2020
ELECTIONS
Trump fumes over Biden ad, media coverage at
Nevada rally
The president attacked his opponent in bitter terms
Saturday night, and repeated warnings that Democrats would destroy America's
suburbs.
By GABBY
ORR
09/13/2020
12:21 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/13/trump-reno-rally-nevada-412990
MINDEN,
Nev. – President Donald Trump set the tone early on at his rally in northern
Nevada Saturday night, warning that he was prepared to "be really
vicious" in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.
Fuming over
a new ad about his alleged disparagement of U.S. military personnel, Trump
arrived here with a torrent of insults ready to go. “Pathetic Joe. He’s a
pathetic human being to allow that to happen,” Trump said of Democratic
presidential nominee Joe Biden and the ad Biden's campaign released last week,
which seized on comments Trump reportedly made about America’s fallen soldiers.
“But you
know the good part?” Trump continued. “Now I can be really vicious. Once I saw
that ad, I don’t have to be nice anymore.”
The
president also claimed Biden, “doesn’t know he’s alive.”
“Sleepy Joe
Biden. You know where he is now? He’s in his damn basement again,” Trump told
the crowd.
He accused
Nevada’s Democratic governor of trying to “rig the election,” after Trump
campaign officials were forced to move the Saturday night rally out of Reno,
Nev. due to Covid-19 restrictions forbidding large crowds in the state. And he
charged his political opponents with trying to “hurt” efforts to develop a
coronavirus vaccine. The president also said the only way he would lose the
election in November is if Democrats "rig" it.
Trump’s
fiery appearance at an airport hangar in Douglas County, which he carried by
more than 30 percentage points in 2016, capped off a turbulent week for his
reelection campaign, with aides left to play defense after taped interviews
emerged of the president admitting to downplaying the dangers of Covid-19, the
disease caused by the novel coronavirus, when the virus first reached the
United States. Upon landing in the Silver State, Trump told reporters the
pandemic is “rounding the corner” and repeated his unlikely claim that a
vaccine will be available before the end of the year.
But
coronavirus seemed far from the president’s mind when he stood before
supporters on Saturday, railing against “bird cemeteries” that accumulate
beneath wind turbines, dismissing concerns about “lock her up” chants that
remain a staple of his rallies, and claiming Biden will be praised for his
performance at the first presidential debate as long as he “gets off the stage”
safely.
It was an
odd sequence of attacks for the president to offload in Nevada, where his
campaign is attempting to court enough Hispanic voters to overcome the
razor-thin margin he lost the state by in 2016 — and potentially offset losses
elsewhere.
The
president’s campaign has spent months devising a backup plan that could get him
to 270 electoral votes should he lose one or more of the Rust Belt states he
flipped four years ago, focusing heavily on areas where his law-and-order
message could break through and where polling shows marginal growth in his
minority support.
Nevada is
among the locations his campaign is targeting as they work to rebuild
enthusiasm around his handling of the U.S. economy and solidify his support
with Hispanic voters. Coronavirus-related lockdowns decimated the local economy
in Las Vegas this summer after casinos and hotels were forced to shutter in
accordance with statewide restrictions on large gatherings and indoor services.
In Reno, doors were shut at local casinos for nearly two months this summer
creating a major loss in room tax revenue across the industry.
Along with
Arizona, where the president is traveling on Monday, Nevada is also a state
where campaign aides believe Trump’s expanded Latino support could make a
difference in November. Latinos account for roughly 19 percent of Nevada’s
eligible voting population.
Towards the
end of his winding, nearly two-hour remarks Saturday night, the president
nodded towards Hispanic voters' pivotal role in the state and, potentially, the
country, touting a poll that he claimed showed he is leading Biden among that
block of voters
In reality,
Biden is leading Trump by double-digits among Hispanics nationally, although a
Marist-NBC survey released Wednesday showed Trump with a 4-point edge among
Hispanic voters in Florida. That's raised questions about a potential tectonic
shift in Hispanic support toward the incumbent Republican, after Democratic
nominee Hillary Clinton carried two-thirds of Florida Hispanics in 2016.
And it's
another reason for alarm among Democrats, some of whom have been criticizing
the Biden campaign for months for their lack of effort in Hispanic communities
in Florida, Arizona and Nevada.
Until
September, the Trump campaign had outspent Biden on Spanish-language
television. The Biden campaign, however, recently told POLITICO it had
increased its ad spending, surpassing Trump on Spanish-language channels last
week, and also beefed up its Hispanic-outreach staff.
