US Joe Biden News Megathread - The Other Biden Derangement Syndrome Thread (with a side order of Fauci Derangement Syndrome)

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Let's pretend for one moment that he does die before the election, just for the funsies. What happens then? Will the nomination revert to option number 2, aka Bernie Sanders? Or will his running mate automatically replace him just the way Vice-President is supposted to step in after the Big Man in the White House chokes on a piece of matzo? Does he even have a running mate yet?
 
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Pence's former lead coronavirus task force aide slams Trump and endorses Biden in new video (archive)

Washington (CNN) — A former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence assailed President Donald Trump's response to the pandemic in a new video Thursday, adding to the growing list of former Trump administration officials who have criticized the President and, in several cases, endorsed his Democratic opponent Joe Biden.

Olivia Troye, who was a homeland security adviser to Pence and his lead staffer on the White House's coronavirus task force, charged in the two-minute video that Trump failed to protect the American public because he only cared about himself and getting reelected. Troye's criticism is particularly striking because of her role working on the coronavirus task force, which Pence leads.

"Towards the middle of February, we knew it wasn't a matter of if Covid would become a big pandemic here, it was a matter of when," said Troye, who left the White House in late July. "But the President didn't want to hear that, because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year, and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success?"

At one coronavirus task force meeting, Troye claimed that Trump suggested "maybe this Covid thing is a good thing."

"I don't like shaking hands with people. I don't have to shake hands with these disgusting people," Troye claimed Trump said at the meeting.

The White House responded swiftly to Troye's allegations by accusing her of being a disgruntled employee who didn't raise objections while on staff.

Trump told reporters on Thursday evening that he did not know Troye, but claimed she had been goaded into making her statement.

"(T)he people get a hold of her and say, 'Let's say some bad things about Donald Trump,' " Trump said.

He added, "Every time somebody leaves government -- 99% of the time I'm not going to know these people. And they leave on a basis of almost like it's a personal thing with me."

Pence also slammed his former aide.

"I haven't read her comments in any detail, but it reads to me like one more disgruntled employee who's left the White House and now has decided to play politics during an election year," Pence said of Troye, in response to a question from a reporter. "I think my staff has indicated that she made no comments like that when she was serving on our team here at the White House coronavirus task force."

Pence added he "couldn't be more proud of the work we've done all along the way and the leadership that President Trump has provided."

White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said, "Outside of generally watching the White House Coronavirus Taskforce from the overflow staff room, this disgruntled former detailee was never in private meetings with the President and her assertions have no basis in reality and are flat out inaccurate."

And Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Pence's national security adviser, said in a statement Troye was "disgruntled that her detail was cut short."

"Ms. Troye directly reported to me, and never once during her detail did she every express any concern regarding the Administration's response to the Coronavirus to anyone in her chain of command," Kellogg said.

Troye's video was released by Republican Voters Against Trump, a GOP group seeking to defeat Trump in November. Troye has also joined a new anti-Trump group formed by Republicans, the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform, or REPAIR, which says it's seeking to "refocus the Republican Party's priorities, and repair the American republic."

The group announced more than two dozen advisers on Thursday, including Troye and several ex-Trump officials who worked in the Department of Homeland Security: former DHS general counsel John Mitnick, former assistant secretary Elizabeth Neumann and Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff to former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Anthony Scaramucci, who was briefly White House communications director, and Josh Venable, who was chief of staff to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, are also part of the group.

Taylor, the group's co-founder and a CNN contributor, said that REPAIR is linked to Republican Voters Against Trump, but while that organization is focused on defeating Trump, REPAIR is not endorsing Biden and is looking to what comes after Trump leaves office.

"We will be the biggest group so far of former Trump administration officials who have come together to say we need to move past Donald Trump and move the party and the country beyond his presidency," Taylor said.
Republicans criticizing Trump is nothing new, and there have been GOP voices attacking him since his 2016 campaign began. Republican-led groups like the Lincoln Project are now actively campaigning against the President in 2020.

