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20/20
Insights, scoops, and analysis of the most important election season of our lives
Thirteen-year-old Brayden Harrington, who has a stutter, went on national television on Thursday night to endorse Joe Biden for president at the Democratic National Convention. As Harrington explains, the former vice president, who has also struggled with a stutter since childhood, gave Harrington the confidence to confront something that has “bothered [him] his whole life.”
Watch Harrington’s moving speech:
.@JoeBiden has struggled with a stutter since he was young.
Tonight, a 12-year-old boy named Brayden Harrington told the world how the Democratic nominee inspired him after a meeting in February. pic.twitter.com/nHh6ehMQUa
Former vice president Joe Biden headlined the fourth and final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention on Thursday after accepting his party’s nomination for president earlier this week.
Biden’s speech serves as the capstone to this year’s Democratic National Convention. The virtual convention featured impassioned speeches from party powerhouses like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, headlined Wednesday evening’s segment of the convention as she made history by accepting the Democratic vice presidential nomination, becoming the first Black woman and first woman of Indian descent to appear on a major party ticket. “We’re at an inflection point,” she said. “The constant chaos leaves us adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid…We must elect a president who will bring something different, something better, and do the important work. We must elect Joe Biden.”
Biden’s nomination has been a long time in the making, but it was far from guaranteed. He has spent nearly five decades at the highest levels of federal elected office, including US senator and vice president to Barack Obama. But Biden faced stiff primary competition earlier this year from a wide-ranging field of Democrats: longtime party insiders, progressive firebrands, and a handful of faces fresh to the political scene. With the nomination now secured, Biden and Harris are focused on their next target: winning the White House.
Read the transcript of the speech in full, as prepared for delivery, below:
Good evening.
Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: Give people light and they will find a way.
Give people light.
Those are words for our time.
The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.
Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. I will be an ally of the light not of the darkness.
It’s time for us, for We the People, to come together.
For make no mistake. United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America. We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.
I am a proud Democrat and I will be proud to carry the banner of our party into the general election. So, it is with great honor and humility that I accept this nomination for President of the United States of America.
But while I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn’t support me as I will for those who did.
That’s the job of a president. To represent all of us, not just our base or our party. This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment.
It’s a moment that calls for hope and light and love. Hope for our futures, light to see our way forward, and love for one another.
America isn’t just a collection of clashing interests of Red States or Blue States.
We’re so much bigger than that.
We’re so much better than that.
Nearly a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt pledged a New Deal in a time of massive unemployment, uncertainty, and fear.
Stricken by disease, stricken by a virus, FDR insisted that he would recover and prevail and he believed America could as well.
And he did.
And so can we.
This campaign isn’t just about winning votes.
It’s about winning the heart, and yes, the soul of America.
Winning it for the generous among us, not the selfish. Winning it for the workers who keep this country going, not just the privileged few at the top. Winning it for those communities who have known the injustice of the “knee on the neck”. For all the young people who have known only an America of rising inequity and shrinking opportunity.
They deserve to experience America’s promise in full.
No generation ever knows what history will ask of it. All we can ever know is whether we’ll be ready when that moment arrives.
And now history has delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced.
Four historic crises. All at the same time. A perfect storm.
The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60’s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.
So, the question for us is simple: Are we ready?
I believe we are.
We must be.
All elections are important. But we know in our bones this one is more consequential.
America is at an inflection point. A time of real peril, but of extraordinary possibilities.
We can choose the path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, and more divided.
A path of shadow and suspicion.
Or we can choose a different path, and together, take this chance to heal, to be reborn, to unite. A path of hope and light.
This is a life-changing election that will determine America’s future for a very long time.
Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy.
They are all on the ballot.
Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And, most importantly, who we want to be.
That’s all on the ballot.
And the choice could not be clearer.
No rhetoric is needed.
Just judge this president on the facts.
5 million Americans infected with COVID-19.
More than 170,000 Americans have died.
By far the worst performance of any nation on Earth.
More than 50 million people have filed for unemployment this year.
More than 10 million people are going to lose their health insurance this year.
Nearly one in 6 small businesses have closed this year.
If this president is re-elected we know what will happen.
Cases and deaths will remain far too high.
More mom and pop businesses will close their doors for good.
Working families will struggle to get by, and yet, the wealthiest one percent will get tens of billions of dollars in new tax breaks.
And the assault on the Affordable Care Act will continue until its destroyed, taking insurance away from more than 20 million people – including more than 15 million people on Medicaid – and getting rid of the protections that President Obama and I passed for people who suffer from a pre-existing condition.
And speaking of President Obama, a man I was honored to serve alongside for 8 years as Vice President. Let me take this moment to say something we don’t say nearly enough.
Thank you, Mr. President. You were a great president. A president our children could – and did – look up to.
No one will say that about the current occupant of the office.
What we know about this president is if he’s given four more years he will be what he’s been the last four years.
A president who takes no responsibility, refuses to lead, blames others, cozies up to dictators, and fans the flames of hate and division.
He will wake up every day believing the job is all about him. Never about you.
Is that the America you want for you, your family, your children?
I see a different America.
One that is generous and strong.
Selfless and humble.
It’s an America we can rebuild together.
As president, the first step I will take will be to get control of the virus that’s ruined so many lives.
Because I understand something this president doesn’t.
We will never get our economy back on track, we will never get our kids safely back to school, we will never have our lives back, until we deal with this virus.
The tragedy of where we are today is it didn’t have to be this bad.
Just look around.
It’s not this bad in Canada. Or Europe. Or Japan. Or almost anywhere else in the world.
The President keeps telling us the virus is going to disappear. He keeps waiting for a miracle. Well, I have news for him, no miracle is coming.
We lead the world in confirmed cases. We lead the world in deaths.
Our economy is in tatters, with Black, Latino, Asian American, and Native American communities bearing the brunt of it.
And after all this time, the president still does not have a plan.
Well, I do.
If I’m president on day one we’ll implement the national strategy I’ve been laying out since March.
We’ll develop and deploy rapid tests with results available immediately.
We’ll make the medical supplies and protective equipment our country needs. And we’ll make them here in America. So we will never again be at the mercy of China and other foreign countries in order to protect our own people.
