With Election Day just three days away, the White House is again slamming one of its own top health experts on the coronavirus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci got candid in a new interview with the Washington Post about failures of the U.S. coronavirus response, saying, “We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation… All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

He warned of rising death tolls and, while being careful in how he talked about the president, said Joe Biden is “taking it seriously from a public health perspective” while Trump is “looking at it from a different perspective… the economy and reopening the country.”

Fauci said the task force briefings have become less frequent and had some tough words in particular for Scott Atlas.

White House spokesman Judd Deere responded to Fauci in a statement accusing him of being part of “The Swamp”:

Deere said Fauci “knows the risks [from the coronavirus] today are dramatically lower than they were only a few months ago.”

“It’s unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci, a senior member of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force and someone who has praised President Trump’s actions throughout this pandemic, to choose three days before an election to play politics,” Deere said. “As a member of the Task Force, Dr. Fauci has a duty to express concerns or push for a change in strategy, but he’s not done that, instead choosing to criticize the President in the media and make his political leanings known by praising the President’s opponent — exactly what the American people have come to expect from The Swamp.”

Deere added that the president “always put the well-being of the American people first,” citing his decision to cut off travel from China, his early shutdown of the country and his mobilization of the private sector to deliver critical supplies and develop treatments and vaccines.

Meanwhile, Atlas indirectly responded on Twitter going after Fauci too:

#Insecurity #EmbarrassingHimself #Exposed #CantThrowABall #NoTimeForPolitics

— Scott W. Atlas (@SWAtlasHoover) November 1, 2020

President Donald Trump tweeted in support of a viral video of his fans swarming one of Joe Biden’s campaign buses, forcing Democrats to cancel several rallies in Austin, Texas.

On Tuesday night, Trump tweeted out the video with the caption “I LOVE TEXAS!” His post came right before his fourth rally of the day in Pennsylvania.

I LOVE TEXAS! pic.twitter.com/EP7P3AvE8L

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020

The campaign bus, which was blocked in by Trump supporters on a Texas highway, reportedly carried congressional candidates Wendy Davis and Roland Gutierrez, and Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX).

The incident, which occurred in the newly-recognized battleground state of Texas, was recorded and uploaded by several other people on the road. The Daily Beast reported the cars — mostly trucks donning American and Trump flags – tried to slow down and run the bus off the road. Biden staffers ended up calling Austin police who eventually helped the bus continue on the highway.

According to CNN’s Jake Tapper, Biden’s campaign responded by saying the president’s supporters put “staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way.”

The Biden campaign says Trump supporters in Texas put their “staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way.“

Here’s more from a local news source about an incident on the highwayhttps://t.co/g66rnAjPG2

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 31, 2020

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden cracked a series of jokes at his opponent’s expense at a rally in Detroit, MI Saturday, mocking President Donald Trump’s claims that he’s a “stable genius” and “perfect physical specimen” — plus some quips about the president’s infamous hairstyle.

Biden’s Detroit rally was part of a multi-state whirlwind of campaign stops for both candidates as Election Day looms ever closer on Tuesday. The former vice president was introduced at today’s events by former President Barack Obama, who dropped his own jokes at Trump’s expense, including asking if the president’s “obsession” with large rallies was because no one went to his birthday parties as a kid.

Many of Biden’s jokes were lighthearted, but others were clearly meant to emphasize his view that Trump was unfit to be president.

“The president likes to portray himself as a tough guy, the macho man,” said Biden. “But when was the last time you saw a President of the United States literally being laughed at by the world leaders at the United Nations? The entire U.N. laughed at him. When’s the last time you saw a President of the United States attend a NATO meeting, being openly mocked by the leaders of the NATO countries making fun of him?”

“Tough guy my –” Biden cut himself off with a sly smirk, as the audience laughed and cheered. “– my word,” he finished, opting for the G-rated word instead of the one that was implied.

