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DNC targets Trump campaign rally with ‘convicted white-collar crook’ billboard
Democrats call Trump ‘unfit to serve’ on the advertisement in Las Vegas, where he’s due to speak on Sunday

David Smith in Washington
Sat 8 Jun 2024 12.00 CEST

Democrats will target Donald Trump’s first full-scale campaign rally since his criminal trial with a billboard that brands him “a convicted white-collar crook”.

The ad, paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is the latest indication that the party is ready to become more aggressive in capitalising on last month’s guilty verdict in New York.

“Trump was a disaster for Nevada’s economy,” says the billboard, which will be displayed in Las Vegas, where Trump is due to speak on Sunday. “Now he’s back. A convicted white-collar crook. Coddling billionaires, leaving workers behind.”

A Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush-money criminal trial, making him the the first former US president to be convicted of a felony. Judge Juan Merchan set a sentencing hearing for 11 July.

But Democrats have been unsure how far to go in hammering home the verdict to voters in this year’s presidential election campaign. Some fear it could fuel a narrative that the trial was politically motivated and backfire by generating sympathy for the presumptive Republican nominee.

A billboard ad paid for by the DNC is targeting Trump in the aftermath of his guilty verdict on 34 felony counts. Photograph: DNC
However, this week there have been signs of a more direct approach. On Monday, at a campaign reception in Greenwich, Connecticut, Joe Biden referred to his opponent as a “convicted felon”.

The Las Vegas billboard attempts to tie Trump’s criminal record to his economic one, portraying him as a “white-collar crook” who ripped off Nevada’s working class when he was president. The phrase also has echoes of the “Crooked Hillary” label that proved effective for Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Stephanie Justice, a DNC spokesperson, said: “As Donald Trump returns to Nevada this weekend for the first time as a convicted felon, voters will remember this crook left Nevada’s workers out to dry as president.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art ... lboard-dnc

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 07, 2024 3:54 pm Palin: a female and Alaska

Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski wrote: Convicted felon Trump, who will promise anything to anyone right now to stay out of prison, tells the Las Vegas rally crowd that he will make all income from tips tax free.

Republican Voters Against Trump @AccountableGOP wrote: Trump pushes the absurd lie that under Biden, "100% of the new jobs have gone to illegal aliens."

raison de arizona wrote: ↑Sun Jun 09, 2024 7:43 pm

Republican Voters Against Trump @AccountableGOP wrote: Trump pushes the absurd lie that under Biden, "100% of the new jobs have gone to illegal aliens."

Ben Meiselas @meiselasb wrote: Here is a short summary of Donald Trump’s June 9 speech in Las Vegas:

1. Tells crowd “I don't care about you. I just want your vote. I don't care.”

2. Tells contractors who set up mic and teleprompter they did a “shitty job” and he “won’t pay them.”

3. Tells audience to choose “suicide over Biden.”

4. Complains about teleprompter again.

5. Asks “Do I get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark?”

6. Claims he "aced" a dementia test twice: “Not easy to ace!”

7. Says “There has never been people treated more horrifically than J6 hostages.”

8. Calls prosecutor a “dumb son of a bitch.”

9. Complains media is too focused on health of crowd in heat when they should “care about Trump.”

10. Glitches multiple times.

11. Speech ends. Trump whisked away on private jet paid for by donors.

We have all the receipts here https://youtu.be/A27GiTMmXjE?si=n9sBrvKBIHQtAnSH

Donald Trump on Sunday called for President Joe Biden to take down an attack ad featuring a series of quotes attributed to the Republican in which he mocks dead soldiers.

The former president’s demand came on the same day that Biden honored fallen troops in a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France, the burial ground that Trump chose not to visit in 2018 and was later reported to have done so while describing the site as “filled with losers.” Trump has denied making the remark—and another in which he allegedly called more than 1,800 Marines “suckers” for being killed—ever since The Atlantic first published his purported words in 2020.

Those denials continued Sunday, first at a rally in Las Vegas. “He said I stood over graves of soldiers and I said: ‘These people are suckers and losers, the dead soldiers from World War I,’’ Trump said, referring to Biden. He went on to claim the whole episode was “made up” and, despite the Biden campaign knowing it’s “phony,” they still “took an ad using it—these are sick people.”

Trump appeared to be referring to an attack ad launched by the Biden campaign on Friday during the president’s visit to Normandy for ceremonies commemorating the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. The video featured the reported “suckers” and “losers” quotes, along with audio of Trump mocking the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as being thought of as a “war hero” because he was captured during the Vietnam War. “I like people that weren’t captured,” Trump added.

“Donald Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about service to his country,” read a post on Biden’s X account featuring the clip.

John Kelly confirms Trump privately disparaged U.S. service members and veterans
Oct. 3, 2023, 9:22 AM EDT By Summer Concepcion

In a statement to CNN published Monday, Kelly delivered a scathing criticism of former President Donald Trump while confirming reporting in The Atlantic in 2020 that detailed the comments he made during his presidency.

