Our Fact Checker team notes that the former president actually lowballed this startling statistic: The unemployment rate in the United States quadrupled — from 3.6 percent in January to 14.7 percent in April, and no other industrialized country came close to experiencing such a steep increase.
Generations of Democratic presidents and nominees – including Clinton, Barack Obama and John Kerry – found themselves on the defensive in the face of relentless GOP attacks that they were insufficiently appreciative of the age-old notion of American exceptionalism. But critics of President Trump see an opening to turn the tables and rewrite the script. The critique, based largely on his approach to foreign policy over the past three-and-a-half years, has become particularly potent as the U.S. death toll from covid-19 surpasses 168,000 people while other developed countries have flattened their curves.
Joe Biden, officially coronated as the Democratic nominee on Tuesday night, has made improving the country’s standing on the world stage a centerpiece of his third bid for the White House. The 77-year-old, who describes himself as a “transitional” figure, is turning this week to a group of national security veterans and other members of an old guard of Democrats to validate his contention that he can restore all that American exceptionalism entails.
“Before Donald Trump, we used to talk about American exceptionalism,” said Kerry, the party’s 2004 nominee and secretary of state during Obama’s second term. “The only thing exceptional about the incoherent Trump foreign policy is that it has made our nation more isolated than ever before. Joe Biden knows we aren’t exceptional because we bluster that we are. We are exceptional because we do exceptional things.”
Trump’s catchphrase is “America First,” and he claims that predecessors of both parties have let foreigners taken advantage of them, but he has rejected the notion that the United States is unique from every other country. He has engaged in false moral equivalency, befriended autocrats and said at the United Nations that every country should pursue its own national interests instead of the global interest.
Whether threatening to withdraw from NATO or pulling U.S. troops out of Germany, Trumpism represents a repudiation of the bipartisan Washington consensus that has more or less existed since World War II about the imperative of American leadership as a beacon of hope and freedom in a dangerous world.
“Joe Biden will be a president we will all be proud to salute,” said former secretary of state Colin Powell, 83, a retired general who served under three Republican presidents and himself seriously considered seeking the GOP nomination. “I support Joe Biden because, on Day One, he will restore America’s leadership and our moral authority. He’ll be a president who knows America is strongest when, as he has said, ‘We lead both by the power of our example and the example of our power.’ He will restore America’s leadership in the world and restore the alliances we need to address the dangers that threaten our nation, from climate change to nuclear proliferation.”
A video that played before Powell’s speech featured retired diplomats and generals decrying what they say has happened to America’s moral standing on Trump’s watch. Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine whom Trump recalled from her post and then testified against him during the House impeachment probe, said foreign leaders will respect Biden in ways they do not Trump. “They trust him. They trust his judgment. And they know that his word is good,” she said.
Former Republican senator Chuck Hagel (Neb.), who served alongside Biden in the Senate for 12 years and then worked with him as Obama’s defense secretary, accused Trump of “failing the troops” and a “dereliction of duty” by refusing to confront the Kremlin over intelligence that the Russians offered bounties for the killing of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. “Trump has degraded and debased the presidency and our country in the eyes of the world,” Hagel said.
Trump has dismissed reports about the Russian program as a “hoax,” even as the administration opened a leak investigation to hunt for the people who disclosed information about what has been described by sources as solid intelligence. The White House also claims the intelligence was unconfirmed and disputed reports that Trump was briefed on it, but many of these denials have been undercut and Trump has defended his decision not to broach it during multiple conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein called it “un-American” that Trump has failed to publicly take action in response to the apparent Russian bounty program. “I’ve led space squadrons and nuclear missile squadrons, and I never thought I would have a president who is a danger to national security,” Weinstein said.
Former acting attorney general Sally Yates, who was fired by Trump for refusing to defend his first travel ban on Muslim-majority countries that would later be struck down in court, spoke earlier in the two-hour program. “He treats our country like it’s his family business, this time bankrupting our nation’s moral authority at home and abroad,” she said. “Rather than standing up to Vladimir Putin, he fawns over a dictator who is still trying to interfere in our elections.”
