theguardian--2020-10-25--'Sue if you must': Lincoln Project rejects threat over Kushner and Ivanka billboards

The Lincoln Project “ will not be intimidated by empty bluster ” , a lawyer for the group wrote late on Saturday , in response to a threat from an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner over two billboards put up in Times Square .
“ Sue if you must , ” Matthew Sanderson said .
The New York City billboards show the president ’ s daughter and her husband , both senior White House advisers , displaying apparent indifference to public suffering under Covid-19 .
Kushner is shown next to the quote “ [ New Yorkers ] are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their problem ” , above a line of body bags .
Trump is shown gesturing , with a smile , to statistics for how many New Yorkers and Americans as a whole have died .
According to Johns Hopkins University , more than 8.5m coronavirus cases have been recorded across the US and more than 224,000 have died .
Case numbers are at record daily levels and one study has predicted 500,000 deaths by February .
New York was hit hard at the pandemic ’ s outset .
The Lincoln Project is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made it their mission to attack Donald Trump and support Joe Biden .
On Friday , Marc Kasowitz , an attorney who has represented the president against allegations of fraud and sexual assault , wrote to the Lincoln Project , demanding the “ false , malicious and defamatory ” ads be removed , or “ we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages ” .
The Lincoln Project responded that they would not remove the billboards , citing first amendment rights of free speech and the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump White House .
In a legal response on Saturday night , attorney Matthew Sanderson told Kasowitz : “ Please peddle your scare tactics elsewhere .
The Lincoln Project will not be intimidated by such empty bluster … your clients are no longer Upper East Side socialites , able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities.
” Due to a “ gross act of nepotism ” , Sanderson wrote , citing supreme court precedent and “ substantial constitutional protections for those who speak out ” , Trump and Kushner have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the right to discuss and criticise freely ” .
Kasowitz claimed Kushner “ never said ” the words attributed to him on the billboards , and Trump “ never made the gesture ” she is shown to make .
Vanity Fair reported the Kushner quote , from a meeting in March , in which Kushner criticised New York governor Andrew Cuomo .
Trump tweeted the pose used by the Lincoln Project in July , controversially promoting Goya foods .
The “ bruised self-image ” of the president ’ s daughter , Sanderson wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that this billboard accurately depicts her support of a federal response that has utterly failed to prevent an unmitigated tragedy for the United States ” .
“ May I suggest , ” he added , “ that if Mr Kushner and Ms Trump are genuinely concerned about salvaging their reputations , they would do well to stop suppressing truthful criticism and instead turn their attention to the Covid-19 crisis that is still unfolding under their inept watch .
“ These billboards are not causing [ their ] standing with the public to plummet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Sanderson ’ s letter cited “ one of the seminal libel-proof plaintiff cases ” , that of a well-known mobster whose reputation was “ so tarnished … he could claim no damages for defamation ” .
“ Mr Kushner and Ms Trump ’ s claims will fare no better than Boobie Cerasini ’ s given their tarnished reputations on Covid-19 , ” it said .
Sanderson also said “ this isn ’ t over ” and added : “ Sue if you must.
” As University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seems unlikely .
Donald Trump “ has honed litigation abuse , as a business person and president , to an art form , ” Tobias said .
But “ if they did sue , the litigation might take years to resolve , be expensive and lead to embarrassing revelations … suits like this by people who have thrust themselves into the public eye are notoriously difficult to win .
“ In short , this appears to be the usual Trump family bluster .
”

The Lincoln Project “will not be intimidated by empty bluster”, a lawyer for the group wrote late on Saturday, in response to a threat from an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner over two billboards put up in Times Square.
“Sue if you must,” Matthew Sanderson said.
The New York City billboards show the president’s daughter and her husband, both senior White House advisers, displaying apparent indifference to public suffering under Covid-19.
Kushner is shown next to the quote “[New Yorkers] are going to suffer and that’s their problem”, above a line of body bags. Trump is shown gesturing, with a smile, to statistics for how many New Yorkers and Americans as a whole have died.
According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 8.5m coronavirus cases have been recorded across the US and more than 224,000 have died. Case numbers are at record daily levels and one study has predicted 500,000 deaths by February. New York was hit hard at the pandemic’s outset.
The Lincoln Project is a group of former Republican consultants who have made it their mission to attack Donald Trump and support Joe Biden.
On Friday, Marc Kasowitz, an attorney who has represented the president against allegations of fraud and sexual assault, wrote to the Lincoln Project, demanding the “false, malicious and defamatory” ads be removed, or “we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages”.
The Lincoln Project responded that they would not remove the billboards, citing first amendment rights of free speech and the “reckless mismanagement of Covid-19” by the Trump White House.
In a legal response on Saturday night, attorney Matthew Sanderson told Kasowitz: “Please peddle your scare tactics elsewhere. The Lincoln Project will not be intimidated by such empty bluster … your clients are no longer Upper East Side socialites, able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities.”
Due to a “gross act of nepotism”, Sanderson wrote, citing supreme court precedent and “substantial constitutional protections for those who speak out”, Trump and Kushner have become public officials whom Americans “have the right to discuss and criticise freely”.
Kasowitz claimed Kushner “never said” the words attributed to him on the billboards, and Trump “never made the gesture” she is shown to make.
Vanity Fair reported the Kushner quote, from a meeting in March, in which Kushner criticised New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Trump tweeted the pose used by the Lincoln Project in July, controversially promoting Goya foods.
The “bruised self-image” of the president’s daughter, Sanderson wrote, “does not change the fact that this billboard accurately depicts her support of a federal response that has utterly failed to prevent an unmitigated tragedy for the United States”.
“May I suggest,” he added, “that if Mr Kushner and Ms Trump are genuinely concerned about salvaging their reputations, they would do well to stop suppressing truthful criticism and instead turn their attention to the Covid-19 crisis that is still unfolding under their inept watch.
“These billboards are not causing [their] standing with the public to plummet. Their incompetence is.”
A footnote to Sanderson’s letter cited “one of the seminal libel-proof plaintiff cases”, that of a well-known mobster whose reputation was “so tarnished … he could claim no damages for defamation”.
“Mr Kushner and Ms Trump’s claims will fare no better than Boobie Cerasini’s given their tarnished reputations on Covid-19,” it said.
Sanderson also said “this isn’t over” and added: “Sue if you must.”
As University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told the Guardian on Saturday, that seems unlikely.
Donald Trump “has honed litigation abuse, as a business person and president, to an art form,” Tobias said. But “if they did sue, the litigation might take years to resolve, be expensive and lead to embarrassing revelations … suits like this by people who have thrust themselves into the public eye are notoriously difficult to win.
“In short, this appears to be the usual Trump family bluster.”


theguardian--2020-10-25--'Deep down, he's a terrified little boy': Bob Woodward, John Bolton and others on Trump