Biden also mocked Trump as “Vladimir Putin’s puppy” for being “too scared to challenge him” about the reported bounties that Russia put on American soldiers in Afghanistan.

“What a total embarrassment,” said Biden about Trump. “My God.”

“By the way, today he said he is a, I think he said, he is a perfect physical specimen,” said Biden as he feigned solemnity and made the sign of the cross as the audience laughed.

“Maybe that’s why he thought he was able to write off $70,000 on his taxes because he needed special haircare,” Biden continued. Someone in the crowd shouted, “He should get a refund!”

“Seriously. $70,000 written off for hair care? I tell you what, man. I hardly have any hair but I’d rather have what I have.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, unloaded on President Donald Trump, White House pandemic adviser Scott Atlas and the United States’ Covid-19 response in a new interview with The Washington Post Friday night.

Fauci, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said he hasn’t spoken to Trump since early October when the president tested positive for the coronavirus. With his role within the administration’s pandemic response diminished, Fauci candidly ripped Trump’s rhetoric around the virus.

“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt,” Fauci said to the Washington Post. “It’s not a good situation. All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

The United States has topped its Covid-19 daily cases several times over the last week. On Thursday, the country neared around 90,000 new cases in 24 hours, a new record high via Johns Hopkins University.

Fauci also went on to attack Atlas, the same doctor that Deborah Birx reportedly called for being removed from the task force for not giving “sound advice.”

“I have real problems with that guy,” Fauci said, referring to Atlas. “He’s a smart guy who’s talking about things that I believe he doesn’t have any real insight or knowledge or experience in. He keeps talking about things that when you dissect it out and parse it out, it doesn’t make any sense.”

In response to Fauci’s scathing remarks, White House spokesman Judd Deere accused Fauci of being a part of “The Swamp.”

“It’s unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci,” Deere said. “As a member of the Task Force, Dr. Fauci has a duty to express concerns or push for a change in strategy, but he’s not done that, instead choosing to criticize the President in the media and make his political leanings known by praising the President’s opponent — exactly what the American people have come to expect from The Swamp.”

Nate Silver wrote Saturday on FiveThirtyEight that there’s clearly a chance President Donald Trump could win reelection, but he said for the president to win it would require more than a “normal-sized polling error.?

As of this posting FiveThirtyEight has Joe Biden favored to win the election, with the Trump only having a ten percent chance of winning.

Many Democrats are worried and anxious about the polls being wrong, though Silver says that “if the polls were exactly as wrong as in 2016 in exactly the same states,” Biden would still win.

He writes that “a Trump win is plausible” but “a 2016-style polling error wouldn’t be enough for Trump to win”:

Trump isn’t in as strong a position as he was in 2016. As you can see in the table above, he’s polling worse than Clinton in every single battleground state. Polls can be wrong — indeed, the whole point of our probabilistic forecast is to tell you the chances of that — but they’re more likely to be wrong when a candidate’s lead is narrower. As of right now, Biden’s lead is large enough that Trump’s chances of winning are 10 percent, considerably lower than the 35 percent chance Trump had at this point in 2016.

Silver puts a Trump win in the “zone of plausibility,” beyond “the normal-polling-error zone” but not in “the outer reaches.”

The current FiveThirtyEight average of national polls has Biden leading Trump 52 – 43.4.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to spend most of his day in Pennsylvania Saturday, hitting a total of FOUR rallies just days before the general election. After a noon rally is in Newton, a second is in Reading, Pennsylvania, and a third in Butler county, his fourth and final rally of the day is set to kick off at 8:15 PM EDT in Montoursville, Pennsylvania.

Montoursville is near Williamsport, PA, home of the Little League World Series and is roughly equidistant from Wilkes-Barre and State College.

The Trump campaign is clearly targeting Pennsylvania since The Keystone State is perhaps the most important state in a path to 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Polls show Trump currently trailing former Vice President Joe Biden. The most recent poll from Muehlenberg has Biden +5, but there are a few polls that show the race closer.

