I really do think these are related.
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One for the election thread!
Supreme Court Vacancy Hasn’t Boosted Trump in Pennsylvania, Poll Shows
President Trump had counted on his court nomination over the weekend to shift the election dynamic away from his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But it has not reset the race in the key battleground state.
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Cross-posting because wow!
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Swing state Pennsylvania…some solid numbers for Biden in PA - ABC) +9 Biden vs T
PIvotal state that T won by a sweeker in 2016
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Project Veritas is up to its old tricks. Even though it’s been denunked, Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, and others are spreading its fearmongering attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar.
What Project Veritas Is Claiming About Ilhan Omar and Illegal Ballot Harvesting
Project Veritas has claimed Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar is engaging in illegal ballot harvesting and a cash-for-ballots scheme in her district in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The group, which has targeted mainly liberal groups with “sting” operations, posted a video late on Sunday showing what it claims is evidence of an illegal effort to harvest absentee ballots.
The group’s founder, James O’Keefe, alleged on Twitter that Omar’s team may have bribed voters in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district, which she has represented since 2019.
Liban Mohamed is shown in a Snapchat video commenting on the ballots. He is the brother of Minneapolis city council member Jamal Osman.
Newsweek originally reported that Mohamed was an Omar campaign worker. However, a spokesperson for Omar clarified that he does not work for the congresswoman.
“Just today we got 300 for Jamal Osman,” Mohamed says in the video. “I have 300 ballots in my car right now.”
“Numbers don’t lie. You can see my car is full. All these here are absentee ballots. Look, all these are for Jamal Osman.”
Mohamed can be seen showing white envelopes on his car’s dashboard in a video from July 1. Later in the Project Veritas video, Mohamed says, “Money is the king in this world… and a campaign is driven by money.”
An anonymous person, identified as a former Minneapolis political worker, told Project Veritas that Omar’s campaign deputy district director Ali Isse Gainey was coordinating ballot harvesting from elderly people in Charles Horn Towers, a housing complex in the city, before the Minnesota primary on August 8.
The same person claimed that women and young people were paid for their ballots during the primary. The cash-for-ballots accusation is unsubstantiated at this time.
Ballot harvesting is not illegal in Minnesota, however. A district court in the state denied a Republican motion to stay a temporary injunction against a law that made it illegal for anyone to help more than three people vote.
Jeremy Slevin, Senior Communications Director for Omar, said: “The amount of truth to this story is equal to the amount Donald Trump paid in taxes of ten out of the last fifteen years: zero. And amplifying a coordinated right-wing campaign to delegitimize a free and fair election this fall undermines our democracy.”
Project Veritas has a history of dubious claims and doctored videos. O’Keefe first came to prominence in 2009 with videos about ACORN, a community group that lost federal funding and had to shut down as a result.
However, O’Keefe had to pay $100,000 to a former ACORN employee who didn’t consent to be filmed and claimed he called the police after a disguised O’Keefe asked how he could make underage prostitution look like a legitimate business.
Since 2009, O’Keefe and Project Veritas have carried out several “sting” operations against liberal and Democratic groups. O’Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for unlawfully entering federal property in 2010 relating to an operation involving then-Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu.
There was instant skepticism of Project Veritas’ latest claim. CNN analyst Jessica Huseman, who has covered the organization, pointed to the timing of the video release.
“Wow you’re telling me that project veritas just happened to release a project right after the nyt release a bombshell huh what are the odds,” Huseman tweeted on Monday.
O’Keefe’s claims also come just two weeks after liberal groups in Wisconsin asked the state’s attorney general to investigate Project Veritas. They say members of the group mislead them by using false identities and tried to get them to agree “to use illegal methods.”
Omar casually dismissed the claims on Monday. She responded to one of President Donald Trump’s tweets about the accusations with a gif mocking the amount he allegedly paid in tax in 2016 and 2017.
Correction 9/28/20, 11:00 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from a spokesperson for Ilhan Omar denying that Liban Mohamed works or worked for the representative.
This voter fraud insider touted by Trump runs a non-existent organization
Project Veritas, the right-wing undercover operation headed up by James O’Keefe, released a 16-minute long video Monday depicting alleged “ballot harvesting” in Minnesota.
The video put out by the huckster, in true O’Keefe fashion, both decontextualizes what happened and fails to verify its sources.
