Appearing on CNN early Sunday morning, an emergency room doctor from Michigan expressed disgust with the White House for labeling Vice President Mike Pence as an "essential worker" so he can continue to campaign for Donald Trump despite the vice president's office being rocked by a COVID-19 outbreak.

Following news the Pence Chief of Staff Marc Short and senior adviser Marty Obst among others in the Vice President's office have tested positive for novel coronavirus, the White House announced that the vice president would maintain his hectic schedule in the waning days before the election.

In order to excuse Pence's appearances which could help spread the virus, the White House designated Donald Trump's running mate as an "essential worker," which drew the ire of Dr. Rob Davidson who called it an "absolute farce."

Asked if Pence should remain on the road, Davidson replied, "He should not. According to CDC guidelines. he should be in quarantine for 14 days and the claim that he's an essential worker is an absolute farce."

"I'm an essential worker and the person at my grocery store is an essential worker" explained the emergency room doctor. "The vice president in his capacity as vice president is indeed an essential worker and he can still carry out his duties in quarantine. He's going around the country trying to convince the American people he should be re-elected and in that work, he's not an essential worker and is putting people at risk."

Watch below:

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According to a report from Politico, Donald Trump's nearly broke re-election campaign is hoping to make up for its inability to pay for television advertising by depending on local news coverage of his rallies to get his message out.

With the report stating the president's struggling campaign has deployed a "cheaper strategy to try to remain on the airwaves, flooding TV and radio through local media bookings and back-to-back-to-back rallies," the president enters the final full week of campaigning hoping to turn around a re=election bid that has been stalled for weeks.

The report notes that Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden has more than three times the amount of cash on hand in the final days of the campaign, forcing the president's campaign to scramble to stay in the public's eye via multiple rallies scheduled each day.

However, as Politico's Meredith McGraw wrote, the president isn't always getting the coverage he would like.

"The gambit has been challenged by a trail of negative headlines that have followed the president: articles about rallies that eschew pandemic guidelines, news of people sickened by coronavirus afterward, spats with local officials that dominate regional coverage before and after a visit," she explained before adding, "… the local coverage has led to some awkward moments, particularly when local reporters press the president or his surrogates on why the campaign continues to hold large, crowded rallies without mandatory mask wearing or any social distancing."

Case in point, Charles Benson of WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee pressed the president by asking, "Your own health experts say avoid crowds and a lack of compliance would lead to preventable death."

The campaign is also dealing blowback in the local press after the rallies when reports of COVID-19 outbreaks hit the news, drawing negative attention to the presidential visits.

"After two campaign stops in Minnesota, 16 cases were linked to one rally in Bemidji, and three additional cases were linked to another rally in Duluth, according to local health officials. While the numbers aren't large, they do generate unflattering local coverage," McGraw wrote.

You can read more here.

According to a report from Politico, Donald Trump's cash-strapped campaign is frantically attempting to collect settlements in legal disputes because it needs the money to fund other lawsuits that are in danger of being dismissed.

Noting that the campaign of the embattled president is pressing Omarosa Manigault Newman to make a delinquent $52,000 payment for writing an unauthorized book about White House doings, the report explains the money is desperately needed.

According to the report, the campaign is currently engaged in a "flurry of legal actions" in the days before the election which is an indication that money is tight.

Pointing out that Trump's people had previously pushed to collect $1 million from Manigault Newman, Politico reports the campaign is under the gun to keep itself funded.

"At one point, Trump's attorneys suggested Newman pay for a nearly $1 million ad campaign "to counteract the long-term adverse effects" of her remarks," the report states. "Yet the campaign has thus far stiffed the arbitrator assigned to mediate the case, according to a letter sent to the parties in the case. If Trump's attorneys don't pay the outstanding bill by next week, the case could be tossed out."

The Omarosa lawsuit is just the tip of the iceberg of lawsuits that the campaign is involved in with Politico reporting, "The campaign is helping fight accusations Trump harassed and sexually assaulted women. It's helping keep documents about his business deals hidden. Other cases are proactive, such as attempts to enforce nondisclosure agreements and to punish media companies the campaign accuses of defamation. And it is responding to lawsuits from people who say they were assaulted at Trump events, including one from a Missouri man who claimed he was arrested after laughing at a MAGA rally."

