ВИБОРЧА ГАЗЕТА

Trump Cabinet Members Look to Reassure Battleground Voters

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue tromped through a strawberry festival in central Florida, detailing the government’s new trade pact. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about foreign policy at a roundtable in south Florida. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler toured parts of Michigan and Wisconsin, where he boasted of the Trump administration’s efforts to clean up the Great Lakes. And just this past week, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was listed as a headliner along with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for the president, at an event in Rapid City, South Dakota, where ticket prices started at $250, according to an independent watchdog group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. FILE – Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, May 19, 2020.With President Donald Trump confronted by skyrocketing joblessness and the coronavirus pandemic as he campaigns for reelection against Democrat Joe Biden, members of his Cabinet are busy making time in pivotal states. They are carrying a message to voters about what the Trump administration is doing for them. At the same time, there are questions about whether these agency heads are running afoul of a law meant to bar overt campaigning by federal officials on the taxpayer tab. These are states in renewed focus after Trump’s narrow 2016 victory. Recent polls in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania show Biden leading. The lesson of four years ago is crucial, though. Nearly every poll in the three states showed Democrat Hillary Clinton ahead of Republican Trump, before Trump’s base came together in the final weeks of the campaign. Cabinet-level leaders have come to Florida alone more than 30 times this year. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona have also seen visits from agency and administration chiefs discussing federal funding and initiatives for local interests — and talking up Trump.  Trump is hoping for an energized base to buoy his prospects for a second term. His recent rhetoric seems to reflect that strategy, as he stokes divides over racial injustice and the coronavirus outbreak. It can be hard to spot any local impact that a housing or a health secretary may have on a presidential race when they are in town. But there can be an effect, said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, who has been studying presidential politics in the battleground state. Cabinet secretaries usually “aren’t generating the same kind of buzz. But it doesn’t mean that what they do is not important both for policy and also politics for their president,” Jewett said.  A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to questions about the Cabinet members’ trips. Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Gwin accused the Trump administration of focusing on “scoring political points, not delivering for the people they work for. With COVID-19 raging unchecked, more than 17 million Americans unemployed, and our country divided, it’s shameful that Trump’s Cabinet is campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime instead of doing their jobs.” A Washington bigwig showing up with assurances on federal policies most vital to Orlando, Florida, or Milwaukee is usually enough to earn an administration a wave of favorable comments, columns and tweets from local leaders. In March, for example, when Perdue went to the strawberry festival in Plant City, in central Florida’s Interstate 4 corridor, he talked about the new U.S. trade pact with Mexico and Canada, and spoke of the importance of the farming community. Afterward, the president of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association, Kenneth Parker, said he was appreciative of “the administration’s commitment … to move forward in helping us in ways to compete.” When the EPA’s Wheeler was in Michigan and Wisconsin last month, he described the administration as a friend of an initiative to clean up the Great Lakes. Never mind Trump’s repeated attempts to kill money for the Obama-era program. GOP lawmakers persuaded Trump, while riding to a Michigan rally last year, to ease up on trying to starve the Great Lakes effort, which is popular across the region, and champion it instead. FILE – Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, speaks on Capitol Hill, May 20, 2020.”Let’s just say we were happy to see him come around on that,” said Laura Rubin of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, which lobbies for the initiative. And so this spring and summer, Wheeler and the EPA boast of millions of dollars the agency has doled out for Great Lakes regional projects such as cleaning up toxic sites and curbing farm nutrient runoff that feeds harmful algae blooms. Wheeler drew praise during the visits from Republican members of Congress and leaders of business groups. Notably absent were environmentalists, who accused Trump and Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, of taking credit for actions by previous administrations and ignoring Trump’s gutting of environmental and public health protections. Hatch ActCabinet secretaries hitting the road to talk up a president’s record in an election year is a political norm. Donald K. Sherman, deputy director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington watchdog group, said it can be tough to track the officials closely enough to know whether they are sticking to the Hatch Act, which is meant to bar obvious campaigning by federal officials with taxpayer money. But with the White House rejecting recommendations from the Office of Special Counsel to presidential adviser Conway for violating the act by using her office to talk down Democrats, Sherman said he is not sure Trump Cabinet members deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to staying within the law on their stops in select states. “It’s obvious that the administration is doing this for a political reason,” Sherman said. “What’s not obvious is if they’re doing this within the contours of the law or outside of it.” Interior Department spokesmen did not respond to questions this past week about the Rapid City event, which took place the evening before Bernhardt helped open for Trump at a fireworks show at Mount Rushmore, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said. It was unclear whether the Trump campaign or the federal government paid for Bernhardt’s costs on the trip.  Asked about Hatch Act compliance overall before the latest event, department spokesman Nicholas Goodwin said, “No campaign related activities have taken place on any official travel.” Spokespeople for two Cabinet-level agencies, the Interior Department and the EPA, did not specifically answer questions about whether they were coordinating such trips and funding announcements with Trump’s advisers or with his campaign staff. They said administration officials are doing their job by traveling and are not favoring any areas. Wheeler’s recent visits “have coincided with important agency announcements that positively impact their respective region,” EPA spokesman James Hewitt said in an email. 
 
…

Trump Escalates Culture War

U.S. President Donald Trump is firmly planting his flag on one side of the culture war in America.  In a pair of high-profile speeches and in comments on Twitter, Trump rebuffed the growing movement that wants police forces to address racial bias and seeks the removal of monuments and flags of the Confederacy.  Emphasizing patriotism and a traditional narrative of American history, Trump is appealing to his political base and rejecting his opponents as dangerous for the country. With the granite giant heads of four U.S. presidents as his backdrop at Mt. Rushmore on Friday and on the White House South Lawn to celebrate the country’s independence anniversary the following day, Trump warned of a domestic threat from angry mobs composed of anarchists, Marxists and far-left fascists, who are “trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.” A left-wing cultural revolution, according to Trump, seeks to wage a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.” Public opinion polling has shown broad support among Americans for the Black Lives Matter movement, with about two-thirds of Americans saying they support the movement, including some 60% of white Americans.  FILE – Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden puts on a face mask as he departs after speaking at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Delaware, June 30, 2020.Over the weekend, a spokesman for the campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said the U.S. was suffering as a result of having a “divisive” president who doesn’t “give a damn about anything but his own gain.”  “Our whole country is suffering through the excruciating costs of having a negligent, divisive president who doesn’t give a damn about anything but his own gain – not the sick, not the jobless, not our Constitution, and not our troops in harm’s way,” campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement on Saturday. Some Republican lawmakers are offering praise for the president’s comments.  “I thought the speech was absolutely one of the best that he has given and how appropriate that he reminded the American people and that we are unique and that you can bet on hope or you can bet on fear,” Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said during an interview on a Fox News show on Sunday.  Trump’s rhetoric is reminiscent of the “American carnage” theme during his 2017 inauguration address. On Monday, he took it even further, assailing the only full-time African American NASCAR race car driver and sharply criticizing the racing organization for its recent racetrack ban on the display of the Confederate flag.  FILE – Bubba Wallace stands by his car before the start of the NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Pocono Raceway, in Long Pond, Pennsylvania, June 28, 2020.Trump pointedly asked whether Black driver Bubba Wallace has apologized for the support NASCAR rendered him after a noose was discovered in an Alabama racetrack garage he was occupying. NASCAR and investigators later determined the rope was being used as a door pull and had been in the garage months before Wallace had use of the space.  Trump, on Twitter, wondered whether Wallace has “apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX?”  Trump said the ensuing uproar over the rope and NASCAR’s “Flag decision has caused lowest (television) ratings EVER!”    Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump host the 2020 “Salute to America” event in honor of U.S. Independence Day, on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, July 4, 2020.“Trump would prefer to talk about culture war issues rather than the currently dominant issues of the uncontrolled virus, the economic downturn or the demands to address systemic racism,” according to Texas A&M Associate Professor Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric.  “Trump has routinely relied on provoking outrage in his followers to keep them attentive and engaged with his messages and it may well continue to work with him,” Mercieca, author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, told VOA. “However, it’s not a message that will do more than solidify his base. It’s hard to get folks concerned about a culture war when their lives are at risk.”  White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday was asked by reporters about the president saying 99 percent of COVID-19 cases “are totally harmless.”  According to McEnany, Trump “was noting the fact that the vast majority of Americans who contract the coronavirus will come out on the other side of this.”  According to the World Health Organization, 20 percent of those diagnosed with the infection progress to severe disease, including pneumonia and respiratory failure.  Other administration officials have also shied away from contradicting the president’s comments playing down the severity of the infection.  A White House press secretary during the Bill Clinton administration, Joe Lockhart, said everybody around Trump lives in fear of contradicting the president.  “On his worst comments, they say he was just kidding or being sarcastic,” Lockhart told VOA. “But they will never say he’s wrong. The problem is he is wrong most of the time.”  With Republican voters, Trump’s approval rating has increased to 91 percent but has dropped among independents to 33 percent, while the president gets a positive assessment from just 2 percent of Democratic Party voters in the latest Gallup Poll, released Monday.  “The current 89-point difference between Republicans’ and Democrats’ ratings of Trump is the largest partisan gap Gallup has ever measured for a presidential approval rating in a single survey,” according to the pollster.  
…

