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Post by Webster on Aug 16, 2023 17:17:10 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden says the US is investing more than $50bn to build up resilience to the impacts of climate change. He vows to cut carbon pollution by half by 2030. The Inflation Reduction Act is helping families save thousands of dollars in energy bills every year, he says. Consumers will save an estimated $27bn in electric bills between now and 2030, he says. -- When I say climate means jobs, I mean good paying union jobs.
The US has faced some tough times in recent years, Biden says. Despite this, he says the economy is stronger and better than any other industrial nation in the world right now. He accuses Republicans of having repeatedly tried to repeal key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, and of taking credit for private investments and the jobs coming into their states. “That’s OK,” he says. “I’m proud of the historic law my administration passed, but it’s not about me. It’s about you.” -- Bidenomics is just another way of saying restore the American dream.
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Post by Webster on Aug 17, 2023 17:01:29 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump does not plan to take part in next week’s Republican presidential primary debate and has instead proposed counterprogramming to the event, according to a CNN report. Citing sources, the report says Trump has not done any prep for the debate, which will take place on 23 August in Milwaukee. The former president has been throwing out different ideas for his own counterprogramming during the debate, including sitting down with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and calling into the different cable news shows, it says. Trump has privately and publicly floated skipping either one or both of the first two GOP primary debates, pointing to his commanding lead in polls.
Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is planning an “aggressive” media blitz to coincide with the first Republican primary presidential debate next week, according to the Hill. The Biden campaign and the Democratic national committee (DNC) plan to run a paid media campaign, according to a campaign official, which will include a billboard campaign across Milwaukee, the site of the GOP debate, including three standing billboards and a billboard truck that will circle the debate venue. Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond and DNC chair Jaime Harrison will host a press conference in a prepared rebuttal to the debate, the official said, and other officials will be on the ground in Milwaukee to meet with local leaders and key constituencies. The campaign will also have “an aggressive war room run jointly by the Biden-Harris campaign and the DNC” that will coordinate responses to Republican candidates’ comments to hold them “accountable for the extreme MAGA views”, according to the report.
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Post by Webster on Aug 21, 2023 12:18:48 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump’s team has two overarching priorities for the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday, according to several sources briefed on the situation: to starve the other Republican presidential candidates of attention, and to publicly humiliate Fox News, which is hosting the event with the RNC, because he has been displeased with some of its recent coverage. The former president has told allies he intends to shun the event and that his sit-down interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which he taped in recent days, could be released around the same time. Trump had also considered swaggering into the debate at the last minute – without prior warning – betting that would almost certainly cause the news coverage to be about his surprise visit and not the other candidates’ answers. But he has since soured on that option, people briefed on the matter said. The Trump team had explored whether Trump could do the ultimate counter-programming by scheduling his surrender to authorities, after the Fulton county district attorney charged him with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, to take place at the same time. But even though the political team had pushed for him to be booked at the Fulton county jail on Wednesday, his legal team has been opposed. Trump’s lawyers thought Thursday was a more realistic option and intend to finalize logistics with the district attorney’s office on Monday, the people said.
Offering “free advice” to his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, the former Texas congressman Will Hurd said: If Donald Trump is leading in the polls, and he’s your opponent, then kissing his butt is not going to help you win. Hurd has not qualified to debate in Milwaukee but he is one of the few candidates prepared to attack Donald Trump in strong terms, not least over scheduled trials that include civil cases over defamation and a rape allegation and investigations of his business affairs. On Sunday, Hurd told the MSNBC host Jenn Psaki: “Things are improving and changing. -- Had a great time in Des Moines [Iowa] yesterday or this week at the Iowa state fair. And what people want is someone who’s willing to be honest. What people want is folks that are not afraid of Donald Trump and who are going to articulate a vision for a future and talk about the issues of the day that are impacting them, and not just focusing on Donald Trump’s legal baggage.Hurd was recently booed in Iowa but he said people in the first state to vote also told him “thank you for being honest”. He said: Here’s what we’re learning. There’s a good chunk of people that are never going to vote for Donald Trump, and there’s folks that like Donald Trump, voted for him twice, still like him as a person, and don’t think he has a chance in a rematch against Joe Biden.Hurd said that showed Trump was “afraid to go on the debate stage and answer for being a proven loser. The last time he won was in 2016. He doesn’t want to have to defend his poor record, he doesn’t want to have to defend all of these issues he’s dealing with. These legal issues are self-inflicted wounds. -- And that’s what I’m looking forward to talking about: not only his problems but articulating what the GOP needs to be doing, so we prevent a trend that has been happening for the last 20 years. And that’s losing the general election popular vote.
