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Trump escalates his January 6 cover-up as political comeback steps up a gear – CNN

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3 years ago

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(CNN)Donald Trump is acting like an ex-President with a constitutional crime to hide as the cover-up of his assault on democracy gathers pace alongside his political comeback.

The twice-impeached 45th President’s continuing influence on politics, popular culture and national life is broadening on multiple fronts and appears undimmed by his ban from social media platforms. His behavior is mirroring the conduct he showed in office: a driving desire to avoid accountability, a challenge to the US system of checks and balances, a willingness to exploit racial and cultural divides, and an eye for a political opening that could boost his own profile, like an apparent tele-rally on the eve of Virginia’s gubernatorial election. The high-stakes election in a state Trump lost by 10 points last year will be closely watched as an indicator of the political environment heading into the 2022 midterms.
A just-revealed list of documents that Trump wishes to prevent the House select committee probing January 6 from seeing — and over which President Joe Biden has refused to assert executive privilege — in itself offers a darkly suggestive picture of Trump’s activities leading up to the mob attack by his supporters on the US Capitol.
If the committee gets its hands on call logs, memos from senior White House staff and entries from the then-President’s schedule, it will be able to create a much fuller picture than is already known about how far Trump directed events, the depth of his effort to steal the election from Biden and how little he did to stop the January 6 riot once it started.
“In 2021, for the first time since the Civil War, the Nation did not experience a peaceful transfer of power,” the House Committee wrote. “The Select Committee has reasonably concluded that it needs the documents of the then-President who helped foment the breakdown in the rule of law. … It is difficult to imagine a more critical subject for Congressional investigation.”
While Trump perpetually tries to evade the consequences of his actions, his latest campaign of obstruction is closely linked with his increasing political activity heading into the midterm elections and a possible 2024 presidential campaign. If the committee were to produce a damning report of Trump’s conduct, it would form a powerful public record of an attempt by an ex-President to destroy America’s democratic heritage as he apparently seeks the office again. There is every reason to believe that in a new White House term, and feeling validated, Trump would pose an even greater threat to democratic governance.

Hiding the truth of January 6

The lengths to which Trump is prepared to go to prevent Americans from learning the full truth about the Capitol insurrection came to light in late night court filings on Friday and early Saturday. The National Archives for the first time revealed details in a sworn declaration about the trove of documents Trump wants kept secret.
Among the 700 pages of documents are handwritten memos from then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, logs of calls by the then-President and then-Vice President Mike Pence and White House visitor records.
In the Meadows documents alone, there are three handwritten notes about the events of January 6 and two pages listing briefings and telephone calls about the Electoral College certification, the archivist said.
The papers could also shed new light on the role of conservative lawyer John Eastman, who drafted a six-step plan for how Pence could have certified the election in favor of Trump, rather than the rightful winner on January 6.
Eastman proposed Pence throwing out the votes of enough states that Biden won so that the presidential election would be decided by the House, where each state gets a single vote and Republicans controlled more state delegations.
Eastman said on former White House official Steve Bannon’s radio show in January that Pence could pull it off if he had the “courage and the spine” to do so, according to comments unearthed by CNN’s KFile. CNN reported last week that the January 6 committee would subpoena Eastman if he did not cooperate.
The conservative lawyer’s blueprint, which has been derided by many scholars but appears to have been taken seriously by Trump, has prompted some members of the January 6 committee to draft new legislation to head off such schemes in the future. The proposal could offer more specific instructions for when Congress can overturn a state’s slate of electors, and more clearly define the role the vice president plays in counting the votes, CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Pamela Brown reported. Drafting a law would also provide the committee with a “legislative purpose,” that could potentially strengthen its case — both against Trump’s sweeping executive privilege assertions and against Bannon, who has already been cited for criminal contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena and could be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

‘It’s just me and Liz Cheney’