Bob Woodward : ‘ I can ’ t think of a time I ’ ve felt more anxiety about the presidency ’ Bob Woodward is associate editor of the Washington Post and the author of 20 books on American politics .
In 50 years as a journalist he has covered nine presidents .
His reporting on the Watergate break-in and cover-up with his colleague Carl Bernstein helped bring down Richard Nixon and won the Post a Pulitzer prize .
His latest book about Donald Trump , Rage , is based on 10 hours of interviews , spread over 19 taped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president himself , in which Trump proved “ only too willing to blow the whistle on himself ” , as the Observer ’ s review noted .
There is an atmosphere in Washington of high anxiety .
Trump is melting down , to put it charitably .
His campaign has been about lashing out , about wanting his former political opponents – President Obama and Joe Biden , who ’ s now running against him , of course – to be indicted then charged .
Then there was his announcement that he is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ result against him .
The idea that the president would put in doubt the basic process of democracy and voting is not only unacceptable , it is a nightmare .
Now you have the added factor that Trump ’ s also had Covid-19 and he ’ s on steroids , saying things like , “ It is a blessing from God that I got the virus ” .
I can ’ t think of anything more absurd , or crueller , than calling it a blessing from God .
More than 210,000 people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the president of the US to talk like that is unbelievable , but I think people have become numb to it .
The outrages pile up , in a way .
People have forgotten the risks .
I think Kamala Harris put it very well in the vice-presidential debate : what ’ s happened in the US with Covid-19 is the biggest failure of the president to exercise his responsibilities , perhaps in the history of the US .
This is a really dangerous period before the election .
I got to know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of interviews I did with him for my book , Rage , and I think if there were to be some accident , some problem , during the final campaign weeks , he would capitalise on it .
Henry Kissinger , of all people , was warning recently that we should worry about some sort of crisis , and reminded people that the first world war started because of an accident .
Probably no one ’ s wanting to start a war right now , but we have a climate in the Middle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sea , which China has really militarised , where you could have some spark trigger a mild confrontation – not that I think Trump ’ s going to manufacture that .
Trump is not sufficiently tuned into the attitudes and experiences of other people , which is an essential requirement of a leader .
After George Floyd was killed , I asked him about the tensions ignited in this country not seen since the heights of the civil rights movement .
I said we were men of white privilege , that we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anger black people feel in this country .
That ’ s when he said something that astonished me : “ Wow , you sure drank the Kool-Aid !
I don ’ t feel that at all.
” He just rejected the idea that somehow white people have to understand the pain and anger of others .
I think that ’ s one of his chief problems .
He thinks in terms of his own pain and anger , and what he wants to do , which is to be re-elected .
Trump also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that are so devastating even President Putin and President Xi of China don ’ t know about them .
I ’ m not exactly sure even today whether he was exaggerating or talking about something real .
But what ’ s a really important question to consider here is how much power is in the presidency : when we decide to go to war , whether you look at Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq , it ’ s all been led by the president , essentially , as commander in chief .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ environment of impatience and speed because of the internet , the president is also in this position to seize the airwaves .
As his son-in-law Jared Kushner said , the news is going along and then Trump tweets something and everyone drops whatever it is .
Trump realises this .
He uses it .
He has that power .
He loves being in control .
He loves the spectacle .
The circumstances have all converged here to give him extraordinary power .
Looking to the aftermath of the election , Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he doesn ’ t win , he ’ s going to be suspicious of mail-in votes .
I think the question is : if he loses , will his political party get together and go see him and talk to him , and say , you can ’ t do this ?
You can ’ t do it to the Republican party and most importantly you can ’ t do it to the country .
There has to be an orderly transference of power , if that ’ s what it comes to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I have now as a reporter : I go to sleep and get up in the middle of the night and start checking the news because God knows what might have happened .
We are sitting on pins and needles in this country about every moment , every action , every assessment , and it is draining .
I think lots of people have got to the point where they are tuning Trump and the political situation out as well as they can .
Unfortunately , the impacts on people ’ s lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ given there ’ s no plan , or organised way of dealing with this .
It ’ s all seat-of-the-pants impulsive decision-making .
I can ’ t think of a time – and I ’ ve been a reporter for nearly 50 years – where I ’ ve felt more anxiety about the country and the presidency and the future .
JR Mary Trump : ‘ If he wins , it ’ s over .
Democracy is over ’ Mary Trump is a psychologist and the niece of Donald Trump .
Her father @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s older brother , died when she was 16 .
Her tell-all book about the president and the Trump family , Too Much and Never Enough : How My Family Created the World ’ s Most Dangerous Man , sold almost 1m copies on the first day it was published in July this year .
My theory about the way Donald has run his campaign is that he knows he ’ s in desperate shape , so he ’ s going to burn it all down , sow more chaos and division @ @ @ @ @ @ @ succeeds .
He knows that he ’ s losing – he ’ ll deny it mightily – and at some level he understands what ’ s at stake .
If he loses , he ’ s probably going to prison .
So , if he ’ s going down , he ’ s going to take us all down with him .
I ’ ve always believed that deep down Donald is a terrified little boy .
The amount of fear he ’ s feeling now has got to be unhinging him .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus , there ’ s the tax story and his prospects in the election looking really bad right now .
He ’ s got to be absolutely panicked .
Throughout the campaign I thought that the absolute worst scenario would be for him to get the virus and then get well .
I know that sounds awful .
He ’ s ignored the severity of the pandemic all year because the idea of illness as weakness is so deeply ingrained in my family , that even an association with it is unacceptable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ ve got 210,000 Americans dead .
But now his statement – you can beat it , don ’ t be afraid of it – is going to result in more people becoming sick , and many of those will die .
Even before he said that , I believed he was engaging in mass murder , but that sealed it for me .
Anybody who ’ s capable of putting hundreds of millions of people at risk to avoid looking bad doesn ’ t care about you .
Since Donald was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by nothing he ’ s done or said .
But I have been shocked by the wholesale abdication of responsibility by the Republican party during this election campaign and throughout the past four years .
I didn ’ t understand the extent to which they would be willing to enable him in Congress and in his cabinet .
If they had done their job and acted as a separate branch of government , he would have been contained .
By siding with him 100 % of the time , they have ensured we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that are getting exponentially worse .
No other president in history has been able to push the envelope the way Donald does .
He ’ s always trying to see what he can get away with and , as I have seen through the course of his life , he ’ s always got away with everything .
No one holds him accountable .
He constantly gets rewarded for failing .
The Republicans understood what he was capable of and have allowed him to push through an agenda that is completely at odds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald , I see somebody who is afraid , lonely , desperate , unloved .
I hesitate to paint a compassionate portrait of him because he ’ s so culpable .
However , I do have compassion for the three-year-old who was without his mother for a whole year when she was sick .
That loss of affection and having no one to soothe him was deeply harmful .
And when she recovered to the extent that she did , she did nothing to heal the wounds of that separation , and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grandfather , who was always an awful person , capable of such abject cruelty and sadism .
So now we have an adult Donald who is sad , lonely , ignorant but who also has immense power – and that is a terrifying prospect .
People need to stop worrying about what might happen if he loses but doesn ’ t accept the results and laugh in his face .
That ’ s the best way to undermine him .
If he wins , it won ’ t be legitimate .
He ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office to shake people ’ s confidence in mail-in voting at a time when people want to be voting by mail during the pandemic .
He ’ s telling his followers if Biden wins it will have been rigged , telling them to show up at the polls to make sure there ’ s no fraud , which is voter intimidation .
If you ’ re a black person in America and a bunch of white guys with automatic weapons are standing outside the polling station you won ’ t want to vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to happen .
If he stays in the Oval Office , I ’ m going to try to get a British passport because I don ’ t think I ’ ll fare well .
He ’ s an extraordinarily vindictive person surrounded by people who are willing to help him be vindictive .
But that ’ s personal : in terms of the country , if he wins , it ’ s over .
Democracy is over .
The western alliance is over .
We ’ ll be entering an incredibly dark period @ @ @ @ @ @ @ JR John Bolton : ‘ He was envious of leaders like Putin , Xi Jinping and Erdoğan ’ John Bolton was US national security adviser under Donald Trump from 2018 to 2019 .
Having started his career as a lawyer , he held senior roles in the state department and justice department during the administrations of Ronald Reagan , George HW Bush and George W Bush , who appointed him 25th US ambassador to the United Nations .
His book about the Trump presidency , The Room Where It Happened , was published @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Trump has a short attention span , myself included .
But when it comes to his own re-election he has an infinite attention span .
Decisions are made not on the basis of the pros and cons of the policies being debated but on what the domestic political blowback could be .
Every president takes politics into account but with Trump it ’ s qualitatively different .
It ’ s not just a factor .
It ’ s the factor .
Everything is a distinct transaction – maybe that ’ s how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business .
If he doesn ’ t see the immediate bottom line impact , he wants to move on to something else .
For example , with our close allies , he says things like : “ Here we are defending you and you don ’ t pay for our bases and you have trade surpluses with us.
” Well , we ’ re not there to defend them .
We ’ re there because we have a mutual defence alliance .
We think it ’ s in our interest as much as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deployed .
We ’ re not there as mercenaries .
And we wouldn ’ t want to be there as mercenaries .
But he doesn ’ t get that .
I think his election campaign is in deep trouble .
Because of what happened in 2016 , when everybody thought Hillary was going to win , he can say the polls are fake news and that he ’ ll win anyway .
And he ’ ll say that right up to election night and probably after it .
But unless the pollsters have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their methodology since 2016 , you have to say that he ’ s in trouble .
Each day you get closer to the election , by definition it ’ s that much harder to make up the gap .
Nothing in life is certain but it looks like he ’ s heading for a pretty substantial defeat .
He ’ s trying to turn his Covid-19 infection to his advantage .
I assume that ’ s what he thought he was doing with his grand entrance to the White House , posing on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think it had the opposite effect .
One thing I ’ ve been waiting for is the wave of sympathy that you would expect from the American people when their leader is taken ill. Maybe it ’ s out there but there isn ’ t any evidence of it at this point .
I had certainly heard all the criticisms of Donald Trump before I took the job of national security adviser but I felt that the gravity of the presidency , the weight of the responsibility , would have an effect on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on every contemporary American president once they took office .
It turned out I wasn ’ t right .
The transition and opening six months were bungled and a lot of Trumpian habits and attitudes were formed in that period .
Although I had aspirations to create more orderly policy processes in the national security area , it was too late to do it .
I was in retrospect overly optimistic that I could correct problems that were inherent in Trump ’ s approach to the job from the get-go .
It became @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impossible to contemplate that he had no philosophy , no grand strategy , he didn ’ t think in policy terms .
Every day was a new adventure .
And the way I think successful foreign policy is laid out is by careful analysis and deliberation , careful implementation , review and persistence .
All of these are things that basically don ’ t exist in the Trump administration .
There was so much that he didn ’ t know and he has very little inclination to learn it .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his data base never changes .
I don ’ t regret taking the job .
I went in and lasted for as long as I could and then I came out and wrote a book so everybody would know exactly what was going on .
There are still people in there now who are trying to get him to do the right thing .
One thing I worry about in a second term is that people like that will simply not join the administration .
Up until now , it was reasonable to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confidence I can make a difference .
It ’ s very hard to make that argument now after four years .
I don ’ t think he has the character or fitness to be president .
I once said to a psychologist that Trump doesn ’ t have character and the psychologist said , sure he does , he has a character defect .
So I ’ ll leave that to the shrinks .
We never should have nominated him .
Nobody ever said that politics ends up with the best people for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrong when someone like this can prevail .
I think he was kind of envious of leaders like Putin , Xi Jinping and Erdoğan .
They are big guys and they do big guy things and he wants to be a big guy too .
I can ’ t explain why he has this affinity for authoritarian leaders but there ’ s no doubt he does .
I don ’ t believe he was reluctant to employ me because of my moustache , as some people say .
Would he have made a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Sure , that ’ s entirely possible .
Whatever his flip remarks – and he ’ s derogatory about almost everybody , sooner rather than later – he did hire me and I actually lasted 17 months .
If Trump loses and leaves on 20 January , of the four national security advisers , I will be the longest serving .
It ’ s not like there was a battle between us over two competing worldviews , because he doesn ’ t have a worldview .
And that was the hardest thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ AA Anthony Scaramucci : ‘ He ’ s out there doing ridiculous things and I fear for the world ’ Anthony Scaramucci was a little-known New York financier when Donald Trump made him the White House director of communications in July 2017 .
He was fired just 11 days later after a string of public relations gaffes but remained a vocal Trump loyalist for the next two years .
However , the president ’ s racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of colour led Scaramucci to withdraw his support .
Since then he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who frequently lashes out at Scaramucci on Twitter .
His book , Trump : The Blue-Collar President , was published in 2018 .
In our country we ’ re so polarised now you have to hate the person you disagree with .
But I don ’ t hate Donald Trump .
If anything I ’ m somewhat sympathetic to him because there ’ s obviously something wrong with him .
There ’ s a screw loose and you don ’ t have to be a psychiatrist to see that .
You just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the absurdity , the lack of maturity .
He ’ s not a fully developed adult .
He ’ s out there doing ridiculous things and I fear for the world and I fear for the country .
There ’ s something wrong with him and the people around him are too afraid of him to intervene on his behalf .
He talked about “ draining the swamp ” but the swamp is now like a gold-plated hot tub .
He ’ s taken the corruption up to a whole new level @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election , it ’ s over for him .
I don ’ t see how he can survive this .
He ’ ll probably get indicted .
However , if he does , he probably won ’ t serve in jail – I don ’ t think America likes putting its ex-presidents in jail .
So he ’ ll most likely get prosecuted with his sentence commuted .
He likes to mud-wrestle his opponents but he can ’ t do that with Joe Biden because Biden is an old-school disciplined politician .
His @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hillary Clinton ’ s .
But I ’ m smart enough to know that the polls are closer than people think .
If Trump wins , there is going to be a further destruction of American society .
He ’ ll start to dismantle the institutions of our democracy , and the country will become weaker as a result of it .
There ’ ll be more disorder , more protests , more racial tension .
The move back to the White House , after hospital , tried to create these optics that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ ve got 210,000 Americans dead , so if you do a matrix , there ’ s about 9 million Americans who have had family or friends hurt by the virus , so that ’ s not going to play with them .
He ’ s a minority politician , he ’ s a minority president .
He ’ s never had the popular vote ; he will have won the electoral college twice , and lost the popular vote twice .
The fact is he ’ s an idiot .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office of the president .
He doesn ’ t have the management capability .
He doesn ’ t have the ability to empathise .
He ’ s not a leader .
He ’ s an un-American bully .
You could say he had a lot of those attributes as a candidate in 2016 so why did I support him ?
And I would say , yes , I chose to overlook that because I was trying to be loyal to my party and its nominee .
I started out disliking him .
Then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m in the Republican party , he ’ s going to be the Republican candidate and now he ’ s won the presidency , so he ’ s going to be the first Republican president since George W Bush , let me figure out a way to like him .
I worked for him and I have to own that for the rest of my life .
I ’ ve acknowledged my mistake , I ’ ve apologised for it , and I ’ ve admitted that I was wrong in my political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ individual and as a political leader .
People say to me , he hasn ’ t changed at all , and I accept that .
But I ’ ve changed .
I ’ m way more psychologically minded .
I ’ m more aware of the pain and trouble he ’ s causing people .
I ’ m very happy I got fired .
It probably saved my marriage and my business career .
I was loyal to him for two years but the year after my book came out he told four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – three of whom were born in the US , the other a naturalised citizen – to go back to the countries they originally came from .
They told my Italian-American grandparents that 100 years ago .
When I said that he was being racist , he started going after my wife on Twitter .
I told Mayor Giuliani : “ You ’ re disavowing your personal integrity and your family ’ s history by supporting this man.
” You can ’ t talk like that as the American president in 2020 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ I don ’ t think most of his supporters think he ’ s the best man for the job .
They see him as a culture warrior , though .
The conservative news outlets have told them that we have a full-on culture war going on in the United States , and he is the last white man standing to protect America from the black and Hispanic latte-drinking transvestites who are going to take over their government and culture .
The president ’ s strategy is let ’ s see if I can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and he hopes there are enough to beat the non-racists .
The secretary of state Mike Pompeo ’ s supporting him because Pompeo looks in the mirror and sees a future president .
We have 63 million people in the US who have voted for Trump for one reason or another , and what I can do is explain my change of heart .
We now have almost four complete years of data on his ineptitude .
It ’ s nothing personal , he ’ s not the right person to be president @ @ @ @ @ @