We’ll make sure our schools have the resources they need to be open, safe, and effective.
We’ll put the politics aside and take the muzzle off our experts so the public gets the information they need and deserve. The honest, unvarnished truth. They can deal with that.
We’ll have a national mandate to wear a mask-not as a burden, but to protect each other.
It’s a patriotic duty.
In short, I will do what we should have done from the very beginning.
Our current president has failed in his most basic duty to this nation.
He failed to protect us.
He failed to protect America.
And, my fellow Americans, that is unforgivable.
As president, I will make you this promise: I will protect America. I will defend us from every attack. Seen. And unseen. Always. Without exception. Every time.
Look, I understand it’s hard to have hope right now.
On this summer night, let me take a moment to speak to those of you who have lost the most.
I know how it feels to lose someone you love. I know that deep black hole that opens up in your chest. That you feel your whole being is sucked into it. I know how mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes.
But I’ve learned two things.
First, your loved ones may have left this Earth but they never leave your heart. They will always be with you.
And second, I found the best way through pain and loss and grief is to find purpose.
As God’s children each of us have a purpose in our lives.
And we have a great purpose as a nation: To open the doors of opportunity to all Americans. To save our democracy. To be a light to the world once again.
To finally live up to and make real the words written in the sacred documents that founded this nation that all men and women are created equal. Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You know, my Dad was an honorable, decent man.
He got knocked down a few times pretty hard, but always got up.
He worked hard and built a great middle-class life for our family.
He used to say, “Joey, I don’t expect the government to solve my problems, but I expect it to understand them.”
And then he would say: “Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in your community. It’s about looking your kids in the eye and say, honey, it’s going to be okay.”
I’ve never forgotten those lessons.
That’s why my economic plan is all about jobs, dignity, respect, and community. Together, we can, and we will, rebuild our economy. And when we do, we’ll not only build it back, we’ll build it back better.
With modern roads, bridges, highways, broadband, ports and airports as a new foundation for economic growth. With pipes that transport clean water to every community. With 5 million new manufacturing and technology jobs so the future is made in America.
With a health care system that lowers premiums, deductibles, and drug prices by building on the Affordable Care Act he’s trying to rip away.
With an education system that trains our people for the best jobs of the 21st century, where cost doesn’t prevent young people from going to college, and student debt doesn’t crush them when they get out.
With child care and elder care that make it possible for parents to go to work and for the elderly to stay in their homes with dignity. With an immigration system that powers our economy and reflects our values. With newly empowered labor unions. With equal pay for women. With rising wages you can raise a family on. Yes, we’re going to do more than praise our essential workers. We’re finally going to pay them.
We can, and we will, deal with climate change. It’s not only a crisis, it’s an enormous opportunity. An opportunity for America to lead the world in clean energy and create millions of new good-paying jobs in the process.
And we can pay for these investments by ending loopholes and the president’s $1.3 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthiest 1 percent and the biggest, most profitable corporations, some of which pay no tax at all.
Because we don’t need a tax code that rewards wealth more than it rewards work. I’m not looking to punish anyone. Far from it. But it’s long past time the wealthiest people and the biggest corporations in this country paid their fair share.
For our seniors, Social Security is a sacred obligation, a sacred promise made. The current president is threatening to break that promise. He’s proposing to eliminate the tax that pays for almost half of Social Security without any way of making up for that lost revenue.
I will not let it happen. If I’m your president, we’re going to protect Social Security and Medicare. You have my word.
One of the most powerful voices we hear in the country today is from our young people. They’re speaking to the inequity and injustice that has grown up in America. Economic injustice. Racial injustice. Environmental injustice.
I hear their voices and if you listen, you can hear them too. And whether it’s the existential threat posed by climate change, the daily fear of being gunned down in school, or the inability to get started in their first job — it will be the work of the next president to restore the promise of America to everyone.
I won’t have to do it alone. Because I will have a great Vice President at my side. Senator Kamala Harris. She is a powerful voice for this nation. Her story is the American story. She knows about all the obstacles thrown in the way of so many in our country. Women, Black women, Black Americans, South Asian Americans, immigrants, the left-out and left-behind.
But she’s overcome every obstacle she’s ever faced. No one’s been tougher on the big banks or the gun lobby. No one’s been tougher in calling out this current administration for its extremism, its failure to follow the law, and its failure to simply tell the truth.
Kamala and I both draw strength from our families. For Kamala, it’s Doug and their families.
For me, it’s Jill and ours.
No man deserves one great love in his life. But I’ve known two. After losing my first wife in a car accident, Jill came into my life and put our family back together.
She’s an educator. A mom. A military Mom. And an unstoppable force. If she puts her mind to it, just get out of the way. Because she’s going to get it done. She was a great Second Lady and she will make a great First Lady for this nation, she loves this country so much.
And I will have the strength that can only come from family. Hunter, Ashley and all our grandchildren, my brothers, my sister. They give me courage and lift me up.
And while he is no longer with us, Beau inspires me every day.
Beau served our nation in uniform. A decorated Iraq war veteran.
So I take very personally the profound responsibility of serving as Commander in Chief.
I will be a president who will stand with our allies and friends. I will make it clear to our adversaries the days of cozying up to dictators are over.
Under President Biden, America will not turn a blind eye to Russian bounties on the heads of American soldiers. Nor will I put up with foreign interference in our most sacred democratic exercise – voting.
I will stand always for our values of human rights and dignity. And I will work in common purpose for a more secure, peaceful, and prosperous world.
History has thrust one more urgent task on us. Will we be the generation that finally wipes the stain of racism from our national character?
I believe we’re up to it.
I believe we’re ready.
Just a week ago yesterday was the third anniversary of the events in Charlottesville.
Remember seeing those neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists coming out of the fields with lighted torches? Veins bulging? Spewing the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the ’30s?
Remember the violent clash that ensued between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it?
Remember what the president said?
There were quote, “very fine people on both sides.”
It was a wake-up call for us as a country.
And for me, a call to action. At that moment, I knew I’d have to run. My father taught us that silence was complicity. And I could not remain silent or complicit.
