Biden has pushed back on those attacks, saying repeatedly that he does not condone looting and has no tolerance for violence against police. He also expressed outrage at the killing of Walter Wallace Jr., condemning in strong terms “another Black life in America lost.” Trump on Wednesday called the shooting a “terrible event” and said the federal government is looking into it. Philadelphia was under a curfew Wednesday night.
Biden’s remarks highlight the fragile balance he is trying to strike as he aims to secure victory in Pennsylvania, an important state Trump won four years ago but where he now trails Biden narrowly, polls show.
To secure victory, Biden is counting on strong support from the populous suburbs around Philadelphia. Those areas have swung sharply Democratic since 2016, but Trump believes he can win back some of his supporters with his law-and-order message.
“We are the swingiest of states,” said the Rev. Mark Tyler, a Biden supporter who has been out in Philadelphia amid the protests this week and worries the looting will overshadow Wallace’s death. “A lot of people are really feeling afraid that the narrative that comes out is one that reinforces the one that Trump has used all along in the suburbs.”
But Biden also needs high turnout among African Americans and other supporters in the city, where voters tend to be more liberal. And the former vice president’s emphasis on violent protesters has frustrated some, who say he should focus less on looting and more on racial justice.
“I think it could have been stronger,” said Helen Gym, a Democratic at-large member of the Philadelphia City Council, of Biden’s response.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, a close Biden ally, found a silver lining in what some saw as timidity on Biden’s part: “Even if he did not say all that we wanted, he was a hundred percent better than President Trump.”
Public polls taken after turmoil this summer but before the events in Philadelphia found swing-state voters trusting Biden more than Trump to deal with racism and, more narrowly, with maintaining “law and order,” showing the risks he assumed by leaning into the situation in Philadelphia.
Trump has frequently fanned racial divisions and, in June, authorities fired flash-bang shells, gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of peaceful protesters near the White House so the president could stage a photo op in front of a church.
Trump’s attacks on political adversaries are often followed by threats to their safety. Trump talks about Biden being assassinated weeks into his presidency. “Joe’s shot; Kamala, you ready?."
Today, in Lansing, Michigan, Trump warned about the elevation of Harris to the presidency, saying that “Joe’s shot; Kamala, you ready?... She makes Bernie Sanders look like a serious conservative.” Trump seems to be using the term “shot” as the old slang word for “worn out,” but there is no doubt he understands the dual meaning in that word, and is warning that Harris, should she be required to succeed Biden, will be a left-wing radical.
“The CIA’s most endangered employee for much of the past year was not an operative on a mission abroad, but an analyst who faced a torrent of threats after filing a whistleblower report that led to the impeachment of Trump,” Greg Miller and Isaac Stanley-Becker report. “The analyst spent months living in no-frills hotels under surveillance by CIA security, current and former U.S. officials said. He was driven to work by armed officers in an unmarked sedan. On the few occasions he was allowed to reenter his home to retrieve belongings, a security team had to sweep the apartment first to make sure it was safe. The measures were imposed by the CIA’s Security Protective Service, which monitored thousands of threats across social media and Internet chat rooms. Over time, a pattern emerged: Violent messages surged each time the analyst was targeted in tweets or public remarks by the president. …
“In recent weeks, the danger has become more alarming and visible. The FBI disrupted an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). Days later, Anthony S. Fauci, the U.S. immunologist leading the response to the coronavirus pandemic, revealed in an interview on ‘60 Minutes’ that he requires near-constant security because of threats against him and his family. … Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who presented the impeachment case against Trump in the Senate, faced so many threats during that trial that he required round-the-clock security …
“Among the most frequent targets is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), one of four female minority members Trump declared should ‘go back’ to their countries last year, even though all four are U.S. citizens, and three — including Ocasio-Cortez — were born in this country. … Lauren Hitt, communications director for Ocasio-Cortez, said that the congresswoman’s office routinely fields between two and eight ‘serious threats’ each week, meaning communications that mention violence. These are only the most worrisome messages among dozens more that come in each week that are deemed merely ‘harassing’ because they don’t mention physical harm to the congresswoman.”
- CBS hired a 24-hour security detail for Lesley Stahl after she received death threats following her interview with Trump. TMZ reports that a death threat reported to the LAPD last Thursday was directed toward her and her family.
- A Michigan judge halted a directive by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) banning the open carry of guns at polling locations on Election Day. The state’s attorney general promised to appeal. (Detroit News)
- Beverly Hills business owners have been told to board up their windows, and Rodeo Drive will be shut down ahead of election night. Authorities fear there might be mass protests and unrest if Trump wins. (Los Angeles Times)
The Biden campaign has announced that it will dispatch vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris to campaign in Texas on Friday, suggesting that it thinks Texas is in play. Since the 2016 election, Texas has gained at least 2 million emigrants from other states, many of them Democrats. About 800,000 Latinx Americans have turned 18. More than 3 million Texans have registered to vote for the first time. Democrats are pouring money into the state, money the strapped Trump campaign can’t match.
If the Biden campaign looks strong, news looks less cheery on the Republican side.
