Politics

by RICHARD C. GROSS Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Trump administration orders shortening census taking by a month and slowing the activities of the United States Postal Service that may impact mail-in balloting have a common denominator: both scorn the American people. In both cases, Donald Trump, a rogue president, doesn’t want voters counted, either their ballots or their persons, especially if they’re Blacks, Latinos or undocumented immigrants. Democrats and civil rights leaders are fighting both changes, which have been implemented. He’s stiffing us, just as he did the World Health Organization when he refused to pay dues owed in the middle of a pandemic? Who does that? The typical outrageous Trumpian objective against both of these stalwart institutions is to try to ...

President Trump speaks during a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on August 4, 2020, in Washington, D.C. BYWilliam Rivers Pitt, Truthout The still-potent remnants of a dying hurricane rumbled up from the south on Tuesday night and landed a big wet haymaker on my little corner of the northern woods. Electricity, phones — land and cell — and internet were gone with the crash of falling trees and the howl of a humid wind, and for about 40 hours it was the 19th century around here. For someone in the RIGHT NOW news biz, this was an unnatural state of affairs, but there was little I could do; I had to drive 25 minutes over broken branches and around closed roads, in fact, to find a signal so I could email my boss and tell her there was little I cou...

Anti-choice extremist Abby Johnson addresses the virtual 2020 Republican National Convention on August 25, 2020. BYWilliam Rivers Pitt, Truthout The second night of the Republican National Convention was bursting with disappointments for those of us who live to suffer, none more stinging than the sudden disappearance from the speaker’s list of Mary Ann Mendoza. Mendoza is a so-called “angel mom” and a member of the Trump campaign’s advisory board who enjoys more than 40,000 followers on Twitter. Hours before her scheduled appearance last night, Mendoza favored those followers with a QAnon-inspired conspiracy theory about Jews seeking to enslave the world. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not a fabrication,” reads the link Mendoza shared. “And, it certainly is not an...

Kimberly Guilfoyle delivers her address to the Republican National Convention at the Mellon Auditorium on August 24, 2020, in Washington, D.C. BYWilliam Rivers Pitt, Truthout The Los Angeles Times wins the prize for best description of the thing that happened on my TV last night: “Welcome to a parallel universe.” You cannot fully wrap your mind around what took place on the first evening of the Republican National Convention unless and until you bear witness to what took place that morning. Donald Trump was re-nominated in Charlotte via a genuinely creepy delegate roll-call video that looked like a flip-card cartoon of aggrieved mostly white male faces. The production value was shabby in its speediness — a bunch of delegates were chopped off m...

President Trump speaks as delegates gather during the first day of the Republican National Convention on August 24, 2020, in Charlotte, North Carolina. BYWilliam Rivers Pitt, Truthout The Republican National Convention (RNC) begins tonight, and I honestly don’t know how to complete this sentence. Many will watch, many more will not, and I’ll be fixated on this four-day failapalooza for one reason only: to see if the Audience of One phenomenon rears its orange head and burns the whole project to the ground. I very strongly suspect it will. The “Audience of One” media phenomenon is perhaps the most vivid, daily available evidence of the stranglehold Donald Trump has on the Republican Party. A member of the administration, or someone who wants to be a member of the administration,...

by ANDREW LEVINE At the presidential level and perhaps down-ticket too, this year’s electoral circus will be a spectacle well calculated to cause disgust and despair – thanks mainly to Donald Trump’s unprecedented machinations, but also because, at least in the presidential contest, the main contenders, both of them, are embarrassingly unfit to serve. For kindness sake, one of them, Joe Biden, should be put back out to pasture; for the sake of justice, the other, Trump, should be put behind bars. Biden at least means well; meaning well is beyond Trump’s ken. The man has no moral compass and no capacity for empathy; he is a vile, narcissistic ignoramus. Exxon Mobil’s Rex Tillerson, his first Secretary of State, got it right: Trump is a “fucking moron.” Worse, he is a dangerous s...