At the time, I said we were in a battle for the soul of this nation.
And we are.
One of the most important conversations I’ve had this entire campaign is with someone who is too young to vote.
I met with six-year old Gianna Floyd, a day before her Daddy George Floyd was laid to rest.
She is incredibly brave.
I’ll never forget.
When I leaned down to speak with her, she looked into my eyes and said “Daddy, changed the world.”
Her words burrowed deep into my heart.
Maybe George Floyd’s murder was the breaking point.
Maybe John Lewis’ passing the inspiration.
However it has come to be, America is ready to in John’s words, to lay down “the heavy burdens of hate at last” and to do the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism.
America’s history tells us that it has been in our darkest moments that we’ve made our greatest progress. That we’ve found the light. And in this dark moment, I believe we are poised to make great progress again. That we can find the light once more.
I have always believed you can define America in one word: Possibilities.
That in America, everyone, and I mean everyone, should be given the opportunity to go as far as their dreams and God-given ability will take them.
We can never lose that. In times as challenging as these, I believe there is only one way forward. As a united America. United in our pursuit of a more perfect Union. United in our dreams of a better future for us and for our children. United in our determination to make the coming years bright.
Are we ready?
I believe we are.
This is a great nation.
And we are a good and decent people.
This is the United States of America.
And there has never been anything we’ve been unable to accomplish when we’ve done it together.
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney once wrote:
“History says,
Don’t hope on this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme”
This is our moment to make hope and history rhyme.
With passion and purpose, let us begin – you and I together, one nation, under God – united in our love for America and united in our love for each other.
For love is more powerful than hate.
Hope is more powerful than fear.
Light is more powerful than dark.
This is our moment.
This is our mission.
May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light joined in the battle for the soul of the nation.
In remarks on the last night of the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) called it like she sees it: President Donald Trump is a “coward-in-chief.”
The Iraq War veteran, speaking with the US Capitol in the background, condemned Trump’s failures to get to the bottom of the killings of American troops and the intelligence that suggests “Vladamir Putin placed a bounty on their life.” Duckworth has demanded more details from the Defense Department about its investigation into an intelligence assessment that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill American troops in Afghanistan. “As president, Joe Biden would never let tyrants manipulate him like a puppet,” Duckworth said.
Her fiery remarks also assailed Trump for his treatment of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters at home. “Joe Biden would never threaten to use our military against peaceful Americans,” she said. “Because unlike Trump, Joe Biden has common sense and common decency. Donald Trump doesn’t deserve to call himself commander in chief for another four minutes—let alone another four years.”
DAMN. @SenDuckworth just called Donald Trump a “coward-in-chief" who "won't stand up to Vladimir Putin, read his daily intelligence briefings, or even publicly admonish adversaries for reportedly putting bounties on our troops' heads." #DemConventionpic.twitter.com/PZYe5YLTBd
Four years after she accepted the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the case for electing Joe Biden—while reminding viewers that Donald Trump never should have been president in the first place.
“Remember back in 2016 when Trump asked, ‘What do you have to lose?’” she said. “Well now we know: our healthcare, our jobs, our loved ones, our leadership in the world, and even our post office.”
Clinton urged Americans to vote early, whether by mail or in person, and to sign up as poll workers if possible.
“Let’s vote for the jobs that Joe’s plan will create, clean energy jobs to fight climate change, caregiving jobs with living wages,” she said. “Vote for emergency relief that lifts small businesses and saves hardworking people from foreclosures and evictions.
“Vote for the parents and teachers struggling to balance children’s education and safety, and for health care workers fighting COVID-19 with little help from the White House. Vote for paid family leave and health care for everyone. For Social Security, Medicare, and Planned Parenthood. Vote for Dreamers and their families. Vote for law enforcement purged of racial bias that keeps all our streets safe. Vote for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, because Black lives matter. Vote for honest elections so we, not a foreign adversary, choose our president. Vote for the diverse, hopeful America we saw in last night’s roll call.”
Watch the video below:
.@HillaryClinton kicked off her speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention by slamming Donald Trump: "I really wish Donald Trump knew how to be a president. Because America needs a president right now." pic.twitter.com/apgzblzqCl
.@HillaryClinton just made the case for electing Joe Biden—while reminding viewers that Donald Trump never should have been president in the first place.
Jill Biden got personal at the Democratic National Convention tonight, shortly after her husband accepted his party’s nomination for president.
Speaking from an empty classroom, Biden noted, “So many classrooms are quiet right now. The playgrounds are still. But if you listen closely, you can hear the sparks of change in the air.” She spoke about how she and Joe Biden met and recalled their grief after their son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46, and how she felt four days after the funeral, when she saw her husband stand in front of a mirror in a suit, putting his shoulders back and taking a deep breath before heading out to work at the White House. “There are times when I couldn’t imagine how he did it—how he put one foot in front of the other and kept going. But I’ve always understood why he did it,” she said.
Echoing a theme that other speakers had raised tonight, Biden emphasized her husband’s commitment to his family. “The burdens we carry are heavy, and we need someone with strong shoulders. I know that if we entrust this nation to Joe, he will do for your family what he did for ours: bring us together and make us whole.” Watch the full video below:
Ady Barkan, a health care activist who was diagnosed with the terminal neurodegenerative disease ALS four years ago, gave one of the most moving speeches of the second night of the Democratic National Convention.
After Barkan’s diagnosis in 2016, President Donald Trump signed a tax bill that threatened Barkan’s health insurance. Barkan traveled to Washington, DC, to advocate for single-payer health care. Though former Vice President Joe Biden has opposed Medicare for All, this evening Barkan made an impassioned plea to vote for him, as Trump’s administration asks the Supreme Court to invalidate Obamacare.
“Even during this terrible crisis, Donald Trump and Republican politicians are trying to take away millions of people’s health insurance,” Barkan said, speaking with help from a computer voice due to paralysis from the disease. “With the existential threat of another four years of this president, we all have a profound obligation to act, not only to vote, but to make sure that our friends, family, and neighbors vote as well.”
