Donald Trump says that he’s “taking the high road” by refusing to meet with Democrats about providing additional rounds of coronavirus relief to the American people. Does “taking the high road” mean being high? Because then this makes sense.
The President announced his antipathy for his suffering, broke, and covid-afflicted populace during what NBC News described as a “meandering” Labor Day press conference at the White House on Monday.
“I am taking the high road,” Trump said of deciding not to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “I’m taking the high road by not seeing them. That’s the high road. Yeah. And if I thought it made a difference or would make a difference, I’d do it in a minute.”
Switching gears, he then attacked Democratic rival Joe Biden, calling him a “stupid person.”
Speaking of Biden, the former Vice President seems to be polling pretty well among suburban voters despite Trump’s best efforts in recent months to position himself as the “law and order” savior of white suburbanites terrified of Black Lives Matter protesters.
According to Politico, a recent Grinell College poll conducted by Selzer & Co. last week found that the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate has been outpacing the Republican incumbent by more than 20 percentage points in the suburbs, with a more than two-to-one margin with suburban women, specifically.
Transgender rights groups in the Phillippines and abroad have decried Pres. Rodrigo Duterte’s decision to grant an “absolute pardon” to Joseph Scott Pemberton, the American marine convicted of killing Filipina trans woman Jennifer Laude in 2015.
“This is a direct attack not just on Jennifer and her family but to every trans person and every victim of corrupt and unequal justice system,” said local LGBTQ+ rights group UP Babaylan in a statement to The New York Times.
- Five boats sank during a pro-Trump boat parade in Texas on Saturday. At the risk of conjecture, lmao. [NPR]
- Richard Grenell, the face of LGBTQ+ outreach for the Trump campaign, snapped at a reporter who asked him about the administration’s purported (slash dogwhistle-y imperialist) effort to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide, which seems to have “amounted to nothing more than a few photo ops,” according to Council for Global Equality chair Mark Bromley. [The Washington Blade]
- The Biden campaign named former Democratic hopeful Pete Buttigieg to its White House transition team. [Reuters]
- Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny is fine! Or at least he’s no longer in a medically induced coma after being poisoned, possibly by the Russian government, with a nerve agent developed by the Soviet military during the Cold War. [NBC News]
- This is great! After being the hardest hit state during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, New York has now reported a covid infection rate of under 1% for the past 30 days, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Sunday. [The Hill]
- This is not great! The wealth and income gaps in the United States have both spiraled out of control during the past few months of the pandemic. Revolution now? Many people are saying this… [Politico]