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US Politics The 2020 Trump Presidency Thread

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Trump says Republicans would ‘never’ be elected again if it was easier to vote

by Sam Levine | The Guardian | 30 Mar 2020

Donald Trump admitted on Monday that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.

The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats had proposed the measures as part of the coronavirus stimulus. They ultimately were not included in the $2.2tn final package, which included only $400m to states to help them run elections.

“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. “They had things in there about election days and what you do and all sorts of clawbacks. They had things that were just totally crazy and had nothing to do with workers that lost their jobs and companies that we have to save.”

Democrats often accuse Republicans of deliberately making it hard to vote in order to keep minorities, immigrants, young people and other groups from the polls. And Republicans often say they oppose voting reforms because of concerns of voter fraud – which is extremely rare – or concerns over having the federal government run elections. But Trump’s remarks reveal how at least some Republicans have long understood voting barriers to be a necessary part of their political self-preservation.

“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Trump’s Monday comments showed he saw voter suppression as part of his re-election strategy, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) said in a statement Monday. “Ensuring that Americans can vote during the Covid-19 crisis is fundamental to maintaining our democracy. It is shocking that Trump is essentially admitting that when the American people vote, Republican lose,” said Xochitl Hinojosa, a DNC spokeswoman. “Trump knows that suppressing the vote is the only way he and Republicans win in November.”

Shortly after he was elected, Trump falsely claimed he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions of illegal votes. There is no credible evidence to support the claim. In December, a Trump campaign aide was recorded saying: “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places.” The aide later told the Associated Press he was saying that Republicans have traditionally been accused of voter suppression.

The $400m that Congress allocated so far is just a small fraction of what the Brennan Center for Justice estimated election officials need to run elections in November if coronavirus still lingers. Officials need that money to pay for postage, personnel and equipment to process an influx of mail-in ballots.

"The urgency of getting election officials those resources should not be lost in the political fighting," said Myrna Perez, director of the Brennan Center’s voting rights and elections program.

“What cannot be lost in all the back and forth among politicians is that election administrators at the state and local level need substantial resources now to ensure that the elections in November go off smoothly and safely,” she said.

www.theguardian.com

Trump says Republicans would ‘never’ be elected again if it was easier to vote

President dismissed Democratic-led push for voter reforms amid coronavirus pandemic during Fox & Friends appearance
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Hah, wow. But I find this quote even more telling, as Trump has made plenty of gaffes and will say pretty much anything:

“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Click to expand...
 
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Paul Krugman

American democracy may be dying

by Paul Krugman | New York Times | April 9, 2020

If you aren’t terrified both by Covid-19 and by its economic consequences, you haven’t been paying attention.

Even though social distancing may be slowing the disease’s spread, tens of thousands more Americans will surely die in the months ahead (and official accounts surely understate the true death toll). And the economic lockdown necessary to achieve social distancing — as I’ve been saying, the economy is in the equivalent of a medically induced coma — has led to almost 17 million new claims for unemployment insurance over the past three weeks, again almost surely an understatement of true job losses.

Yet the scariest news of the past week didn’t involve either epidemiology or economics; it was the travesty of an election in Wisconsin, where the Supreme Court required that in-person voting proceed despite the health risks and the fact that many who requested absentee ballots never got them.

Why was this so scary? Because it shows that America as we know it may not survive much longer. The pandemic will eventually end; the economy will eventually recover. But democracy, once lost, may never come back. And we’re much closer to losing our democracy than many people realize.

To see how a modern democracy can die, look at events in Europe, especially Hungary, over the past decade.

What happened in Hungary, beginning in 2011, was that Fidesz, the nation’s white nationalist ruling party, took advantage of its position to rig the electoral system, effectively making its rule permanent. Then it further consolidated its control, using political power to reward friendly businesses while punishing critics, and moved to suppress independent news media.

Until recently, it seemed as if Viktor Orban, Hungary’s de facto dictator, might stop with soft authoritarianism, presiding over a regime that preserved some of the outward forms of democracy, neutralizing and punishing opposition without actually making criticism illegal. But now his government has used the coronavirus as an excuse to abandon even the pretense of constitutional government, giving Orban the power to rule by decree.

