Trump Warns Suburban ‘Housewives’ About Biden: Campaign Update
Biden Talks With Obama About Son’s Death: Campaign Update
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump tells ‘suburban housewives’ that Democratic nominee Joe Biden poses a danger. Biden leads Trump by double-digits in a Florida poll. Biden sat across a room from former President Barack Obama for a chat.
There are 103 days until the election.
Other Developments:
Trump Warns Suburban ‘Housewives’ About Biden
Trump intensified his push to attract white voters on Thursday, arguing that Biden would pose a danger to the suburbs.
Trump addressed a tweet to the “Suburban Housewives of America,” using an outdated term, and linked to a New York Post op-ed saying that Biden’s policies would result in the construction of high-density affordable housing in suburban communities.
“Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better!” the president wrote.
The president weighed in after Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson formally announced that his department would ax an Obama-era fair housing regulation, known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, and replace it with a weaker rule. -- Jordan Fabian
Biden Leads Trump by 13 Points in Florida Poll (3:12 p.m.)
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has a 13 percentage-point lead over President Donald Trump in Florida, a crucial swing state in November that’s experiencing a spike in coronavirus cases, a poll released Thursday showed.
By 51% to 38%, Florida registered voters said they backed Biden, according to the Quinnipiac poll. A survey conducted in April showed Biden at 46% and Trump at 42%; the RealClearPolitics average shows Biden up 7% in the state, including the Quinnipiac survey.
The poll comes as Trump faces criticism for his handling of the pandemic. Florida posted a record 173 new Covid-19 deaths Thursday, pushing the state’s total to 5,518. With 389,868 cases in the state, 79% of voters said Florida should require mask-wearing in public, and 22% opposed it.
Despite the outbreak, the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign have said they will follow through with plans to hold a scaled-down version of the party’s convention in Jacksonville from Aug. 24. In the poll, 34% of respondents, including the majority of Republican voters, said it would be safe to hold the event, while 62% said it would be unsafe.
The poll of 924 registered voters was conducted July 16-20 and had a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points. -- Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou
Co-Chair of New ‘Lawyers for Trump’ Is Under Criminal Indictment (1:16 p.m.)
A leader of the newly created group of legal professionals supporting Trump needs a lawyer of his own.
On Thursday, the Trump campaign announced the creation of Lawyers for Trump and said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would be one of four co-chairs.
Paxton was indicted in 2015 in a financial fraud case. He has been under a legal cloud since, as the trial was delayed when a political dispute led to the special prosecutors’ pay being withheld and as Paxton tried unsuccessfully to get the charges dismissed. Most recently, he sought to have the trial moved to his hometown.
He also faces civil charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Trump campaign’s announcement said Lawyers for Trump is “committed to rally support to help make another four years of President Trump’s leadership a reality,” and argued that Biden would “undermine the law of the land” as president.
Biden Pulls Obama Close During Socially Distanced Chat (10:47 a.m.)
Biden pulled Obama close to his campaign as the two sat several feet apart in a video chat released Thursday.
In a 17-minute campaign video posted on both men’s social media accounts, the two sit on opposite sides of Obama’s Washington office to talk about their work together in the last administration.
Obama begins the talk by comparing the coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn to the Great Recession that began his presidency, praising Biden’s ability to empathize with suffering Americans.
“One of the things I have always known about you, Joe, it’s the reason why I wanted you to be my vice president and the reason why you were so effective,” he said. “It all starts with being able to relate.”
Trump criticized the video in a tweet. “Obama, who wouldn’t even endorse Biden until everyone else was out of the primaries (and even then waited a long time!), is now making a commercial of support,” Trump wrote. “Remember, I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for them. I wouldn’t be President. They did a terrible job!”
Billed as a “socially distanced conversation,” the video is the latest workaround for the Biden campaign, which has been hindered from traditional rallies and roundtables due to the pandemic.
Poll Shows Dead Heat Between Trump, Biden in Texas (9:59 a.m.)
A new poll is showing a dead heat in the presidential election in Texas.