The concept of executive privilege is meant to provide presidents a guarantee that they can receive confidential advice on matters of state from senior officials. However, Trump appears to be using the doctrine to cover-up details of his own role in trying to stage a coup, so the claim that he is seeking to protect the office of the presidency itself rings rather hollow. But even if the House select committee does draft legislation, its prospects are uncertain. It could potentially pass the Democratic-led House, but its chances of surviving a likely GOP filibuster in the Senate — where only seven Republican senators voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial over January 6 — appear slim.
Such GOP appeasement of Trump’s autocratic instincts was cited on Sunday by Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger — a rare Republican critic of Trump and one of just two Republicans on the January 6 committee — as one of the reasons why he decided not to run for reelection.
“You ultimately come to the realization that basically it’s me, Liz Cheney, and a few others that are telling the truth, and they’re about 190 people in the Republican Party that aren’t going to say a word,” Kinzinger said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“And there’s a leader of the Republican caucus that is embracing Donald Trump with all he can,” Kinzinger said, referring to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has anchored his party’s hopes of winning back the House next year and becoming speaker, on Trump.

Trump’s influence is everywhere

The latest developments in the January 6 investigation were not the weekend’s only indicators of Trump’s hold over his party and the influence his tumultuous time in the Oval Office still holds over the country.
He is apparently planning to vault himself on Monday into the Virginia governor’s race with a tele-rally on behalf of Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, who has run a well-pitched campaign that all but ignores the ex-President while sending coded cultural and racial messages to his supporters. Youngkin hopes to make gains in the critical suburban areas around Washington, DC, where Trump is held in disdain. Trump’s maneuver appears to be a naked attempt to claim credit if Youngkin wins a neck-and-neck race in a state where Biden trounced the ex-President. But it might just give Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe — who has had limited success with painting his rival as a Trump clone — an election eve boost.
“Trump wants to win here so he can announce for president for 2024. That’s the stakes of this election,” McAuliffe told supporters on Sunday. If McAuliffe — who served a previous term as governor — squeezes out a victory Tuesday, it might suggest that Trump remains a drag on swing state GOP candidates, even out of office. But Trump is likely to use a victory for Youngkin to bolster his false claims that vote counts in last year’s elections were tampered with and that he really won in states he easily lost.
In a new sign that his return to front-line politics is accelerating, Trump showed up in Atlanta on Saturday night for Game 4 of the World Series and, with the former first lady by his side, relished taking part in the controversial “Tomahawk chop” — a chant and gesture that is a longtime tradition at Braves games but has also been criticized as racist and offensive to Native Americans. Trump’s visit, alongside his personally recruited Georgia senate candidate Herschel Walker, underscored his willingness to embrace politically incorrect causes to send cultural signals to his base — a technique that is at the center of his political appeal.
His visit to the state also brought a reminder of some of his most notorious efforts to steal the 2020 election, including his January 2 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, who disclosed on Sunday that he felt threatened by Trump’s pressure to find votes that would overturn his narrow loss in the state to Biden.
“And so you run down every single rabbit trail, none of it ever was supported by the facts. And so I was never concerned from the standpoint of that, but I heard the threat that he was making,” Raffensperger said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
The ex-President’s influence also hung over the G20 summit in Europe as foreign nations wonder how long Biden’s “America is Back” mantra will last if Trump runs for president in 2024. The current President on Sunday warned the world is “continuing to suffer from the very bad decisions President Trump made to pull out of” the Iran nuclear deal. Biden has struggled to get the Islamic Republic back to the negotiating table and the US now appears on the edge of another serious escalation with Tehran.

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Justin Trudeau’s Announcing Cuts to Immigration Could Facilitate a Trump Win

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34 mins ago

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November 5, 2024

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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.

______________________________________________________________

 

Nick Kossovan, a self-described connoisseur of human psychology, writes about what’s

on his mind from Toronto. You can follow Nick on Twitter and Instagram @NKossovan.

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RFK Jr. says Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water. ‘It’s possible,’ Trump says

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21 hours ago

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November 4, 2024

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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.

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Danielle Smith receives overwhelming support at United Conservative Party convention

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21 hours ago

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November 4, 2024

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Danielle Smith receives overwhelming support at United Conservative Party convention

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