In this edition: Texas Democrats try a virtual convention, the politics of “law and order” take an unexpected turn and a limousine drives from Italy into Colorado’s Senate race.
Former HUD secretary Julián Castro (left) walks the floor of the Texas Democratic Party convention, which was held virtually from a studio in a Central Texas hotel. (David Weigel/The Washington Post)
GEORGETOWN, Tex. — The disembodied voice of Joe Biden played softly through a monitor to a nearly empty room.
“I wish we were all together this year under different circumstances,” Biden said in a recorded address to Texas Democrats. “I wish I was with you and I’m anxious to campaign in person.”
But nobody can campaign in person right now. So over a weekend in a suburb of Austin, Texas’s Democratic Party held a largely virtual political convention, one that national Democrats will study for clues of how they might run their convention in Milwaukee. A skeleton crew of staffers and technicians held a virtual delegate selection, a mix of virtual and in-person events and a fundraiser, much of it in a few spare rooms near a hotel pool.
“For the national party, this probably would be more effective,” said Gilbert Hinojosa, chairman of Texas’s Democratic Party, after the event wrapped on Saturday. “Yeah, [traditionally] there’s 15,000, 20,000 people in a convention hall, but there’s millions more people watching at home. If it’s done well, like this convention, it could project the image of a progressive party that’s serving people with great leadership.”
The pandemic has roiled both Democrats’ and Republicans’ plans for standard national conventions, initially scheduled to be held in arenas in Milwaukee and Charlotte. Republicans, committed to holding at least some sort of mass rally, bolted Charlotte after the city’s Democratic mayor, and North Carolina’s Democratic governor, demanded that they follow local ordinances and scale it down. The president’s party is now scrambling to find another site that will meet their demands.
Democrats have taken a different approach. They have not threatened to leave Wisconsin, a state that Hillary Clinton was criticized for not visiting in person in the months before the 2016 election. Instead, they delayed the convention’s date by a month, from mid-July to mid-August, and tweaked party rules to allow virtual meetings to hammer out the convention’s work.
Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez has already begun to describe the possibility of scaled-back event as a plus, a contrast between a responsible party and one moving heaven and earth to have a MAGA rally. “We’re going to continue to follow the science,” Perez told reporters on a Friday call-in to the convention. “Joe Biden doesn’t have the ego gratification need to have tens of thousands of people fawning over him.”
Those remarks were broadcast in a media room that contained just one staffer for most of Friday and Saturday, sitting behind a laptop to manage calls from remote guests and questions from remote reporters. The handful of guests who gave live remarks had the option to come to that room, sit behind a laptop and answer questions on Zoom — similar to the party’s caucuses, which had been scaled back to online meetings that candidates could call into, instead of visiting them in person.
The rest of the in-person convention was relegated to a ballroom that had been transformed into three studios. In one, two party officials sat behind a “news desk” they’d found for $200 on Craigslist, and introduced each segment, taped or live. Behind them, a space was filled with socially-distanced chairs, where a few panels took place.
To the right of that, a lectern was set up for speeches by the in-person guests. Backstage, a technical crew wiped down microphones, lecterns and chairs as soon as speakers were finished with them. To anyone watching, it looked just like an ordinary convention, minus the chants and crowd energy.
“It’s definitely a different experience,” said Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, who arrived at the convention with a George Floyd face mask he’d picked up at a barbershop. “You don’t end up taking as much time, because there’s no applause.”
Texas Democrats had thrown this together in a few weeks. Plan A was to hold the convention in San Antonio’s convention center, which could fit 12,000 delegates and hundreds of reporters and speakers. That was scrapped after Bexar County introduced social distancing rules. Plan B was a virtual convention in Austin, where the Renaissance hotel could meet their more limited needs. That was working, for a while, until the county extended its pandemic rules into June, making even a socially-distanced event impossible.
“There was even a week where I was planning an in-person and an online convention at the same time,” said Hannah Roe Beck, the convention’s director. Local Republicans were plowing ahead with their own convention in person, which to Roe Beck sounded absurd: “I think it’s incredibly irresponsible, and I’m not particularly concerned with how it looks.”
The operation moved to Georgetown for a simple reason: Suburban Williamson County had looser stay-at-home orders than liberal Travis County. None of the in-person guests required special security, something that wouldn’t be true of a Democratic National Convention.