Biden is spending his day campaign in Michigan where he is set to host two rallies in Flint and Detroit.

Trump’s rally in Montoursville, is set to kick off at 8:15, eastern.

Watch above via the Trump campaign.

With 3 days to go until Election Day, former Vice President Joe Biden still has the lead against President Donald Trump, and though the candidates have been hard at the trail, changes in polling the last week or so have been practically glacial, when there are changes at all. Because many polls don’t put out new results on the weekend, this will be a briefer update. In any case, here’s what’s happening in the polls today:

The National Picture

It’s important to understand that the FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics polling averages, the leading aggregates of polls, are very different from each other. You can read about those differences here.

As of this writing, the RCP average has Biden up +7.8 over Trump, at 51.3 to 43.5. This is the same as yesterday, mainly because today is a Saturday and there is less data to update with. in fact none of the national polls used for the RCP average have released new data since Friday.

But that doesn’t mean NOTHING has changed. Looking at the FiveThirtyEight average, we find Biden up +8.6 nationally over Trump, at 52% to 43.4%, a point two percent increase for Trump from yesterday.

Still, most national polls included in such averages, and most daily trackers, aren’t putting out Halloween results. But there are results from other sources.

Battleground States

CNN on Saturday published a new result from their latest polls, conducted by SSRS, which shows Biden ahead in both Wisconsin and Michigan, for example. They also have Biden up 4 over Trump in Arizona, one of the most important battles for Trump on election day.

The Halloween results are Biden in the average of the “Top Battleground” states that RCP tracks, up by more than 3 over Trump.

Pennsylvania’s Biden lead narrowed by .1 since Friday, but Biden still has a 3.7 lead in the RCP average for Biden. President Trump campaigned extensively in Pennsylvania on Saturday attempting to move that needle further.

Perhaps startlingly, RCP’s battleground tracker has moved Arizona to a +0.1 for Trump over Biden, having just moved the state to a tie on Friday. Later on Saturday, the average changed AGAIN to .1 for Biden. So … that’s happening.

Morning.

Evening.

That’s a pretty perfect microcosm of the overall picture: it changes a lot, but only by a little.

Meanwhile, a new poll that just came out on Saturday evening from the Des Moines Register has Trump leading Biden 48 – 41.

The Senate Picture

RCP’s forecast still shows Democrats with a shot at 54 seats, while FiveThirtyEight likewise has Democrats with a chance at landing on a majority. Today’s update shows an 80% likelihood of landing at 48 – 56 Democrat seats in the Senate.

In addition to the presidential results mentioned above, the new Des Moines Register polling shows incumbent Sen. Joni Ernst leading her Democratic opponent Theresa Greenfield 46 – 42.

Every day closer to the election has potential to upset the polling, as we head into the last remaining days for each candidate to make their case. With early voting in HUGE swing already, and mail-in votes in the mail, and with a polarized public less prone to changes of heart, each days tracking and update becomes to some extent less able to reflect the sentiment of the voters.

But it does reflect the mood of voters, and that will be one of the most important factors of all when it comes to turnout and day-of voting results. So check back with us daily for updates on the state of play as we finish the last few days of a grueling season.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Former U.S. president Barack Obama went viral on Saturday night for draining a 3-pointer before a rally in Detroit.

In a video captured by a Olivia Raisner, a traveling digital director for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, Obama was shown hitting the corner 3-pointer at Northwestern High School’s gymnasium in Michigan.

After a group of people shouted in excitement when Obama made the shot, he exclaimed, “That’s what I do,” before beginning his second rally of the day.

so this was absolutely insane pic.twitter.com/W4JL6LQZxq

— Olivia Raisner (@OliviaRaisner) October 31, 2020

Obama was no stranger to showing off his skills on the court during his presidency. In 2008, he drained a 3-pointer from the top on his first try in Kuwait. In 2010, Obama also played CBS’s Clark Kellogg in a game of HORSE. Obama won the pick-up game against Kellogg, the former 8th overall pick in the 1982 NBA Draft.