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Post by Webster on Aug 21, 2023 12:23:46 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump should drop out of 2024 presidential race, says Republican senator Bill CassidyDonald Trump should drop out of the 2024 race for the White House because polling shows the former US president trailing Joe Biden as he grapples with more than 90 pending criminal charges, according to Republican US senator Bill Cassidy. Cassidy’s comments to State of the Union host Kasie Hunt were not the first time he has denounced Trump. About two months earlier, he went on CNN and predicted that Trump would lose if his party nominated him to run for the Oval Office again, citing the poor performance of his endorsed candidates during the 2022 midterms. Cassidy said of his fellow Republican and the ex-president during CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday: Obviously, that’s up to him … but he will lose to Joe Biden, if you look at the current polls.The Louisiana senator added that it would do their party no good if Trump “ends up getting the nomination but cannot win a general [election]” against the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden. Alluding to a Republican presidential candidates’ debate scheduled Wednesday in Milwaukee that Trump intends to skip, Cassidy said: “I want one of them to win.” But he passed on an opportunity to single out any of the expected debate participants as someone he supported.
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Post by Webster on Aug 21, 2023 12:27:07 GMT -5
(The Guardian) It is unclear if Donald Trump plans to skip all the debates for the Republican primaries, or just the first one. A second debate is scheduled for 27 September at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California, to be aired on Fox Business. A Trump adviser told CNN that the former president could still decide to participate in a later primary debate, despite his Truth Social post on Sunday. Trump has told a number of allies that he does not want to debate at the Reagan library. Though the library has hosted GOP presidential debates before, including a 2015 debate that Trump participated in, the former president complained that Fred Ryan, the publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, is the chairman of the foundation’s board of trustees.
Donald Trump continues to hold a dominant lead over the rest of the GOP field in Iowa, the site of the nation’s first presidential caucuses, with 23% points ahead of his closest competitor, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, according to a new poll. The survey by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom of likely Republican caucus-goers was conducted before and after Trump’s latest indictment in Georgia, and shows the former president’s lead over DeSantis increased after his latest charges. In the poll, 42% of likely Republican caucusgoers say Trump is their first choice out of 14 GOP presidential candidates, compared to 19% for DeSantis. In third place is South Carolina senator Tim Scott, at 9%. Trump’s early advantage in the first nominating contest is the largest Republican caucus lead recorded by the poll since the 2000 contest won by George W Bush. The Iowa Republican caucus is set for 15 January 2024.
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Post by Webster on Aug 21, 2023 12:28:23 GMT -5
(The Guardian) The latest Iowa poll offered some glimmers of hope for Donald Trump’s rivals, with a majority of likely Republican caucus-goers saying that they have not made a final decision on who they will vote for. The survey showed 52% said their minds were not made up and that they could be persuaded to support another candidate. The contest may be “closer than it may first seem”, said prominent pollster J Ann Selzer, who conducted the poll. Some 63% of likely Republican caucus-goers said they support Trump as their first or second choice in the caucuses, compared to 61% who said the same for the former president’s closest rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Selzer said the other Republican candidates have the opportunity to gain on Trump and turn people who are actively considering them into firm supporters, but “there’s a lot of work to be done”.