Interviews by Jude Rogers and Andrew Anthony

Bob Woodward: ‘I can’t think of a time I’ve felt more anxiety about the presidency’
Bob Woodward is associate editor of the Washington Post and the author of 20 books on American politics. In 50 years as a journalist he has covered nine presidents. His reporting on the Watergate break-in and cover-up with his colleague Carl Bernstein helped bring down Richard Nixon and won the Post a Pulitzer prize. His latest book about Donald Trump, Rage, is based on 10 hours of interviews, spread over 19 taped phone calls, often initiated by the president himself, in which Trump proved “only too willing to blow the whistle on himself”, as the Observer’s review noted.
There is an atmosphere in Washington of high anxiety. Trump is melting down, to put it charitably. His campaign has been about lashing out, about wanting his former political opponents – President Obama and Joe Biden, who’s now running against him, of course – to be indicted then charged. Then there was his announcement that he is not necessarily going to accept the electoral result against him. The idea that the president would put in doubt the basic process of democracy and voting is not only unacceptable, it is a nightmare.
Investigative journalist Bob Woodward. Photograph: Alex Gallardo/Reuters
Now you have the added factor that Trump’s also had Covid-19 and he’s on steroids, saying things like, “It is a blessing from God that I got the virus”. I can’t think of anything more absurd, or crueller, than calling it a blessing from God. More than 210,000 people have died in the US. For the president of the US to talk like that is unbelievable, but I think people have become numb to it. The outrages pile up, in a way. People have forgotten the risks. I think Kamala Harris put it very well in the vice-presidential debate: what’s happened in the US with Covid-19 is the biggest failure of the president to exercise his responsibilities, perhaps in the history of the US.
If there were to be some accident, some problem, during the final campaign weeks, he would capitalise on it
This is a really dangerous period before the election. I got to know Trump very well in hours and hours of interviews I did with him for my book, Rage, and I think if there were to be some accident, some problem, during the final campaign weeks, he would capitalise on it. Henry Kissinger, of all people, was warning recently that we should worry about some sort of crisis, and reminded people that the first world war started because of an accident. Probably no one’s wanting to start a war right now, but we have a climate in the Middle East, and in the South China Sea, which China has really militarised, where you could have some spark trigger a mild confrontation – not that I think Trump’s going to manufacture that.
Trump is not sufficiently tuned into the attitudes and experiences of other people, which is an essential requirement of a leader. After George Floyd was killed, I asked him about the tensions ignited in this country not seen since the heights of the civil rights movement. I said we were men of white privilege, that we’ve got to understand the pain and anger black people feel in this country. That’s when he said something that astonished me: “Wow, you sure drank the Kool-Aid! I don’t feel that at all.” He just rejected the idea that somehow white people have to understand the pain and anger of others. I think that’s one of his chief problems. He thinks in terms of his own pain and anger, and what he wants to do, which is to be re-elected.
Trump also told me the US has nuclear weapons that are so devastating even President Putin and President Xi of China don’t know about them. I’m not exactly sure even today whether he was exaggerating or talking about something real. But what’s a really important question to consider here is how much power is in the presidency: when we decide to go to war, whether you look at Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq, it’s all been led by the president, essentially, as commander in chief. As we’ve gone into a media environment of impatience and speed because of the internet, the president is also in this position to seize the airwaves. As his son-in-law Jared Kushner said, the news is going along and then Trump tweets something and everyone drops whatever it is. Trump realises this. He uses it. He has that power. He loves being in control. He loves the spectacle. The circumstances have all converged here to give him extraordinary power.
Timeline US election: what happens between now and inauguration day? Show 23 November 2020 Washington state's deadline for accepting mail-in ballots that were post-marked on or before election day passes, the latest deadline of any state. 8 December 2020 The deadline for resolving election disputes at the state level. All state recounts and court contests over presidential election results are to be completed by this date. 14 December 2020 Electors vote by paper ballot in their respective state capitols and also in the District of Columbia, which while it is the seat of the US government, is not actually a state. Thirty-three states and DC have laws or party regulations requiring electors to vote the same way the popular vote goes in the state. In some states, electors can even be replaced or subjected to penalties if they do not toe the line. An elector who doesn’t vote according to who won the popular vote is known as a “faithless elector”. The votes for president and vice-president are counted and the electors sign six “certificates of the vote”. The certificates, along with other official papers, are sent by registered mail to various officials, including the president of the Senate. 23 December 2020 The certificates must be delivered to the designated officials. 6 January 2021 The House and Senate hold a joint session to count the electoral votes. If one ticket has received 270 or more electoral votes, the president of the Senate, currently vice-president Mike Pence, announces the results. If neither presidential candidate wins at least 270 electoral votes, the House can decide the election, based on the 12th amendment to the US constitution. 20 January 2021 The president-elect is sworn into office on inauguration day. The outgoing president welcomes the president-elect to the White House. Then in a ceremony traditionally attended by all living former presidents, the new president swears the oath of office. This is presided over by the chief justice of the supreme court, which is currently John Roberts. Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback.
Looking to the aftermath of the election, Trump’s set the table to say that if he doesn’t win, he’s going to be suspicious of mail-in votes. I think the question is: if he loses, will his political party get together and go see him and talk to him, and say, you can’t do this? You can’t do it to the Republican party and most importantly you can’t do it to the country. There has to be an orderly transference of power, if that’s what it comes to.
This is the level of anxiety I have now as a reporter: I go to sleep and get up in the middle of the night and start checking the news because God knows what might have happened. We are sitting on pins and needles in this country about every moment, every action, every assessment, and it is draining. I think lots of people have got to the point where they are tuning Trump and the political situation out as well as they can.
Unfortunately, the impacts on people’s lives carry on, given the virus, given there’s no plan, or organised way of dealing with this. It’s all seat-of-the-pants impulsive decision-making. I can’t think of a time – and I’ve been a reporter for nearly 50 years – where I’ve felt more anxiety about the country and the presidency and the future. JR
Mary Trump: ‘If he wins, it’s over. Democracy is over’
Mary Trump is a psychologist and the niece of Donald Trump. Her father, Fred Trump Jr, the president’s older brother, died when she was 16. Her tell-all book about the president and the Trump family, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, sold almost 1m copies on the first day it was published in July this year.
Mary Trump, the daughter of the president’s older brother, Fred Trump Jr. Photograph: Peter Serling/Simon Schuster/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
My theory about the way Donald has run his campaign is that he knows he’s in desperate shape, so he’s going to burn it all down, sow more chaos and division, because that’s where he succeeds. He knows that he’s losing – he’ll deny it mightily – and at some level he understands what’s at stake. If he loses, he’s probably going to prison. So, if he’s going down, he’s going to take us all down with him.
I’ve always believed that deep down Donald is a terrified little boy. The amount of fear he’s feeling now has got to be unhinging him. Not only did he get sick with the virus, there’s the tax story and his prospects in the election looking really bad right now. He’s got to be absolutely panicked.
Throughout the campaign I thought that the absolute worst scenario would be for him to get the virus and then get well. I know that sounds awful. He’s ignored the severity of the pandemic all year because the idea of illness as weakness is so deeply ingrained in my family, that even an association with it is unacceptable, and that’s why now we’ve got 210,000 Americans dead. But now his statement – you can beat it, don’t be afraid of it – is going to result in more people becoming sick, and many of those will die. Even before he said that, I believed he was engaging in mass murder, but that sealed it for me. Anybody who’s capable of putting hundreds of millions of people at risk to avoid looking bad doesn’t care about you.
He’s always trying to see what he can get away with and he’s always got away with everything. No one holds him accountable
Since Donald was elected, I’ve been surprised by nothing he’s done or said. But I have been shocked by the wholesale abdication of responsibility by the Republican party during this election campaign and throughout the past four years. I didn’t understand the extent to which they would be willing to enable him in Congress and in his cabinet. If they had done their job and acted as a separate branch of government, he would have been contained. By siding with him 100% of the time, they have ensured we are now faced with several concurrent disasters that are getting exponentially worse.
No other president in history has been able to push the envelope the way Donald does. He’s always trying to see what he can get away with and, as I have seen through the course of his life, he’s always got away with everything. No one holds him accountable. He constantly gets rewarded for failing. The Republicans understood what he was capable of and have allowed him to push through an agenda that is completely at odds with what the majority wants.
In Donald, I see somebody who is afraid, lonely, desperate, unloved. I hesitate to paint a compassionate portrait of him because he’s so culpable. However, I do have compassion for the three-year-old who was without his mother for a whole year when she was sick. That loss of affection and having no one to soothe him was deeply harmful. And when she recovered to the extent that she did, she did nothing to heal the wounds of that separation, and that’s before we get to my grandfather, who was always an awful person, capable of such abject cruelty and sadism. So now we have an adult Donald who is sad, lonely, ignorant but who also has immense power – and that is a terrifying prospect.
People need to stop worrying about what might happen if he loses but doesn’t accept the results and laugh in his face. That’s the best way to undermine him. If he wins, it won’t be legitimate. He’s already using the powers of his office to shake people’s confidence in mail-in voting at a time when people want to be voting by mail during the pandemic. He’s telling his followers if Biden wins it will have been rigged, telling them to show up at the polls to make sure there’s no fraud, which is voter intimidation. If you’re a black person in America and a bunch of white guys with automatic weapons are standing outside the polling station you won’t want to vote, which is exactly what Donald wants to happen.
