The Bible signed by President Donald Trump after a photo op outside a Washington, D.C., church has been listed for sale.
The memorabilia company Moments in Time is advertising the autographed Bible for $37,500, although it's not clear how it ended up on the website, reported TMZ.
The president ordered federal agents to fire chemical irritant and rubber bullets at peaceful protesters outside St. John's Episcopal Church on June 1 so he could stand outside the church, which had been damaged by a fire at the beginning of nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd.
The Bible that's for sale apparently isn't the one he held up for the photo outside the church.
President Donald Trump’s campaign is having money trouble, according to a New York Times report, while former Vice President Joe Biden’s team is flush with cash.
Biden announced a record-breaking sum of nearly $365 million in fundraising for the month of August, swiftly outpacing the president’s best month. And the report Monday from the Times exposed just how deep and sordid the story behind the Trump campaign’s depleted coffers and revealed signs of animosity brewing with its ranks.
Here are seven key details from the report:
1. The big takeaway: Trump has poured $800 million down the drain with little to show for it
“If you spend $800 million and you’re 10 points behind, I think you’ve got to answer the question ‘What was the game plan?’” said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist who runs a small pro-Trump super PAC, and who accused [former Trump campaign manager Brad] Parscale of spending “like a drunken sailor.”
Of course, one of the biggest problems is that Trump has always been an unpopular president never interested in appealing to a broad majority of the country rather than his narrow base. You can’t spend your way out of that problem.
2. Parscale, meanwhile, is trying to spread the blame around
Unusually for a Trump campaign official, Parscale seemed to be willing to comment extensively for the Times piece. In the comments printed, he appeared desperate to deflect blame for overspending to the Trump family and the RNC.
For example:
“I ran the campaign the same way I did in 2016, which also included all of the marketing, strategy and expenses under the very close eye of the family,” said Mr. Parscale, who was the digital director, not the campaign manager, in 2016. “No decision was made without their approval.”
Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has overseen the campaign from his position as a senior White House aide, had posed for a Fortune magazine cover as the person who ran the 2016 campaign soon after the election.
“Any spending arrangements with the R.N.C. since 2016 were in partnership with Ronna McDaniel,” Mr. Parscale said, referring to the party chairwoman, “who I consider a strategic partner and friend.” [emphasis added]
And also:
The Trump campaign has undertaken its own financial review of spending under Mr. Parscale. Among the first changes implemented was shutting down an ad campaign that had used Mr. Parscale’s personal social media accounts to deliver pro-Trump ads. More than $800,000 had been poured into boosting Mr. Parscale’s Facebook and Instagram pages; those ads ceased the day after he was removed as campaign manager.
Mr. Parscale said the Facebook page was “not my idea” and the “family’s direct approval” had been sought on the program.
“I built an unprecedented infrastructure with the Republican Party under this family’s leadership since 2016,” Mr. Parscale said in a statement to The Times. “I am proud of my achievements.” [emphasis added]
The fact that campaign officials were willing to talk — off the record, it seems — negatively about Parscale for this story also suggests someone or some group is trying to throw him under the bus.
3. Trump is a big part of the problem
Some of the wasteful spending reported in the piece seemed designed specifically to soothe Trump’s ego. For example, the Times reports that the campaign has nixed a Parscale idea to sponsor a NASCAR car. The $3 million expenditure would certainly have pleased Trump, but it’s hard to see how it would sway voters.
The reporters also note that ad spending during the Superbowl and in Washington, D.C., also seems to have been designed to please Trump specifically, even though the buys had little strategic value. Even if Trump didn’t push for these expenses, he shows terrible leadership by cultivating employees who decide to put his personal preferences over long-term strategic interests.
4. The campaign spent nearly half of its spending on more fundraising
It’s hard to imagine this was cost-effective, given the fact that the campaign has recently felt the need to cut back on ads.
“Under Mr. Parscale, more than $350 million — almost half of the $800 million spent — went to fund-raising operations, as no expense was spared in finding new donors online,” the report said.
5. A lot of money is covering campaign-adjacent legal bills
Republicans, for instance, have been saddled with extra legal costs, more than $21 million since 2019, resulting from the many investigations into Mr. Trump and, eventually, his impeachment trial. The R.N.C. also paid a large legal bill of $666,667.66 to Reuters News & Media at the end of June. Both Reuters and the R.N.C. declined to discuss the payment. It was labeled “legal proceedings — IP resolution,” suggesting it was related to a potential litigation over intellectual property.