"A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,'" Kelly said of Trump. "A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

Trump win could see mass purge of state department, US diplomats fear
Project 2025 blueprint for second Trump term envisages replacing thousands of career staff with political loyalists

Julian Borger in Washington
Thu 13 Jun 2024 12.30 CEST

America’s career diplomats are braced for the threat of a mass purge if Donald Trump wins the November election and for the potential flooding of the state department with loyalty-tested political appointees.

Rather than leading to a seamless change of course in a rightward Trumpist direction, the diplomats’ union and former ambassadors argue, such an attempted takeover would be much more likely to end in legal challenges, gridlock and chaos.

If elected, Trump has threatened to reinstate a policy he unsuccessfully attempted in his first term with the creation of “Schedule F”, a new category of federal employees which would be applied to tens of thousands of civil servants in “policy-related” jobs, robbing them of legal protections and making them liable to be fired at will.

A rightwing Washington thinktank, the Heritage Foundation, has prepared a blueprint for a second Trump term called Project 2025, fleshing out the Schedule F approach with a chapter on plans for the state department, which puts an emphasis on a clean-out of career officials suspected of not being fully committed to the president’s agenda, from the first day of a new Trump presidency, his inauguration.

“The next administration must take swift and decisive steps to reforge the department into a lean and functional diplomatic machine that serves the president and thereby the American people,” the 2025 plan declares. “No one in a leadership position on the morning of January 20 should hold that position at the end of the day.”

The plan also envisages getting around the requirements of Senate confirmation of nominees for senior positions by the president simply placing his people in state department posts in an acting capacity pending confirmation, and thereby “exert leverage on the Senate” to accelerate the confirmation process.

The author of the chapter, Kiron Skinner, ran the state department’s office of policy planning for about a year in the Trump administration. She depicted the department as a bastion of leftwing partisan resistance.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art ... 2025-purge

What is Project 2025 and what does it have to do with a second Trump term?
Conservatives have created a guide for how Trump and allies could dismantle the US government if he wins the election

Rachel Leingang
Sun 26 May 2024 14.00 CEST

Heavyweight conservatives joined together to create a roadmap for a potential second Trump presidency, and they are working to recruit and train the people who would work in an incoming conservative administration.

Project 2025 details across more than 900 pages how Trump and his allies could dismantle and disrupt the US government. It suggests ridding the federal ranks of many appointed roles and stacking agencies instead with more political appointees aligned with and more beholden to Trump’s policy prescriptions.

Led by the rightwing Heritage Foundation, the project showcases a federal government that cracks down intensely on immigration, vanquishes LGBTQ+ and abortion rights, diminishes environmental protections, overhauls financial policy and takes aggressive action against China.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 has four pillars to extend conservative influence throughout the US government, starting with a lengthy roadmap. Alongside the document, the group is creating a database of potential personnel for an incoming Trump administration, as well as training them on how the government should work as part of a “Presidential Administration Academy”. The final step will be a presidential transition playbook that seeks to help the next president hit the ground running once he takes office.



rest at link https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art ... 2025-trump

Former President Donald Trump is back in Washington for the first time since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee as well as a convicted felon, holding a pair of significant, closed-door meetings with key congressional allies, vice presidential hopefuls and even a few former outspoken opponents – all of whom are expected to line up behind him this fall.

A bitter primary and general election cycle muddied by Trump’s ongoing legal troubles have given Republicans little opportunity to sync up over the policies and proposals that generally drive an election year.

“He’ll come and lead the team,” GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a fierce Trump ally, told CNN. “I think it’s gonna be a pep rally environment for the former and future president.”

Ahead of the meeting, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn noted it would be “nice” to “get everybody singing from the same sheet of music.” Cornyn has previously criticized Trump and said he preferred to see the GOP move in a different direction, before ultimately endorsing the former president in January.

Senior campaign advisers said Trump was expected to express his campaign priorities and policies — focusing on the economy, inflation, tax cuts and immigration during his meetings, first with House Republicans at the Capitol Hill club in the morning and then with Senate Republicans at the nearby National Republican Senatorial Committee building. He’ll also reiterate his commitment to not cutting entitlement programs for seniors like Social Security and Medicare.

“We want to get everyone on the same page talking about policy, including the economy and inflation,” one senior Trump adviser told CNN. “That’s the biggest factor in all the polling, it’s the biggest thing people are worried about.”

Trump, who will be accompanied by his two top campaign officials, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, among others, is also expected to discuss details around a potential second term agenda, including how to immediately implement his policy goals, with the help of lawmakers, if reelected to the White House. Meanwhile, House Republicans have been eager for information to help them jumpstart legislative action on Capitol Hill next year.

“We want to be part of that plan to hit the ground running,” GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of California told CNN. “When most presidents get elected, they anticipate they have eight years. This president knows he has four.”

Advisers said the meetings would also be an opportunity to allow lawmakers to ask questions or bring up any pressing matters ahead of the November election, with Trump planning to open the floor to members after his remarks.