But in recent months there have been a growing number of officials who worked in the Trump administration and subsequently criticized the President. Former national security adviser John Bolton's book gave an unflattering portrait of Trump, and both former Defense Secretary James Mattis and former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats offered brutal assessments of Trump in Bob Woodward's new book "Rage."

Several Republicans have gone even further and endorsed Biden, including Scaramucci, Neumann and Taylor.
Troye, who took a job at the National Insurance Crime Bureau when she left the Trump administration, endorsed Biden in the video released Thursday. She has worked at multiple federal agencies throughout her career on counterterrorism and intelligence issues, including for the vice president since 2018. She said that she decided to leave the administration because she felt her work wasn't making a difference thanks to Trump.

"Does it matter," she said, "because no matter how hard you work and what you do, the President is going to do something that is detrimental to keeping Americans safe, which is why you signed up for this role?"

In her farewell email to colleagues, which was obtained by CNN, Troye wrote she had "witnessed firsthand how dedicated and committed all of you have been to doing the right thing."

"Thank you for entrusting me to be your rock during this hard time. I will always be rooting for you knowing that you will continue to fight the good fight," she said.
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Trump needs to stick to the Barbies, and ditch the harpies as hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
 
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So tell me, who didn't see this coming?
tl;dr: Biden more presidential, ready to lead, and not losing it. Trump still bad, btw.

Biden shows the qualities Trump lacks at CNN town hall

(CNN) — Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Thursday showed the empathy and fact-based thinking at a CNN town hall that President Donald Trump has been lacking, both at his own similar event two days before and throughout his botched management of a pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans.

At a unique drive-in event that reflected the reality of America's socially distanced election season, Biden lacerated the President over the pandemic, became apoplectic several times about Trump's reported comments that US war dead were "suckers" and "losers," and marveled that in a recent poll, foreigners expressed more trust in Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping than in the President of the United States. The former vice president, in his element near his boyhood home of Scranton, Pennsylvania, also displayed the kind of sympathetic connection with voters that Trump, more at home in his rowdy rallies, struggles to approach.

Biden offered more compassion in a few moments for the victims of the Covid-19 disaster that has crushed the rhythms of normal life than the President has for most of this year.

Biden also seized on Bob Woodward's revelation that the President understood the severity of the coronavirus back in January and February but did not share the details with the American people.

"The idea that you're going to not tell people what you've been told, that this virus is incredibly contagious, seven times more contagious than the flu, you breathe the air, you get it sucked in your lungs. He knew it and did nothing, it's close to criminal," Biden said of the President.

While Biden offered coherence and demonstrated a facility of detail at the event, the central question of the election is whether Americans are looking for this kind of traditional presidential leadership. It's still possible sufficient voters who prefer Trump's cultural arguments rooted in race or his hardline law-and-order or economic message will give him an electoral college victory.

Thursday's town hall came after yet another week when Trump has politicized his management of the pandemic and undermined government advice on mask wearing and social distancing.

The evening developed as a clear contrast to Trump's own town hall on ABC two nights earlier, which was a flurry of misinformation and unjustified and callous self-celebration on the pandemic, featuring a blizzard of lies.

Biden is far from a perfect candidate. The former vice president, who appears fit but has aged in recent years, sometimes interrupts himself, or loses his train of thought. He interrupted one question from a woman who is the chief financial officer of her family's potato farm in Pennsylvania who complained about regulations -- though quickly apologized when she objected.

Biden came up with some misstatements of his own, for instance accusing Trump of holding the Bible upside down at his notorious photo-op outside a church opposite the White House. And it's easy, too, now for Biden to ignore the demands of the left-wing of his party on issues like fracking and health care while the liberal base is compliant in hopes of ousting Trump. Republicans are trying to make the case that it will be different when Democrats are in power.

But Biden also came across as a serious person who had been briefed by experts on crucial details of the pandemic — on the lack of vaccine testing on children, for instance — and who had internalized the information and formed a strategy. The President has often ignored the complexities of the virus and prioritized his own political goals -- never more so than when he publicly rebuked Dr. Robert Redfield, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, on Wednesday after he gave an extended timeline for public vaccinations.

