Huge questions over practical matters of rallies and travel, but also of whether Trump falls ill – and what that means for the election
Hours after the announcement that he had tested positive for Covid-19, Donald Trump canceled a planned trip to Florida for a campaign rally on Friday and announced that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, who also tested positive, would enter quarantine.
Related: What happens if Trump is incapacitated and how would it impact the election?
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From me and Joan E Greve:
In a memorable moment from the Republican National Convention, Guilfoyle rallied supporters in what Guardian Washington bureau chief David Smith described as “a high-octane audition for Evita – without an audience”.
She said that Democrats “want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear” and later screamed, “Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for liberty and the American Dream: the best is yet to come!”
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When a reporter asked Trump about his comments on the Proud Boys last night, the president asked for a “definition” of the extremist far-right group.
Trump says he does "not know who the Proud Boys are," but they should "stand down and let law enforcement do their work."
(He said they should "stand by" last night.) pic.twitter.com/kgi2R8DgN9
Trump just spoke to reporters on the South Lawn before leaving for Minnesota, where he will hold campaign events this evening.
Addressing his comments last night on the Proud Boys, Trump claimed he did not know who the extremist far-right group was.
Related: Trump's refusal to condemn white supremacy fits pattern of extremist rhetoric
Continue reading...The dismal spectacle reminded viewers what is at stake in November for the US – and the rest of us
One unmistakable winner emerged from Tuesday’s presidential debate: Xi Jinping. The loser was the American public – and anyone else unfortunate enough to have sat through the grim 90-minute spectacle.
Variously described by commentators as a trainwreck, dumpster fire, shitshow and the worst debate in presidential history, it reflected the state of the race and the nation after four years of Donald Trump. This is America in 2020: wracked by a pandemic that has killed 200,000 people and highlighted its deep structural failings on healthcare and inequality, as well as the parlous state of its politics – a realm of bitter divisions in which facts appear to be optional.
Continue reading...The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden deteriorated into an ugly display of contempt on Tuesday night, as the president relentlessly interrupted and attacked his Democratic rival during clashes over the coronavirus pandemic, racism, the economy, mail-in voting and the future of the supreme court
Here is the full story from my colleagues Kari Paul and Lois Beckett on how the Trump was received at watch parties in California:
Related: How the chaos of the first debate was received at three very different watch parties
After recording in the early hours UK time and with, he says, his “jaw somewhere close to the floor,” the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland discusses the highlights and lowlights of the debate with Guardian columnist Richard Wolffe on this today’s episode Politics Weekly Extra:
Related: Insults and interruptions on US election debate night: Politics Weekly Extra
Continue reading...Analysis: Only one man looked remotely presidential on the debate stage in Cleveland, Ohio, and it was not the incumbent
Cry, the beloved country. Donald Trump ensured Tuesday’s first US presidential debate was the worst in American history, a national humiliation. The rest of the world – and future historians – will presumably look at it and weep.
More likely than not, according to opinion polls, his opponent Joe Biden will win the November election and bring the republic back from the brink. If Trump is re-elected, however, this dark, horrifying, unwatchable fever dream will surely be the first line of America’s obituary.
Continue reading...It’s a myth that Republicans handle the economy better – US recessions almost always occur under the GOP
Joe Biden has consistently held a wide polling lead over US President Donald Trump ahead of November’s election. But, despite Trump’s botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic – a failure that has left the economy far weaker than it otherwise would have been – he has maintained a marginal edge on the question of which candidate would be better for the US economy. Thanks to Trump, a country with just 4% of the world’s population now accounts for more than 20% of total Covid-19 deaths – an utterly shameful outcome, given America’s advanced (albeit expensive) healthcare system.
The presumption that Republicans are better than Democrats at economic stewardship is a longstanding myth that must be debunked. In our 1997 book, Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy, the late (and great) Alberto Alesina and I showed that Democratic administrations tend to preside over faster growth, lower unemployment and stronger stock markets than Republican presidents do.
Continue reading...Donald Trump heads into the first US presidential debate against Joe Biden on Tuesday night trailing in opinion polls and now reeling from dramatic newspaper revelations detailing his chronic financial losses and years of tax avoidance.
Related: Democrats on the attack after Trump tax return revelations – live
Continue reading...As the presidential campaign heats up, the Guardian is tracking the latest polling in eight states that could decide the election
Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump in the national polls for the presidential election.
Continue reading...The vice-presidential candidate who debated Paul Ryan helped turn the trajectory of Obama’s reelection campaign
For Democrats and supporters of former vice-president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, the hope is that the version of Biden who faced then-congressman Paul Ryan back in 2012 shows up for the debate against Donald Trump on Tuesday in Ohio.
The Biden who showed up for the Ryan debate eight years ago helped turn around the trajectory of then-President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. Ask just about any former Obama campaign alumna or Democratic strategist and they will concede that Obama’s performance against Mitt Romney in the first debate was lacking.
