Donald Trump, Jr. addressed the Republican National Committee on Monday, urging Americans to trust his father with four more years in office.
But instead of focusing on the words coming out of his mouth, many Twitter users were focused on his eyes, with many wondering if he might have been on drugs.
Here's some of what people were saying about his speech:
On Monday, at the Republican National Convention, Trump strategist Kimberly Guilfoyle took the stage to give a forceful speech attacking Democrats and warning that they pose a threat to the American way of life.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) spoke during the first night of the Republican National Committee Convention.
Jordan complained about crime during his speech, despite allegations that he was aware Ohio State wrestling team students were molested while he was a coach.
Here's some of what people were saying about Jordan's speech:
On the first night of the Republican National Convention, CNN and MSNBC dutifully carried a live stream of the proceedings, as speaker after speaker lined up to attack Democrats and praise the president.
Fox News, however, cut out from the convention early — a decision that angered the Trump campaign's former manager and current digital adviser Brad Parscale, who whined that he had to rely on CNN instead.
President Donald Trump has increasingly grown frustrated with Fox News, turning away from it in favor of the much more consistently pro-Trump One America News (OANN).
On the first night of the Republican National Convention, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) took the stage to give a speech attacking Joe Biden and promoting the GOP.
Commenters on social media ridiculed the speech — many of them mocking his appearance, and others laughing over the fact that even he referred to himself as a "Florida Man."
When President Donald Trump was asked by his friend and Fox News host Sean Hannity in June what he would do in a second term, it did not go well. He gave a rambling, self-obsessed answer that presented no policy objectives, no vision for the future. It was so bad that he faced criticism from within his own party, and Hannity gave him a second chance. This time, Trump was able to name a few policy objectives, like defeating the coronavirus and rebuilding the economy, but still gave no sense of a distinctive vision for the Republican Party's agenda.
Though many pundits have long since given up on the idea that Trump's poor performance will hurt him among his supporters, these answers were widely viewed as a significant problem for him. And they may be — winning re-election happens on the margin, and Trump's inability to give purpose to his candidacy may fail to inspire otherwise gettable voters.
But some pundits drew another lesson from this episode, one that was codified in a new piece from Politico on Monday by Tim Alberta. In "The Grand Old Meltdown," the reporter who has spent much of his life covering the right wing confessed that he is unable to express what the party stands for anymore.
"The supposed canons of GOP orthodoxy—limited government, free enterprise, institutional conservation, moral rectitude, fiscal restraint, global leadership—have in recent years gone from elastic to expendable," he said. "Identifying this intellectual vacuum is easy enough. Far more difficult is answering the question of what, quite specifically, has filled it."
He even called up Frank Luntz, a prominent GOP pollster, who expressed similar bafflement. Alberta concluded:
It can now safely be said, as his first term in the White House draws toward closure, that Donald Trump’s party is the very definition of a cult of personality. It stands for no special ideal. It possesses no organizing principle. It represents no detailed vision for governing. Filling the vacuum is a lazy, identity-based populism that draws from that lowest common denominator Sanford alluded to. If it agitates the base, if it lights up a Fox News chyron, if it serves to alienate sturdy real Americans from delicate coastal elites, then it’s got a place in the Grand Old Party.
“Owning the libs and pissing off the media,” shrugs Brendan Buck, a longtime senior congressional aide and imperturbable party veteran if ever there was one. “That’s what we believe in now. There’s really not much more to it.”
But this isn't really right. It's true that the Republican Party has become a cult of personality around Trump. But the administration — like the party that supports it — retains many key ideas that shape its policies and will shape another term of a Trump presidency, if he wins it. If Joe Biden wins, other principles will control the federal government. Trump's second term will undoubtedly be filled with more efforts to enact and entrench these principles as government policy. It's professional negligence if reporters ignore these principles and Trump's clear second-term agenda. "More of the same" may not seem like a shiny new idea for reporters to talk about, but the stakes are incredibly high. Reporters should make it clear to readers what the differences will be between a second Trump term and a new Biden administration, and why they matter.
One major difference centers on Trump's key issue: immigration. Immigration restrictionism is a core goal of the GOP under Trump, even if the principle was initially presented as mere opposition to illegal immigration. That pretense is dropped now. Especially since the coronavirus crisis, but starting from the early days of the presidency, the Trump administration has been aggressively using its authority to limit immigration to the United States and often immiserate migrants who make it here.
