegedly hired to play Obama or provide a specific date for the incident, but it does include a photograph of Trump sitting behind a desk, facing a Black man wearing a suit with an American flag pin affixed to the lapel. On Trump’s desk are two books, one displaying Obama’s name in large letters.”
Politico: “The president and his allies are plotting ways to portray Harris as a serious threat to the working-class voters whom Biden hopes to flip this fall, four years after many across the Rust Belt ditched Democrats to support Trump. They’re digging up her comments from Democratic primary debates, hoping they can use them to put her and Biden on defense.”
“And despite Harris’ lukewarm relationship with some anti-establishment progressive groups, they are considering ways to cast her as a champion of the radical left by concentrating on positions she’s taken that run afoul of Biden-style centrism, one of the former vice president’s key appeals to swing voters.”
During President Trump’s infamous 2018 visit to Paris, in which his planned trip to a French cemetery for fallen soldiers was canceled, he strolled around the lavish ambassador’s residence in Paris and took a fancy to a number of pieces of artwork, including a bust of Benjamin Franklin and some Greek mythical figurines, Bloomberg reports.
So he ordered them removed from the residence and packed into Air Force One and brought to the White House.
“Michigan’s secretary of state said on Sunday her state’s full results of the Nov. 3 elections won’t be available on Election Day, advising voters it could take a week for a final tally,” Politico reports.
Said Jocelyn Benson: “We should be prepared for this to be closer to an election week as opposed to an election day. The bottom line is we are not going to have the full results and a counting of all of our ballots on election night. We already know that. We’ve asked the legislature to make changes to the laws to give us more ability to be prepared and count those ballots more efficiently.”VIS
“Louis DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising, which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates — money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say,” the Washington Post reports.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, told CNN his magazine’s story about Trump calling Americans who died in battle “losers” and “suckers,” was just the tip of the iceberg.
Said Goldberg: “I would fully expect more reporting to come out about this and more confirmation and new pieces of information in the coming days and weeks. We have a responsibility and we’re going to do it regardless of what he says.”
President Trump is coming after Laurene Powell Jobs, the philanthropist billionaire who owns a majority stake in The Atlantic.
Said Trump: “Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE. Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!!”
“Never before has a sitting president been hit by so many blistering books, so many times, in a one-month period,” Axios reports.
Next up: “Bob Woodward, armed with a reported 17 interviews with Trump himself, will be out Sept. 15 with Rage, which Trump is already attacking.”
Bloomberg: “If the outcome of this November’s election comes down to fights over counting mail-in ballots and claims of fraud by President Trump, Democrat Joe Biden may have a quiet advantage: The top election officials in many of the key states that could decide the election are Democrats.”
“In Michigan and Pennsylvania — two Democratic-leaning states Trump won in 2016 — the top elections officials belong to Biden’s party. That’s also true in Arizona, which Trump carried but Biden is now leading in the polls, and Minnesota, which the president has targeted.”
Washington Post: “Biden has been under intense pressure from allies to hasten his campaign pace — but from there the advice has diverged, with some favoring a strategy meant to attract some White working-class voters and others Black voters who are mobilizing and calling for racial justice. Amid the frenzy of recommendations, Biden has settled on a through line meant to appeal to everyone: Trump is the reason for all of America’s most pressing ills, no matter which one matters most to a specific audience.”
“Joe Biden is expanding his transition team, adding a former presidential rival, vice presidential contenders and top Obama administration policy hands in new leadership and advisory roles,” CNN reports.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is privately encouraging voting by mail and warned President Trump the party could be “screwed” by his fight against mail-in voting, Axios reports. McCarthy said the party can’t afford for Republicans to sit home, afraid of getting COVID-19, while Democrats flood the field with mail-in ballots. McCarthy is particularly worried about deterring senior citizens.
Sen. Bernie Sanders told Politico that Americans must ready themselves for the possibility that President Trump will refuse to leave office even if he loses November’s election.
Said Sanders: “Trump was saying … ‘the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.’ Now he is making that statement at a time when virtually every national poll has him behind.”
Politico: “As Trump’s reelection effort pulled back on television advertising over the past month, it is pouring money and staff time into Google’s video platform. The campaign and its joint fund with the Republican National Committee have spent over $65 million on YouTube and Google — about $30 million of it since July. Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee joint committee, by comparison, have spent about $33 million on YouTube and Google during the entire campaign.”
“Big employers including Gap Inc.’s Old Navy, Target Corp. and Warby Parker are telling employees they can take paid time off to volunteer as election workers this fall as they aim to help solve a national poll-worker shortage and offer workers a way to find a sense of purpose,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“President Trump is so fixated on finding a vaccine for the novel coronavirus that in meetings about the U.S. pandemic response, little else captures his attention,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump has pressed health officials to speed up the vaccine timeline and urged them to deliver one by the end of the year. He has peppered them with questions about the development status and mass-distribution plans. And, in recent days, he has told some advisers and aides that a vaccine may arrive by Nov. 1, which just happens to be two days before the presidential election.”
“President Trump is so fixated on finding a vaccine for the novel coronavirus that in meetings about the U.S. pandemic response, little else captures his attention,” the Washington Post reports.
I thought that the virus was a hoax?
More Than Ever, Trump Casts Himself as the Defender of White America
We can officially hang up the “economic distress” of these white folks, right? Almost 4 years later, it’s pretty clear he showed up as a practitioner of the OG of “Identity politics” — white supremacy.