In a Quinnipiac University Poll released Wednesday, 45% of voters backed Biden and 44% backed Trump in the Lone Star State, well within the survey’s 3.3 percentage-point margin of error.
“With crises swirling through American society and a country deeply divided, there’s no other way to slice it,” said Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy. “It’s a tossup in Texas.”
Voters gave Trump higher marks on the economy and Biden higher marks on addressing racial inequality, but the two tied on health care, the coronavirus and responding to a crisis.
Texas has been a reliably Republican stronghold since the mid-1990s.
The Quinnipiac poll of 880 self-identified registered voters in Texas was conducted July 16-20.
Biden’s Facebook Ads Show Pre-Pandemic Banter (8 a.m.)
Biden isn’t able to meet voters on the trail the way he used to, so his campaign is using Facebook to show old clips.
While Trump’s social media ads show images of police protests and call Biden “corrupt China Joe,” the former vice president’s ads show him talking with young children, hanging out with blue-collar workers and bantering with senior citizens.
One ad just shows Biden asking a young boy if he’s available to be vice president as his mother laughs. In another, he tells an Ohio worker that the country would collapse without electricians. And in a third, he jokingly demands a 95-year-old man show him his license to prove it. Each ad ends with the tagline “That’s Joe.”
The ads feature older clips from before the coronavirus pandemic of the kind of one-on-one interactions that Biden has always seemed to enjoy.
Biden Talks With Obama About Son’s Death (7 a.m.)
In another excerpt of their sit-down talk released Thursday, Biden discussed with Obama about the death of his son.
In a clip released this morning, Biden recalled his son Beau’s death from brain cancer in 2015 in the context of protections provided by the Affordable Care Act passed by the Obama administration.
“I used to sit there and watch him in the bed and in pain and dying and glioblastoma, I thought to myself, what would happen if his insurance company was able to come in, which they could have done before passed Obamacare and said, ‘You have out run your insurance,’” he said.
Obama responded by alluding to his mother’s death of ovarian cancer, which he often referenced during the fight to pass health-care reform.
“I mean, you and I both know what it’s like to have somebody you love get really sick,” he said. “And in some cases to lose somebody, but that loss is compounded when you see the stress on their faces, because they’re worried that they’re being a burden on their families.”
The full talk between Obama and Biden will be released later Thursday.
Trump Keeps Talking About the Cognitive Test He Took (6:23 a.m.)
Once again, Trump brought up the cognitive test he took with a White House doctor.
In an interview on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that aired Wednesday night, Trump repeated that he aced the Montreal Cognitive Assessment that he took in early 2018.
“I got a perfect mark,” he said. “And the doctors, they said very few people can do that.”
Trump claimed that after he took the test, questions about his mental faculties went away, and he said that Biden should have to take one as well if he wants to be president.
Trump also brought up the cognitive test in a July 9 phone interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity and an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace that aired Sunday.
The Montreal test, which Trump requested from the White House doctor, is typically done to measure cognitive impairment among people who are showing symptoms of mild dementia and similar issues.
Right-Leaning Think Tank Says USPS Can Handle Vote-by-Mail (6:23 a.m.)
Trump’s attacks on vote-by-mail have led to something unusual in Washington: A free-market think tank praising a government agency.
The R Street Institute, a D.C.-based think tank that promotes small-government ideals, released a four-page study Wednesday which argued that the U.S. Postal Service is “well-positioned to successfully rise to the occasion” in November.
“While vote-by-mail will be new to many, and USPS is far from a perfect institution, the agency has proven capable of reliably moving government documents for decades,” the report says.
Researchers at the think tank have also argued, contra Trump, that vote-by-mail has low rates of fraud, and its president signed a joint letter from conservatives to congressional leaders urging them to provide further funding for vote-by-mail during the coronavirus.
Some conservatives worry that Trump’s attacks on vote-by-mail will dampen Republican support, giving Biden an early-voting advantage in November. Polls show Republicans have grown more skeptical of absentee voting this year.
Coming Up:
Vice President Mike Pence will travel to Indiana on Friday to meet with higher education officials on reopening schools.
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