Happy Sunday, everyone! Hopefully, you are all having a good week and taking some time to unwind and relax this weekend. The Democratic National Convention certainly put a pep in my step. I hope it has had the same effect on you.
Let’s get to the news, shall we?
Trump desperately tries (and fails) to separate himself from newly indicted border wall fraudsters
By Jen Hayden
On Thursday morning, the news cycle exploded with yet another member of Donald Trump’s inner circle facing federal charges, bringing the total to six Trump confidantes who’ve faced charges since 2016. This time it is Steve Bannon, who joins Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, and Michael Flynn in the Trump Indictment Club. Bannon was the Trump campaign’s chief executive officer in 2016. He later followed Trump to the White House as chief strategist, a position he left in August 2017 to return to Breitbart News and attach himself to a series of grifts, including the one he is now facing charges for, which involved soliciting donations for a privately built border wall and then, according to prosecutors, fraudulently creating sham invoices and shell companies to enrich himself and other collaborators. It’s quite similar to what the NRA was doing, as well. Makes you wonder if any other campaigns might have similar setups? Curious, indeed.
But back to Trump responding to the Bannon news. During an appearance with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, Donald Trump took a few questions and tried to put a Grand Canyon-sized gap between himself and Steve Bannon, a man he apparently barely knows now. Let’s break down his responses here, because he gave a couple of rather incredulous responses.
When fraudsters try to separate themselves from fraud, by acting like they’re not the same as their fellow fraudsters who they helped commit fraud … you gotta laugh. (Did I say fraud enough? Hah!)
Trump has taken charge of his convention, so you know it'll be a sh*tshow
By Kos
I’m not even talking about content. You know those cabinet meetings where everyone around the table took turns to praise their Dear Leader Trump? This will be 1,000 times worse, a three-day festival to a single man and the deplorable people who idolize him. For a campaign and party bleeding critical suburban support among college-educated white women, we can fully expect Trump and company to double down on the very bullying, racism, xenophobia, and misogyny that drove those voters away in the first place.
Nah, I’m taking about production values. Remember, it wasn’t even a month ago when Trump finally conceded that no in-person convention would take place. Up until that point, he insisted that a regular convention was in store. Therefore, planning for a whole new convention, one almost exclusively online, didn’t even start until late July. That means Trump Republicans, not paragons of efficiency and effectiveness (everyone who is competent at their jobs isn’t eager to get stiffed by Team Trump), will have had to plan three days’ worth of programming in just four weeks—a near impossible task for the best teams.
That’s common sense, right? And as expected, we hear that the Republican National Convention is still struggling to figure out programming for next week’s big event.
Trump's Arizona speech attacking Biden on immigration instead showcases his own extremism
By Gabe Ortiz
Trump’s speech kicked off his rant by touting the endorsement of the National Border Patrol Council union, which also endorsed him in 2016. The organization itself had said at the time that it “had a longstanding practice of not endorsing presidential candidates in the primaries,” but candidate Trump was just the kind of racist that border agents have been longing for. And when they’ve already had no issue with stomping on U.S. law, what’s the harm in stomping on a pesky little tradition?
These agents have “been my friends from the beginning,” Trump said, calling them “unbelievable people” and “great people.” Some might say that the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tactical unit that kidnapped protesters right off the street in Oregon before helping raid a humanitarian medical camp at the southern border are, in fact, not “great people,” but those kinds of raids and state-sanctioned disappearances are exactly why the authoritarian president loves them in the first place.
But of course, the impeached president wasn’t there just to soak in the love from his mini-fascists, he was also there to attack Joe Biden, who was set to receive the Democratic nomination for president later that day. “Biden’s plan is the most radical, extreme, reckless, dangerous, and deadly immigration plan ever put forward by a major party candidate,” Trump vomited at the rally he’s holding in the middle of a pandemic, claiming that “[f]or decades, Washington politicians like Biden allowed an endless supply of illegal foreign labor to decimate American jobs and wages.”
School reopens. COVID-19 cases emerge. Rinse and repeat ... 700 times
By Laura Clawson
- On Sunday the University of North Carolina reported its fourth cluster of cases in three days. Also, a sorority at Oklahoma State University has 23 cases, and college parties in Alabama and Georgia are causing worries about what’s coming.
- An Oklahoma high school student went to school knowing they’d tested positive but thinking it was safe because they were asymptomatic. That points to the importance of school officials in making decisions about safety, because individuals are not necessarily going to know all the facts. Twenty-two students who were in contact with that student and one other who tested positive now have to quarantine.
- One Arizona school couldn’t open on Monday because of pushback from teachers, who refused to show up in person due to safety concerns.
- Los Angeles is starting school all-remote, but working on a testing plan that could enable schools to open safely at some point, an effort detailed by Superintendent Austin Beutner.
- Texas, on the other hand, has decided that the way to not have a coronavirus problem in schools is to refuse to track the data.
How Sarah Palin's culture war affects us in 2020
By Cara Zelaya
Like many of you, I spent the better part of last week being excited about the announcement of Senator Kamala Harris being Joe Biden’s running mate. With all that excitement in mind, I couldn’t help thinking about a thread that my colleague David Neiwert posted a few months back, about perhaps the most infamous Vice Presidential candidate of all time: Sarah Palin.
This thread went viral, but I felt that it needed to have a second life on video so people could feel the full effect of Governor Palin in all her belligerent splendor, diving deep into how she is our proto-Trump.
And that’s it for this week!
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Let me know in the comments: What was your favorite part of the DNC? What moment sticks out in your mind?
Looking forward to chatting with you all below!