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s pick for America’s highest court, Amy Coney Barrett, is an “ideological fanatic” who threatens abortion rights, healthcare and the environment, activists warned on Saturday, before Trump unveiled his third supreme court nominee in the White House Rose Garden.
Related: 'Not special any more': how the Senate has failed the American people
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A quick glance at the guest list for Amy Comey Barrett’s nomination ceremony today makes troubling reading. Among the guests were representatives from Judicial Watch, which has described climate science as a “fraud”; the Heritage Foundation (which has also pushed back against climate science); and the Family Research Council (which has opposed abortion, divorce and LGBT rights).
Attendees at Trump's SCOTUS nomination of Amy Coney Barrett:
•Judicial Crisis Network's Carrie Severino
Heritage Foundation's Kay Cole James
•Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton
•Family Research Council's Tony Perkins
•Cleta Mitchell—a lawyer tied to many GOP 'dark money' nonprofits https://t.co/q5BzTkPBs9
Now that Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated for the supreme court, the senate hearings are likely to last from 12-15 October. And, as is more than likely, she will be confirmed by the Republican-held Senate by 29 October, well before the 3 November elections.
Donald Trump’s rival for the presidency, Joe Biden, has issued a statement saying the process should be delayed until after the election.
Election Day is just weeks away, and millions of Americans are already voting because the stakes in this election could not be higher. They feel the urgency of this choice – an urgency made all the more acute by what’s at stake at the U.S. Supreme Court.
They are voting because their health care hangs in the balance. They are voting because they worry about losing their right to vote or being expelled from the only country they have ever known. They are voting right now because they fear losing their collective bargaining rights. They are voting to demand that equal justice be guaranteed for all. They are voting because they don’t want Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for nearly half a century, to be overturned.
Continue reading...Open seat offers chance for both parties to rally their bases as Democrats see chance to take control of chamber
The shock of a sudden new vacancy on the US supreme court has rippled out to some of the most contentious Senate races in the final weeks before the 3 November elections, throwing the vital issue of who might win control of the body into confusion.
The recent death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg while Republicans control the Senate and the White House virtually ensures that her replacement will be conservative, swinging the court into a 6-3 conservative majority.
Continue reading...Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden makes a plea to Senate Republicans, asking them to 'follow their conscience' and defy president Donald Trump's push to name his nominee for the supreme court ahead of November's election. Trump says he plans to nominate a women for the seat as soon as possible, after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died aged 87 six weeks out from the US election. 'I appeal to those few Senate Republicans, that handful who really will decide what happens. Please follow your conscience,' Biden says. 'Don't vote to confirm anyone nominated under the circumstances President Trump and Senator McConnell have created. Don't go there. Uphold your constitutional duty, your conscience'
Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, made an urgent plea on Sunday to the conscience of Senate Republicans, asking them to defy Donald Trump and refuse to ram through his nominee to the supreme court before the November election.
Related: Rushing to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, McConnell shows power trumps principle | Robert Reich
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Tim Alberta, the chap I quoted a while back re Mitch “Mule Piss” McConnell and his single-minded pursuit of judicial appointments, has a fascinating piece up at Politico.
“If there’s one Republican who could be convinced that filling the sudden supreme court vacancy is a bad idea,” he writes, “it’s President Donald Trump.”
Related: Trump names three sitting senators among 20 possible supreme court picks
Any number of variables could tip the scales in such a tight election. But it’s not difficult to deduce that had a supreme court seat not been hanging in the balance, Hillary Clinton would be president right now. When I offered this theory last year to McConnell … he grinned.
“I agree,” McConnell said.
Having been reminded countless times over the past 45 months that his Supreme Court gambit won him the trust of social conservatives – which, in turn, won him the election – Trump surely realizes that this is a moment of maximum leverage. Maybe he doesn’t bother using it; maybe he automatically produces more of the goods, keeping his most important customers satisfied, believing it’s one more accomplishment to point to.
But the president is transactional to his core. This was exactly the word– “transactional” – that Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, used when we discussed the supreme court list Trump unveiled in 2016.
News is starting to come out of the Senate Democrats’ caucus call today…
Per source Schumer started with moment of silence for RBG and said “nothing is off the table” next year if GOP moves forward w/nominating process
Related: Battle hymn of the Democrats: why it's time for liberals to fight dirty
Continue reading...Susan Collins of Maine is among vulnerable Republican senators as polls indicate voters trust Biden more on justice picks
On the question of supreme court nominees, the Republican senator Susan Collins has repeatedly threaded the same political needle. It is one with a shrinking eye.
Related: Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed America long before she joined the supreme court | Moira Donegan
Continue reading...The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has sparked a titanic political fight that could shape the future of US supreme court decisions on abortion rights, voting rights and other fundamental issues for a generation.
Related: What does Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death mean for the supreme court?
Continue reading...The top congressional Democrat, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has joined mounting calls for an investigation into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention centre in Georgia accused of performing hysterectomies on migrant women held there without their full consent.
Pelosi branded the substance of allegations presented by a whistleblowing nurse “a staggering abuse of human rights”.
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