If you say that something similar can’t happen here, you’re hopelessly naïve. In fact, it’s already happening here, especially at the state level. Wisconsin, in particular, is well on its way toward becoming Hungary on Lake Michigan, as Republicans seek a permanent lock on power.

The story so far: Back in 2018, Wisconsin’s electorate voted strongly for Democratic control. Voters chose a Democratic governor, and gave 53 percent of their support to Democratic candidates for the State Assembly. But the state is so heavily gerrymandered that despite this popular-vote majority, Democrats got only 36 percent of the Assembly’s seats.

And far from trying to reach some accommodation with the governor-elect, Republicans moved to effectively emasculate him, drastically reducing the powers of his office.

Then came Tuesday’s election. In normal times most attention would have been focused on the Democratic primary — although that became a moot point when Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign. But a seat on the State Supreme Court was also at stake.

Yet Wisconsin, like most of the country, is under a stay-at-home order. So why did Republican legislators, eventually backed by the Republican appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court, insist on holding an election as if the situation were normal?

The answer is that the state shutdown had a much more severe impact on voting in Democratic-leaning urban areas, where a great majority of polling places were closed, than in rural or suburban areas. So the state G.O.P. was nakedly exploiting a pandemic to disenfranchise those likely to vote against it.

What we saw in Wisconsin, in short, was a state party doing whatever it takes to cling to power even if a majority of voters want it out — and a partisan bloc on the Supreme Court backing its efforts. Donald Trump, as usual, said the quiet part out loud: If we expand early voting and voting by mail, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Does anyone seriously doubt that something similar could happen, very soon, at a national level?

This November, it’s all too possible that Trump will eke out an Electoral College win thanks to widespread voter suppression. If he does — or even if he wins cleanly — everything we’ve seen suggests that he will use a second term to punish everyone he sees as a domestic enemy, and that his party will back him all the way. That is, America will do a full Hungary.

What if Trump loses? You know what he’ll do: He’ll claim that Joe Biden’s victory was based on voter fraud, that millions of illegal immigrants cast ballots or something like that. Would the Republican Party, and perhaps more important, Fox News, support his refusal to accept reality? What do you think?

So that’s why what just happened in Wisconsin scares me more than either disease or depression. For it shows that one of our two major parties simply doesn’t believe in democracy. Authoritarian rule may be just around the corner.

www.nytimes.com

Opinion | American Democracy May Be Dying (Published 2020)

Authoritarian rule may be just around the corner.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
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trump is bringing america to ruin. Maybe a new america can rise from the ashes where the elite rich lobbies are kicked out and people actually have their voice heard.
 
Democracy is dying when Democrats lose.

When they win - electoral college is bae.
 
I really would love it if we could move to a true popular vote, and also do away with these primaries that force only a single candidate in each party. That way we could determine the president more democratically, by allowing everyone who is trying to run a chance, and whoever gets the most votes, wins. We certainly could move to that system in this day and age, I think it would be a good move.
 
So Trump has done away with using a press agent and is speaking live, directly from the White House to millions of Americans practically EVERY NIGHT. He's noted many times that this has caused the MSM's ratings to go through the roof (which is why they don't dare stop these sessions). Trump's candidness during these talks gives a sense of transparency to all that is unfolding in a manner that in some ways recalls Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats," which FDR warmly gave each night on the radio to millions of Americans through the majority of WWII.

However, because these "chats" are going so well for Trump, there is push-back on his continuing. Thus, Trump states (cajoling the MSM): hey, usually you say I don't do enough press - NOW you say it's too much!

So, it's rather amusing that this has all backfired on them. Yes, Trump is now bringing together millions of Americans via ye' ol' t.v. set in a way he has never done before. And, I mean, who needs campaigning with THAT going on?

