The US President has publicly talked about the need to keep his hair “perfect". (Source: Reuters/File)President Donald Trump’s elder sister, a former federal judge, is heard sharply criticising her brother in a series of recordings released Saturday, at one point saying of the president, “He has no principles.” Maryanne Trump Barry was secretly recorded by her niece, Mary Trump, who recently released a book denouncing the president, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” Mary Trump said Saturday she made the recordings in 2018 and 2019.
After the Democratic National Convention last week, it’s now the Repulbic Party’s turn to dazzle their supporters. And they have help from two producers of “The Apprentice,” where Trump rose to TV stardom, are involved in the planning. Sadoux Kim, a longtime deputy to “Apprentice” creator Mark Burnett, is a lead consultant on the production. Kim once served as a Miss Universe judge when Trump owned the pageant. Chuck LaBella, a former NBC entertainment executive who helped produce “The Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump,” is also on the payroll.
Party officials say their convention — during which Trump is expected to speak every night in the 10 p.m. hour — will ultimately surpass the Democrats’ telethon-like show, which the president and his allies have repeatedly called “dark,” depressing and thin on policy proposals. “We’re going to have more of it live than what they did,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday. “I think it’s pretty boring when you do tapes.”
Joe Biden and Donald Trump
President Donald Trump’s older sister, a former federal judge, is heard sharply criticizing her brother in a series of recordings released Saturday, at one point saying of the president, “He has no principles.” Maryanne Trump Barry was secretly recorded by her niece, Mary Trump, who recently released a book denouncing the president, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” Mary Trump said Saturday she made the recordings in 2018 and 2019.
In one recording, Barry, 83, says she had heard a 2018 interview with her brother on Fox News in which he suggested that he would put her on the border to oversee cases of immigrant children separated from their parents. “His base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this,” Barry says.
At another point she says: “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God.” She adds: “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.” Barry can also be heard saying that she guesses that her brother has never read her opinions on immigration cases.
“What has he read?” Mary Trump asks her aunt.
Barry responds: “No. He doesn’t read.”
Aiming to woo the influential Indian-American voters numbering over 2 million, the Trump campaign has released its first video commercial that has short clips from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speeches and US President Donald Trump's historic address in Ahmedabad. Modi and Trump addressed a huge crowd in Ahmedabad during the US president's visit to India in February this year. Trump was also accompanied by his wife Melania, daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jared Kushner and top brass of his administration on his trip to India.
'America enjoys a great relationship with India and our campaign enjoys great support from Indian-Americans!' Kimberly Guilfoyle, national chair of Trump Victory Finance Committee said in a tweet releasing the video commercial. The president's son Donald Trump Jr, who is leading the campaign and is well connected with the Indian-American community, also retweeted it as the commercial soon became viral on social media with over 66,000 views on Twitter in the first few hours. Titled 'Four More Years' the 107-second video starts with the iconic footage of Modi and Trump walking hand in hand at the NRG Stadium in Houston during the prime minister's visit to the US last year wherein the leaders of the world's two largest democracies made a joint address before a strong crowd of Indian-Americans numbering more than 50,000. Amidst cheering of thousands of his supporters in the US, Modi is seen as saying that Trump 'needs no introduction' and that 'his name comes up in almost every conversation.'
He is the president of the United States of America 'Mr Donald Trump', the prime minister says at the start of the video, that has been conceptualised by Al Mason, co-chair of the Trump Victory Indian American Finance Committee. Modi is highly popular among Indian-Americans. His star appeal has attracted record crowds. His address at the Madison Square Garden in 2015 and then in the Silicon Valley two years later, both attracting more than 20,000 people, making the prime minister perhaps the only foreign leader in recent memory to have addressed such huge rallies in the US.
Democrats set a high bar last week for the pandemic-era political convention, dispensing with cheering crowds in favor of a virtual pageant that encompassed passionate speeches, a charming cross-country roll call vote, vignettes from an Oscar-winning filmmaker and a low-fi fireworks display above a parking lot. A few hiccups aside, even jaded network executives conceded the party mostly pulled it off.
Now it’s the Republicans’ turn in the prime-time spotlight — and the party led by a former reality TV star is rushing to measure up.
