WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Thursday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- Peace, harmony and finally a resolution to a hard-fought campaign? Of course not. This is 2020. Thursday night and key states still too close to call, with Joe Biden’s lead in Arizona diminishing at this hour and Donald Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania slipping while his lead in Georgia that had been shrinking began growing again.. Totals in Nevada where Biden leads and North Carolina where Trump leads seemed frozen for now. Got all that?
- President Trump in the evening delivered 17 minutes of grievances and many, many accusations which afterward were amplified by different voices, including the usual defenders among the Fox News anchors and some prominent Republicans. Sen. Lindsey Graham donated $500,000 to Trump’s legal defense fund. The Drudge Report headline on Trump: “Lashes, Thrashes, Trashes.” Fact checker par excellence Daniel Dale tweeted, “I’ve read or watched all of Trump’s speeches since 2016. This is the most dishonest speech he has ever given.” Trump’s bottom line: It may all end up at the Supreme Court.
- Let’s review some of the evening’s chaos and tumult and just plain weird stuff. On Fox News, author Jason Whitlock told anchor Tucker Carlson, if this election swings toward Biden it is a testament to “hate” of Donald Trump. Trump’s supporters he said, have “unconditional love” for their candidate, willing to risk their health by going maskless to big packed rallies, risking violence from antifa and Black Lives Matter. Whitlock is himself black, incidentally. One of his main points, that it all has nothing to do with Joe Biden. Why the hate and why the love? Hard to explain, which is as good an analysis as any in this strange year of turmoil.
- Over on CNN, no end of disdain and criticism of Trump and the aspersions he cast on all the Democratic and Republican citizens trying their best, the anchors said, to honestly count the ballots. Even Republican contributor Rick Santorum said it is time for Republicans everywhere to reject Trump’s claims of fraud – which, of course, didn’t happen. “No president of the United States should say” what Trump just said, he said. “I hope Republicans will stand up and say what needs to be said.” He added, “Counting absentee ballots is not fraud.” Anchor John King said Trump’s definition of democracy is, “It’s good if I win.” If not, it’s fraud. Gloria Borger said you don’t undermine the whole process, especially if you are president of the United States.
- Jonathan Turley, George Washington University law professor, also on Fox, said there may be some basis for legal challenges by the Trump camp if the evidence can be produced. His point, he said, is that you not only have to win, but people have to believe you’ve won. The Biden camp has assembled its own team of heavy-hitting legal minds, including former Attorney General Eric Holder.
- Also on Fox, anchor Sean Hannity played two Project Veritas videos of postal workers allegedly admitting for hidden cameras they were diverting ballots. Hannity conceded he couldn’t vouch for the validity of the clips. “Millions of mail-in ballots with no postmarks,” he said. “ I can factually tell you tonight it will be impossible to ever know the true, fair, accurate total of votes.” Americans have “every right to distrust the honesty of the result.” An “unmitigated embarrassment.”
- Joe Biden lost about 10,000 votes in Arizona through the day and at 9p ET, in one of the biggest single data dumps since Election Day, the count of 100,000 ballots from Arizona’s Maricopa County showed some further erosion of Biden’s lead. It was that kind of night for those states that were reporting updated counts. Sometimes as few as 30 votes were added to one column or the other. Trump’s lead in Georgia became as little at one point a razor-thin 1,700. Georgia is must-win state for Trump.
- MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC all cut away from Trump’s remarks after seeing about a minute of him attacking the vote counting process, with MSNBC’s Brian Williams saying the president’s words were “dangerous.” Over on social media Facebook banned “Stop the Steal” Trump legal defense fund postings. Twitter during the day added warnings to four of Trump’s tweets saying claims of fraud were “disputed.”
- Joe Biden tweeted after Trump’s address, “’No one is going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever. America has come too far, fought too many battles, and endured too much to let that happen.” He also asked for legal defense fund contributions.
- Lawsuits were filed, some summarily dismissed. In Philadelphia a judge cleared the way for the parties to have 60 poll watchers each who can get within six feet of the ballot counters, even as various Republican voices, including that of Don. Jr., charged their representatives were actually still being excluded.
- And so what did President Trump say in the White House briefing room as he lashed, thrashed and trashed the American vote counting process. Here’s a sample:
— “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us,” he said.
— “If you count the votes that came in late, we’re looking into them very strongly. A lot of them have come in late. I already decisively won critical states including Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio. “It is despite interference from big money, big tech. We won by historic numbers and the pollsters got it knowingly wrong.”
— “These really phony polls, fake polls, were designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden and diminish Republican’s ability to raise funds,” Trump said.
— “In Georgia, I won by a lot, with a lead getting close to 300,000 votes on election night in Georgia and by the way it got whittled down .” He added, “Now it is getting to a point where I go from winning by a lot to perhaps being even down a little bit.”
- At least it was all a big excuse not to fixate on the virus which kept advancing, oblivious to party affiliation. At least 1,616 new coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, giving credence to some predictions that around Thanksgiving the death toll will be around 2,000 a day. How many new cases confirmed? How about 107,872. What’s the trend? New cases averaged 91,878 cases per day, an increase of 51% above two weeks ago. (NYT Tracker.)
- Upcoming economic data is mainly the monthly jobs report at 8:30a ET. Thursday morning’s weekly report on new claims for unemployment benefits were about level at 751,000. Under ordinary circumstances that would be regarded as a huge number. The day’s Federal Reserve policy meeting was about as much a non-event as possible but Fed Chair Jay Powell did hint at some recalibration being considered for asset purchases as detailed in a story elsewhere on this macenews.com site.
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Content may appear first or exclusively on the Mace News premium service. For real-time email delivery contact tony@macenews.com. Twitter headlines @macenewsmacro.