US Supreme Court Says States May Punish ‘Faithless Electors’

The U.S. Supreme Court has four simple words for members of the Electoral College who fail to back the winner of their state’s popular vote in presidential elections: “We the people rule.”  In a unanimous decision, the nine-member high court Monday ruled that members of the Electoral College, the body that elects the U.S. president, are not “free agents” and that states may penalize them for breaking their pledge. “The Constitution’s text and the nation’s history both support allowing a state to enforce an elector’s pledge to support his party’s nominee — and the state voters’ choice — for president,” liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a 33-page opinion on behalf of the court.   The decision came in a pair of cases involving so-called “faithless electors,” members of the Electoral College who choose someone other than the presidential candidate who carries their state’s popular vote. FILE – Associate Justice Elena Kagan sits with fellow Supreme Court justices for a group portrait at the Supreme Court Building in Washington, Nov. 30, 2018.Although “faithless electors” have never influenced the outcome of a U.S. presidential election, the ruling restores a degree of certainty to the electoral system ahead of another contentious presidential vote in November. Most states compel their presidential electors to take a pledge to support the winner of the statewide vote. Of these, 15 states have laws that fine or remove electors for breaking their promise. The question before the Supreme Court was whether these laws are constitutional. The U.S. method of picking presidents is unique in the world. 2016 schemeWhen Americans cast their ballots for a presidential candidate, they are actually choosing members of the Electoral College, the 538-member body that meets later to formally elect the president. To become president, a candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes.  In November 2016, shortly after Donald Trump’s victory but before the Electoral College voted, a group of Democratic presidential electors concocted a scheme to head off the real estate mogul’s entry to the White House.  With no Republican elector willing to jump ship and pick Hillary Clinton, Democratic electors Peter Chiafalo and Michael Baca figured the only way they could stop Trump was to persuade other electors to “write in” a compromise candidate such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Recruiting four fellow Democratic members of the Electoral College, they formed a group they called the “Hamilton Electors,” claiming that American founding father Alexander Hamilton wanted electors to stop an “unqualified demagogue” from taking office. Not a single Republican elector flipped. But when Chiafalo and two fellow Democratic electors in Washington state went ahead and voted for Powell instead of Clinton, the winner of the statewide vote, state authorities fined each $1,000. In Baca’s case in Colorado, another state carried by Clinton, he was removed before he could cast his vote for another Republican candidate.  The Democratic activists then sued their states for disciplining them, setting off a legal chain reaction that ended up before the Supreme Court this year.  ‘Free agents’ or ‘proxies’?The questions before the justices boiled down to this: Are electors “free agents” allowed to vote their minds, or are they “proxies” for the popular will? And can states punish them if they go against the wishes of the voters? During oral arguments in May, lawyers for Chiafalo and Baca argued that while states have the power under the Constitution to appoint members of the Electoral College, they have the right to vote however they please. But lawyers for Washington state and Colorado said that the Constitution gives states the power to both appoint and remove the electors. What’s more, they said, allowing electors to vote as they wish could lead to chaos in presidential elections The Supreme Court sided with the states. Kagan wrote that the U.S. Constitution gives states “broad powers over electors and gives electors themselves no rights.”  “Among the devices states have long used to achieve their object are pledge laws, designed to impress on electors their role as agents of others,” she wrote. “A state follows in the same tradition if, like Washington, it chooses to sanction an elector for breaching his promise.”  When a state tells its electors that they can’t vote against the wishes of the people, Kagan continued, that “direction accords with the Constitution — as well as with the trust of a nation that here, We the People rule.” Historically, faithless voting has been a rarity: In more than two centuries, only 100 or so electors have defected, and they have never changed the outcome of a presidential election. In 2016, seven electors cast “faithless” votes, the most in a century, but well short of what was needed to sway the election. This is the first time in 34 years that the court has decided a case after the July 4th Independence Day holiday. Oral arguments in 10 cases, including those involving the faithless electors, were conducted via teleconference in May after the high court postponed arguments in March and April because of the coronavirus pandemic. 
 
…

Gallup Poll: 38% of Americans Approve of Trump’s Performance

A new Gallup poll showed Monday that 38% of Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s White House performance, a figure largely unchanged in the last month but off sharply from early May. Trump, facing a tough reelection contest in November against former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, tied his personal best approval rating of 49% two months ago. But his standing dropped sharply in late May and early June amid coast-to-coast demonstrations, some of them turning violent, against police abuse of minorities in the wake of the death of African American George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Trump expressed his support for peaceful protests, while saying Americans wanted law and order, and voiced continued backing for police.   FILE – Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Del., June 30, 2020.Four months ahead of the national vote, Trump’s approval rating now stands three percentage points above his personal low of 35% recorded on four separate occasions in 2017. A collection of national polls by the Real Clear Politics website shows Biden leading Trump by an average of nearly nine percentage points. The latest Gallup poll shows an unprecedented political divide in America.  The pollster said its June 8-30 survey showed Republican support of Trump increasing from 85% to 91%, with Democratic approval dropping from 5% to 2%. His support from self-described independent voters eroded from 39% to 33%. Gallup said the 89-point difference between the approval of Trump by Republican and Democratic voters was the largest it had ever recorded in decades of polling. Trump’s decline in approval was apparent across a range of voter subgroups, Gallup said. It said his standing is now less than a majority level among groups “that are typically more favorable to him, including non-Hispanic white Americans, men, older Americans, Southerners and those without a college degree.” The pollster said Trump retains a 57% approval rating among white Americans without a college degree, but the figure is off from 66% earlier in the year. Trump’s overall June standing in a reelection year is similar to that of the only two presidents who lost reelection bids in the last four decades — Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. 
 