Velvet ropes at a few entrances closed off the area from the wedding guests who decisively outnumbered the nine party staffers and dozen technical crew members. (A typical convention might have three times as many technicians, and all of the party’s 60-plus staff.) When the party’s traditional tech contractor laid off some of its staff, Texas Democrats gave one of them a contract to run it all.
The result was almost seamless. Glitches came from the guests, not the party — a guest calling in a little late, a speaker giving them a raw video that included a few seconds of her trying to pronounce a colleague’s name. None it would have stood out at a traditional, loud, normal convention.
But it wasn’t a normal convention, and became, intentionally, more of a telethon. In their branded masks — “Texas is the BIGGEST battleground state” — staffers and guests urged supporters to give money, at least $38, one for each of the state’s electoral votes. It worked: They raised more than $1 million over the course of the week, the biggest digital haul ever for a state Democratic Party.
That wasn’t without a cost. The party saved at least $500,000, by its estimate, by scaling back from an in-person convention. But it lost “several hundred thousand dollars” in corporate donations, according to Hinojosa. The DNC would lose more it if were forced to scale back the events in Milwaukee.
“They weren’t sure how it was going to work, so it was hard to get corporate sponsors for this convention,” Hinojosa said. “But now that they’ve seen what we produced, I think that if we ever are in this situation again, maybe it’s going to be easier to raise money. We got so many people watching it online.”
God closes a camera lens and opens up a Zoom room.
On the trail
GEORGETOWN, Tex. — One week ago, as looting followed some protests over the killing of George Floyd, a clear narrative was ready to go. President Trump would run as a “law and order” candidate. Voters would cheer for the National Guard and military forces to control the streets. Prison and criminal justice reform, something the Trump campaign wastouting as recently as mid-May, would go out of vogue, with Democrats listening to the concerns of an increasingly suburban base.
On Sunday, the President took a page from that playbook.“Sleepy Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats want to ‘DEFUND THE POLICE,’ ” the president tweeted on Sunday morning. “I want great and well paid LAW ENFORCEMENT. I want LAW & ORDER!”
But the politics on the ground are much more complicated than Trump’s missive would suggest. Over the past few days, support for police forces has declined, while a majority of voters say they agree with protesters. At the same time, the slogan “defund the police” has become so popular with activists that it was literally painted on Washington’s 16th Street, not far from the stretch of road where the city had approved a “Black Lives Matter” mural. When the mayor of Minneapolis declined to support “defunding” the police, he was heckled out of a rally in his own city.
Taken together, it puts Democrats in a tricky position. The party is trying to align itself with the Black Lives Matter movement, but also moving slower than protesters would like.
After a criminal justice-focused speech at the Texas Democratic convention this weekend, Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas scoffed at the idea that his party could be accused of wanting to abolish police forces. “The prospect of Trump lying about something else is par for the course,” Castro said. “Look, you don’t have people in Congress calling for no police force. Right? Or bringing police budgets down to zero. You have to do things like qualified immunity, and demilitarize police on the local level. You’ve got to reform these collective bargaining agreements.”
With the exception of Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents Minneapolis, Castro’s fellow congressional Democrats have avoided the defund-the-police thicket. There is bipartisan legislation already introduced to scale back qualified immunity, which protects law enforcement from being sued for most actions in the line of duty. In the coming week, the party will roll out the Justice in Policing Act, which would make some police behavior illegal (such as “no-knock warrants” and chokeholds) and give the federal government more power to investigate and prosecute police departments.
Some of that could be trickier than the “defund the police” slogan; the arguments over it resemble the fights about the slogan “abolish ICE” in 2018, which didn’t drag down swing-seat Democrats because they rejected it. Police unions have been widely critical of Democrats, and endorsements by local and national unions have praised the president for undoing the police reforms backed by Barack Obama at the end of his presidency.
The Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed Trump in 2016, is so supportive of his presidency now that it condemned impeachment, comparing him to “law enforcement officers… often convicted in the media.” While the FOP backed Republicans in the past, it has not backed a president who openly told police “don’t be too nice,” and it has not had to deal with multiple, daily, viral videos that make police look like aggressors in standoffs with protesters.
That’s the environment Democrats are operating in now, where activists see reasons to scrap police departments and start over, but the party and its nominee favor reforms of the current system. Even if the party won’t go nearly as far as protesters demand, it’s going to come into conflict with police unions with loud megaphones, who are ready to label any reform as “anti-cop.”