Also: the following clip might be a good indication of how many Democrats are feeling these days about "sleepy Joe Biden":



Another interesting tidbit is a Trump tweet from yesterday. I have no idea how accurate this is but it would be interesting to try and verify:

"Nobody wants to say that if Elizabeth Warren gets out of the race before Super Tuesday, Crazy Bernie Sanders wins virtually every state in a blowout...NOT EVEN CLOSE! I haven’t heard one member of the Fake News Establishment even mention this irrefutable fact. FAKE NEWS!"

But, assuming the above is true, instead of allowing Bernie in, which at the very least would create a much more interesting presidential race/debate, it seems the Dems will go down in flames with Biden. Or, at least that's how things appear at present.

As for Trump's changing course concerning COVID-19, it seems a deal had been struck. Or, at least that's how I read things. If that's so: what did Trump get in exchange for towing the WHO/CDC line to the degree that he has?

Speculating here, since COVID-19 is being used in large part as a screen while the entire economy is on hold and Wall Street is applying a re-boot, Trump still gets to maintain the winning (if fallacious) narrative of just how great the economy was before this terrible virus came along. Meanwhile, Russia-gate, Ukraine, impeachment, etc., all have not only disappeared, but also in a way that Trump is seemingly vindicated.

While it's true Trump is still being vilified for his "delayed reaction" concerning the virus, I'd say it's doubtful these attempts to malign him are enough to change Americans' minds -- those of his initial base, and possibly many more now. As we saw, even Joe Rogan, who I presume to be a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, is impressed by Trump's resiliency.

On the other hand, there is now an attempt being made -- probably because Trump is seeking to wrap up this whole Coronavirus business as quickly as possible -- to have the states along with "experts" take over (again, in this whole Coronavirus business) in such a way that precludes the White House (this according to several recent items in the Washington Post). The whole thing has a coup-like flavor to it, this obviating of the Big Chief, as it were; so, it's something to keep our eyes on.

In any event, given the extreme volatility of so many of these factors, who can say with any surety just WHAT will happen -- even in the coming days, let alone come election time. All that we can be sure of is that, just as happened with 9/11, things have unalterably changed.
 
It's been interesting watching Trump's press conferences. While he does indeed come across as a particularly thin-skinned narcissist, which makes for some amusing moments (his self-promo video yesterday was a lol), nevertheless it's also been interesting to see how starkly and openly the media frames what he's said to suit their own narratives.

For example, I watched him saying last week (paraphrased) "ask your doctor about hydrochloroquine, it can be harmful for some, but may be better than dying," which seems relatively sensible for him, but was twisted quite a bit by various media outlets. Normally I'd only get to read those interpretations (as presented by the NYT/CNN etc) of what he said, because I'm not that interested in what he says and would never watch one of his speeches. So to see it happening like that was eye-opening.
 
^Yeah, I agree. I think the man is an absolute disaster (probably a reptilian as well, look at those eyes) but the political scene down south is horrific to live next to.
Not quit the same, but I sort of get how Turks living next to Syria feel.

It's hyper-partisan and looks like a slow-mo dissolution of civility. It's kind of sad. I myself won't travel south anymore...it's bad joo joo and vibes down there.

They're in the middle of a plague disaster and are still bickering like little kids. Contrast that to our politicos who were bickering like little kids before this all hit, though, getting along a lot better than those in the US and who are now all besties because, well, there's some serious shit that needs dealing with so we had best all grow the fuck up real quick and do what needs doing.

You guys going to be ok down there?
 
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Trump’s view of his power in crisis widely rejected

by Charlie Savage | New York Times | 14 April 2020

Trading barbs with governors about their powers over when to ease restrictions on society, Trump's assertion that he wields "total" authority lacks a basis in the Constitution or federal law.

President Trump’s claim that he wielded “total” authority in the pandemic crisis prompted rebellion not just from governors. Legal scholars across the ideological spectrum on Tuesday rejected his declaration that ultimately he, not state leaders, will decide when to risk lifting social distancing limits in order to reopen businesses.

“When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total,” Mr. Trump asserted at a raucous press briefing on Monday evening. “And that’s the way it’s got to be.”

But neither the Constitution nor any federal law bestows that power upon Mr. Trump, a range of legal scholars and government officials said.