Those lawsuits won't go away after the election with one Washington attorney saying the president is facing massive legal bills.

"Even if he loses the election, very little actually ends once Trump leaves the White House in January 2021," explained Bradley Moss, a Washington lawyer who defended one of Trump's targets. "Litigation Trump has personally brought under his own name or through the campaign, whether it be protecting his tax returns or suing Omarosa, will continue for however long there is money to pay the lawyers."

According to the report, lawyers may be wary of continuing their representation of the president once he is out of office because of his extensive history of stiffing people he owes money to.

"Private contractors, bartenders, painters, real estate brokers and others have all claimed that Trump didn't adequately compensate them for their work before he was sworn into office. More recently, Trump has been accused of failing to pay local officials who provide thousands of dollars' in security assistance to the president's campaign during rallies," the report states before highlight the president's money woes with, "The Trump campaign's financial outlook is also faltering in the election's final weeks. Trump has fallen behind Biden on fundraising. In August, Democrats for the first time outraised Republicans by a staggering $154 million, eroding the president's longstanding cash-on-hand advantage. The pattern repeated itself in September, when Biden raised $383 million to Trump's $247.8 million."

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According to a report from Politico, high-ranking members of Donald Trump's administration are "furious" with FBI Director Christopher Wray for siding with the intelligence community and calling recent revelations about former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

As the New York Post story about the Democratic presidential nominee's son continues to fall apart — with even Fox News reportedly passing on it before Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani took it to the Post — Wray, who has had a strained relationship with the president is allowing his department to investigate Russia instead of the Biden's.

That, in turn, has angered White House officials looking for a helping hand to help out the president's cratering re-election campaign.

According to Politico, "Trump's inner circle was already furious at Wray for echoing the intelligence community's finding that Russia is acting to damage Biden's candidacy, as well as his description of antifa as 'an ideology' rather than an organized entity. Now, they're ratcheting up calls for Trump to fire his handpicked director."

The report goes on to note that Republicans had been hoping that Wray would open up a full-scale investigation into the sketchy accusations based upon unverified information reportedly found on the younger Biden's laptop computer.

For his part, Wary is reportedly loath to enter the fray with an eye on the election just two weeks away, and his own future uncertain.

"Other congressional and law enforcement sources noted that Trump might lack the leverage to bend Wray — who, like past FBI directors, was appointed to serve a 10-year term, a setup designed to insulate the bureau from politics — to his will," the report states. "A public offensive against Biden by the FBI would doom Wray's chances of remaining atop the bureau in a potential Biden administration. Wray, they say, would have no incentive to burn the rulebook in order to score a point for Trump, particularly when he enjoys relatively bipartisan support in the Capitol."

According to those who know Wray, he is unlikely to take the president's side this time.

"Chris does not need my advice," explained Chuck Rosenberg, a former FBI chief of staff. "He is smart and thoughtful and principled and has the best interests of the FBI and the nation in mind."

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In a column for the Atlantic, a former adviser to Republican President George W. Bush made the charge that evangelical Christians sold their souls to support Donald Trump while he secretly held them in contempt and used them to advance his political ambitions.

Using an article from McKay Coppins who reported, "many of Trump's comments about religion are marked by cynicism and contempt, according to people who have worked for him. Former aides told me they've heard Trump ridicule conservative religious leaders, dismiss various faith groups with cartoonish stereotypes, and deride certain rites and doctrines held sacred by many of the Americans who constitute his base," Peter Wehner stated it's time for Christians who supported the president to reconsider their view of him before they cast their ballots.

"Let's start with the president," Wehner, who focuses on the role of religion in government, wrote. "A man whose lifestyle is more closely aligned with hedonism than with Christianity, Trump clearly sees white evangelicals as a means to an end, people to be used, suckers to be played. He had absolutely no interest in evangelicals before his entry into politics and he will have absolutely no interest in them after his exit."

Conceding that extremely conservative Christians have made some "transactional' gains under the president — in particular appointments of conservative-leaning judges — the former White House official suggested it may have not been worth it.