…

Trump’s Leadership Tested in Time of Fear, Pandemic

Not long after noon on Feb. 6, President Donald Trump strode into the elegant East Room of the White House. The night before, his impeachment trial had ended with acquittal in the Republican-controlled Senate. It was time to gloat and settle scores.
“It was evil,” Trump said of the attempt to end his presidency. “It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars.”
It was also soon forgotten. On Feb. 6, in California, a 57-year-old woman was found dead in her home of natural causes then unknown. When her autopsy report came out, officials said her death had been the first from COVID-19 in the U.S.
The “invisible enemy” was on the move. And civil unrest over racial injustice would soon claw at the country. If that were not enough, there came a fresh round of angst over Russia, and America would ask whether Trump had the backs of troops targeted by bounty hunters in Afghanistan.
For Trump, the virus has been the most persistent of those problems. But he has not even tried to make a common health crisis the subject of national common ground and serious purpose. He has refused to wear a mask, setting off a culture war in the process as his followers took their cues from him.  
Instead he spoke about preening with a mask when the cameras were off: “I had a mask on,” he said this past week. “I sort of liked the way I looked … like the Lone Ranger.”  
These are times of pain, mass death, fear and deprivation and the Trump show may be losing its allure, exposing the empty space once filled by the empathy and seriousness of presidents leading in a crisis.  
Bluster isn’t beating the virus; belligerence isn’t calming a restive nation.  
Angry and scornful at every turn, Trump used the totems of Mount Rushmore as his backdrop to play on the country’s racial divisions, denouncing the “bad, evil people” behind protests for racial justice. He then made a steamy Fourth of July salute to America on the White House South Lawn his platform to assail “the radical left, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters,” and, for good measure, people with “absolutely no clue.”
“If he could change, he would,” said Cal Jillson, a presidential scholar at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “It’s not helping him now. It’s just nonstop. It is habitual and incurable. He is who he is.”
Over three and a half years Trump exhausted much of the country, while exhilarating some of it, with his constant brawls, invented realities, outlier ways and pop-up dramas of his own making. Into summer, one could wonder whether Trump had finally exhausted even himself.
Vainglorious always, Trump recently let down that front long enough to ponder the possibility that he could lose in November, not from the fabricated voting shenanigans he likes to warn about but simply because the country may not want him after all of this.  
“Some people don’t love me,” he allowed.
“Maybe.”Victory Lap
On Feb. 5 in the White House residence, Trump had watched all the Republican senators, save Mitt Romney of Utah, dutifully vote to acquit, ending the third impeachment trial in U.S. history.  
His rambling, angry, 62-minute remarks the next day were meant to air out grievances and unofficially launch Trump’s reelection bid — with the crucible of impeachment behind him, his so-so approval ratings unharmed, Republicans unified and the economy roaring.
The president’s advisers also watched, relieved that the shadow of impeachment — which loomed first due to Russia’s U.S. election interference, then his Ukraine machinations — was now behind them, letting them focus on the reelection battle ahead.  
The plan was taking shape: a post-trial barnstorming tour, rallies meant to compete with the Democratic primaries and a chance for the president to dive into the reelection fight that had animated so many of his decisions thus far in his term, according to some of the 10 current and former administration and campaign officials who requested anonymity to speak candidly for this story.
A few days earlier, the first coronavirus death outside China had been recorded, in the Philippines. Known cases of the disease in the U.S. were under a dozen. The U.S. had declared a public health emergency and restricted travel to and from China. But this was not something Trump wanted to talk about in the glow of acquittal and fog of grievance, and events had not yet forced his hand.
The day was meant to mark a new chapter in Trump’s presidency. It did. But not the one the president and his people expected.  The Longest Day 
Trump’s whirlwind trip to India was meant to be a celebration and in some ways was. He addressed a rally crowd of 100,000 and visited the Taj Mahal.  
But in a quick talk to business people at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, he felt compelled to address the virus, which had begun rattling the foundation for his argument for another four years in office: the economy.
Fighting jet lag and anxiety about a dive in the stock market, Trump was up much of the previous night on the phone with advisers, peppering them with questions about the potential economic fallout of the outbreak, according to the officials who spoke with The Associated Press.
“We lost almost 1,000 points yesterday on the market, and that’s something,” Trump told the two dozen or so business leaders. “Things like that happen where — and you have it in your business all the time — it had nothing to do with you; it’s an outside source that nobody would have ever predicted.”
The virus was “a problem that’s going to go away,” he said. “Our country is under control.”  
But the markets fell again the next day, creating their biggest two-day slide in four years. When Trump boarded Air Force One well after sundown in India, he was in a rage about the virus and his inability to slow the market tumble with reassuring words, according to the officials.  
Trump barely slept on the plane as it hurtled back to Washington overnight, landing early in the morning Feb. 26 after more than a dozen hours in the air, creating the effect of one endless day. He then quickly tore into aides about Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who had publicly predicted that the virus’ impact would be severe.  
It was already too late to pretend otherwise, not that Trump stopped trying. Warning signs had been missed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed in an early attempt at a coronavirus test. Trump had refused to turn up the pressure on China for fear of alienating Xi Jinping and scuttling a trade deal.
His conventional weapons failed him. The virus doesn’t have a Twitter account.
“Trump was elected to burn down the system and entertain,” said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management consultant who has followed Trump’s business, TV and political careers.
“When things get terrible, people don’t want a leader to burn down the system and entertain. We actually want a system. And you can’t bully a disease, which has been his one maneuver for 74 years.”
The president returned to the West Wing to watch the market fall yet again and told aides that, later that day, he would take the podium and preside over the coronavirus task force briefing for the first time. This would become a daily ritual for Trump to try to force his belief that the virus was under control even as infections surged and the death toll mounted.
The virus was not the only exterior event shaping his week. Three days later, Joe Biden began his remarkable political comeback by trouncing Bernie Sanders in the South Carolina Democratic primary.
Trump’s assumption that he would be running on the back of a strong economy against a socialist had been flipped on its head.  
Coronavirus cases were about to soar.The Briefing 
At an April 23 briefing that would live in infamy and make some comedy careers, Trump wasn’t really listening. By this day about 50,000 Americans had died from COVID-19.
Trump has long had trouble focusing in meetings, hearing one piece of information and often going off on tangents, frequently a memory from his time in New York real estate.  
Instead, he focused on the televised briefings and relished his jousting with reporters. He scheduled them for the late afternoon or early evening and would tell aides and confidants about the huge ratings they’d get, according to the officials.
The briefings would often stretch more than an hour, the vital health information from public health officials often drowned out by Trump’s attacks on the media and insistence that the pandemic was under control when, in late April, it decidedly was not.
 
