Former President Trump Holds Rally In Wilkes
The shameful raid and break in of my home, Mar-a-Lago, was a travesty of justice, said former President Trump about the FBIs search of his residence for alleged classified documents.read more
The shameful raid and break in of my home, Mar-a-Lago, was a travesty of justice, said former President Trump about the FBIs search of his residence for alleged classified documents. He accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Department of Justice and FBI for political ends. Moreover, he claimed that the FBI staged a photoshoot of the documents and called it disinformation. The former presidents remarks came during a campaign speech for Pennsylvania candidates ahead of the 2022 elections, and he spoke in support of U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano . He also discussed President Bidens recent speech from Philadelphia about threats to democracy, calling it the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever given by an American president. He also repeated his grievances about the 2020 election and spoke about immigration, crime, education issues, foreign leaders, and problems he sees with Democratic policies. close
Strip Job Protections For Federal Workers
In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order reclassifying tens of thousands of federal workers to remove their employment protections and make them easier to fire. The National Treasury Employees Union sued to stop the change, and before a court could rule on the challenge, Biden took office and revoked the order.
Lately, Trump has declared his intent to restore the change and put it to greater use. Hes gone further by calling on Congress to overhaul the civil service through a statute, which could be more sweeping and harder to reverse than an executive order.
Congress should pass historic reforms, empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary for the job can be told did you ever hear this? Youre fired, Trump said at the July speech in Washington. Get out. Youre fired. Have to do it.
Though overhauling the civil service by reclassifying employees under a new category called Schedule F may sound geeky, its become a consistent applause line in Trumps speeches and even the basis for fundraising appeals.
I told you I would DRAIN THE SWAMP and purge Washington of woke bureaucrats, and thats exactly what Schedule F accomplishes, an Aug. 9 email to supporters said.
Move Homeless People To Outlying Tent Cities
As Trump has honed a law-and-order message, packing his speeches with graphic accounts of violent offenses and bleak appraisals of Americas cities, he has particularly focused on images of people living on the streets. Trumps solution is to move homeless people to tent cities on the outskirts of metropolitan areas, staffed with medical professionals and built to house hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
The only way youre going to remove the homeless encampments and reclaim our downtowns is to open up large parcels, large tracts, of relatively inexpensive land on the outer skirts of the various cities and bring in medical professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists and drug rehab specialists and create tent cities, Trump said on Aug. 6 at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. You dont have time to build buildings, you can do that later, but you have to get the people off the street. We have to bring back, we have to reclaim our cities.
In a July speech in Washington, Trump acknowledged that the idea would be controversial but argued it would be an improvement. Now, some people say, Oh, thats so horrible no, whats horrible is whats happening now, he said.
Trumps Washington speech happened to coincide with the alliances conference, setting off a ripple of concern among the 1,300 attendees and leading the groups chief executive, Ann Oliva, to address it from the stage.
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Donald Trump: What We Learned From His Rally In Pennsylvania
Donald Trump has called President Joe Biden an “enemy of the state” at his first rally since the FBI searched his Florida resort for sensitive files.
Speaking to thousands of supporters in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the ex-president accused Mr Biden of weaponizing the FBI against him.
The raid was “one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history”, Mr Trump claimed.
He was in the state to promote two Republican candidates.
Dr Mehmet Oz is running for the US Senate, and state Senator Doug Mastriano is in the race to become Pennsylvania’s next governor.
Both spoke only briefly – as always, the rally on Saturday night was really about one person: the headliner.
Mr Trump, 76, spent the first part of his nearly two-hour speech criticising the FBI search early last month.
FBI agents conducting the search found dozens of empty folders marked as classified, and top secret files were recovered from his personal office.
Mr Trump, who is being investigated over his handling of classified records, denies wrongdoing.
Apart from the raid, the former president returned to familiar themes at the Pennsylvania rally: false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, attacks on rivals in the Democratic Party, and promises to “save our country”.
Several times, he called for people who deal drugs to receive the death penalty.
Here are four key things you need to know about Donald Trump’s rally.
Lafayette Square Protester Removal And Photo Op
On June 1, 2020, federal law enforcement officials used batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray projectiles, stun grenades, and smoke to remove a largely peaceful crowd of protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House. Trump then walked to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where protesters had set a small fire the night before he posed for photographs holding a Bible, with senior administration officials later joining him in photos. Trump said on June 3 that the protesters were cleared because “they tried to burn down the church and almost succeeded”, describing the church as “badly hurt”.
