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Donald Trump has claimed Joe Biden is against God in an attack on the presumptive Democratic presidential candidates faith.

In provocative remarks during a trip to Ohio, a key election battleground, the US president said Biden was following the radical left agenda.

Trump added: Take away your guns, destroy your second amendment. No religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God.

Hes against God, hes against guns, hes against energy, our kind of energy.

Biden, who is leading in the polls, has frequently spoken about how his Catholic faith helped him cope with the deaths of his first wife and daughter in a 1972 car accident.

In a statement, he said Trumps comments were shameful.

He added: Like so many people, my faith has been the bedrock foundation of my life: its provided me comfort in moments of loss and tragedy, its kept me grounded and humbled in times of triumph and joy.

And in this moment of darkness for our country of pain, of division, and of sickness for so many Americans my faith has been a guiding light for me and a constant reminder of the fundamental dignity and humanity that God has bestowed upon all of us.

For President Trump to attack my faith is shameful. Its beneath the office he holds and its beneath the dignity the American people so rightly expect and deserve from their leaders.

Bidens stance on abortion has antagonised many of his fellow Catholics. In 1973, he said the Roe v Wade supreme court decision went too far, but now believes Roe v Wade is the law of the land, a woman has a right to choose.

Biden is dealing with a controversy of his own, after suggesting the African American community was homogenous a comment Trump described as very insulting.

Biden said: What you all know but most people dont know, unlike the African American community with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things.

He later tweeted: Earlier today, I made some comments about diversity in the African American and Latino communities that I want to clarify. In no way did I mean to suggest the African American community is a monolith not by identity, not on issues, not at all.

My commitment to you is this: I will always listen, I will never stop fighting for the African American community and I will never stop fighting for a more equitable future.

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Joe Biden attacks Donald Trump for 'shameful' claim he is 'against God' - The Guardian

This week is the 75th anniversary of the explosions on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9), ending World War II with the only two nuclear bombs ever deployed as instruments of war. This naturally invites a measure of historical reflection. But a more productive way to mark the occasion is with contemporary agitation: Are you comfortable with the fact that Donald Trump has the unilateral authority to launch the third nuclear bomb? Or the 30th? Or the 300th?

With a power that is like that of all presidents since Truman -- but with a temper and temperament more volatile than any predecessor has put on public display -- Trump could decide late this evening that missiles are a better way to make a point than Twitter and they would be flying without delay.

No evidentiary thresholds would need to be met. No congressional consultation required. The system is designed to be immediately responsive to presidential judgmentor misjudgment. Only a coordinated, widespread mutiny could stop this process from reaching its grim end, write William J. Perry and Tom Z. Collina, in a newly released book, The Button. The whole process, from presidential order to launch and an irrevocable step over the brink into a new chapter of history, would take just minutes.

Trumps erratic personal style sharpens the point his blustery rhetoric about the U.S. nuclear arsenal is more truculent than his generally dovish instincts about military intervention but that point is the same even if one accepts his self-appraisal as a very stable genius. There are proposals in Congress to alter the chain of command and require congressional authorization before any use of nuclear weapons. For now, however, the reality that any president can order nuclear annihilation on his or her sole authority is madness. Yet it is the kind of madness that is illustrative of the still-distorted psychology of the still-very-much-with-us Nuclear Age.

Most people who follow the news or watch television dramas know that the president is followed at all times by a military aide with the football, carrying communications equipment and codes needed to order bombs. They probably understand vaguely that there are still a lot of bombs in the world (around 13,000 worldwide, down from over 70,000 in the Cold War, with the United States and Russia each still possessing over 6,000.)

But for nearly all people this knowledge is an abstraction. It is in approximately the same mental category as an asteroid. We know they have struck in the past (A drag what happened to the dinosaurs) and perhaps we ponder in some theoretical way that one could strike again (Could we maybe, you know, figure out some way with technology to divert the course or blow it up before impact?). Yet most of us devote scant mental or emotional energy to worrying about something that is basically beyond the comprehension or control of any average citizen.