Former vice-president Mike Pence refused to say if Donald Trump should be barred from returning to the White House if he is convicted on any of 91 criminal charges against him. “I think that he’s to be left to the American people,” Pence told ABC’s This Week, on Sunday. -- Let’s have the former president have his day in court. Let’s maintain a presumption of innocence.Trump faces charges concerning federal and state election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments to a porn star. He also faces civil cases involving defamation, alleged rape and his business affairs, contributing to a schedule of trials in the election year. Pence and other qualifiers for the first debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday – a contest Trump will skip for an interview with Tucker Carlson – have backed a Republican National Committee pledge requiring support for the nominee.
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Post by Webster on Aug 21, 2023 12:33:13 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Aug 21, 2023 12:38:20 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, said No Labels would “very likely” launch a third-party “alternative” if Donald Trump and Joe Biden are the nominees for their parties in the 2024 presidential election. “f Trump and Biden are the nominees, it’s very likely that No Labels will get access to the ballot and offer an alternative,” Hogan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. -- If most of the voters don’t want A or B, we have an obligation to give them C, I mean, for the good of the country.An “overwhelming majority” of Americans are “completely fed up with politics”, said Hogan, who serves as the national co-chairman of No Labels. -- They think Washington is broken. And so, even though this normally is not something that we consider and talk about seriously because it hasn’t happened in the past, this is something that could happen.
Donald Trump Jr confirmed he will travel to Wisconsin to attend the first Republican presidential primary debate, even though his father, Donald Trump, said he will not be there. The Trump campaign told the Hill that Trump Jr will be in Milwaukee as a “surrogate” in support of his father’s reelection bid.
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Post by Webster on Aug 21, 2023 19:01:51 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump plans unprecedented harsh restrictions on immigration if he is elected in 2024 - reportDonald Trump plans to introduce sweeping new restrictions on immigration and the border if he wins the 2024 presidential election, according to a report. During his tenancy in the White House, Trump built part of a border wall, established strict wealth and health tests for prospective immigrants, and limited asylum. But the former president’s plan would go much further, potentially making it tougher for millions of foreigners to enter or stay in the US, Axios writes. Under Trump’s plans, ideological screening would be ramped up for people legally applying to come into the country, the report says. US law has blocked communists from entering for decades, but it has rarely been enforced, and Trump wants to enforce the law to reject applicants who are deemed “Marxists”, Axios says. Trump would also expand his “Muslim ban” idea to block more people from certain countries from entering the US, according to the report. Under a new Trump administration, the US Coast Guard and Navy would be sent to form a blockade in the waters off the US and Latin America to stop drug-smuggling boats, it says. He will also designate drug cartels as “unlawful enemy combatants” to allow the US military to target them in Mexico, it says, and extend the floating barriers along the Rio Grande. The former president intends to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrations, according to the report. He would also allegedly seek to complete his border wall. Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Axios: For those passionate about securing our immigration system …… the first 100 days of the Trump administration will be pure bliss – followed by another four years of the most hard-hitting action conceivable.
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Post by Webster on Aug 22, 2023 16:02:44 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Most Iowa Republican caucus-goers believe Trump won 2020 election – pollThe majority of likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers said they believe Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, according to a new poll. The NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll found that 51% of likely caucus-goers said they believe Trump’s claims that he won in 2020, despite no evidence of widespread election fraud, while 41% said they don’t, and 8% said they are not sure. The poll included both Republican and independent voters. Of those who said they believed Trump’s claims were a majority of self-identified Republicans (60%), those making less than $70,000 a year (69%), evangelicals (62%) and those without college degrees (59%), the poll showed. Of those who listed Trump as their first-choice candidate, 83% said they believe he won the 2020 election. Two-thirds of respondents, or 65%, said Trump has not committed serious crimes, despite him being indicted four times over the past year.
