"Trump's press conference today marks a change in tone and a more disciplined and realistic approach," tweeted Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak. "It will be a good message for the public and he will benefit from it politically. Welcome news."

Um, no.

If there is anything we have learned -- or should have learned -- about Donald Trump over these past five-ish years, it's that that there is no "new" Trump, no version 2.0, no new leaf to turn over. There is just Trump. He has been this same person -- bullying, blaming, convinced of his own brilliance, willing to bend and break facts for his own purposes -- his entire adult life. He may be able to subsume those natural characteristics for a day or even a week. But they will come back out -- sooner rather than later. They always, always do.

We've been down this road before. Like, a lot of times.

Go back to the spring of 2016 when Trump was trying to convince the Republican Party that he could rein in his more base instincts (sand Twitter fingers) and be the sort of presidential nominee they had grown to expect.

"His Tuesday night victory speech at Trump Tower in New York City was brief, relatively subdued, and relatively on-message. The roughly ten-minute speech was a far, far cry from the night in March when he celebrated primary wins by hawking Trump steaks, Trump wine and threw a Trump magazine into the crowd of supporters who had gathered at his lush Mar-a-lago resort in Florida."

Trump then went on a media blitz to sell the new him.

That was more than four years ago.

And yet, when Trump delivered his first address to a bicameral session of Congress in 2017, there was still talk of a new tone.

That was more than three years ago.

"For 30 minutes on Tuesday, President Donald Trump pretended to act like something approximating a normal human in discussing the COVID-19 crisis facing our country. He read some platitudes from a script. He expressed support for basic safety precautions in the face of a contagious virus. While not eliminating them entirely he kept the wishcasting and gaslighting and hyperbolic statements about his self-proclaimed greatness to a minimum."

Yes, that.

And, even within Trump's quasi-presidential performance on Tuesday night, there was evidence that the old Trump -- aka the only Trump -- was lurking right below the surface.

Right.

You can hate that Trump. Or love him. But you cannot reasonably think that there is any other iteration of Trump that is emerging. There is not. Trump is just Trump. Always has been. Always will be.

See the rest here:

Don't be fooled: There is no 'new' Trump on coronavirus (or anything else) - CNN

Jack Spielman has been a Republican his whole life. But over the past four years, he has come to two realizations.

Increasingly upset by President Donald Trumps appalling behavior, his cozy relationships with dictators and the ballooning national debt, Spielman says his first epiphany was that he couldnt cast a ballot for Trump again. But for the retired Army cybersecurity engineer, the final straw was the Presidents retaliation against impeachment witness Lieut. Colonel Alexander Vindman, who retired in July after Trump fired him from the National Security Council in February. Spielman decided he had to do more than just vote for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden; he had to persuade others to do the same. So Spielman filmed a video for a group called Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT), explaining his views. I want to do some part, Spielman tells TIME, to try to correct the wrong that I did in voting for this man.

RVAT, which launched in May, is among a growing number of Republicanled groups dedicated to making Trump a one-term President. Since December, longtime GOP operatives and officials have formed at least five political committees designed to urge disaffected conservatives to vote for Biden. The best known of these groups, the Lincoln Project, has since forming late last year gained national attention for its slick advertisements trolling the President. Right Side PAC, led by the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party, launched in late June; a few days after that, more than 200 alumni of George W. Bushs Administration banded together to form an organization called 43 Alumni for Biden. Theres also the Bravery Project, led by former GOP Congressman and erstwhile Trump primary challenger Joe Walsh. And plans are in the works for a group of former national-security officials from Republican administrations to endorse Biden this summer.

Since 2015, pockets of the party have bemoaned Trumps Twitter antics, his divisive rhetoric and key elements of his platform, from the Muslim travel ban to his trade tariffs to his family-separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. But with the Presidents approval rating in the party consistently around 90%, and GOP lawmakers terrified to cross him, the so-called Never Trump faction has proven largely powerless, with a negligible impact on federal policy.

Now, in the final stretch of the Presidents term, the Never Trumpers could finally have their revenge. Four years ago, Trump won the Electoral College by some 77,000 votes scattered across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. If even a small slice of disillusioned Trump voters or right-leaning independents defect to Biden in November, it could be enough to kick Trump out of office. They are the constituency that can swing this election, says Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican operative and founder of RVAT.