The great crusade of the past couple decades of Bill Perrys life is to try to make nuclear catastrophe seem less abstractnot beyond comprehension or control. His is one of the most arresting stories of the original Cold War and what he believes is now an indefensible second Cold War unfolding in our midst.

The former Defense secretary under Bill Clinton is now a couple months shy of 93, and has spent his entire life immersed in different dimensions of the nuclear dilemma. The war was just ended and he was still in his late teens when Army service took him to occupied Japan. He found the mathematics of destruction astounding: The firebombing that left Tokyo ravaged had been caused by thousands of bombs dropped in many hundreds of missions. Hiroshima was reduced to radioactive rubble by a single bomb.

In the 1950s, Perry developed an expertise in defense electronics, and it was in this capacity, in 1962, that he played an in-the-shadows role during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was a pro bono consultant on a team that each night analyzed the latest imagery of a Soviet missile site under construction in Cuba. The teams analysis would be on JFKs desk the next morning. In a memoir three years ago, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, Perry recounted that for two weeks he went to work believing nuclear conflict was imminent and each day was possibly his last on earth.

During the Carter administration, he was a committed Cold Warrior, overseeing the Pentagons research division that produced breakthroughs like stealth aircraft and smart bombs and such now familiar technology as GPS.

The theme of his memoir, and also The Button (co-author Collina is a longtime nuclear policy analyst now at the Ploughshares Fund), is how often the past 75 years has been shadowed by accident and improvisation. Military and civilian leaders maneuvered with generally sound intentions but usually with fragmentary information and frail judgment.

JFK never knew during the Cuban crisis that operating tactical nuclear weapons were already on the island and commanders had authority to use thema fact learned only decades later. His assessment that there had been a one-in-three chance the crisis ended in nuclear war was likely far too optimistic. Richard Nixon was a heavy drinker at critical moments in his presidency. Ronald Reagan by the end of his tenure was showing signs of mental decline. On at least three occasions during the Cold War, there were reports on radar of incoming nuclear missiles from the Soviet Unionthe result of technical failures that, under different circumstances, might have provoked a retaliatory response. As Perry often says, nuclear catastrophe was averted more through good luck than good management.

Rising tensions with Vladimir Putins Russia, the threat of terrorists succeeding in long-time efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, and other scenarios have caused Perry and others to warn that the odds of some kind of civilization-altering nuclear incident, if not necessarily an all-out war, are just as high now as they were during the Cold War. He has become a prophet of doom, Perry told me a few years ago, with a rueful smile.

The Button has a roster of tangible ideas to reduce the chances the prophecy comes true. In addition to ending unilateral presidential control of the arsenal (and retiring the around-the-clock nuclear football) the United States should officially foreswear first-use of nuclear weapons. Other key parts of traditional nuclear doctrine are more likely to lead to war by accident or miscalculation than to actually deter aggression. They include the policy of launch on warning, which could lead to a retaliatory strike to a perceived incoming missiles strike that might be a figment of a technical glitch or a malicious computer hack. The land-based leg of the so-called nuclear triad is unnecessary and even dangerous; a much smaller number of submarine-based and aircraft-based missiles is enough to deter a foe from launching a suicidal first attack.

Beyond specific policies, what Perry and Collina wish for most of all is a blossoming of public engagement to move the issues outside the narrow realm of military officials and national security experts, who are too often prisoners of outdated habits and dogma. The way to prevent the unthinkable is for more people to think about it.

In this campaign they are joined by former California Gov. Jerry Brown, who has become a close ally of Perry on the nuclear issue. In an interview Thursday, he said the pandemic, climate change, and the nuclear issue all highlight the same imperative: the need to end hyper-nationalist policies and to recognize that on the most existential issues U.S. interests are in alignment with other world powers, not in competition. He also said the political and media classes need to focus attention on the limits of improvisation and hoping for the bestor the next 75 years will be less attractive than the 75 since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Can luck last forever? The answer is no, Brown told me. Luck is playing a role that is unacceptable.