Trump’s aides had already begun counseling the president to scale back or stop altogether his appearances at the briefings, nervously watching polls that found his scattershot performances were eroding support, particularly among older people, the group most vulnerable to COVID-19.
Trump refused. He told aides that his successes in politics were from dominating the stage and he was not going to give that up, particularly when his beloved campaign rallies were suspended and he couldn’t run the race against Biden that he wanted.
But in the task force meeting that April 23, Trump only somewhat heard or understood a discussion about a study detailing the use of light and disinfectants to help kill the coronavirus on surfaces.
He then began a dialogue with William Bryan, acting head of science at the Department of Homeland Security, who said the “virus dies quickest in sunlight.” Trump had a thought or two about that.
“So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked because of the testing,” Trump said in a helpful tone. “And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that, too.”
“Then I see the disinfectant,” he continued, even more perilously. “Knocks it out in a minute.” Perhaps an “injection inside or almost a cleaning.”
“It would be interesting to check that.”
The uproar was instantaneous, the White House’s attempted cleanup futile. Soon, the briefings would be canceled, the president surrendering his pulpit in the midst of sinking poll numbers and growing questions about his fitness for the job.
What might have worked for Trump before the pandemic stopped working as the death toll mounted and the president looked increasingly out of his element, Jillson said.
“People would watch Trump and see the instability … the emergencies of his own making he would then claim to have taken care of, and be mildly entertained or at least not deeply worried,” he said. But now? “A lot of that ‘Am I still amused?’ quickly gets to a ‘No’ answer.
“You’re never going to come out a major natural disaster unscathed but you can mitigate the damage by an empathetic response that describes the path out of this. That’s what Trump is literally incapable of doing.”The Bunker 
The chants could be heard inside the White House residence.
George Floyd, a Black man, had died under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer, igniting several nights of protests in the Twin Cities. Trump had said little about the death but was quick to denounce the violence that accompanied some of the demonstrations. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he tweeted, a threat flagged by the social media company and pilloried by Democrats because it reprised the language of a racist Miami police chief in the 1960s.
That Friday afternoon, May 29, as racial unrest now gripped the country and the virus death toll stood at more than 100,000, Trump spoke to reporters from the Rose Garden about China. He did not mention Floyd’s name.
That night, the protests reached Trump’s front yard.  
Thousands of people descended on Lafayette Square, clashing with law enforcement and overwhelming the security perimeter hastily set up just a few hundred yards from the front fencing of the White House. The size and energy of the protest had caught the Secret Service off guard and Trump, along with members of his immediate family, were rushed to an underground bunker, usually used to protect presidents during possible terrorist attacks.
The president’s tweeting continued, threatening a further crackdown against the protests, which he depicted as unlawful even though the vast majority were peaceful. When the bunker story became public, Trump reacted in a rage, screaming at aides to find the leaker, whom he deemed a traitor, and angry that it made him look weak, according to the officials. In the days that followed, Trump argued unconvincingly that he was only in the bunker to inspect it.
It was that anger — and a reflexive desire to align himself with law enforcement even when polling indicated widespread support for the protests — that led Trump to make one of the defining decisions of his term. He authorized the clearing of the square so he could walk across to the nearby “Church of the Presidents,” which was damaged during the protests, and hold up a Bible.
The photo op went terribly wrong. Democrats likened it to the actions of an authoritarian while Republicans dissociated themselves from the spectacle. Aides cast blame on each other and even Trump privately admitted that he did not expect the fierce blowback.
Trump issued an executive order directing the government to establish a national database tracking police officers who lose their jobs for misconduct and freeing grant money to improve policing practices. With these steps, Trump “turned justified anger into meaningful action,” said deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews.
She spoke of a “whole-of-America response to this pandemic” that let states decide when and how to reopen and ensures “the federal government will be there to support states if needed.”
Trump’s instinct, his ability to read a moment, had long been his strength as a politician. But from the bunker to the church to his increasingly lonely defense of Confederate monuments, he appeared out of step even with many Republicans on matters of race and in denial about the ravages of COVID-19.
“In a crisis, when you lack an operational solution, all you are left with is humanity,” Dezenhall said. “This is just a situation where Trump cannot pivot because he views empathy as the equivalent of running down Pennsylvania Avenue in high heels and a tutu.”The Sacred And the Profane 
The empty seats made him angry.
The rally in Tulsa was supposed to signal his comeback, the first mega campaign event since the onset of the pandemic. It was to be a show of political defiance and force in deep-red Oklahoma, reassuring nervous Republicans.
It didn’t turn out that way.
Despite campaign boasts of 1 million ticket requests, only slightly more than 6,000 people came to the indoor rally in a space holding 19,000. An overflow space went unused. Fears of the virus and protests kept many away. But the scant crowd also raised questions about whether the Trump show was wearing thin even with his supporters in red hats.
It was June 20. The virus death toll was closing in on 120,000.
The woebegone rally was part of a bet his campaign was making and still is. It’s predicated on the belief that few voters who don’t like Trump can be persuaded to swing behind him now, so success lies in motivating those who are still with him.
The plan: First, drive up negative opinions about Biden, whom the Trump campaign believes is liked by perhaps 60% of the country, if tepidly.  
Second, on the theory that a largely unwavering 40% of the country likes the president, Trump would serve up policies and rhetoric to generate enough enthusiasm to turn out that slice of the country to vote.
A key recent stop for that plan was Arizona, where Trump in 109-degree Yuma heat marked progress on the border wall central to his 2016 campaign.
Then a speech at a Phoenix megachurch, a nod to evangelicals and a group of avid young Republicans. And when Trump looked out at the rows, he saw none of the empty seats that bedeviled him in Tulsa just three days earlier.
Trump reveled in the crowd, speaking for more than 90 minutes and getting the in-person adulation he had been missing for months. He did not mention that his supporters in the church were placing themselves and others at risk by sitting close together and not wearing masks.
Confirmed infections and hospitalizations in Arizona have hit daily records.
The president boarded Air Force One in an ebullient mood, telling aides to return to scheduling rallies — perhaps in smaller venues than Tulsa, perhaps outside — that could soon again get him in front of a crowd, the officials said.  
No rallies have been held since Tulsa. One is coming up Saturday in New Hampshire, to be held outside at Portsmouth’s airport. The virus has come roaring back in widespread parts of the country, pushing the death toll to about 130,000.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway acknowledged “it’s a new world” because of the pandemic and many Trump supporters won’t go to a traditional rally because it’s “high risk, low reward for them,” given that they already back the president.
Nonetheless, Trump tried to entice the masses to his July Fourth event, drawing only a scattered crowd to the National Mall for an air show and fireworks while he remained at the White House, hosting several hundred invited guests on the South Lawn.
There his angry words washed over the guests and ricocheted across the country.  
The people in front of him were said to be medical and other front-line workers in the pandemic and law enforcement. But he was speaking really to his most fervent supporters around the country, tapping the divide over race and culture and making it about us versus them — the leftists, the looters and the clueless.
He cast himself as the defender of heritage and the “American way of life.”
He wore no mask. But the Lone Ranger was riding again.
…