Even the President knows to end on a make… https://t.co/NasRlWCOj0

— Trae Young (@TheTraeYoung) October 31, 2020

Obama called game…yeesh pic.twitter.com/CWMKm1vjSY

— Johnny Verhovek (@JTHVerhovek) October 31, 2020

It’s a walk off. Barack called game.

“That’s what I do.”

44, y’all.

Vote Biden/Harris…pic.twitter.com/eGGCjbGMlv

— Rex Chapman (@RexChapman) October 31, 2020

Even President Obama gotta end on a make (via @BarackObama) pic.twitter.com/VRLa8tuNk7

— Overtime (@overtime) October 31, 2020

Obama is too NICEE SPLIKAK! pic.twitter.com/eMNUxAfWb0

— Maxisnicee (@maxisnicee) October 31, 2020

Just call him Bucket Obama https://t.co/KKgcDkmgZy pic.twitter.com/S17g9upTtN

— Leigh Ellis (@LeighEllis) October 31, 2020

Biden and Obama have been campaigning in swing state Michigan all day on Saturday. During the two’s first rally in Flint, Michigan, Obama railed against President Donald Trump and his super spreader rallies.

“What is his obsession, by the way, with crowd size? You noticed that?” Obama said in his first rally of the day. “He’s always worried, this is the one measure he has of success.”

CNN’s Anderson Cooper went off on President Donald Trump Friday night for a claim he has been making at recent rallies about the coronavirus.

Trump said at a rally Friday that “our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid.”

Cooper, after again calling out people who still won’t wear masks, slammed Trump for continuing to “hold events making it easy for the virus to spread.”

“The president is all-in on lying about the virus now,” Cooper said. “He’s telling crowds and maskless people they are social distancing and wearing masks. He’s saying the virus is going away. It’s not. It’s spreading. He says the doctors are lying about the death toll. They aren’t. The death toll is actually underreported.”

After showing the clip of Trump talking about doctors, Cooper said, “No, it’s not true. Doctors and nurses are risking their lives. They very possibly saved the life of that man right there and this is how our president treats them, out frontline heroes.”

“It’s not enough for our self-described wartime president to get our fellow citizens hating and fighting one another,” he continued. “He’s now trying to get us to turn on the very people who are defending us on the frontlines, fighting this virus. His supporters nod their heads there, they cheer and they jeer. That’s what we have become.”

He brought up rising covid deaths and said, “No, Mr. President, it is not that we are testing more, because in some states with your encouragement we’re actually testing less. It’s not the doctors trying to earn extra cash from people dying, faking death counts, which is obscene. They’re risking their lives along with nurses and hospital staffs to save others.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

Fox News not only claimed victory in cable news primetime ratings on Thursday, it also beat out three broadcast networks — ABC, NBC, and CBS — in overall audience.

According to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News attracted 5.36 million total viewers in Thursday primetime. That easily surpassed its cable news rivals MSNBC and CNN, which pulled in 2.93 million and 2.09 million overall viewers, respectively. But it also romped past ABC’s 3.96 million, NBC’s 2.77 million, and CBS’ 2.95 million total viewers.

In the coveted 25 – 54 age demographic, Fox News averaged 977,000 viewers from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. on Thursday, also good enough for first place in cable news. CNN came in second with 563,000 viewers in the demo, and MSNBC trailed behind with 452,000 A25 – 54 viewers.

Leading the Fox News primetime charge was Tucker Carlson Tonight, which beat out every other show on television except for Fox broadcast network’s Thursday night football. Fox’s 8:00 p.m. flagship show hit 1.10 million in the demo and 6.13 million overall viewers. Carlson‘s successor at 9:00 p.m., Hannity, came in right behind its lead-in, making it the third-watched show on television on Thursday, with 976,000 A25 – 54 viewers and 5.38 million in total. In all, Fox swept the top five shows in cable news in the demo and seven out of the top 10.