Regardless, it’s been boosted already by President Donald Trump.
O’Keefe alleges that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) employed individuals to “harvest ballots” in exchange for cash in her 2020 primary. The video shows Snapchat footage from a man named Liban Mohamed, who is not an Omar campaign employee, gloating about having picked up over 300 ballots in one day. In it, he is not picking up ballots for Omar. And ballot harvesting, the phrase for collecting and delivering ballots for people who voted but cannot deliver them, like the elderly, is not illegal in Minnesota.
Regardless, the video tries to sow panic by interviewing an expert on the matter. Only that source is hilariously uncredentialed. Project Veritas’ “insider,” who explains the “scam,” has quite the questionable past as a faux spokesperson for the Somali community in Minnesota.
Project Veritas says that Omar Jamal, their key whistleblower “works with the Ramsey County Sheriff Department and is the chairman of the Somali Watchdog Group.”
Records obtained by the Daily Dot indicate that the “Somali Watchdog Group,” the group which Jamal allegedly heads, only just registered its website in late August 2020.
The timeframe appears to be after Project Veritas began producing the video, which shows footage from July.
The Daily Dot was also unable to identify any other members or affiliates of the group headed up by Jamal.
The “News” section of the site appears to be an RSS feed of CNN.
Project Veritas Communications Director Neil McCabe was curt when speaking with the Daily Dot and failed to answer straightforward questions about Jamal’s organization.
Asked if Project Veritas believes their whistleblower’s organization is a real group and if Veritas fact-checked the authenticity of the “Somali Watchdog Group,” McCabe stated, “I believe that he identifies as the chairman of that group.”
McCabe was then asked again two more times by the Daily Dot if Veritas looked into the authenticity of the group, only for McCabe to repeat himself.
The Ramsey County Sheriff Department’s phone line operator could not confirm to the Daily Dot if Jamal is or was an employee. Multiple requests for such information to numerous department representatives went unreturned.
When the Daily Dot asked Veritas’ spokesperson if they ever confirmed he worked for the department, McCabe stated, “He represented to us that he was—had a relationship with the Ramsey County Sheriff Department.”
Asked with a rephrased question about fact-checking the claims made by sources, McCabe yet again repeated his prior answer.
Jamal, the central Veritas “insider,” who is one of the only individuals without his face blurred in the video, has a questionable past.
In 2003, he was arrested on immigration fraud charges. It’s an ironic twist, as far-right operatives have long tried to paint Omar as guilty of her own immigration fraud.
“The government alleges Omar Jamal lied five years ago in immigration proceedings in Memphis, Tenn. The government says Jamal lied about where else he had lived, and used a fake passport to enter the United States,” Minnesota Public Radio reported at the time.
“Omar Jamal is the latest brave Project Veritas Insider to come forward and expose a voter fraud scheme in Minnesota that will shock you,” said O’Keefe in a press release.
McCabe, when asked about Jamal’s criminal past, didn’t speak for 15 seconds before responding, “My past, your past… I’m not worried about your past, are you worried about my past?”
“I mean what type of question is that?” McCabe asked this reporter.
Asked again about the “insider’s” credibility, McCabe played down Jamal’s charges in 2003. “I would say nothing that happened in the year in 2003, has any bearing over what he told us in 2020,” he told the Daily Dot.
While Project Veritas was interviewing Jamal, the insider also just so happened to tout Veritas’ motto of “do something,” although that’s probably just a coincidence by their whistleblower and not something he may have been reading off of a script.
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Here’s a link to a message from Obama saying to be aware of the Channel 4 News dump
and the link to the Channel 4 News revelations…There are a couple videos I believe. @Windthin already has listed here (but I can not find it) 
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I did but I can’t find it either. I’ve watched it, though, and read the articles, and it’s wild stuff.
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Watch Party!!
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Early surge of Democratic mail voting sparks worry inside GOP
Of the more than 9 million voters who requested mail ballots through Monday in Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maine and Iowa, the five battleground states where such data is publicly available, 52 percent were Democrats. Twenty eight percent were Republicans and 20 percent were unaffiliated.
Additional internal Democratic and Republican Party data obtained by The Washington Post shows a similar trend in Ohio, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Wisconsin.