“President Trump told us to simply abandon the Kurds. It’s shameful,” said Brett McGurk, who resigned in protest as the president’s special envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS after he initially announced that U.S. troops would leave Syria in December 2018. “I’ve served for two Republican presidents and one Democratic president. I have seen the Trump administration make decisions without any thought, without any preparation, that have massive life and death consequences.”
Perhaps unwittingly, summoning members of this older generation to endorse Biden has spotlighted the extent to which he has been a Washington insider for nearly half a century. He would be the oldest president ever elected. In fact, he would be slightly older on Inauguration Day than Ronald Reagan was when he finished his second term. Trump, while 74, did not run for office until 2015 so he lacks the deep relationships Biden has cultivated on Capitol Hill and across what Trump disdainfully refers to as the “the swamp.”
Jimmy Carter, 95, noted that Biden was one of the first senators to endorse his presidential campaign in 1976. The former president is so frail that he sent an audio message, rather than a video recording. Black-and-white pictures of the two men together in the 1970s appeared onscreen as he spoke. (As a point of contrast, the only living Republican former president, George W. Bush, will not speak on Trump’s behalf during next week’s GOP convention.)
Cindy McCain narrated a video about her late husband John McCain’s friendship with Biden. She noted that the two got to know each other in the 1970s when McCain was a military aide accompanying Biden on congressional trips overseas. Then their families hung out together at barbecues during the 1980s after McCain was elected to the Senate. Cindy McCain stopped short of offering a formal endorsement of Biden. Operatives in both parties say that this is because her eldest son, Jack McCain, recently returned from a deployment as a Navy helicopter pilot and is expected to run for public office soon as a Republican.
Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John F. Kennedy, said she has admired Biden since she got to know him as a Senate intern in the 1970s. Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), first elected to Congress in 1982, said he has had a good working relationship with Biden over four decades. He and Delaware Gov. John Carney (D) then announced that all the state’s delegates supported their favorite son. On Monday night, former Ohio GOP governor John Kasich recalled getting to know Biden during the legislative battles of the 1990s. “I’ve known Joe Biden for 30 years,” he said. “I know Joe is a good man.”
Clinton, who has spoken at every Democratic convention since 1980 and was first elected as president 28 years ago, turned 74 on Wednesday, meaning he is three years younger than Biden. “When Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972, Clinton was a law student running George McGovern’s campaign in Texas and Obama was an 11-year-old living with his grandparents and beginning fifth grade at the Punahou School in Honolulu,” notes David Maraniss, who has written biographies of Clinton and Obama. “Biden has been around national politics for 48 years, more than either Clinton or Obama had lived when they entered the White House. Clinton, born in 1946, and Obama, born in 1961, were the bookends of the extended postwar baby-boom generation. Biden has been called a baby boomer, but he wasn’t one. He was a war baby, born on Nov. 20, 1942, just as the British army was seizing the port of Benghazi from the Nazis in the North Africa campaign.”
Tuesday foreshadowed the changing of the guard. The night opened with a keynote address that featured a Zoom-style montage of 17 up-and-coming Democrats speaking into cameras from across the country.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), 30, was born two years after Biden ended his first of three presidential campaigns and 17 years after he was elected to the Senate. In her brief speech, she made clear that she does not subscribe to the older generation’s view of American exceptionalism. Ocasio-Cortez said that the movement she represents strives “to recognize and repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny and homophobia, and to propose and build reimagined systems of immigration and foreign policy that turn away from the violence and xenophobia of our past.”
More convention highlights
Jacquelyn Brittany, a 31-year-old African American security guard, became the first person to put Biden’s name into nomination for president. She was last seen blurting “I love you” to Biden as she escorted him in an elevator to an editorial board meeting at the New York Times last December, part of an exchange that went viral as the Biden campaign cast her adulation as a bigger deal than the news organization’s endorsement, which he lost. “I take powerful people up my elevator all the time,” she told Annie Linskey. “In the short time I spent with Joe Biden, I could tell he really saw me. I knew, even when he went into his important meeting, he’d take my story with him.”
