Giving a eulogy for late Congressman John Lewis on Thursday, former President Barack Obama took repeated shots at his successor, President Donald Trump.
“Today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of black Americans,” Obama said, according to The Independent. “George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators.”
Following weeks of violent unrest by rioters in Portland, Oregon, Trump authorized the deployment of dozens of federal agents to protect the federal courthouse.
Attorney General William Barr staunchly defended the move on Tuesday. “What unfolds nightly around the courthouse cannot reasonably be called protest. It is, by any objective measure, an assault on the government of the United States,” the AG said. “Since when is it okay to burn down a federal courthouse?”
Obama wasn’t done. The former president suggested Trump was trying to suppress votes of minorities, and hit the GOP for pushing basic voter ID measures.
“Even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darndest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision – even undermining the postal service in the run up to an election that’s going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick,” said Obama.
On Wednesday, Trump posted video of a CBS News experiment on mail-in voting. After numerous issues with obtaining the planted “votes,” there were still 3% of the votes that never materialized, which, as noted by CBS, could swing a real presidential election.
“CBS News This Morning” co-host Tony Dokoupil conducted the experiment, which included a fake P.O. Box to determine if ballots were adequately counted.
The Daily Wire reported on the mail-in experiment:
Dokoupil sent out 100 mock ballots in the Philadelphia area, using the same size envelope, weight, and class of mail to simulate genuine mail-in votes, albeit without the expedited “Election Mail” insignia. After the post office box was set up, 100 more faux ballots were sent out. “We’re gonna see somewhere between probably 80 and 100 million voters receiving their ballot that way,” a former Arizona election official told Dokoupil. After a week, 97% of the ballots Dokoupil mailed had been returned. “Three simulated persons, or 3% of voters, were effectively disenfranchised by mail by giving their ballots a week to arrive,” CBS noted. “In a close election, 3% could be pivotal.” Even four days after mailing the second round of fake ballots, 21% of the fake votes had failed to materialize. Almost half of states allow voters to receive ballots less than half-a-week before the election.
Trump has also highlighted the “disastrous” mail-in voting that has recently taken place in New York, which has been described as a “failure” by left-leaning publication The Atlantic. “The first large-scale test of mail-in voting in the pandemic has left one in five New Yorkers with their votes tossed out,” the outlet said.
“New York Mail-In voting is in a disastrous state of condition,” Trump posted via Twitter on Wednesday. “Votes from many weeks ago are missing – a total mess. They have no idea what is going on. Rigged Election. I told you so. Same thing would happen, but on massive scale, with USA. Fake News refuses to report!”
Obama said during the eulogy that he knows “this is a celebration of John’s life,” and that “there are some who might say we shouldn’t dwell on such things, but that’s why I’m talking about it. John Lewis devoted his time on this earth fighting the very attacks on democracy, and what’s best in America, that we’re seeing circulate right now.”
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Author: Amanda Prestigiacomo
Source: Daily Wire: BREAKING: Obama Takes Trump Shots During Hyper-Political Eulogy For John Lewis