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How Trump’s Push to Undo Election Has Divided His Media Allies

How Trump's Push to Undo Election Has Divided His Media Allies

President Trump’s final term began Monday with the Republican Party’s disorder – and the president’s media allies also disagreed on how to deal with the crisis sparked by his fantasies of a “rigged” election.

On the Monday episode of Fox News’ normally Trump-friendly morning show “Fox & Friends,” host Brian Kilmeade urged Mr. Trump’s lawyers to produce evidence of fraud. He also warned that the pro-Trump protests scheduled for Washington this week are “the kind of anarchy that by and large works for no one, Republicans or Democrats.” His co-host Steve Doocy noted, “So far we haven’t seen the evidence.”

In the same program, Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who has announced that she will object if Congress approves the vote on Wednesday’s electoral college, discussed the bomb record of a phone call made on Saturday that President Trump tried to get Brad Raffensperger to do. Georgia’s Secretary of State to defeat to change the state’s vote.

“Brian, one of the things I think everyone said is that that call wasn’t a helpful call,” Ms. Blackburn said. (On another Fox News broadcast, Republican strategist Karl Rove called Mr. Trump’s call “inappropriate”.)

Complicated matter for experts on the right: Acceptance of Mr. Trump’s allegations of a stolen election could stifle Republican turnout in Tuesday’s Georgia runoff election that will determine control of the United States Senate.

But Fox News has also expressed very different views of the President than those of Mr. Rove and the hosts of Fox & Friends. On Sunday night, right-wing brand Mark Levin told viewers of his prime time show on Fox News, “Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are being destroyed by the Democratic Party and the media, and they want to destroy what’s left of it. ”

Throwing a warning to Republican leaders who are not involved in Mr. Trump’s efforts, Mr. Levin mentioned Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by name and added, “The Republican leadership in the Senate has been extremely pathetic.”

Like the breakaway Republican senators who advocated Mr Trump’s efforts to undermine the election, Mr Levin has stayed in step with Mr Trump’s increasingly far-fetched fraud allegations.

At 9 p.m. on Fox News, Sean Hannity’s program presented viewers with numerous false statements about the 2020 election as it aired unfiltered Mr. Trump’s rally for the Georgia Republican Senate nominee. However, the prime-time venue provided by Mr Hannity was not enough for those in the audience who were aware of the reluctance of some Fox News personalities to support the President’s fraud claims. His mention of the network, almost an hour after his speech, drew the crowd.

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Updated

Jan. 4, 2021, 3:39 p.m. ET

Monday’s comment on MSNBC and CNN was, unsurprisingly, slightly different.

John Heilemann, an MSNBC analyst, compared Mr. Trump to a mob boss. On CNN, host Jake Tapper described Mr Trump’s call to Georgian officials as “putting pressure on them, threatening them and suggesting that they could be prosecuted if they couldn’t find” enough votes “for Trump to get the election results in Georgia to change. ” . “He added,” Too many members of the ruling Republican Party are clearly trying to undermine the American experiment of undermining democracy. “

And when Fox News showed the Trump rally at 9 p.m., CNN host Chris Cuomo had a discussion on the slow roll-out of coronavirus vaccines.

Newsmax, the conservative network that has tried to outperform Fox News on the right by fueling Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories, gave up time on Monday to several guests who vigorously supported the president’s unsubstantiated claims, including Representative Jody B. Hice Georgia and a Trump campaign advisor Steve Cortes.

Republican Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, told Newsmax viewers that there was “massive electoral fraud” and stated that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. “would not be a legitimate president.” He also complained that the judicial system – which has been issuing opinion after opinion at the state and federal level against Mr. Trump’s fraud allegations – has been a “pathetic failure”. Bob Sellers, the Newsmax host who interviews Mr. Brooks, has not pushed his claims back.

Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson claimed Monday afternoon that Mr Trump did not try to get Mr Raffensperger to reverse the Georgia election results during the phone call, but instead used it as some sort of information tour.

“You can hear how passionately the president believes he has won the state,” said Ms. Robinson.

