Former Trump staffers get prime-time speaking spots — at Democrats’ convention

Former Trump staffers get prime-time speaking spots — at Democrats’ convention

American politics is awash right now in talk of surprise political endorsements. One in particular: reports suggest Robert F. Kennedy may abandon his presidential bid later this week and endorse Donald Trump.

Pundits are buzzing about whether the move might, or might not, give Trump a boost in a U.S. race expected to be a photo finish.

Amid that breaking news, a slower-rolling wave of endorsements has built up for months and finally crested at the Democratic convention.

It involves the slew of officials who worked for Trump now refusing to back his re-election bid, several of whom have endorsed Biden. 

Trump isn’t backed by his former vice-president; his second and third national-security advisers; several White House press officials; a chief of staff; and half his previous cabinet. 

Now two officials from the Trump White House have spoken at the Democratic convention in Chicago to plead with Americans not to elect their former boss.

They included Trump’s press secretary and a national-security official. That’s atop other Republicans who addressed the convention.

“Being inside Trump’s White House was terrifying,” said Olivia Troye, a former counterterrorism adviser to then-vice-president Mike Pence.

“But what keeps me up at night is what will happen if he gets back there.… The guardrails are gone. The few adults in the room the first time resigned — or were fired.”

She said Trump will undermine this next election, just like he did the last one, and she said American adversaries around the world are relishing this.

Addressing those members of her party watching from home, Troye said: “You aren’t betraying our party. You’re standing up for our country.” 

The crowd chanted, “U-S-A,” as she spoke Wednesday.

‘No empathy, no morals’

A day earlier, Trump’s White House press secretary declared she’d be voting for Kamala Harris. Stephanie Grisham said she wasn’t just a Trump supporter: “I was a true believer,” she said, who spent her Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas at his Mar-a-Lago residence.

Her breaking point, she said, came with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; that’s when a mob of Trump supporters tried stopping certification of the previous election.

She recalled asking then-first lady Melania Trump if they could release a statement supporting the right to protest — just not violently.

“[Melania] replied with one word: ‘No,’ Grisham said. She said that she immediately resigned that day.

She described seeing Trump in private settings, when cameras were off, and recalled him mocking his supporters — calling them “basement-dwellers.”

On a hospital visit to an ICU where people were dying, she said, Trump got mad because cameras weren’t focused on him.

“He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth,” Grisham said. 

“He used to tell me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, say it enough and people will believe you.’ But it does matter. What you say matters, and what you don’t say matters.”

Walz: ‘They’re warning us’

Grisham was often criticized for a precedent-destroying act in office: She did not hold a single daily White House press briefing. On Wednesday, said it’s because she didn’t want to be forced to lie.

“Now here I am, behind a podium,” advocating for a Democrat because, she said, she loves her country more than her party. 

Overhead, on the arena scoreboard at the convention, a video showed graphic scenes of violence from Jan. 6 – bodies of police officers being smashed, and Pence and other officials racing away for their safety, while Trump, at the White House, said nothing for hours.

The images were overlaid by audio of Trump talking about eventually pardoning the Jan. 6 convicts in his second term.

The crowd applauded an officer who protected the Capitol that day, Aquilino Gonell. “I was assaulted with a pole. Attacked with the American flag,” he said. “President Trump sided with the attackers.”

In a boisterous speech accepting the nomination for vice-president Wednesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz mentioned the Republicans who’d addressed the convention.

“They were with him for four years. They’re warning us the next four years would be much, much worse,” said Walz, who, in his remarks, sought to define freedom on Democrats’ terms: as access to quality education and health care; the right to same-sex marriage and abortion; and freedom from fear of school shootings.  

He led the crowd in chants of, “We’re not going back.”

Reaching persuadable voters

These convention speakers are Democrats’ attempt to reach a tiny — yet critical — slice of American voters: the few who can be persuaded to switch parties.

“[They’re] a very small subset of the American population,” decades-long party strategist Robert Creamer told a strategy workshop during the convention. 

