Tuesday, June 25, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.
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Joe is always busy.
The big news this week is the Presidential Debate on Thursday on CNN at 9 pm Eastern. For details, see below. 👇
Our President picked great projects and a great Transport Secretary in Pete Buttigieg.
Jackson, Miss.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, left, escorts Reena Evers-Everette, daughter of Civil Rights activists Medgar and Merlie Evers-Williams, to the groundbreaking of the Medgar Evers Boulevard Project in Jackson, Miss., Friday, June 21, 2024.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, third from left, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, center, break ground in Myrlie's Garden for the Medgar Evers Boulevard Project in Jackson, Miss., Friday, June 21, 2024. With them are from left, W. Hibbitt Neel of Neel Schaffer, Willie Simmons, Central District transportation commissioner, and from right, Safiya R. Omari, chief of staff for Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Reena Evers-Everette, daughter of Civil Rights activists Medgar and Myrlie Evers, and cousin Wanda Evers.
Biden hits Trump on abortion rights in video marking Roe reversal anniversary. https://www.axios.com/2024/06/24/biden-trump-roe-second-anniversary-abortion-rights-video
President Biden took aim at former President Trump on abortion rights in a new campaign video marking the second anniversary of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and ahead of this week's televised presidential debate.
Biden ad on the second anniversary of Dobbs, overthrowing Roe.
Why it matters: The video is part of a push by Democrats linking Trump and other Republicans to what are seen as vulnerabilities for the GOP leading up to November's elections: abortion rights and access to birth control and IVF. Driving the news: In echoes of previous comments by Biden and other Democrats, the president says in the video ahead of Thursday's presidential debate that Trump and Republicans are "coming for IVF and birth control next" if the former president is elected in November.
"For MAGA Republicans, Roe is just the beginning," says Biden in the video, released Monday, as images of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot are displayed.
The White House statement announcing the ad on Monday notes the video is part of "a campaign-wide organizing push around the Dobbs anniversary, which includes more than 50 events across the country."
The big picture: Trump has insisted that abortion regulations should be left to the states to decide in the wake of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, but he has bragged about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in the landmark case.
Biden and other Democrats want to remind voters of the link between Trump's three court nominees and how they voted on Roe, Axios' Hans Nichols notes.
Democrats have launched a reproductive rights blitz centered around the second anniversary of the end of Roe v. Wade that resulted in Republicans blocking a bill earlier this month that would have protected access to contraception at a federal level.
Protecting in vitro fertilization has become a top campaign issue for Democrats after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling froze access to the treatment in the state and the Biden campaign released a video earlier this month targeting Trump and other Republicans on IVF.
That's despite Trump, along with some other Republicans, saying that he supports access to IVF after the Alabama ruling.
Zoom out: "Already this year, Republican elected officials and states have filed more than 300 bills to restrict access to abortion care," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on a call with reporters Monday.
Republicans have had "every opportunity to protect reproductive freedom" since the Dobbs decision but have refused to do so, she added. As examples, she pointed to Senate Republicans' blockage earlier this month of bills ensuring federal protections for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and access to contraception.
"It's extreme, it's out of touch, and it's wrong," Jean-Pierre said. (Axios).
In This Debate, CNN Is the Decider.https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/business/media/cnn-presidential-debate.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-
The prime-time matchup on Thursday between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump represents an evening full of promise and peril.
Especially for CNN.
For the first time in decades, a single television network will have sole discretion over the look, feel and cadence of a general-election presidential debate. Unlike in past years, when an independent, nonprofit commission oversaw the contests, CNN has picked the moderators, designed the set and will choose the camera angles that viewers see.
Lest any voters forget who’s in charge, the red CNN logo will be ubiquitous: Rival channels seeking to simulcast the event had to agree to leave the network’s on-air watermark untouched.
The debate, at 9 p.m. Eastern, could be the single most-watched moment of the presidential campaign, with consequences that ripple all the way to November. And much of the credit — or the blame — for what transpires on tens of millions of screens on Thursday will land at CNN’s feet.
Leaders at the channel, which has endured a run of poor ratings and viewer apathy, say they don’t mind the pressure.
“The fact that we got it was something of a moment for us,” Mark Thompson, who became CNN’s chairman in October, said in an interview between prep meetings in Washington. “Much of the reaction of the public, the rest of the media and other politicians is going to depend on President Trump and President Biden, who are the stars of the show.”
Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump will meet in a closed studio in Atlanta with no live audience. Each candidate’s microphone will be muted when it is not his turn to speak. “It’s been done in a way, at least in principle, that is designed to get as much light as possible, and not to be overwhelmed with heat,” Mr. Thompson said.
On Thursday, much focus will be on the moderators, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, and their ability to keep proceedings on track. Neither anchor has moderated a general-election debate, but they both have experience at various Republican and Democratic primary debates sponsored by CNN, including an audience-free bout between Mr. Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders in March 2020.