After coronavirus emerged, millions of people watched a Ted Talk by Bill Gates from 2015 clearly laying out the imminent threat five years before it arrived. The world will be in bad shape if Perrys and Collinas book finds a similar audience only after the threat it warns against has already arrived.

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Donald Trump Has the Sole Authority to Blow Up the World. It is Madness to Let Him Keep It. - POLITICO

America has changed, said Frank Luntz, the veteran Republican consultant and pollster. Every person who cares about the NRA is already voting for Trump. Suburban swing voters care about the right to own a gun, but they don't care about the NRA.

A brawl between the NRA and New York state once would've been turnout gold for a Republican president. And some Republicans and Democrats alike on Thursday suggested that Republicans could use the episode to stoke turnout among Trump's base.

But the NRA is not the institution it was in American politics even four years ago, when it spent heavily to help Trump win election. Beset by financial problems and infighting, public support for the NRA has declined during the Trump era, falling below 50 percent last year for the first time since the 1990s, according to Gallup. At the same time, nearly two-thirds of Americans want stricter gun laws.

That's when voters are even thinking about gun control. Three months before Election Day, they mostly arent it's all about coronavirus and the economy, stupid. That's a problem for Republicans even the NRA has acknowledged.

Frank Miniter, editor in chief of the NRA publication America's First Freedom, raised the alarm for members in a column last week. Citing research by a firearms trade association, he lamented that only 17% of gun owners in the survey said gun-related issues were one of their three top policy areas going into this election (15% did say crime and 18% said civil rights)."

The culture wars of old, said Paul Maslin, a top Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean, seem miles away from where this election is right now.

Gun control and other cultural issues, he said, are always a backdrop and a way for Trump to maintain his base. But again, his base is 42 percent. Wheres the other 5 to 6 percent he needs going to come from?

If Republicans have an opening in the developing feud over the NRA, it will likely have less to do with gun control than with a broader effort to paint Joe Biden as beholden to the progressive left. The former vice president, a moderate Democrat, remains ill-defined in many voters minds, pollsters of both parties say. Republicans are spending heavily to depict him as an extremist, and the filing of the NRA lawsuit in New York, a heavily Democratic state, helped Republicans to advance their cause.

The Democrat strategy has seemed to be and I think it was a smart strategy go with Biden, hes a centrist, hes safe, hes nonthreatening, said Greg McNeilly, a Republican strategist in Michigan and longtime adviser to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. While that alternative seemed inviting to a lot of Trump supporters, including older voters, McNeilly said he thinks they'll reconsider when the reality of a potential Biden presidency sets in.

And the lawsuit against the NRA is incredibly tangible, specific attack on a core Republican value This is a gift to the Trump campaign, and its an unforced error on the [Democratic] side. Its a real mistake.

Trump himself pressed the case Thursday when he called the New York action a very terrible thing that just happened.

Evoking his own defection from New York to Florida and drawing a more explicit connection to a state that is unexpectedly competitive, he told reporters, I think the NRA should move to Texas and lead a very good and beautiful life, and Ive told them that for a long time.

Pro-gun control groups like Everytown for Gun Safety have spent millions of dollars on down-ballot races in recent years, winning victories in a number of swing congressional districts in 2018. And Democrats sense an opportunity to put the NRA down for good.

Whats interesting is that if the NRA truly has to dissolve, there is no far-right organization that is going to take its place, said Mathew Littman, a former Biden speechwriter who works on gun reform. The NRA is not where the American people are on the gun issue So without that, I think you could see rational gun reforms.

Within hours of the lawsuits announcement, some Democrats did raise concerns about the effect that it could have on turnout. One Democratic elected official in Pennsylvania likened it politically to a Republican attorney general suing to dissolve Planned Parenthood, saying, If this is the election of our lifetime, and I believe it is, why risk it?

But given Trump's inability to harness any other cultural issue so far in the campaign, it will likely take a Hail Mary for him to make it work. Trump has been running consistently behind Biden nationally and in most battleground states unaided by issues surrounding civil unrest and the flag. Trump's best chance, most Republicans and Democrats agree, is for the coronavirus or economy to turn around or for his law-and-order rhetoric to gain traction.