6. The pandemic — and Trump’s refusal to adapt to it — has repeatedly thrown a wrench into the gears
Unlike Biden, Trump reportedly hasn’t taken to online fundraisers that can be extremely efficient and productive:
One of the reasons Mr. Biden was able to wipe away Mr. Trump’s early cash edge was that he sharply contained costs with a minimalistic campaign during the worst months of the pandemic. Trump officials derisively dismissed it as his “basement” strategy, but from that basement Mr. Biden fully embraced Zoom fund-raisers, with top donors asked to give as much as $720,000.
These virtual events typically took less than 90 minutes of the candidate’s time, could raise millions of dollars and cost almost nothing. Mr. Trump has almost entirely refused to hold such fund-raisers. Aides say he doesn’t like them.
And Trump’s failed attempt to hold the in-person convention to Jacksonville, Florida, reportedly ended up wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars.
7. Much of the money remains mysteriously unaccounted for
Many of the specifics of Mr. Trump’s spending are opaque; since 2017, the campaign and the R.N.C. have routed $227 million through a single limited liability company linked to Trump campaign officials. That firm, American Made Media Consultants, has been used to place television and digital ads and was the subject of a recent Federal Election Commission complaint arguing it was used to disguise the final destination of spending, which has included paychecks to Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the partners of Mr. Trump’s two adult sons.
Millions more followed to firms tied to R.N.C. and Trump-linked officials, including more than $39 million to two firms, Parscale Strategy LLC and Giles-Parscale, controlled by Mr. Parscale since the beginning of 2017.
Although Europe has a reputation for being generally more receptive to liberal, progressive and left-wing ideas than the United States, Europe has its far right as well — including Marine Le Pen and the National Front in France, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, Germany’s Alternative for Germany movement. And journalist Katrin Bennhold, in the New York Times, reports that the German far-right is finding inspiration in President Donald Trump.
Bennhold notes that when far-right agitators recently tried to storm the Bundestag (the German Parliament), a German woman chanted, “Trump is in Berlin!”
“Mr. Trump was neither in the embassy nor in Germany that day — and yet, there he was,” Bennhold explains. “His face was emblazoned on banners, t-shirts and even on Germany’s pre-1918 imperial flag, popular with neo-Nazis in the crowd of 50,000 who had come to protest Germany’s pandemic restrictions. His name was invoked by many with messianic zeal.”
That demonstration even echoed one of the top complaints of far-right Trump supporters in the U.S.: opposition to social distancing measures that have been enacted in response to the coronavirus pandemic — only instead of storming the state capital in Michigan and railing against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, they were in Berlin expressing their disdain for German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Bennhold points out that although Trump is “deeply unpopular among a broad majority of Germans,” the German far right is a major exception and admires his “unvarnished nationalism and tolerance of white supremacists, coupled with his skepticism of the pandemic’s dangers.” To make matters worse, the extremist QAnon cult has been gaining German converts.
“In Germany, as in the United States, Mr. Trump has become an inspiration to these fringe groups,” Bennhold observes. “Among them are not only long-established hard-right and neo-Nazi movements, but also, now followers of QAnon — the internet conspiracy theory popular among some of Mr. Trump’s supporters in the United States that hails him as a hero and liberator. Germany’s QAnon community, barely existent when the pandemic first hit in March, may now be the biggest outside the United States along with Britain, analysts who track its most popular online channels say.”
Matthias Quent, director of Germany’s Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (das Institut für Demokratie und Zivilgesellschaft in German) told the Times that Germany is seeing the “Trumpification of the German far right.”
“Trump has managed to attract different milieus, and that’s what we’re seeing here, too,” Quent observed. “We have everything from anti-vaxxers to neo-Nazis marching against corona measures. The common denominator is that it’s people who are quitting the mainstream, who are raging against the establishment.”
House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney said the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors should immediately suspend DeJoy as the probe moves forward.
The Democrat-controlled House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over reports that, as CEO of a major North Carolina logistics company, he orchestrated an unlawful straw-donor scheme for the benefit of Republican political candidates, the latest scandal threatening to engulf the head of the U.S. Postal Service.
In a statement late Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) urged the USPS Board of Governors to immediately suspend DeJoy as the probe moves forward and said her panel will also investigate the postmaster general for possible perjury.