AP Fact Check: Trump Falsely Says 99% of Virus Cases Benign

President Donald Trump is understating the danger of the coronavirus to people who get it, as more and more become infected in the U.S.  
In his latest of many statements playing down the severity of the pandemic, Trump declared that 99% of cases of COVID-19 are harmless. That flies in the face of science and of the reality captured by the U.S. death toll of about 130,000. Trump also sounded a dismissive note about the need for breathing machines.
Throughout the pandemic, Trump has declared it under control in the U.S. when it hasn’t been. His remarks on that subject and more from the past week:Virus threatTrump: “Now we have tested over 40 million people. But by so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless.” — Fourth of July remarks Saturday.The Facts: This statement does not reflect the suffering of millions of COVID-19 patients.
The World Health Organization, for one, has said about 20% of those diagnosed with COVID-19 progress to severe disease, including pneumonia and respiratory failure. Whatever the numbers turn out to be, it’s clear that the threat is not limited to the merest sliver of those who get the disease.
Aside from that, those with mild or no symptoms also can spread the virus to others who are more vulnerable.
Asked Sunday to defend Trump’s claim, Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn declined to do so. He instead urged Americans not to back off the federal government’s public health measures urging social distancing and wearing a mask.
“What I’ll say is that we have data in the White House task force,” Hahn told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Those data show us that this is a serious problem. People need to take it seriously.”Trump: “Our tremendous Testing success gives the Fake News Media all they want, CASES. In the meantime, Deaths and the all important Mortality Rate goes down. … Anybody need any Ventilators???” — tweet Saturday.The Facts: No, increased testing does not fully account for the rise in cases. People are also infecting each other more than before as distancing rules recede and “community spread” picks up. And as cases surge, so has demand for ventilators once again in parts of the U.S.
“One of the things is an increase in community spread, and that’s something that I’m really quite concerned about,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, testified Tuesday.
Adm. Brett Giroir, the Health and Human Services official overseeing the nation’s coronavirus testing efforts, told Congress on Thursday that the increases can’t be explained by just additional testing. “We do believe this is a real increase in cases because of the percent positivities are going up,” he said.
In areas of the U.S., the demand for ventilators is approaching the highs seen in April. For instance, the number of patients requiring ventilators in Miami-Dade County has increased from 61 two weeks ago to 158 on Saturday, according to Miami-Dade figures posted by the county online. The highest number of patients on ventilators was 198, on April 9.
As for Trump’s point about mortality coming down, Fauci said that is not a relevant measure of what is happening in the moment with infections. “Deaths always lag considerably behind cases,” he said. “It is conceivable you may see the deaths going up.”Trump: “We’ve made a lot of progress; our strategy is moving along well. …We’ve learned how to put out the flame.” — Fourth of July remarks Saturday.  
Trump, describing the COVID-19 threat as “getting under control”: “Some (places) were doing very well, and we thought they (the virus) may be gone and they flare up, and we’re putting out the fires.” — remarks Thursday on a jobs report.Trump: “I think we are going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think that, at some point, that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.” — interview Wednesday on Fox Business Network.The Facts: “The virus is not going to disappear,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert. Nor can it be considered “under control” and its flame “put out” as cases have been surging to fresh daily highs.  
The number of confirmed cases in the U.S. per day has roughly doubled over the past month, hitting over 50,000 this past week, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University. That is higher even than what the country experienced from mid-April through early May, when deaths sharply rose.
Fauci warned last week that the increase across the South and West “puts the entire country at risk” and that new infections could reach 100,000 a day if people don’t start listening to guidance from public health authorities to wear a mask and practice social distancing.
Arizona, California, Florida and Texas have recently been forced to shut down bars and businesses as virus cases surge. The U.S. currently has more than 2.7 million known cases and many more undetected.
Fauci has said there “certainly” will be coronavirus infections in the fall and winter.Vice President Mike Pence: “While we’re monitoring about 16 states that are seeing outbreaks, it represents about 4% of all the counties in this country.” — interview with CBS aired on June 28.The Facts: That’s a misleading portrayal of the virus threat. More than 20% of Americans actually live in those relatively few counties.
The White House provided The Associated Press with the full list of U.S. counties that reported increases in COVID-19 cases as of a week ago, when Pence and other administration officials repeatedly cited the low county tally. The list showed 137 of the 3,142 counties in the U.S. that were under a higher alert — indeed, about 4% in that snapshot of time.
But measured by population, those counties represent a vastly higher share — more than 1 in 5 people in the U.S.
Altogether there are 68.3 million people living in those 137 counties, while there is a total U.S. population of 322.9 million. That means 21.1% of U.S. residents actually live in the virus “hot spots” identified in the list.Trump on BidenTrump: “Biden was asked questions at his so-called Press Conference yesterday where he read the answers from a teleprompter. That means he was given the questions.” — tweet Wednesday.The Facts: Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic presidential rival, did not read answers off a teleprompter. Nor did the AP, which asked the first question at the briefing, submit questions in advance.  
Biden used a teleprompter to read prepared remarks that took aim at Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, before the questions and answers started, at which point the teleprompter appeared to have been turned off.  
Biden’s campaign gave him a list of news organizations to call on and he answered questions from reporters on that list as well as some he chose spontaneously. That’s not an uncommon practice when officials give news conferences.  
Video footage shows that during nearly 30 minutes of questions and answers, Biden often looked directly at the reporter, not at the teleprompter. His answers were at times long-winded, without the practiced pauses typically heard in prepared speeches.
Biden campaign national press secretary TJ Ducklo called Trump’s allegation “laughable, ludicrous and a lie.”
Trump’s accusation reflected his tactic of trying to stir doubts about Biden’s mental acuity.Trump: “He wants to defund and abolish police.” — interview Wednesday on “America This Week.”
The Facts: Biden does not join the call of protesters who demanded “defund the police” after George Floyd’s killing.
“I don’t support defunding the police,” Biden said last month in a CBS interview. But he said he would support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether “they meet certain basic standards of decency, honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community, everybody in the community.”
Biden’s criminal justice agenda, released long before he became the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, proposes more federal money for “training that is needed to avert tragic, unjustifiable deaths” and hiring more officers to ensure that departments are racially and ethnically reflective of the populations they serve.
Specifically, he calls for a $300 million infusion into existing federal community policing grant programs.
That adds up to more money for police, not defunding law enforcement.
Biden also wants the federal government to spend more on education, social services and struggling areas of cities and rural America, to address root causes of crime.War in Iraq
Kayleigh Mcenany, White House press secretary: “You have this President who, when Washington was unanimous in saying, ‘We’re going into Iraq,’ this President said, ‘No, that’s not the right decision.'” — news briefing Tuesday.The Facts: That’s false. Trump voiced support for going into Iraq, as much as he and now his press secretary insist otherwise. And Washington was not unanimous in supporting the invasion.
On Sept. 11, 2002, when radio host Howard Stern asked Trump whether he supported a potential Iraq invasion, Trump said: “Yeah, I guess so.”
On March 21, 2003, just days after the invasion, Trump said it “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”
Later that year, he began expressing reservations.
More than 150 members of Congress voted against the 2002 resolution to authorize President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq. That is not unanimity.  MemorialsTrump: “We are tracking down the two Anarchists who threw paint on the magnificent George Washington Statue in Manhattan. … They will be prosecuted and face 10 years in Prison.” — tweet Tuesday.Trump: “Since imposing a very powerful 10 year prison sentence on those that Vandalize Monuments, Statues etc., with many people being arrested all over our Country, the Vandalism has completely stopped.” — tweet on June 28.The Facts: Trump does not have the authority to impose prison sentences — a president is not a judge. Nor can he toughen penalties on his own.
Trump signed an executive order last week to protect monuments, memorials and statues, calling on the attorney general to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any person or group that destroys or vandalizes a monument, memorial or statue.
The order basically instructs the attorney general to enforce laws that already exist.  Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami, and Alexandra Jaffe, Zeke Miller and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
…

