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Post by Admin on Aug 28, 2020 19:23:04 GMT
On Thursday night, President Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination for a second term. Twenty-four hours earlier, he had a very hard time saying exactly what he would do with another four years. "But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we'd have a very, very solid, we would continue what we're doing, we'd solidify what we've done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done," Trump told The New York Times' Peter Baker. Yes, that's the quote. And no, it makes no sense. Which really shouldn't surprise anyone paying attention. Trump has repeatedly struggled to articulate why he wants a second term -- and what he would do with it -- over these last few months. Last month, in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump offered this up when asked about four more years: "One of the things that will be really great -- the word experience is still good, I always say talent is more important than experience, I've always said that -- but the word experience is a very important word, a very important meaning.
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Post by Admin on Aug 29, 2020 23:10:02 GMT
KRUSE: Was Ivanka’s speech, in your estimation, a lie from beginning to end, too?
TRUMP: I can’t say that with complete certainty because she was talking about anecdotes that I would not have been privy. I’ve never been in the Oval Office with him and his grandchildren, for example, so ...
KRUSE: More generally, do you agree with what seems to be the conventional wisdom that Ivanka has been and remains his most effective surrogate?
TRUMP:: I don’t know exactly—I mean, certainly not with the base, but he doesn’t need anybody to be effective for him with the base. And even if he did, [his son] Donny’s got that covered because he rants, he’s hateful, and he hates all the right people, and, you know, he’ll literally say anything, at a high volume, to ramp them up. With people slightly outside of the base, who may still be convinced one way or the other, that’s potentially true. Sometimes, though, it’s hard for me to evaluate these things—because, as with Donald, I look at her, I look at him, and I don’t see anything admirable about either one of them, so I’m completely mystified why anybody would be taken in by it.
KRUSE: Let’s talk about Don, and Eric, too. What have you seen over the course of the last handful of years, or before, that we should know about the dynamic between the two of them and how it informs their relationships with their father?
TRUMP: They’re much younger than I am, so my main experience of them was on holidays and they wrestled a lot, like pummeled each other into the ground, while Donald just like sat in a chair and stepped on them occasionally.
KRUSE: A scene from the book that I recall.
TRUMP: There’s a desperation to Donny that I don't see in Eric.
KRUSE: And why do you think that is?
TRUMP: I think there are two possibilities. One is that Donny still thinks that he has a chance to gain his father’s favor and will do anything to do so—not sure why—and Eric, maybe, knows there is no chance. And so why bother? You know, I think that’s the most likely possibility, to tell the truth.
KRUSE: So, at the risk of oversimplifying, you portray the family, your family—starting with your grandfather, the president’s father, and his wife, and their five children—as deeply wounded damaged, troubled, “malignantly dysfunctional.” How did you see it play out over these last four days?
TRUMP: I guess the simplest way of putting it is that Donald continues to be this vortex that kind of sucks in attention. I think in the book I refer to him as ‘a black hole of need.’ And just as his family of origin organized itself around him, his family now, his children, seem to be playing the same role. And when a family system arranges itself or organizes itself around the most deeply damaged person in the family, nothing good comes of that. We see the same thing with the Republican Party. I know it sounds reductive, but it actually seems to be playing out that way—and it’s quite terrifying.
KRUSE: Robert, the president’s little brother, died coming up on two weeks ago. And the president in his statement that day said Robert was his “best friend.” Was he?
TRUMP: No. No. They, when I knew them—well, not the whole time—but after Robert rather abruptly left the Trump Organization, they hated each other. There was no love lost. And from what I understand, it wasn’t until Donald started running, or secured the nomination, that Robert, for purely opportunistic reasons, kind of got back in with Donald—and, like everything else in the family, it was transactional and it was mutually beneficial in whatever way. I also question Donald’s capacity to have deep, close friendships, anyway—but I don’t think that that’s at all true. In fact, if that had been the case, then Donald probably should have been with his second brother who was dying in a hospital.
KRUSE: Sort of a replay of his older brother, in a way, right?
TRUMP: Not as bad, of course, because Robert had a wife and stepchildren who hopefully were with him. You know, I’ve seen people say you can’t criticize somebody, everybody grieves differently, and the truth is Robert wasn’t dead yet. Donald could have been with him. He wasn’t grieving when he was playing golf. Robert was still dying when he was playing golf. So, yeah, I don’t think he gets let off the hook for that.