This is an animating idea for many in the party. Immigration should be reduced, they believe, and unwanted immigrants should be dealt with harshly. This vision has been enacted in dozens of policies, most notably the short-lived family separation policy, though that is far from the only example. The Trump administration has lowered the amount of refugees accepted annually to the United States to 18,000, a historic low. The Remain in Mexico policy and metering at the border severely limit the number of aslyum-seekers who can cross over. And Trump's infamous ban on immigration from a group of primarily Muslim-majority countries remains in place. In a second term, these policies will continue to fuel misery for migrants and would-be migrants, and Trump's aides will undoubtedly find more ways to enforce their xenophobic preferences.
Biden seeks to overturn these policies. He would, for instance, raise the cap on refugees to 125,000 annually, higher than during President Barack Obama's tenure. Making such changes would affect hundreds of thousands of lives, arguably many more, in profound and irreversible ways.
The big ideas of the GOP play out in other ways, too. The Trump administration has opened up federal lands for resource extraction. It has reversed more than 100 rules regulating environmental pollution, permitting industry to poison our skies and our brains. The National Labor Relations Board has been turned on its head, and it is now used to attack workers' rights. Under the Trump Justice Department, white-collar prosecutions have reportedly dropped to their lowest level ever. Biden would seek to reverse these trends, while Trump would pursue them more aggressively.
One area in which Trump's rhetoric most diverges from the reality of his party's principles is on health care. While Trump ran on insuring every American, his Justice Department has joined a lawsuit that seeks to strike down Obamacare — a move that could strip health insurance from tens of millions of Americans and slash protections for many millions more. The administration has also weakened Medicaid and made it easier for states to deny coverage to their residents. Alberta is right when he reports that the GOP has no plan to "replace" Obamcare, as it long promised to do. But he's wrong to conclude the party has no big ideas or plans for health care. Its plan is, quite clearly, to do what it can to take government-funded health care away from people while telling voters it's doing the exact opposite.
In the realm of foreign policy, the big ideas of Trumpism are also quite clear. The administration has been hollowing out the State Department. Trump has deliberately set out to weaken American alliances with Democratic countries while seeking deals and relationships with dictators and authoritarian states that can give him what he wants. Sometimes, that's just personal recognition and praise. And sometimes, as in the case of China, it's a series of minor deals that nonetheless let him claim victory.
Some critics may paint this as a foreign policy driven by a lack of ideas, but again, this misses the point and fails to appreciate the very dangerous ideas at play. Trump's foreign driven by complete disdain for the world of professional diplomacy. He wants to break down international ties based on democratic values and replace them with alliances that are narrowly and personally beneficial to him. This is a genuinely terrifying view of what foreign policy should be, but it's clearly a coherent idea all on its own.
Alberta and others fail to see these animating ideas behind the GOP and Trumpism, perhaps because they stand in contrast to the story they would like to tell about the party. But all of these actions flow from principles — some directly from Trump himself, others straight from Republican orthodoxy — that comprise a genuine governing philosophy. It's a deeply frightening vision for the country, so the GOP would rather the voters don't understand it.
MSNBC anchor Joy Reid offered a shocking take on how the Trump family views democracy during MSNBC's coverage of the Republican National Committee Convention.
"What I have been thinking about today is the difference between a democracy and a constitutional monarchy," Reid explained.
"In a constitutional monarchy, there are perfunctory votes, but the king is still the king. The royal family is the royal family, there is nothing you can do about it," she explained. "If the royal family has done misdeeds and if the court wants to dig into potential illegality, it doesn't matter, they are the royal family."
"It's almost as if the election doesn't matter anymore because as far as Donald Trump and his family are concerned, they have established themselves as monarchs," she warned.
Watch:
According to CBS News, Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr. is denying earlier reports that he is resigning over the pool boy sex scandal.
"Jerry Falwell Jr. said Monday that he is not resigning from Liberty University after earlier reports that he would be stepping down. He had said earlier in the day that he was seeking help for the emotional toll of his wife's alleged affair," said the report. "A senior official at Liberty University told CBS News that members of the school's board "have been in discussion" with Falwell and expect to make a statement on Tuesday. The official would not comment on the conflicting reports of Falwell's resignation."
Donald Trump lives in his own alternate universe. He sees the world not as it really is, but how he wants it to be. He relies on magical thinking—the belief that his thoughts can directly make something happen in the real world—and conspiracy theory—the belief that other people are making something happen in a sinister fashion behind his back.
Trump’s magical thinking could not be more dangerous, especially when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. And his conspiracy theory that mail-in voting will result in a “rigged election” is demoralizing and potentially calamitous to the country.
Trump is a malignant narcissist. Malignant narcissists are prone to establish their own “alternate universe” with magical thinking and conspiracy theories in order to maintain their grandiosity and sense of superiority. They twist and distort true information to fit their self-image. And, sometimes, their new version of the truth can become extreme, fixed, and detached from reality—what is called psychotic delusional thinking.
Trump’s magical thinking and conspiracy theory are extreme, fixed, and largely disconnected from reality. They are almost delusional. Donald Trump is close to being psychotic.
Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic can be traced to his irrational magical thinking. His magical thinking does not allow for the consideration of data and science. He has stopped listening to our public health experts, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx. He is not following CDC guidelines. Medical opinions are dismissed and unwelcome in Trump’s alternate universe.
Trump proclaims to the American people that the coronavirus has been reduced to “ashes.” He reports that some states are “in extremely good shape.” He asserts that he has done “a great job” in getting rid of the virus.
Trump’s magical thinking about COVID gets even more irrational: “It will go away like things go away,” “It will just disappear,” and “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will just disappear.”
Some of Trump’s magical thinking about COVID has been bizarre. He mused at a press briefing that inserted light or ingested disinfectant might kill the virus. He is obsessed with a drug, hydroxychloroquine, although it has no proven efficacy with this virus and can cause death. On Sunday, Trump held a news conference to announce that he had obtained emergency approval for the use of convalescent plasma. Such plasma is already in use with COVID patients and is not considered a miracle breakthrough treatment. And the FDA commissioner approved it only after Trump accused him of being “deep state.”
Trump also believes that the number of cases of COVID infection would be less if we stopped testing for it. That is recklessly illogical thinking. That is like saying there would be less cancer if we simply did not test for it.
Trump’s conspiracy theory is that national mail-in voting will automatically result in widespread voter fraud. His belief is not supported by data; it is contrary to the best science at hand. Trump keeps clamoring about a rigged election; that is his new mantra. It is his “made-up fantasy” that is not rooted in reality. Trump irrationally believes that he is trying to prevent “anarchy, madness and chaos.”
Trump’s psyche cannot handle this pandemic situation. He does not understand that the virus is surging and spreading and will not just magically disappear on its own without a proven vaccine. He does not understand the vital importance of mitigation measures—hand washing, mask wearing and social distancing. He does not grasp that 176,000 deaths could have been largely prevented with a proactive national strategy.
Trump’s psyche cannot grasp the importance—and safety—of national mail-in voting in light of our pandemic. He firmly believes that he will be the victim of voter fraud, and that this would be the “most inaccurate and dishonest election in history.” He has blocked funds to the Post Office in order to stymie mail-in voting. The fact that Trump voted by mail in the last Florida Republican primary does not compute in his world of unreality.
We are in a life-and-death crisis in this country. Thousands of Americans are dying each week of COVID. And Donald Trump is still not taking reality-based, medically-sanctioned steps to defeat this deadly pandemic.
Mail-in voting is vital to have in place by November 3. The American people need a way to vote that is safe and timely and efficient. Trump is doing everything he can to undermine mail-in voting. His goal is to confound and even paralyze the whole election process—an event that would be catastrophic to the orderly transition of power.
Trump’s alternate universe is almost delusional. It will be on full display at the RNC. His psychiatrically disturbed thinking and behavior will be lauded by his sycophants. It is beyond alarming to see his apologists have fidelity to a president who is near-psychotic.
Trump’s alternate universe of irrationality and dangerousness cannot sustain the backbone of our democracy.
We are at the inflection point.
Alan D. Blotcky, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, Alabama.
Near the end of a lengthy indictment detailing fraud allegations against Stephen Bannon, former Donald Trump campaign CEO and chief strategist and his associates, federal prosecutors reveal that they intend to seize the assets of a murky nonprofit organization Bannon launched in 2017 to promote “economic nationalism.”
The group is Citizens of the American Republic, a California-based nonprofit that serves as a platform for Bannon’s films and podcasts that promote Trump’s ideology. Throughout the 24-page indictment, the group appears to be referenced as “Non-Profit-1” in a scheme in which Bannon and his partners were allegedly looting a crowdsourced charity, We Build the Wall, for personal gain. The indictment never outright states that “Non-Profit-1” is Citizens of the American Republic, but it describes it as an “organization founded by [Bannon] with the stated purpose of promoting economic nationalism and American sovereignty,” which closely matches the nonprofit’s own stated aims.
The indictment alleges that “Non-Profit-1” received over $1 million through the scheme and funneled part of it to Brian Kolfage, the military veteran who raised money to build a privately funded wall to help Trump block off the southern border.