During the roll call to nominate Biden, three states were represented by people who have connected with the former vice president over the shared pain of losing a child. Fred Guttenberg of Florida lost his daughter, Jaime, in the 2018 shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Colby Itkowitz reports. Khizr Khan of Virginia lost his son, Humayun, a U.S. Army captain in the Iraq War. Judy and Dennis Shepard of Wyoming lost their son, Matthew, when he was murdered in a brutal anti-gay hate crime. Biden lost his infant daughter, Naomi, in tragic car accident in 1972 that also killed his wife and lost his son, Beau, to cancer in 2015. “When my daughter was murdered in Parkland, Joe Biden called to share in our family’s grief,” said Guttenberg. “Over time, my wife and I have come to know his soul,” said Khan, who drew Trump’s ire after his speech at the 2016 Democratic convention. “Joe understands more than most our grief over Matt’s death,” said Dennis Shepard.
Quote of the day
“How do you make a broken family whole? The same way you make a nation whole — with love and understanding, and with small acts of kindness, with bravery, with unwavering faith,” Jill Biden said in her address to the convention.
The Biden campaign said nearly 30 million people watched Monday night’s programming, with 10.2 million digital viewers and 19.7 million watching on television. That number is down from about 26 million who watched the first night of the convention in Philadelphia four years ago.
Happening tonight: Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) will accept the vice-presidential nomination in a speech at the Chase Center here. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren have the other major speaking slots. Also addressing the convention will be Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, as well as former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords. I will join The Post’s live show from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern to preview the program in Wilmington and return from 11 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. to offer analysis of the speeches. Tune in on our homepage.
More on the elections
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said he will temporarily suspend policies blamed for mail delays.
“The U.S. Postal Service said it will shelve its controversial cost-cutting initiatives until after the November election, canceling service reductions, reauthorizing overtime and suspending the removal of mail-sorting machines and public collection boxes,” Jacob Bogage, Amy Gardner and Erin Cox report. “Tuesday’s reversal comes hours after at least 21 states announced plans to sue the mail service and [DeJoy], arguing that policy changes widely blamed for mail slowdowns will interfere with their abilities to conduct elections. DeJoy is poised to address those issues at a Senate hearing Friday, then go before a House panel on Monday with Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors. … DeJoy’s announcement Tuesday did little to quiet concerns or address questions about reported backlogs at processing plants or delays in home delivery. Democratic lawmakers continued to press postal officials for answers about the policies and elaboration on the agency’s preparedness to collect election mail.”
But, but, but: Regardless of who wins the presidential election in November, Trump loyalists are slated to maintain an iron grip on the board and postmaster general job for several years. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on the Postal Service’s governing board to oust DeJoy, but he was appointed by a board now dominated by Trump disciples, Lisa Rein reports. While the administration still has to make hundreds of political appointments across the federal government, boards and commissions, the president was able to leave his mark on USPS’s traditionally nonpartisan leadership. He benefited from inaction in a divided Senate, a vacant board when he took office and interventions by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that left Trump with a clean slate to mold his agenda. “The president had a unique opportunity to start from scratch,” said Arthur Sackler, a longtime lobbyist for mailers, postal shippers and suppliers. “I can’t recall another time when there was literally no one on the board.”
- D.C. elections officials are working to boost the number of ballot drop boxes because of concerns about possible Postal Service chicanery. There will be at least 50 ballot drop-box locations scattered throughout the District starting in early October. (Rebecca Tan)
Right-wing commentator Laura Loomer won the GOP primary in Trump’s Palm Beach district.
