Yesterday, on Fox, towards the end of his panel discussion, Chris Wallace asked Karl Rove if "Trump's continued targeting of Joe Biden may be the best thing Biden has going for him right now." Rove: "Well, it would be if Biden knew how to respond. The president started going after him the weekend of September 16th and his first real tough response was October 5th, delivered late in the afternoon on the West Coast so that none of us saw it, and it was, how dare you attack my family. Ironically, Biden's best defense would be to say, you know what, in retrospect I should have said something to Hunter about getting off that Burisma board while I'm-- while I'm focused on corruption in Ukraine and said you've got to make a living someplace else. But he didn't. So the more that he says, how dare you attack my family, the more we talk about the stinky arrangement and the stinkier it gets."
Wallace: And let's look, because I was talking about Biden's campaign, let's look at the fundraising numbers for the third quarter, which are pretty dramatic, on the screen. Bernie Sanders, in the third quarter of this year, raised $25 million and Elizabeth Warren, $24.6 million. Pete Buttigieg, $19 million. And all the way back in fourth place, the supposed frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden at $15.2 million. Josh, do you think that at some point President Trump may come to regret his efforts to get Joe Biden out of this race?Josh Holmes: "NO, because he's... because he's... well, I mean it's an easy question. I think the fundraising is a very interesting component of this because as the world of politics has adapted, the Joe Biden's of the world have not, right? They all... everybody's gone to the digital low dollar sort of renewable resource to try to keep your campaign funded. He had a huge boom, bang, max out dollar thing first quarter and now here he is in fourth place. What is he going to do in the fourth quarter? It's not going to get better and it's not going to get better in the first quarter of next year either. He's going to be outspent and outraised four, five, six to one down the stretch, all of it because, you know, frankly this campaign is a little antiquated.Rove: It may get better in this next quarter for him because he is Trump's target and he's... my inbox is inundated with Joe's requests. If Joe wants me to send him $5, Joe's upset about Trump, look at what Trump is saying about me or saying...
It goes way beyond fundraising but the panel never discussed the essence of why Trump is attacking Biden. Trump desperately wants Biden as an opponent. Biden is the only candidate he can beat because Biden is Hillary in a suit and tie and because Biden is senile and a compulsive liar-- like Trump, essentially voiding those two potent anti-Trump arguments for the Democrats. And, obviously the families. TRump's family of grifters is beyond disgusting. But so is Biden's. So... independent voters just throw up their hands and say, basically, "a pox on both your houses"... and walk away. By hammering Biden, Trump is manipulating unsophisticated Democratic primary voters into nominating him. It's what Trump wants. And the same folks that burdened the Democratic Party with Hillary may now now burden the party with Biden-- and another 4 years of Trump.Biden hasn't been able to defend himself against Trump's barrage of attacks over the last week because the last thing he wants is to encourage a bigger investigation into his grifter family of lobbyists and crooks. Perhaps the only good thing to come out of Trump's term as "president," will be him saving the country from a Biden term. I literally can't think of two less fit individuals for the White House. How would you like seeing a campaign based on whose family is more inherently disgusting and criminally-minded?The Biden campaign's comms team wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post yesterday: Trump won't destroy me or my family. The title is as close as he gets to defending his notoriously corrupt family. "Enough is enough," wrote Biden's professional communicator in his name, if not his voice. "Every day-- every few hours, seemingly-- more evidence is uncovered revealing that President Trump is abusing the power of the presidency and is wholly unfit to be president. He is using the highest office in the land to advance his personal political interests instead of the national interest. The president’s most recent violation of the rule of law-- openly calling for China to interfere in our elections, as he stood on the South Lawn of the White House-- is so outrageous, it’s clear he considers the presidency a free pass to do whatever he wants, with no accountability."
He does not understand the immense responsibility demanded of all those who hold the office of the president of the United States. He sees only the power-- and how it can benefit just one person: Donald Trump.Our first president, George Washington, famously could not tell a lie. President Trump seemingly cannot tell the truth-- about anything. He slanders anyone he sees as a threat. That is why is he is frantically pushing flat-out lies, debunked conspiracy theories and smears against me and my family, no doubt hoping to undermine my candidacy for the presidency.It’s the same cynical playbook he returns to again and again. But this time, it won’t work, because the American people know me-- and they know him. I will put the integrity of my whole career in public service to this nation up against Trump’s lack of integrity any day of the week.It all comes down to the abuse of power. That is the defining characteristic of the Trump presidency.We now know he has abused the foreign policy of the United States in an attempt to extract political favors from multiple countries. He has directly asked three foreign governments to interfere in U.S. elections, including Russia, one of our greatest adversaries, and China, our closest competitor. He has corrupted the agencies of his administration-- including the State Department, the National Security Council staff, the Justice Department and the office of the vice president-- to do his personal political bidding. We also know that the people around him in the White House recognized just how profoundly wrong it was and worked overtime to cover up Trump’s abuses.Whistleblower by Nancy OhanianThankfully, someone had the courage to blow the whistle. In America, not even the president is above the law. That’s a founding principle of our nation and our system of government.This isn’t just an academic exercise in political theory. A president who puts his self-interest ahead of the public good and the nation’s security poses a threat to the daily lives of every AmericanJust days after the House of Representatives opened an impeachment inquiry against him, Trump hosted the president of the National Rifle Association in the Oval Office. Did they discuss the common-sense gun-safety legislation the nation so desperately needs? No-- they talked about how the NRA can help reelect Donald Trump.He’s so deep in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, he’s literally sacrificing the planet’s future for personal political gain. He pulled out of the Paris climate agreement and froze fuel economy standards the Obama-Biden administration put in place for cars, and he’s preventing California from implementing its own higher standards. He won’t even acknowledge the climate crisis that he is making worse every day.In his phone call in June with Chinese President Xi Jinping-- in addition to seeking his involvement in our election, which he then publicly repeated-- Trump reportedly sold out the people of Hong Kong, who for months have been rallying in the streets for the democratic rights they are owed.America’s word and our standing in the world are in free fall because of the actions and incompetence of this president....And to Trump and those who facilitate his abuses of power, and all the special interests funding his attacks against me: Please know that I’m not going anywhere. You won’t destroy me, and you won’t destroy my family. And come November 2020, I intend to beat you like a drum.