“You have to have some sort of police in society to do very basic types of work,” said Texas state Rep. Gene Wu (D). “But we don’t have to have cops in body armor and tanks everywhere. That’s not necessary. I know there’s a lot of cops who dress up for normal work in full tactical gear. Dude! Why are you all tac’d out for just patrolling the street?”
In Texas, where Republican weakness in the suburbs has made Democrats competitive for the first time in decades, there has been little hesitation about criticizing the president’s “law and order” responses, from threatening to use military support to quell protests to his support for letting police departments obtain military gear.
“This isn’t China, with how they’re dealing with Hong Kong protesters,” MJ Hegar, an Air Force veteran who’s leading in the runoff for the party’s Senate nomination. “I am against the militarization of our police force. I am against any politician who would just swallow down their conscience and spew self-preservation, political party allegiance.”
Ad watch
Marjorie Greene, “Antifa.”The safely Republican 14th District of Georgia is open this year, and Greene has spent the most of anyone running, much of it ($700,000) from her own pocket. She has positioned herself as a tireless culture warrior, and this spot exemplifies that, highlighting donations to bail funds by celebrities and Joe Biden campaign staffers to warn that the left is supporting domestic terrorism. “I have a message for antifa terrorists: Stay the hell out of northwest Georgia,” she says, cradling a rifle.
Bob Hamilton, “Guns.” Toting and shooting guns has been a theme in Republican advertising for years, both by front-running candidates and by insurgents who are trying to get buzz. Hamilton, one of the lesser-known candidates in Kansas’s crowded Senate primary, is in the second camp. “The Second Amendment is not an option, it’s a right,” he says. “And if the liberal gun-grabbers want to take away my semiautomatic, I have one message for them.”
America First, “Joe Biden on Energy Jobs.”At one of the first Democratic debates, in July 2019, Biden and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee were asked about their energy plans, and Biden said he’d “end subsidies for coal or any other fossil fuel.” CNN’s Dana Bash followed up by asking whether there’d be “any place for fossil fuels” in his administration, and Biden said he’d “make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those.” The framing of the question and Biden’s first few words of response made it sound like he would literally end the use of fossil fuels, something he doesn’t support. But this Pennsylvania-focused ad cuts the quote at “eliminated,” and repeats it twice, taking advantage of the confusion to insist Biden would kill “600,000 jobs” — more than 10 percent of the jobs available in the state. Biden has had a few tongue-tied moments like this, and they’re starting to show up in ads.
The Lincoln Project, “Leadership.”The biggest growth industry in 2020 advertising is Republican anti-Trump spots. The Lincoln Project produced two in 24 hours, and this one focuses on the letter Dwight Eisenhower prepared in case the D-Day operation failed. “Great leaders prepare for every eventuality,” a narrator says, before contrasting that with the president rejecting responsibility for the downsizing of the pandemic response team.
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Like every national poll this year, Marist’s found a lead for Joe Biden outside the margin of error — 7 points. But he gets there with lower support from nonwhite voters than Hillary Clinton enjoyed in polls around this time in 2016, and lower than she won on Election Day. Clinton won the black vote by 81 points and won among Latinos by 38 points; Biden’s leads, respectively, are 79 points and 24 points. So, what explains the lead? Trump won the white vote by 20 points in 2016, and here, he has the thinnest Republican advantage with white voters since 1996, when Bob Dole carried the demographic by just 3 points. Recovering some of the white vote without losing those gains with nonwhite voters would erase Biden’s lead; holding onto white voters while winning back some of Clinton’s nonwhite support would push Biden toward a landslide.
Michigan’s most famous pollster had a very rough 2016, first missing Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the primary, then releasing a pre-election poll that missed Trump’s last-minute surge. But that poll, which EPIC-MRA cautioned about at the time, is a study in how odd the 2016 election really was: Clinton held just 42 percent of the vote in November 2016, to 38 percent for Trump, and a surge of support from undecided voters put Trump over the top. That’s why results like these are so grim for the president. It’s not enough to convince undecideds that Biden is unacceptable; he has to convert current Biden voters, something his reliable plays to his base aren’t designed to do.