“Loomer, 27, will face four-term Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel in the November general election. Frankel, who has served in Congress since 2013 and ran unopposed two years ago, easily defeated primary challenger Guido Weiss, a former legislative assistant for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii). Frankel will be the favorite in the heavily Democratic district that covers a swath of Palm Beach and Broward counties,” Lori Rozsa reports. Loomer, who defeated five opponents in the Republican primary, has been supported by Trump confidant Roger Stone and far-right radio host Alex Jones. “Loomer was banned from Twitter and Facebook in 2018 for what many considered to be hate speech against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one member of the ‘Squad’ of four freshman, minority congresswomen.” Trump and first lady Melania Trump had their absentee ballots delivered to Palm Beach election officials just in time to be counted. It’s the second time they’ve voted by mail, even as Trump attacks this method as inviting fraud.
- Trump offered a strong endorsement of Loomer, who has called herself a #ProudIslamophobe, described Muslims as “savages” and contributed to conspiracy site Infowars. (Tim Elfrink)
- Rep. Ross Spano (R-Fla.), facing a criminal investigation into possible campaign finance violations, was ousted in a primary by Scott Franklin in a district encompassing Lakeland and other Tampa suburbs. “Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), an ally of Trump, had endorsed Franklin, warning that an incumbent dogged by ethics woes could cost the GOP the seat,” David Weigel reports. “The Justice Department has been investigating Spano over loans he made to his 2018 campaign, according to the House Ethics Committee, which disclosed the criminal probe in a November 2019 statement.”
- Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in 1872, 50 years before women were given the franchise. She was tried and fined $100. On the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Trump announced he would pardon her. (Samantha Schmidt)
Protesters continue to demand the arrest of the officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s death.
“The prospect of police prosecution is complicated by state laws that give the benefit of the doubt to officers involved in carrying out their official duties. That legal reality has animated protests against police violence nationwide since the killing of George Floyd in May,” Josh Wood and Tim Craig report. “The demonstrations have continued for 11 weeks, with some protesters maintaining an around-the-clock presence in a small city park they have dubbed ‘Injustice Square.’ In daily marches, they chant, ‘How do you spell murderers? L-M-P-D’ — the initials of the Louisville Metro Police Department. … In Louisville, the state attorney general’s investigation has stretched for nearly three months, fueling protesters’ anger. … Family attorney Sam Aguiar … said the case hinges on Kentucky’s ‘castle doctrine,’ which allows the use of lethal force if a person fears for their life. “
The coronavirus continues to ravage America.
The World Health Organization warned that young people are emerging as the main spreaders of the virus.
“Many nations in Asia, which had previously pushed infections to enviably low rates, have experienced surges in recent weeks at the same time that the age of those infected skewed younger,” William Wan and Moriah Balingit report. “‘People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are increasingly driving the spread,’ Takeshi Kasai, the WHO’s Western Pacific regional director, said … ‘The epidemic is changing.’ More than half of confirmed infections in Australia and the Philippines in recent weeks have been in people younger than 40, WHO officials said, a stark contrast to predominantly older patients from the previous months. In Japan, 65 percent of recent infections occurred in people below age 40. …
“For colleges and universities, where students in their late teens and 20s live in tight quarters and mingle at off-campus gatherings, the problem has proved particularly vexing. … On Tuesday, the University of Notre Dame announced that it will halt in-person teaching for at least two weeks after reporting that 147 people had tested positive since Aug. 3. Michigan State University also said Tuesday that it will shift to remote learning for the fall semester after 187 people in surrounding East Lansing were linked to an outbreak at a college bar in July. At least 189 people at the University of Kentucky have tested positive for the virus since Aug. 3 … But public universities in several states are forging ahead with plans to fully reopen campuses, including those in Georgia and Florida, which have among the highest infection rates in the nation.”
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is not just pushing schools to open but also demanding they stay open even after cases are diagnosed. “On a phone call with school district superintendents late last week, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran urged them to be ‘surgical’ when dealing with covid-19 cases, as opposed to ‘sweeping’ — and told them not to close a school without calling state officials first to discuss it,” Valerie Strauss reports.
- Some Tennessee school districts could ask teachers or other staff who may have been exposed to the coronavirus to continue in-person instruction. At least six districts there have already adopted such policies, according to the Tennessee Lookout. Gov. Bill Lee (R) said school districts are free to implement a controversial CDC quarantine policy that allows essential workers to return to their jobs as long as they remain asymptomatic, the Tennessean reported.