"Trump has reshaped the federal judiciary, particularly compared with what would have happened if Hillary Clinton had been president, and nothing else Trump has done—no moral line he has crossed, no offense he has committed—can take away from his achievements in this area," he wrote, "But if politically conservative evangelicals have things they can rightly claim to have won, what has been lost?"

According to Wehner, there is abject hypocrisy in the evangelical movement when it comes to Democrats who don't follow Christian ideals as they see them and Republican apostates who are forgiven with "verses like 'Judge not lest you be judged," with the columnist using, "If it's Bill Clinton in the dock, savage him; if it's Donald Trump, savage his critics," as an example.

"If evangelical supporters of Trump are honest, they should admit—at least to themselves, if not to the rest of the world—that something has gone terribly amiss and that the power they have achieved is coming at the expense of the faith they proclaim," he wrote.

"The Trump era is hardly the first or most egregious time that people who speak for Christianity have disfigured their faith. Furthermore, evangelicalism isn't the whole of Christianity in America, and Christianity in America isn't the vital center of Christianity in the world," he added before concluding, "What American evangelicals do certainly matters, though perhaps not quite as much as its champions and critics might think. And there are pockets of renewal within American evangelicalism, along with a deep desire among many Christians to close this unfortunate chapter in their history and write a far more enchanting and captivating one next."

You can read more here.

According to a report from USA Today, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and fellow Republican senators waited too long to put some distance between themselves and unpopular President Donald Trump and that will likely cost McConnell his power and GOP control of the Senate.

With the election a little more than two weeks away and Trump appearing to be heading to defeat, members of the Republican Party have begun to openly suggest they are facing a "bloodbath" on November 3rd. According to the USA Today report, conservatives lawmakers have only themselves to blame for the coming debacle.

According to Jessica Taylor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, "It just shows that these senators are pulled in two different directions. They can't irritate the very conservative Trump base but they also need independents to win the general election. It's a no-win situation for them in many regards."

The report notes that McConnell is pushing through the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett and scheduling a vote of COVID-19 relief this coming week in an effort to give GOP candidates something to brag about while avoiding mention of the president.

"McConnell, known for bringing home the political bacon to Kentucky, looked to give GOP colleagues a way out when he announced the Senate's schedule was shifting," the report stated.

"As a general rule, presidential candidates have coattails that help down-ballot candidates of their own party because they help expand the participation of like-minded voters. But that wasn't the case in 2016 with Trump," the report continued. "Four years ago, a number of senators publicly disavowed Trump, many of them breaking with him over the Hollywood Access tape in which the then-reality show star Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging about groping women."

This go-around it appears that Republican Senators from North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, Nebraska, Arizona and Georgia could be out of a job after election day because they failed to disavow the president — thereby handing control of the Senate to the Democrats.

You can read more here.

According to a report from Politico, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is in the fight of his political life that could see his time in the Senate come to a close in November due to his close association with Donald Trump.

With his numbers in the polls showing him in a virtual tie with Democratic challenger Jamie Harrison, Graham is reportedly hoping his rush to seat Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court will rally enough conservatives to turn out at the polls to stave off what would be an embarrassing defeat.

According to the report, Graham is "facing an opponent who is the best-funded Senate candidate in American history; anger from the left over his metamorphosis from scathing Trump antagonist to fierce loyalist; and lingering distrust from a small but not insignificant slice of conservatives over his past as an aisle-crossing compromiser."

As the report notes, Graham's advocacy of the controversial Barrett has been a double-edged sword; encouraging conservative voters on one side and rallying Democrats to turn out and vote against him on the other side.

Also dogging Graham is the public's view that he is too attached to a president who is highly unpopular, according to the polls, and whose faltering campaign is also dragging the South Carolina Republican's chances with it.

"Trump's sagging poll numbers are creating problems for Graham. Harrison's campaign is blanketing the airwaves and the web with ads portraying the incumbent as untrustworthy and two-faced, pointing to his transformation into a Trump cheerleader," the report states.

According to House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC), "[Voters] tend to have a very low regard for hypocrites. And they look at these candidates, and when they can see authenticity, they tend to buy into it. That's what Jaime has done."