Even more alarming to some Republicans, Democrats are also returning their ballots at higher rates than GOP voters in two of those states where that information is available: Florida and North Carolina.
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Ok…that is great news.
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Another Trump lie gets shot down by the “Portland sheriff.”
I hope his deputy weighs in also.
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The first post-debate polls say Biden won
To get a better picture of how this will affect the race, though, we’ll have to wait longer.
To get a methodologically rigorous look at who “won” the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden — if winning is defined as helping their presidential campaign’s chances — you’ll have to wait a bit longer.
The indicators we have right now are necessarily incomplete and limited; they’re focus groups of tiny, handpicked samples of undecided voters, or polls of people who watched the debate rather than the electorate at large, or just pundits making stuff up. Plus, the true impact of a debate is often determined in the spin war fought in the hours and days afterward.
Keeping these limitations in mind, overall those preliminary findings so far look better for Biden.
CBS News and YouGov have been tracking respondents in battleground states, and they were able to quickly contact some of those respondents and ask those who watched the Tuesday debate what they thought. Overall, 48 percent said Biden won the debate, while 41 percent said Trump won, and 10 percent said it was a tie. As CBS elections and survey director Anthony Salvanto pointed out on air, this was pretty close to the support for each candidate going in.
Kabir Khanna of the CBS News Election and Survey Unit also points out that 42 percent of debate watchers said they thought worse of Trump afterward, and 24 percent said they thought better of him. In contrast, 32 percent said they thought worse of Biden, while 38 percent thought better of him.
CNN and SSRS also conducted an instant poll of debate watchers, and they found a more lopsided margin in Biden’s favor. Sixty percent of their respondents thought Biden won, while 28 percent thought Trump won.
Then we have the focus groups. Republican pollster Frank Luntz convened a focus group of 16 purportedly undecided voters from swing states, and in general they had kinder things to say about Biden’s performance than Trump’s.
Asked to describe Trump in one word or phrase, the responses were: “horrid,” “chaotic,” “unpolished,” “crackhead,” “ehh,” “puzzling,” “un-American,” “unhinged,” “an ass, but a confident ass,” “classic Trump,” “forceful,” “unhinged,” “bully,” “arrogant,” arrogant,” “typical.”
Then, asked to describe Biden, the responses were: “I was surprised at how well he did,” “better than expected,” “definitely more professional than Trump and I think he’s more a people person,” “competent,” “politician,” “showed restraint and compassion,” “politician,” “predictable,” “nice guy but lacking vision,” “coherent,” “leader,” “attentive and rehearsed,” “somewhat evasive,” “humanity and integrity,” “predictable,” “presidential.”
CNN convened its own focus group of undecided voters in Ohio, and most of them said that neither Biden nor Trump won the debate (there were about a dozen, and one said Biden won while two said Trump won).
The bigger picture, of course, is that Trump is currently losing to Biden, according to all the pre-debate polls. So even something like a draw in the debate would effectively be a win for Biden. Trump needed a strong performance to dramatically reshape the race, and the early indications are that he didn’t get that.
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All that for 6% of viewers? Amazing, I wonder what percentage of that 6% turned it off after the first five minutes watching the President yell at the former Vice President. That debate made all politics look bad. Is this the bottom yet because the next step on this path scares me.
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The master debaters in charge of the debates are discussing giving the moderator the power to cut Trump’s mic to maintain order.
Pelosi: Turning off Trump’s mic at the debate would have been the ‘simple thing to do’
Pelosi also said it was a “sad night for our country” because Trump refused to “disassociate himself from white supremacists.”
Trump-Biden debate was marred by interruptions. Should mics have been cut?
Would cutting off mics fix the presidential debates?
There were a number of calls to give moderators more control during last night’s rancorous first debate between President Trump and Joe Biden.
No, Chris Wallace Couldn’t Mute Trump’s Mic Yesterday
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Wow.
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I had to miss the debate last night, I saw a clip or two but I’m not sure it’s worth bothering with the whole thing. Trump shit the bed and that’s not new, but I guess this time it was long form enough that his press sec will have a harder time keeping up.
Seems a lot more people are becoming familiar with the term “gish gallop.”
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It was intense but unless you want to watch it for the absolute shitshow that it was, I would advise you to not. You didn’t miss anything important, believe me.
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