.@AdyBarkan highlights the shocking number of people who don't have health insurance amidst the pandemic: "Nearly 100 million Americans do not have sufficient health insurance… Our essential workers are treated as dispensable." pic.twitter.com/2Nwuf2TiBG
On Tuesday evening, Jacquelyn Brittany, a security guard at the New York Times, nominated Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention.
“I take powerful people up in my elevator all the time,” Brittany said in her nomination message. “When they get off, they go to their important meetings. Me, I just head back to the lobby. But in the short time I spent with Joe Biden, I could tell he really saw me. That he actually cared. That my life meant something to him. And I knew, even when he went into his important meeting, he’d take my story in there with him.”
WATCH: Jacquelyn Brittany, a security guard at the New York Times, became the first person to officially nominate Joe Biden for president at the Democratic National Convention. pic.twitter.com/RhzVWYJGIU
Brittany, a 31-year-old Black woman, met Biden in December when she escorted him to an interview at the Times as the paper’s editorial board was weighing its 2020 presidential endorsement. Biden didn’t get the Gray Lady’s endorsement, but he did get a viral video of Brittany exclaiming, “I love you,” and then, “I do. You’re like, my favorite.”
Biden's interaction with a mailroom worker in the @nytimes elevator was honestly the highlight of the episode: pic.twitter.com/gocSQlOLXc
Brittany recently told the Washington Post that she had long admired Biden’s resilience: “He’s been through so much. And he doesn’t show it on the outside. He may feel it on the inside—and I’m that type of person,” she said. Brittany, who goes by her middle name to protect her privacy, added that she had had her own tribulations, including time in foster care.
Typically, high-profile elected officials make nominating speeches. Brittany told the Post, “I never thought I was worthy enough to do this.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee released its fifth and final volume in its years long counterintelligence investigation on Tuesday, offering new detail and reporting on connections between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian hack-and-leak operation aimed at Hillary Clinton. But several of the Democratic members of the committee, most notably Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, say the report blocks the American public from a key piece information: what the Russians are doing right now to intervene in the 2020 election to help Trump.
“The…report includes a wealth of extremely troubling new revelations about the counterintelligence threat posed by Donald Trump and his campaign,” Wyden said in a standalone statement included at the end of the report. However, Wyden added, a lot of the new information “remains needlessly classified” in the report, including “redacted information that is directly relevant to Russia’s interference in the 2020 election.”
Wyden, who has developed a reputation for presciently and publicly flagging major intelligence issues without revealing classified information, was backed up in another statement attached to the report he co-authored with Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich, Dianne Feinstein, Kamala Harris, and Michael Bennet. The group noted that the value of the committee’s extensive investigation “is not purely historical,” not only because the lessons of Russia’s interference remain valuable, but also because—and as Trump’s own intelligence officials assert—”Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 US election to assist Donald Trump, and some of the President’s associates are amplifying those efforts.”
While the US intelligence community and law enforcement officials—some of whom have access to some of the redacted information—repeatedly say they’ve learned the lessons of 2016, the vast majority of that information will remain hidden not only to citizens, but to state and local election officials who are on the frontline of defense against what the US government says are active influence and interference operations being carried out by some of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agencies.
Republican Senators James Risch, Marco Rubio, Roy Blunt, Tom Cotton, John Cornyn, and Ben Sasse offered their own statement, claiming the report shows “no evidence” that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. That claim runs contrary to the findings laid out in the first pages of the report stating that Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman who is now in prison, had active connections with Russian intelligence officers while running the campaign and up into 2018.
According to Wyden’s statement, the report’s redactions give cover for the Republican senators to make such claims. As an example, he cited redactions that block the public from knowing exactly what the committee found with respect to Manafort’s connections with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer, including indications that Manafort himself was “connected to Russia’s hack-and-leak operations.” He also notes that the committee’s findings about the role of Russian disinformation in the attempts to tie Vice President Joe Biden to corruption in Ukraine—and ultimately the source of Trump’s impeachment in January of this year—are similarly hidden behind redactions.
That could be a boon to Trump and his allies, who have continued to seek to tarnish Biden with the material in hopes of defeating him in November. “Only when the American people are informed about the role of an adversary in concocting and disseminating disinformation can they make democratic choices free of foreign interference,” Wyden warned.
Michelle Obama’s speech Monday night at the Democratic National Convention was the heart and soul of opening night.
Obama’s passionate remarks hewed to a characteristic she is beloved for: she is a moral compass, she’s clarity in the muddiest days. “Most of us practice [empathy] without a second thought…because there but for the grace of God go I,” the former first lady said. “But right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another. They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.”
She cited several national horrors from the past four years—police brutality, white supremacist marches, a border patrol that rips children away from their families and imprisons them.
When it came to discussing President Donald Trump’s tenure outright, she got straight to the point. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” Obama said steadily. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”
She was also unwavering in her support for her husband’s former vice president. “Now, Joe is not perfect, and he’d be the first to tell you that,” she said. “But there is no perfect candidate, no perfect president. And his ability to learn and grow—we find in that the kind of humility and maturity that so many of us yearn for right now. Because Joe Biden has served this nation his entire life without ever losing sight of who he is; but more than that, he has never lost sight of who we are, all of us.”
She continued: “If you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”
At the Democratic National Convention Monday tonight, Sen. Bernie Sanders succinctly summed up many people’s frustration at President Trump’s bungling of the coronavirus response.
“Nero fiddled while Rome burned,” Sanders said. “Trump golfs.”
Former First Lady Michelle Obama anchored the first night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention on Monday night, kicking off a week that will culminate in the party’s nomination of Former Vice President Joe Biden for president. Obama called Biden “a profoundly decent man guided by his faith” and praised his ability to tackle the multiple crises besetting America, while taking direct aim at the current occupant of the White House as their root cause. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment.”
Watch the video above, and read Michelle Obama’s full remarks, as prepared for delivery, below:
Good evening, everyone. It’s a hard time, and everyone’s feeling it in different ways. And I know a lot of folks are reluctant to tune into a political convention right now or to politics in general. Believe me, I get that. But I am here tonight because I love this country with all my heart, and it pains me to see so many people hurting.
I’ve met so many of you. I’ve heard your stories. And through you, I have seen this country’s promise. And thanks to so many who came before me, thanks to their toil and sweat and blood, I’ve been able to live that promise myself.