This Voter Group Could Sway 2020 Election

Ian Martens, a rising junior at Furman University in South Carolina, says President Donald Trump has “done a great job building our economy up,” and he likes the fact that Trump “stands up for Second Amendment rights,” or the right to bear arms. “Most importantly, he is the most pro-life president,” Martens told VOA, calling that political issue for him “a debate between life and death.” While the youth vote — now the largest voting bloc in the U.S. — is predicted to have a significant impact on the 2020 election, young white males like Martens may play an outsized role in determining the election.  Young white males “form a sizable and sometimes disproportionate swath of the American electorate,” reported the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.  Young white males came out in force in the 2016 presidential election: One million more young white males went to the polls and cast a vote than young white females, and they preferred Republican candidate Trump to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by 22 percentage points.And two years later in the 2018 midterm elections, while the majority – 60% — of young voters ages 18 to 29 identified with the Democratic Party, more than four in 10 young white men said they favored Trump, according to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. They voted more than Latino and Black men in the 2018 midterm elections, according to the Tufts analysis of 2018 Census Current Population Survey (CPS) data, and they make up a larger portion of the population in “some pivotal swing states like Iowa, Ohio, and New Hampshire,” CIRCLE reported.Top issues  Priorities among young white male voters are “Make America Great Again and the gun rights movements,” according to CIRCLE.“I support President Trump because he brought up issues career politicians have neglected for decades, from highlighting working-class men and women all across this country, addressing the needs of farmers to protecting national interests overseas,” Cody Steed, a member of College Republicans at Florida Atlantic University, wrote in an email to VOA.  “I feel that he truly cares for the progression and success of this country,” Steed said.  Gun rights are pivotal for many young voters. In 2018, 77 percent of young American voters said that gun control was an important issue in determining their vote, according to the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. The anti-abortion movement is important to some young white male voters, as well. Overall, 46% of men overall oppose abortion, according to a 2019 Gallup poll. “The pro-life debate is the most important ‘political’ issue in my opinion, because it is most directly a debate between life and death,” Martens said. “Each abortion is the ending of a life, so that is why I am most passionate about that because I am not in favor of ending precious babies’ lives.”  By comparison, the same poll found 43% of women overall identified as supporting abortion rights, with 62% between the ages of 18 and 29. Forty-six percent of these women identified as “total Hispanic or nonwhite.” Young white men join the ranks of “disaffected, middle-aged, working-class white men [who] were credited with one of the biggest political upsets in American presidential politics,” VOA reported.The Young White Men Who Back Trump

        As he drives along a rural Ohio road where cellphone service can be spotty, Rylee Cupp, 21, reflects on how he overcame reservations about Donald Trump to emerge as a strong supporter of the president. “Looking now, after everything I see that Trump has done,” he says, “and the positives that have happened to the country, with the booming economy, a great pick for the Supreme Court, and of course now, denuclearization talks with North Korea, I can confidently say that I would happily vote for Donald…

At a Trump youth rally in Phoenix June 23, young white men took the stage with President Trump, one of his adult sons, and several other lawmakers and officials – all older white males.Arizona Trump Rally Focuses on Youth Vote Students for Trump event draws an estimated 3,000 conservative voters who belong to the block of 18- to 29-year-olds who may be key to 2020 election “What a day at the @TrumpStudents convention in Phoenix,” tweeted Twitter user @realRyanShear after the youth rally in Phoenix. “So many great speakers and stories. Young conservatives won’t back down to the leftist mob that wants to silence our freedom of thought and speech. #Trump2020”One engine for young white men is S4T, founded in 2015 by Campbell University students Ryan Fournier and John Lambert, that has “over 5,000 volunteers, 280 chapters, and over 13,000 vote pledges,” as of October 2019, it states on its website.  Confidence to act  A 2018 study from CIRCLE showed that young white men’s “self-perceived civic efficacy was relatively high,” 39 percent of them hold a belief that they are “well-qualified” to engage in politics, a higher percentage than that of young white women or of young men and women of color.Despite this, however, a majority of – 60% — “young white men were the least likely subgroup of youth to feel heard by their elected officials.”But these voters do not uniformly echo the concerns of older white men in the Republican Party.  A study done by Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics found that many young Americans support getting rid of the Electoral College as well as private health insurance. Additionally, a “majority” of those surveyed support background checks for assault weapons. “I would also like Trump to support and advance bipartisan legislation protecting clean air and water, investment in infrastructure, and economic support for disadvantaged communities in the form of a system different than our current assistance programs.” Steed said.  “I would very much like to see advanced … his personal promise in 2016 to broaden the overall party to be more inclusive of same-sex marriage and individuals who identify with the LGBT community,” Steed added.  “We are blessed with tremendous freedoms because of our founders, and that is something to celebrate and love, and President Trump does,” Martens said.  A Virginia native, Martens hasn’t campaigned for Trump, but says he likes talking with friends about politics and hopes that “people can see my side of things and I can explain it with compassion and kindness.” What’s needed in the U.S. is a “cultural shift,” Martens says, such as a return to traditional religious values.  “A lot of conservative values are rooted in religion and religious principles and values, but as people move away from religion, we are losing the important aspects religion brings to our communities,” he said.  Conservatives not Republicans  Since the 2018 midterm elections, however, the president has faced criticisms for his handling of a variety of issues, including foreign interference in U.S. politics, but also the more recent coronavirus pandemic and protests caused by racial strife.  Among the critics are some conservative white males — ardent conservatives or Trump supporters four years ago, but who now have taken to social media to explain how they’ve changed their mind in whom they will support this this election year.  “I want to say to every woman, Muslim, member of the LGBTQ+ community, minorities, victims of sexual assault, and many others, I’m sorry,” Zach from North Carolina said in a video tweet from @RVAT2020, who said he voted for Trump in 2016.  “You deserve so much more than a man who … enacts legislation that moves us backwards on social issues and individual liberty,” he said.Trey, an 18-year-old from Texas, said he was “extremely excited to be able to vote for the Republican candidate to finally uphold the conservative values I’ve been raised with and that I believe in.”  “I’ve been waiting for this year for a while,” he explained in a video on Twitter. “The Christian faith that Donald Trump claims to uphold is in no way, shape or form apparent in the way he acts. It’s all meant to be a facade to court the Republican vote, and his policies have steered what Republicanism and conservatism mean in a completely different direction than in what I believe in,” he said. Trey said he would be voting for someone who “upholds character, leadership, the ability to court both sides of the political aisle. … and that is certainly not Donald J. Trump.” “I do think that America can return to that shining city on a hill that (former President Ronald) Reagan once referred to us as,” tweeted @PrestonBrailer, who attends the University of Pennsylvania and describes himself as conservative. “But first, I think, Donald Trump and the current GOP leadership need to be voted out.” 
…