CNN’s efforts will play out on virtually every major television outlet.
It is offering other networks a free simulcast of its debate, albeit with stipulations that have irked some rivals. One requirement is that any mention of the event, including onscreen program guides, must include CNN in the title. CNN even distributed a specific graphic to be used for promotions, complete with a pair of giant CNN logos — and a tiny blank space allotted for other networks to include their own branding.
The other networks must also accommodate one of the biggest changes in CNN’s production: advertisements.
General-election debates have not previously included ads, a precedent set by CBS, which produced the very first televised debate in 1960. At the time, though, Robert Sarnoff, then the president of NBC, argued otherwise. “It is an antiquated notion that a so-called public service program is not a public service if it is sponsored,” Mr. Sarnoff wrote. “By this odd reasoning, a broadcaster cannot serve the public unless he loses money.”
CNN apparently agreed; the channel will interrupt Thursday’s 90-minute event with two ad breaks, each set to last three and a half minutes. Under the simulcast rules, other networks cannot feature their own news anchors during those breaks, though they are free to sell their own ads. (New York Times)
Here’s Saturday with a rambling, incoherent, perhaps demented candidate for President.
Former president Donald Trump expanded his portrayal of migrants as violent with a suggestion that they could be pitted in fights for entertainment.
During a speech to Christian conservatives on Saturday afternoon, and again at a rally in Philadelphia that evening, Trump claimed that he told his friend Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, that he should start a spinoff competition featuring migrants, as part of his riff on restricting immigration. Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.
“Did anyone ever hear of Dana White?” Trump asked during his speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Washington. “ … I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win, that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much.”
The remarks are part of Trump’s broader pattern of using dehumanizing language when discussing immigrants, which during this election cycle has included broadly portraying migrants as violent criminals and saying that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Trump reiterated his promise to “begin the largest deportation operation in American history,” should he return to the White House. He also warned that undocumented immigrants are “just getting comfortable,” but that “they’re going to start hitting us very hard.”
Trump spoke for nearly an hour and a half at the conference hosted by the evangelical group started by longtime conservative strategist Ralph Reed. He referenced issues championed by the group such as imposing government restrictions on abortion. But the themes of his speech more closely resembled those of his campaign rallies, including immigration and election denialism.
Yes, this man who addresses no issues of importance to America and the world is really the best the Republicans have to offer as their Presidential candidate.
His theme was the same… immigrant fights for entertainment, plus this… “Trump painted a dystopian, often dishonest picture of “bedlam and death and terror”, a likely preview of his strategy for Thursday’s debate against Biden in Atlanta and the rest of his scorched earth campaign until November.
“Murders in Philadelphia reached their highest level in six decades,” he said. “Retail theft in Philly is up 135% since I left office. The convenience stores are closing down left and right. The pharmacies have to lock up the soap … You can’t buy toothpaste, you can’t buy a toothbrush, it takes you 45 minutes.” The crowd roared with laughter.
In April the Pew Charitable Trusts’ annual “State of the City” report found that violent crime in Philadelphia is at its lowest level in a decade. The city’s homicide rate dropped six percentage points in 2023, in line with other cities of similar scale.
Trump said: “Unbelievably Crooked Joe Biden is going around trying to claim that crime is down. Crime is so much up. First of all, we have a new form of crime. It’s called the Biden Migrant Crime, right? And all these millions of people that have come in, they’re just getting warmed up.”
In fact last year violent crime fell to one of its lowest levels in more than half a century. FBI statistics show steep drops in every category of violent crime in every region in the first three months of 2024 compared with a year earlier.
But at Saturday’s rally Trump, himself a convicted criminal, sought to turn reality on its head. (Source. The Guardian).
One more thing. Or two. Or three.
"Trump announced his latest grift on Saturday at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia to hawk his gold Trump-branded sneakers for the price of $399. While on the stage talking about the sneakers, many in the audience quickly erupted into boos."
Nicole Wallace. “Trump says electric motors in boats won’t work because if it sinks everyone will get electrocuted.”
He also was meandering around, talking about sharks and windmills. And this - Trump during his Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Rally on debating Biden:
“A little before debate time he gets a shot in the ass.. they want to strengthen him up.. I say he'll come out all jacked up.”
In Philadelphia that same day, he couldn’t even fill a 10,000 seat gym.
The President didn’t have that problem in Philadelphia.
Kamala is always busy.
The VP on Morning Joe with Mika.👇
On the 2nd anniversary of Roe being overturned.
Flotus is always busy.
The President on Sunday. Flotus on Monday.
Your Daily Reminder.
Trump is a convicted felon.
On May 30th, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts by the unanimous vote of 12 ordinary citizens.
He will be sentenced on July 11th.
Today is Primary Day in New York State, for all who participate.
If you live in NYS, that should mean you if you haven’t voted early. Spread the word. Make a phone call or take someone to the polls.