If he stays in the Oval Office, I’m going to try to get a British passport because I don’t think I’ll fare well. He’s an extraordinarily vindictive person surrounded by people who are willing to help him be vindictive. But that’s personal: in terms of the country, if he wins, it’s over. Democracy is over. The western alliance is over. We’ll be entering an incredibly dark period of autocracy on a global scale. JR
John Bolton: ‘He was envious of leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping and Erdoğan’
John Bolton was US national security adviser under Donald Trump from 2018 to 2019. Having started his career as a lawyer, he held senior roles in the state department and justice department during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and George W Bush, who appointed him 25th US ambassador to the United Nations. His book about the Trump presidency, The Room Where It Happened, was published in June this year.
John Bolton with President Trump in the Oval Office, 28 September 2018. Photograph: Oliver Contreras/The Washington Post/Getty Images
People complain that Trump has a short attention span, myself included. But when it comes to his own re-election he has an infinite attention span. Decisions are made not on the basis of the pros and cons of the policies being debated but on what the domestic political blowback could be. Every president takes politics into account but with Trump it’s qualitatively different. It’s not just a factor. It’s the factor.
Everything is a distinct transaction – maybe that’s how you’re successful in the real-estate business. If he doesn’t see the immediate bottom line impact, he wants to move on to something else. For example, with our close allies, he says things like: “Here we are defending you and you don’t pay for our bases and you have trade surpluses with us.” Well, we’re not there to defend them. We’re there because we have a mutual defence alliance. We think it’s in our interest as much as the allies’ interest to be forwardly deployed. We’re not there as mercenaries. And we wouldn’t want to be there as mercenaries. But he doesn’t get that.
I think his election campaign is in deep trouble. Because of what happened in 2016, when everybody thought Hillary was going to win, he can say the polls are fake news and that he’ll win anyway. And he’ll say that right up to election night and probably after it. But unless the pollsters have done absolutely nothing to try to fix their methodology since 2016, you have to say that he’s in trouble. Each day you get closer to the election, by definition it’s that much harder to make up the gap. Nothing in life is certain but it looks like he’s heading for a pretty substantial defeat.
I once said to a psychologist that Trump doesn’t have character and he said, sure he does, he has a character defect
He’s trying to turn his Covid-19 infection to his advantage. I assume that’s what he thought he was doing with his grand entrance to the White House, posing on the balcony like Il Duce. I think it had the opposite effect. One thing I’ve been waiting for is the wave of sympathy that you would expect from the American people when their leader is taken ill. Maybe it’s out there but there isn’t any evidence of it at this point.
I had certainly heard all the criticisms of Donald Trump before I took the job of national security adviser but I felt that the gravity of the presidency, the weight of the responsibility, would have an effect on him the way it’s had on every contemporary American president once they took office. It turned out I wasn’t right.
The transition and opening six months were bungled and a lot of Trumpian habits and attitudes were formed in that period. Although I had aspirations to create more orderly policy processes in the national security area, it was too late to do it. I was in retrospect overly optimistic that I could correct problems that were inherent in Trump’s approach to the job from the get-go.
It became clear in ways that I previously found impossible to contemplate that he had no philosophy, no grand strategy, he didn’t think in policy terms. Every day was a new adventure. And the way I think successful foreign policy is laid out is by careful analysis and deliberation, careful implementation, review and persistence. All of these are things that basically don’t exist in the Trump administration. There was so much that he didn’t know and he has very little inclination to learn it. It’s hard to have an evolving conversation when his data base never changes.
I don’t regret taking the job. I went in and lasted for as long as I could and then I came out and wrote a book so everybody would know exactly what was going on. There are still people in there now who are trying to get him to do the right thing. One thing I worry about in a second term is that people like that will simply not join the administration. Up until now, it was reasonable to say, I’ve got enough confidence I can make a difference. It’s very hard to make that argument now after four years.
I don’t think he has the character or fitness to be president. I once said to a psychologist that Trump doesn’t have character and the psychologist said, sure he does, he has a character defect. So I’ll leave that to the shrinks. We never should have nominated him. Nobody ever said that politics ends up with the best people for government. But there’s something wrong when someone like this can prevail.
I think he was kind of envious of leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping and Erdoğan. They are big guys and they do big guy things and he wants to be a big guy too. I can’t explain why he has this affinity for authoritarian leaders but there’s no doubt he does.
I don’t believe he was reluctant to employ me because of my moustache, as some people say. Would he have made a flip remark about it at some point? Sure, that’s entirely possible. Whatever his flip remarks – and he’s derogatory about almost everybody, sooner rather than later – he did hire me and I actually lasted 17 months. If Trump loses and leaves on 20 January, of the four national security advisers, I will be the longest serving.
It’s not like there was a battle between us over two competing worldviews, because he doesn’t have a worldview. And that was the hardest thing for me to understand and appreciate. AA
Anthony Scaramucci: ‘He’s out there doing ridiculous things and I fear for the world’
Anthony Scaramucci was a little-known New York financier when Donald Trump made him the White House director of communications in July 2017. He was fired just 11 days later after a string of public relations gaffes but remained a vocal Trump loyalist for the next two years. However, the president’s racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of colour led Scaramucci to withdraw his support. Since then he has become an outspoken critic of Trump, who frequently lashes out at Scaramucci on Twitter. His book, Trump: The Blue-Collar President, was published in 2018.
Anthony Scaramucci photographed in his office in New York, May 2018. Photograph: Christopher Lane/the Guardian
In our country we’re so polarised now you have to hate the person you disagree with. But I don’t hate Donald Trump. If anything I’m somewhat sympathetic to him because there’s obviously something wrong with him. There’s a screw loose and you don’t have to be a psychiatrist to see that. You just have to look at the manic behaviour, the absurdity, the lack of maturity. He’s not a fully developed adult. He’s out there doing ridiculous things and I fear for the world and I fear for the country. There’s something wrong with him and the people around him are too afraid of him to intervene on his behalf.
He talked about “draining the swamp” but the swamp is now like a gold-plated hot tub. He’s taken the corruption up to a whole new level. I think if he loses the election, it’s over for him. I don’t see how he can survive this. He’ll probably get indicted. However, if he does, he probably won’t serve in jail – I don’t think America likes putting its ex-presidents in jail. So he’ll most likely get prosecuted with his sentence commuted.
He likes to mud-wrestle his opponents but he can’t do that with Joe Biden because Biden is an old-school disciplined politician. His positive-negative differentials are 20% higher than Hillary Clinton’s. But I’m smart enough to know that the polls are closer than people think.
If Trump wins, there is going to be a further destruction of American society. He’ll start to dismantle the institutions of our democracy, and the country will become weaker as a result of it. There’ll be more disorder, more protests, more racial tension.
He’s unfit to serve in the office of the president. He’s not a leader. He’s an un-American bully
The move back to the White House, after hospital, tried to create these optics that he’s a superman. But you’ve got 210,000 Americans dead, so if you do a matrix, there’s about 9 million Americans who have had family or friends hurt by the virus, so that’s not going to play with them. He’s a minority politician, he’s a minority president. He’s never had the popular vote; he will have won the electoral college twice, and lost the popular vote twice.
The fact is he’s an idiot. He’s unfit to serve in the office of the president. He doesn’t have the management capability. He doesn’t have the ability to empathise. He’s not a leader. He’s an un-American bully. You could say he had a lot of those attributes as a candidate in 2016 so why did I support him? And I would say, yes, I chose to overlook that because I was trying to be loyal to my party and its nominee.
I started out disliking him. Then I thought, OK, I’m in the Republican party, he’s going to be the Republican candidate and now he’s won the presidency, so he’s going to be the first Republican president since George W Bush, let me figure out a way to like him. I worked for him and I have to own that for the rest of my life.
I’ve acknowledged my mistake, I’ve apologised for it, and I’ve admitted that I was wrong in my political judgment and assessment of him as an individual and as a political leader. People say to me, he hasn’t changed at all, and I accept that. But I’ve changed. I’m way more psychologically minded. I’m more aware of the pain and trouble he’s causing people.
I’m very happy I got fired. It probably saved my marriage and my business career. I was loyal to him for two years but the year after my book came out he told four women who were democratically elected to Congress – three of whom were born in the US, the other a naturalised citizen – to go back to the countries they originally came from. They told my Italian-American grandparents that 100 years ago. When I said that he was being racist, he started going after my wife on Twitter. I told Mayor Giuliani: “You’re disavowing your personal integrity and your family’s history by supporting this man.” You can’t talk like that as the American president in 2020. He’s a despicable guy.
I don’t think most of his supporters think he’s the best man for the job. They see him as a culture warrior, though. The conservative news outlets have told them that we have a full-on culture war going on in the United States, and he is the last white man standing to protect America from the black and Hispanic latte-drinking transvestites who are going to take over their government and culture.
The president’s strategy is let’s see if I can turn out every racist in America, and he hopes there are enough to beat the non-racists. The secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s supporting him because Pompeo looks in the mirror and sees a future president.
We have 63 million people in the US who have voted for Trump for one reason or another, and what I can do is explain my change of heart. We now have almost four complete years of data on his ineptitude. It’s nothing personal, he’s not the right person to be president of the United States. AA