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Post by Webster on Aug 23, 2023 19:54:36 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump to discuss debate skipping, indictments and 'civil war' in Tucker Carlson interviewDonald Trump is leading the Republican primary field, but rather than participate in tonight’s debate, he sat for an interview with Tucker Carlson – a conservative commentator whose views are often aligned with the former president’s. Expect their interview, which airs on Twitter (also known as X) at 8.55pm ET, five minutes before the debate starts, to be a particularly friendly encounter. Carlson, who was booted from his primetime spot on Fox News earlier this year, has released a teaser that indicates he asked Trump about everything from his legal troubles to the death of Jeffrey Epstein: Carlson is getting back on his feet after Fox showed him the door without warning in April, and has opted to broadcast the interview on Twitter/X, which, since billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase last year, has become an increasingly friendly platform for the right. In the below video, Carlson says Trump approached him about doing the interview, seeking “a far larger audience than he’d receive on cable news” – which sure sounds like a dig at his former employer.
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Post by Webster on Aug 23, 2023 19:54:59 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Aug 23, 2023 20:09:11 GMT -5
(The Guardian) The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson launched his interview with Donald Trump five minutes before the first Republican primary debate was to begin in Milwaukee in an attempt to sabotage both the former president’s rivals in the 2024 election and their host, Carlson’s former employer, Fox News. Carlson opened the 46 minute with a question about why Trump wasn’t at the Milwaukee debate. “You see the polls that have come out and I’m leading by 50 and 60 points and some of them are at one and zero and two. And I’m saying do I sit there for an hour or two hours or whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people who shouldn’t even be running for president?” he said. “I just felt it would be more appropriate not to do the debate.” It was perhaps remarkable that the conversation was taking place at all. Just five months ago it was revealed that Carlson said of Trump in a text message: “I hate him passionately.” “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” The then Fox News anchor said in a message to a colleague in early January 2021 as the former president continued a futile battle to remain in office. “I truly can’t wait.” But the two men set aside their differences to jointly take on their respective enemies – Fox and the rest of the Republican primary field.
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Post by Webster on Aug 23, 2023 21:09:15 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump has told Tucker Carlson that he is concerned his opponents will try to kill him in a rambling interview packed with conspiracy theories from whether Jeffrey Epstein was murdered to accusations that federal agencies are limiting the amount of water in washing machines. Carlson asked Trump whether he was concerned that “the left”, after impeaching and then indicting him, would try and kill him. “They’re savage animals. They are people that are sick, really sick,” said Trump. “You have great people that are Democrats. Most of the people in our country are fantastic. And I’m representing everybody … But I’ve seen what they do.” Trump took aim at his former attorney general Bill Barr. Carlson suggested to Trump that Barr had covered up the murder of the billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a New York jail. The former president didn’t bite, saying he thought Epstein had probably killed himself but he took the opportunity to take a shot at Barr, accusing him of failing to properly investigate Trump’s false allegations that he 2020 election was rigged. “Barr became so petrified, so frightened of being impeached,” he said. “They play a much rougher game, the left, the lunatics, and they were going to impeach Bill Barr and he was petrified.”
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Post by Webster on Aug 23, 2023 21:35:20 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump wrapped up his interview with Tucker Carlson by warning of the threat of conflict in the US after saying that he expects the Democrats to steal the 2024 election from him. The former president also described the crowd that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 as full of “love and unity” while appearing to justify the violence as the result of legitimate grievance. Asked by Carlson if he thinks the country is headed to “civl war” and “open conflict”, Trump said he didn’t know but then added: “I can say this. There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen. There’s a level of hatred, that I’ve never seen and that’s probably a bad combination.” Carlson responded: “That is a bad combination”. The remarks came after Trump defended the crowd that gathered to hear him speak on January 6. Trump suggested that he told the protestors to behave “peacefully and patriotically” but “a very small group” went to the Capitol. “People in that crowd said it was the most beautiful day they’ve ever experienced. There was love in that crowd, and unity. I have never seen such spirit and such passion and such love. And I’ve also never seen simultaneously, and from the same people, such hatred of what they’ve done to our country,” he said.
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