Trump-Connected Lobbyists Reap Windfall in COVID-19 Boom

Forty lobbyists with ties to President Donald Trump helped clients secure more than $10 billion in federal coronavirus aid, among them five former administration officials whose work potentially violates Trump’s own ethics policy, according to a report.
The lobbyists identified Monday by the watchdog group Public Citizen either worked in the Trump executive branch, served on his campaign, were part of the committee that raised money for inaugural festivities or were part of his presidential transition. Many are donors to Trump’s campaigns, and some are prolific fundraisers for his reelection.  
They include Brian Ballard, who served on the transition, is the finance chair for the Republican National Committee and has bundled more than $1 million for Trump’s fundraising committees. He was hired in March by Laundrylux, a supplier of commercial laundry machines, after the Department of Homeland Security issued guidance that didn’t include laundromats as essential businesses that could stay open during the lockdown. A week later, the administration issued new guidance adding laundromats to the list.
Dave Urban, a Trump adviser and confidant, has collected more than $2.3 million in lobbying fees this year. The firm he leads, American Continental Group, represents 15 companies, including Walgreens and the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, on coronavirus issues.  
Trump pledged to clamp down on Washington’s influence peddling with a “drain the swamp” campaign mantra. But during his administration, the lobbying industry has flourished, a trend that intensified once Congress passed more than $3.6 trillion in coronavirus stimulus.
While the money is intended as a lifeline to a nation whose economy has been upended by the pandemic, it also jump-started a familiar lobbying bonanza.  
“The swamp is alive and well in Washington, D.C.,” said Mike Tanglis, one of the report’s authors. “These (lobbying) booms that these people are having, you can really attribute them to their connection to Trump.”  
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.  
Shortly after Trump took office, he issued an executive order prohibiting former administration officials from lobbying the agency or office where they were formerly employed, for a period of five years. Another section of the order forbids lobbying the administration by former political appointees for the remainder of Trump’s time in office.  
Yet five lobbyists who are former administration officials have potentially done just that during the coronavirus lobbying boom:  
— Courtney Lawrence was a former deputy assistant secretary for legislation in the Department of Health and Human Services in 2017 and 2018. She became a lobbyist for Cigna in 2018 and is listed as part of a team that has lobbied HHS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and at least two other agencies. Cigna did not respond to a request for comment.  
— Shannon McGahn, the wife of former White House counsel Don McGahn, worked in 2017 and 2018 as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. She then joined the National Association of Realtors as its top lobbyist and is listed on disclosures as part of a team that has lobbied both houses of Congress, plus six agencies, including the Treasury Department. The Realtors association did not respond to a request for comment.  
— Jordan Stoick is the vice president of government relations at the National Association of Manufacturers. Stoick’s biography on NAM’s website indicates that he is “NAM’s lead lobbyist in Washington,” where he started working after serving as a senior adviser in the Treasury Department. Disclosures indicate that Stoick and his colleagues lobbied both houses of Congress plus at least five executive branch agencies, including Treasury.  
“NAM carefully adheres to the legal and ethical rules regulating lobbying activity, including ensuring that its employees comply with all applicable prohibitions on contacting their former employers,” Linda Kelly, the organization’s general counsel, said in a statement.
— Geoffrey Burr joined the firm Brownstein Hyatt after serving as chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. The firm’s lobbying disclosure for the first quarter of 2020 includes Burr on a list of lobbyists who contacted the White House and Congress on coronavirus-related matters on behalf of McDonald’s.
— Emily Felder joined Brownstein Hyatt after leaving the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where she worked in the legislative office. Felder is listed on a disclosure from the first quarter of 2020 that shows she was part of a team that lobbied Congress and the White House.
A spokeswoman for the firm said both Felder and Burr abide by the Trump administration’s ethics rules, which limit their lobbying to the House and the Senate.  
“We are confident that our lobbyists are in compliance with all lobbying rules and applicable prohibitions and did not violate their Trump Administration pledge,” spokeswoman Lara Day said in a statement.  
Public Citizen’s Craig Holman, who himself is a registered lobbyist, said the group intends to file ethics complaints with the White House. But he’s not optimistic that they will lead to anything. Last year, he filed more than 30 complaints, all of which were either ignored or rejected.
“There does not appear to be anyone who is enforcing the executive order,” Holman said.
…

Young White Males Formidable at the Polls

Ian Martens, a rising junior at Furman University in South Carolina, says President Donald Trump has “done a great job building our economy up,” and he likes the fact that Trump “stands up for Second Amendment rights,” or the right to bear arms. “Most importantly, he is the most pro-life president,” Martens told VOA, calling that political issue for him “a debate between life and death.” While the youth vote — now the largest voting bloc in the U.S. — is predicted to have a significant impact on the 2020 election, young white males like Martens may play an outsized role in determining the election.  Young white males “form a sizable and sometimes disproportionate swath of the American electorate,” reported the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.  Young white males came out in force in the 2016 presidential election: One million more young white males went to the polls and cast a vote than young white females, and they preferred Republican candidate Trump to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by 22 percentage points.And two years later in the 2018 midterm elections, while the majority – 60% — of young voters ages 18 to 29 identified with the Democratic Party, more than four in 10 young white men said they favored Trump, according to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. They voted more than Latino and Black men in the 2018 midterm elections, according to the Tufts analysis of 2018 Census Current Population Survey (CPS) data, and they make up a larger portion of the population in “some pivotal swing states like Iowa, Ohio, and New Hampshire,” CIRCLE reported.Top issues  Priorities among young white male voters are “Make America Great Again and the gun rights movements,” according to CIRCLE.“I support President Trump because he brought up issues career politicians have neglected for decades, from highlighting working-class men and women all across this country, addressing the needs of farmers to protecting national interests overseas,” Cody Steed, a member of College Republicans at Florida Atlantic University, wrote in an email to VOA.  “I feel that he truly cares for the progression and success of this country,” Steed said.  Gun rights are pivotal for many young voters. In 2018, 77 percent of young American voters said that gun control was an important issue in determining their vote, according to the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. The anti-abortion movement is important to some young white male voters, as well. Overall, 46% of men overall oppose abortion, according to a 2019 Gallup poll. “The pro-life debate is the most important ‘political’ issue in my opinion, because it is most directly a debate between life and death,” Martens said. “Each abortion is the ending of a life, so that is why I am most passionate about that because I am not in favor of ending precious babies’ lives.”  By comparison, the same poll found 43% of women overall identified as supporting abortion rights, with 62% between the ages of 18 and 29. Forty-six percent of these women identified as “total Hispanic or nonwhite.” Young white men join the ranks of “disaffected, middle-aged, working-class white men [who] were credited with one of the biggest political upsets in American presidential politics,” VOA reported.The Young White Men Who Back Trump

        As he drives along a rural Ohio road where cellphone service can be spotty, Rylee Cupp, 21, reflects on how he overcame reservations about Donald Trump to emerge as a strong supporter of the president. “Looking now, after everything I see that Trump has done,” he says, “and the positives that have happened to the country, with the booming economy, a great pick for the Supreme Court, and of course now, denuclearization talks with North Korea, I can confidently say that I would happily vote for Donald…

At a Trump youth rally in Phoenix June 23, young white men took the stage with President Trump, one of his adult sons, and several other lawmakers and officials – all older white males.Arizona Trump Rally Focuses on Youth Vote Students for Trump event draws an estimated 3,000 conservative voters who belong to the block of 18- to 29-year-olds who may be key to 2020 election “What a day at the @TrumpStudents convention in Phoenix,” tweeted Twitter user @realRyanShear after the youth rally in Phoenix. “So many great speakers and stories. Young conservatives won’t back down to the leftist mob that wants to silence our freedom of thought and speech. #Trump2020”One engine for young white men is S4T, founded in 2015 by Campbell University students Ryan Fournier and John Lambert, that has “over 5,000 volunteers, 280 chapters, and over 13,000 vote pledges,” as of October 2019, it states on its website.  Confidence to act  A 2018 study from CIRCLE showed that young white men’s “self-perceived civic efficacy was relatively high,” 39 percent of them hold a belief that they are “well-qualified” to engage in politics, a higher percentage than that of young white women or of young men and women of color.Despite this, however, a majority of – 60% — “young white men were the least likely subgroup of youth to feel heard by their elected officials.”But these voters do not uniformly echo the concerns of older white men in the Republican Party.  A study done by Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics found that many young Americans support getting rid of the Electoral College as well as private health insurance. Additionally, a “majority” of those surveyed support background checks for assault weapons. “I would also like Trump to support and advance bipartisan legislation protecting clean air and water, investment in infrastructure, and economic support for disadvantaged communities in the form of a system different than our current assistance programs.” Steed said.  “I would very much like to see advanced … his personal promise in 2016 to broaden the overall party to be more inclusive of same-sex marriage and individuals who identify with the LGBT community,” Steed added.  “We are blessed with tremendous freedoms because of our founders, and that is something to celebrate and love, and President Trump does,” Martens said.  A Virginia native, Martens hasn’t campaigned for Trump, but says he likes talking with friends about politics and hopes that “people can see my side of things and I can explain it with compassion and kindness.” What’s needed in the U.S. is a “cultural shift,” Martens says, such as a return to traditional religious values.  “A lot of conservative values are rooted in religion and religious principles and values, but as people move away from religion, we are losing the important aspects religion brings to our communities,” he said.  Conservatives not Republicans  Since the 2018 midterm elections, however, the president has faced criticisms for his handling of a variety of issues, including foreign interference in U.S. politics, but also the more recent coronavirus pandemic and protests caused by racial strife.  Among the critics are some conservative white males — ardent conservatives or Trump supporters four years ago, but who now have taken to social media to explain how they’ve changed their mind in whom they will support this this election year.  “I want to say to every woman, Muslim, member of the LGBTQ+ community, minorities, victims of sexual assault, and many others, I’m sorry,” Zach from North Carolina said in a video tweet from @RVAT2020, who said he voted for Trump in 2016.  “You deserve so much more than a man who … enacts legislation that moves us backwards on social issues and individual liberty,” he said.Trey, an 18-year-old from Texas, said he was “extremely excited to be able to vote for the Republican candidate to finally uphold the conservative values I’ve been raised with and that I believe in.”  “I’ve been waiting for this year for a while,” he explained in a video on Twitter. “The Christian faith that Donald Trump claims to uphold is in no way, shape or form apparent in the way he acts. It’s all meant to be a facade to court the Republican vote, and his policies have steered what Republicanism and conservatism mean in a completely different direction than in what I believe in,” he said. Trey said he would be voting for someone who “upholds character, leadership, the ability to court both sides of the political aisle. … and that is certainly not Donald J. Trump.” “I do think that America can return to that shining city on a hill that (former President Ronald) Reagan once referred to us as,” tweeted @PrestonBrailer, who attends the University of Pennsylvania and describes himself as conservative. “But first, I think, Donald Trump and the current GOP leadership need to be voted out.” 
…

