Trump news: Under-fire postmaster general says he has 'no intention' of returning mail sorting machines
Senate committee interrogates US Postal Service chief as GOP prepares for 2020 convention
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Donald Trump said he would send law enforcement officers to polling locations for this November's presidential election in comments branded "an attack on America" by a former White House ethics chief.
“We're going to have sheriffs, and we're going to have law enforcement, and we're going to have hopefully US attorneys, and we're going to have everybody and attorney generals (sic),” Mr Trump told Fox News after host Sean Hannity asked if he would have "poll watchers".
Meanwhile, his Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said on Friday there was “no intention” to return mail sorting machines that were removed in recent weeks, after it was reported that at least 671 machines were removed in critical voting states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin and Georgia, among others.
The postmaster general said those machines were “not needed”, while adding that he supports vote-by-mail efforts amid the pandemic.
Mr DeJoy, who has overseen sweeping cuts at the agency following his appointment by the president in June, told a US Senate committee he would be voting by mail in fall elections and insisted that the "American people should feel comfortable that the Postal Service will deliver on this election" despite the president's constant threats to undermine the agency.
On Friday, the president and his family held a funeral service for his brother Robert Trump, who died on 16 August. He was 71. The president held a service in the East Room of the White House.
A group of anti-Trump Republicans have meanwhile seized on the arrest of former Trump campaign chief and senior White House adviser Steve Bannon, who has pleaded not guilty to fraud in an an alleged US-Mexico border wall crowdfunding scheme. He is the subject of an advert targeting Fox News views during next week's 2020 Republican National Convention.
GOP officials and the president are preparing for the event following Joe Biden's official nomination as the Democrats' nominee after his party's week-long convention, during which Democrats and several Republicans condemned the current administration and the president's response to the coronavirus pandemic and economic fallout.
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Opinion: Louis DeJoy's testimony to Congress has made Trump’s motives over the Postal Service crystal clear
Ahmed Baba writes: We've spent years discussing foreign election interference in US democracy, but now the interference is coming from inside the White House. Donald Trump welcomed Russia's help in 2016, allegedly extorted Ukraine and publicly solicited help from China.
In his desperate attempts to cling onto power, he's proven no institution is beyond the reach of his grip, and now, he's set his authoritarian sights on the US Postal Service (USPS).
The theory that President Trump is sabotaging the USPS in order to suppress the vote was given credence by his own words. While many have pointed to President Trump's interview on Fox News last week where he openly admitted to blocking more than $25 billion in USPS funding to sabotage mail-in voting, there's another Fox interview that further highlights his motives. In a March appearance on Fox & Friends, Trump condemned the election funding in the coronavirus relief bill at the time:
"The things they had in there were crazy. They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."
As usual, President Trump said the quiet part out loud and clearly asserted a key to his re-election strategy is keeping the levels of voting low, as it has always been for the modern GOP. Then came Postmaster General (PMG) Louis DeJoy's appointment by a Trump-appointed USPS Board of governors that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnunchin reportedly met with prior to DeJoy's selection.
Trump campaign plasters The Washington Post with ads linking to claims debunked by paper’s fact checkers
Kate NG writes: The Trump campaign has plastered The Washington Post 's website with a series of huge adverts, including full-screen video promotions, sparking criticism of the influential newspaper.
The ad campaign was launched amid the Democratic National Convention (DNC), which culminated on Thursday evening in Joe Biden formally accepting his party’s presidential nomination.
In anticipation of the DNC, President Donald Trump’s campaign reportedly threw approximately $10 million into ad buys, which include homepage takeovers of the Wall Street Journal and Daily Caller, as well as The Washington Post.
The Trump campaign’s communications director ,Tim Murtaugh, said last week the digital ad buy also took over the YouTube masthead for 96 hours, from Tuesday through to Friday, according to Axios.
He said: “The total of the online buy is high seven figures. Some of the ads are performance-based, so the total could push to over $10 million.
Syrians face calamity as Trump’s new sanctions combine with surging coronavirus
Patrick Cockburn writes: “If I don’t buy masks or medicine, I may die or survive, but if I don’t buy bread for the family, we will all die of starvation,” says a retired 68-year-old teacher in Damascus, explaining why he does not have masks, sterilisers or medicines. “We need two bundles of loaves every day which costs us at least 600 Syrian pounds (24 US cents), but if we buy masks, they will cost us about 1000 SP (40 cents). The choice is between bread and masks.”
Millions of ordinary Syrians are having to choose between buying food to eat and taking precautionary measures against coronavirus, which local witnesses say is much more widespread than the Syrian government admits.
Poverty and deprivation have worsened dramatically since the US introduced all-embracing sanctions on Syria on 17 June under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which Donald Trump signed into law late last year. Named after the individual who documented the murder of thousands of Syrians by the Syrian government (Syrian officials deny the allegations), the legislation is supposedly intended to restrain it from carrying out further acts of repression.
In practice the Caesar Act does little to weaken President Bashar al-Assad and his regime, but it does impose a devastating economic siege on a country where civilians are already ground down by nine years of war and economic embargo. The eight in 10 Syrians who are listed by the UN as falling below the poverty line must now cope with a sudden upsurge in the coronavirus pandemic.