Cutting the unemployment rate Donald Trump: 48% Joe Biden: 35%
Dealing with the economy Donald Trump: 48% Joe Biden: 37%
Being competent and effective Joe Biden: 47% Donald Trump: 38%
Dealing with the coronavirus Joe Biden: 48% Donald Trump: 37%
NBC’s poll gives Biden an overall seven-point lead on Trump, and an eight-point lead in the states that had the closest 2016 results. (That’s a departure from CNN, which added Georgia, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia to its “battleground state” subgroup, and found Trump with an overall lead.) It finds Trump nevertheless leading Biden, as he has all year, when voters are asked who would be the best steward of the economy. Trump’s audacious message, that he is not to blame for the recession and has proven he can rebuild the economy, is far and away the most successful part of his reelection campaign. But it has not been enough to push him past Biden, who leads on nearly every other question put to voters.
Poll watch
Candidate tracker
President Trump spent Friday on a modified campaign trail, using official White House events in the Rose Garden and in Maine to tout economic recovery, celebrating an unemployment report that showed 2.5 million people rejoining the workforce after the pandemic.
“We were doing so well and then it came in,” Trump said of the virus. “But we’re going to be back there. I think we’re going to actually be back, higher next year than ever before. And the only thing that can stop us is bad policy, frankly, left-wing, bad policy of raising taxes and Green New Deals and all of the things that you have been writing about, long and hard, that will stop it like you wouldn’t believe.”
Trump was less direct in talking about the ongoing protests against police violence. In a pair of weekend tweets, 24 hours apart, the president attacked Joe Bidenfor passing the 1994 crime bill, which greatly increased funding for law enforcement, then accused Biden of wanting to “defund the police.”
Biden stayed at home in Delaware, appearing in a video for Texas Democrats at their convention and publishing an op-ed in the L.A. Times about his plan for a “national police oversight commission” to reform law enforcement.
“We need to implement real community policing and ensure that every police department in the country undertakes a comprehensive review of their hiring, their training, and their de-escalation practices, with the federal government providing the tools and resources needed to implement reforms,” Biden wrote. “But, we cannot wait for new leadership to make reforms. Congress should take action immediately to outlaw chokeholds, stop the transfer of weapons of war to local police forces, improve oversight and accountability, and create a model use-of-force standard.”
Notably, Biden did not emphasize one of his campaign’s proposals: greater funding for the aforementioned community policing.
Dems in disarray
When Democrats talk about their strategy to win the Senate, they describe two states as virtual locks: Arizona and Colorado. In the former, they drafted astronaut-turned-gun-safety activist Mark Kelly, who cleared the primary field. In the latter, they brought in popular former governor John Hickenlooper shortly after his presidential bid sputtered out. Hickenlooper has led every single poll of the race.
But Hickenlooper spent this week taking blow after blow, with the state’s ethics commission finding he violated the law on political gifts twice — after holding him in contempt for not appearing at a virtual hearing. A nearly two-year chase by conservative activists, who obtained Hickenlooper’s travel records, had accused the former governor of nearly 100 violations.
“At the outset we said that John Hickenlooper broke the law as governor,” said Frank McNulty, a former Republican speaker of Colorado’s House of Representatives who founded the organization that launched the complaints. “Now Colorado knows that John Hickenlooper illegally accepted gifts from U.S. and foreign corporations.”
The violations involved two trips far from Colorado: a donor’s private jet flight to Connecticut for the commissioning of the USS Colorado, and a limo ride at the Bilderberg conference in Italy. Hickenlooper’s campaign defended the travel, characterizing it as part of the work he did to pitch Colorado to employers.
“The Republicans who launched these attacks pursued 97 allegations, and the Commission dismissed 95, a result that shows you they’ve been focused not on the facts but on political smears,” Hickenlooper spokeswoman Melissa Miller said on Friday. “[H]e followed the guidelines in his travel to bring business to Colorado, which went from 40th in job creation to number one in the country while he was governor.”
The campaign had hoped for something different: a clean slate, and a chance to say that the allegations were baseless. Skipping the video conference hearing drew more attention than the charges themselves, and Hickenlooper appeared after the state’s Democratic attorney general after a subpoena.
The story unfolded exactly as ballots began to be sent to voters in the June 30 primary. Hickenlooper has led decisively in polling since entering the race, leading most of the Democrats who had been running — and running to his left — to drop out. But that has produced a fairly one-on-one contest with Andrew Romanoff, a liberal former speaker of the state House who, in part because he lost races in 2010 and 2014, national Democrats saw as a weaker candidate.