In total day ratings, MSNBC and CNN swapped second and third places in overall and A25 – 54 ratings, respectively, while Fox News took first in both on Thursday. Fox scored 515,000 viewers in the demo, while CNN reached 345,000 and MSNBC 289,000 viewers. But in overall audience, MSNBC’s 1.75 million mark beat out CNN’s 1.41 million but came in behind Fox’s 2.81 million.

Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned on CNBC Friday night about coronavirus “accelerating across the country” as new figures show the U.S. has reached a new record high number of daily cases — roughly 97,000.

Our daily update is published. States reported a new record number of cases—97k—and 1.4 million tests. Currently, 47k people are hospitalized. There were 933 COVID-19 deaths reported. pic.twitter.com/JWmi3R3Ks4

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) October 30, 2020

Gottlieb told Shepard Smith “we’re right at the beginning of the steep part of the epidemic curve, we’ve seen these episodes before,” and warned that we’re going to see an acceleration of cases in weeks.

He said December will likely be “the toughest month” and that “we’ll be forced to take tougher mitigation steps right around Thanksgiving.”

“Right now today we reported 97,000 cases. We probably will cross 100,000 maybe tomorrow, but certainly by next week,” Gottlieb said. “The reason why it doesn’t feel very bad in most parts of the country right now is because it’s moderately bad everywhere, as opposed to the epidemics before that were centered in New York and n the South, this one is more confluent across the entire country.”

“Well, if it’s moderately bad everywhere,” Smith asked, “and the trend is up, then are we anticipating really bad everywhere?”

“I think that’s the risk,” Gottlieb said.

Smith also asked about a realistic vaccine timeline. Gottlieb expressed hope that if results from current trials are released this month, “you could see an authorization for a vaccine for a high-risk population, largely an older population, happen at some point this year.”

“It’s really probably going to be February or March before that first tranche of patients that are eligible to receive a vaccine actually have protective immunity,” he added.

You can watch above, via CNBC.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman pleaded for Americans to send an unmistakable message in the 2020 election, one that would include Texas going blue in a landslide victory for Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Only that magnitude of victory, he said, would be enough to “break the fever” and enable the Republican Party to throw off the “cult of personality” around President Donald Trump.

Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the Times columnist said “the only thing that can save us” is an overwhelming majority of American voters backing Biden to preserve the future of the country’s democracy.

“Anderson, if you were my genie and you said ‘Tom, you get one wish, what would it be that would be the greatest thing for America?’ The greatest thing for America would be is if Joe Biden win Texas,” Friedman said. “It would break this fever in the Republican Party. It would blow that party up.”

Texas, while changing demographically for decades, has emerged as a real battleground state in 2020, with Trump narrowly leading Biden by roughly two percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics average. What’s more, the early vote in Texas has seen massive turnout so far, and has already surpassed the entire 2016 vote total.

Winning Texas would push Biden’s electoral college victory to more than 200 points, and, Friedman projected, could lead to the formation of a “national unity” government of progressives, liberals, and a few moderate Republicans.

he sane moderate Republicans, I think, would reemerge. I could see them and Biden forming a national unity government that would include everyone from AOC to a few Republicans on the other.

“The Trumpers, Donald Jr. and Donald Sr. and the whole clown car could go on Fox and do their thing and start their own network, whatever they want,” he said. “It’ll force the reckoning, if they lose Texas. That would be such a shock to the system that it would be the same kind of shock that two wins that Obama gave them that they were supposed to force a reckoning.”

“Trump just derailed that whole rethink of Republicanism,” Friedman went on, “and turned it into the cult of Trump, which has been so unhealthy for the conservative movement, for conservative ideas. And so unhealthy for the country.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

President Donald Trump has been doing a lot of rallies in the final leg of the campaign, in a number of key states, and generally going for at least an hour at most of his campaign stops. The Trump campaign has contrasted those big rallies with the events Joe Biden has held.