This constituency now appears more willing to vote for Biden than they were six months ago, in no small part because of Trumps faltering response to the corona-virus, which has killed more than 140,000 Americans and ravaged the economy. Between March and June, according to a Pew Research poll, Trumps approval rating among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters dropped seven percentage points, to 78%. A June 25 New York Times/Siena College survey found that Biden has a 35-point lead over Trump among voters in battleground states who supported a third-party candidate in 2016. Any small percentage of voters who no longer support him could be critical in closely matched swing states, says Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

Its too early to gauge how effective the raft of Never Trump groups will be. Theyre dismissed by many Republicans as self-serving opportunists profiting off the polarization Trump has exacerbated. Trump also remains hugely popular among Republicans. President Trump is the leader of a united Republican Party where he has earned 94% of Republican votes during the primariessomething any former President of any party could only dream of, says campaign spokes-woman Erin Perrine.

Even if the Never Trump activists are able to help oust the President, its unclear what will become of a party thats vastly different from the one they came up in. Trump has transformed todays GOP into a cult of personality rooted in economic nationalism and racial division. And while the small anti-Trump faction wants to return to the conservative ideology that reigned for decades before Trump, many Republicans believe Trump has changed the party forever.

Sitting in front of a packed book-case, Rick Wilson looked surprised as he peered over hornrimmed spectacles at an overflowing screen: Theres 10,000 people on here, the onetime Republican operative marveled of the Zoom audience assembled for the Lincoln Projects first town hall on July 9.

The Lincoln Projects ads criticizing the Presidents performance have helped it raise nearly $20 million

Grant LancasterAM New York

Wilson formed the Lincoln Project in December, along with lawyer George Conway, the husband of Trumps senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, and veteran political strategists Steve Schmidt and John Weaver, among others. The Republican stalwarts had grown disgusted with the Presidents behavior and their partys acquiescence to it. The launch met little fanfare, but in the months since, the group has demonstrated a knack for quickly producing memorable videos and advertisements that get under Trumps skin. In early May, with the unemployment rate soaring toward 15%, the group released an ad dubbed Mourning in America, a play on the upbeat Ronald Reagan classic, which depicted the woes of sick and unemployed Americans under Trumps leadership. If we have another four years like this, the ads narrator intones as dead patients are wheeled out of hospitals on stretchers, will there even be an America? The President took notice. Their so-called Lincoln Project is a disgrace to Honest Abe! Trump tweeted. I dont know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface, but it must have been really bad.

Irritating the President is part of the point. Its not trolling if you get a fish in the line, says Reed Galen, a veteran of George W. Bushs presidential campaigns and one of the projects co-founders. We kept dropping a hook in the water, and eventually the President bit. The attention has been a boon to the groups finances. The Lincoln Project raised nearly $17 million between April 1 and June 30.

If the Lincoln Project tries to needle the President, other groups in the Never Trump ecosystem have found complementary roles. Instead of using polished editing and ominous music to make a splash online, RVAT has gathered more than 400 testimonials from disheartened Republicans like Spielman. I did only vote for Donald Trump because I couldnt believe someone who acted as goofy as he did on TV actually meant it, Monica, a self-described evangelical Christian from Texas, says in one video. Since that time, I have been riddled with guilt.

Longwell, RVATs founder, believes hearing from people like Monica will show waffling conservatives that theyre not alone in their dislike of the President, and encourage them to break away. The thing that people trusted wasnt elites, it wasnt Republican elites, it certainly wasnt the media, Longwell says of her focus-group research. But they did trust people like them. The group says it plans to showcase those voices in an eight-figure ad campaign in five swing states before Election Day.

RVAT identified recalcitrant Republicans through email lists Longwell had built at Defending Democracy Together, its parent organization. Founded in 2019, Defending Democracy Together created online petitions whose signatories often offered clues of their disillusionment with Trump. Petitions supporting Vindman and thanking Utah Senator Mitt Romney for voting to convict Trump of abuse of power during the impeachment trial proved especially fruitful in finding former Trump supporters, according to Tim Miller, RVATs political director and a veteran Republican communications strategist.

