What Are Republicans Up To?

This blog piece will depart from our usual format. It's less sharing links than speculating on a bigger picture based on things we know.

We shouldn't assume that Trump and other Republicans, congressional or state, are on the same page on every issue. But those lower level Republicans will almost always support Trump because they're afraid of the repercussions if they get out of line.

Washington Post

Factor #1

The Republicans are putting a lot of pressure on states to open up. Barr has threatened legal action against states that aren't moving as fast as Trump thinks they should. McConnell has backed off, but he threatened to let states go bankrupt, arguing that red states shouldn't support blue states. (What he was really doing: attacking state pension funds.) The truth, we all know, is that blue states are richer than red states and generally subsidize red states on the whole. There's the whole "Liberate" protest movement, which Trump encouraged.

The ugliest part of the GOP plan? They're organizing so that employees who refuse to risk their lives, the lives of people they love, and public health by refusing to go to work will lose their employment benefits. In other words, they're coercing people to return to work against the public interest.

Let's remember the pattern:

• Feb. 29: 1 death
• Mar. 29: 2,425 deaths
• Apr. 29: 60,967 deaths

With deaths spiking the past two days, clearly the Republicans are valuing economic activity over public health. There has to be a balance, but no experts think we're seriously ready for what they're trying to do.

Factor #2

Trump is promising stuff, but he has no plan to address the real issues that stand between us and a safe opening. 

Jared says we're fine with testing: "I'm very confident we have all the testing we need to start reopening the country." He adds that states have "excess capacity" for testing, which is a lie. 

Trump just says anything that comes to mind on the subject. He promises massive amounts of testing materials, fails to deliver on his promises, brags about his progress despite failing to deliver on his promises, then says it's all up to the states and they shouldn't rely on the federal government. In other words, Trump isn't serious about testing. 

But here's the one that baffles me. The press started reporting, 

Trump won’t use the Defense Production Act for medical supplies. But he’ll use it for meat.

That's the Editorial Board of the Washington Post talking. Not your typical editorial take. Within hours another story broke: the Pentagon is applying the Defense Production Act to testing swabs.

This is so fucking typical. Trump delayed action on this front for weeks, with medical professionals and governors begging him to take this step. But Trump only moves so that he can counter the complaint that he clearly values meat processing over public health.

How much more ready to open would we be if Trump had prioritized this issue?

And another couple of things. (1) Where are we getting our biggest clusters of coronavirus cases? Answer: Nursing homes and meat production facilities. (2) Who works in meat production plants? A lot of people who aren't white. (3) And how have meat production plants responded to safety concerns? Not fucking well.

In fact, the coronavirus is ravaging people Trump hates: prisoners and detained migrants. It disproportionately kills black people.

Here's the local story from Lancaster County.

Tyson officials would not provide the exact number of employees at those plants or say whether any of them have been sick with the virus.

"Since this is an ever-changing situation, we're not sharing specific numbers," a Tyson spokesman said.

Sure....

Conclusion

So what are these people up to? I don't know for sure. But here's what I think: Republicans are trying to save their electoral chances and enrich their cronies by sacrificing public health. (It won't save their electoral chances.) Bonus: they really don't mind killing brown and black people to do it.

You Can't Trust That

Donald Trump's coronavirus strategy runs something like the high school drama teacher yelling "Everything is fine!" while the set for the school play bursts into flames. As we suggested a few days ago, looks like it's not working. And there are multiple data points.

According to a USA Today/Suffolk University survey, only 31 percent of Americans regard Trump as "honest and trustworthy," as opposed to 64 percent who disagree. But here's where it gets good: those 31 percent who trust Trump amount to people who watch Fox News--and basically get their news only from similar sources. "Among Fox-first viewers — who comprise about 25 percent of Americans in the survey — 78 percent say Trump is honest and trustworthy, while just 15 percent disagree."

Among people who don't watch Fox, only 15 percent trust Trump, while 80 percent don't. It's sort of a "This is your brain on Fox" thing.

Americans trust their governors over Trump by a wide margin.

Meanwhile, Ohio's Republican governors Mike DeWine's popularity is surging precisely because he's not following Trump's lead. 

That might be a smart idea for Republican governors. Trump encouraged Georgia's Brian Kemp to reopen the state. But when Kemp followed through the next day, Trump threw him to the wolves: "I wasn’t happy with Brian Kemp, I wasn’t at all happy."

Let's not feel too sorry for Kemp, who purged voter rolls to win his election and claimed to have believed asymptomatic people couldn't spread the virus. Let's not feel sorry for anyone who aligns with the Death Star.

But hey, why wouldn't we trust Trump? Last night he tweeted,

The only reason the U.S. has reported one million cases of CoronaVirus is that our Testing is sooo much better than any other country in the World. Other countries are way behind us in Testing, and therefore show far fewer cases!

