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If you've been on Twitter lately, there's a good chance you've seen one of the scathing ads the Lincoln Project has launched against President Donald Trump. Some have been seen millions of times.

The people behind those staunchly anti-Trump ads? They're in his own party.

The Lincoln Project is made up of anti-Trump Republicans like co-founder Jennifer Horn, the former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party.

"When voters come and see our ads and see our website and listen to our message, they are reminded of just how dangerous this president is," Horn said ahead of Trump's rally in New Hampshire this week, which was eventually postponed. "We are using his own words and his own actions and highlighting them for the American people."

Those ads are sent out to the political action committee's 1 million Twitter followers -- gained since December, when the group was established -- and are meant to get under the president's skin. The Lincoln Project goes after Trump's record in office, saying he's failed to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and reports that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American troops, but also his ego.

New reports say President Donald Trump was briefed months ago about intelligence that Russia offered money to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. soldiers.

For example, in an ad about his Tulsa rally, which brought out far fewer attendees than the Trump campaign expected, the Lincoln Project called the turnout "sad, weak, low-energy -- just like your presidency. Just like you."

The Trump campaign fired back at the Lincoln Project in a statement to NBC News this week that said "Every shred of evidence proves that Republicans enthusiastically support President Trump, so any efforts by disgruntled former Republicans are doomed to fail."

The group has no intention of stopping.

"Every minute that the president spends defending himself against something that we've said, the 25 minutes that he spends at a rally in Oklahoma proving that he really can drink a class of water, that's 25 minutes that he's not spending spewing lies to his supporters," Horn said.

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Meet a NH Republican Behind a Series of Scathing Anti-Trump Ads - NBC10 Boston

Last month, we asked our readers what issues they wanted to hear the candidates running for office address ahead of this summers primary elections. Based on the input we received, we developed a five-item questionnaire for Republican candidates running for the United States Senate seat.

Well be publishing the candidates responses to one item per day each day this week. Today were publishing the candidates responses item three:

Are you satisfied with the federal governments response to the COVID-19 pandemic? Why or why not?

When we are faced with unprecedented times, as we have been with the COVID-19 pandemic, there will always be criticism on how we respond. Overall I am happy with the Trump administrations response and commend President Trump on closing the borders early to stop the spread. I am disappointed with Democrats in Congress who are using the covid outbreak to push their socialist agenda.

President Trump was exactly right when he shut down travel from China and then from Europe to the United States. In times of pandemic, borders matter. If you cant control who gets into our country, you cant protect our country.

His administration was also correct in issuing federal guidelines for dealing with the pandemic, because a onesize-fits-all approach doesnt work for a country as large and diverse as the United States. The COVID response in Manhattan, New York, for example, should be much different than the response in Manhattan, Kansas.

There are, however, still important lessons to be learned from the pandemic. First, we cant protect the country by shutting the front door if the back door is wide open. A secure border is essential in our defense against not only crime and terrorism, but also pandemics. We need to build the wall.

Second, this crisis has illustrated how dependent we are on China for essential pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics. That has to change. Yesterday. We must immediately act to bring those supply chains back to America.

I was the first member of congress to talk about the COVID-19 Pandemic way back in January. My experience as a physician made it clear that China was lying, and this virus was a serious threat. I sounded the alarm early. President Trump made the right decision when he closed our borders from the Chinese, while Nancy Pelosi scheduled a vote to repeal this travel ban and jeopardize millions of American lives. Ultimately, President Trumps swift actions saved lives.

Since the beginning of this pandemic Ive been working to protect your familys health. I have successfully secured thousands of tests for the state of Kansas with President Trumps assistance. Every call Ive made to the White House has been answered, and my requests have been granted.

Im pleased with the federal governments immediate action to save our economy from collapse, including the $1200 stimulus checks, and the Paycheck Protection Program. These policies have helped everyday Americans, and allowed small businesses to remain open. Im so proud of our local hospitals and their incredible doctors and nurses. They have been at the forefront of this virus providing quality care to patients by utilizing the lifesaving treatments weve helped accelerate.

I have a mixed level of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the governments response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Regarding the economy: let me give credit where credit is dueconsider the differences between this stimulus and those of the Global Financial Crisis. Almost all of the aid for the GFC went to bail out banks and corporations while average Americans suffered and faced foreclosures and joblessness. This stimulus has had considerably more money and attention given to average working class folks and small businesses. This is a testament to the widespread fury and activism by the populace in response to the handling of the GFC. That said, the stimulus was insufficient and the partisan fighting over it makes me pessimistic about what a second round of stimulus will look like.