The election is about Trumps pandemic response and the answer to the Reagan question: Are you better off now than four years ago, said Doug Herman, a lead mail strategist for former President Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

Even in Texas, a relatively gun-loving state, several Democrats said they doubted the NRA issue would resonate.

I just dont really think that many people are paying that much attention to anything other than the pandemic and the economy, said Colin Strother, a veteran Democratic strategist in Texas.

Chris Lippincott, an Austin-based consultant who ran a super PAC opposing Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2016 Senate campaign, said, Its not breaking news that New York Democrats dont like the NRA.

Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.

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Donald Trump is losing the culture wars - POLITICO

His linguistic quirks reveal the salesmanship that has made his career

Aug 8th 2020

EVERYONE KNOWS how to do a Donald Trump impersonation. In speech, adopt his raspy timbre, bellowing volume and start-stop rhythm. In writing, throw in bigly, capitalise Emotional Noun Phrases and end everything with an exclamation mark. Such quirks of enunciation and spelling make Mr Trump easy to mimic, but they do not easily explain his political success. The way he constructs sentences, however, does offer some insight into how he captured the presidency.

Underpinning Mr Trumps distinctive language is an extreme confidence in his own knowledge. Like Steve Jobswho inspired his colleagues at Apple by making the impossible seem possibleMr Trump creates his own reality distortion field. One of his signature tropes is not a lot of people know He has introduced the complicated nature of health care, or the fact that Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, as truths that are familiar only to a few. A related sound-bite is nobody knows more about...than I do. The fields of expertise Mr Trump has touted this way include campaign finance, technology, politicians, taxes, debt, infrastructure, the environment and the economy.

His critics have often attributed this to narcissism, but a complementary explanation is that it is also one of his strengthssalesmanship. In Mr Trumps framing, he is in possession of rare information. He is therefore able to cut a customer a special deal not a lot of people know about. Should you be tempted to take your business to a competitor, he will remind you that nobody knows more about what is on offer than he does.

And how does he convince listeners he really does know what hes talking about? His language constantly indicates self-belief. Consider Mr Trumps predecessor. Barack Obama was known for long pauses, often filled with a languid uh He gives the impression of a man thinking hard about what to say next. But Mr Trump rarely hesitates and hardly ever says um or uh. When he needs to plan his next sentenceas everyone musthe often buys time by repeating himself. This reinforces the impression that he is supremely confident and that what hes saying is self-evident.

Perhaps the most striking element of Mr Trumps uncompromising belief in his sales technique can be glimpsed in an unusual place: his mistakes. Mr Trump is often presented as a linguistic klutz, saying things that make so little sense that his detractors present them as proof of major cognitive decline.

All people make some slips and stumbles when they speak: not just those known for them (say, George W. Bush) but those known for eloquence (Mr Obama, for example). Mr Trump regularly makes errors but his signature quality, by contrast, is to lean into them. Take a recent interview with Fox News, in which he talked about governors differing attitudes towards masks. Some are keener than others about requiring people to wear them to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Or, as Mr Trump put it, theyre more mask into.

What is remarkable is not the mistake. It is easy for anyone to go down a syntactic blind alley. Many people will say something like theyre more mask and then realise there is nowhere to go. The sentence, in linguists terms, requires repair, which usually involves backtracking. Unless, that is, you are Mr Trump, in which case you confidently intone into and move on, giving no hint of trouble.

This refusal to concede blunders shows up in more serious ways, of course, such as the presidents unwillingness to take responsibility for his administrations missteps during the pandemic. It also helps explain two mysteries. The first is the odd disjunct between words that seem nonsensical on the page and a stage presence that enraptures audiencesit is Mr Trumps assertive persona that convinces more than his words.