 To that Washington Post reporter replied,

FACT:

US has conducted 16.4 tests per every 1,000 people, below the world average and about the same as *Belarus*

Iceland: 136 per 1,000

Bahrain: 71

Italy: 30

Russia: 22

Belarus: 17

Yesterday Trump and Florida Governor Mike DeSantis--another guy who minimized the virus and won a rigged election--celebrated Florida's coronavirus progress. The Tampa Bay Times:

While DeSantis spoke in Washington, there was grim news back home: Florida reported its deadliest day in the two months since the outbreak began.

No wonder this trust thing isn't going well for Trump. How could it, when you can't trust the president with basic facts, and if the vice-president is gonna defy Mayo Clinic rules and walk around without a mask?

AP

Just a word. With Justin Amash entering the presidential race, things may get ugly for Democrats. One way or another, Joe Biden's gonna have to address the sexual assault accusation--and maybe get out of the way. I'm not feeling optimistic this morning.

Two Stories by Ryan Goodman and Michelle Schulkin

They knew.
They didn’t want the American public to know.
They lied to cover it up.
As we detail, the US military raised the threat level to WATCHCON1 for the imminent pandemic.
A CDC official warned the public. Trump threatened you fire her. And Azar and Esper fell in line.

Ryan Goodman, an NYU law professor and former Special Counsel to the Department of Defense, has just co-authored two significant pieces with Danielle Shulkin.

Twitter profile pic

Goodman believes this is the most comprehensive timeline of Trump's response to the pandemic, going back all the way to joint epidemic exercises with the Obama administration prior to the inauguration and including a timeline of Trump's deterioration of our preparedness.

The two summarized some of their work in a New York Times opinion piece, "How Trump and His Team Covered Up the Coronavirus in Five Days."

Maybe this wouldn't be necessary if Trump were taking effective action. But he's still blaming Obama and still blaming states. Yesterday he said,

There has been so much unnecessary death in this country. It could have been stopped and it could have been stopped short, but somebody a long time ago, it seems, decided not to do it that way. And the whole world is suffering because of it.

"Somebody."

Regime of Untruth

The past couple of days have made one thing abundantly clear: the Trump administration's fundamental dishonesty has cost us lives, maybe many lives.

CNN captured the problem perfectly yesterday. If we can't agree on fundamental assumptions, we're just not going to be effective.

Besides the disconnect between Trump and Fauci, we had conflicting messages between Trump and CDC director Robert Redfield. The Washington Post quoted Redfield as expressing concern that a fall combination of the coronavirus and the normal flu season was going to be "more difficult" than this spring's situation. In the afternoon circus Trump claimed Redfield had been misquoted.

As NBC reported it:

But earlier Wednesday, Trump tweeted that Redfield was "totally misquoted by Fake News @CNN" and "He will be putting out a statement."

Trump revisited the topic at the start of Wednesday's briefing, saying Redfield "was totally misquoted in the media on a statement about the fall season and the virus."

"Totally misquoted. I spoke to him. He said it was ridiculous," Trump continued. "He was talking about the flu and corona coming together at the same time. And corona could be just some little flare-ups that we'll take care of. We're going to knock it out, we'll knock it out fast, but that's what he was referring to, coming together at the same time."

Watch Redfield parse his language so as to reaffirm what he'd already said while trying to pacify Trump.

I didn't say that this was going to be worse. I said it was going to be more difficult.

I'm just summarizing the NBC report here. ABC's Jonathan Karl peeled Redfield away from Trump like a cheetah separates a gazelle from the herd. Reading from the Post story, Karl asked, "Is that what you said to The Washington Post?"

Redfield....

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say to you just a minute ago....

On redirect from Karl, Redfield one more time...

I'm accurately quoted in The Washington Post as 'difficult." 

This single moment played out bigly in other stories. Trump, with help from FoxNews, heavily promoted hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure for the virus. This week the most significant study yet found that the drug is an ineffective treatment, and the CDC modified its statement on the drug as a treatment option.

But here's the thing.... Trump's promotion of hydroxychloroquine redirected key government resources away from other priorities. We know this because of two news breaks.

1. Back in February Trump threatened to fire the CDC's chief of respiratory diseases, Dr. Nancy Messonier, because she publicly acknowledged that the CDC was preparing for a potential pandemic. 
2. Trump actually did reassign Dr. Rick Bright, head of coronavirus vaccine research, after Bright questioned hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness. I encourage you to read Bright's statement, where he specifically says he refused to direct resources to the unproven treatment, and that's why he was demoted. (A click will expand the image.)

The lies are about resources--about our capacity to fight this virus. That's why it's funny-not-funny-at-all that the new leader of the HHS pandemic daily response team "joined the department after running a dog-breeding business for six years." It just makes your head explode.