To test new video messages, Longwell held a Zoom focus group on July 15 with seven Florida voters and allowed TIME to watch. Each participant voted for Trump in 2016 but was now dissatisfied with his leadership. Several mentioned his handling of COVID-19 in the meeting, noting Floridas dramatic spike in cases. Long-well showed the group a few of RVATs testimonials. It resonates with me, one woman who works in the travel industry in Orlando said. It does make me feel less alone. But while three people on the call said theyd likely vote for Biden, two said they were unsure and two said they would still vote for Trump again. I dont think theres any hope for him, the Orlando woman said. But I dont see Biden doing a good job either.

Matt Borges of Right Side PAC recognizes that Republican voters uncertainty about Biden needs to be addressed. As the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party watched Never Trump groups roll out advertisements, he worried there was too much focus on why Trump was bad and not enough on why Biden was a good alternative. We need these people who know they are not [going to] vote for Trump but are not sold on Joe Biden to hear some messaging from fellow Republicans that says, No, its O.K. to vote for this guy,' says Borges, a lifelong Republican who disavowed Trump three years ago. In an unrelated development, Borges was arrested on July 21 for allegedly participating in a $60 million bribery scheme involving top political officials that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio decried as the biggest money-laundering effort in the states history.

In June, Borges teamed up with former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci to form Right Side PAC, which plans to spend up to $7 million targeting these voters through mailings, digital ads and phone banks. Their first focus is Michigan, where Borges commissioned a pollster to conduct research on Republican voters in swing districts. After spending more than a week in the field, the pollster delivered the results to Borges and Scaramucci on a Zoom call, which TIME observed. Support for Trump among Republican voters in Michigans Eighth Congressional District had dropped from 80% in January to 67%, the pollster said. The district had swung for Trump in 2016, then voted for a Democratic Congresswoman, Elissa Slotkin, two years later. Voters who ranked the coronavirus as their top concern were seen as more likely to break for Biden. While the group had planned to target all white Republican women over the age of 50 in Michigan, the pollster said the data suggested those over 65 were immovable in their support for Trump. These insights, Borges says, will form the basis of Right Side PACs final sale to voters on Bidens behalf.

As the presidential race heads into its final months, another group of Republicans aims to help Biden in a different way. A group of more than 70 former national-security officials from GOP administrations, led by John Bellinger, the senior National Security Council and State Department lawyer under George W. Bush, and Ken Wainstein, Bushs Homeland Security Adviser, plans to endorse Biden and publish a mission statement describing the damage they say Trump has done to Americas national security and global reputation. They will also fund-raise for the former Vice President and do media appearances in battleground states when the group launches later this summer. Some of the same people wrote an open letter denouncing Trump in 2016. But, says Wainstein, our effort this time is going to have some staying power throughout the campaign.

How much impact these groups will ultimately have on voters remains unclear. As they try to unseat an incumbent with a massive war chest, their first hurdle is money. Right Side PAC raised just over $124,000 in the first two weeks, disclosure filings show. The bulk of that haul came from one person, New York venture capitalist Peter Kellner, a long-time Republican donor who began giving to Democrats in 2018 and who has forked over the maximum amount to Bidens campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The groups prospects were also clouded by Borges July 21 arrest. Borges did not respond to requests for comment.

43 Alumni for Biden, the group of former George W. Bush officials, announced its formation on July 1, which means it doesnt have to file disclosure reports until October; had it announced a day earlier, it would have had to publicize its finances in mid-July. A member of the group declined to provide specific figures but said it had received contributions from more than 500 individuals. The Bravery Project officially launches July 23, and a representative declined to provide any fundraising figures.

Longwell tells TIME that RVAT has raised $13 million this year. As a 501(c)4, or political nonprofit, the group does not need to disclose its donors or exact figures. But the number she provides puts the group on par with the Lincoln Project, whose biggest donors are primarily prominent Democrats. While disclosure filings show that nearly half of the Lincoln Projects donations were unitemized or under $200, it raked in $1 million from billionaire hedge-fund manager Stephen Mandel and $100,000 apiece from business mogul David Geffen and Joshua Bekenstein, the co-chairman of Bain Capital.

This influx of cash has enabled the Lincoln Project to ramp up advertisements against vulnerable Republican Senators like Susan Collins of Maine, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Steve Daines of Montana. We made it very clear that this is not just about Trump but Trumpism and its enablers, says Galen. The Republican Senators we have held to account are the Presidents greatest enablers.