“But they’re important.”

Trump attempted something similar at his convention last month, inviting several former Democratic voters to speak on stage about their reasons for switching.

At the Democratic convention, the party-switchers happened to include more prominent names, like the former lieutenant-governor of Georgia, a Republican, who described having police officers stationed outside his house because he wouldn’t help Trump overturn the election.

“Let’s get the hard part out of the way: I am a Republican. But tonight I stand here as an American,” Geoff Duncan said. 

“His actions disqualify him from ever, ever, ever stepping foot in the Oval Office again.” 

Duncan also looked into the camera, addressing any Republicans watching. Millions of them, he said, are tired of making excuses for Trump.

He likened their party now to a cult led by a felonious thug. 

“[Our party now is] not civil or conservative. It’s chaotic and crazy,” Duncan said. “The only thing left to do is dump Trump.”

He added: “If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 you’re not a Democrat — you’re a patriot.” Again, people chanted, “U-S-A!” 

Other convention speakers have rallied around a similar theme: Casting the election as one candidate who cares about others versus one who doesn’t.

Or as former president Bill Clinton described the election on Wednesday night: “We the people,” versus “Me, myself and I.”

Polls suggest the race is deadlocked. In a game of inches, every twitch, one way or the other, could make a difference. Endorsements could matter.

We’ll learn soon if reports are accurate — that Trump could get Robert Kennedy. Deciphering the electoral consequences will take a little longer.

Published at Thu, 22 Aug 2024 10:54:41 +0000

In Kursk, Ukraine soldiers find disillusioned Russians and inexperienced troops

When Ukrainian troops started massing in the Sumy region in the country’s northeast during the early weeks of the summer, it was clear some kind of operation was in the works, a Ukrainian soldier recently told CBC News.

But he didn’t realize his country was on the brink of a large, secretive and carefully planned incursion into Russia. 

“We didn’t know, but we were feeling something special about the situation,” said the soldier, who wanted only to be identified as Wolverine, in an exclusive interview with CBC.

Over the past two weeks, Ukraine says its troops have managed to seize more than 1,200 square kilometres of Russia’s Kursk region, including dozens of small settlements, in what is the first invasion of Russian territory since the Second World War.

The military manoeuvre is widely seen by analysts as both a bold attempt to put additional pressure on Russia by bringing the 2 1/2-year war closer to home and a major gamble at a time when Ukraine is fighting to hold off Russian gains in the Donetsk region.

While Russia is still advancing in the south, the incursion into Kursk has shifted the momentum and boosted Ukraine’s mood, Wolverine believes.

“It’s good for … our morale, obviously,” he said.

Wolverine, who spoke to CBC via Zoom from the Sumy region after returning from Kursk for a quick trip to resupply, would not comment on the current battlefield conditions, but confirmed he and his unit entered Kursk on Aug. 7. 

“We don’t need any foreign territories,” he said. “This operation is not only in Kursk, but about [helping] our brothers and sisters who are defending our territory from Kharkiv to Zhaporizhzhia and Kherson.”

Surprise attack 

When thousands of Ukrainian troops stormed into Kursk on Aug. 6, they appeared to meet little resistance. Ukrainian officials released videos of Russian soldiers waving white flags in surrender. 

But in recent days, the battle has intensified. Russia has released its own images, showing a destroyed Ukrainian military convoy (which included armoured personnel carriers manufactured by Roshel, a Canadian company based in Mississauga, Ont.). 

Back in Ukraine, officials admit the situation around the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk is especially difficult, as Russian troops threaten to capture a key logistics hub for Ukraine. This week, families with children still residing in the city have been urged to leave. 

In the spring, the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv came under regular attack from Russian missiles and glide bombs, and in May, Russian troops seized the Ukrainian border town of Vovchansk, leading hundreds to be evacuated under shelling and the buzz of drones overhead. 

That same month, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency told the New York Times he expected Russia to launch an offensive toward the Sumy region in the coming days. 

But it was Ukraine that launched an attack over the border nearly three months later.

During his nightly address on Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the operation in Russia’s Kursk region aims to create a buffer zone on the “aggressor’s territory.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously said Russia’s incursion into the Kharkiv region in May was an attempt to create a buffer zone to protect Russian communities and military positions. 

Russia’s response

Putin has said little about Ukraine’s attack on Kursk, but during a visit to the town of Beslan in North Ossetia on Tuesday to honour the victims of the 2004 school siege, he compared Ukrainian troops to terrorists. 

“We will punish the criminals. There can be no doubt about this,” he said. Officials also announced the formation of three new military groups to bolster security in the area.

Russian officials have said more than 120,000 people have left the Kursk region, and state media outlet TASS has reported that more than 30 civilians have been killed since Ukraine’s attack.

Wolverine told CBC that during his time in Kursk, he heard Russian citizens express anger at their own authorities.

“They speak about betrayal from the Russian government,” he said. “They did not declare evacuation and immediately turned off water and light, so they [created] unbearable living conditions.”

He provided CBC with a short edited video taken with the body camera he was wearing when he spoke to residents in a rural Russian village. At least one woman was in tears while another man complained they had been abandoned by the Russian authorities. The man said two buses had come to evacuate the elderly and frail but left other residents behind. 

CBC was unable to verify the video or the statements made by the residents, who were likely unaware they were being recorded.

Wolverine says his unit encountered 10 Russian soldiers who surrendered, and it was clear the troops positioned in Russia along the border near Kursk weren’t as “high quality” as the forces Ukraine has been facing elsewhere along the front line. 

While there were some experienced units, including fighters from Chechnya, there were also many conscripts: young men completing their mandatory military service.

On Russian social media networks, there are posts from relatives looking for their sons who were stationed in Kursk and haven’t been heard from since Ukraine’s attack.

Inexperienced conscripts

A freelance journalist working for CBC was granted access to a prison in the Sumy region where Russian prisoners of war are being held. He, along with other journalists, was permitted to speak with the more than 20 men held in three separate cells as long as there weren’t any questions that could compromise the security of Ukrainian forces in Kursk.

The prisoners’ freedom hinges on being swapped in an exchange with Ukrainian soldiers captured in Russia. CBC is not identifying any of the men who consented to speak. 

One 19-year-old said he was sent to Russia’s border region in May and wasn’t given proper training, including when it came to fighting and firing a weapon.

He said he and others were sheltering in a building from the rain when a Ukrainian grenade flew through a window. Moments later, he and 27 others surrendered to the Ukrainian soldiers outside. 

“We started shouting that there are conscripts here, don’t shoot,” he said.

Another 22-year-old conscript said Ukrainian troops started storming his position on Aug. 7. He and a few others managed to spend the night hiding in a trench, but the next day, he was hit by a grenade and later captured. 

As he spoke, he lay on the lower half of a bunk bed, shrapnel still embedded in both of his legs.

He is from St. Petersburg and was conscripted in October. 

“We were told that we would not take part in hostilities,” he said. “We understood that anything was possible, but we did not think that our day would end with us being prisoners of war in another country.”

One of the oldest prisoners in the group was a 54-year-old who originally worked as a coal miner in Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine but moved to Moscow in 2014 after the war began in the Donbas.

He ended up being granted Russian citizenship and signed a military contract. Throughout the war, he had been stationed in Sevastopol, Crimea and Kherson but was redeployed to Kursk on Aug. 5 to help strengthen security along the border. 

Like the rest of the soldiers who spoke in the cell, he was shocked by the scale of the Ukrainian offensive. 

He said when he arrived at his position, he was told everything would be quiet. Hours later, thousands of Ukrainian troops started pouring over the border. 

“No one could even predict that there would be an attack … in such a large area and [with] so much power.”

Published at Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:52:23 +0000