Let's remember the role of FoxNews in this. It was Fox that first got Trump all aroused about the miracle drug. It's Fox that never ackowledges when they're wrong. And it's Fox that thinks this is an appropriate commentary segment.

Not Gonna Work Out

I don't think this is gonna work out well for Donald Trump. We all want to manage the coronavirus as effectively as possible, which means we hope Trump will do the right things. But Donald Trump is not doing the right things, and it looks like people know that.

What's Trump's game? In an interview on Andy Slavitt's In the Bubble podcast, Anthony Scaramucci said, "Trump is thinking only about T.R.U.M.P. He's not thinking, U.S.A., and he's certainly not thinking Y.O.U."

I know, I know, consider the source. But Mooch's argument fits the evidence. Trump only wants to salvage his reelection chances. His own handling of the coronavirus constitutes his biggest obstacle. All that's left is to (a) try to change the path by repeating the same bullshit over and over and (b) drive a wedge between himself and the governors. The intermediate goal? To make it look like the governors are holding us all back from a recovery, while Trump is the popular hero.

That's all that's going on. Literally. There's nothing else in Trump's lizard brain.

That's why Trump supported the "Liberate State X" protests the past few days. And it's certainly why Attorney General William Barr leveled an exceptionally vague, Mafia-style threat against those governors yesterday.

Getty, via NPR

It might be why Trump threatened to "shoot down" Iranian gunboats today. (Shooting down boats would prove that our military has, um, unique capabilities.)

I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.

But I don't think this plan is gonna work. First, public opinion is dead set against Trump. A current YahooNews/YouGov poll shows that people are committed to staying the course, despite and maybe because of Trump's foolishness.

Second, the virus is working against Trump. States that are opening up prematurely already have ongoing spikes in cases. And Kentucky, which has a protest just over a week ago, is now spiking. Indeed, the CDC director is warning us to expect a national spike this fall and winter.

Just my opinion, but I think Trump is going to have to face reality willingly or unwillingly.

Parade of Awful: The Branch Stupidians

This post has no particular focus. With the demise of our democracy, sometimes it's hard to avoid the eye candy. Our democracy declined before Trump, but Trumpism plus an emergency has exposed it for what it is, according to an insightful opinion piece by The Atlantic's George Packer.

The most awful news, obviously, is Trump's decision to utilize the pandemic as cover for a "temporary" ban on immigration. The Racist in Chief says he's doing it to protect us from infection and to save jobs.

In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!

Look, (1) The USA is the #1 hotbed for the disease, so this isn't about keeping us safe. And (2) this has nothing to do with jobs, but we all knew that.

Next, we have Trumpist governors opening up their states (a) way too early and (b) against the will of their people. These are the same fools who didn't know the virus could be carried by asymptomatic people and thought it didn't kill anyone under 25. Yesterday Kentucky announced its highest spike in coronavirus cases--one week after protests to open the state.

Coincidence? Or a case of the Branch Stupidians? (Not my invention, sadly.)

Alyssa Pointer, AP

Or maybe there's a logic. What if Kemp's real motivation is to protect Georgia from paying out unemployment benefits? The action and his comments would be no less stupid, but you could understand they behavior. Hard to give them the benefit of the doubt if they can't say it out loud. In any case, this from George Chidi, an Atlanta journalist, publicist, and activist.

 

But hey, check this out. The AME (African Methodist Episcopal) bishop of Georgia has mandated that Georgia churches remain closed this Sunday, a direct counterpoint to Kemp's foolishness.

Let's move on. It turns out the man Trump put in charge of expanding our testing capacity--absolutely essential for a safe and gradual return to something like normal activity--was fired (given half an hour to resign) from his job at Texas A&M due to poor performance reviews. The evaluations said he was more interested in promoting himself than the health science center he worked for. Only the best people, right?

Back to the Branch Stupidian topic. Fresh polling by NBC/WSJ reveals a massive gap in support for Trump among white voters: the fault lines are gender and education. Trump polls abysmally among non-white voters (duh), but consider these numbers among whities.

• White men, non-college: Trump 65%, Biden 29%
• White women, non-college: Trump 55%, Biden 37%

• White men, college+: Trump 44%, Biden 46%
• White women, college+: Trump 29%, Biden 64%

I'm convinced this is why Trump says such obviously false and stupid things: he's counting on people who don't keep up with the facts or who will believe him no matter what. Consider these gems from the past day or so.

Case #1: "When I did the ban on China, they say a lot of the people that didn’t come in here went to Italy. You’ve heard that. That’s why Italy was hit so hard." So the Chinese would have infected us, but they chose the Italians instead?

Case #2, an interaction with NPR reporter Yamiche Alcindor.