On July 4th, Trump Kicks Off ‘Law & Order’ Campaign

U.S. President Donald Trump spent the 4th of July weekend at Independence Day celebrations in South Dakota and Washington. He used both events to deliver a strong message on law and order, the platform that his campaign is focusing on ahead of the November election. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara traveled with Trump to South Dakota and brings us the story. 
…

Trump, Biden Fight for Primacy on Social Media Platforms

On an average day, President Donald Trump sends about 14 posts to the 28 million Facebook followers of his campaign account. His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, delivers about half that many posts to an audience of just 2 million.The numbers are similarly skewed in other spheres of the social media landscape.On Twitter, Trump’s 82.4 million followers dwarf Biden’s 6.4 million. The president has spent years cultivating a ragtag digital “army” of meme makers and political influencers who retweet campaign messages hundreds of times daily. Trump is outspending Biden on Google and YouTube advertising by nearly 3 to 1.  As his reelection bid faces growing obstacles, his primacy in the dizzying digital world is one of his top advantages, giving him a massive platform to connect with supporters and push a message that ignores his vulnerabilities related to the pandemic, unemployment and race relations. Biden and his allies are now working feverishly to establish a social media force of their own.  For the first time, Biden outspent Trump on Facebook advertising in June, pouring twice as much money into the platform as the president. His campaign is recruiting Instagram supporters to hold virtual fundraisers. And it’s plotting ways to mobilize the power of hundreds of teens on TikTok who reserved tickets for Trump’s recent Oklahoma campaign rally and took credit for sinking the event by artificially inflating the crowd count before it began.  But Trump’s head start may be tough to overcome.”Vice President Biden and Trump have very different challenges right now,” said Tara McGowan, the founder of liberal digital firm Acronym and former digital director for the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA during the 2016 campaign. “Trump needs to hold his base … and Vice President Biden needs to define and in a lot of ways introduce himself to you new voters, and potential supporters.”But Trump’s unimpeded access to the digital microphone is facing its limits.Twitter is beginning to fact check Trump’s posts, including one that made unfounded claims that mail-in voting would lead to fraud. The company also alerted users when the president posted a manipulated video, and it hid his Twitter threat about shooting looters in Minneapolis.Under pressure in June as major companies yanked advertising from its site, Facebook promised it would label Trump posts when they break rules around voting or hate speech. Video messaging platform Snapchat last month also said it would keep the president’s account active and searchable but would stop showcasing his profile on the platform. And in a move to clamp down on hate and violent speech, the online comment forum Reddit decided to ban one of the president’s most prolific fan forums, The_Donald.FILE – Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally at Renaissance High School in Detroit, Michigan, March 9, 2020.Trump and Biden have strikingly divergent tactics on social media.A centerpiece of Trump’s digital efforts is the Team Trump Online! nightly live broadcasts streamed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Twitch, an online streaming platform. The broadcasts feature top Trump surrogates including daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.Trump also tweets with far greater velocity, sending more than 160 Twitter messages during a seven-day period starting June 14, an Associated Press analysis of Trump and Biden’s accounts reveals. More than 50 of Trump’s posts were retweets from an assortment of users that included the U.S. Army, far-right meme makers, conservative news outlets, little-known congressional candidates and anonymous accounts that in some cases promoted conspiracy theories.  The president’s steady retweets of everyday users helps fans feel connected to him, said Logan Cook, a Kansas internet meme maker whose work Trump has regularly promoted on his social media accounts.  “President Trump’s team, they’re blending in with social media culture, which is also why they’re getting into so much trouble,” said Cook, whose Twitter account @CarpeDonktum was permanently suspended last week for copyright violations. His memes are controversial because he alters videos to mock Trump’s political rivals, including Biden.  Twitter users celebrate being retweeted by the president, or his inner circle, like the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who has more than 5 million followers.  Trump’s followers see producing sardonic memes or videos as a game where the ultimate prize is a retweet from the president, said Misha Leybovich, a tech entrepreneur who produces social media engagement products that support Democratic candidates and causes.  “The fan base is having a blast,” Leybovich said. “If they never gave the fans the ability to be amplified by the president, the stakes would be lower.”Biden has stuck to a more conventional approach, tweeting nearly 60 messages during that same time, only a handful of which were retweets from verified accounts, like former President Barack Obama, or established news outlets. Every video Biden tweeted out over that week in June was produced by his own campaign.But the effectiveness of campaign messaging isn’t just about numbers, said Jennifer Mercieca, a political rhetoric professor at Texas A&M University.  “If you want to compare the attention and engagement metrics, it might look like Trump is way ahead, but that attention and outrage isn’t always good,” Mercieca said. “When a child is throwing a tantrum, you’re giving them attention, but it’s not because you approve of their behavior.”Indeed, the Biden campaign argues that despite being outmatched on social media, their engagement is strong.”The way that they treat their supporters, it’s about distraction. It’s about keeping them angry,” said Rob Friedlander, Biden campaign digital director. “For us it’s about, how do we make you feel like you’re brought into the campaign.”The campaign is creating Facebook groups, holding virtual events on Instagram and partnering with social media influencers who create posts in support of the campaign.  One such group is an Instagram account called Bake for Biden, which bakes bread and ships sourdough starters across the country in exchange for donations to Biden. The group was born out of what Brooklyn marketing executive Domenic Venuto first saw as an inadequate response from Biden’s campaign to Trump’s taunts and conspiracy theories.  Venuto said he’s come to understand the campaign’s digital strategy of ignoring Trump’s attacks.  “They’ve been very good at promoting values and shying away from being baited into the same tactics (as the Trump campaign),” Venuto said. 
 
…