The strategy of going after Senators has provoked the ire of many Republicans, who say the group is prioritizing profit over party. Its purely grifting and making a name for themselves. Its not based on principle at all, says Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist who worked for Jeb Bushs and Romneys presidential campaigns. The Lincoln Project, he says, is essentially meant for raising money off the resistance and lining their own pockets.

The groups finances have also raised some eyebrows among government watchdogs. Two consulting firms, one run by Galen and another by co-founder Ron Steslow, received nearly a quarter of the $8.6 million the group spent between January and July. While other committees use similar methods, it is not at all standard, says Sheila Krumholz, executive director at the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. It raises red flags about whether the operation is taking advantage of a situation where donors are giving to what they think is supporting one effort, but there are other patterns at play.

Krumholz notes that the Lincoln Project does not publicly disclose all of the vendors who have done work for them, which suggests they are funneling money to organizations that then hire subcontractors. This method is not unheard-of, but the lack of transparency makes it difficult to discern who is ultimately profiting. The public doesnt know the extent to which Lincoln Project operatives may be profiting, or if theyre profiting at all, Krumholz says. When asked about the groups finances, Galen says, We abide by all reporting requirements laid down by the FEC. No one at the Lincoln Project is buying a Ferrari.

For now, the Never Trump Republicans say they arent looking beyond November. Were all in a grand alliance to beat a very big threat, says Miller of RVAT. Well see how the chips fall after. But regardless of the elections outcome, Miller and his cohorts face challenges ahead. They will either be failed rebels, cast out by a party taken over by its two-term President, or facing down a Biden Administration, which would bring unwelcome liberal policies and perhaps Supreme Court vacancies.

If Biden wins, Trumpism wont disappear with Trump. The Presidents rapid rise revealed the extent to which many of the ideological pillars of modern conservatismits zeal for unfettered free markets, its devotion to deficit reduction, its attachment to global alliances, its faith in a muscular foreign policywere out of step with actual Republican voters. Many of the ambitious lawmakers rising in the party, like Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, have seen in Trumps political success an example to emulate. The next generation of Republican leaders may try to replicate his policies without the self-defeating behavior.

Its led many to wonder whether traditional conservatives will have a home in the GOP after Trump is gone. There is a growing feeling that we need to burn the whole house down to purify the party of Trump enablers in the Congress, says a former White House official in George W. Bushs Administration. Some see the prospect of a rupture, with disaffected Republicans cleaving off and either forming a new party or making a tenuous peace with the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Theres a very real possibility that the party will split, says Richard Burt, former ambassador to Germany under President Reagan.

The modern Republican Party was always an uneasy alliance in some ways, with fiscal conservatives, religious conservatives and neoconservatives jostling for influence, and a white working-class base voting for policies that often favored the wealthy. Steven Teles, co-author of Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites, envisions a Republican Party in which Trumpism dominates but the dissenters make up a vocal resistance faction. I dont think anyone is going to have control of the Republican Party the way weve seen in the past, he says.

The irony of the Never Trumper activists is that while they are encouraging Republicans to vote Democratic for the first time in their lives, that is bringing some Republicans back into the party by creating a community of the disaffected. Spielman, the retired Army cybersecurity engineer, had become so disenchanted with Trump that he turned his back on the party altogether, voting for Democrats in Michigans 2020 primaries. But the Never Trump groups are giving me hope that there are still some people out there with some decency that want to go back and save the party, Spielman says. Its allowed me to come back and say, Yeah, Im a Republican. Im not leaving the party, but I want to fight for whats right for the party.

With reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Mariah Espada, and Josh Rosenberg

This appears in the August 03, 2020 issue of TIME.

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See the article here:

Revenge of the Never Trumpers: Meet the Republican Dissidents Fighting to Push Donald Trump Out of Office - TIME

Donald Trump spent much of his coronavirus press briefing on Tuesday trying to persuade Americans that the coronavirus has little to do with them, or with him, except as a cause for self-congratulation. Within the first two minutes, he had referred twice to the China virus; he then immediately emphasized the advanced age and prexisting illnesses of those who had diedmost young adults wont even know theyre sicksuggesting that we now know, as if we didnt before, who the vulnerable are, and so the rest of the country can go back to doing other things. Other issues, such as COVID-19s ability to ravage the health of even those who survive it, the many ways that people of all ages can be vulnerable, and the difficulty of sheltering anybody when infections are rampant, were shunted aside. Most of all, Trump wanted everyone to know that we are winning. Were leading the world, he said, which is true only if the destination is off a cliff.