- In Salt Lake County, Utah, 79 teachers left their jobs over coronavirus concerns. (Salt Lake Tribune)
- Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) reopened the state even though his administration knew there was a staggering shortage of protective equipment for health-care workers. (Daily Beast)
- Some 500,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District started school online. The system said it had enough computers and Internet hot spots for all, but some students and teachers suffered connectivity issues. (Los Angeles Times)
- An Aug. 7 wedding reception in Maine led to an outbreak of 24 confirmed cases. (Lateshia Beachum)
- The NBA’s eight non-bubble teams will be permitted to host voluntary group activities in their home markets next month. The plan includes the Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors and New York Knicks. Team members could be allowed to report for individual workouts and undergo daily testing. (Ben Golliver)
- A global wave of experimentation using smartphones to combat the pandemic has stumbled over privacy concerns, security glitches and slow rollouts, leaving behind dozens of initiatives with little evidence of success. (Craig Timberg, Steve Hendrix, Min Joo Kim and Fiona Weber-Steinhaus)
Senate Republicans are preparing a skinny relief package with a $500 billion price tag.
“The measure will also include $10 billion for the embattled Postal Service,” the AP reports. “Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of the Senate Republican leadership, said the emerging legislation will provide $300 weekly in extra federal payments for unemployed people above the state payments that beneficiaries receive. He said he believes the extra payments would run through 2020. … The new proposal includes $105 billion for education, … $16 billion for virus testing and $29 billion for developing vaccines. …The bill does not include a renewal of the one-time direct payments of up to $1,200 for taxpayers and dependents.”
- An advisory board created to review the ethics of proposed fetal tissue research urged the Trump administration to block government funding for nearly all of the applications – essentially banning support for most such scientific work at the National Institutes of Health. Many scientists consider fetal tissue an invaluable research tool that has led to advances in understanding and treatment of several major diseases and potentially useful in developing coronavirus cures and vaccines. (Amy Goldstein)
- The government spent tens of millions on a treatment for chemical weapons exposure, but now the company that makes it, Emergent BioSolutions, won’t say whether the treatment works. (Jon Swaine)
- Roughly 30 industry leaders, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said they’re unlikely to implement Trump’s order deferring payment of workers’ payroll taxes. The groups said Trump’s order is “unworkable” and that logistical challenges are likely to prevent them from passing any extra income back to their employees, as the president keeps claiming will happen. (Tony Romm)
- Stock prices reached all-time highs on Tuesday, despite a double-digit unemployment rate and the collapse in recent months of perhaps 100,000 small businesses. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has risen more than 50 percent since March, completing the fastest rebound from a bear market in history. (David Lynch)
This pandemic is taking a deep toll on the mental health of the transgender community.
The population has long struggled with higher rates of mental illness and poor medical care. Since the pandemic began, a crisis telephone line staffed by transgender people has seen a 40 percent surge in calls. At an LGBTQ-focused community health center in Washington, mental health providers are seeing 25 percent more patients than they did before the contagion. Meanwhile, advocates warn that transgender people are experiencing more abuse than usual as many are forced to move home or stay closer to people who don’t support their gender identity decisions. (Alyssa Fowers and William Wan)
There’s still a bear in the woods.
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan report punctures several Trump denials.
An exhaustive investigation led by members of the president own party portrays his 2016 campaign as posing counterintelligence risks through its myriad contacts with Russia, eager to exploit assistance from the Kremlin and seemingly determined to conceal the full extent of its conduct during a multiyear probe. The long-awaited report contains dozens of new findings that appear to show more direct links between Trump associates and Russian intelligence, Greg Miller, Karoun Demirjian and Ellen Nakashiima report. The report describes Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s receptivity to Russian outreach as a “grave counterintelligence threat” that made the campaign susceptible to “malign Russian influence.” The committee determined that Putin personally directed the hack-and-leak campaign and concludes that members of Trump’s transition team probably fell prey to Russian manipulation that they were too callow to recognize. Kremlin operatives “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report says. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”
“In one of its most startling passages, the report concludes that one of Trump’s core claims of innocence cannot be credited. In written testimony to the team of federal prosecutors led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump insisted that he could not recall ever discussing the WikiLeaks dumps with political adviser Roger Stone or any other associate. ‘Despite Trump’s recollection,’ the Senate report said, ‘the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.’