Religious leaders condemned the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself. Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned Trump’s proposal to use the U.S. military against anti-police brutality protesters. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General , later apologized for accompanying Trump on the walk and thereby “creat the perception of the military involved in domestic politics”.
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Restrict Voting To One Day Using Paper Ballots
Trumps grievances over losing the 2020 election and baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud have inspired Republican state lawmakers across the country to propose and adopt new voting restrictions. Trump has called for measures such as universal voter ID since disbanding in 2018 the commission he established to back up his false claim of millions of fraudulent votes costing him the 2016 popular vote.
Trump has recently added a demand for same-day voting using paper ballots. That should be our goal, he said at CPAC. The proposal echoes his false claims blaming mail ballots and electronic voting machines for his loss in 2020.
As president, Trump could not change the rules on his own. He could pressure Republican-led state legislatures to pass more restrictions, or he could push for action in Congress. Congress has the power to regulate elections under the Constitution, with past examples including the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
Requiring everyone to vote on one day would upend elections across the country. Forty-six states and D.C. allow early in-person voting, and 35 and D.C. permit voting by mail without an excuse, including eight that automatically send mail ballots to voters, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Attacks On Courts And Judges Personally For Staying Immigration Executive Orders
On Friday, February 3, 2017, Washington U.S. District Court Judge James Robart issued a decision temporarily staying enforcement of Donald Trumps January 27 executive order limiting immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries and halting the admission of refugees from anywhere. On February 9, the Ninth Circuit denied the governments request for a stay of the district courts order. Trump issued a revised version of the immigration executive order on March 6, 2017, which narrowed the scope to six countries and exempted green card and visa holders, among other changes. On March 15, 2017, a federal judge in Hawaii temporarily blocked enforcement of the order nationwide, followed by a March 16 order by a federal judge in . On May 26, the Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld the stay of the travel ban.
Trump has made a series of tweets and public statements attacking the deciding judges personally, questioning the authority of federal courts to review his orders, suggesting the court is biased, and suggesting that the judges and court system would be to blame for future terrorist attacks.
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Trumps Survival After Scandals
More than a year and a half since Trump left office, 58 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of him, according to this latest poll. That includes 89 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of independents. But 83 percent of Republicans say they still favor Trump, along with roughly a third of all Americans.
Trumps favorability among the GOP outpaces that of a handful of other Republicans who are considered potential rivals for a White House bid in 2024:
According to GOP strategist and conservative pollster Whit Ayres, most Republicans are also open to having a new candidate who carries less baggage than they believe Trump carries as their nominee in 2024.
It all depends on who the alternatives are, Ayres said. Most alternatives arent nationally known here.
Trumps political resilience is unlike anything else in U.S. presidential history, said Jeffrey Engel, who directs the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
As with everything with Donald Trump, history gives us no guide, Engel said.
One comparison is tough to ignore, though todays political dynamics are nearly opposite. In 1974, after an investigation uncovered that President Richard Nixons reelection campaign had bugged the phones at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, Nixon resigned in disgrace before he could be impeached. He retreated from public life and partially rebuilt his reputation in foreign policy during the decades that followed, Engel said.
Relationship With The Press
Trump began promoting himself in the press in the 1970s, and continued to seek media attention throughout his career, sustaining a “lovehate” relationship with the press. In the 2016 campaign, Trump benefited from a record amount of free media coverage, elevating his standing in the Republican primaries.The New York Times writer Amy Chozick wrote in 2018 that Trump’s media dominance enthralled the public and created “must-see TV.”
As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently accused the press of bias, calling it the “fake news media” and “the enemy of the people“. In 2018, journalist Lesley Stahl recounted Trump’s saying he intentionally demeaned and discredited the media “so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you”.
As president, Trump privately and publicly mused about revoking the press credentials of journalists he viewed as critical. His administration moved to revoke the press passes of two White House reporters, which were restored by the courts. In 2019, a member of the foreign press reported many of the same concerns as those of media in the U.S., expressing concern that a normalization process by reporters and media results in an inaccurate characterization of Trump. The Trump White House held about a hundred formal press briefings in 2017, declining by half during 2018 and to two in 2019.
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Historical Evaluations And Public Opinion
In the sixth Siena College Research Institute’s presidential rankings, conducted after Trump had been in office for one year, Trump was ranked as the third-worst president.C-SPAN‘s 2021 President Historians Survey ranked Trump as the fourth-worst president overall and the worst in the leadership characteristics of Moral Authority and Administrative Skills. Trump’s best rated leadership characteristic was Public Persuasion, where he ranked 32nd out of the 44 individuals who were previously president.
