Biden predicts Trump will try to ‘steal the election’ by fighting mail-in voting – live

The Guardian’s Daniel Strauss reports:

The former acting director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which works under the Department of Homeland Security, has condemned the Trump administration’s handling of protests in Portland by deploying federal agents into the city.

John Sandweg, the former acting director of Ice, who also served as general counsel for the DHS, said Donald Trump was using the agency as his own “goon squad” by sending federal law enforcement agents to Oregon’s biggest city and vowing to send more to other cities around the country, including Chicago and Albuquerque.

Sandweg, in a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, called the administration’s policy a “failure of leadership in the Trump administration”.

He added: “I think it’s an abuse of DHS. I mean really the president’s trying to use DHS as his goon squad. That’s really what’s going on here.”

Sandweg went on to offer scathing criticism of the administration’s handling of the protests, calling it a “manufactured crisis” driven by politics from the president.

“In my experience, this is not coming from the workforce. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there that I hope that I can at least clear up,” Sandweg said. “DHS has not so much been unleashed as pushed to do these kinds of things. In my experience the folks that I’ve worked with want to protect national security and public safety.”

The Cook Political Report has changed the electoral college ratings of four states — all in Democrats’ favor.

Most notably, the perennial swing state of Florida has been moved from “toss up” to “lean Democrat.”

Cook’s Amy Walter explains the rating change:

In Florida, as COVID-19 cases started to rise this summer, Trump has seen his vote margin and his job approval rating drop. …

[A] July Quinnipiac poll found Biden leading Trump by 20 points on who is best able to handle the coronavirus, including an eight-point lead with those 65 and older. For months, Trump has questioned the severity of this crisis. But in Florida, 83 percent of voters see coronavirus as a serious problem, and 66 percent are very, or somewhat worried that they will get this virus. The only group not taking coronavirus seriously are Republican voters; 52 percent say they think the virus is under control. …

More important than any polling, however, is the fact that Trump announced on Thursday that the RNC was cancelling their convention in Jacksonville. This is about all the proof you need that he and the campaign realize how big of a hole he’s currently sitting in.

The Cook Report also moved three “solid Republican” states — Missouri, Kansas and Indiana — to “likely Republican.” Here is the full list of Cook’s electoral college ratings.

Good morning, live blog readers, and greetings from Washington.

The US is about 100 days out from its presidential election, and things are not looking good for Donald Trump.

The RealClearPolitics average of national polls shows Joe Biden leading the president by nearly 9 points, and several surveys released this week found the Democrat has a similar advantage in key battleground states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

But Biden is warning his supporters that Trump will not go down without a long, drawn-out fight.

During a virtual fundraiser last night, Biden said, “This president is going to try to indirectly steal the election by arguing that mail-in ballots don’t work.”

The former vice president predicted Trump would try to show mail-in ballots are “not real” or “not fair” in order to contest the results of the election if he loses.

Trump has already sought to question the integrity of mail-in voting, which has become even more important this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last month, the president pushed the false claim that the election could be rigged by foreign countries printing and mailing ballots to US voters.

In reality, voter fraud is very rare, and the country has relied on mail-in voting as a key part of its election system for decades.

On top of that, if the president ends up losing some of these battleground states by double digits, as recent polls suggest he might, it’ll be harder for him to contest the result. But that doesn’t mean Trump won’t try.

Here’s what else the blog is watching:

• Trump will present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Olympian and former Republican congressman Jim Ryun at 11 am ET. He will deliver remarks and sign executive orders on lowering drug prices at 3 pm ET. He will then leave Washington to spend the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
• Biden is attending a virtual fundraiser.
• The opening ceremonies of the 2020 Olympics would have been held today in Tokyo, but the games have obviously been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.