DeJoy, the former head of fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, faces "criminal exposure" both if the claims surrounding the alleged straw-donor scheme are true and "also for lying to our committee under oath," said Maloney.
During sworn testimony before the Oversight Committee last month, DeJoy expressed outrage at a line of questioning pursued by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who pushed the postmaster general on whether he reimbursed any of his company's top executives for contributing to President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
"That's an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it," said DeJoy, himself a megadonor to Trump's campaign. "The answer is no... I'm fully aware of legal campaign contributions, and I resent the assertion, sir. What are you accusing me of?"
The Washington Post and the New York Times reported Sunday that DeJoy pressured his employees at New Breed Logistics to write checks for Republican congressional and presidential candidates and reimbursed them for doing so through bonuses. DeJoy served as CEO of the company from 1983 to 2014.
"Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses," David Young, DeJoy's director of human resources at New Breed Logistics, told the Post. "When we got our bonuses, let's just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations—and that covered the tax and everything else."
According to the Times,
A review of campaign finance records shows that over a dozen management-level employees at New Breed would routinely donate to the same candidate on the same day, often writing checks for an identical amount of money. One day in October 2014, for example, 20 midlevel and senior officials at the company donated a total of $37,600 to the campaign of Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who was running to unseat a Democratic incumbent. Each official wrote a check for either $2,600, the maximum allowable donation, or $1,000.
The straw-donor allegations came as DeJoy was already facing growing calls to resign over his sweeping Postal Service operational changes that significantly slowed mail across the nation and threatened the timely delivery of ballots for the November election, sparking allegations of deliberate and politically motivated sabotage by the postmaster general.
As Common Dreams reported, Democratic lawmakers and other officials said the new revelations provide further reason for DeJoy to step aside or be removed by the USPS Board of Governors, which unanimously appointed him in May despite his potential conflicts of interest and complete lack of prior experience at the Postal Service.
"Megadonor Louis DeJoy seemingly broke multiple campaign finance laws, continuing a dangerous pattern of turning our institutions of government upside-down, from the Postal Service to our election campaigns," Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said in a statement Sunday.
"It is extraordinarily disturbing," Flynn continued, "that megadonor DeJoy is abusing his power as Postmaster General to help President Trump win reelection, meanwhile apparently demonstrating disregard for key campaign finance laws designed to promote the integrity of our democratic elections."
Once safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines are available, tough choices will need to be made about who gets the first shots.
A committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine – at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health – has proposed an equitable way to allocate the vaccine.
They recommend first responders and health care workers take top priority. Older adults in congregate living situations would also be part of a first vaccination phase, according to the plan.
We are faculty at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Southern California who have spent decades studying health economics and epidemiology. One of us is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
We argue that this pandemic requires a different model for making vaccination choices. After taking care of essential workers, vaccinations should be given to the biggest transmitters of the virus – mostly the young – and only then to the most vulnerable.
Lessons from 2009 flu epidemic
The textbook vaccine model goes out the window when novel viruses emerge.
Some lessons can be drawn from the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic, which killed an estimated 500,000 people around the world. In the U.S, President Barack Obama declared the spread a national emergency.
A vaccine was developed as early as the fall of 2009. However, only 16 million doses were initially available. The CDC was required to make some difficult decisions about allocation. Some states requested 10 times the amount they were allocated.
In the end, the CDC allocated the vaccine strictly in proportion to a state’s population – that is, on a per capita basis. States then allocated them, often with priority to infants and the elderly, along with people at high risk.
This priority – to protect the most frail – has been public policy since at least the 1957-1958 influenza pandemic.
Very few of the COVID-19 superspreaders are elderly. It is the younger people who have a much greater propensity to resume social lives at schools and in other venues.
Among the young are a subset of highly social people with wide circles of friends who become the most fertile ground for the spread of COVID-19. These young people also have a much lower risk of death or even severe symptoms, which also means they are more likely to infect others.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association reports that at least 338,000 children have tested positive for the virus through July 30, with more than a quarter of that number having tested positive in just the last two weeks of that month.
With or without a vaccine, the best strategy for older Americans, especially those with underlying medical conditions, is avoiding contact with potential carriers.
Optimally, older people will drive down deaths by staying home in large numbers, and younger people will drive down infections by getting vaccinated in even larger numbers. It all works if the vaccine is effective and enough people take it.
We predict the pressures and politics around prioritizing vaccine distribution will be intense. We argue that they key will be to take the most beneficial route, not the most obvious one. With a full-scale public health campaign behind it, that will mean prioritizing those who are driving transmission, not those who are most vulnerable.
As counterintuitive as such a strategy may appear, plenty of evidence shows this would be the right approach.
"The Real Polls are starting to look GREAT! We will be having an even bigger victory than that of 2016," Trump claimed, in spite of the public polls showing him losing.
"The Radical Left Anarchists, Agitators, Looters, and just plain Lunatics, will not be happy, but they will behave!" Trump promised.
The president was harshly criticized for what many perceived as a threat:
President Donald Trump lashed out at his critics after 10 p.m. on Labor Day.
"The Real Polls are starting to look GREAT!" Trump celebrated, despite the fact the public polls show the president trailing Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.
"We will be having an even bigger victory than that of 2016," Trump promised.
In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College, but 2,868,686 more voters chose Hillary Clinton.
Trump then attacked his perceived enemies, vowing he will receive obedience.
"The Radical Left Anarchists, Agitators, Looters, and just plain Lunatics, will not be happy, but they will behave!" Trump wrote.
President Donald Trump has said that the 2020 election results will be illegitimate if he loses -- despite trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls. Now, progressives are planning to deal with what may come after Election Day 2020, according to a new report in The Daily Beast.
"Last week, a coalition of leading progressive groups gathered on Zoom to begin organizing for what they envision as the post-Election Day political apocalypse scenario," The Beast's Sam Stein reported.
"Put together by the Fight Back Table—an initiative launched after the 2016 election to get a constellation of lefty organizations to work more closely together—the meeting dealt with the operational demands expected if the November election ends without a clear outcome or with a Joe Biden win that Donald Trump refuses to recognize," Stein reported. "Sources familiar with the discussions described them as serious with a modestly panicked undertone. A smaller FBT session last fall had talked about post-election planning, but those discussions were tabled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the first time they were bringing the matter to the 50-plus organizations that make up the coalition. To formalize the effort, they gave it a name: the 'Democracy Defense Nerve Center.'"
"Over the course of two hours, participants broached the question of what the progressive political ecosystem can functionally do in a series of election scenarios," Stein reported. "They began charting out what it would take to stand up a multi-state communications arm to fight disinformation, a training program for nonviolent civil disobedience, and the underpinnings of what one official described as 'mass public unrest.'"
The group reported studied the Transition Integrity Project report warning, "The potential for violent conflict is high."
The Beast interviewed "one source familiar with the Democracy Defense Nerve Center operations."
“I don’t know what the strategy is when armed right-wing militia dudes show up in polling places,” the source said. “This [Kyle] Rittenhouse guy is being lionized on the right, right now. If it is being unleashed that you can shoot people and be a hero, I don’t know what preparation we can possibly do for that.”
Graphic video was posted on Twitter on Labor Day by Oregon Public Broadcasting.
"Hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators gathered in Oregon City on Labor Day for a planned vehicle rally," Jonathan Levinson and Sergio Olmos reported. "The rally’s organizers did not lead the caravan into Portland, as happened at the previous week’s event. Instead, vehicles drove from Oregon City and headed south on Interstate 5. Some drivers traveled with their vehicle doors open on the highway, or with people perched on top of vehicles as they drove."
The caravan officially ended in Woodburn.
"Members of the Proud Boys, an extremist group that regularly engages in street violence, and other demonstrators traveled to Salem after the official rally concluded. They congregated at the Oregon State Capitol Building, where some carried firearms and baseball bats," the network reported. "In one clash between the groups, members of the pro-Trump group attacked a counterprotester with a baseball bat and pepper spray. After a second similar attack, Salem police officers and Oregon State Police troopers arrested at least two men with the conservative demonstrators."
Videos recorded by Olmos show a protester being struck by a stick, another punched in the head while he was face down in the ground and show a protester being spray while down with a pepper spray-like gas.
Donald Trump re-election strategist Brad Parscale was widely mocked on Labor Day after a new bombshell report in The New York Times on his campaign facing a "cash crunch" after already blowing $800 million.
"Brad Parscale, the former campaign manager, liked to call Mr. Trump’s re-election war machine an 'unstoppable juggernaut.' But interviews with more than a dozen current and former campaign aides and Trump allies, and a review of thousands of items in federal campaign filings, show that the president’s campaign and the R.N.C. developed some profligate habits as they burned through hundreds of millions of dollars. Since Bill Stepien replaced Mr. Parscale in July, the campaign has imposed a series of belt-tightening measures that have reshaped initiatives, including hiring practices, travel and the advertising budget," the newspaper reported.
"Under Mr. Parscale, more than $350 million — almost half of the $800 million spent — went to fund-raising operations, as no expense was spared in finding new donors online. The campaign assembled a big and well-paid staff and housed the team at a cavernous, well-appointed office in the Virginia suburbs; outsize legal bills were treated as campaign costs; and more than $100 million was spent on a television advertising blitz before the party convention, the point when most of the electorate historically begins to pay close attention to the race," the newspaper noted.
Parscale attempted to deflect blame to "the family" in an interview with the newspaper.
“I ran the campaign the same way I did in 2016, which also included all of the marketing, strategy and expenses under the very close eye of the family,” Parscale said. “No decision was made without their approval.”
Still, Parscale is receiving criticism.
Veteran GOP strategist Ed Rollins blasted Parscale for spending "like a drunken sailor."
“If you spend $800 million and you’re 10 points behind, I think you’ve got to answer the question ‘What was the game plan?’” Rollins explained.
Here's what others were saying about Trump's re-election campaign and Brad Parscale:
President Donald Trump is scheduled to host a rally at the Winston-Salem airport Tuesday evening and Dave Plyler, the Republican chairman of Forsyth's county commission told the president to wear a mask.
All Trump fans must assume that they're being exposed to COVID-19 and sign a release saying that they accept all responsibility and won't sue Trump if they die. Masks will be handed out to those who want them, but most Trump supporters crowded into the small pens don't sport the face covering. They'll also be given hand sanitizer and their temperatures will be checked.
"It's been ordered by the governor," Plyler said of the mask requirement. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in North Carolina, do as the governor says."
"He (Trump) is a citizen of the United States, but he is also a guest in our county," Plyler said. "Without a mask, he could get sick, and he could blame the governor."
But in the past, Trump has decided that he doesn't need to wear one because everyone around him is tested. That doesn't mean he won't be exposed to the virus or can't get sick or his followers are immune.
President Donald Trump's re-election effort is burning through cash and may face a crisis during the final two months of the 2020 presidential campaign, according to a new analysis by The New York Times.
"Money was supposed to have been one of the great advantages of incumbency for President Trump, much as it was for President Barack Obama in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004. After getting outspent in 2016, Mr. Trump filed for re-election on the day of his inauguration — earlier than any other modern president — betting that the head start would deliver him a decisive financial advantage this year," the newspaper reported. "It seemed to have worked. His rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was relatively broke when he emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee this spring, and Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee had a nearly $200 million cash advantage."
"Five months later, Mr. Trump’s financial supremacy has evaporated. Of the $1.1 billon his campaign and the party raised from the beginning of 2019 through July, more than $800 million has already been spent. Now some people inside the campaign are forecasting what was once unthinkable: a cash crunch with less than 60 days until the election, according to Republican officials briefed on the matter," The Times reported.
"Brad Parscale, the former campaign manager, liked to call Mr. Trump’s re-election war machine an 'unstoppable juggernaut.' But interviews with more than a dozen current and former campaign aides and Trump allies, and a review of thousands of items in federal campaign filings, show that the president’s campaign and the R.N.C. developed some profligate habits as they burned through hundreds of millions of dollars. Since Bill Stepien replaced Mr. Parscale in July, the campaign has imposed a series of belt-tightening measures that have reshaped initiatives, including hiring practices, travel and the advertising budget."
The newspaper noted some of the ways the campaign has blown money.
"Among the splashiest and perhaps most questionable purchase was for Super Bowl ads that cost $11 million — more than the campaign has spent on TV in some top battleground states — a vanity splurge that allowed Mr. Trump to match the billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg’s buy for the big game," they reported. "There was also a cascade of smaller choices that added up: The campaign hired a coterie of highly paid consultants (Mr. Trump’s former bodyguard and White House aide has been paid more than $500,000 by the R.N.C. since late 2017); spent $156,000 for planes to pull aerial banners in recent months; and paid nearly $110,000 to Yondr, a company that makes magnetic pouches used to store cellphones during fund-raisers so that donors could not secretly record Mr. Trump and leak his remarks."