Biden also took on Trump's argument that mask wearing and local shutdowns recommended by health experts to suppress the virus are an infringement of basic American freedoms. In a rare evening of dueling events in this most stunted of campaigns, Trump told a rally audience in Wisconsin Thursday night, "Your home has become your prison."

"I will tell you what takes away your freedom, not being able to see your kid, not being able to go to the football game or baseball game, not seeing your mom or dad sick in the hospital, not being able to do things, that's what is costing us our freedom," Biden said. "And it's been the failure of this President to deal with this virus."

Biden counters Trump's attacks on his mental fitness
Compared to Trump, who is prone to going off on wild tangents, Biden's arguments mostly flowed on logical lines. And unlike the President, who remained seated throughout his town hall event, Biden stood for the entire town hall, moderated by CNN's Anderson Cooper. The President escalated his claims that Biden, who at 77 is only three years his senior, is not mentally able to take on the demands of the presidency.

"I mean I'm watching what they're doing with Biden where he's using teleprompters, 'Move it up, move it up, I can't see, I can't see.' He's shot! He's shot," Trump said at his rally.
Yet the impression given by Biden on Thursday night was not recognizable from the President's mockery, raising the possibility that Trump's efforts to portray his rival as senile will backfire.

Biden made a particularly strong pitch on the economy, defining the election as a "campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue," in a reference to the President's history as a wealthy Manhattan real estate tycoon. Following criticism that his convention did too little to focus on blue collar issues that Trump rode to victory through the Midwest in 2016, Biden fumed that people had noted he'd be the first recent president without an Ivy League degree.

Again and again, the tragedy-scarred Biden absorbed the stories of loss and deprivation of his questioners -- one, for instance, by a man who works in a cancer center and doesn't even earn $15 an hour -- by looking down and shaking his head, as if the emotional blow was his own.

He behaved in many ways like a President would be expected to behave in such circumstances, responding with logic, calm, humility and suggestions for action. In that, the town hall was almost a relic of a previous political age, not marked by presidential tantrums, incessant attempts to divide and demagogic appeals to a political base. Biden also sought to defuse the power of Trump's law-and-order arguments by again condemning all violence -- and wondered why Trump had not done the same in criticizing White supremacists.

While Trump is still trying to tear Washington down, Biden assumed the position of a long-term establishment player seeking to use government for the common good. It was another reminder of how this election has reversed the insider-incumbent and challenger-outsider dynamic. If sufficient voters embrace Biden's vision of a future distinguished by more peaceful politics, it is difficult to see how the President can find a decisive line of attack to disqualify Biden in the six weeks remaining before Election Day. If there is still a boiling resentment at elites and Washington that can surmount the impact of a disastrously mismanaged national crisis on the part of the President, he may be as good as his word in finding sympathetic voters who are escaping the attention of pollsters.

The key test of the strategies of both men will come in less than two weeks, when they meet face-to-face for a crucial first debate for which this week's town halls are effectively a warm-up act.
The Trump side of the contrast was on display at the Wisconsin rally -- where a crowd packed in an aircraft hanger with little mask-wearing reflected the gulf in worldviews between Trump and Biden, who walked on stage in Pennsylvania wearing a mask.

The President raged against the coronavirus restrictions recommended by the medical experts and scientists in his own administration, suggesting that the media imposes a double standard, condemning his rallies but not condemning protests. As some in Trump's crowd held campaign signs that said "Peaceful Protester," the President once again said that he had started calling his events "protests" instead of "rallies."

"We don't call them rallies anymore because you know, you're not allowed to have a political rally for more than 10 people. You're not allowed to go to church, you're not allowed to meet, you're not allowed to talk to anybody, you have to stay in a prison," Trump said.
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I have to pull Biden on this one. Do you guys smell something? Because the gas is lit!
 
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Zero Day Defense said:
The moderator isn't there to assess the truth of statements.
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That may have been the case 20 yrs ago, but in the day/age of instant info and the hatred of all things Drumpf you know these guys are going to get instant fact checking on shit the moment it's said.

Biden will be given a pass as the AI will be unable to parse his mumblemouth words fast enough before his time is up for the next question.
 
