Ex-UK ambassador Kim Darroch say pollsters could be undercounting Donald Trump supporters
The former UK ambassador in Washington, Kim Darroch, has warned of a “genuine risk” of violence in the aftermath of a close-run US election in November.
Darroch noted that although Joe Biden is maintaining a significant lead nationwide, the margins in some battleground states are shrinking, and he suggested pollsters could be systematically undercounting Donald Trump supporters.
Continue reading...Joe Biden addressed record-setting wildfires in the western US while on the presidential campaign, calling Donald Trump a 'climate arsonist'.
Meanwhile Donald Trump arrived in California, citing the importance of forest management.
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Trump has landed in California, where he will receive a briefing on the west coast wildfires, which have already claimed at least 35 lives.
“There has to be good, strong forest management, which I’ve been talking about for three years with the states, so hopefully they’ll start doing that,” Trump said.
Trump is in California mispronouncing "Oregon" and insisting that wildfires are caused be poor forest management pic.twitter.com/zydXDoe3DT
Joe Biden closed his climate speech by noting he continues to pray for Americans on the west coast who have been affected by the wildfires.
“We see the light through the dark smoke. We never give up. Always,” Biden said.
Continue reading...Joe Biden holds a steady lead in the polls but plenty of time remains for surprises and even the act of voting is controversial
The election to decide whether Donald Trump will serve a second term as president has already begun, with voters in North Carolina filling out absentee ballots, Minnesotans preparing to start early in-person voting on Friday and other states revving up their election machinery.
But for most Americans, today marks 50 days until election day, 3 November, when voters will take varying degrees of health risks – and face hurdles to voting of varying heights – to cast their ballots in person for Trump or his potential Democratic successor, Joe Biden.
Continue reading...The president’s campaign has paid out $800m, but at a crucial phase he is making cuts while Joe Biden is outspending him
More than $180,000 per second. That is what Donald Trump’s two TV ads during the Super Bowl worked out at in February, offering vivid proof of the outsized role of money in American politics – and of his re-election campaign’s premature and profligate spending.
The 2020 presidential election has been described by both sides as the most important in living memory and is certainly proving the most expensive. Hundreds of millions of dollars have flooded both campaigns and, in the pandemic-enforced absence of shaking hands and kissing babies, may prove even more influential than usual.
Continue reading...Donald Trump was headed for Nevada on Saturday, aiming to erode poll leads enjoyed by Joe Biden there and in Arizona, another key state, as the 3 November presidential election draws near.
Related: Trump in Fox News interview to accuse Biden of taking drugs
Continue reading...Fox News will broadcast an interview on Saturday night in which Donald Trump accuses Joe Biden of taking performance-enhancing drugs.
Related: Trump ally who sought to change CDC Covid reports claims he was fighting 'deep state'
Continue reading...Ceremonies were held across the US in remembrance of the victims of the al-Qaida attack on 11 September 2001.
Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden were among the attendees at memorial services in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to honor the 40 passengers who died aboard Flight 93.
At the Pentagon, US army chief general Mark Milley spoke in defense of a free press when listing examples of US armed forces' "values".
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In the latest sign of how ugly the presidential race has become, Trump baselessly accused Joe Biden of using performance-enhancing drugs in a new interview.
Fox News released a clip from Trump’s recent interview with host Jeanine Pirro, which will air in full tomorrow night.
"I think there's probably, possibly drugs involved. That's what I hear." -- during interview with Judge Jeanine, Trump casually accuses Joe Biden of using performance enhancing drugs pic.twitter.com/RVWJMqPNhn
Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong picking up the blog from smoky Oakland, California. I’ll have more news and politics coming your way for the rest of the evening.
First up: QAnon-supporting candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene’s election to Congress is all but assured after her Democratic opponent, Kevin Van Ausdal, abruptly dropped out of the race to represent Georgia’s 14th district.
A message from Kevin Van Ausdal pic.twitter.com/Y5LtVcpK2B
Related: 'Mind-bogglingly irresponsible': meet the Republican donors helping QAnon reach Congress
Continue reading...Donald Trump continued his attacks on Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, calling him 'the worst presidential candidate in the history of presidential politics'. Speaking from a rally in Freeland, Michigan, two months ahead of the election, the president said 'If Biden wins, China wins. If Biden wins, the mob wins. If Biden wins, the rioters and anarchists, arsonists and flag burners win.' Trump also boasted of his recent Nobel peace prize nomination, which he received for normalising of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates
• Norwegian far-right MP nominates Donald Trump for Nobel peace prize
Continue reading...This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian’s Sam Levine about why election night might turn into election week … or month
This week the question might seem a simple one, but it isn’t. Jonathan asks Sam Levine in New York about how the Covid-19 pandemic will affect the US election on 3 November, and the conversation leads to Jonathan reminiscing about the infamous 2000 presidential election, when George W Bush narrowly (and potentially wrongly) pipped Al Gore to the Oval Office. So, when will we know who’s won this year?
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A panel of three federal judges blocked the Trump administration on Thursday from excluding undocumented immigrants from the census totals used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets.