Trumps appearance was billed as his return to heading coronavirus-task-force briefings; those appearances were more or less discontinued in late April, as part of Trumps effort to pretend that the crisis was over. In contrast to those early appearances, Trump was alone, with no public-health officials to answer questions or provide a modicum of realism. When a reporter asked, Why are your doctors not with you here today? Wheres Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx? Trump replied, Well, Dr. Birx is right outside, then quickly called on someone else. (Deborah Birx, the cordinator of the task force, stayed outside; Anthony Fauci told CNN that he wasnt invited to the briefing.) The reason for the renewal is obvious: the number of new confirmed infections has grown to more than sixty thousand a day, and the charts of the number of cases in states in the South and West, led by Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas, show increasingly sharp rises to precipitous heights. Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp is engaging in something akin to deciding to let his constituents die by trying to block local governments from mandating masks, is also registering alarming numbers. (Last week, when Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, defied him, Kemp sued to stop and silence her; that litigation is pending.) In all those states, hospitals are filling up.

Increased testing does not explain the numbers; the percentage of tests that are coming back positive is above ten per cent in the worst-affected states, which, given the current numbers, is far too high for epidemiologists to be confident that most cases are being caught. (Roughly speaking, in the current circumstances, a lower positivity rate means that fewer marginal or asymptomatic cases are missed; testing is not confined to those who show up at hospitals. In New York, the current positivity rate is around one per cent.) Around the time that Trump spoke, the daily tally of deaths exceeded a thousand for the first time since late May, and the total number of confirmed deaths in the United States now exceeds a hundred and forty thousandalmost a quarter of the planets total COVID-19 fatalities.

Trump, though, still thinks hes doing great. At the briefing, he displayed a chart claiming that the case fatality rategenerally, deaths per laboratory-confirmed casesfor the United States was lower than for a string of other countries and the world as a whole. But, in the absence of comprehensive testing, that number is not viewed as the most reliable measure of the pandemics toll. The chart for deaths per hundred thousand inhabitants would look different. By that measure, according to Johns Hopkins Universitys numbers, the United States is among the worst affected, with forty-three dead per hundred thousand. Some European countries have fared worse than the United States, such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. (Others have done far better: Germany and Denmark have lost just under eleven people per hundred thousand; for Canada and Mexico, the numbers are twenty-four and thirty-two, respectively.) But those European countries now have their outbreaks relatively under control, with tallies of new daily cases in the hundreds, not the thousands or tens of thousands. As the United States adds many more fatalities to its total, its relative position will only get worse. We are now, basically, in a race to the bottom with Brazil.

Trump is very wrong about how the United States is doing relative to the rest of the world. And yet even arguing the point misses how sordid his basic position is. When large numbers of Americans are dying, how much of a consolation, when it comes down to it, is the worse fatality rate for Belgium meant to be? Trump seems to believe that Americans would be satisfied, or even pleased, to hear that even more people in places they are unfamiliar with are dying, and to be frustrated that that message isnt getting through. If you watch American television, you would think the United States is the only country involved with suffering from the China virus, he complained in the briefing. (Blaming the media comes even more naturally to Trump than blaming China.) The larger failing is that he doesnt offer a conception of winning that goes beyond being able to claim that countries or populations his voters dont identify with are doing worse than they are. (This is a domestic issue, too, rather than just a matter of xenophobia: one of the shocking aspects of the pandemic has been how willing many Americansespecially, but not exclusively, Republican politicianshave been to write off the vulnerable.) Another vision of winning might involve a true engagement in the international effort to contain the pandemic. In that respect, Trump never seems to get tired of losing.