Even so, Newsmax does not protect viewers from the inevitability of Mr Biden’s inauguration, although many voters may object to the drafting. On a segment of the network, anchor John Bachman stated that Mr Biden’s plans for inauguration day would be reduced because of the pandemic; Right-wing commentator Dan O’Donnell, one of Mr. Bachman’s guests, wondered for no reason whether the minor inauguration was due to Mr. Biden’s “decreased mental capacity”.

“That’s a fair question,” said Mr. Bachman.

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Politics

11 Republican senators push to delay certification of Biden victory

11 Republican senators push to delay certification of Biden victory

Eleven GOP senators and elected senators will press for the delay in confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump in the electoral college during a formal joint session of Congress on Wednesday, they said in a statement.

The Senators, led by Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, cited allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election for which they presented no evidence and which have been repeatedly rejected by courts across the country.

The Justice Department said it found no evidence of widespread fraud in the elections.

Efforts to reverse the latest of dozen Republican attempts to undo Trump’s loss are unlikely to change the electoral college’s record, which Biden won between 306 and 232. Biden is expected to be inaugurated on January 20th.

In their statement, the senators said they would object to the certification of voters from “controversial states” unless Congress sets up a commission to review those states’ elections. The commission would conduct a “10-day emergency audit,” they wrote.

“Once completed, individual states would evaluate the results of the commission and, if necessary, could convene a special legislative session to confirm a change in their vote,” the senators said in the statement.

Mike Gwin, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said in a statement: “This stunt will not change the fact that President-elect Biden will be sworn in on Jan. 20. These unsubstantiated claims have already been examined and rejected by Trump’s own.” Attorney General, dozens of courts and election officials from both parties. “

Marc Elias, a Democratic election attorney who has overseen the Biden campaign’s response to many of the lawsuits against the 2020 election, wrote in a post on Twitter that there is “no way” that the GOP efforts will “change the election result.” .

The Senators who signed the declaration are Cruz, Ron Johnson, R-Wis., James Lankford, R-Okla., Steve Daines, R-Mont., John Kennedy, R-La., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn . and Mike Braun, R-Ind.

The elected Senators who signed it are Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. The elected senators will officially take office on Sunday.

Wednesday’s joint congressional session, usually a formality, takes place when lawmakers are required to officially count the electoral college votes given to each presidential candidate and announce the winner. Vice President Mike Pence will chair the session as President of the Senate.

If at least one senator and one member of the House of Representatives object to the results of a state, the joint session is suspended and the House and Senate meet separately for a maximum of two hours to consider the objection. A majority of both houses of Congress must approve the objection and reject the votes of the electoral college.

While the Republicans control the 100-member Senate, the Democrats hold a majority in the House of Representatives, making it virtually impossible for an objection to have a realistic chance of success.

In their statement, the senators acknowledge that their plan has little chance of success and that they “expect most, if not all, Democrats and perhaps more than a few Republicans” to vote against them.

In a post on Twitter, the campaign wrote “THANK YOU!” and listed the names of all eleven current and incoming Senators, as well as Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who previously said he would object to electoral college certification.

“It is encouraging to see so many patriots emerge calling for an investigation into the rampant electoral fraud and irregularities we saw on November 3rd,” Jenna Ellis, senior legal advisor for the campaign, said in a statement.

Efforts to reverse Biden’s victory have drawn fire from the Democrats and an increasing number of Republicans. In December, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Urged his party not to object to the results of the electoral college.

“The electoral college has spoken. So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden,” McConnell said on December 15, after the electoral college officially confirmed Biden’s victory and weeks after NBC News and other major media outlets announced the outcome of the race.

John Thune, RS.D., has repeatedly said that Trump’s efforts to ditch the results are likely to go down like a “shot dog”.

Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, the 2012 GOP presidential candidate, said Hawley’s move was “disappointing and destructive”.

Following Saturday’s announcement, Senator Pat Toomey, R-Penn. Said that Hawley and Cruz “are undermining the right of the people to choose their own leaders”.

“The senators justify their intention by saying that there have been many allegations of fraud. But allegations of fraud from a losing campaign cannot justify overturning an election,” Toomey said. “They do not acknowledge that these allegations were heard in courtrooms across America and not supported by evidence.”