The second is how this works on his fans. In a recent survey conducted by Pew, Americans were asked to rank Mr Trump and Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, on a number of characteristics. The trait for which Americans give Mr Trump the highest mark is telling. Despite a notably light schedule and a stated disdain for exercise, the presidents incessant speaking style is almost certainly the reason he received a good score on one quality in particular: 56% of voters, and 93% of his supporters, describe him as energetic.

Dig deeper:Sign up and listen to Checks and Balance, our weekly newsletter and podcast on American politics, and explore our presidential election forecast

This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "The Greatest Phrases!"

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Donald Trumps language offers insight into how he won the presidency - The Economist

President Donald Trump on Thursday issued executive orders banning U.S. transactions with Chinese tech firms Tencentand ByteDance.

Tencent owns Chinese messaging app WeChat, and ByteDance is the Beijing-based parent company of the widely popular short video-sharing app TikTok.

The ban will take effectin 45 days and may attract retaliation from Beijing.

While the scope of the ban remains unclear, the executive orders said that after 45 days, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross "shall identify the transactions" that will be subjected to the prohibition.

China's foreign ministry on Friday said at a media briefing that it firmly opposed the executive orders, Reuters reported. Beijing will defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese businesses, according to foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, the news wire added.

WeChat "automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information," Trump said in the executive order banning the app, adding that the application also captures personal information of Chinese nationals visiting the U.S.

TheUS actions against TikTok and WeChat could be a turning point in Beijing's calculus around how to respond to the US policy actions...

The order would basically ban the app in the United States as it prohibits "any transaction that is related to WeChat by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with Tencent Holdings Ltd."

Tencent shares in Hong Kong tumbled 5.04% on Friday.

A similar order was issued for TikTok and its Beijing-based owner, ByteDance.

The popular app "may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party," Trump said in the executive order banning the video-sharing app."The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security."

TikTok has consistently denied those allegations. It says that U.S. user data is stored in the country itself with a backup in Singapore, and that its data centers are located outside China, implying the information was not subjected to Chinese law.

Still, experts have pointed to existing legislation in China which could force local Chinese companies like ByteDance and othersto hand over data to Beijing.

Microsoft announced Sunday that it was in talks with ByteDance to acquire TikTok's business in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand within the next three weeks, ahead of a Sept. 15 deadline.

In a statement, TikTok said it was "shocked" by the executive order and said it was "issued without any due process.

"For nearly a year, we have sought to engage with the US government in good faith to provide a constructive solution to the concerns that have been expressed. What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses," TikTok said in its statement.

Read TikTok'sfull statement here.

Tencent did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

The moves came after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration wants to see "untrusted" Chinese apps like WeChat and TikTok removed from U.S. app stores. He detailed a new five-pronged "Clean Network" effort aimed at curbing potential national security risks and said because those apps have parent companies based in China, there was "significant threats to personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for Chinese Communist Party content censorship."

Pompeo also said the State Department would work with other government agencies to limit the ability of Chinese cloud service providers to collect, store and process data in the U.S.

The latest moves represent another step in the deteriorating relations between the world's two largest economies.

"The executive orders represent a major escalation on the US side of the confrontation with China over the use of technology and mark the first time the US government has attempted to ban a software application running on millions of mobile phones within the US,"according to analysts at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.

While the move puts pressure on ByteDance to sell TikTok to Microsoft or other U.S. companies within the 45-day window, the implications for WeChat and Tencent could be broader depending on guidance from the Trump administration, Eurasia Group analysts said.

"TheUS actions against TikTok and WeChat could be a turning point in Beijing's calculus around how to respond to the US policy actions that have now either impacted or threatened to impact all of China's national tech champions," the analysts wrote.

"The strident tone of some editorials in state backed media in recent days suggests pressure is mounting for Beijing to take steps like rolling out the much talked about but not yet implemented unreliable entities list to target the operations of US technology companies in China," they added.

Recently, the U.S. closed the Chinese consulate in Houston, which prompted China to do the same for the U.S. consulate in Chengdu.

CNBC'sAmanda Macias contributed to this report.

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Trump issues executive orders banning U.S. transactions with WeChat and TikTok in 45 days - CNBC