There were moments when Trump acknowledged that the picture was not entirely rosy. It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better, he said. And he cannot be entirely blind to the polls that show him falling further behind Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump has, in the past week, tweeted a picture of himself wearing a mask, and during the press conference he pulled one from his pocket. There was no contrition, of course, regarding his fatal mockery of masks for much of the pandemic. Instead, the President who recently summoned crowds to hear him speak in Oklahoma and Arizona claimed that he has been a voice for social distancing. He thought that he might have saved millions of lives. He certainly wasnt to blame: Its a nasty horrible disease that should never have been allowed to escape China, but it did. When a reporter pressed him on his earlier prediction that the virus would disappear, and whether he was responsible for the fact that the trajectory has been very different, he said, Well, the virus will disappear. It will disappear. He launched into a disjointed soliloquy about how good his relationships with various governors are and how wise his own decisions have been, and he repeated that China should have stopped it.

The next reporter Trump called on asked him about another topicGhislaine Maxwell, a former associate of Jeffrey Epsteins, who was arrested earlier this month and is facing charges related to the sexual abuse of girls. (She has pleaded not guilty.) Trump said that he hadnt been following the story, but that he knew Maxwell from Palm Beach. I wish her well, whatever it is. His good wishes seem, to say the least, misdirected. An optimist might think that his lack of focus on the latest in the Epstein-Maxwell story might mean that he was, at last, paying more attention to Floridas hospital capacity than to the Palm Beach social scene. An optimist would be wrong.

Excerpt from:

Trump Returns to the Coronavirus Daily Briefing and Still Refuses to Face Reality - The New Yorker

It is never a good sign when a candidate is forced to replace his campaign manager less than four months before the election. In Donald Trumps case, it is an indication that his reelection campaign is in a crisis so pervasive that it threatens to take down not only his presidency but his entire party.

At the national level, former Vice President Joe Biden now leads President Trump by an average of about 9 percentage points according to FiveThirtyEight, which adjusts for the timing and quality of individual surveys. Focusing on the highest-quality surveys released during the past three weeks, the picture gets even darker for the president.

TABLE 1

A 9-point win for Biden would give him the largest margin of victory since Ronald Reagan, while an 11.5-point win would exceed even Reagans victory margin over one-term president Jimmy Carter in 1980.

The outlook for the president is no brighter in the most closely contested states, whose results will determine the outcome in the Electoral College. Table 2 compares the polling averages according to FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics with the results in 2016. A positive number indicates a Trump lead in 2020 or victory in 2016; a negative number indicates a lead for Biden in 2020.

TABLE 2

Here are the takeaways from Table 2:

President Trumps weak political standing is having an impact on other Republican candidates. It has created tougher-than-expected battles for Republican Senate incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, and North Carolina, and it is dimming the hopes of the Republican challenger in Michigan. The presidents double-digit deficits in Colorado and Maine, both of which Hillary Clinton carried by smaller margins in 2016, is making life more difficult for Republican incumbents in these states as well.

President Trumps impact is also apparent in two deep-Red states that should be slam-dunks for Republican Senate candidates. In 2016, Trump prevailed in Montana by 20.4 percentage points and in Kansas by 20.6 points. As of now, his lead in both these states is down to 9 points. The Democrats Senate candidate in Montana, the current governor, is running about even with the incumbent Republican senator, and Kansas Republicans openly worry than if they nominate a Trump-style populist conservative in their primary, they could end up with a Democratic senator for the first time since 1932.

President Trump is reshaping public assessments of the two major parties to the disadvantage of the Republicans. A Gallup survey released on July 16 found that the 2-point edge in party affiliation the Republicans enjoyed as recently as January of 2020 had turned into an 11-point Democratic advantage by the end of June. The bulk of this Republican erosion has occurred during the past two months.

For years, majorities of Americans have rendered negative judgments on President Trumps character and personal conduct while giving him high marks for his management of the economy. But circumstances have changed. Fewer Americans approve of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which pulled the country into a deep recession. For the first time ever, a high-quality survey has found a majority trusting Joe Biden to manage the economy better than Donald Trump, and they prefer him over the president as the countrys pandemic manager by a margin of 59 to 35.

The more the 2020 election turns into a referendum on President Trump as crisis manager, the worse the outcome will be for him. As recently as June 7, 47% of Americans thought the coronavirus situation was getting better, compared to just 30% who thought it was getting worse. Just three weeks later, after the massive upsurge in COVID-19 cases, the share of Americans who thought the situation was getting better fell by half to just 23% while the share who thought it was getting worse had more than doubled to 65%. An ABC/Washington Post poll released on July 17 found that approval of the presidents handling of the pandemic fell from 51% in March and 46% in May to just 38% in mid-July, while disapproval rose from 45% in March to 53% in May and 60% today.