As with UN sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1990s, the Syrian leadership will be least affected by the new American measures because it controls resources. The real victims are the poor and the powerless who suffer since the price of foodstuffs has risen by 209 per cent in the last year. The cost of a basic food basket is 23.5 times what it was before the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011 according to the World Food Programme (WFP).
Bannon jokes about financial fraud in resurfaced video
James Crump writes: Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Steve Bannon joked about fraud at a We Build the Wall fundraising event, in a clip that has resurfaced the day after his arrest.
Mr Bannon was indicted on Thursday, alongside three others, for allegedly funnelling “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from the We Build the Wall online fundraising campaign to the founder of the organisation, Brian Kolfage, who was among those charged.
We Build the Wall started as a GoFundMe campaign in 2018, and was created to help raise money from public funding to go directly towards building the the US-Mexico border wall at a time when the president was struggling with Congress.
Acting US attorney Audrey Strauss confirmed on Thursday that Mr Bannon was arrested while aboard a 150-foot yacht in the Long Island Sound, with assistance from the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).
In a clip that was uploaded to Twitter on Friday by Buzzfeed reporter Ryan Mac, Mr Bannon can be seen joking about Mr Kolfage taking money from the campaign during a fundraising “WALL-A-THON”.
Bannon back on air after not guilty plea in alleged border wall fraud scheme
Steve Bannon has dismissed federal charges against him as a "political hit job" following his arrest for allegedly defrauding donors to a crowdfunded US-Mexico border wall project and laundering the proceeds.
He pleaded not guilty to one count each of wire fraud and money laundering on Thursday and was released on a $5m bond following a brief court appearance in US District Court in New York.
On Friday, he returned to his radio programme and podcast War Room Pandemic to announce he is "not going to back down."
"This is a political hit job," he said. "Everybody knows I love a fight. I was called 'honey badger' for many years. You know, 'Honey badger doesn't give.' ... I'm in this for the long haul. I'm in this for the fight. I'm going to continue to fight."
Trump repeats 'mad theory' about Nancy Pelosi becoming president if 2020 election result delayed
Donald Trump repeated what he called a "mad theory" on Friday that Nancy Pelosi would become president if an election result was delayed due to mail-in voting.
As House Speaker, Ms Pelosi is second in line to the presidency behind Mike Pence. The theory posits that Ms Pelosi would ascend to the White House if a new president has not been inaugurated by the end of Mr Trump's term at noon on 20 January, as required by the 20th amendment.
Amidst a battle over universal mail-in voting, Mr Trump said at the 2020 Council for National Policy that widespread vote-by-mail ballots could lead to delays of weeks, months, years or "maybe never".
"And I don't know what's going to happen. You know there's a theory that if you don't have it by the end of the year, crazy Nancy Pelosi would become president. You know that right," Mr Trump said.
A federal judge asked the Trump campaign for evidence of mail-in voter fraud. They couldn’t.
The Trump campaign has been unable to provide evidence of mail-in voter fraud in response to a request from a federal judge in Pennsylvania, casting doubt on the president’s repeated assertion that mail-in ballots could be “rigged” against him.
A lawsuit filed by the campaign to block the use of drop-off ballot boxes — where voters can deliver their mail-in ballots to be picked up by election officials — had alleged that their use would increase the risk of voter fraud in the battleground state.
But when asked by Judge J Nicholas Ranjan to provide evidence, the campaign filed hundreds of pages of documents that failed to identify any instances of mail-in fraud.
The 524-page court filing, shared with The Independent, instead included numerous news reports about non-mail-in voter fraud that was discovered and prosecuted, together with requests by the campaign for information from various counties across the state.
Richard Hall reports:
Matt Gaetz rebuked by ethics panel for tweet aimed at former Trump attorney
The House Ethics Committee has ruled that Republican congressman Matt Gaetz broke House rules for a tweet he directed at Michael Cohen last year. While the panel determined that Rep Gaetz broke house rules during the incident, they said that he did not break witness tampering and obstruction of Congress laws.
On Friday, the panel released a report that said Mr Gaetz’s actions “did not reflect creditably upon the House of Representatives” and “did not meet the standards by which Members of the House should govern themselves”.
The ruling comes following the tweet in 2019 which Mr Gaetz made in 2019 accusing Mr Cohen of having extramarital affairs while he was preparing to testify before a House panel about Donald Trump’s conduct.
Trump and family walk behind pallbearers carrying president's brother
Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump and their family joined a funeral procession from the White House as the body of the president's late brother Robert was carried into a hearse.
Getty Images
Robert Trump, the president's younger brother, died on 16 August.
He was 71. Details of his illness have not been released.
Getty Images
Trump says Obama isn't a great president because 'much of what he's done we've undone'
Donald Trump said Barack Obama could not be considered a great president because he had undone many of the polices his predecessor had introduced during his time in office.
"President Obama, they say he was a great president – but you can't be a president when much of what he's done we've undone," Mr Trump said.
His words came during a campaign visit to Old Forge, Pennsylvania, two days after Mr Obama gave a speech during the Democratic National Convention painting Mr Trump as a dire threat to the future of America.
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