Overall our government has not done enough. We should have used our crisis plan (which was ignored). This crisis showed from the start the weaknesses of our healthcare system that does not encourage people to use services and stay healthy- from the start everything should have been covered. We should have mobilized much more quickly to provide testing, better economic stimulus so that people didnt feel they had to choose between survival and health/safety, rationing and price fixing of essentials to make sure there was enough to go around. Honestly, the results speak for themselves in terms of containment and treatment- we are far and away the worst country for cases of COVID and for quickly and efficiently dealing with the problem. The only countries that could rival us are in extreme poverty with crowded living spaces and nowhere near the healthcare infrastructure. We could have done much better on almost every front.

The crisis has highlighted how deep the economic challenges most Americans face are that they see the only option is to let the pandemic terrorize their communities without precautions. It highlights the deep partisanship where even in the wake of a global pandemic we have no shared narrative or sense of shared purpose. Conspiracy theories and misinformation abound, and every aspect of the pandemic is politicized. It shows how our politicians are more concerned with gaining power and being rulers than public servants.

We cant change how we have dealt with the crisis up to this point, but I hope we can learn from it.

Did not respond.

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Tomorrow well publish the candidates responses to item four:

In response to the national protests following the killing of George Floyd, President Trump has signed an executive order addressing police reforms. The order calls for improved credentialing of police departments, better tracking of complaints about officers who use excessive force, and better services to address issues like homelessness, mental health and drug addiction. Will this adequately address concerns about police brutality? If not, what other steps should be taken?

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Republican US Senate candidates on the issues: The federal government's response to COVID-19 - Shawnee Mission Post

Rick Wilson has worked to elect Republicans for 30 years, but he will no longer use those skills to serve the party I once loved. That party is gone.

He has not become a Democrat, but Wilson is adamantly anti-Trump. His book, Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump and Democrats from Themselves, is a rant against President Donald Trump as the worst president in history. The explosion of Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the United States this past month and the surging popularity of Wilsons Lincoln Project PAC indicates that he is not alone in frustration with the countrys direction.

Wilsons message is serious, but his delivery is hilarious, with over-the-top snarky comments and profanity. Its a fun book to read, but the bottom line is that the Democrats must stop Trump from winning a second term. Wilson sees Congress as unable to respond other than sending Trump a strongly worded letter.

Wilsons example of Trumps corruption is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocking bipartisan efforts to stop Russian election interference in the 2020 election. It occurred right after a Russian oligarch announced that he would build a new aluminum plant in Kentucky, where McConnell is unpopular and faces a close reelection.

According to Wilson, Democrats must not focus on the national vote. Instead they must remember to run 15 disciplined state campaigns; it is absolutely necessary to win in the targeted swing states. Their messaging and strategies cannot rely on miracles. Nor should they waste energy releasing anger, even though [Trump] deserves it.

He advises that Democrats must stop insisting on picking candidates based on what policies they love, versus what wins, and to him, that means Do not scare the [crap] out of the Republican squish voters, as in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona. They cannot afford to choose a candidatewho strokes their ideological happy place.

Wilson drapes his strategy with a string of poll findings. A January 2019 Pew survey asked Democrats if they wanted their party to become more moderate or more liberal. While 40% wanted a more liberal approach, 53% said they wanted a more moderate approach. Data shows socialism may not frighten the populace like communism did in the 1950s, but in the swing Electoral College states for 2020, it could stop the Democrats from attracting the key voters that flipped the House from Republican to Democrat control. For instance, according to a February 2019 Public Opinion Strategies poll, 54% of the voters in 11 of those swing states oppose socialism, as did 57% of suburban women and 56% of independents.

From his prior experience leading Republican campaigns, Wilson believes Trumps advisers want to make this election about a core package of issues, NOT a referendum on Trumps personality, leadership and accomplishments.Consequently, if Democrats run on detailed policies, they will be appealing to the brain and will lose; instead, Wilson argues, they need to appeal to the heart by focusing on Trumps faults.

In brief, Wilson is saying Trump is a flawed president, but a clever one who has brilliantly exploitedthe grievance culture of everyone is coming to get you. They are the immigrants, Black Lives Matter, antifa, Muslims, women.

Running Against the Devil, with dry, cutting humor on every page, will probably not persuade many Republicans to vote against Trump. And Wilsons advice to the Democrats runs directly counter to the progressive drift of the party, which often pushes a progressive agenda to the front lines, no matter what surveys say about its effectiveness in getting votes.

Wilson may convince Democrats that Bidens victory is not about a popular vote. Hillary Clinton got that and still lost. Trump made the election about her, not her policies. Wilson knows how that was done, and he is doing it now to Trump. He has co-founded the Lincoln Project with other well-known Republicans to produce and run attack ads against the president. By provoking anxiety and fear about Trump, they hope to persuade enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states to abandon him and perhaps even vote for Biden.