Americans are losing hope, at least for the near-term. Seventy-four percent expect the coronavirus disruption that has upended their lives to last through the end of 2020 or longer. Fifty-six percent worry about catching COVID-19, the highest since April, and 72% say that it is better to hunker down at home rather than resuming normal activities. Until these attitudes become more positive, it is hard to see how the economy can regain its vigor.

Have President Trumps chances of reelection disappeared altogether? Not quite. If a vaccine demonstrates its safety and effectiveness by early fall and new cases begin to drop, the public mood could shift. The president could admit error and change course in both substance and tone, as savvy Republican analysts have recommended. Joe Biden could commit a gaffe as damaging as Hillary Clintons basket of deplorables comment, or he could perform badly enough in the debates to raise doubts about his fitness for the presidency. But as things now stand, President Trump would have better odds of drawing to an inside straight, and changing campaign managers wont help him very much.

See the rest here:

Trumps campaign is in freefall, with COVID-19 on voters minds - Brookings Institution

Hillary Clinton said Russia succeeded in its effort to influence the U.S. presidential election four years ago when she was the Democratic presidential nominee, and that Russia was working again to help elect someone "who is favorable to their agenda."

In a July 20 interview with MSNBCs Joy Reid, Clinton characterized President Donald Trumps foreign policy as incoherent and inconsistent. She said she was glad that Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was trying to warn Americans "that what happened in 2016 is sadly underway again."

Reid then said: "Yeah, to say nothing of putting bounties on American troops."

"Its unbelievable, Joy," Clinton replied. "I mean, he is still yet to say anything, as the president of the United States, about bounties on American troops."

The "bounties" story is about reports that Russia offered Taliban-linked militants bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan.

PolitiFact decided to fact-check whether Clinton was right that Trump hasnt said anything on the matter. A spokesperson for Clinton, Nick Merrill, told PolitiFact that Clinton was referring to Trump "abdicating his responsibilities as commander-in-chief to hold a foreign adversary thats killing our troops to account, and ensuring it stops."

Trump has not challenged Russia over the bounties reports, but he has not been silent on the issue either. Trump has dismissed New York Times reporting as "just another hoax," said the story of Russian bounties wasnt "credible" and that he wasnt briefed about it.

New York Times reporting says Trump was briefed

The New York Times reported June 26 that American intelligence officials concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for the killing of coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. troops. A Taliban spokesman told the New York Times that the report was baseless and the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Russian government was not aware of the accusations. The New York Times story relied on officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Other news outlets, including the Associated Press, Washington Post, CNN and Fox News, have also reported on the information, citing officials familiar with the issue.

"While officials were said to be confident about the intelligence that Russian operatives offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing Americans, they have greater uncertainty about how high in the Russian government the covert operation was authorized and what its aim may be," the New York Times story said.

That story and subsequent reporting said Trump was briefed on the U.S. intelligence finding.

Trumps response: just another hoax

Trump hasnt condemned or warned Russia over the information reported by the New York Times because he has said the reporting isnt credible.

"Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an "anonymous source" by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us....." Trump tweeted June 28.

In a follow-up tweet, Trump claimed that no other administration has been tougher on Russia and veered off into a campaign-related talking point on Ukraine and Hunter Biden. Trump ended that tweet with: "Probably just another phony Times hit job, just like their failed Russia Hoax. Who is their source?"

Trump also tweeted June 28: "Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!"

On July 1, Trump reiterated his argument that the story was made up and intended to damage him and Republicans. "The secret source probably does not even exist, just like the story itself. If the discredited @nytimes has a source, reveal it. Just another HOAX!" Trump wrote.

Later that day, Trump repeated that there was no corroborating evidence and that he was never briefed because "any info that they may have had did not rise to that level."

In a Fox Business Network interview, Trump was asked, "if there's ever a scenario in which Russia puts a bounty on U.S. troops, how would you respond?"

"First of all, theyd hear about it," Trump said July 1. "But we never heard about it, because intelligence never found it to be of that level where it would rise to that. From what I hear and I hear pretty good, the intelligence people didn't even, many of them didn't believe it happened at all. I think it's a hoax. I think it's a hoax by the newspapers and the Democrats."