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Post by Admin on Aug 30, 2020 19:18:59 GMT
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got chills, I’ve got nausea,” Stephen Colbert told viewers at the top of his last live show of the week Thursday night. “It’s either the onset of COVID or seeing 1,500 people with no social distancing, no masks or testing packed on to the South Lawn of the White House. I know Republicans like voter suppression, I didn’t know they kicked it up to voter extinction.”
While The Late Show host admitted that he skipped the third night of the Republican National Convention out of disgust for the GOP’s constant lies, he did tune in to see Donald Trump deliver his big speech on Thursday, because “he is the president, and at this point the entire Republican Party.”
Colbert also caught the speech from “White House senior daughter and American Girl doll just following orders” Ivanka Trump, who boasted about working “alongside the president as he signed into law nine pieces of legislation to combat the evil of human trafficking.”
“And then I watched him tell one of those human traffickers that he wished her well,” the host added, referring to the president’s shocking comments about accused Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
The president’s daughter concluded her speech with this simple message: “Washington has not changed Donald Trump. Donald Trump has changed Washington.”
“She’s right, actually, and that’s weird,” he replied. “You see, the presidency proverbially changes the occupant. It matures them, it ages them.” Showing side-by-side photos of President Barack Obama at the beginning and the end of his eight years in office, Colbert joked, “The guy on the left looks like he should be persuading the guy on the right to give up his car keys.”
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Post by Admin on Aug 31, 2020 19:09:52 GMT
The Republican National Convention may have ended with a literal bang — fireworks spelling out “Trump 2020” — on Thursday last week, but according to a new post-convention ABC News-Ipsos poll, President Donald Trump isn’t getting much of a convention bounce — at least when it comes to his approval rating.
Historically, presidential candidates see notable, though frequently ephemeral, increases in their polling following their party’s conventions. For instance, in 2016, Gallup found Trump’s approval rating rose about 5 percentage points following the GOP convention, before falling ahead of the election.
However, this year, Ipsos pollsters found Trump’s overall approval rating to be essentially the same as it was ahead of the GOP’s convention, falling 1 percentage point from the previous week to 31 percent.
The poll, taken from August 28 to 29, also found Americans were not won over by the convention’s message, with 59 percent of Americans disapproving of the content of the RNC’s four nights of programming, versus the 37 percent who approved. Overall, 48 percent of Americans reported that they watched, slightly less than the 50 percent who said they tuned in for the Democratic National Convention the week prior.
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Post by Admin on Aug 31, 2020 22:48:02 GMT
Since the Emerson College July national poll, President Donald Trump has tightened the presidential race to a two-point margin, and is now trailing former Vice President Joe Biden 49% to 47%. In July, former V.P. Joe Biden held a four-point lead over President Trump –– 50% to 46%. Spencer Kimball, Director of Emerson College Polling explains “the Republican convention gave Trump his most positive week of news coverage which likely attributes to his bounce in this month’s poll and increasing job approval.” Voters planning to vote early in person are breaking for Trump 50% to 49% while those who plan to vote in person on election break for the President 57% to 37%. Voters who said they plan to vote by mail break for Biden 67% to 28%. Trump leads with male voters 50% to 45% and Biden leads with female voters 52% to 44%. Biden leads with independents 50% to 42%. Trump has an 83% to 14% lead over Biden with Republicans while Biden leads Trump 79% to 18% among Democratic voters. Looking at the 2016 voting patterns, Trump voters from 2016 break for the President 91% to 7% for Biden while Clinton voters from 2016 are breaking for Biden 88% to 9% for Trump. Voters who went with a third party candidate in 2016 are breaking for Biden nearly 3:1 at 59% to 18%. New voters in 2020 are breaking from the President 51% to 44%. Biden leads with all minority groups, albeit by different ranges. Biden leads with Asians 76% to 11%, Blacks/African Americans 77% to 19%, and Hispanic voters break for Biden 60% to 37%. White voters break for President Trump 56% to 41%. Biden leads with voters over 65 years old 55% to 41% and with younger voters 18-29 at 61% to 34%. Trump leads with voters 30-49 53% to 41% and with voters 50-64 with 51% and Biden at 47%. For the first time since he’s taken office, Trump’s job approval rating is approaching a majority, at 49% approval and 47% disapproval. This is a jump of four points since July, where Trump had 45% approval and 51% disapproval. Trump’s approval is the highest among those aged 30-49 (55% approval), and lowest among those aged 18-29 (37% approval). His approval among those aged 65 and older has fallen almost ten percent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, from 50% approval in February to 41% approval today.
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