That’s the story of America. All those folks who sacrificed and overcame so much in their own times because they wanted something more, something better for their kids.
There’s a lot of beauty in that story. There’s a lot of pain in it, too, a lot of struggle and injustice and work left to do. And who we choose as our president in this election will determine whether or not we honor that struggle and chip away at that injustice and keep alive the very possibility of finishing that work.
I am one of a handful of people living today who have seen firsthand the immense weight and awesome power of the presidency. And let me once again tell you this: the job is hard. It requires clear-headed judgment, a mastery of complex and competing issues, a devotion to facts and history, a moral compass, and an ability to listen—and an abiding belief that each of the 330,000,000 lives in this country has meaning and worth.
A president’s words have the power to move markets. They can start wars or broker peace. They can summon our better angels or awaken our worst instincts. You simply cannot fake your way through this job.
As I’ve said before, being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are. Well, a presidential election can reveal who we are, too. And four years ago, too many people chose to believe that their votes didn’t matter. Maybe they were fed up. Maybe they thought the outcome wouldn’t be close. Maybe the barriers felt too steep. Whatever the reason, in the end, those choices sent someone to the Oval Office who lost the national popular vote by nearly 3,000,000 votes.
In one of the states that determined the outcome, the winning margin averaged out to just two votes per precinct—two votes. And we’ve all been living with the consequences.
When my husband left office with Joe Biden at his side, we had a record-breaking stretch of job creation. We’d secured the right to health care for 20,000,000 people. We were respected around the world, rallying our allies to confront climate change. And our leaders had worked hand-in-hand with scientists to help prevent an Ebola outbreak from becoming a global pandemic.
Four years later, the state of this nation is very different. More than 150,000 people have died, and our economy is in shambles because of a virus that this president downplayed for too long. It has left millions of people jobless. Too many have lost their health care; too many are struggling to take care of basic necessities like food and rent; too many communities have been left in the lurch to grapple with whether and how to open our schools safely. Internationally, we’ve turned our back, not just on agreements forged by my husband, but on alliances championed by presidents like Reagan and Eisenhower.
And here at home, as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and a never-ending list of innocent people of color continue to be murdered, stating the simple fact that a Black life matters is still met with derision from the nation’s highest office.
Because whenever we look to this White House for some leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division, and a total and utter lack of empathy.
Empathy: that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The ability to walk in someone else’s shoes; the recognition that someone else’s experience has value, too. Most of us practice this without a second thought. If we see someone suffering or struggling, we don’t stand in judgment. We reach out because, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” It is not a hard concept to grasp. It’s what we teach our children.
And like so many of you, Barack and I have tried our best to instill in our girls a strong moral foundation to carry forward the values that our parents and grandparents poured into us. But right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another. They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.
They see people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe. They see people calling the police on folks minding their own business just because of the color of their skin. They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else. And they see what happens when that lack of empathy is ginned up into outright disdain.
They see our leaders labeling fellow citizens enemies of the state while emboldening torch-bearing white supremacists. They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protestors for a photo-op.
Sadly, this is the America that is on display for the next generation. A nation that’s underperforming not simply on matters of policy but on matters of character. And that’s not just disappointing; it’s downright infuriating, because I know the goodness and the grace that is out there in households and neighborhoods all across this nation.
And I know that regardless of our race, age, religion, or politics, when we close out the noise and the fear and truly open our hearts, we know that what’s going on in this country is just not right. This is not who we want to be.
So what do we do now? What’s our strategy? Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me, “When others are going so low, does going high still really work?” My answer: going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.
But let’s be clear: going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top. Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God, and if we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences.
And going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth.
So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.
Now, I understand that my message won’t be heard by some people. We live in a nation that is deeply divided, and I am a Black woman speaking at the Democratic Convention. But enough of you know me by now. You know that I tell you exactly what I’m feeling. You know I hate politics. But you also know that I care about this nation. You know how much I care about all of our children.
So if you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.
I know Joe. He is a profoundly decent man, guided by faith. He was a terrific vice president. He knows what it takes to rescue an economy, beat back a pandemic, and lead our country. And he listens. He will tell the truth and trust science. He will make smart plans and manage a good team. And he will govern as someone who’s lived a life that the rest of us can recognize.
When he was a kid, Joe’s father lost his job. When he was a young senator, Joe lost his wife and his baby daughter. And when he was vice president, he lost his beloved son. So Joe knows the anguish of sitting at a table with an empty chair, which is why he gives his time so freely to grieving parents. Joe knows what it’s like to struggle, which is why he gives his personal phone number to kids overcoming a stutter of their own.
His life is a testament to getting back up, and he is going to channel that same grit and passion to pick us all up, to help us heal and guide us forward.
Now, Joe is not perfect. And he’d be the first to tell you that. But there is no perfect candidate, no perfect president. And his ability to learn and grow—we find in that the kind of humility and maturity that so many of us yearn for right now. Because Joe Biden has served this nation his entire life without ever losing sight of who he is; but more than that, he has never lost sight of who we are, all of us.
Joe Biden wants all of our kids to go to a good school, see a doctor when they’re sick, live on a healthy planet. And he’s got plans to make all of that happen. Joe Biden wants all of our kids, no matter what they look like, to be able to walk out the door without worrying about being harassed or arrested or killed. He wants all of our kids to be able to go to a movie or a math class without being afraid of getting shot. He wants all our kids to grow up with leaders who won’t just serve themselves and their wealthy peers but will provide a safety net for people facing hard times.
And if we want a chance to pursue any of these goals, any of these most basic requirements for a functioning society, we have to vote for Joe Biden in numbers that cannot be ignored. Because right now, folks who know they cannot win fair and square at the ballot box are doing everything they can to stop us from voting. They’re closing down polling places in minority neighborhoods. They’re purging voter rolls. They’re sending people out to intimidate voters, and they’re lying about the security of our ballots. These tactics are not new.