Toomey added that he voted for Trump and approved him for re-election. “But on Wednesday I intend to vigorously defend our form of government by opposing these efforts to disenfranchise millions of voters in my state and others,” he said.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said in a statement earlier in the day that she would vote to count the electoral college’s votes.

“I took an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution, and I will do it on January 6 – just as I want to do every day as I serve the people of Alaska,” Murkowski said.

“The courts and state lawmakers have all done their duty to hear legal allegations and have found nothing to justify reversing the results,” she added. “I urge my colleagues from both parties to acknowledge this and, together with me, maintain confidence in the electoral college and our elections so that we can ensure that we continue to have the confidence of the American people.”

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Politics

‘This simply has to get carried out’: Lawmakers push Trump to signal the reduction invoice.

Jobless Benefits Are Set to Expire as Trump Resists Signing Relief Bill

“Sign the bill, do it, and if the president wants to push for more, let’s do it, too,” said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who also appeared on the show.

Another Washington governor, Jay Inslee, said Mr. Trump “has decided to take the entire aid package hostage”. Mr Inslee, a Democrat, announced Sunday that the state would provide $ 54 million to nearly 100,000 people who want to lose unemployment benefits.

Despite harsh criticism of Mr Trump, two elected progressive officials joined the president’s call for greater direct payments. In State of the Union, New York Democrat Jamaal Bowman claimed that after his defeat in November the president “is taking an attitude to make himself and bring himself back as a hero of the American people”. But like Mr. Trump he said, Americans needed more relief.

“It has to be at least $ 2,000, so he has to speak to his Republican friends and say, ‘Give the people the money,” said Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri, who also called the $ 600 figure “a slap in the face.” “denoted people who suffer.”

Democrats, who have long been campaigning to increase financial relief spread across the country, plan to hold a vote on Monday to approve a standalone bill that will increase payments to $ 2,000. It’s unclear whether this legislation will stand a chance in the Senate, where Republicans have long been opposed to spending more than $ 1 trillion on pandemic aid.

Pennsylvania Republican Senator Patrick J. Toomey said he would oppose such a move and urged the president to sign the bill, adding that “time is running out”.

“I understand that he wants to be remembered for campaigning for big checks,” Toomey said on Fox News Sunday. “But the danger is that if he allows this to happen, he will be remembered for chaos, misery and erratic behavior.”

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Politics

Variety of Executions in U.S. Falls Regardless of Push by Trump Administration

Number of Executions in U.S. Falls Despite Push by Trump Administration

WASHINGTON – Partly because of the impact of the pandemic on the criminal justice system, the number of executions in the United States this year has fallen to its lowest level since 1991 despite the Trump administration reviving the federal death penalty. This emerges from a study published on Wednesday.

The report from the Information Center on the Death Penalty said seven prisoners were executed by states, the lowest number since 1983. The center led the decrease in executions as well as a decrease in new death sentences due to court closings and public health concerns related to the prison back coronavirus, but also cited a long-term trend away from the death penalty in much of the country.

In contrast, the federal government executed 10 prisoners, the highest number of federal civilian executions in a single calendar year in the 20th or 21st century. The surge – the first time the federal government has executed more civilian prisoners than all states combined – was the result of a decision by the Trump administration to end an informal 17-year moratorium on the death penalty for federal crimes.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has announced that he will work to end the federal death penalty. However, the Justice Department has planned three more executions in the first half of January before he takes office.

Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which is not categorically opposed to the death penalty but has been critical of its use, said states and the federal government were exposed to the same virus even though the annual numbers were skewed by the pandemic but reacted very much differently.

“At the time when almost every state was prioritizing the safety of its citizens over the execution of prisoners, the federal government decided that it was more important to carry out a rash of executions without full judicial review of these cases in the circumstances and public health endangered, ”he said.

Attorney General William P. Barr announced in July 2019 that the government would execute five men in the coming months, which the courts foiled shortly before the executions began. The Supreme Court then cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume the death penalty in June and allowed any execution.

In her senior year, the government has also allowed additional available execution options such as firing squads or electrocution. The 17-year federal death penalty hiatus was largely due to legal challenges and the unavailability of lethal injections, said Charles Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. He said the government had simply continued the constitutionally approved tradition of the federal death penalty.