One
official involved with the Trump campaign claimed the president’s support among
Hispanic voters nationally has reached 30 to 35 percent in some internal polls,
though the official declined to share the data with POLITICO.
Trump allies
have a number of rationales for his rise in popularity among Hispanics. Some
claim the pre-pandemic economy, which saw the Hispanic unemployment rate hit a
record low of 3.9 percent a year ago, helped more Hispanics feel comfortable
supporting the president, despite his record of racially insensitive rhetoric
and policies. Others believe Biden has embraced policy positions that alienate
Hispanic Catholics and workers in parts of Nevada, Arizona and Florida.
Trump
suggested Saturday night he would do well with Hispanic voters in November
because they "like tough people, they like people who are going to produce
jobs. And by the way Hispanics know the border better than anyone."
Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law
if you lose election
Trump meanwhile promises to ‘put down’ leftwing
protests and says US Marshals killing Portland suspect was ‘retribution’
Martin
Pengelly
@MartinPengelly
Sun 13 Sep
2020 03.12 BSTLast modified on Sun 13 Sep 2020 03.14 BST
Roger
Stone, whose 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress and witness
tampering in the Russia investigation was commuted by Donald Trump, has said
Trump should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and
Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg if he loses to Joe Biden in November.
The
long-time Republican strategist and dirty trickster, who has a tattoo of
Richard Nixon on his back, lied about contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016
election regarding emails hacked from Democratic party accounts.
In turn,
special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate intelligence committee suspected
Trump lied when he said he could not recall discussing the leaks with Stone.
Stone did
not turn on Trump and had his sentence reduced on the recommendation of
attorney general William Barr. But he still faced prison before Trump acted.
His conviction stands.
Both men
were in Nevada on Saturday, Trump holding campaign events while Stone sought to
raise money for himself. He outlined his advice to Trump should he lose in a
call to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars online show, on Thursday.
Citing
widely debunked claims of fraud around early voting, absentee balloting and
voting by mail, Stone said Trump should consider invoking the Insurrection Act
and arresting the Clintons, former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Mark
Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple and “anybody else who can be proven
to be involved in illegal activity”.
Stone also
said: “The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal
marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes
should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable
case. Send federal marshals to the Clark county board of elections, Mr
President!”
Nevada has
not gone to a Republican since 2004 but is shaping up to be a crucial contest
this year. Biden leads there, but polls have tightened.
Trump’s own
rhetoric was not far removed from that of the man he spared prison. The
president continued on Saturday to make unsubstantiated claims about voter
fraud. He and his campaign have also consistently claimed without evidence that
“antifa”, or anti-fascist, activists represent a deadly threat to suburban
voters that will be unleashed should Biden win.
Commenting
on a Daily Beast report about leftwing activist groups planning what to do “if
the election ends without a clear outcome or with a Biden win that Trump
refuses to recognize”, Stone told Jones the website should be shut down.
“If the
Daily Beast is involved in provably seditious and illegal activities,” he said,
“their entire staff can be taken into custody and their office can be shut
down. They wanna play war, this is war.”
Stone also
advocated “forming an election day operation using the FBI, federal marshals
and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal
objections [to results] and if necessary to physically stand in the way of
criminal activity”.
In an
interview broadcast on Saturday night, Trump told Fox News he would happily
“put down” any leftwing protests.
“We’ll put
them down very quickly if they do that,” he told Jeannine Pirro.
“We have
the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want. Look, it’s
called insurrection. We just send in and we, we do it very easy. I mean, it’s
very easy. I’d rather not do that, because there’s no reason for it, but if we
had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes, within minutes.”
The Insurrection
Act of 1807 allows the president to use federal troops to enforce federal law.
Last used in 1992, it was much discussed this summer, amid protests over racism
and police brutality arising from the killing of George Floyd by officers in
Minneapolis.
Ultimately
Trump chose simply to send federal agents to confront protesters, most
prominently in Portland, Oregon, a move which proved hugely controversial.
In his
interview with Fox News, Trump discussed an incident in the city in which US
Marshals shot dead a suspect in the killing of a member of a rightwing group.
“There has
to be retribution when you have crime like this,” Trump said.
He also
said protests such as those in Portland would lead to “a backlash” from the
political right, “the likes of which you haven’t seen in many, many years”.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário