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Top Democrats fear that protests could help Trump win

29 August 2020
Dan Ackermann

Democrats close to Joe Biden increasingly fear the looting and violence in cities could help President Trump, especially among the few undecided or wavering Americans.

Why it matters: This is a huge story that helps explain the state of the race, with some Democrats panicking that Trump could win.

A new poll out of Wisconsin has heightened worry among top Democrats:

  • In a Marquette Law School poll of registered voters in battleground Wisconsin, support for Black Lives Matters protests dropped 13 points from June to August, just ahead of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha.

"There was an initial surge in support for and sympathy with BLM in June," Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, told me.

  • "The shift to a more negative view in August is strongest among Republicans, but independents and Democrats also became less approving. The decline was across all regions except for the city of Milwaukee."

At a rally last night in Manchester, N.H., the Trump campaign amplified the issue by handing out official signs saying "PEACEFUL PROTESTER" and "THIS IS A PEACEFUL PROTEST."

  • "You know what I say? Protesters, your ass," Trump said. "I don't talk about my ass. They're not protesters. ... Those are anarchists. They're agitators. They're rioters. They're looters."
  • "They don't even know who George Floyd is. If you ask 'em: 'Who's George Floyd?' they couldn't even tell you."

Video of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and his wife, Kelley — being chased back to their hotel, shielded by police — has gotten more than 10 million views.

Rand Paul just got chased by a crowd back to his hotel, after leaving the White House from Trump’s Republican Party Nomination #DC#DCProtestspic.twitter.com/h1kPcZG1jh

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) August 28, 2020

Paul said on "Fox & Friends" that the attackers were yelling: "Say her name — Breonna Taylor," killed by police in a no-knock raid in Kentucky.

  • "I'm actually the author of the [Justice for Breonna Taylor Act], to end no-knock raids," Paul said. "So the irony is lost on these idiots."

Andrew Sullivan writes, in "The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into": "If law and order are what this election is about, they will lose it."

  • "Biden needs a gesture of real Sister Souljah clarity to put daylight between him and the violent left."

The bottom line ... David Axelrod warned fellow Dems about Trump's effort to shift attention from COVID and unemployment to "law and order":

  • "[T]he timing of unrest in Kenosha has been a gift to him in that project."

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.