But this is not the time to withhold our votes in protest or play games with candidates who have no chance of winning. We have got to vote like we did in 2008 and 2012. We’ve got to show up with the same level of passion and hope for Joe Biden. We’ve got to vote early, in person if we can. We’ve got to request our mail-in ballots right now, tonight, and send them back immediately and follow-up to make sure they’re received. And then, make sure our friends and families do the same.
We have got to grab our comfortable shoes, put on our masks, pack a brown bag dinner and maybe breakfast too, because we’ve got to be willing to stand in line all night if we have to.
Look, we have already sacrificed so much this year. So many of you are already going that extra mile. Even when you’re exhausted, you’re mustering up unimaginable courage to put on those scrubs and give our loved ones a fighting chance. Even when you’re anxious, you’re delivering those packages, stocking those shelves, and doing all that essential work so that all of us can keep moving forward.
Even when it all feels so overwhelming, working parents are somehow piecing it all together without child care. Teachers are getting creative so that our kids can still learn and grow. Our young people are desperately fighting to pursue their dreams.
And when the horrors of systemic racism shook our country and our consciences, millions of Americans of every age, every background rose up to march for each other, crying out for justice and progress.
This is who we still are: compassionate, resilient, decent people whose fortunes are bound up with one another. And it is well past time for our leaders to once again reflect our truth.
So, it is up to us to add our voices and our votes to the course of history, echoing heroes like John Lewis who said, “When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.” That is the truest form of empathy: not just feeling, but doing; not just for ourselves or our kids, but for everyone, for all our kids.
And if we want to keep the possibility of progress alive in our time, if we want to be able to look our children in the eye after this election, we have got to reassert our place in American history. And we have got to do everything we can to elect my friend, Joe Biden, as the next president of the United States.
This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files”—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current President—on July 7, 2016.
There was a time when Donald Trump spoke out against racism.
In 1999, when Trump was flirting with the idea of seeking the Reform Party’s presidential nomination, he paid a visit to a museum run by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization that promotes human rights and studies the Holocaust. In a rare moment of eloquence, Trump called out his potential competitor for the nomination, commentator Pat Buchanan, for suggesting in a book that Hitler had posed no direct threat to the West in 1940.
“In the 1930s, everyone thought Hitler was a fringe element who could never come to power,” Trump said, according to an article in USA Today.
“History showed otherwise,” he added. “We must recognize bigotry and prejudice and defeat it wherever it appears.”
Trump encouraged his rival to visit the museum, hoping it would enlighten him. “I think Pat Buchanan should come here, absolutely,” Trump said, according to the Associated Press. “His views are so far off, and what he wrote in his book was so bad.”
A group of protesters hold a demonstration in front of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's home in Greensboro, North Carolina on August 16, 2020. LOGAN CYRUS/Getty
Demonstrators delivered their displeasure over changes at the Postal Service directly to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Sunday—in the form of a protest outside his mansion in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The gathering, which reportedly included about 100 people, followed another demonstration calling for DeJoy’s resignation in front of his home in Washington, DC, on Saturday. Both followed reports this week that under DeJoy, a major Republican donor, the Postal Service is experiencing delays, has removed mail-sorting machines ahead of the November elections, and has warned states that it may not be able to meet deadlines for mailed-in ballots. In response to the reports, and President Trump’s admission Thursday that he is blocking funding for the Postal Service in a brazen attempt to disenfranchise voters, the House Oversight Committee on Sunday called for DeJoy to testify later this month at an “urgent hearing.”
Protesters in Greensboro carried signs that read things like, “Save our postal system,” “Dump DeJoy,” and “I’m tired”; they chanted the old standby, “Na Na Na Na Hey Hey-ey Goodbye“. One guy (who happens to be the founder of a Grammy-nominated string band) even brought a banjo and sang a postal-themed ditty:
It's not a protest in North Carolina until the banjo comes out.
— Ted Corcoran (Red T Raccoon) (@RedTRaccoon) August 16, 2020
More from the rally to #SaveThePostOffice in Greensboro, NC outside Louis DeJoy’s house right now. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s around 200 people here. pic.twitter.com/0rWImfhJtY
— Ted Corcoran (Red T Raccoon) (@RedTRaccoon) August 16, 2020
A collection of signs from protesters currently adorn the fence of Postmaster General DeJoy’s Greensboro home after a nearly 2 hour protest in the area! @WFMYpic.twitter.com/ELtpzbKr0i
On Sunday, the House Oversight Committee urged Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to move up his scheduled testimony before the committee to August 24, nearly a month before planned, citing the “starling new revelations” about the “scope and gravity of operational changes you are implementing at hundreds of postal facilities.”
“Your testimony is particularly urgent,” writes the committee’s chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), “given the troubling influx of reports of widespread delays at postal facilities across the country—as well as President Trump’s explicit admission last week that he has been blocking critical coronavirus funding for the Postal Service in order to impair mail-in voting efforts for the upcoming elections in November.”
JUST IN: House Oversight Committee calls postmaster general DEJOY to testify on Aug. 24, nearly a month earlier than scheduled. pic.twitter.com/4Zt7l8pEb9
The committee’s request comes less than 24 hours after President Trump praised DeJoy, saying he is a “very smart man” and that DeJoy “wants to make the Post Office great again.” On Saturday in Bedminster, New Jersey, the president also blamed Democrats for the lack of secured funding for the Postal Service, contrasting with his admission Thursday that if he refuses to make a deal with Democrats for funding, ballots would fail to be counted in November.
“If you’re going to do these millions of ballots out of nowhere,” he said Saturday, “[DeJoy is] going to obviously need funding but the Democrats are not willing to provide funding for other things and therefore they are not going to get the funding for that.”
As Donald Trump’s strategy of hobbling the US Postal Service to undermine mail voting comes into clearer focus, it might be easy to forget that the president is also going to great lengths to weaken confidence in the voting system more generally.
The president stoked that part of his war Saturday morning, retweeting a tweet from Republican National Committee spokesperson Elizabeth Harrington claiming that Democrats are knowingly engaging in fraudulent behavior via mail voting:
The Democrats know the 2020 Election will be a fraudulent mess. Will maybe never know who won! https://t.co/tEWKJ5NcUj
What the president may not realize is that he’s showing voters that even though problems exist—some serious and in need of sustained public education campaigns by local election officials—the situation he points to as evidence that mail voting can’t be trusted is an example of how hard it would be to rig elections at scale with mail ballots.