Republicans will aim to recast the story of Donald Trump's presidency when they hold their national convention, featuring speakers drawn from everyday life as well as cable news and the White House while drawing a stark contrast with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Trump is looking to shift his campaign away from being a referendum on a presidency ravaged by a pandemic and economic collapse and toward a choice between vastly different visions of America's future. Reshaping the national conversation around the race has taken on greater urgency for Trump, who trails in public and private surveys as the coronavirus continues to ravage the nation's economy and his reelection chances.
A California court ordered President Donald Trump this week to pay USD 44,100 in attorney fees to porn actress Stormy Daniels to pay for her legal battle over her effort to cancel a hush money deal brokered to keep her quiet about their sexual relationship a decade ago. The order in Superior Court in Los Angeles determined Daniels won her lawsuit against Trump over the agreement that was signed 11 days before the 2016 presidential election. As a part of that deal, the losing party would pay the lawyers fees.
The House is meeting for a rare Saturday session over mail delivery disruptions, poised to approve legislation that would reverse recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations and send USD 25 billion in emergency funds to shore up the agency ahead of the November election. "Don't pay any attention to what the president is saying, because it is all designed to suppress the vote," Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday accused members of the "deep state" at the Food and Drug Administration, without providing evidence, of working to slow testing of COVID-19 vaccines until after the November presidential election.
In a Twitter post, Trump said the deep state "or whoever" at the FDA was making it very difficult for drug companies to enroll people in clinical trials to test vaccines and therapies for the novel coronavirus.
The comment came after Reuters exclusively reported on Thursday that a top FDA official said he would resign if the Trump administration approved a vaccine before it was shown to be safe and effective.
"Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!" Trump wrote, tagging FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn in the tweet.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was a "dangerous statement" and that the president was "beyond the pale" for accusing the FDA of playing politics. (Reuters)
Congressional Republicans in tight reelections are in a precarious position over the embattled Postal Service as its bosses impose cost-cutting measures on one of the government's few beloved agencies. And as often happens, President Donald Trump has made the political fallout for Republicans ever more ticklish.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor, insists he's trying to economize at an agency that's long bled billions annually. Meanwhile, Trump has railed almost daily about the Postal Service, which he considers wasteful, and has threatened to oppose extra money to help it handle expected record levels of mail-in ballots this fall, driven by the coronavirus pandemic. He on Friday told a Senate committee that the Postal Service is committed to delivering election mail "securely and on-time", but he said he has no plans to restore mailboxes or reverse other agency cuts made since he took over in June.
Fed by Trump's unfounded insistence that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud, Democrats and other critics say he's trying to undermine this fall's presidential and congressional elections by preventing the Postal Service from delivering ballots in time to be counted.
Republicans say Democrats are exaggerating long-running Postal Service problems to rev up their own voters. Illustrating the political advantage they perceive, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a fundraising letter Friday that she's "disgusted right alongside you watching President Trump and his Republicans undermine and sabotage our Post Office". (AP)
Bantering during the final night of the Democratic National Convention, actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang repeatedly got the name of “our current vice president” wrong.
Was it “Mika Pints?” or “Paints?” Or maybe “Ponce,” Yang suggested. “Oh, some kind of weird foreign name?” Louis-Dreyfus asked. “Yeah, not very American sounding,” Yang replied.
It was a quick bit of satire with a pointed message from Democrats: When top Republicans – including President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence – mispronounce Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ first name, it’s not just disrespectful, it’s racist.
President Donald Trump spent the week of the Democratic National Convention forsaking what has historically been an incumbent's greatest advantage: He's in the job his challenger wants.
Traditionally, an incumbent would devote the week of his rival's convention to bolstering his own credentials as a leader. But rather than focusing on his command of the job or using its power, Trump hit the campaign trail, where he flouted his own administration's pandemic safety guidance and expressed gratitude for support from adherents to an extremist conspiracy theory, QAnon.
It was a consequence of Trump's unwillingness to share the limelight, but also a necessary attempt to shift the November campaign from a referendum on his job performance to a choice between himself and Joe Biden. Ten weeks out from Election Day, as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged Trump's reelection chances, aides have recognized that a vote on his presidency is not one he is likely to win. (AP)