Robert O’Brien didn’t provide any details, also claiming Beijing had ‘the most massive program’ to influence US politics
China has taken the most active role among countries seeking to interfere in the US election and has the biggest program to influence domestic politics, the US national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said on Friday, without providing any details.
“We know the Chinese have taken the most active role,” O’Brien told reporters at a briefing.
Continue reading...
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.
Continue reading...
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
Continue reading...
The Guardian’s Kenya Evelyn reports:
Joe Biden will meet Jacob Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr, later today as well as other members of the family of the 29-year-old who is gravely wounded and still fighting for his health in a local hospital in Kenosha after being shot in the back by a white police officer on August 23.
Trump and his advisers are trying to walk back his comments encouraging North Carolinians to vote twice in the November elections.
The president said yesterday, “Let them send it in and let them go vote. And if the system is as good as they say it is then obviously they won’t be able to vote” in person.
Trump yesterday: “If you get the unsolicited ballots ... send it in early, and then go and vote.”
Trump in May:
“If you told a Republican to vote twice, they'd get sick at even the thought of it."pic.twitter.com/bjWMotfXrP
White House summit irritates EU diplomats, who say deal brokered by them is near
The leaders of Kosovo and Serbia will meet at the White House on Thursday and Friday, in an encounter that some see as a push for a diplomatic win for Donald Trump to brandish during his re-election campaign.
Kosovo’s prime minister, Avdullah Hoti, will meet with the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, in talks that Trump aides say will be primarily about economic issues between the two countries, but may pave the way to a broader deal.
Continue reading...White House manipulation of US intelligence on Russian and Chinese interference may rival WMD fiasco that led to Iraq war, say experts
Two months before the presidential election, the US intelligence agencies are under increasing pressure from the Trump administration to provide only the information it wants to hear.
After installing loyalist John Ratcliffe at the pinnacle of the intelligence community, the administration is seeking to limit congressional oversight, and has removed a veteran official from a sensitive national security role in the justice department
Continue reading...US president Donald Trump told voters in North Carolina they should vote twice, once by mail and once in person, even though doing so would be illegal. Trump was asked whether he has confidence in the mail-in voting system before suggesting voters break the law as he cast further confusion over the process ahead of November's election. 'Let them send it [their mail-in ballot] in and let them go vote, and if their system’s as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote,' he said.'So that’s the way it is. And that’s what they should do'
Continue reading...
From me and Joan E Greve:
A Bay Area police officer has been charged with voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of a Black man in a Walmart store in April.
The district attorney in California’s Alameda county announced the charge against officer Jason Fletcher, 49, in the killing Steven Taylor, 33. Responding to a call about a possible shoplifter with a baseball bat at a Walmart, Fletcher fired first his taser and then his pistol at Taylor, killing him.
Lee Merritt, an attorney for Taylor’s family, said Taylor was going through a mental health crisis on Saturday afternoon, and that he has previously suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar depression. “He was shot after he had become completely helpless and no longer represented a threat,” Merritt told the Guardian on Monday.
Merritt said he wasn’t sure yet whether police shot Taylor with a Taser or bullet after he was already down, and that an autopsy was under way.
Related: 'Don't shoot him no more!' California police face backlash over killing of man in Walmart
Continue reading...Democratic candidate sought to put virus at heart of the campaign as rivals gave duelling speeches on Wednesday
Joe Biden attempted to regain the narrative in the US presidential election on Wednesday, telling Donald Trump to “get off Twitter” and focus on safely reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic.
Related: Covid cases could surge in battleground midwest during Labor Day holiday
Continue reading...Joe Biden has described school closures as a ‘national emergency’ as he sought to put the coronavirus pandemic back at the heart of the US election campaign, after two weeks of Trump seeking to capitalise on sporadic scenes of violence in cities to push a ‘law and order’ theme
Continue reading...US president blamed police discrimination on ‘bad apples’. Plus, US refuses to join coronavirus vaccine cooperation over WHO stance
Good morning. Trump blamed discriminatory policing on “bad apples”, and denied it was “systemic”, as he visited Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kenosha has been the site of daily anti-racism protests since police shot and paralysed Jacob Blake, an African American man, as he was getting into his vehicle with his three children inside.
Continue reading...As many as 75% of Biden voters worry that if Trump loses election he will refuse to concede defeat, triggering a constitutional crisis
Three in four supporters of Democratic challenger Joe Biden are worried about the prospect of Donald Trump rejecting the US presidential election result if it goes against him, an Opinium Research poll for the Guardian shows.
