Donald trrump

In an opinion column for the New York Times, Thomas Friedman proposes that Joe Biden debate Donald Trump only if the President meets two conditions. Trump must release his tax returns and agree to a non-partisan panel of fact-checkers. The fact-checkers, he says, should point out the debaters’ errors in real time and conclude the event by summarizing their findings. Among really bad ideas, this one is a prize-winner. Let us count the reasons why. Trump’s failure to release his tax returns is a legitimate issue to debate, not a precondition for one. Biden is free to raise it on the campaign trail and debate stage, just as Hillary Clinton did. Remember, the voters have already dealt with this issue once.

Who knew that the most prominent NeverTrumper would be a member of the Trump family? Mary Trump is Donald's niece and bears the same name as his mother. She has a PhD in clinical psychology and is now the author of a book called Too Much and Never Enough, an unsparing look at her uncle that does not shrink, as it were, from putting him on the couch. The Amazon bestseller has spun up the president; he is getting his minions to denounce it and is promoting cancel culture by suing to prevent it from being read by the masses. White House spokesman Kayleigh McEnany noted that she had not seen it but went on to declare that Mary’s maiden effort was a 'book of falsehoods' brimming with 'absurd allegations'.

Even the most ardent Trumpist must admit that it has been a bad few months for the President. The COVID-19 crisis robbed Donald Trump of his strongest argument for re-election, the economy, and made his administration seem ineffectual. He was wrongfooted by the riots after George Floyd’s death. The country has been in chaos under his watch. He has looked weak, even disorientated. His polling slid.Yet Trump, ever the reality entertainer, loves a comeback story — and last night he launched his. Under the heads of Mount Rushmore, on a blue-white-and-red dais, the President marked Independence Day with a fiercely patriotic and defiant speech. It was an address that tackled, head on, the crisis that has rocked America in recent weeks.

Politicos have spent years asking what would happen to the Republican party post-Trump. Establishment types prayed that he was an anomaly and that the party would return to ‘normal’ after his reign. Slightly more savvy observers worried that the Trump base would slip back toward the Democrats once they lost their champion and the GOP would have to rebuild a winning coalition. Both relied on an assumption that Trumpism cannot exist without Trump. That was wrong. Elitist politicians and the mainstream media have been so obsessed with denouncing Trump’s egregious character that his voters developed a reflexive tendency to defend the man rather than his policies. But nearly four years later, many Trump voters feel unsatisfied with his list of accomplishments.

It’s starting to look as though the question isn’t who Donald Trump asked to assist him in his 2020 bid but who he didn’t. Former national security adviser John Bolton reports in his forthcoming 592-page memoir, The Room Where It Happened, that Trump seems to have asked Chinese President Xi Xinping to lend him a hand during a summit dinner last year. Add that to the 'favor' he asked for from Ukraine and you have a portrait of a President who was desperate for help wherever and whenever he could find it. Maybe Trump had it right: if his current prospects are anything to go by he could definitely use a lift from abroad. Was this his personal version of what international law calls 'anticipatory self-defense?

The final stage of the election campaign and its result will depend on four factors: management of the balance between demand for police reform and concern for the maintenance of public order; whether there is a significant revival of COVID-19; the swiftness of the economic recovery; and the resolution of questions about Joe Biden’s apparent capacity to serve as president. Hovering above the campaign will be the question of indictments from US Attorney John Durham’s special counsel investigation. On all that has been revealed, crimes will be charged, and Attorney General William Barr confirmed last week that those whose conduct is likely to be judged controversial will be 'familiar' names. But they may not include elected officials and apparently not Biden himself.

Don’t cross Donald Trump. Trump originally ran for the presidency because Barack Obama mocked him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. He has devoted himself to tearing up every accomplishment, every treaty that Obama signed. Yesterday he was mocked for the revelation that he was conducted into the White House bunker by the Secret Service. Now he has had his revenge. Speaking in the Rose Garden today, Trump declared, 'If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for there.' He indicated that he is prepared to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to quash to the protests.This isn’t rodomontade.