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"*slurp*, Remember, Anderson? Back fifteen, twenty years ago, we talked about this. In... in... in San Francisco, it's all about, well, y'know, gay... y... gay... gay bath houses, and everybo... it's all about round-the-clock sex. It's all... c'mon, man."


 
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Drain Todger said:
"*slurp*, Remember, Anderson? Back fifteen, twenty years ago, we talked about this. In... in... in San Francisco, it's all about, well, y'know, gay... y... gay... gay bath houses, and everybo... it's all about round-the-clock sex. It's all... c'mon, man."


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WTF... this aired on National TV? Retire him immediately.

Theres a world where this guy is the next president of the US. TDS might do something more than provide laughs. Who knew.
 
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Reverend said:
Pence has the patience of a Pastor. He can outlast glaciers with his stare of indifference. I highly doubt he will come at Kamala with anything but highly proven, irrefutable, facts and admissions that not even CNN can weasel their way through.
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Weasel their way through? Wow, welcome to earth. You can say something isn't true even if your own network reported it yesterday. See: newt gingrich mentioning soros on fox.
Or the "debate moderators" saying romney was wrong about something that was true.
Seriously, are you new here?
 
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Senior Biden campaign cybersecurity expert participated in racist internet troll group Gay N----- Association of America
A senior cybersecurity adviser to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign spent years affiliating with a hacking organization and boasted on a personal blog about breaking into her neighbor's computers.

Jackie Singh, who joined the Biden campaign in July as a senior cyber incident responder and threat analyst, was an affiliate of the hacking organization the Gay N----- Association of America, once headed by white nationalist Andrew Auernheimer.

Logs obtained by the Washington Examiner from various Internet Relay Chat rooms, a messaging platform dating back to the 1980s which is popular with hackers, show Singh as a contributor to a toxic culture of overt racism. In August, Singh wrote on Twitter that her role with the Biden campaign focused on "working tirelessly to ensure the digital safety of this campaign."

From 2009 to 2016, Singh, under the username "jax," routinely spammed advertising for the GNAA, which relied upon shock messaging to attract members, in IRC channels. Screenshots show that Singh used the same handle, "jax.," on Stickam, a defunct streaming platform popular in the mid-2000s.

Evidence providing a picture of Singh's background raises questions about the vetting process of the Biden campaign in its hiring process, seven weeks before the Democratic nominee faces President Trump for the keys to the White House.

“People who are well respected, don’t come from trolling or hacking groups. There’s been a culture shift there. Companies don’t want to hire people with sketchy backgrounds," said Gene Spafford, a leading cybersecurity expert and Purdue University computer science professor. "They want people who are trustworthy. There are insider threat problems."

The GNAA, described by the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium as an "extremist right wing terrorist group," has claimed responsibility for a variety of attacks on webpages and businesses, including on then-candidate Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign page, and vandalizing the Wikipedia pages for Hillary and Bill Clinton in 2016.

Most of the chat logs obtained by the Washington Examiner come from the #2600 IRC channel, a popular hangout for hackers and those interested in cybersecurity. A 2017 University of Arizona study described the channel as a "highly active hacker community which quarterly publishes hacker magazines, organizes monthly hacker meetings, and regularly provides a forum for hacking knowledge dissemination, hacker events, computer underground organization, etc."

Throughout the logs seen by the Washington Examiner, Singh repeatedly uses racial slurs and off-color jokes in conversation with other members. In one instance, she expresses frustration that the use of the N-word had been banned from the IRC channel. Other times, Singh justifies the use of the word, recounting frustrations with job recruiters.

Archived tweets from Singh's personal account show her interacting with Auernheimer in 2015. Tweets from October 2015 show Singh referring to the two of them as "friends."

Auernheimer, who reportedly lives in Eastern Europe, is an avowed white nationalist who sports a swastika tattoo on his chest. In 2017, he worked as the webmaster for the neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer. Following the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting by a white supremacist that left 22 dead, Auernheimer wrote that “random violence is not detrimental to the cause, because we need to convince Americans that violence against nonwhites is desirable or at least not something worth opposing."