The survey underlined fears that the president will not accept the outcome of November’s race, triggering a constitutional crisis. Last week two congressional Democrats wrote to the Pentagon seeking assurance that the military would ensure an orderly transfer of power.
Continue reading...Internet Research Agency also hired real, unwitting freelance reporters in operation Facebook has removed
The Russian agency that interfered in the 2016 US election created a fake leftwing news publication, staffed it with fake editors with AI-generated photos and hired real freelance reporters as part of a fresh influence operation detected and removed by Facebook, the company said on Tuesday.
The latest operation by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) was still in its early stages when it was detected thanks to a tip from the FBI, according to Facebook’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher. The network had 13 accounts and two pages, with about 14,000 total followers.
Continue reading...What does Trump mean by claiming he’s the ‘law and order’ president and is this a new argument from him?
“I am your president of law and order,” Donald Trump declared in June, as federal agents violently cleared peaceful protesters from a park near the White House. Lately, Trump has simply tweeted “law and order” in all caps. But what is his strategy here – and will it work?
Related: Trump compares police shootings to golfing and defends teenager who shot protesters
Continue reading...Analysis: For the president, loyalty is paramount – those on his team will not be chastened, even for alleged murder
Donald Trump has the blind devotion of a rabid sports fan. His team can do no wrong. The opposition are liars and cheats.
So maybe no one was surprised on Monday when he appeared to defend an accused murderer.
Continue reading...
Joe Biden has responded to Trump’s refusal to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse:
In a statement, he said:
Tonight, the President declined to rebuke violence. He wouldn’t even repudiate one of his supporters who is charged with murder because of his attacks on others. He is too weak, too scared of the hatred he has stirred to put an end to it.
So once again, I urge the President to join me in saying that while peaceful protest is a right — a necessity — violence is wrong, period. No matter who does it, no matter what political affiliation they have. Period.
If Donald Trump can’t say that, then he is unfit to be President, and his preference for more violence — not less — is clear.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seeking a communications firm to “defeat despair and inspire hope,” bidding out a $250m contract, Politico reports.
Ahead of the elections, with 180,000 Americans dead from coronavirus, HHS wants a firm to help “deliver important public health and economic information the administration can defeat despair, inspire hope and achieve national recovery.”
Several weeks ago, the department sent out to a number of communications firms a “performance work statement,” which lays out what work will be expected of the winning firm. The document says that the vast majority of the money will be spent from now until January.
The document also lists the goals of the contract: “defeat despair and inspire hope, sharing best practices for businesses to operate in the new normal and instill confidence to return to work and restart the economy,” build a “coalition of spokespeople” around the country, provide important public health, therapeutic and vaccine information as the country reopens and give Americans information on the phases of reopening.
Continue reading...The president has shown a lifelong penchant for inflaming racist hatreds and fears – expect much more of this before November
Six months into the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump tweeted a rare statement of condolences, as the confirmed death toll in the US climbed past 183,000.
Related: Biden to accuse Trump of stoking violence in US after Portland clashes
Continue reading...In Forest county, Wisconsin – which backed Obama before Trump – voters voice doubts about both major candidates
Joe Biden has blown his chance to win over Kristen, to be found selling home-baked cakes and pies at a farmer’s market in Forest county, northern Wisconsin.
The 46-year-old was once a fan of Barack Obama, voting for him twice before switching her allegiance to Donald Trump four years ago. Kristen, who doesn’t want her last name used, was minded to back Trump again in November but was holding off to see who Biden chose as his vice-presidential running mate.
Continue reading...The Democratic and Republican national conventions offered two radically different diagnoses of the problems confronting America
One version told of a president who is callous and cruel. “My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” said Kristin Urquiza, whose father voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and died from Covid-19 in June. “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump – and for that he paid with his life.”
The other spoke of a president blessed with compassion. Kayleigh McEnany recalled taking a phone call as she recovered from a preventative mastectomy. “It was President Trump, calling to check on me,” she said. “I was blown away. Here was the leader of the free world caring about me.”
Continue reading...Film-maker says enthusiasm for president in swing states is ‘off the charts’ and urges everyone to commit to getting 100 people to vote
The documentary film-maker Michael Moore has warned that Donald Trump appears to have such momentum in some battleground states that liberals risk a repeat of 2016 when so many wrote off Trump only to see him grab the White House.
“Sorry to have to provide the reality check again,” he said.
Continue reading...