“Ultimately, if we are to uphold the rule of law, you have to make the rule of law work,” said Stimson.

This year, the total number of executions by both states and the federal government fell from 22 in the previous year to 17, according to the report.

Updated

Apr. 16, 2020, 7:32 am ET

The coronavirus has spread to correctional facilities across the country, making the death penalty difficult and killing some death row inmates before states can kill them. The Texas courts have stopped or delayed eight executions, and four more have been delayed in Tennessee by court order or by the governor, the report said. Of the 62 execution dates set for that year, only 17 were carried out.

In contrast to the federal states, the federal government has largely adhered to its schedule despite the dangers of the pandemic.

Two lawyers for Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row scheduled to be executed, contracted the coronavirus after visiting her client. A judicial statement by a Bureau of Prisons official found that eight members of the team that carried out a federal execution in November at the Terre Haute, Indiana prison complex, where hundreds of cases have been reported, later tested positive for the virus.

Coronavirus forced states to temporarily close their courts, a major factor that resulted in the fewest new death sentences passed in a year since the Supreme Court repealed existing death penalty laws in 1972.

According to a Gallup poll, support for the death penalty in murder cases has been around 55 percent since 2017.

Robert Blecker, professor emeritus at New York Law School, said poll support for the death penalty depends largely on how the question is phrased. Support will rise when the question identifies the circumstances and “atrocities associated with the murder,” he said.

Colorado became the 22nd state to abolish the death penalty this year, and 12 others have not carried out executions in at least a decade, according to the center’s report.

In addition, voters in at least nine major counties elected new prosecutors who had pledged to abandon the death penalty or use it sparingly. These districts make up 12 percent of the current death row population, the report said.

Most likely, the number of executions and death sentences will rise in 2021 and 2022 as the pandemic subsides, said Dunham, the report’s lead author. But those who are to die under the Trump administration will most likely be the final federal executions, at least while Mr Biden is in office.

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Trump indicators funding invoice amid Covid reduction push

Trump signs funding bill amid Covid relief push

President Donald Trump signed a week-long government funding extension Friday as Congress rushed to secure coronavirus spending and relief.

The Senate passed the measure in a vote earlier in the day, and the House approved it this week. Funding would have expired on Saturday if Washington hadn’t passed a spending plan.

The law will fund the government until December 18th. Congressional leaders hope to have both a year-round funding package and pandemic aid approved by then. You have tried to reach an agreement on both fronts.

The appropriators have agreed on a $ 1.4 trillion price for the legislation to keep the government running through September 30, 2021. However, they have not agreed on exactly where the money should go.

Despite the most frantic effort in months to develop a coronavirus bailout, Congress must resolve several major disputes to reach an agreement. Millions of Americans await help as an uncontrolled outbreak ravages communities across the country, creating hunger that has not been seen for years.

If the legislature cannot pass relief laws in the coming days, around 12 million people will lose unemployment benefits the day after Christmas. An eviction moratorium and provisions for family leave introduced at the beginning of this year will also expire at the end of December.

Two senators, the independent Vermont-based Bernie Sanders and the Missouri Republican Josh Hawley, threatened to block the spending measure when they urged Congress to send more aid to Americans. Legislators wanted to vote on a proposal to send another direct payment of up to $ 1,200 for individuals and $ 500 per child.

Sanders said he decided not to object to government funding on Friday but would do so next week if Congress didn’t seek more relief.

“We are more hungry in America today than ever before in the modern history of this country,” said the senator when pressing for direct payments.

For months, Congress failed to provide more aid to Americans, despite ongoing health and economic crises. A GOP-backed proposal to give businesses immunity from coronavirus-related lawsuits and a plan to send more aid to state and local governments backed by Democrats and many Republicans remain the biggest sticking points in reaching a settlement .

Democrats have also criticized the fact that the recent $ 916 billion aid offer from the White House, blessed by GOP congressional leaders, does not include additional federal unemployment insurance funds. It has a direct payment of $ 600, half the total of the March stimulus checks approved by Congress.

Democrats have put their weight behind a $ 908 billion package put together by a non-partisan group. The measure would include unemployment benefit of $ 300 per week but no direct payments.

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