Etiket: She

Aileen M. Cannon, the federal judge overseeing the prosecution of a man accused of trying to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump, rejected the man’s request that she remove herself from the case, saying on Tuesday that she has no relationship with Mr. Trump even though he appointed her to the bench and she has ruled in his favor in a separate criminal matter.

Judge Cannon denied the request by the defendant, Ryan W. Routh, in a brief decision issued in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla. Mr. Routh was arrested last month in West Palm Beach after Secret Service agents spotted him carrying a rifle in the bushes along the fence line of one of Mr. Trump’s golf courses.

Mr. Routh’s lawyers first asked Judge Cannon to remove herself from the case two weeks ago. In their initial request, they argued that Mr. Trump had “repeatedly praised” her rulings in a separate case in which he stood accused of illegally holding onto classified documents after he left office.

In an unexpected decision in that matter, Judge Cannon threw out all the charges against Mr. Trump in July, ruling against decades of legal precedent that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed the indictment, had been illegally appointed to his job.

But in her decision on Tuesday, Judge Cannon rebuffed the idea that she had been affected by Mr. Trump’s praise. She said she had in fact never met or spoken to the former president except “in connection with his required presence” in her courtroom for hearings in the classified documents case.

“I have no control over what private citizens, members of the media, or public officials or candidates elect to say about me or my judicial rulings,” Judge Cannon wrote. “Nor am I concerned about the political consequences of my rulings or how those rulings might be viewed by ‘some in the media.’”

Barack Obama got blunt in Pittsburgh on Thursday. He chided Black men who are not supporting Kamala Harris, saying that some of “the brothers” were just not “feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”

That left me mulling again: Is Harris in a dead-even race against a ridiculous person because of her sex or is that just an excuse?

Hillary Clinton did not lose because she was a woman. She lost because she was Hillary Clinton. She didn’t campaign hard enough, skipping Wisconsin and barely visiting Michigan. She got discombobulated about gender and whinged about sexism.

I asked James Carville if Kamala’s problem is that too many Americans are still chary about voting for a woman, much less a woman of color. The Ragin’ Cajun chided me.

“We’re not going to change her gender or her ethnic background between now and Election Day, so let’s not worry about it,” he said. “Time is short, really short. They need to be more aggressive. They don’t strike me as having any kind of a killer instinct. They let one fat pitch after another go by. I’m scared to death. They have to hit hard — pronto.”

Her campaign, he said dryly, “is still in Wilmington.”

Kamala spent a week answering questions on “60 Minutes” and “The View” and on the shows of Stephen Colbert and Howard Stern. And she didn’t move the needle.