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When Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign kicked off the president and his aides targeted states they felt they could pick up that went to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.

That was then and this is now.

According to a report from Politico, with the president's approval numbers in freefall and pollsters predicting a substantial Electoral College loss, the president is now being forced to appear in states he won in 2016 to keep them out of the loss column in what could be a "crushing loss" at the ballot box.

According to the report from Politico's Gabby Orr, "In the final 18 days before voters decide whether to keep President Donald Trump in the White House, the incumbent Republican is spending precious time in states that were never supposed to be this close but now threaten to upend his reelection campaign."

If recent polling is to be believed, Trump is in danger of losing normally stalwart Republican states like Georgia, Arizona, Iowa and Florida -- making his path to re-election near impossible.

As Orr wrote, "The president's campaign schedule in the final weeks is either a tacit acknowledgment that he's on the brink of crushing losses in major battlegrounds and once-impenetrable red states, or an over cautious exercise in due-diligence." She then added, "Trump's defensive posture follows a stretch of devastating blows to his reelection campaign that further imperiled his standing in the industrial Midwest, where the 2020 election is likely to be decided, and cast new doubt on his ability to keep the Sun Belt in his column."

Noting the stunning reversal of Trump's political fortunes, one person close to Trump's campaign admitted, "I've never seen a Republican president with numbers like this in Arizona."

According to the Politico report, "Trump is expected to remain on the campaign trail nearly every day until the election, zig-zagging between the Midwest and southern tier of the U.S. to cover all his bases. Next week he will participate in his second and final debate against Biden at Belmont University in Nashville."

You can read more here.

According to a report from Politico, Republican lawmakers on the November ballot are in a panic over the fact that their Democratic opponents are awash in cash three weeks before the election while they are still begging for support from their backers.

With Politico's James Arkin and Elena Schneider dubbing what the GOP is facing a "green tsunami," the report states that the Republican leadership met in April to discuss fundraising for the November election and were given a warning then that the party had fallen behind in digital fundraising.

"Six months later, the green tsunami is here. And it's threatening to wipe out the Republican Senate majority," the report states.

According to the report, Republicans are facing a perfect storm that arose out of the public's disgust with Donald Trump, the coronavirus pandemic that has killed over 215,000 Americans and crippled the economy, the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the growing unpopularity of some sitting senators who allied themselves with an even more unpopular president. Those factors, and more, have led voters to open their wallets and flood Democrats with cash.

"Propelled by the wave of money, Democrats have suddenly expanded the Senate battlefield to a dozen competitive races, burying long-contested states like Iowa and Maine in TV ads while also overwhelming Republican opponents in states like Alaska, Kansas and South Carolina that are suddenly tightening," the report states before adding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has expressed displeasure at the turn of events that could end with him stripped of his powers in the Senate.

"On a call with lobbyists and donors last week, McConnell grumbled that GOP incumbents were getting beaten financially across the board in every competitive race, citing their edge on ActBlue, the preferred Democratic fundraising platform, according to three people who participated in the call," Politico reports.

According to one GOP lobbyist the cash disparity is a "major, major problem for us."

One complaint Republicans have is that they did not prepare to ramp up collecting more cash if the political tides turned against them or to react to events on the ground.

"You get to a certain point where the die is cast," explained one Republican strategist. "You can't capitalize on a huge moment like SCOTUS vacancy if you haven't spent the last 6 months or 12 months building the asset to maximize the value of it. There's a limit to what you can accomplish if you haven't done the work."

Even more frustrating is the fact that longtime big-money GOP donors have been more tightfisted as of late.

"I think the donor community, at times, doesn't appreciate that volatility extends across the country and not just in four or five Senate seats," explained one GOP consultant.

"For some Republicans, the money is exacerbating broader issues as the party battles to hold the majority: Trump's sagging poll numbers, an environment tilted against them, and a map with more and more incumbents under duress and only two legitimate offensive opportunities." Politico reports with one lobbyist lamenting, "It's red alert at this point. I don't think anyone has written off the Senate, but everyone knows the snapshot in time is pretty bleak and things need to stabilize pretty quickly."

You can read more here