At the time of the 2016 election, polls by Gallup found Trump had a favorable rating around 35% and an unfavorable rating around 60%, while Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton held a favorable rating of 40% and an unfavorable rating of 57%. 2016 was the first election cycle in modern presidential polling in which both major-party candidates were viewed so unfavorably. By January 20, 2017, Inauguration Day, Trump’s approval rating average was 42%, the lowest rating average for an incoming president in the history of modern polling during his term it was an “incredibly stable ” 36% to 40%. Trump was the only president to never reach a 50% approval rating in the Gallup poll dating to 1938.
Both Parties Eye Pennsylvania
The state is vital to Democrats’ hopes as well. They want to pick up a US Senate seat by propelling Lt Gov John Fetterman to victory.
The governor’s race has taken on extra significance with Mr Mastriano’s landslide win in the Republican primary. He attended the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Congress and played a key role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania.
Should he win the governorship, he would have significant power over the state’s election implementation.
To oppose him, Democrats have put forth the state’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, and President Biden held several high-profile events in the state in recent days to help whip up the Democratic base.
In fact, he also visited Wilkes-Barre, on 30 August to give a major speech about guns and public safety and two days ago he gave a primetime address in Philadelphia.
He argued that Trump’s ideology – which he called “Maga Republicans” after his predecessor’s famous campaign slogan – threatened American democracy.
“Not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, are Maga Republicans,” Mr Biden said.
“But there’s no question the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.”
On Saturday, Mr Trump called Mr Biden’s address the most “vicious hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president”.
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Donald Trump Is Doing Everything He Can To Hurt Republican Chances In 2022
Donald Trump is, ostensibly, a Republican. But he has shown time and again â both in the White House and now out of it â that he cares little about helping the party and its other candidates.
The latest example came Wednesday night when Trump issued this statement via his Save America PAC:
âIf we donât solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 , Republicans will not be voting in â22 or â24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.â
If you built a statement in a lab, you would be hard-pressed to make it more counterproductive to Republican efforts to win back the House and Senate majorities they lost in the Trump years.
What Trump is saying, quite simply, is that unless and until he is restored as president â due to voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election â Republican voters should withhold their votes in the 2022 midterms .
Itâs reminiscent of the âstrategyâ used by Trumpâs âlegalâ team during the Georgia Senate runoffs earlier this year.
Sidney Powell urged âall Georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all until your vote is secure â and I mean that regardless of party.â Lin Wood, meanwhile, told voters that âthis is Georgia. We ainât dumb. Weâre not going to go vote on Jan. 5 on another machine made by China.â
Enter Trump â who seems hellbent on slowing that momentum as he pursues his own personal vendettas and agenda.
An Attack On The Capitol
In the weeks following the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede to Biden, declaring that he had won the election even though he and his legal team could not offer any evidence to back up his claims. On January 6, 2021, while Congress was in a joint session to count the electoral votes, a mob of violent protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent Congress from declaring victory for Biden. The mob consisted of people who believed Trumps false claims that he had won the election. Five people, including a U.S. Capitol police officer, died during the riots.
Many people believed that Trump encouraged his followers to overrun the Capitol because of remarks he had made on social media and at rallies, including one just before the attack happened. Because of that, the U.S. government moved to impeach Trump for the second time during his presidency to charge him with incitement of insurrection. He was officially impeached by the House of Representatives on January 13, 2021, this time with 10 Republicans joining Democrats to charge him. He is the only U.S. president ever to be impeached twice.
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Rep Scott Perry Suing To Block Doj Access To His Cell Phone
The 16-page suit, filed last week in Washington D.C. federal court, was not publicly docketed until late Tuesday.
Rep. Scott Perry indicated that after his phone was seized, he and his attorney conferred with DOJ about an alternative solution to litigation. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
08/24/2022 09:22 AM EDT
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Rep. Scott Perry is suing to block the Justice Department from reviewing the contents of his cell phone, which was recently seized as part of an apparent investigation into the Pennsylvania Republicans connections to former President Donald Trumps effort to overturn the 2020 election.
FBI agents seized Perrys phone on Aug. 9 and transported it to the custody of DOJs inspector general, which has helped lead the inquiry into the push by Trump and his allies to replace department leadership as part of a broader drive to keep Trump in power. Investigators have cited Perry as a key participant in that effort given his help connecting Trump with Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ official whom Trump viewed as an ally in his push.
But Perry indicated in his recent filing that DOJ has not yet accessed materials on his phone and is in the process of obtaining a second search warrant that would guide its review, including a process to screen out potentially privileged materials. Perry is objecting to that bid, demanding that the government be blocked from scouring his phone and that it return any data in its possession.
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