theguardian--2020-10-25--Coronavirus: Mike Pence continues campaign tour despite chief of staff's positive test

The White House has said the vice-president , Mike Pence , plans to maintain an aggressive campaign schedule this week despite several members of his inner circle , including his chief of staff , testing positive for coronavirus .
A spokesman for Pence disclosed late on Saturday that Marc Short , Pence ’ s chief of staff , had tested positive for the virus .
Pence and his wife , Karen , tested negative earlier in the day and the vice-president will not alter his schedule , the spokesman said .
The New York Times reported that several other members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ positive in recent days .
Short ’ s diagnosis comes weeks after Covid-19 spread through the White House , infecting President Donald Trump , the first lady and two dozen other aides , staffers and allies .
Under criteria from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the vice-president is considered a “ close contact ” of his chief of staff but will not quarantine , said a spokesman , Devin O ’ Malley .
O ’ Malley said Pence decided to maintain his travel schedule “ in consultation with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in accordance with the CDC guidelines for essential personnel ” .
Those guidelines require that essential workers exposed to someone with the coronavirus closely monitor for symptoms of Covid-19 and wear a mask whenever around other people Saskia Popescu , an infectious disease expert at George Mason University , called Pence ’ s decision to travel “ grossly negligent ” regardless of the stated justification that Pence is an essential worker .
“ It ’ s just an insult to everybody who has been working in public health and public health response , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ find it really harmful and disrespectful to the people going to the rally ” and the people on Pence ’ s own staff who will accompany him .
“ He needs to be staying home 14 days , ” she added .
“ Campaign events are not essential.
” After a day of campaigning in Florida on Saturday , Pence was seen wearing a mask as he returned to Washington onboard Air Force Two shortly after the news of Short ’ s diagnosis was made public .
He is scheduled to hold a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ North Carolina .
President Trump commented on Short early Sunday after his plane landed at Joint Base Andrews , outside Washington .
“ I did hear about it just now , ” he said .
“ And I think he ’ s quarantining .
Yeah .
I did hear about it .
He ’ s going to be fine .
But he ’ s quarantining.
” Pence , who has headed the White House coronavirus taskforce since late February , has repeatedly found himself in an uncomfortable position balancing political concerns with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which has killed more than 220,000 Americans .
The vice-president has advocated mask-wearing and social distancing , but often does not wear one himself and holds large political events where many people do not wear face-coverings .
By virtue of his position as vice-president , Pence is considered an essential worker .
The White House did not address how Pence ’ s political activities amounted to essential work .
Short , Pence ’ s most senior aide and one of his closest confidants , did not travel with the vice-president on Saturday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exposure to a confirmed positive case stands in contrast to how the Democratic vice-presidential nominee , Kamala Harris , responded when a close aide and a member of her campaign plane ’ s charter crew tested positive for the virus earlier this month .
She took several days off the campaign trail citing her desire to act out of an abundance of caution .

Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff made an unusually candid admission on Sunday – that the administration does not intend to contain the coronavirus crisis.
“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Mark Meadows said, bluntly.
The former hard-right congressman from North Carolina made the revealing remark as confirmed cases of Covid-19 reached new peaks and hospitalisations rose rapidly in 38 states. The contagion also continues to ravage the White House itself, with the chief of staff to Mike Pence and four others in the vice-president’s inner circle having tested positive.
Meadows repeatedly sidestepped questions about the administration’s responsibility for combatting spread of the virus. Instead, in a contentious interview with CNN’s State of the Union, he highlighted what he called “mitigating” factors, including the search for a vaccine and new therapeutics that could bring down the death rate.
Even so, the number of deaths in the US is back up at about 1,000 a day.
Asked why the administration was not going to control the pandemic, Meadows replied: “Because it is a contagious virus.”
Turn on the television, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid. On 4 November you won’t hear about it any more Donald Trump
Despite Pence being exposed to the disease, he planned to continue an aggressive campaign schedule in the final nine days of the race. Pence spoke at a rally in Kinston, North Carolina, on Sunday, where he did not address the positive cases in his entourage. He will be in Hibbing, Minnesota, on Monday before returning to events in North Carolina on Tuesday.
Such unbroken travel plans amounted to a breach of the recommendations of the Trump administration’s own public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They would require the vice-president to be in quarantine for 14 days and always to wear a mask around other people. Pence has frequently been seen maskless in public.
Such blatant disregard for the administration’s own health standards is doubly awkward given that Pence has led the White House coronavirus taskforce since late February. Dr Anthony Fauci, the most senior public health expert on the taskforce, said on Friday meetings had dwindled and Trump had not attended one in months.
The White House said Pence was not required to follow the quarantine rule because he is deemed “essential personnel”. Asked why electioneering was classed “essential”, Meadows said the vice-president continued to do his official work in between campaign stops.
Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease expert at George Mason University in Virginia, called Pence’s decision to travel “grossly negligent”.
“It’s just an insult to everybody who has been working in public health and public health response,” she said.
Donald Trump leaves the White House on Sunday. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who contracted the virus earlier this month after helping Trump with debate prep, was also critical. Speaking to ABC’s This Week, he said: “I think everybody has to put the health of the people they are going to be in touch with first. I’m a little bit surprised.”
Trump left the White House on Sunday for a rally in New Hampshire. He was photographed not wearing a mask.
The latest data from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland puts the total number of confirmed cases in the US at more than 8.5m, with almost 225,000 deaths. Hotspots have been identified in 36 states.
The count of new cases reached all-time highs on Friday and Saturday, with more than 83,000 recorded each day. Authoritative forecasters predict the US may see more than 300,000 deaths by the end of the year.
Yet Trump continues to insist falsely that the crisis is past its worst. At a rally in Florida on Friday, he said: “We are entering the final turn and approaching the light at the end of the tunnel.”
On Saturday in North Carolina, Trump mocked media coverage of the pandemic, telling supporters: “Turn on the television, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid. By the way, on 4 November you won’t hear about it any more.”
Despite Trump’s desire to wish the crisis away, the dramatic surge in infections across huge swaths of the country days before the election is causing the president inevitable political damage. On Sunday a new poll from CBS News put his Democratic challenger Joe Biden marginally ahead in Florida and neck-and-neck in North Carolina and Georgia.
Asked if Trump should be worried, Christie said: “Of course he should … Any president who is in the midst of a crisis like this that is not abating before an election but is increasing – that’s a problem. This has been the single toughest issue for Donald Trump in his four years and it may be determinant for the election.”
Mike Pence speaks in Tallahassee, Florida on Saturday. Photograph: Steve Cannon/AP
With his back against the wall, Trump has placing increasing hope in the rapid roll-out of a coronavirus vaccine. But Fauci warned that any vaccine was unlikely to reach most of the American people until the spring at the earliest.
Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday, Fauci said: “When you talk about vaccinating a substantial proportion of the population, so that you can have a significant impact on the dynamics of the outbreak, that very likely will not be until the second or third quarter of the year.”
Pence has repeatedly found himself in an uncomfortable position, balancing political concerns with the administration’s handling of the pandemic.
How he has responded to being exposed to a confirmed positive case stands in contrast to how the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, reacted when a close aide and a member of her campaign plane’s charter crew tested positive for the virus earlier this month. She took several days off the campaign trail citing her desire to act out of an abundance of caution.


theguardian--2020-10-25--'Power grab': how Republican hardball gave us Amy Coney Barrett

The almost certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court on Monday represents a “ power grab ” by Republicans facing possible wipeout at the ballot box , activists and analysts say .
Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee shrugged off a Democratic boycott on Thursday to advance Barrett ’ s nomination to the full Senate , which will vote little more than a week before the presidential election .
If confirmed , Barrett could be sworn in as a justice almost immediately .
To critics , the rushed process represents one of the most naked power plays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dismal opinion polls , is weaponizing unelected judges to compensate for setbacks in elections .
Even as they contemplate the loss of political power , Republicans are poised to cement judicial power for generations .
“ This is like the last gasp by the Republican party to try to lock in their minority rule , ” said Christopher Kang , co-founder and chief counsel of the progressive group Demand Justice .
“ They ’ re potentially just days away from not only losing the White House but also the Senate , maybe even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trying to do everything they can to consolidate on the supreme court a Trump supermajority for decades to come.
” Under Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell , Republicans have built a reputation for ruthless bare knuckle tactics Democrats struggle to combat .
They blocked swaths of Barack Obama ’ s legislative agenda and in 2016 refused to grant a hearing to his supreme court nominee Merrick Garland , arguing that it was an election year so the voters should decide .
In 2018 , when the conservative nominee Brett Kavanaugh faced credible allegations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests and rammed his appointment through .
And when liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last month , Donald Trump moved like lightning to replace her with Barrett , 48 , a lifetime appointment who would tilt America ’ s highest court to a 6-3 conservative majority .
It was another example of Republican hardball – audacious , shameless and devastatingly effective .
Comedian Bill Maher told viewers of his HBO show : “ If you haven ’ t gotten it yet , this kind of completely bald-faced premeditated hypocrisy should make it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them in an inconsistency .
They don ’ t care because it ’ s all and only about power .
The only rule Republicans play by is : the people who win make the rules .
Power talks , losers walk.
” Democrats cried foul , pointing out that the Senate has never confirmed a supreme court nominee so close to a presidential election .
They were whistling in the wind .
During committee hearings Barrett swerved most of their questions , refusing to commit herself on abortion , the transfer or power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ The process was so rushed and she was far more evasive and refused to answer more questions than any other nominee .
That was a little bit jarring , if not surprising , but it shows how little respect Republicans have not only for the Senate but the supreme court itself .
The Republican party is very blatantly just treating the supreme court as another political branch of government.
” Demand Justice has called for Democrats to fight back by expanding the court , noting that its size has been changed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Democratic presidential nominee , has said he will appoint a bipartisan commission to examine such proposals .
Kang predicted : “ Republicans ’ attempt to assert their raw political partisan power grab to get a sixth seat on the court , when they already have five , could end up backfiring spectacularly on them and they could be on the losing side of a 7-6 supreme court before they know it.
” All 12 Republicans on the judiciary committee voted in favour of Barrett .
Ted Cruz of Texas hailed perhaps the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s presidency .
Democrats displayed posters at their desks , of Americans who benefited from Obama ’ s Affordable Care Act which they warn Barrett could help strike down .
Democrats have also warned that if Trump follows through on his threat to dispute the outcome of the 3 November election , it might go before Barrett and other members of the supreme court for a final ruling , just like the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore .
Laurence Tribe , a constitutional law professor at Harvard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confirmation as a “ ‘ power grab ’ in every relevant sense of the term , especially in light of President Trump ’ s open concession that he appointed judge Coney Barrett in part to ensure her ability to vote in his favour should his re-election as president end up turning on a case the supreme court would need to resolve in order to give him an electoral college victory in the face of a national popular defeat.
” Trump has appointed more than 200 federal judges , likely to be his most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or two .
Critics suggest the courts represent the last bulwark of Republican minority rule and the Barrett episode is starkly indicative of a party that has lost its ideological and ethical moorings and now treats power as an end in itself .
Kurt Bardella , a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project , an anti-Trump group , said Republicans have betrayed their claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility , pro-life principles , small government and congressional oversight .
“ When a party diverges from itself on so many issues so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ it tells you they don ’ t actually have any moral convictions or principles that guide them .
Only the pursuit of power .
”