Countdown
… two days until primaries in Georgia and West Virginia … 16 days until New York’s presidential and congressional primaries … 32 days until the Green Party meets to pick a presidential ticket … 71 days until the Democratic National Convention … 78 days until the Republican National Convention … 148 days until the general election
NEW YORK (AP) — In a new video posted early Election Day, Beyoncé channels Pamela Anderson in the television program “Baywatch” – red one-piece swimsuit and all – and asks viewers to vote.
In the two-and-a-half-minute clip, set to most of “Bodyguard,” a four-minute cut from her 2024 country album “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé cosplays as Anderson’s character before concluding with a simple message, written in white text: “Happy Beylloween,” followed by “Vote.”
At a rally for Donald Trump in Pittsburgh on Monday night, the former president spoke dismissively about Beyoncé’s appearance at a Kamala Harris rally in Houston in October, drawing boos for the megastar from his supporters.
“Beyoncé would come in. Everyone’s expecting a couple of songs. There were no songs. There was no happiness,” Trump said.
She did not perform — unlike in 2016, when she performed at a presidential campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Cleveland – but she endorsed Harris and gave a moving speech, initially joined onstage by her Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland.
“I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said.
“A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided,” she said at the rally in Houston, her hometown.
“Imagine our daughters growing up seeing what’s possible with no ceilings, no limitations,” she continued. “We must vote, and we need you.”
Harris used the song in July during her first official public appearance as a presidential candidate at her campaign headquarters in Delaware. That same month, Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, publicly endorsed Harris for president.
Beyoncé gave permission to Harris to use the song, a campaign official who was granted anonymity to discuss private campaign operations confirmed to The Associated Press.
Outside of sports and a “Cold front coming down from Canada,” American news media only report on Canadian events that they believe are, or will be, influential to the US. Therefore, when Justin Trudeau’s announcement, having finally read the room, that Canada will be reducing the number of permanent residents admitted by more than 20 percent and temporary residents like skilled workers and college students will be cut by more than half made news south of the border, I knew the American media felt Trudeau’s about-face on immigration was newsworthy because many Americans would relate to Trudeau realizing Canada was accepting more immigrants than it could manage and are hoping their next POTUS will follow Trudeau’s playbook.
Canada, with lots of space and lacking convenient geographical ways for illegal immigrants to enter the country, though still many do, has a global reputation for being incredibly accepting of immigrants. On the surface, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver appear to be multicultural havens. However, as the saying goes, “Too much of a good thing is never good,” resulting in a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, which you can almost taste in the air. A growing number of Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation, are blaming recent immigrants for causing the housing affordability crises, inflation, rise in crime and unemployment/stagnant wages.
Throughout history, populations have engulfed themselves in a tribal frenzy, a psychological state where people identify strongly with their own group, often leading to a ‘us versus them’ mentality. This has led to quick shifts from complacency to panic and finger-pointing at groups outside their tribe, a phenomenon that is not unique to any particular culture or time period.
My take on why the American news media found Trudeau’s blatantly obvious attempt to save his political career, balancing appeasement between the pitchfork crowd, who want a halt to immigration until Canada gets its house in order, and immigrant voters, who traditionally vote Liberal, newsworthy; the American news media, as do I, believe immigration fatigue is why Kamala Harris is going to lose on November 5th.
Because they frequently get the outcome wrong, I don’t take polls seriously. According to polls in 2014, Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were in a dead heat in Ontario, yet Wynne won with more than twice as many seats. In the 2018 Quebec election, most polls had the Coalition Avenir Québec with a 1-to-5-point lead over the governing Liberals. The result: The Coalition Avenir Québec enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 74 of 125 seats. Then there’s how the 2016 US election polls showing Donald Trump didn’t have a chance of winning against Hillary Clinton were ridiculously way off, highlighting the importance of the election day poll and, applicable in this election as it was in 2016, not to discount ‘shy Trump supporters;’ voters who support Trump but are hesitant to express their views publicly due to social or political pressure.