The tweet is referring to a local city council election in May in Paterson, New Jersey. As the novel coronavirus pandemic raged, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy mandated that elections would be conducted entirely by mail. According to the Washington Post, local officials mailed ballots to all eligible voters, and some of those ballots were improperly delivered in some large apartment buildings. Rather than blank ballots being delivered into individual boxes, some were left outside of the boxes.
Some of those ballots were stolen, and then campaign workers for a city council candidate filled them out for preferred candidates and affixed images of signatures they’d gathered from past petition drives to the ballots. The ballots were then bundled and put into a mailbox in hopes they’d eventually be counted.
The four men alleged to be involved in the scheme were caught after a postal worker saw 347 mail ballots bundled together in a local post office and decided to take a closer look. That review led to more scrutiny of all of the ballots, leading to 3,274 being rejected by the local elections board. Election officials determined that roughly half the ballots eventually rejected had signatures that didn’t match a voter’s signature on file, and others were rejected because a portion of the envelope requiring a signature from the person who submitted the ballot was not filled out (New Jersey law allows people—”bearers”—to let others submit their sealed ballots on their behalf, but the bearer can only submit three ballots not their own and must sign the outside envelope).
So what the national Republican official and the president are pointing to is a system that caught alleged misbehavior: Postal workers noticed problems leading to the local election officials reviewing ballots and finding other apparent problems. The situation does highlight some problems with mail voting in elections, the Post noted, many of which trace back to insufficient voter education on the part of election officials. Nationwide, nearly 319,000 mail ballots were rejected in the 2016 election, a separate Post analysis found, representing about 1 percent of all mail ballots during that election.
Reasons for rejection include signature mismatches, late arrivals, unsealed envelopes, among others, but rarely is it outright fraud, as was the alleged case in New Jersey. Voting rights advocates and election administration experts say the problems have to do with the rules related to mail ballots: the integrity of envelopes, when they can be counted and processed, when they need to arrive, etc. This is a main reason why congressional Democrats and nonpartisan state and local election officials have asked for additional funding as part of COVID-19 relief packages, saying that voter education campaigns and updated infrastructure is needed to handle the surge in mail voting expected this fall as voters avoid in-person voting for fear of getting sick.
So if the president actually cared about a more accurate election via mail ballots—the method by which he and his family vote, by the way—he might consider supporting the funding and measures nonpartisan election officials advocate to support secure mail voting. Instead he’s steadfastly opposed to any election-related funding in the relief packages or additional money for the postal service because, as he says, he doesn’t want it to be able to better handle mail ballots. And it looks like he might get his wish. On Friday, the Washington Post reported that the postal service had sent a letter to 46 states and the District of Columbia alerting government officials that some states’ mail ballot timelines may not work with the postal service’s delivery timelines, especially as Trump’s hand-picked postmaster general cuts overtime and enforces other cuts in the name of “efficiency,” even if that means mail doesn’t get delivered on time.
This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files”—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current president—on October 5, 2016.
In early 2006, eager to cash in on the housing bubble he believed would continue to grow indefinitely, Donald Trump unveiled his newest business venture, Trump Mortgage LLC, at a reception in Trump Tower. “Trump Mortgage is going to take better care of people than anyone in the mortgage industry ever has,” he promised.
In some ways, Trump Mortgage was typical of a lot of Trump’s ventures, in that Trump licensed his name to an idea that someone else had come up with. In this case, the CEO, EJ Ridings, had suggested a mortgage company to Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and Trump had given it the green light. But unlike some licensing deals, Trump also played a key role in getting it off the ground. He hired Ridings as the CEO of the company he was lending his name to, met with him to plot strategy before the big launch, blitzed the financial press to talk up the company, and was listed as a “key executive” on the company’s website. He even provided Trump Mortgage with prime office space at his building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, from which employees cold-called borrowers with subprime mortgages seeking to refinance their loans.
Despite Trump’s prediction about the strength of the market—he repeatedly told Trump University students in 2006 that there was no housing bubble—the bubble burst in 2007. By February 2007, Trump Mortgage stopped paying rent to its landlord, 40 Wall Street LLC—which Trump owned, through the Trump Organization. What happened next? One Trump company took the other to court. In July 2007, 40 Wall Street LLC petitioned New York County Civil Court for $57,367.95 (the unpaid rent plus $450 in legal fees) and asked for permission to evict Trump Mortgage from its 25th-floor space. After Trump’s Trump Mortgage LLC failed to respond to the petition, Judge Debra Samuels ruled in favor of the Trump-owned 40 Wall Street LLC, and the struggling mortgage company, which went out of business in 2007, was booted out of Trump’s own building.
Trump wasn’t the only person stiffed by Trump Mortgage. In 2008, the New York Supreme Court ruled that the company owed one of its former mortgage brokers $298,274 in compensation for a deal she’d negotiated. The broker told the Washington Post in February that she still has never received a cent.
After the firm’s collapse, Trump preferred to act as if the whole mortgage adventure was never more than a passing fad. “The mortgage business is not a business I particularly liked or wanted to be part of in a very big way,” he told Crain’s New York at the time. And his once-rosy predictions about the housing market had done a 180 too. “People have been talking about the end of the cycle for 12 years, and I’m excited if it is,” he said of the housing bubble. “I’ve always made more money in bad markets than in good markets.”
Conspiracy theorists keep winning Republican primary elections, and GOP leaders aren’t just letting it happen—they’re welcoming them with open arms.
On Tuesday, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a businesswoman with a history of saying racist things and outwardly supporting the QAnon conspiracy, which baselessly claims that a cabal of liberal elites is running a massive pedophile ring, won the GOP nomination in Georgia’s 14th congressional district.
QAnon is not just another harebrained conspiracy theory. Its followers have on multiple occasions carried out or plotted deadly acts of violence. The FBI is concerned that it’s only a matter of time before more Q devotees follow suit and take up arms.
