On this day in 2020, Republicans in the U.S. Senate ignored their own supposed standards concerning filling Supreme Court vacancies close to elections and confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as Donald Trump’s third justice, for a 6-3 right-wing majority that stands today.
Good morning. Martin here, delighted to bring you the news you need to start your week. For your latest Monday-themed musical treat, we have this little baggy beauty.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ll take a look at stark contrasts on the campaign trail: Donald Trump’s blunt refusal to shut up about how he’s caused gas prices to spike, to the point of bragging about it, and Barack Obama’s emergence in Ohio and Michigan to apply the stiletto. Oh, and there was a minor if amusing fuss over Obama’s reference to Trump’s taste in White House redecorations.
After that, we’ll turn to Brazil, where the runoff election between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and challenger Flávio Bolsonaro produced chaos, delay… and a win for Lula, though Bolsonaro Jr. didn’t concede. A day out from election day in Israel, there were plenty of worrying developments in the Iran war too. Let’s jump in.
Tone-Deaf Trump
Rambling on at his midterm rally in Perry, Georgia, on Saturday, Donald Trump spewed out sentences that contained a frank confession.
Boasting about the “hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars” his administration is supposedly making from oil in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Venezuela, and Greenland, the president said his “people” told him not to mention it, because, thanks to his war with Iran, the American “people are paying a little higher” for gas and diesel.
“I could just see the fake headlines,” Trump said. “‘President Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump.’ That’ll be the headline. But I said, ‘I don’t give a damn. I’m going to say it. We’re making a fricking fortune.’”
Trump doesn’t give a damn that ordinary people are struggling. Ordinary people are well aware that he and his family and cronies are making a fricking fortune in office. Such tone-deaf remarks are, of course, typical of the man whose illegal war led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a wider regional conflagration, and all that punishment at the pump for average Americans.
In Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday, Trump went back to the well.