Those Trump rallies have not followed social-distancing guidelines, but the rally he held in Minnesota Friday night was smaller than usual because of state limits on gatherings. The president publicly blasted those state officials for limiting the crowd at his rally to only 250 people.

Keith Ellison Restricts Freedom of Assembly of Political Opponents https://t.co/WAPPsfQrWk via @BreitbartNews We were planning for as many as 25,000 people in Minnesota. Now the Governor, at the last moment, will only allow the first 250 people to attend. Riots plus Omar = WIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2020

There was an overflow crowd at the venue, which the president briefly addressed prior to the rally, but the rally was obviously smaller than the normal Trump rally and there were social distancing measures in place.

Trump’s speech lasted only 21 minutes, which stuck out to a number of reporters covering it:

Trump appears very tired at this rally in MN, slowly moving through his prepared remarks.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 30, 2020

The president is either tired or dispirited by the limited crowd. He spoke for only 20 minutes. No dancing to YMCA as he departs.

— Chris Megerian (@ChrisMegerian) October 30, 2020

Remarks from @realDonaldTrump lasted a mere 21 minutes.

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) October 30, 2020

The president was subdued and moving fast through his speech tonight in MN. The difference between the two earlier ones? The crowd was restricted by state officials over covid concerns. No big crowd, less interest in the speech.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 30, 2020

Trump just spoke for less than 30 minutes to a crowd in Rochester, MN, after lamenting at several points today that local authorities would only allow 250 people into the rally of the thousands he said wanted to attend.

— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) October 30, 2020

Not even a half hour ! I’ve never seen Trump look less interested https://t.co/G21ImftINL

— John Santucci (@Santucci) October 30, 2020

Trump's Minnesota rally was just 21 minutes long, which has to be the shortest of the campaign for him by far.

(The crowd was smaller because of a Covid-related order from the governor. Trump criticized the order and the governor. He normally feeds off crowds.)

— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) October 30, 2020

Trump is already done in Minnesota

Trump flew to MN and gave a mostly monotone speech to 250 supporters for under 30 minutes

— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) October 30, 2020

Trump in Rochester read almost exclusively off the teleprompter, in a flat voice, with little ad-lib, then ended his 3rd event of the day after just 20 minutes. https://t.co/3sh9XSj7Ly

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) October 30, 2020

21 min! https://t.co/vJF4c38Eee

— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) October 30, 2020

Maybe it’s the small crowd. Maybe it’s the cold. But this is the lowest energy I’ve ever seen the President be at a rally. He’s blowing through his applause lines, just checking the boxes on his usual speech, like he’s got somewhere to be. pic.twitter.com/iZyj6YSlLp

— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) October 30, 2020

Trump spoke for less than 30 minutes. I can’t ever recall a rally that short. He spoke for 1 hour 15 min in MI earlier today. This was his third stop. https://t.co/HEtu41SFMp

— Shannon Pettypiece (@spettypi) October 30, 2020

NBC News reporters pulled back the curtain on their efforts to cover the allegations about Hunter Biden misconduct and how, despite the Trump campaign’s claims of a mainstream media blackout, they were rebuffed in their attempts by the very people pushing the story the hardest.

According to a new NBC News story, Ken Dilanian and Tom Winter, who cover national security and corruption for the network, respectively, made numerous attempts to confirm and vet the claims made by Rudy Giuliani and Tony Bobulinski. But they were never granted sufficient access to further interrogate the ambiguous allegations leveled at Biden and his father, 2020 Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

In the weeks since the New York Post first published a story about materials from an allegedly abandoned Hunter Biden laptop, the Trump campaign has complained that mainstream media outlets have intentionally avoided reporting out stories connected to Joe Biden’s son and possible corruption.

“Both the Wall Street Journal and Fox News — among the only news organizations that have been given access to key documents — found that the emails and other records don’t make that case,” Dilanian and Winter noted, regarding the specific allegation of the former vice president being involved in his business dealings. They then detailed their similar outreach, but had little success.

“An NBC News correspondent asked Bobulinski for an interview and for copies of documents in his possession, but he declined,” the story explained. Instead, Bobulinski told NBC to watch Fox News’ opinion host Tucker Carlson’s interview with him on Tuesday.

Likewise, attempts to get first-hand access to the alleged Hunter Biden emails and laptop ran into obstacles. Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, did grant NBC News some ability to review some of the materials, but did now allow the reporters to do a formal forensic analysis of them.

It was Giuliani who ultimately told NBC News he would not be providing a copy of the hard drive. NBC News responded by asking if, instead of a full copy of the hard drive, he could just provide copies of the full set of emails. Giuliani did not agree to that proposal. NBC News then declined an offer of copies of a small group of emails.

NBC News also attempted to interview the computer store owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, who purportedly turned over a copy of the Hunter Biden laptop hard drive to Giuliani and the FBI. He did not respond.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images

As we trudge through the final days of the 2020 election, pollsters’ attempts to read the tea leaves of voter preferences are once again the subject of much speculation, and countless articles and commentary. One pollster with a track record heavily favoring President Donald Trump was the subject of a blistering critique on Mediate founder Dan Abrams’ SiriusXM show Friday, when Philip Bump of the Washington Post slammed him as “not a real pollster,” and shredded his “laughable” methodology as “absolutely ridiculous and statistically unsound.”

Robert Cahaly, the founder of the Trafalgar Group, was the target of Bump’s verbal evisceration. Cahaly is known for being one of the few pollsters to predict Trump would win the 2016 election, based on the “hidden Trump voter” premise. Still, the pollster has faced criticism, and has a C- rating from statistics website FiveThirtyEight.

Trump himself has sneered at the polling throughout this campaign — often in conjunction with his attacks on the “fake news” media.

To introduce the discussion, Abrams played a clip of Cahaly speaking, where the pollster explains what “he’s been doing differently from the other pollsters, and why he thinks he’s going to be right again.”

Cahaly expressed his dislike for “long questionnaires,” because they “miss average people” who “don’t have time to stop, take the phone call at 6 o’clock and talk for 25 minutes.” According to Cahaly, people are unwilling to answer polls that take longer than three minutes, so they keep theirs under that limit.

Cahaly added that they always poll at least 1,000 people in a state, by multiple methods including live calls, text messages, robocalls, emails, online polls, and a longer time frame to complete the poll.

One key factor in the different results from Trafalgar polls is their sampling models. As Cahaly explained, they were targeting “likely voters as we define them” — a group that includes low propensity voters who “have demonstrated the characteristics, as they did in ’16, of participating this year.”

Abrams then asked Bump for his thoughts, and he pulled no punches.

“The word I would use to describe his claims is laughable,” said Bump. “Essentially, everything he said there runs contrary to what we understand about polling.”

Bump rattled off a series of blows, shredding Cahaly’s claims about sample size as “absolutely ridiculous and statistically unsound,” his polling methods as “both unproven and subject to a lot of fluctuation that real pollsters try and avoid,” and the way Trafalgar chooses their sample as “subject to a lot of subjectivity, which I think is part of the reason that he gets the results that he gets.”

Merely “having made a correct guess in one election,” Bump said, “was not necessarily someone you should assume has a strong track record of success.”

Going back to Trump’s attacks on pollsters as biased against him, Bump told Abrams that “the idea that pollsters, broadly… are trying to throw this thing one way or the other is idiotic.”

However, Bump continued, there were some unreliable pollsters, who were willing to “get up there and repeat a factually inaccurate claim from the Trump campaign about what Biden’s view of the virus is, which is just what you heard the guy from Trafalgar doing, right?”

“Trafalgar isn’t even honest about how they do their methodology,” said Bump, criticizing the pollster for not submitting all their data in a way that third parties could review.

“I mean, you heard him hemming and hawing,” Bump continued. “He hasn’t been upfront about that. Real pollsters participate in polling groups, there are professional organizations of pollsters that evaluate work and look and see how people did, and hold themselves accountable.”

“If our pollsters were throwing the race, they would be fired from the Washington Post,” Bump declared, “because our goal is objectivity — no matter what Donald Trump says it is.”

Is Bump’s criticism fair? Reviewing the polls tracked by RealClearPolitics in several key states, Trafalgar is a clear outlier, over and over again.

In North Carolina, polls have had Trump’s Democratic challenger Joe Biden up a few points the entire month of October, with a handful of tie results, Republican pollster Rasmussen twice finding Trump up one point, and Trafalgar finding Trump up 3 in an Oct. 20-22 poll.

A number of states follow similar trends as Nevada, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, where the polls all show Biden ahead, but the narrowest Biden leads are from Trafalgar.

Most of the polls from Florida give the edge to Biden, and again Trafalgar is one of the few standout red lines, saying Trump is up a few points.

Michigan is one of the more extreme examples, with polls all year showing Biden with the lead, and currently an RCP average of +6.5 points. The only pollster finding Trump winning is Trafalgar, showing the president up one or two points four separate times since August.

Listen above, via SiriusXM.

Tucker Carlson cast doubt on the explanation he received from UPS about the lost Biden documents that were returned to him on Thursday, concluding that the “obvious explanation” for their disappearance was an intentional act of sabotage.

Carlson had revealed the night before that documents allegedly related to Hunter and Joe Biden were sent to him in Los Angeles in preparation for his Tuesday interview with Tony Bobulinski. But the contents of the package, he informed his audience, mysteriously never arrived. Without making any specific claims, Carlson implied something nefarious might have transpired after the package left their custody, as part of a plot to protect the 2020 Democratic candidate from further scrutiny.

His hints at a conspiracy theory, as well as the implication that he had lost these critical documents forever (Carlson had made copies), drew intense online mockery after his revelation.

On Thursday, Carlson updated his viewers with the good news that the documents, which had been on a thumb drive, had been returned by UPS, the delivery company in question.

“Last night we told you of about a pretty weird experience we had,” he said. “Somewhere along the way the contents of the package disappeared and inside it was a flash drive. We made a copy of those files before we sent them.”

“They vanished on the same day we were conducting a heavily publicized interview based in part by documents from the Biden family, so as you can imagine we wanted to know what happened,” Carlson continued. “Unfortunately we still don’t know what happened. This morning, UPS issued a press release announcing they had found our flash drive, and then were boasting about their customer service.”

Carlson granted that they had quickly recovered the lost item, but still noted that the company had lost it first. And then provided more details about the discovery that led him to suspect foul play was at work.

“[Executives] claimed that the flash drive was found on Monday night by hourly employee in the UPS building on 43rd Street in Manhattan and suggested it may have been sitting on the floor there. They couldn’t prove that because, remarkably, in a room or millions of high-value packages are are handled, there are no security cameras. That’s what they told us. UPS told us the employee who found our flash drive simply dropped it on top of a supervisor’s desk. Our documents sat there undiscovered for more than 24 hours before we announced on television that they were missing.”

The lack of details beyond that did not satisfy Carlson.

“How did our flash drive get separated from the package that we sent it in? That seems like something worth knowing. The envelope was securely sealed, and we know that. UPS does not dispute that. Was the package torn open accidentally by a machine? That seems unlikely and UPS says that almost never happens,” Carlson explained. “So we are left with the obvious explanation. Someone, for some reason, opened our package and removed a flash drive containing documents that were damaging to the Biden family. We would love to know would do that and why. It would be helpful to see the envelope itself, but UPS says can’t because they threw it away. So here we are, we got our flash drive back today, and that’s great.”

“But what we’d really like…are some answers,” he concluded.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

Ever since Sony put a DVD player in the PlayStation 2, video game consoles have been expected to pull double duty as gaming systems and entertainment devices. These days, many of us use our PlayStations, Xboxes, and Nintendo Switches to stream TV, movies, and music when we’re not using them to play games. The upcoming…

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