Whether Wilsons predictions and advice hold water remains to be seen. But as November approaches, Running Against the Devil is a fitting primer for the true start of the race.

_____

Running Against the Devil by Rick Wilson, Crown Forum, 352 pp., $28

Nick Licata served on the Seattle City Council for 18 years until his retirement in December 2015.

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Longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson lays out his road map for the 2020 election in Running Against the Devil - Seattle Times

He grew up in an area that was dominated by Democratic politics and yet still had many of the socioeconomic issues that you see in other urban centers, Mr. Andrews said. Hes said, I asked myself why does this exist, and if what weve been doing isnt working, then why not try something different?

Starting with Mr. Watts and later working for Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the future vice president, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Mr. Smith made a name for himself on Capitol Hill for his ambition, his drive and his willingness to work with Democrats, according to over a dozen friends, colleagues and White House officials who spoke for this article. He was offered a job in the Trump White House as an urban affairs policy adviser in 2017.

A lot of people didnt want to subject themselves to the criticism and the scrutiny, said Darrell Scott, a minister and informal Trump adviser, recalling the backlash that he and other Black people, including the musician Kanye West, have received for expressing interest in working with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Smith was not deterred.

Until recently, Mr. Smith largely flew under the radar, while Omarosa Manigault-Newman, a White House aide, and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, became known as the most prominent Black officials in the overwhelmingly white upper reaches of the Trump administration.

Ms. Manigault-Newman left the White House after less than a year and wrote a tell-all book calling the president a racist. Mr. Carson has maintained a relatively low profile, though nothing compared to Mr. Smith.

In a 2018 television appearance, Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the president, did not appear to know Mr. Smiths last name when asked to list high-ranking Black administration officials. We have JaRon, she said.

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JaRon Smiths Balancing Act: A Black Republican Navigates the Trump White House - The New York Times

Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa was a titanic failure. He promised to bring thunder and lightning to the BOK Center in Tulsa but instead there was only abrief trickle of rain.

Apparently, TikTok users, largely teenagers, successfully trolled the Trump campaignby reserving hundreds of thousands of tickets for the Tulsa rally online, leading Trump and his campaign manager to brag about the enormous crowd they expected.

In reality, only 6,200 of the most diehard Trump followers would be in the audience for their Great Leader's disjointed airing of grievances, racism, threats of violence, bloviating ignoranceand narcissistic self-pity.

Trump and his campaign organizers were (and remain) shocked and enraged that their boasts about close to a million attendees resulted from an activist prank at their expense.

Trump looking disheveled, enraged, shrunkenand sad arrived back in Washington later that Saturday evening. As he walked across the tarmac, the president appeared to bea broken and defeated man.

If the rumors are to be believed, Trump's White House and campaign are now in disarray after the debacle in Tulsa.

That failedrally reflects bigger problems for Trump, who now trails Joe Biden by double digits in mostpolls, and also trails in battleground states likely to decide the election, includingFlorida, Michigan and Wisconsin. He is losing support among key groups such as suburban whitewomen, evangelicalsand older voters.

Evan Siegfried of NBC News summarizes this:

Reliable Republican voters likesuburban womenandsenior citizenshave been increasingly drifting toward Democratic candidates in both polls and elections since Trump took office, not because Democrats have been winning them over, but because Trump and Republicans have been losing them. And a recent Fox News poll showing Biden with a10-point leadover Trump among voters 65 and older only confirms thegrowing problemfor him.

The economy teeters on the edge of a second Great Depression. Trump's willful and malevolent failure torespond to the coronavirus pandemic is revealed to be something even worse: Trump has now repeatedly admitted that he urged a reduction in virus testing in an effort to hide the true number of casesand improvehis re-election chances.

At present, the mainstream news media's dominant narrative is thatTrump is in "retreat", "disarray," "failing," and "losing." Pundits have largely concluded that his re-election in November is increasingly unlikely.

Liberal schadenfreude feels good, especially for those Americans who have been under siege and made miserable from the many calamities inflictedby Donald Trump and his regime.

But liberal schadenfreude even in combination with Trump's own self-inflicted wounds will not by itself win the 2020 election. To accomplish that will require hard questions, uncomfortable truthsand lots of hard work by the Democratic Party and its voters.

It is true that only 6,000 or so people attended Trump's Tulsa rally. But there shouldhave been no one there to celebratea president with obvious fascist leanings, a global embarrassment whose decisions have brought ruin to the American economy and killed more than 120,000 people.