“We don’t have a king in this country,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on Tuesday, adding, “There are laws and facts — even in this wild political environment.” He rebutted Mr. Trump’s claim by citing a line from Alexander Hamilton, observing that presidential encroachment on powers that the Constitution reserved to the states would be “repugnant to every rule of political calculation.”

Mr. Cuomo is a Democrat, but even some of the most outspoken Republican supporters of a generally sweeping vision of presidential power agreed that Mr. Trump’s claim was empty.

John Yoo, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor known for writing much-disputed Justice Department memos after the Sept. 11 attacks claiming that President George W. Bush, as commander in chief, had the power to override legal limits on torture and surveillance for the war against Al Qaeda, said Mr. Trump "could not force states to reopen."

“Only the states can impose quarantines, close institutions and businesses, and limit intrastate travel,” Mr. Yoo wrote in The National Review. “Democratic governors Gavin Newsom in California, Andrew Cuomo in New York, and J.B. Pritzker Illinois imposed their states’ lockdowns, and only they will decide when the draconian policies will end.”

Vice President Mike Pence — who styled himself as a strong proponent of states’ rights when Barack Obama was president — was a lonely voice backing Mr. Trump. “In the long history of this country,” he said on Monday, “the authority of the president of the United States during national emergencies is unquestionably plenary.”

The Constitution bestows specific powers on the federal government while reserving the rest to sovereign state governments. None of the enumerated powers given to the federal government directly address control over public health measures, although the Constitution does let Congress regulate interstate commerce.

Both a pandemic and social distancing measures that require the closure of businesses, to be sure, affect interstate commerce. But even if the federal government in theory could have more power in this area, it would take an act of Congress to bestow it on the presidency.

Lawmakers have created some executive powers relevant to the crisis — including enabling an administration to take steps to keep illness from spreading across state lines and to mobilize industry to ramp up production of needed goods in a public health crisis. But they have passed no statute purporting to give the presidency pre-eminence over governors on rescinding public health limits inside states.

Similarly, while Mr. Trump declared a national emergency over the pandemic, that did not mean he was tapping into some reservoir of limitless constitutional power. Rather, he was activating specific statutes that Congress has enacted creating particular standby powers, none of which include letting a president overturn state-imposed public health safety measures.

In a 1952 case involving President Harry S. Truman’s seizure of steel mills to avert a strike during the Korean War, the Supreme Court rejected his effort to invoke purported “inherent” constitutional power to resolve the crisis using different tools than Congress had provided.

And even if Congress were to now enact a law giving Mr. Trump that power — which is unlikely, with the House in the hands of Democrats — there would still be legal obstacles. The Supreme Court over the last generation has pushed back when Congress has enacted laws that the court sees as federal commandeering of states’ authority.

“The federal government may neither issue directives requiring the states to address particular problems, nor command the states’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 1997 Supreme Court ruling.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump appeared to seek a face-saving way out, saying he was “authorizing” governors to decide for themselves when to reopen their states. He offered no explanation for the implication that his permission was necessary before they could lift their own orders.

For Mr. Trump, the legal emptiness of his assertion fits with a larger pattern in his handling of the pandemic and more. Where President Theodore Roosevelt liked to invoke an African proverb to describe his approach to wielding executive power — “speak softly and carry a big stick” — Mr. Trump sometimes talks as if he has a big stick but with little to back it up.

"Despite his extreme, proud rhetoric about how he can do whatever he wants,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, "the story of the Trump presidency has been, with few exceptions, talking a big game, but not in fact exercising executive power successfully.”

Mr. Trump has made greater use of a softer power of the presidency: using his pre-eminent position and the attention he commands for public persuasion, which Roosevelt called the bully pulpit. But Mr. Trump used it at first to play down the crisis, rather than issuing a call to action to galvanize the country to more swiftly take steps like ramping up testing capacity and consider imposing social distancing measures.

Some legal experts theorized that Mr. Trump could try to use the federal government’s control over disaster relief funds and equipment to punish states whose governors reject a hypothetical future White House declaration that it is time to open up.