The almost certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court on Monday represents a “power grab” by Republicans facing possible wipeout at the ballot box, activists and analysts say.
Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee shrugged off a Democratic boycott on Thursday to advance Barrett’s nomination to the full Senate, which will vote little more than a week before the presidential election. If confirmed, Barrett could be sworn in as a justice almost immediately.
01:58 Democrats refuse to participate as Amy Coney Barrett nomination advanced – video
To critics, the rushed process represents one of the most naked power plays yet by a party which, confronting dismal opinion polls, is weaponizing unelected judges to compensate for setbacks in elections. Even as they contemplate the loss of political power, Republicans are poised to cement judicial power for generations.
“This is like the last gasp by the Republican party to try to lock in their minority rule,” said Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the progressive group Demand Justice. “They’re potentially just days away from not only losing the White House but also the Senate, maybe even resoundingly, and so they’re trying to do everything they can to consolidate on the supreme court a Trump supermajority for decades to come.”
The only rule Republicans play by is: the people who win make the rules. Power talks, losers walk Bill Maher
Under Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republicans have built a reputation for ruthless bare knuckle tactics Democrats struggle to combat. They blocked swaths of Barack Obama’s legislative agenda and in 2016 refused to grant a hearing to his supreme court nominee Merrick Garland, arguing that it was an election year so the voters should decide.
In 2018, when the conservative nominee Brett Kavanaugh faced credible allegations of sexual assault, Republicans ignored fierce protests and rammed his appointment through. And when liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last month, Donald Trump moved like lightning to replace her with Barrett, 48, a lifetime appointment who would tilt America’s highest court to a 6-3 conservative majority.
It was another example of Republican hardball – audacious, shameless and devastatingly effective.
Comedian Bill Maher told viewers of his HBO show: “If you haven’t gotten it yet, this kind of completely bald-faced premeditated hypocrisy should make it clear. There’s no catching them in an inconsistency. They don’t care because it’s all and only about power. The only rule Republicans play by is: the people who win make the rules. Power talks, losers walk.”
Democrats cried foul, pointing out that the Senate has never confirmed a supreme court nominee so close to a presidential election. They were whistling in the wind. During committee hearings Barrett swerved most of their questions, refusing to commit herself on abortion, the transfer or power or the climate crisis.
05:10 Amy Coney Barrett: key moments from the supreme court confirmation hearings – video
Kang said: “The process was so rushed and she was far more evasive and refused to answer more questions than any other nominee. That was a little bit jarring, if not surprising, but it shows how little respect Republicans have not only for the Senate but the supreme court itself. The Republican party is very blatantly just treating the supreme court as another political branch of government.”
Republicans’ attempt to assert their raw political partisan power could end up backfiring spectacularly Christopher Kang
Demand Justice has called for Democrats to fight back by expanding the court, noting that its size has been changed seven times before. Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, has said he will appoint a bipartisan commission to examine such proposals.
Kang predicted: “Republicans’ attempt to assert their raw political partisan power grab to get a sixth seat on the court, when they already have five, could end up backfiring spectacularly on them and they could be on the losing side of a 7-6 supreme court before they know it.”
All 12 Republicans on the judiciary committee voted in favour of Barrett. Ted Cruz of Texas hailed perhaps the “single most important accomplishment” of Trump’s presidency. Democrats displayed posters at their desks, of Americans who benefited from Obama’s Affordable Care Act which they warn Barrett could help strike down.
Democrats have also warned that if Trump follows through on his threat to dispute the outcome of the 3 November election, it might go before Barrett and other members of the supreme court for a final ruling, just like the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore.
Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, described Barrett’s probable confirmation as a “‘power grab’ in every relevant sense of the term, especially in light of President Trump’s open concession that he appointed judge Coney Barrett in part to ensure her ability to vote in his favour should his re-election as president end up turning on a case the supreme court would need to resolve in order to give him an electoral college victory in the face of a national popular defeat.”
Trump has appointed more than 200 federal judges, likely to be his most lasting legacy whether he serves one term or two. Critics suggest the courts represent the last bulwark of Republican minority rule and the Barrett episode is starkly indicative of a party that has lost its ideological and ethical moorings and now treats power as an end in itself.
Kurt Bardella, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said Republicans have betrayed their claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility, pro-life principles, small government and congressional oversight.
“When a party diverges from itself on so many issues so many times,” he said, “it tells you they don’t actually have any moral convictions or principles that guide them. Only the pursuit of power.”


theguardian--2020-10-25--Many midwest Democrats stayed home in 2016. Will they turn out for Biden?

Jamal Collins took the trouble to vote four years ago even though , like a lot of people in Cleveland , he didn ’ t imagine it would change very much .
Eight years of deflated hopes for Barack Obama had left the African American teacher wondering if any president could really make that much difference to the lives and livelihoods Collins saw around him .
He even thought there might be an upside to the election of Donald Trump .
“ I ’ m kinda glad it happened , ” Collins said a few weeks after the new president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It really is an eye-opener on what ’ s really going on .
The real truth about America .
The real truth that there ’ s still a lot of racism .
People voted for this sort of stuff.
” A lot of people in Cleveland chose not to vote .
Driven by disillusionment with Obama and dislike for Hillary Clinton , turnout fell in the overwhelmingly Democratic city where nearly half the population is black , as it did in others across the midwest , helping to usher Trump to victory .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ last four years , have been absolutely horrible .
Trump blew life back into white supremacy .
Him being so open and unapologetic about the stuff he says , and things that he ’ s done , really gave that power , ” he said .
“ Plus coronavirus , because now we have tens of thousands of people , especially in the black community , really suffering from Covid-19 .
We have an economy decimated to almost the proportions of the depression .
The loss of jobs and loss of wealth is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before.
” Collins will be voting for Biden and encouraging anyone else he can to do the same because the election hangs in good part on the turnout in major midwestern cities .
Trump decisively won Ohio four years ago after the state had voted twice for Obama .
But with the president holding a lead of just 1 % in the aggregate of recent polls , the result in Ohio may come down to just a few thousand votes in Cleveland .
Four years ago , Clinton won nearly 50,000 fewer votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ includes Cleveland and its small satellite cities , in part because so many Democrats stayed home .
In neighbouring Michigan , Democratic turnout in Detroit fell by about 60,000 votes in 2016 .
Trump took the state with a majority of just 10,704 votes .
Similarly , the drop in turnout between presidential elections in the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee , Wisconsin , was more than double the number of votes – just 23,000 – that Trump won the state by .
Those victories were key to the president winning the electoral college @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats have reason to hope Biden can turn that around on 3 November .
More than 8m people have registered to vote in Ohio , the second highest on record after Obama ’ s 2008 race .
The number registering as Democrats has surged 20 % in the state this year while Republicans have fallen 6 % although they still have a slight lead in total registrations .
Little more than half of the electorate are independents .
Two-thirds of the drop in Republican voters is in Cuyahoga county .
Those retreating from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women living in the Cleveland suburbs .
“ Voting for him was a big mistake , ” said a shop assistant , Lynn , who is married to a factory worker , after a campaign worker knocked on her door .
“ We both didn ’ t like Hillary and thought Trump would be good for bringing jobs back .
I lost it with him that first year .
I realised he was completely unfit to be president .
But my husband hung on , believing in him until Covid .
We ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him out .
I don ’ t know what Biden will do but at this point I don ’ t care.
” Like others who once backed Trump and have turned away she did not want to be identified because “ we have some crazy neighbours around here ” .
Lynn is among about 2.5m Ohioans who applied for absentee ballots , double the number in 2016 .
Nearly one quarter of the electorate has already voted in Cuyahoga county , whether by post or in person .
“ What we ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people voting by mail , ” said Erika Anthony of Cleveland Votes , a nonpartisan get out the vote group .
“ Weirdly , despite the fact that every sort of tactic that we normally would be deploying to get people to vote has been compromised because of the pandemic , I will say there ’ s been an increased excitement when we are engaging with residents , potential voters.
” But for all that , less than half of the population of Cleveland registered to vote .
Some in the city have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ turned out for Obama but not since .
“ Voter apathy is a real thing , ” said Anthony .
“ If I ’ m a black person particularly , I really am not seeing anything that ’ s demonstrating to me that democracy is working for me.
” Cleveland is among the most racially segregated cities in the country and one in three residents lives below the poverty line .
It struggled through the Obama years , never really recovering from the 2001 recession or the national economic collapse seven years later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , an African American volunteer working to register voters in Cleveland said some voters are more motivated to turn out this year .
“ I think that among young and educated voters , there ’ s a feeling that this is our duty to vote in this election because it ’ s consequential .
It feels more pressing than the Trump-Hillary election , ” she said .
“ I think for some people , their bubble has been burst .
After the Obama presidency they were thinking we ’ re a progressive society @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this four years of Trump has really made some people come to the realisation that our country is not the democracy that it could be or should be.
” But King , who runs an art collective , Shooting Without Bullets and who helped curate City Champions , the Guardian ’ s week-long focus on the city last year , said she met far less enthusiasm in one of the city ’ s poorest neighbourhoods , Hough , where she visited barbershops , a popular gathering place for discussion among African American men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Hough , which is a majority black neighbourhood that has been disinvested from , redlined , a lot of that population is functionally illiterate , it ’ s a very different response over there .
There ’ s a lot of people who are not interested and who don ’ t believe in electoral politics , ” she said .
“ Many of their arguments were that whether it ’ s Trump , whether it ’ s Obama , whether it ’ s Bush , whether it ’ s Clinton , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Me choosing them as leadership has never changed the conditions in which I ’ m living .
And you look at that neighbourhood , and you look at those statistics , and you say , you ’ re damn right .
I understand that frustration.
” King said dire predictions for four more years of Trump are doing little to galvanise people in neighbourhoods like Hough .
“ That might work for white women who voted for Trump last time but that ’ s not going to work necessarily for the people on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say to someone who has nothing , to someone who is constantly in a state of struggle , well this guy is gon na make it worse .
There ’ s no more fear to be had .
They ’ re not selling greatness here , they ’ re selling well , it ’ s worse or worse , ” she said .
“ I ’ m thinking that there ’ s a lot of barbershops around the midwest where this conversation is happening .
It scares me because I know that we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Detroit and Milwaukee also saw a drop in voting in African American neighbourhoods in 2016 that local activists in part attributed to a lack of interest because Obama was not on the ballot or disillusionment because he was able to achieve less than they had hoped , in part because of Republican obstruction .
Collins grew up in overwhelmingly black East Cleveland where his father worked for General Electric and his mother was a bus driver .
“ People feel like their vote is not going to make a difference .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stuff that ’ s going on right in front of their face versus getting into politics .
They don ’ t trust politicians , never have , ” he said .
“ Up until Obama , there were never a lot of people voting around here because I don ’ t think they really saw them making a change.
” Collins , who teaches at a school and a community centre , said coronavirus forced his classes online but some of young people he teaches don ’ t have computers .
Others lack @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on their phones for social media but that doesn ’ t work for interactive lessons .
“ These are the kinds of problems a lot of their families are focused on , not voting , ” he said .
Democratic politicians remain confident but have a different concern .
Kent Smith is running unopposed for re-election as a state representative in Euclid , a majority black small city within Cuyahoga county that is effectively a suburb of Cleveland .
He is less worried about turnout than whether the votes get counted .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because of the global pandemic and the change in how people are voting , it ’ s really going to be turnout versus the number of votes that are ruled ineligible , ” he said .
Smith said a combination of voters not being used to filling out postal ballots – a common error is to put the date instead of date of birth – and efforts by Ohio ’ s Republican secretary of state , Frank LaRose , to throw roadblocks in the way of voting by post which is more favoured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ large numbers of ballots being discounted .
“ Projections of turnout are healthy for the Democrats .
It ’ s a matter of how many of those votes will actually count , ” said Smith .

Jamal Collins took the trouble to vote four years ago even though, like a lot of people in Cleveland, he didn’t imagine it would change very much.
Eight years of deflated hopes for Barack Obama had left the African American teacher wondering if any president could really make that much difference to the lives and livelihoods Collins saw around him. He even thought there might be an upside to the election of Donald Trump.
“I’m kinda glad it happened,” Collins said a few weeks after the new president moved into the White House. “It really is an eye-opener on what’s really going on. The real truth about America. The real truth that there’s still a lot of racism. People voted for this sort of stuff.”
A lot of people in Cleveland chose not to vote. Driven by disillusionment with Obama and dislike for Hillary Clinton, turnout fell in the overwhelmingly Democratic city where nearly half the population is black, as it did in others across the midwest, helping to usher Trump to victory.
Jamal Collins will be voting for Biden and encouraging anyone else he can to do the same. Photograph: DaShaunae Marisa/The Guardian
This year, Collins sees it differently.
“Trump’s presidency, the last four years, have been absolutely horrible. Trump blew life back into white supremacy. Him being so open and unapologetic about the stuff he says, and things that he’s done, really gave that power,” he said.
“Plus coronavirus, because now we have tens of thousands of people, especially in the black community, really suffering from Covid-19. We have an economy decimated to almost the proportions of the depression. The loss of jobs and loss of wealth is worse than I’ve ever seen before.”
Collins will be voting for Biden and encouraging anyone else he can to do the same because the election hangs in good part on the turnout in major midwestern cities. Trump decisively won Ohio four years ago after the state had voted twice for Obama. But with the president holding a lead of just 1% in the aggregate of recent polls, the result in Ohio may come down to just a few thousand votes in Cleveland.
Four years ago, Clinton won nearly 50,000 fewer votes than Obama in Cuyahoga county, which includes Cleveland and its small satellite cities, in part because so many Democrats stayed home.
In neighbouring Michigan, Democratic turnout in Detroit fell by about 60,000 votes in 2016. Trump took the state with a majority of just 10,704 votes. Similarly, the drop in turnout between presidential elections in the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was more than double the number of votes – just 23,000 – that Trump won the state by.
Those victories were key to the president winning the electoral college and taking the White House.
The Democrats have reason to hope Biden can turn that around on 3 November. More than 8m people have registered to vote in Ohio, the second highest on record after Obama’s 2008 race. The number registering as Democrats has surged 20% in the state this year while Republicans have fallen 6% although they still have a slight lead in total registrations. Little more than half of the electorate are independents.
Neighborhood of East Cleveland. Photograph: DaShaunae Marisa/The Guardian
Two-thirds of the drop in Republican voters is in Cuyahoga county. Those retreating from Trump include blue collar workers and white women living in the Cleveland suburbs.
“Voting for him was a big mistake,” said a shop assistant, Lynn, who is married to a factory worker, after a campaign worker knocked on her door. “We both didn’t like Hillary and thought Trump would be good for bringing jobs back. I lost it with him that first year. I realised he was completely unfit to be president. But my husband hung on, believing in him until Covid. We’re both voting Biden just to get him out. I don’t know what Biden will do but at this point I don’t care.”
Like others who once backed Trump and have turned away she did not want to be identified because “we have some crazy neighbours around here”.
Lynn is among about 2.5m Ohioans who applied for absentee ballots, double the number in 2016. Nearly one quarter of the electorate has already voted in Cuyahoga county, whether by post or in person.
“What we’re seeing right now is astronomical volumes of people voting by mail,” said Erika Anthony of Cleveland Votes, a nonpartisan get out the vote group. “Weirdly, despite the fact that every sort of tactic that we normally would be deploying to get people to vote has been compromised because of the pandemic, I will say there’s been an increased excitement when we are engaging with residents, potential voters.”
Erika Anthony in Midtown, Cleveland. Photograph: DaShaunae Marisa/The Guardian
But for all that, less than half of the population of Cleveland registered to vote. Some in the city have never been to the polls. Others turned out for Obama but not since.
“Voter apathy is a real thing,” said Anthony. “If I’m a black person particularly, I really am not seeing anything that’s demonstrating to me that democracy is working for me.”
Cleveland is among the most racially segregated cities in the country and one in three residents lives below the poverty line. It struggled through the Obama years, never really recovering from the 2001 recession or the national economic collapse seven years later. Then came coronavirus.
Amanda King, an African American volunteer working to register voters in Cleveland said some voters are more motivated to turn out this year.
“I think that among young and educated voters, there’s a feeling that this is our duty to vote in this election because it’s consequential. It feels more pressing than the Trump-Hillary election,” she said. “I think for some people, their bubble has been burst. After the Obama presidency they were thinking we’re a progressive society, things are great. And then this four years of Trump has really made some people come to the realisation that our country is not the democracy that it could be or should be.”
photos One in three Cleveland residents lives below the poverty line.
But King, who runs an art collective, and who helped curate City Champions, the Guardian’s week-long focus on the city last year, said she met far less enthusiasm in one of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods, Hough, where she visited barbershops, a popular gathering place for discussion among African American men.
“When I do voter registration in Hough, which is a majority black neighbourhood that has been disinvested from, redlined, a lot of that population is functionally illiterate, it’s a very different response over there. There’s a lot of people who are not interested and who don’t believe in electoral politics,” she said.
“Many of their arguments were that whether it’s Trump, whether it’s Obama, whether it’s Bush, whether it’s Clinton, they’ve never cared about me. Me choosing them as leadership has never changed the conditions in which I’m living. And you look at that neighbourhood, and you look at those statistics, and you say, you’re damn right. I understand that frustration.”
King said dire predictions for four more years of Trump are doing little to galvanise people in neighbourhoods like Hough.
“That might work for white women who voted for Trump last time but that’s not going to work necessarily for the people on the fence. You can’t say to someone who has nothing, to someone who is constantly in a state of struggle, well this guy is gonna make it worse. There’s no more fear to be had. They’re not selling greatness here, they’re selling well, it’s worse or worse,” she said.
Amanda King is a local activist and artist in Cleveland, Ohio. Photograph: DaShaunae Marisa/The Guardian
“I’m thinking that there’s a lot of barbershops around the midwest where this conversation is happening. It scares me because I know that we need to turn out for this election.”
Detroit and Milwaukee also saw a drop in voting in African American neighbourhoods in 2016 that local activists in part attributed to a lack of interest because Obama was not on the ballot or disillusionment because he was able to achieve less than they had hoped, in part because of Republican obstruction.
Collins grew up in overwhelmingly black East Cleveland where his father worked for General Electric and his mother was a bus driver.
“People feel like their vote is not going to make a difference. And people may be too concerned with other stuff that’s going on right in front of their face versus getting into politics. They don’t trust politicians, never have,” he said. “Up until Obama, there were never a lot of people voting around here because I don’t think they really saw them making a change.”
Collins, who teaches at a school and a community centre, said coronavirus forced his classes online but some of young people he teaches don’t have computers. Others lack decent internet connections. They might rely on their phones for social media but that doesn’t work for interactive lessons.
“These are the kinds of problems a lot of their families are focused on, not voting,” he said.
Photos Cleveland is among the most racially segregated cities in the country. Photos by DaShaunae Marisa for the Guardian
Democratic politicians remain confident but have a different concern.
Kent Smith is running unopposed for re-election as a state representative in Euclid, a majority black small city within Cuyahoga county that is effectively a suburb of Cleveland. He is less worried about turnout than whether the votes get counted.
“I really think that in 2020, because of the global pandemic and the change in how people are voting, it’s really going to be turnout versus the number of votes that are ruled ineligible,” he said.
Smith said a combination of voters not being used to filling out postal ballots – a common error is to put the date instead of date of birth – and efforts by Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, to throw roadblocks in the way of voting by post which is more favoured by Democrats, has raised concerns of large numbers of ballots being discounted.
“Projections of turnout are healthy for the Democrats. It’s a matter of how many of those votes will actually count,” said Smith.