Trump's attacks on American companies are on the ballot
03 November 2020
When President Trump first took office, there was lots of talk about "normalization."
The state of play: Today, American voters will either codify a new normal or relegate many of Trump's unconventional tactics to history's anomalous footnotes. Among them is browbeating and boycotting U.S. companies.
- Trump began tweet-supporting boycotts well before he became president, including against Starbucks (for its infamous red holiday cups) and the maker of Oreos (because it was moving some production to Mexico).
- He continued the practice after Inauguration Day, giving oxygen to grievances that ranged from policy (e.g., Harley-Davidson) to politics (e.g., Goodyear) to personal (e.g., pick a social media or mainstream media company).
- Many of these tweets caused the target company's stock to sink, although the impacts were more pronounced earlier in Trump's term.
Joe Biden has no such history, either before or during the 2020 campaign. This isn't to argue that he's an uncritical friend to business — for example, he wants higher corporate taxes and shares some of Trump's animus toward Silicon Valley — but rather that his strikes would be of the more traditional, technocratic variety.
Flashback: Earlier this year, Trump made a false comment about a Fortune 500 company, related to an action it had taken. When I asked the company’s communications chief why he wouldn't comment on the record, he replied that it wasn’t worth the barrage of negative tweets that would likely follow. “We’d rather minimize the damage,” he explained.
The bottom line: We've stopped being shocked, or even surprised, when the White House attacks an American company by name. One question on the ballot today is if that change is permanent.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly 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.