“The document describes Trump and associates of his campaign as often incapable of candor. It offers new proof that former national security adviser Michael Flynn lied about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, raises troubling questions about Manafort’s decision to squander a plea agreement with prosecutors by lying to Mueller’s team, and accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of ‘deceptive’ accounts of his meetings with a Russian oligarch in the Seychelles weeks before Trump was sworn into office. The overall portrait that emerges from the report’s 966 pages is of repeated encounters between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, but no formal collusion. The two sides shared the same objective — the defeat of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — and basked in one another’s admiration. But more because of ineptitude than any principled commitment to the sanctity of American democracy, the partnership was never consummated, the committee determined. …
“A Russian lawyer who met with Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower before the 2016 election also had more ‘significant connections’ to the Kremlin than has been previously reported, the Senate probe concludes. … The Intelligence Committee’s report notes that it had made referrals to the Justice Department ‘for potential criminal activity’ suspected during the course of its investigation. … Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort were among those flagged to federal prosecutors because the committee believed that their testimony was contradicted by information unearthed by Mueller. It is unclear whether the Justice Department took action on the referrals. …
“The document would read more like a harrowing historical account were it not for mounting evidence that many of the same forces of disruption are lining up for the 2020 election. … Attorney General William P. Barr has intervened in criminal cases against Trump allies Stone and Flynn. And Trump supporters on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), have reportedly accepted material from Russian-tied sources to discredit [Biden].”
The report is the first to flatly identify Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime partner of Manafort, as a Russian intelligence officer. It cites evidence that that Kilimnik may have been directly involved in the Russian plot to break into a Democratic Party computer network and provide plundered files to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. His name is mentioned over 800 times, David Stern reports. Kilimnik started working with Manafort in the mid-2000s as his primary interpreter, when Manafort was hired to run the political campaigns of Viktor Yanukoych, a Kremlin-linked politician from eastern Ukraine. The report concludes that Kilimnik “likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort’s access to gain insight into the Campaign.” Kilimnik may also have been key in spreading the false narrative that the Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 election.
Mali’s president resigned hours after mutinous soldiers arrested him.
Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta announced his resignation on state television hours after soldiers stormed the capital and took into custody, setting off global outrage. The address marked the end of his seven-year reign over the West African country, which Danielle Paquette reports is straining under the pressure of an Islamist insurgency, an economic crisis and the coronavirus. “I do not wish for blood to be shed anymore so I can maintain power,” said Keïta, speaking just after midnight local time through a surgical mask. His exit comes after tens of thousands of Malians have flooded the streets of the capital, Bamako, in recent weeks, accusing Keïta of thwarting their chances at prosperity with corruption and botching a near-decade-long fight against extremists.
Social media speed read
Trump retweeted this post from a QAnon follower and GOP congressional candidate:
The Senate report on Russian interference included multiple letters Trump has sent to Putin:
The Democratic candidate for vice president enjoyed the roll call at home, wearing her alma mater’s colors. Her husband posted this:
And, a century after the ratification of 19th Amendment, former FBI director Jim Comey encouraged Americans to elect more women. Hillary Clinton, who has blamed Comey for her 2016 loss, was nonplussed:
Videos of the day
Anderson Cooper thrashed MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for touting a plant extract as a coronavirus miracle cure. Calling him a “snake oil salesman,” the CNN anchor asked: “How do you sleep at night?”
“The Daily Show’s” Dulcé Sloan highlighted that it was white women who have mostly benefited from the 19th Amendment:
And “Late Night’s” Amber Ruffin took a look at all the things Trump has “done” for women: