“Some guests for Saturday’s White House event on the South Lawn, which will be President Donald Trump’s first since testing positive for the coronavirus, had their travel and lodging paid for by controversial conservative activist Candace Owens’ group BLEXIT, according to emails obtained by ABC News. Supporters, who are also scheduled to attend a separate BLEXIT event earlier in the day, were invited to attend a “HUGE outdoor rally” by the group and asked to fill out a form that notified them that BLEXIT, a campaign urging Black Americans to leave the Democratic Party, will be covering travel costs” – ABC News.

President Trump should replace the commissions cancelled second debate by accepting joe rogan’s offer and inviting Biden to join them.let Biden choose the topics and 20 foot social spacing. Give Biden no excuse to say no.

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) October 10, 2020

CBS News: “President Trump’s reelection bid received a vote of support Friday from an entity most in his party would reject: the Taliban. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News in a phone interview, ‘We hope he will win the election and wind up U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.’ The militant group expressed some concern about Mr. Trump’s bout with the coronavirus. ‘When we heard about Trump being COVID-19 positive, we got worried for his health, but seems he is getting better,’ another Taliban senior leader told CBS News.”

“The fever may be starting to break. Donald Trump has held his party in line with bullying tactics and the white-hot love of the conservative populist base. But now – badly trailing in the polls and marred by increasingly erratic, self-sabotaging behavior – there are signs that some Republicans are beginning to distance themselves from Trump in a desperate attempt to avoid political doom. The unlikely canary in the coal mine came in the form of Arizona Sen. Martha McSally – typically a Trump sycophant – who avoided answering several direct questions on whether she was proud of her support for the President during her debate against Democratic challenger Mark Kelly. Instead, she robotically repeated that she was ‘proud to be fighting for Arizona.'”

“It wasn’t subtle but it was strategic. That’s because hugging Donald Trump too tight is a liability in a purple state general election. Independents make up 32% of registered voters in Arizona and in the latest CNN poll, Trump has just a 37% approval rate among independents nationally. In Arizona, Trump has the added burden of repeatedly insulting the state’s favorite son, John McCain, whose wife Cindy has endorsed Joe Biden. Trump’s persistent disrespect of McCain provoked McSally to slap the President more directly: ‘It pisses me off when he does it'” – John Avlon.

New York Times: “Campaigning for president as a Washington outsider, Mr. Trump electrified rallies with his vows to ‘drain the swamp.’ But Mr. Trump did not merely fail to end Washington’s insider culture of lobbying and favor-seeking. He reinvented it, turning his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway’s new back rooms, where public and private business mix and special interests reign.”

“He reinvented it, turning his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway’s new back rooms, where public and private business mix and special interests reign. As president-elect, he had pledged to step back from the Trump Organization and recuse himself from his private company’s operation. As president, he built a system of direct presidential influence-peddling unrivaled in modern American politics. Once Mr. Trump was in the White House, his family business discovered a lucrative new revenue stream: people who wanted something from the president. An investigation by The Times found over 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments that patronized Mr. Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration. Nearly a quarter of those patrons have not been previously reported.”

“The best check on a Biden presidency is for Republicans to have a majority in the Senate. And I do think ‘checks and balances’ does resonate with North Carolina voters” – Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) quoted in a Politico piece about his campaign.

Great, the social media masters and their leftist friends are going to decide what’s credible and what isn’t. Based on what we’ve seen for the last few years this is a recipe for disinformation.
See, Russia Hoax FBI corruption etc… https://t.co/7GL2v0jx2U

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 10, 2020

New York Times: “Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican whose embrace of President Trump threatens to sweep him from what was once a safe conservative seat, declared that Black people ‘can go anywhere in this state’ as long as they are ‘conservative and not liberal’ during a candidate’s forum on Friday night. The ‘go anywhere’ remark came after Mr. Graham touted his friendship with the state’s other Republican senator, Tim Scott, who is Black — and after Mr. Graham said that a candidate of any color could succeed in South Carolina, provided the person shared the state’s ‘values.’ Friday’s event was supposed to be the second shared-stage debate, a much-anticipated showdown between Mr. Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and the strong, well-funded Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, a state Democratic Party official, who is Black.”

“Federal Court dismisses Trump/RNC lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania vote by mail procedures. Major Victory for Alliance for Retired Americans, Priorities USA, and all the voters of Pennsylvania” – Dem elections attorney Marc Elias via Twitter. Read the dismissal ruling here.

New York Times: “Recently, Mr. Trump told a rally in North Carolina that he probably would not have shown up if he’d been doing better in the polls. ‘I would have said no, we don’t have to bother.’ In Manchester, N.H., the president said that if Mr. Biden wins the election, ‘I’ll be so angry at New Hampshire, I’ll never speak to you again.’ He said something similar in Michigan: ‘Michigan, you better vote for me! I got you so many damn car plants!'”

“At first it was refreshing that Mr. Trump never bothered with the faux-modesty routine — ‘this election is not about me, it’s about you.’ This struck me as one of the few truly honest parts of his act. His cartoonish self-regard seemed to buy him a certain credibility with his supporters, whose unshakable allegiance appeared to fall somewhere between true belief and being in on the joke. It’s difficult to quantify the degree to which Mr. Trump’s base might now be softening, but there is anecdotal evidence to suggest, at the very least, a trying of patience. ‘I don’t think he has any respect for those who vote for him,’ said one participant from Wisconsin in a focus group of people who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 conducted by Republican Voters Against Trump. ‘I think he thinks he’s better than, smarter than, everybody,’ said another focus group member, this one from Texas.”

“PPP’s newest Georgia poll finds that both of the state’s Senate seats appear headed for runoffs. In the regular Senate election Jon Ossoff is getting 44% to 43% for David Perdue, with Libertarian Shane Hazel’s 4% well exceeding the difference between the two of them. In the special Senate election, Raphael Warnock continues to grow his support and now has a 17 point lead over the rest of the field at 41% to 24% for Kelly Loeffler and 22% for Doug Collins.”

“The other Democratic candidates are non entities at this point- Matt Lieberman comes in at 3% and Ed Tarver gets less than 1%. Warnock is proving to be easily the most popular of the major candidates in the field. He has a +17 net favorability rating at 43/26. By contrast Kelly Loeffler has a -11 net approval rating at 31/42 and Doug Collins has a -4 net favorability rating at 32/36. Joe Biden has a small lead for President in the state at 47% to 46% for Donald Trump. Trump’s 46% vote share matches his approval rating in the state, with 50% of voters disapproving of him. There’s a good chance Democrats will score one or more major wins in Georgia this year for the first time in more than two decades” – Public Policy Polling.

Olivia Nuzzi: “Donald Trump was on the phone, and he was talking about dying. It was Saturday, October 3, and while his doctor had told the outside world that the president’s symptoms were nothing to worry about, Trump, cocooned in his suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, was telling those close to him something very different. ‘I could be one of the diers,’ he said.”

“The person on the other end of the line couldn’t forget that unusual word the president used: dier. A seldom-said dictionary standard, it was a classic Trumpism, at once sinister and childlike. If being a loser was bad, being a dier was a lot worse. Losers can become winners again. Diers are losers forever. But aren’t we all diers in the end? Donald Trump, the least self-reflective man in America, was contemplating his own mortality. He said it again: ‘I could be one of the diers.'”

Daily Beast: “With coronavirus running through his body in competition with a heavy steroidal dose, President Trump is frustrated that a country where over 210,000 people have died from the virus seems disinterested in the ‘hoax’ of Russiagate. Trump spent part of his week demanding the latest version of his Russia counter-narrative—that the intelligence officials teamed up with Democrats to invent Russian collusion in 2016—be used to prosecute his political enemies. ‘I say, ‘Bill [Barr], we have plenty [of evidence], we don’t need any more,’ Trump told Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. On Friday, he fumed to Rush Limbaugh that Republicans are ‘afraid they’re going to influence the election… they don’t play the tough game.'”

“Providing that ‘evidence’ to Attorney General William Barr’s special prosecutor is loyalist Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Intelligence veterans are seething as Ratcliffe helps Trump concoct a narrative to aid him in an election. ‘Everyone knows the deal here,’ said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer. ‘They know Ratcliffe is irresponsible. It’s just everything goes.’ Yet Trump and his aides, in recent weeks, have recognized that the public isn’t captivated by the Breitbart-friendly accounts of uncovered notes from former CIA officials four years ago, according to two sources familiar with the private complaints.”

A federal judge in Texas stopped Texas Governor Greg Abbott from limiting the number of ballot drop boxes to just one in each county, thereby allowing citizens to have dozens of other options available to deliver their completed ballots, KHSF reports.

Abbott had previously ordered drop boxes removed unless they were at the election offices in each county.  Previously, drop boxes had been set up at early voting centers and other polling stations around the state.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of Austin said in a 46-page opinion “the public interest is not served by Texas’ continued enforcement of a proclamation plaintiffs have shown likely violates their fundamental right to vote. This factor therefore weighs in favor of a preliminary injunction.”

The New York Times dropped another bombshell report about Donald Trump’s finances, culled from the information on more than a decade’s worth of tax data they obtain.

This story details how, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Trump somehow got more than $20 million to funnel into his campaign.  The Times’ reporting is its typically thorough and well-sourced.  But as a lot of their stories are, it’s behind the pay-wall.

NatZero encourages you to support your local journalism, including our efforts (shameless plug for the PayPal donation button below!), but this story is so important, readers need to get a summary of what the story’s all about.  So here we go:

In 2015, Donald Trump vowed to self-fund his campaign.  He wasn’t going to take money from big donors to whom he would become beholding, he lied.  He vowed to spend $100 million of his own money in his run for office.

The problem was, he didn’t have the cash to finance the endeavor.

At least nine people who attended Donald Trump’s September 18th rally in Bemidji, Minnesota, have tested positive for the coronavirus, with one of those people remaining in the intensive care, Politico reports.

Minnesota health officials point out that they cannot definitely pinpoint how a person got the virus, but all nine cases were confirmed within the window of time the people attended the rally.  There were no mask requirements or social distancing practices undertaken at the rally.

At least one person was reported to have been infectious when they attended the rally.  Two people who protested at the rally have also tested positive.

WTAE: “House Republicans in Pennsylvania are dropping plans to fast-track an 11th-hour effort to set up a Republican-majority election panel with subpoena power, officials said Friday, amid accusations that it was an effort to steal the election. In an email to House Republicans, Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre, said “the muddied waters and misunderstanding” about the intent of the Select Committee on Election Integrity made it clear ‘this is the wrong time to run the proposal.’ Benninghoff blamed ‘the left and their media allies.'”

“The presidential battleground state is hotly contested by President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, after Trump narrowly won it in 2016, by less than 1 percentage point. House Republicans introduced the legislation Sept. 28. That was two days after Trump, at a campaign rally near Harrisburg, claimed he will lose Pennsylvania only if Democrats cheat and, as he did in 2016′s campaign, suggested that the Democratic bastion of Philadelphia needs to be watched closely for election fraud. Republicans had scheduled it for a vote Oct. 1 over the protests of Democrats, but were derailed when a Republican member tested positive for the coronavirus.”