President Trump is cutting all US funding to the World Health Organization as of Friday afternoon.‘China has total control over the World Health Organization despite paying only $40 million per year, compared to what the United States has been paying, which is approximately $450 million per year’, said the President.Trump cited the WHO’s failure to enact recommended reforms and said that the funding will be redirected toward other public health initiatives.The announcement comes after months of skepticism about the WHO’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. In early April, the Trump administration froze funding to the WHO due to their mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis.

Is lockdown a gargantuan mistake? That's the view of a growing number of thinkers and critics, including The Spectator’s very own Toby Young, who sees the political class's shutting down of entire populations as the most catastrophic policy error in history. Not every free thinker agrees, however. We asked Matt Labash, a contributing editor and a skeptic of lockdown skepticism, to challenge Toby over email. Matt Labash: Toby, thanks for stepping into the squared circle and joining me for a Pandemania tussle as a gentleman pugilist, sage, and co-equal partner in the search for truth. And also, as a fellow amateur epidemiologist, which there is no longer any shame in saying, since the pros have bunged things up so spectacularly.

Democratic strategist Joel Payne was left ‘embarrassed’ after insinuating on TV that black Trump supporters were merely stock models paid to pose in pro-Trump t-shirts. His remarks followed former vice president Joe Biden’s claim that, if you are having a hard time deciding whether to vote for him or President Trump, then ‘you ain’t black’. Payne was the latest Biden defender to put his foot in his mouth by erasing black Trump supporters, chuckling during a CBS News interview that two black people shown wearing the Trump campaign’s new ‘you ain’t black’ t-shirts were probably just paid models. ‘Those two models you showed wearing those shirts...I wonder if they’d actually vote for Donald Trump.

With just under six months to go, now is a good time to assess where things stand in the 2020 presidential election. You would think that with the Wuhan virus pandemic, predicting the outcome of the 2020 election would be even harder than normal. Given the sheer ‘redness’ and ‘blueness’ of most states, however, the only meaningful change will occur in the 10 or so states we’ve categorized as battleground states over the last five elections. Historically, the last real landslide presidential election occurred in 1988 when George H.W. Bush won 40 states and 426 electoral votes as he earned 53.6 percent of the popular vote. Bill Clinton’s 370 electoral votes in 1992 papered over the fact he only received 43 percent of the popular vote.

Though it is yet to enjoy the endorsement of the UN, or the approval of the Supreme Court, the greatest human right of all is the right to self-abuse. Mankind, divided in so many ways, is nevertheless bound together by its desire to ride lawnmowers at speed, or take selfies on cliff edges, or eat bats, or jump from appalling heights out of planes. The right to self-abuse, as costly as it is, will never be legislated out of existence. It cannot be willed away either. It is exercised by the wise and the ignorant in equal measure; by the poor, the slightly less poor, and the rich too. As long as there are human beings, there will be men who find it amusing to eat a cactus. Does the President have the same right to do the Stupid Thing as the rest of us do?

Late last December, Democrats were heading into the homestretch of their presidential primary optimistic that although they faced an internal battle about their party's position on healthcare, they could easily outrun President Trump on the issue. Healthcare proved to be a winning issue during the 2018 midterms when Democrats took back the House, catching Republicans flat-footed on a policy issue they had failed to present a new, cohesive idea on since 'repeal and replace Obamacare'. Democrats hoped they could replicate this success in 2020, as Trump repeatedly floated the possibility of a new Republican plan on healthcare but had yet to actually unveil one. The strategy seemed good on its face; healthcare was constantly polled as the top issue for voters in late 2019 and early 2020.

House Democrats, flummoxed by their failed attempt to remove President Trump earlier this year, are gearing up for another round of quasi-impeachment with their coronavirus oversight committee. It's been just a few months, believe it or not, since the House impeached the President for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, but the moment was quickly overshadowed by the global pandemic. The coronavirus committee thus could be the Democrats' last ditch effort to dig up dirt on the President before the election in November.