ET TU, BARACK?
As Donald Trump prepares to speak on the final day of the Republican National Convention, Joe Biden is looking increasingly isolated as more members of his party call on him to drop out of the presidential race.
The Washington Post reports former president Barack Obama has told allies that Biden needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy as the 81-year-old’s path to victory in November’s election has reduced significantly.
Obama is said to have told people he is concerned that the polls are moving away from Biden and donors are abandoning the president.
The report follows the news House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer both told Biden, in separate meetings last week, that their members were concerned about his chances in the election and the impact of him running on Congress. CNN reports former House speaker Nancy Pelosi also privately told Biden polling showed he can not defeat Trump and that seeking a second term could ruin Democrats’ chances of winning the House.
As the pressure continues to intensify, Biden, who is currently isolating after testing positive for COVID yesterday, is said to be “more receptive” to hearing arguments as to why he should ditch his re-election bid, The New York Times reports.
In Milwaukee, as Republicans (many of whom have spent this week making fake bandages for their ears in support of their presidential candidate) await Trump’s closing speech at the convention, NBC News reports former wrestler Hulk Hogan is also due to address delegates earlier in the evening.
Those taking to the stage ahead of Trump formally accepting the Republican nomination for president, in what will be his first major televised speech since surviving an assassination attempt, include: former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, the former president’s son Eric Trump and UFC president Dana White, CBS News reports.
As the questions over the assassination attempt continue, CNN reports GOP senators chased Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle through the convention hall accusing her of not answering questions about Saturday’s shooting.
AUSTRALIANS’ HEALTH INFO HACKED
Hackers stole personal data including the health information of nearly 13 million Australians earlier this year, the AAP reports. The breach represents one of the country’s largest cyber attacks.
The ABC reports a sample of the data taken from electronic prescriptions provider MediSecure had been published on the dark web.
MediSecure, which went into voluntary administration last month, said the data included names, addresses, Medicare numbers and information on the medications people were prescribed.
The company first became aware of the breach in April and publicly confirmed the attack in May, before revealing the scale of the hack on Thursday.
Guardian Australia reports national cyber security coordinator Lieutenant General Michelle McGuinness responded to the news with: “I understand many Australians will be concerned about the scale of this breach. This activity only feeds the business model of cyber criminals and can be a criminal offence.”
Meanwhile, the fallout from CFMEU allegations shows no sign of easing, with the New South Wales branch of the union’s construction division posting a video on social media declaring the organisation is under an “unprecedented attack” and praising the union’s leadership, the ABC reports.
The Age reports the NSW division posted on its Facebook page: “Stand up and defend your union. External forces attacking the CFMEU have one agenda only: to reduce your collective power through the union to win better wages and conditions.”
Yesterday, federal and state Labor parties severed ties with the union’s construction division over the corruption allegations published in the Nine newspapers.
Also in the news, The Australian reports Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, joining Julian Assange’s flight back to the country added almost 30% to the final taxpayer bill.
Responding to the cost, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said: “A condition of Mr Assange’s bail was that he would be accompanied by High Commissioner [Stephen] Smith to a US jurisdiction, while ambassador Rudd has played a central role in bringing the two sides together and travelled to Saipan to ensure arrangements with the Department of Justice proceeded as agreed.”
Lastly, The Sydney Morning Herald reports polling shows a narrow majority of voters believe Labor should relax its rules on internal dissent in the wake of Senator Fatima Payman quitting the party.
The data showed 54% of those polled believe caucus members should have more freedom to vote as they wish.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
How much would you pay to have your very own 11ft (3.4m) stegosaurus skeleton?
Well, a hedge fund founder just paid US$44.6 million (A$66 million) for one nicknamed “Apex”, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The purchase, during a Sotheby’s auction in New York, is the most amount of money ever paid for a fossil.
The buyer was officially listed as anonymous but the WSJ reports it was bought by Citadel founder Ken Griffin and someone familiar with his plans said he intends to display it in a museum.
The skeleton had only been expected to sell for between US$4 million (A$6 million) and US $6 million (A$9 million) at auction, ABC News said.
The dinosaur, which is believed to have roamed the planet around 150 million years ago, received its nickname from professional fossil hunter Jason Cooper in 2022.
The BBC reports it was found by Cooper near the suitably named town of Dinosaur in Colorado.
The Financial Times quotes Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture, as saying: “‘Apex’ lived up to its name today, inspiring bidders globally to become the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction.”
