Politics
WATCH: Don Lemon blasts Trump — and explains why nobody wants to hear from him on George Floyd’s murder
CNN anchor Don Lemon slammed U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald for invoking President Donald Trump on Thursday.
“I know she has a tough job, but guess what, as long as we are being honest right now, nobody wants to hear from the White House or the attorney general right now,” Lemon said. “No one wants to hear from the man who wanted the death penalty to come back for the Central Park Five.”
“No one wants to hear from the man who says that the former president was not born in this country. No one wants to hear from the man who said there are ‘very fine people on both sides.’ Do you understand what I am saying?” he asked.
“No one wants to hear from the person that they perceive as contributing to situations like this in this society. Not directly, but allowing people like that to think they can get away from this," Lemon explained. "No one wants to hear from the Birther-in-Chief, from the ‘sons of bitches’-calling person, who says that athletes are kneeling for this very reason.”
Trump is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist -- with powers he doesn’t have: NYT reporter
President Donald Trump's new executive order on social media companies was ridiculed on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" on Thursday.
"Donald Trump has moved at remarkable speed -- imagine if he did that with the pandemic -- in his attempt to exact revenge on Twitter for daring to fact-check a pair of his tweets," Nicolle Wallace reported.
"Just this hour he brought reporters into the Oval Office with Attorney General Bill Barr right next to him. Trump said he's about to sign an executive order with new regulations for social media companies, seemingly designed to curtail some of their legal protections," Wallace noted.
For analysis, Wallace interviewed New York Times reporter Nick Confessore.
"Nick, I think Trump should be careful what he wishes for because I don't totally understand why social media platforms have just a -- it's like opening the spigots for Russian disinformation to pour through it. You've reported more extensively about this than just about anyone. Could Trump's moves, one, backfire on Trump, and two, be just the tip of the iceberg of what a responsible regulation of social media could entail?" she asked.
"Well look, if you got rid of Section 230 right now, for example, it's possible to imagine that somebody could sue President Trump for his calamities on Twitter, for lies he tells on Twitter about Joe Scarborough or someone whose wife died, so he should be careful," Confessore replied.
"I will also point out, Section 230 does not have to do with this thing about being a platform or a publisher. Section 230 already encourages platforms to moderate content, that's why it was passed. What's happening with the president's order here, as far as we've seen details, he's trying to use powers he doesn't actually have to solve a problem that doesn't exist," he explained. "It's ridiculous."
"That's the most brilliant thing I've heard in a long time," Wallace said.
Watch:
Pennsylvania Dem unloads on GOPers who pushed to reopen as they hid colleague's COVID-19 infection
Pennsylvania state Rep. Brian Sims (D) lashed out at Republican lawmakers who remained silent after testing positive for COVID-19.
Democrats this week accused Republicans of withholding information after Rep. Andrew Lewis (R) tested positive for the virus.
"It's been a week, perhaps longer, that House Republican leadership knew that at least one of their members had tested positive for COVID-19," Sims explained in a Facebook post. "But they didn't go on quarantine until they were done serving alongside us, especially those of us that serve on the State Government Committee."
"Our gerrymandered Republican leadership has been perhaps the most active state legislature in the entire country," he continued. "And during that time period, during the entire COVID-19 crisis, the State Government Committee has been the place where all of these f*cked up bills to pretend that it's safe to go back to work have been going."
According to Sims, Republican members "lined up one after one after one" to say it is safe to go back to work.
"Meanwhile during that time period, they were testing positive," the lawmaker complained. "They were notifying one another and they didn't notify us."
Watch the entire video below.
'I'm entitled': Kayleigh McEnany defends her 11 mail-in votes while calling it 'fraud' for the masses
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Thursday faced questions from Fox News about why she had voted by mail 11 times even though President Donald Trump has called absentee ballots a "scam."
McEnany was asked about her voting history after the Tampa Bay Times reported that she had used mail-in voting nearly a dozen times in recent years.
"So why is it OK for you to do it?" Fox News host Ed Henry asked McEnany. "I understand you are traveling, you're in a different city. But how can you really be assured that your votes were counted accurately but when other people do it, it's fraud."
"The president's been very clear," the White House spokesperson replied. "Every American is entitled to vote the way that I did if you are someone who is working out of state, that your domicile is in a different state, you are absolutely entitled to request an absentee ballot and to cast your ballot by mail."
"I'm entitled to that, the average viewer watching is entitled to that," she said. "The president has no qualms with that. He's for absentee voting for a reason. What he's not for is mass mail-in voting, what Nancy Pelosi is asking for, which we know is subject to fraud, where automatically the state sends to all of its voter rolls a ballot, where in L.A. county you have 112% of the population registered."
McEnany added: "That leaves 12% subject to fraud -- at least 12%. That's what he's against. He's not against the average everyday American who has a reason for casting their ballots to get an absentee and cast in that manner."
Watch the video below from Fox News.
‘We’re barreling towards economic devastation’: Robert Reich worries ‘government is nowhere to be found’
With the United States Senate on vacation and no efforts currently advancing to provide further COVID-19 stimulus, economist Robert Reich warned of the stakes on Wednesday.
Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, listed three troubling economic facts.
"Temporary eviction moratoriums are set to expire in half of the states. One-fifth of Americans missed rent payments this month. Unemployment benefits are set to expire in two months," he noted.
"We're barreling towards economic devastation and the government is nowhere to be found," Reich warned.
The Berkeley professor offered a solution after 100,000 coronavirus deaths and 40 million unemployed.
"Vote him out in November," Reich said, in reference to President Donald Trump.
Colorado GOP lawmaker rages against pandemic bill: 'I go to Walmart and I don't wipe down that cart'
Colorado state Sen. Vicki Marble (R) on Wednesday lashed out against a pandemic safety bill that would allow legislators to participate remotely.
In a speech on the Colorado Senate floor, Marble explained that she is opposing the measure even though health conditions prevent her from wearing a mask.
"To be an elected representative of the people means making sacrifices, huge sacrifices," Marble opined. "I feel that over the last 10 weeks our representative government has been shoved to the wayside and it's more of a dictatorship -- but it's for the safety of the people so we let it go."
"What's really funny is all the precautions we see around here," she said, referring to the state capitol. "Greater than anywhere else in the state! Greater than Walmart, believe it or not."
According to Marble, "All these precautions, all the masks, all the spacing at the desks, all of these plexiglass partitions for perception so we can all feel safe. But we all really know it really doesn't help."
"Who are you kidding? Honestly, who are you kidding?" she asked before explaining how she shops at Walmart.
"I feel safer here than I feel anywhere," Marble said. "And you know what? I go to Walmart. And you know what? I don't wipe down that cart every time I take it out. I put my hands on, shove it through and I'm going shoulder with people in the aisles even though Walmart has taken precautions to say you go this way down that aisle and that way down that aisle."
"People just aren't ready to accept that," she added.
Watch the video below from the Colorado Senate.
CNBC anchors argue on air: '100,000 people died... all you did was try to help your friend the president'
CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday accused co-anchor Joe Kernen of providing political help to President Donald Trump instead of reporting factual news about the coronavirus pandemic.
Kernen appeared to get under Sorkin's skin by dismissing questions about the relatively quick market comeback as the rest of the economy suffers in the midst of the pandemic.
"Joe, you missed [the stock market] 100% on the way down and you missed 100,000 deaths," Sorkin said. "So we can have this debate back and forth and you can try and question the questions I'm asking."
"Hold on!" Sorkin shouted when Kernen tried to interrupt him.
"I'm not going to do this with you, Joe," he said. "These are questions that investors are asking every single morning. I'm just trying to get through some of this clutter. I may be right or I may be wrong... it doesn't make people a good person or a bad person. It doesn't make it right to act the way you are."
"You just yelled again," Kernen complained. "I'm sorry."
"No you're not, Joe," Sorkin charged. "Go ahead with the news."
"You panicked about the market, panicked about COVID, panicked about the ventilators, panicked about the PPE, panicked about ever going out again," Kernen said.
"Joseph, 100,000 people died!" Sorkin exclaimed. "A hundred thousand people died and all you did was try to help your friend the president! That's what you did! Every single morning on this show! Every single morning on this show you have used and abused your position, Joe!"
"I'm trying to help investors keep their cool," Kernen insisted. "As it turns out, that's what they should have done."
"Do the news," Sorkin quipped before signing off.
Watch the video below from CNBC.
Fox News legal analyst: 'I will defend to the death' Twitter's right to fact check Trump
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano on Wednesday shot down President Donald Trump's threat to regulate Twitter after the company fact checked one of his tweets.
A note added to the president's tweet encouraged users to "get the facts about mail-in ballots," which Trump had wrongly called "no less than substantially fraudulent."
"We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen," Trump wrote in response to the fact check.
Fox News host Sandra Smith asked Napolitano if Twitter has the power to fact check the president.
"Can they do this?" the Fox News host wondered.
"The short answer is yes," Napolitano replied. "The president is right about the bias in social media and the president is also understandably not happy about his being fact checked. I mean, nobody would."
"But Twitter is privately owned and publicly held," he continued. "It's not owned by the government. And so the First Amendment, which guarantees the freedom of speech and of the press, since it only regulates the government, does not regulate Twitter. So stated differently, Twitter can take down, modify or correct any user it wants, including the president of the United States."
Napolitano predicted that it will be almost impossible for Trump to "regulate" Twitter's free speech rights.
"Look, I don't like what they say," he remarked. "But I'll defend to the death their right to say it. Under a Supreme Court decision that the president likes called Citizens United, Twitter has freedom of speech just like you and I and the president himself."
Watch the video below from Fox News.
Protesters build ramparts from shopping carts at ‘The Battle of Snelling and Lake’ in Minneapolis
Police reportedly used tear gas, flash-bang grenades and fired rubber bullets at people protesting the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on Tuesday evening.
The protests began as a peaceful, but large, gathering in spite of the coronavirus pandemic. Things escalated and police reportedly used tear gas on the protesters.
At a Target department store parking lot, protesters improvised barricades out of shopping carts to take cover.
Here are some photos from later in the evening:
'This is pretty nuts': Reporter grills Kayleigh McEnany over Trump's Joe Scarborough murder smear
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany defiantly pushed back on criticism of President Donald Trump for suggesting that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is guilty of murdering intern Lori Klausutis.
"The opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough was not a Donald Trump original thought, this has been going on for years, long before I joined the chorus," Trump wrote in a tweet, "about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing? Maybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?"
On Tuesday, McEnany was asked if Trump would honor a request from Klausutis' family to take down the tweet.
"I do know that our hearts are with Lori's family at this time," McEnany said without answering the question.
"Why is the president making these unfounded allegations?" ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl asked. "This is pretty nuts, isn't it? The president is accusing somebody of possible murder. The family is pleading with the president to please stop unfounded conspiracy theories. Why is he doing this?"
After glancing at her prepared remarks, McEnany accused Scarborough of "joking about killing an intern" years after Klausutis died.
"I'm sure that was hurtful to Lori's family," she added.
"He's the president of the United States," Karl pointed out, "and he's accusing somebody of possibly murder. This is different. He's not a private citizen. He's the president."
"Yeah," McEnany said, returning to her notes. "Joe Scarborough, if we want to start talking about false accusations, we have quite a few we can go through."
"I'm asking about the president's allegations," Karl pressed.
"And I'm replying to you," McEnany quipped. "Mika [Brzezinski] accused the president of 100,000 deaths and that's incredibly irresponsible. They've dragged his family through the mud. They've made false accusations that I won't go through."
"They should be held to account for their falsehoods!" she complained. "Joe Scarborough should be held to account for saying people will die by taking hydroxychloroquine."
"Does that justify the president spreading a false conspiracy theory?" Karl wondered.
"I will point you back to Joe Scarborough who laughed and joked about this item," McEnany shot back. "It's Joe Scarborough that has to answer these questions."
Watch the video below from Fox News.
Gov. Ron DeSantis: 'Obviously' Trump will 'abide' by safety rules if RNC convention is moved to Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said he made a pitch to the White House this week for the Republican National Convention to be moved from North Carolina to Florida.
DeSantis revealed on Tuesday that he had spoken to White House officials about moving the convention after President Donald Trump threatened to pull the event from Charlotte unless Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper agreed to allow people to "fully occupy" the arena.
While speaking to reporters, the Florida governor insisted that Trump would follow public health guidelines if the event was moved to his state.
"Florida would love to have the RNC," DeSantis said. "Heck, I'm a Republican. It would be good for us to have the RNC in terms of the economic impact when you talk about major events like that."
"We should try to get it done as best we can in accordance with whatever safety requirements," he added. "You know, [Trump's] government will be talking about the safety restrictions of the president's government."
DeSantis continued: "Obviously he's going to want to abide by whatever they're saying. So we can get that done. We can do it in a way that's safe. That would be a huge economic impact."
The governor, however, did not commit to allowing Republicans to "fully occupy" the convention space as Trump has called for.
Watch the video below from WFLA.
CNN's Camerota grills New Jersey pastor for defying state order and delivering sermon without a mask
Appearing on CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday morning, a New Jersey pastor who is defying state orders to stay closed, and plans to sue New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) if he doesn’t designate places of worship essential, was confronted by Alisyn Camerota for refusing to wear a mask during his Sunday sermon.
With Pastor Charles Clark II of the Solid Rock Baptist Church in Camden County saying the governor is infringing on his 1st Amendment rights by forbidding in-person services during the coronavirus pandemic, Camerota pressed him over whether he wore a mask during this past weekend's sermon.
"It sounds like you're bending over backwards to do all the right things, even things that are beyond what is necessarily officially recommended and I'm sure that's helpful. But it is actually your behavior in front of the congregation that could possibly be the riskiest. I'm sure you heard -- hold on," she began as he attempted to interrupt. "Let me just state the case as is stated by the National Academy of Sciences. You projecting in front of the congregation, it is your sermon. It is the idea that you would take off the mask for that, and the reason that I say that is because there is research that shows that one minute of loud speech, the kind you would do while projecting, produces thousands of droplets that then remain airborne for 12 minutes. And so everybody else, it seems, is doing pretty risk free or as low risk behavior as you can, but yours might be the most dangerous."
"We're up on a platform and we have a distance between us and the first pew that is more than six feet. And so I understand what is being said, the whole idea of the mask or not the mask, including back to things Dr. [Anthony] Fauci has said at times, the mask is very controversial, we are wearing them," he attempted. "I, being on the platform, people that are back away from the first pew, I don't think that's uncommon including in press conferences and where the president and others have spoken, that there is a distance between us and the parishioners, and so every time we come off the platform, we do put our mask on."
"Yeah, I mean, it is the problem with the projecting. I'm heartened to hear about the choir, because it is the singing that gets people sick," Camerota countered. "But it is the projecting of the pastor and there are a couple of instances where we can look to see that parishioners get sick. In Arkansas, a pastor and his wife infected 35 people doing just that kind of preaching, three people then died. In Washington, that was a choir, but there was one person sick in a choir who because of singing infected 71 people, two of them died."
"The reality is in spreading of the virus, there are no guarantees," Clark shot back. "Everyone that I know is trying to be as safe as possible. But this idea that because I'm up on a platform, somehow I'm going to infect a whole entire congregation, that doesn't make sense."
"It is because you're speaking loudly," the CNN host explained. "Not because you're on a platform. because you're speaking loudly."
"I understand that," the pastor exclaimed. "But if I was on the New Jersey boardwalk today or if I were to be in Home Depot today, if I were to be in the grocery store today, and I know some -- I know we're wearing masks in those places -- but we're putting on a mask."
"There is no guarantee of with me wearing that mask or not that it is going to make it perfect being there on the platform," he added.
"I know," Camerota replied. "It is all about cutting down on risk and that's it. What you can do is cut down on risk."
Watch below:
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