My distrust in polls aside, polls indicate Harris is leading by a few points. One would think that Trump’s many over-the-top shenanigans, which would be entertaining were he not the POTUS or again seeking the Oval Office, would have him far down in the polls. Trump is toe-to-toe with Harris in the polls because his approach to the economy—middle-class Americans are nostalgic for the relatively strong economic performance during Trump’s first three years in office—and immigration, which Americans are hyper-focused on right now, appeals to many Americans. In his quest to win votes, Trump is doing what anyone seeking political office needs to do: telling the people what they want to hear, strategically using populism—populism that serves your best interests is good populism—to evoke emotional responses. Harris isn’t doing herself any favours, nor moving voters, by going the “But, but… the orange man is bad!” route, while Trump cultivates support from “weird” marginal voting groups.
To Harris’s credit, things could have fallen apart when Biden abruptly stepped aside. Instead, Harris quickly clinched the nomination and had a strong first few weeks, erasing the deficit Biden had given her. The Democratic convention was a success, as was her acceptance speech. Her performance at the September 10th debate with Donald Trump was first-rate.
Harris’ Achilles heel is she’s now making promises she could have made and implemented while VP, making immigration and the economy Harris’ liabilities, especially since she’s been sitting next to Biden, watching the US turn into the circus it has become. These liabilities, basically her only liabilities, negate her stance on abortion, democracy, healthcare, a long-winning issue for Democrats, and Trump’s character. All Harris has offered voters is “feel-good vibes” over substance. In contrast, Trump offers the tangible political tornado (read: steamroll the problems Americans are facing) many Americans seek. With Trump, there’s no doubt that change, admittedly in a messy fashion, will happen. If enough Americans believe the changes he’ll implement will benefit them and their country…
The case against Harris on immigration, at a time when there’s a huge global backlash to immigration, even as the American news media are pointing out, in famously immigrant-friendly Canada, is relatively straightforward: During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, illegal Southern border crossings increased significantly.
The words illegal immigration, to put it mildly, irks most Americans. On the legal immigration front, according to Forbes, most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, to name three, have immigrants as CEOs. Immigrants, with tech skills and an entrepreneurial thirst, have kept America leading the world. I like to think that Americans and Canadians understand the best immigration policy is to strategically let enough of these immigrants in who’ll increase GDP and tax base and not rely on social programs. In other words, Americans and Canadians, and arguably citizens of European countries, expect their governments to be more strategic about immigration.
The days of the words on a bronze plaque mounted inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal’s lower level, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” are no longer tolerated. Americans only want immigrants who’ll benefit America.
Does Trump demagogue the immigration issue with xenophobic and racist tropes, many of which are outright lies, such as claiming Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets? Absolutely. However, such unhinged talk signals to Americans who are worried about the steady influx of illegal immigrants into their country that Trump can handle immigration so that it’s beneficial to the country as opposed to being an issue of economic stress.
In many ways, if polls are to be believed, Harris is paying the price for Biden and her lax policies early in their term. Yes, stimulus spending quickly rebuilt the job market, but at the cost of higher inflation. Loosen border policies at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was increasing was a gross miscalculation, much like Trudeau’s immigration quota increase, and Biden indulging himself in running for re-election should never have happened.
If Trump wins, Democrats will proclaim that everyone is sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mention a likely White Supremacist, and for good measure, they’ll beat the “voter suppression” button. If Harris wins, Trump supporters will repeat voter fraud—since July, Elon Musk has tweeted on Twitter at least 22 times about voters being “imported” from abroad—being widespread.
Regardless of who wins tomorrow, Americans need to cool down; and give the divisive rhetoric a long overdue break. The right to an opinion belongs to everyone. Someone whose opinion differs from yours is not by default sexist, racist, a fascist or anything else; they simply disagree with you. Americans adopting the respectful mindset to agree to disagree would be the best thing they could do for the United States of America.
PHOENIX (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected president.
Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.
Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on the social media platform X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.
“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.
Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”
The former president declined to say whether he would seek a Cabinet role for Kennedy, a job that would require Senate confirmation, but added, “He’s going to have a big role in the administration.”
Asked whether banning certain vaccines would be on the table, Trump said he would talk to Kennedy and others about that. Trump described Kennedy as “a very talented guy and has strong views.”
The sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over U.S. public health.
In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.
Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in U.S. kids.
In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.
A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.
In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.
But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump’s top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy traveled with Trump Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want” except oil policy.
“He wants health, he wants women’s health, he wants men’s health, he wants kids, he wants everything,” Trump added.