The race remains too close for comfort. In some polls, Trump trails Biden by as few as seven points. They appear to be tied in Ohio, and Biden's edge is within the margin of errorin Pennsylvania and Arizona.

FiveThirtyEight shows in its "poll of polls" that as of June 23, Biden leads Trump by approximately ninepoints, 51to 41.7 percent.

Consider the context: For the four years of his presidency so far, Gallup reports that Donald Trump has an average presidential approval rating of 40 percent. He continues to command the highest built-in level of support of any president in the history of modern public-opinion polling.

Consider these warnings from the recent past: although their situations are distinct from one another and from the present both 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton appeared to holddouble-digit leads over their Republican opponents in the summer. Both went on to lose in November.

Exceptfor his white supremacist counterrevolution against America's multiracial democracy, Trump has fulfilled few of the promises he made to hisfabled"white working class" voters. Again, by conventionalrubrics Trump should be much less popular than he currently is.

Ultimately, the four months between nowand Nov. 3are an eternity in politics. Many things are likely to occur,to Trump's advantage and Biden's disadvantage.

In resisting premature pronouncements that Trumpism hasbeen vanquished, there are importantvariables to consider.

The United States is a failing democracy, struggling to resist the gravity of Trump and his movement's authoritarian assault on the country's political norms, institutionsand values. Thatis a cruciallens for viewing andunderstanding the Age of Trump and the 2020 Election.

On Twitter, conservative pundit Bill Kristol, a "Never Trumper,"summarized theperil:

You look at the polls and think "he can't win." But Trump's path to victory doesn't depend on persuading Americans. It depends on voter suppression, mass disinformation, foreign interference, and unabashed use of executive branch power to shape events, and perceptions, this fall.

Any analysis of the 2020 presidential election that fails toproceed from these basic assumptions is fundamentally flawed.

Social scientists have shown that Donald Trump's supporters and other authoritarian conservatives are especially vulnerable to manipulation by death anxieties. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, such fears will likely make Donald Trump more attractive, not less, to his supporters.

Donald Trump is viewed as a type of god ordivine figure by manyright-wing Christian nationalists and evangelicals. Hemeets all the criteria of being a political cult leader.

Social science research has shown that people who manifest what is known as the "dark triad" of behavior Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism are also more likely to support fascistand authoritarian leaders.

White supremacy and racial authoritarianism are also key variables (if not the most important ones) that helpexplain the enduring power of Trump's movement. Such sentiments and beliefs, and their influence on political decision-making, are not easily dispelled or broken.

Trump also commands a vast news media disinformation and propaganda machine which he uses to manipulate and control his followers,and to shape the contours of American public discourse more broadly. The power of such an apparatus is not to be underestimated.

Contrary to much of the conventional wisdom at this point,Trump is certain to draw on a large reservoir of support on Election Day.

Instead of being seduced by the happy pills of liberal schadenfreude and those who peddle such intoxicants, what shoulddecent Americans do to ensure that Trump is defeated?

Confirm ahead that you are registered. Show up to vote. Make sure that relatives, friendsand neighbors are also voting against Trump and the Republicans. Use a combination of positive social pressure andsocial stigma to influence fence-sitters in your social circle. Only an overwhelming defeat at the polls not a narrow or disputable outcome in the Electoral College can prevent Trump and his minions from declaring the election result to be fraudulent.

Participate in local organizations which are working to create positive social change. Social democracy must be nurtured from the ground up as both a bulwark and prophylactic against the poison of Trumpism and other forms of fake right-wing populism.

Resist purity tests from those voices who demand a perfect candidate. Such standards are a gross luxury in a time of crisis. Joe Biden will be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. Whatever his flaws and there are many Biden is now the last and therefore bestoption to remove Donald Trump from office.

Do not succumb to the undertow and churn of the 24/7 cable news cycle. Its relentless focus on the outrage of the day is an exhausting distraction from the long-term crisis and existential threat to democracy represented by Trump, his partyand their followers and allies.

Internalize the warnings of Noam Chomsky (among others), who has said: "Trump is the worst criminal in history, undeniably. There has never been a figure in political history who was so passionately dedicated to destroying the projects for organized human life on Earth in the near future. That is not an exaggeration."

In the end, the choice on Election Day is between America and Donald Trump. Nothing more. Nothing less. The American people must vote as if their lives depend on it because they do.

Yes, Trump can certainly be defeated. Butdeclaringvictory too early is a pathway to inevitable defeat, and aguarantee that Donald Trump will remain president for at least another four years, bringing America into one ofits most perilous times.

Read more from the original source:
After Tulsa: Liberal schadenfreude may feel good, but it won't win the November election - Salon