In the #2600 chat, Singh would often link to tweets from her personal account boasting about how she would troll politicians such as former Florida Gov. and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. Photos provided to the Washington Examiner show Singh in 2018 at a #telephreak party, a phone-based hacking collective affiliated with #2600. Other photos showed Singh at events with other #2600 members.

Outside of the IRC channel, Singh briefly maintained a personal LiveJournal blog under the pseudonym "jax0m," where she discussed issues with her first marriage and frustrations in the workplace. The blog has since been deleted, but an archive remains viewable on the WayBack Machine. In a post dated Jan. 12, 2005, Singh boasts about hacking into the laptop of her neighbor, a purported Halliburton employee, and describing the victim with homophobic slurs.

The Washington Examiner asked the Biden campaign about Singh's history in the IRC chat, as well as the contents of her blog and her public interactions with Auernheimer. Despite repeated outreach for comment, the Biden campaign would not speak to the issue on the record but did provide a statement from Singh.

"These accusations are categorically untrue and the words falsely attributed to me are anathema to the values I've embraced and championed in my life," she said. "I've never been a member of that group, and the chat logs have been faked and promoted by individuals as part of an ongoing online harassment campaign."

Singh did not offer comment on her personal blog, which experts say would be nearly impossible to falsify, her public interactions with Auernheimer on Twitter, or multiple pictures over the years of her at social gatherings with #2600 members in subsequent questions. The Washington Examiner also asked Singh how she could be certain the IRC transcripts were falsified when their tone matched conversations she shared on her own blog; its existence she never denied. Singh also did not offer comment on whether she knew Auernheimer was a white nationalist, despite the fact that he had written racist screeds on far-right websites a year prior to their last interaction on Twitter.

The Washington Examiner never accused Singh of being a member of the GNAA, only that she regularly interacted with and occupied chatrooms where the group congregated. Five different #2600 affiliates testified to the veracity of the IRC logs.

According to Singh’s LinkedIn page, earlier in her career, she was a VSAT and network engineer for the defense contracting firm M.C. Dean, based out of Balad, Iraq. Most governmental consulting roles were overseas, ranging from stints in Iraq to Djibouti.

Singh returned stateside in 2013 to work as an information assurance security engineer for the government contracting firm Science Applications International Corporation. She followed that with roles with the Alexandria, Virginia-based cybersecurity firm Mandiant and then at Spyglass Security, an information security advisory firm she founded in 2018.

As the CEO of Spyglass Security, Singh was often quoted in articles about cybersecurity by outlets, including the Wall Street Journal or NBC. On the firm's website, Singh bills herself as having "15 years of global technical experience" and offers guidance on "an organization's ability to more quickly and effectively detect, respond, and contain targeted attacks."

Spafford, of Purdue University, said Singh’s racially charged posts should have made her untouchable for a presidential campaign.

"Normally or traditionally hired into a sensitive area, they're going to have to pass a background check. They have to very possibly get a security clearance with a polygraph, the FBI is going to do an extensive background check," said Spafford. "Somebody who shows up with red flags would not be allowed to occupy a position of sensitivity."

Cybersecurity expert Harri Hurtsi agreed.

"To me, the first question is that if this person is working in a security role, they should have had a background check of sorts," she said. "I think the campaigns, generally speaking, are very relaxed. It’s shocking to me, the campaigns have many lapses in security."
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Oh. I guess that dude wasn't just making shit up after all.
 
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>Biden has GNAA now

pffftffftt.jpeg


This election year keeps getting funnier holy shit
 
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Who the fuck are the 'shy' Biden voters? Trump voters are being hit with bricks and shot in the street for wearing a MAGA hat. Voting for Biden is the mainstream position. What the fuck are they even talking about?
 
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Cyclonus said:
Why the fuck is this forum so pro Trump? Didn't he want to take your guns off you?
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Wut?

He told the ATF to (effectively) ban bump-stocks and while I don't appreciate that in the slightest, they're for fun and not practical use anyway. That's it.

Compare it to Biden's "we protect ducks more than our children, ban capacities over 3 rounds now" program.
 
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