The document also sheds light on an oblique financial trail linking a loose-knit group of private businesses and nonprofit organizations politically aligned with Trump. In addition to Bannon’s nonprofit and We Build the Wall, federal investigators are moving to seize assets from four other entities, including two affiliated with Kolfage — a defunct right-wing news site called Freedom Daily that operated out of Florida and America First Medical, a medical supplies company Kolfage formed in Wyoming to sell masks in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. rules allowing so-called dark money groups like Bannon’s to hide the identity of their donors helps them maintain a shroud of secrecy, which is only partially pierced by a criminal indictment and the subpoena power of investigators.
“The only reason any of this is coming to light is it turns out that the money that was being collected wasn’t necessarily used for the promised purposes and instead it was used to enrich someone,” said Daniel Weiner, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Election Reform Program. “The secrecy, at least for the people who helped design the system, is a feature not a bug.”
Kolfage told Reuters in 2019 that he had earned seven figures through creating and selling conservative websites like Freedom Daily.
Bannon played a critical role in helping Kolfage set up We Build the Wall Inc. after GoFundMe, the crowdfunding platform he had been using, accumulated millions in donations from supporters, the indictment charges. GoFundMe demanded that Kolfage set up a legitimate nonprofit to accept donations. The effort ultimately raised over $25 million after promising — falsely, the indictment alleges — that the donations would not benefit Kolfage.
That “removes all self-interest taint” and gives “Brian Kolfage saint hood,” stated Andrew Badolato, a longtime Bannon associate who was also indicted, in a text to Bannon that prosecutors quoted. Badolato and his lawyer did not respond to emails requesting comment.
Bannon promoted the wall effort on his podcast “War Room: Pandemic” as recently as Wednesday, when he had Kolfage on to discuss the situation at the border.
“You’ve been the leader of this, assisting President Trump in building this wall in these tough areas,” Bannon said to Kolfage.
Bannon was arrested on Thursday by federal agents in Connecticut while on board a superyacht owned by wealthy Chinese businessman Guo Wengui. Guo also allowed Bannon to use his private jet to fly around promoting Republican congressional candidates in 2018, an arrangement that experts said could run afoul of campaign finance laws banning foreign donations.
Bannon and his lawyers did not return emails from ProPublica requesting comment. He told reporters after posting bond that the indictment was a “fiasco” to “stop people who want to build the wall.” On Friday, Kolfage wrote on his Facebook page that the indictment is a “witch hunt” and the work of a “weaponized judicial system” trying to take down Trump insiders.
Kolfage did not return an email from ProPublica for comment after the indictment. On Thursday, Trump continued to distance himself from We Build the Wall, telling reporters that he thought “it was done for showboating reasons” and that he didn’t know that Bannon was linked to the group. A spokesperson for Trump told Fox News that the president did not know the other people involved with the project.
Citizens of the American Republic raised around $4.5 million in 2018, according to its tax filings, most of which came through six- and seven-figure donations from just a handful of donors, whose names are not disclosed. A single donor gave $2 million. The group’s purpose is to “educate the American people” about issues including “economic nationalism,” “social policy and respect for traditional American values” and “America First foreign policy,” among other issues, according to the filing.
The group’s first filings, for the 2017 tax year, show no donations to the nonprofit. The 2018 tax filings show transactions that occurred prior to the timeline covered in the federal indictment.
As a “social welfare” nonprofit organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, the organization is not required to disclose its donors. The contact number listed on the group’s tax forms belongs to its accountant, Robert Watkins, who did not return a message requesting comment.
The organization made just $15,000 in grants in 2018. The filings show $250,000 in loans and payments to Bannon’s film company and $40,000 in payments to Bannon’s nephew, Sean.
Bannon is the group’s president and is described as working 80 hours a week for the group with no salary. His sister Mary E. Meredith, who is vice president, earned $20,000 for her 40 hours per week of work. Meredith did not respond to messages requesting comment. Other top officials are Dan Fleuette, a longtime Bannon associate, and lawyer Cleta Mitchell. Fleuette did not respond to a LinkedIn message requesting an interview.
Mitchell has served on the boards of several right-leaning nonprofits, including the National Rifle Association and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, led by Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore. She declined an interview request.
The filings show more than $1.1 million flowing out of the nonprofit to various large vendors, although the nature of their work is unclear. Nearly $850,000 went toward travel, and more than $1.4 million to “conferences, conventions and meetings.” The filing says that Citizens of the American Republic funded two Bannon documentaries, about the 2016 campaign and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and paid for promoting them.
In 2018, Citizens of the American Republic paid nearly $144,000 to a company called Platinum Advertising Corporation for “websites/social media.” The address given for Platinum Advertising in the filing, 30 N. Gould St., Suite R, in Sheridan, Wyoming, is the same address as the medical supplies company Kolfage formed, America First Medical.
Wyoming has particularly lax business transparency laws, and Platinum Advertising appears to be a shell corporation. Its secretary is listed in state filings as Gerald Pitts, the founder and president of Wyoming Corporate Services, which specializes in incorporating businesses to shield assets from taxation or disclosure. A 2011 investigation by Reuters found that Pitts was listed as “a director, president or principal for at least 41 companies” registered at a single address in Wyoming.
Pitts did not respond to an email requesting comment.
A second company paid by Citizens of the American Republic, Fortress FM, received more than $191,000 in 2018 for “security, logistics, and training.” The company address listed on the 2018 filing is a post office box in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that is also used by a firm of accountants, Kercher-Jarrett LLC.
T. Gary Kercher and Wayne Jarrett, who are listed on Kercher-Jarrett LLC’s business filings, did not respond to messages requesting comment.
One of the charges Bannon is facing is that of conspiring to commit money laundering. The 2018 National Money Laundering Risk Assessment, prepared by the departments of Treasury, Justice and Homeland Security and U.S. regulatory agencies, noted the risks presented by a lax approach to shell corporations.
“The ease with which companies can be incorporated under state law, and how little information is generally required about the company’s owners or activities, raises concerns about a lack of transparency,” the report said.
Kolfage worked with Fisher Industries, a North Dakota-based construction firm, to help build the two border fences. We Build the Wall funded the construction of one stretch of border fence in New Mexico, near El Paso, Texas, and contributed 5% of funds for Fisher to build a $42 million fence along the banks of the Rio Grande south of Mission, Texas.
A ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigation found that the Rio Grande Valley project suffered from major erosion just months after it was finished. Engineers warned that could result in segments of the fence toppling into the river if not fixed. Fisher Industries’ CEO has dismissed the concerns and said that he will fix any problems.
Despite criticism of the wall-building project from the president, his administration has awarded Tommy Fisher, CEO of Fisher Industries, about $2 billion worth of federal contracts to build segments of the border wall for the government — at least two of them while a federal audit over concerns of “inappropriate influence” by the president is pending.
Fisher’s attorney told ProPublica and the Tribune that his client has not received any other money beyond the construction funding provided and has no other business with We Build the Wall.
On Monday, a federal official confirmed several Democratic lawmakers' suspicion about President Donald Trump's proposal to eliminate payroll taxes if re-elected: It would wipe out the Social Security trust fund within three years.
The news prompted anger on social media, with commenters demanding the president and his Republican allies leave Social Security alone.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was blasted for an unethical and potentially illegal decision to address the Republican National Committee Convention.
"While he is overseas on an official trip, Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo will address the Republican National Convention in his "personal" capacity, the State Department said Sunday, blurring the lines between the two in an unprecedented -- and critics say inappropriate -- way," ABC News reported. "Slated for Tuesday evening, his speech has already sparked a wave of backlash, with critiques that the top U.S. diplomat is supposed to represent all Americans and not play a role in party politics and that the speech violates department protocol, if not U.S. law."
Ambassador Nicholas Burns blasted Pompeo's decision on Twitter.
A paper trail was revealed by House Foreign Affairs Chair Elliot Engel (D-NY), who released two internal State Department documents stating that Pompeo should not be speaking at the covention.
Foreign policy Prof. Daniel Drezner also offered his thoughts on the scandal, which revealed the depths of the outrage over Pompeo's decision.
On Monday, Stephen Goss, the chief actuary of Social Security, sent a letter to four senators, warning them that President Donald Trump's plan to eliminate payroll taxes would drain the Social Security trust fund in three years.
"If this hypothetical legislation were enacted, with no alternative source of revenue to replace the elimination of payroll taxes on earned income paid on January 1, 2021 and thereafter, we estimate that DI Trust Fund asset reserves would become permanently depleted in about the middle of calendar year 2021, with no ability to pay DI benefits thereafter," concluded Goss. "We estimate that OASI Trust Fund reserves would become permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023, with no ability to pay OASI benefits thereafter."
The letter came in response to queries about the viability of Trump's plan by Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
In response to a congressional standoff over coronavirus stimulus, Trump recently signed four executive actions, one of which temporarily defers payroll taxes that are used to fund Social Security. The president has proposed eliminating this tax altogether if re-elected, and has not clarified how he plans to replace the lost revenue.
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