He could, for example, try to allocate more equipment to states whose governors acquiesce to his desires, which would inevitably lead to litigation. Even so, as Mr. Yoo wrote, "such punitive measures are politically unlikely to move Democratic governors in hard-hit areas to reopen their economies before public health experts say it is safe."

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Mr. Trump demurred when pressed to say who told him he wielded “total” authority, and his administration has put forward no legal theory.

Some White House officials expressed uncertainty about what the president was relying on. But others pointed to Article II of the Constitution, which creates the presidency and which Mr. Trump has often invoked, and several statutes creating certain public health powers. None of those statutes they cited say a president has total authority to force governors to lift pandemic restrictions.

Indeed, numerous legal scholars rejected Mr. Trump’s claim as baseless, including Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who testified in the president’s favor during the impeachment inquiry.

“The Constitution was written precisely the deny that particular claim,” Mr. Turley wrote on Twitter.

Complicating the task of parsing the president’s intentions, he often appears to float striking and self-aggrandizing ideas off the cuff, causing consternation before he drops them.

On March 28, Trump abruptly suggested that he might impose a federal quarantine on the New York City area before reversing course hours later.

It was never clear what he was talking about. While Congress has granted the federal government some power to take steps to prevent the transmission of illness into the country or between states, the virus was already everywhere by then, so sealing state borders would not have kept it contained. And a quarantine that would confine large populations to their homes within a state is widely understood to be a state-level decision.

Yet despite punctuating his performance with claims of his own might, Mr. Trump has repeatedly made less-than-aggressive use of undisputed authorities at his disposal to combat the pandemic.

For example, he has repeatedly boasted about shutting down travel from China in February, using the power that Congress granted to the presidency to control the international border in a public health emergency.

But despite Mr. Trump’s claims that he was the first to take that action, 38 other countries had already put in place such a travel ban. And the American version was limited and porous.

And as it became clear in March that hospitals were hindered by shortages of masks and other equipment, Mr. Trump resisted growing calls to make use of another power Congress gave the presidency for use in a national emergency: to coerce factory owners to change what they are manufacturing under the Defense Production Act.

In late March, Mr. Trump finally declared that he was invoking the law — but he had merely delegated to Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, the ability to invoke that law in theory. No company had been ordered to do anything.

As criticism over Mr. Trump’s inaction swelled, he signed an order telling Mr. Azar to use the law to push General Motors to make masks. But G.M. said it had already decided by then to make ventilators in partnership with Ventec, developed plans to source the necessary parts and started preparing a factory in Kokomo, Ind., for production.

Mr. Trump has a history of making head-turning claims about his powers in other contexts. During the Russia investigation, for example, his lawyers argued that he could not be guilty of obstruction of justice because his power over the Justice Department was absolute, and Mr. Trump repeatedly claimed he could fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, if he wanted — even directly.

“Article II allows me to do whatever I want,” he said.

Yet as the eventual report by Mr. Mueller showed, in practice Mr. Trump’s power was weak. He pushed subordinates to oust the special counsel, but they would not go along.

Mr. Goldsmith said that Mr. Trump’s approach to the pandemic crisis reflected a general pattern of loud words but incompetently executed action on policies that were more complex than basic tasks like issuing pardons and firing people, bogging down his efforts in court battles and dysfunction rather than clear accomplishment.

“Trump wants it to seem like he is this really powerful guy being really aggressive with executive power, but he’s not,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “There has been a huge mismatch between his rhetoric and his actions. He clearly seems to enjoy how people’s heads explode when he says this stuff, even though it’s not matched by reality.”

www.nytimes.com

Trump’s Claim of Total Authority in Crisis Is Rejected Across Ideological Lines (Published 2020)

Trading barbs with governors about their powers over when to ease restrictions on society, the president made an assertion that lacks a basis in the Constitution or federal law.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
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Trump is so stupid to defund the WHO.

He's angry that China is influencing the WHO, so what's his solution? Stop funding them... So china can take up the slack and gain even more power over it.

America could have been a world leader in this health crisis. :(
Instead trump has repeatedly made it easier for China to gain more power, and on my the grounds of "making America great" at that..
 
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