Even though this is a general problem for the nation, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) doesn’t seem to mind. McCarthy’s spokesperson told reporters back in June after Politico first reported on videos of Greene saying racist comments that the congressman found them “appalling” and had “no tolerance for them.” But even with that, and Greene’s clear association with QAnon, in the final weeks of the race McCarthy seemed to treat her like any other candidate. He had several conversations with Green and her top rival, with his spokesperson telling Politico McCarthy had a “good and productive” relationship with both and would remain neutral in the contest.
The House Minority leader isn’t the only top Republican welcoming Greene. Ranking member of the influential House Judiciary Committee Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who has been accused of being complicit in a real sex abuse scandal involving college students, donated $2,000 to Greene’s campaign.
Video
Related: How QAnon Is Mutating for 2020
Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the number two house GOP official, is the only top Republican who had helped Greene’s opponent.
Greene’s race isn’t a one-off. Republican top brass more or less did the same thing during Lauren Boebert’s bid for the Republican nomination in Colorado’s 3rd district. Boebert is also a big QAnon fan.
After Boebert upset five-term incumbent Rep. Scott Tipton in the Republican primary, McCarthy called her to welcome her into the party. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) soon gave Boebert its stamp of approval, praising her and adding her to its “Young Guns” fundraising and training program.
Both Greene and Boebert have a serious shot at winning their November elections and making it to the halls of Congress next year. Greene is running in the second most conservative district in Georgia and is expected to win the general. Boebert’s race is tighter but the district has been held by Republicans since 2011; recent polling shows her in a dead heat with her Democratic opponent, Diane Mitsch Bush.
Greene and Boebert have received the most attention because they have a shot at winning in the fall, but Alex Kaplan at Media Matters has tracked how across the country, 20 pro-QAnon candidates have secured spots running for Congress as Republicans on the general election ballots. They are in 12 states, and include one Senate candidate in Oregon, Jo Rae Perkins.
The GOP leadership’s actions are not the only reason this keeps happening, but by failing to even vocally oppose QAnon candidates, and instead sometimes welcoming them, influential members of the party are aiding QAnon’s ascent to Congress.
President Donald Trump was back at it with the racism and sexism Thursday morning, lobbing insults at prominent women of color during an appearance on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show.
After referring to Sen. Kamala Harris as a “mad woman,” Trump turned his attention to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), making unfounded claims about her academic performance. “AOC was a poor student,” he said. “This is not even a smart person, other than she’s got a good line of stuff. I mean, she goes out there and she yaps.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s high school research on longevity, including how antioxidants can prolong the lifespan of roundworms, earned her an asteroid named in her honor. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, says the “very stable genius” paid someone else to take the SATs for him.
Let’s make a deal, Mr. President:
You release your college transcript, I’ll release mine, and we’ll see who was the better student.
This post was originally published as part of The Trump Files—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current president—on November 6, 2016.
Donald Trump has often boasted of his commitment to hiring women and people of color. “I have many executives that are women,” he said on ABC’s This Week in August. Two months earlier, he had made a bolder claim, assuring the Associated Press that he had hired many Black senior executives and saying, “I am the least discriminatory person in the world.”
But as reports during this campaign have shown, Trump has exaggerated his commitment to diverse hiring. In fact, while constructing the Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach in the late 1990s, Trump got in trouble for failing to hire firms owned by people of color for the project—after he’d promised to do so as part of a lawsuit settlement.
Here’s what happened: In 1995, Trump sued Palm Beach County over aircraft noise. Mar-a-Lago, his lavish Palm Beach estate, was situated just south of the flight path out of Palm Beach International Airport, and Trump had been complaining about the noise ever since he bought the property a decade earlier. In 1996, the case settled, and the county agreed to build a structure that would keep airplanes from getting close to Mar-a-Lago. In exchange, Trump promised to lease land from the county, for a hefty and rising fee, on which he was going to build the Trump International Golf Club. As part of the settlement, he also pledged to make “reasonable efforts” to give 30 percent of the contracting work during construction to diversely owned businesses, with 10 percent of the work going to Black-owned firms and 20 percent to other nonwhite- and women-owned businesses.
Construction on the $40 million golf course began in 1998. Six months in, county commission chair Maude Ford Lee got a tip that Trump might be not be keeping his end of the deal. Lee had become the county’s first Black commissioner in 1990, following a report that showed the county had a long history of excluding diversely owned businesses. She wrote Trump a sharp letter warning him to come into compliance.
“I am extremely disappointed with the lack of participation by minority and black vendors in this effort thus far,” Lee wrote. “I am requesting an immediate plan of action from you to help [to] rectify this grave disparity.”
Lee wrote the letter after an airport official had informed her that neither of the two general contractors on the golf course project had provided reports of hiring any nonwhite or women subcontractors. An aide to Lee told the Sun Sentinel that Lee’s office knew of many businesses that were qualified to work on the project, but that it hadn’t heard from Trump.
“He’s violating the deal he made with Palm Beach County,” Lee told the New York Post.
As he often does in the middle of controversy, Trump denied the allegations. “Whatever charges were made, they are totally false,” his spokesperson Rhona Graff told the Sun Sentinel. “We have great numbers of hired and to-be-hired minority workers on that project.”
Today, after presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris to be his running mate, President Donald Trump seized the chance to attack Harris at his coronavirus press briefing. The only sustained criticism of Harris that Donald Trump could muster? She was too “mean” to Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Taking a softball question from a New York Post reporter, Trump resorted to playing his hits: calling a woman in a position of power “nasty.”
“She was extraordinarily nasty to Kavanaugh,” he said. “She was nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing.”
Besides being explicitly sexist, Trump’s focus on the Kavanaugh hearing was a non sequitur. The Post reporter had lobbed him a question about marijuana and Harris’ record on prosecutions—easy bait that Trump ignored.
During Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation hearing before the Senate, Harris grilled the justice on whether he had spoken to anyone at a law firm founded by Trump’s personal lawyer about Robert Mueller’s investigation. Kavanaugh was unable to come up with an answer. Here is the exchange:
Later in the briefing, Trump was asked directly whether Biden’s VP pick would help his chances at winning the presidency. He repeated his dig at Harris—she was so “nasty” to Kavanaugh. “I thought she was the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate,” he said.
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