To launch the final week of the campaign, last night the president held a rally at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska, in near-freezing temperatures. The campaign bussed attendees to the site from parking lots about three miles away, but when the rally was over and Trump had headed off on Air Force One, the buses could not navigate the crowded road and rally-goers were stranded. By the time the last people were finally rescued, 30 people needed medical attention.
Critics said this negligence showed how little Trump values his supporters but, rather than contradict that impression, the campaign’s national press secretary Hogan Gidley made it worse. This morning, CNN host Alisyn Camerota asked him about the vice president’s campaign events during the pandemic. She asked, “[A]re you at all concerned given that there has been an outbreak in the vice president’s orbit of people around him and that there is currently an outbreak -- I mean, hospitals in Wisconsin are near capacity…. [D]oes that give you any pause or the vice president any pause about going there and holding a big rally?” Gidley responded “No, it doesn't. The vice president has the best doctors in the world around him, they've obviously contact-traced and have come to the conclusion it’s fine for him to be out on the campaign trail.”
Ouch.
Today coronavirus continued to spike around the country as we approach 9 million coronavirus cases. More than 20 states have record levels of infection. Today the nation reported 81,181 new cases and 1,016 deaths.
The rising numbers of infections, and how that will delay an economic recovery, drove the stock market down sharply today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 943.24 points, or 3.4%, its worst drop since June.
Since March, attorneys have filed more than 300 election cases in state and federal courts. Most of the lawsuits have to do with mail-in voting, made imperative this year by the pandemic. Republicans are trying to depress voting by making it harder to vote; Democrats are trying to increase voting by making it easier. Today a factual error in a Supreme Court opinion upholding the Republican effort embarrassed one of Trump’s Supreme Court justices, Brett Kavanaugh.
On Monday, five Supreme Court justices—all appointed by Republicans—backed a request from Wisconsin Republicans to throw out ballots postmarked by November 3 but received up to six days later. In his explanation of why he was siding with the Republicans, Kavanaugh said that state legislatures should be the ones to decide on voting rules. He specifically noted Vermont as a state that has “decided not to make changes to their ordinary election rules, including to the election-day deadline for receipt of absentee ballots.” In fact, Vermont did change its rules, making two major changes, and today Vermont’s Secretary of State Jim Condos formally requested that Kavanaugh’s opinion be corrected.
Meanwhile, with no verification and dubious origins, the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop is dying, and likely will have little of the impact for which Trump was clearly hoping. The president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani is still trying to push the story, but with little luck. He blew up when a host on the Fox Business Network suggested the Hunter Biden laptop story was unverified. Tucker Carlson tonight claimed that he had “real, authentic and damning” new Hunter Biden documents, but a producer shipped them to Carlson’s home—apparently without making copies of them-- and they mysteriously disappeared.
News services today reported that Russians are secretly developing illegal chemical weapons. If true, this puts pressure on Trump to respond. So far, he has resisted pushing back on Putin’s treaty violations, including the recent poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, although Britain and the European Union acted.
Today, Miles Taylor, former chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, revealed that he was the person who published critiques of Trump under the pen name “Anonymous.” In 2018, Taylor wrote an op-ed in the New York Times claiming that a number of people inside the administration were working hard to keep Trump from destroying the country. In 2019, he wrote a book he called “a character study,” warning that many of the officials at the highest levels of the government were alarmed by Trump’s instability.
In a piece published today on Medium, Taylor noted that an unprecedented number of former officials of the Trump administration are speaking out against the president, and he urged ordinary Americans to join the chorus. Taylor warned that, if he is reelected, “Trump unbound will mean a nation undone — a continued downward slide into social acrimony, with the United States fading into the background of a world stage it once commanded, to say nothing of the damage to our democratic institutions.”
The candidates have six more days to make their final pitch to voters.
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Notes:
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/25/kamala-harris-texas-campaign/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/28/trump-omaha-supporters-stuck-cold/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/27/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/vermont-correction-kavanaugh-concurrence
https://milestaylor.medium.com/a-statement-a13bc5173ee9
https://www.lawfareblog.com/mail-voting-litigation-during-pandemic-introduction
https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-says-he-had-authentic-damning-new-hunter-biden-documents-it-got-lost-mail-1543084https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/28/us
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/28/politics/hogan-gidley-trump-campaign-coronavirus-covid-19/index.html
Are jeering sign-wavers and caravans of honking trucks ‘voter intimidation’ or ‘free speech’?
“Some of the loud displays, often from supporters of Trump and particularly frustrating to Democrats, have prompted local law enforcement agencies to station officers near polling places to keep the peace. In some locations, they have sparked allegations of voter intimidation and fears of tinderbox confrontations,” Abigail Hauslohner reports. “The potential for such violence and claims of voter intimidation led sheriff’s departments in Laredo, Tex., and Pinellas County, Fla., last week to station deputies outside early-voting stations. In Laredo, the move came after a group of Trump supporters was accused of surrounding and harassing Democratic Party volunteers in a parking lot near a voting precinct. … While some of the vocal activity outside voting precincts might trot right up to the line of illegal intimidation, most of it isn’t actually violating the law, law enforcement officials and experts say.”