Trump acted unlawfully in July when he ordered the Commerce Department to produce data that would allow him to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count, the panel said. Federal law is clear that only a single data source - the census count of total population - can be used to apportion the 435 seats in the US House among states, the judges wrote. The decennial census does not ask about citizenship status and by requesting a second set of data outside of the decennial census, Trump ran afoul of the law.
Unprecedented wildfires and rushed evacuations in Oregon have wreaked havoc on the state’s incarcerated population, with thousands now packed into a single overcrowded prison that was already a major Covid-19 hotspot.
A destructive and rapidly spreading fire in Marion county prompted the state to evacuate three prisons on Tuesday, transferring 1,450 people to the Oregon state penitentiary (OSP) in Salem. Evacuees are sleeping on the floor and on emergency beds throughout OSP, including in indoor recreational areas, program rooms and other facilities not typically used for housing.
Related: Oregon fires: evacuated prisoners sleep on floor in packed Covid-19 hotspot
Continue reading...Joe Biden has branded Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic “almost criminal” after book revelations that the US president admitted in early February the disease was “deadly stuff” but deliberately played it down.
As the death toll from Covid-19 nears 200,000 in America, the world’s highest, Biden excoriated his opponent in November’s election over the way he did not address the defining crisis of his presidency early and comprehensively.
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From me and Joan E Greve:
Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, is refusing to enforce a White House coronavirus taskforce recommendation to close bars and require people to wear masks after Covid-19 infections in some of the state’s cities surged.
Meanwhile, coronavirus cases have risen sharply across the whole midwest in recent weeks, putting the region at the forefront of America’s pandemic. The region accounted for six of the eight states with the highest number of new Covid-19 cases by early September even as infections fell in other parts of the US previously among the worst hit.
Related: Iowa refuses to close bars and require masks as Covid-19 cases surge in cities
Continue reading...Joe Biden took the offensive against Donald Trump during a campaign event in Warren, Michigan after CNN released audio of Trump telling the journalist Bob Woodward in February that he knew coronavirus was ‘deadly’ and airborne.
Biden said the president had ‘failed to do his job on purpose’ as he knew the danger of Covid-19 but downplayed the severity of the virus for months
Continue reading...As the US election draws closer, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington hears from civil leaders on their fears for the integrity of the process and the future of their democracy
When Barack Obama spoke at the Democratic national convention recently he had as his backdrop a facsimile of the US constitution. He spoke pointedly about the importance of that document and criticised Donald Trump, a reality TV star who had damaged the reputation of the United States with “our democratic institutions threatened like never before”.
It is a concern shared by many across the US and the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington tells Anushka Asthana that he was alarmed by what he heard in interviews with some of the most prominent figures in civil rights, the law and academia on the state of democracy in America. He spoke to Michael Waldman, the head of the Brennan Center for Justice; Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP; Deirdre Schifeling, the campaign director of Democracy For All 2021; K. Sabeel Rahman, the head of Demos, and Vanita Gupta, the president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. All told him versions of the same story: democracy in America is in peril like never before.
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The race to succeed Bill de Blasio as New York mayor has a new potential entrant.
Kathryn Garcia, the city’s sanitation commissioner and one of de Blasio’s most trusted cabinet members, resigned on Tuesday in anticipation of a run.
Michael Cohen’s Trump book is out today and it may or may not be a coincidence that the president was exceedingly busy on Twitter this morning as NBC’s Today was broadcasting excerpts of in interview between his former lawyer and fixer and Lester Holt, of NBC Nightly News.
Related: Michael Cohen book details Trump's racism and toxic family dynamic
Continue reading...David Smith’s sketch: With Biden still enjoying a lead in the polls, the president’s attacks on his rivals and perceived enemies smacked of more desperation than usual
After turning the south lawn into a convention stage last month, Donald Trump held a surprise press conference-cum-campaign event on Monday at the White House’s front door – where Jackie Kennedy wore black on the day of JFK’s funeral, and where the Obamas greeted their successors on inauguration day.
On a glorious late summer’s day, Trump’s vantage point behind a presidential lectern at the north portico afforded him a view of former president Andrew Jackson’s statue in Lafayette Square and, beyond that, the newly minted Black Lives Matter Plaza. Give him a second term in November, and perhaps he’ll install a golden escalator like the one he descended in at Trump Tower to launch his first campaign.
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Jennifer Griffin, a national security correspondent for Fox News, said she has confirmed reporting by The Atlantic with two former senior Trump administration officials.
One former official told her: “When the President spoke about the Vietnam War, he said, ‘It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker.’”
This former official heard the President say about American veterans: "What's in it for them? They don't make any money." Source: "It was a character flaw of the President. He could not understand why someone would die for their country, not worth it."
Regarding McCain, "The President just hated John McCain. He always asked, 'Why do you see him as a hero?" Two sources confirmed the President did not want flags lowered but others in the White House ordered them at half mast. There was a stand off and then the President relented.
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A furious Joe Biden castigated Donald Trump after it was reported that the US president had called dead soldiers 'losers' and 'suckers'. 'If what is written is true, it's disgusting,' Biden said. 'It affirms what most of us believe to be true: Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief.'
Trump reportedly made the remarks when he cancelled a visit to pay respects at an American military cemetery outside Paris in 2018. He has denied the allegations, first reported in the Atlantic magazine
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