Trump added that "many of the intelligence people didn't think it was something that even happened, and if it did happen, the Russians would hear about it and anybody else would hear about it that was involved."

While the White House has said Trump was never orally briefed, warnings that a Russian intelligence unit placed bounties on American forces appeared in the Presidents Daily Brief, according to multiple news reports.

RELATED: Whats the Presidents Daily Brief? Not like a mini novel, as Fox News host says

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in press briefings has not directly denounced Russia over the New York Times reporting, offering instead broad warnings to all countries and saying there are dissenting opinions on the intelligence reported by the New York Times.

A reporter on July 13 asked McEnany if Trump or the administration planned to "make it very clear to the Russian Federation that there should not be bounties placed on the heads of American soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

McEnany said, "We tell each and every country that." But the information on Russia was uncorroborated and there were "varying views" about it, she said.

"Im not going to answer a question based on unverified intelligence, but rest assured, every country in this world is put on notice that bounties on the heads of U.S. troops is unacceptable, and this president will stand for U.S. troops at home and abroad," McEnany said.

McEnany said "yes" when she was asked if that included Russia.

Trump and Putin spoke on the phone July 23 and discussed the coronavirus pandemic and arms control issues, the White House said. There was no mention of the presidents talking about the news of Russian bounties to kill U.S. troops.

Our ruling

Clinton said Trump "is still yet to say anything as the president of the United States about bounties on American troops."

There is an element of truth in that Trump has not condemned Russia over the reports. But hehas talked about the topic several times. His reaction has been to blast the reporting and the intelligence about Russia bounties as not credible. That would support why he hasnt publicly condemned Russia.

We rate Clintons statement Mostly False.

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Fact-checking Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump's response to reports of Russian bounties on US troops - PolitiFact

President Donald Trump speaks on the "Rebuilding of America's Infrastructure: Faster, Better, Stronger" in Atlanta on July 15.

Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

President Donald Trump's properties have made over $17 million from the Trump campaign and his joint fundraising committees since 2016.

That includes close to $400,000 recently paid by Trump Victory, Trump's joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee, to the Trump Hotel Collection.

The payments to the president's business came in the second quarter, as the coronavirus pandemic was spreading. The payments were largely for the RNC donor retreat at Trump's private Mar-a-Lago resort in early March, just before the end of the first quarter, according to a Republican official familiar with the matter.

At the weeklong event, Trump tried to reassure donors that his administration had everything under control regarding the virus, as CNBC first reported. Vice President Mike Pence at the time echoed Trump's sense of calm.

President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort is seen on November 1, 2019 in Palm Beach, Florida.

Joe Raedle

Following that gathering, Trump and the RNC opted to go to a fully virtual campaign, including for fundraising events.A person familiar with the matter said that even though the meeting was in March, the payments showed up on the second-quarter filing due to a delay in processing the payments during the start of Covid-19. The second-quarter filing shows data ranging from April through June.

The second-quarter payments to Trump Hotels were first flagged by Anna Massoglia, a researcher at the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, or CRP.

Beyond Trump's hotels getting paid the massive six-figure totals, a company run by a business ally of the president's also saw campaign expenditures come its way. Las Vegas Sands, the massive casino company owned by longtime Trump and GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, saw payments from Trump Victory last quarter.

The payments totaled nearly $250,000 and they came on the heels of the president looking to take part in a fundraiser in March at Adelson's home. That gathering and the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual event were eventually cancelled. The RJC conference was supposed to take place at the Venetian, a property of Sands.

Adelson and many other large casino owners have had their facilities mostly shut down for months due to the pandemic.

The vendor payments to Trump's hotels have rankled government ethics experts and triggered debates over whether his company is benefiting from his presidency.

An RNC official defended holding events at Trump-owned facilities.

"We hold some of our events at Trump properties because they are great venues that fit our needs," the official said.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said: "The campaign pays fair market value and abides by all FEC laws and regulations."

A representative from the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.

The data from CRP shows that in the 2020 election cycle alone, Trump's properties have been paid close to $4 million by the president's campaign, RNC and joint committees, including thousands of dollars to Trump Tower, Trump Restaurants and Mar-a-Lago.

The same groups paid Trump's businesses nearly $13 million during the 2016 election, data shows.

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Trump properties have made over $17 million from the campaign and the RNC since 2016 - CNBC