The previous dinosaur fossil sale record was a tyrannosaurus rex, nicknamed Stan, which fetched US$31 million (A$46 million) in 2020.
Say What?
When I saw him come out Monday night — that magical moment — I thought, ‘I have to do something,’ and this is what I could do.
Joe Neglia
Neglia, a Republican delegate from Arizona, claimed to The Washington Post that he was the first person to stick a piece of white paper to the side of his head to mimic Donald Trump’s ear bandage in a sign of unity following the assassination attempt on the former president.
CRIKEY RECAP
She compares the way she was “white-anted within the Greens” — a reference to the bullying allegations she raised in the weeks following her departure, which she initially put down to her opposition to the Voice to Parliament — with what happened to Payman.
“It just gets to the point where you’ve got to stand by your values and draw the line and, yeah, and leave,” says Thorpe. “I feel like I broke those chains and I’m free to speak. And I know Senator Payman feels the same way.”
The 50-year-old senator cried watching Payman’s defection announcement, in which the 29-year-old raised both deaths in custody and child removal — issues on which Thorpe is getting little traction from the Albanese government.
What’s it like to stare at Donald J Trump for an hour and a quarter, from a little under 10 metres away?
It is very strange and intense.
Once I made it out onto the main floor of the convention (this took four hours), pushed through the crowds of officials and delegates and journos, and manoeuvred myself into an aisle with a half-decent view of Trump sitting in the bleachers, I lost interest in listening to the speeches up on stage. I just wanted to, well, stare at the guy.
It’s enough to swell one’s heart with nostalgia — not so much for the halcyon days when the Oz was a sane conservative voice committed every bit as much to genuinely important journalism as it was to vendettas and ever-narrowing culture war preoccupations, but for when we had the time to do fun things like send them a cake. As James Jeffrey, whose witty and limpid prose was a major reason to read the paper until he scarpered into Anthony Albanese’s office (weird how Peter Dutton never brings that one up?), wrote in the “Strewth” column when the Oz turned 50:
“Then there was one from the folks at Crikey, pictured, emblazoned with the portraits of many august organists (including yours truly) and the message: “Happy 50th, The Australian! Much like the climate, we hope you never change.” While we are shocked to discover Crikey may be a hotbed of climate-change scepticism, we can cheer it on the second bit, the gist of the official response being that change here is as likely as a casino on Titan. Against expectations, the cake was not half-baked but sweet with a soft heart — we can only assume it was made by Crikey scribe Bernard Keane. We didn’t eat the bit adorned with our likeness, but Paul Kelly — who suffers no such delicacy — ate his portrait. His verdict? ‘Scrumptious’.”
Remember when we used to have fun? Great days.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Trump has given no official info about his medical care for days since an assassination attempt (Associated Press)
Ursula von der Leyen is re-elected European Commission president by large majority (euronews)
Japan’s prime minister apologises to people forcibly sterilised under former eugenics law (CNN)
Labor works to cool fear of Israel-Lebanon war as Wong lambasts Israel (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Italian journalist ordered to pay €5,000 damages over Giorgia Meloni height jibe (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
On CFMEU, Albo must emulate Hawke — Roger Gyles (AFR): The industrial anarchy caused by and the lawlessness of the construction division of the CFMEU, formerly the Building Workers Industrial Union, from at least 1990 have been demonstrated in reports of royal commissions conducted by myself published in 1992, by Terence Cole in 2003 and by Dyson Heydon in 2015, brought up to date by the investigation reported in these pages over the last week.
There have been countless decisions of courts exposing reprehensible conduct of the union and its officers.
The problem goes well beyond John Setka and Victoria. It is systematic and endemic. It will not be solved by cleaning out a few bad apples or other band-aid solutions.
Donald Trump is unfit to lead — The New York Times editorial board (The New York Times): The Democrats are rightly engaged in their own debate about whether President Biden is the right person to carry the party’s nomination into the election, given widespread concerns among voters about his age-related fitness. This debate is so intense because of legitimate concerns that Trump may present a danger to the country, its strength, security and national character — and that a compelling Democratic alternative is the only thing that would prevent his return to power.
It is a national tragedy that the Republicans have failed to have a similar debate about the manifest moral and temperamental unfitness of their standard-bearer, instead setting aside their longstanding values, closing ranks and choosing to overlook what those who worked most closely with the former president have described as his systematic dishonesty, corruption, cruelty and incompetence.
That task now falls to the American people. We urge voters to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it. The stakes and significance of the presidency demand a person who has essential qualities and values to earn our trust, and on each one, Donald Trump fails.