• TRUMP: I took coronavirus very seriously
• ALCINDOR: You held rallies in February and March
• TRUMP: I haven't left the White House in months 
• ALCINDOR: You held a rally in March
• TRUMP: Did I hold a rally? I'm sorry.

Case #3, more Alcindor v. Trump: 

• ALCINDOR: Are you concerned downplaying the virus maybe got some people sick?
• TRUMP: "And a lot of people love Trump, right? ... I think we're gonna win in a landslide."

There you have it. 

Gonna Be Bumpy

I don't know about your media feed, but mine is full of fellow liberals and moderates worked up about the "Liberate State X" demonstrations.

ABC News

The hypocrisy is stunning. It's usually FoxNews and Trump mocking the protesters and promoting laws that make it literally dangerous to protest. This time, it's the Trumpster himself egging things on.

I reckon they're "Freedom Fighters" when you want 'em to be.

But some good reporting has brought out two key pieces of information. These are hardly grassroots campaigns organized by concerned citizens. And we can expect more of this.

• The protesters aren't exactly laser focused. They're not practicing social distancing. Trump claimed they were standing six feet apart, but it's obvious from the video that's not the case. More to the point, some protesters are carrying semiautomatic rifles, some are carrying Confederate flags, and a few are sporting swastikas. In short, the protests are basically rallies of the kooky right wing fringe: they're generally small, and they don't reflect even conservative popular opinion. 
• The protests are not grassroots uprisings; they're orchestrated. Some of their funders have been exposed, and they include links to people like Betsy DeVos. Common text appears on the "ReOpen" Facebook pages for different states. And New York Times tech reporter Nicole Perlroth shared that "Someone on Reddit figured out that all the 're-open the economy' websites were created on the same day by the same guy in Jacksonville, FL." (Some of the website development seems to be related to gun rights groups.) The Washington Post traces much of the organizing to gun rights groups (more below). Crucially, Trump mentioned Second Amendment concerns in a pro-protest Tweet. He knows what's up.

(If you're brave enough to dive into the rabbit hole, try this.)

One website. Common texts. Common funders. This is organized right-wing wacko bullshit, the kind the Mueller investigation warned about, being manipulated by Trump boosters to distract from Trump's own failures. Of course Trump encourages it. From the Mueller Report on Russian-controlled demonstrations:

The IRA organized and promoted political rallies inside the United States while posing as U.S. grassroots activists.... The Office identified dozens of U.S. rallies organized by the IRA. (p. 29)

To reiterate, the protests are designed to distract from Trump's manifest failures in dealing with the coronavirus. They're meant to incite chaos. Trump's failures are showing up in the polling numbers. 

• 60 percent of Americans want the stay at home orders to stay in place.
• 58 percent are more concerned about the virus's spread, while 32 percent are more concerned about the economy.
• Asked who they trust for information, 69 percent say the CDC; 66 percent their own governors; 60 Anthony Fauci; 46 percent New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; and 35 percent Mike Pence. (Cough.) By the way, Joe Biden comes in at 26 percent trust, 29 percent don't.
• In the same poll, 36 percent say they trust Trump.

Polls are just polls, but Trump cares about them a lot. Here's something else Trump cares about: inconvenient facts. Governors and business leaders alike say it's not safe to loosen up society until we have ample testing in place. Over the weekend Trump said, "America’s testing capability and capacity is fully sufficient to begin opening up the country totally."

Two key governors called bullshit, one a Democrat and one a Republican. Republican governors play a critical role right now, and Maryland's Larry Hogan, Ohio's Mike DeWine, and to a lesser degree Vermont's Charlie Baker and Vermont's Phil Scott provide the true index of Trumpian mendacity: they ignore him all they can, and they call him out when they have to.

Yesterday Virginia Democrat Ralph Northam, face unsmeared by shoe polish, called Trump's claims "delusional" and "irresponsible." 

Jake, that’s just delusional to be making statements like that. We have been fighting every day for PPE, and we’ve got some supplies now coming in. We’ve been fighting for testing. It’s not a straightforward test. We don’t even have enough swabs, believe it or not, and we’re ramping that up.

But for the national level to say we have what we need, and really to have no guidance to the state levels is just irresponsible because we’re not there yet.

And thank God for Larry Hogan, who considered running for the GOP presidential nomination this year.

To try to push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t doing our job, is just absolutely false. Every governor in America has been pushing and fighting and clawing to get more tests. Not only from the federal government, but from every private lab in America, and from all across the world.

Also,

It's not accurate to say there's plenty of testing out there and the governors should just get it done. That's just not being straightforward. 

"Irresponsible," "absolutely false" and "not straightforward." In other words, bullshit.

Trump's problems lie with facts, and they keep piling up.

• After praising the Chinese for their transparency, Trump is now blaming his slow response on Chinese deception and on the WHO. Trouble is, several of China's neighbors acted immediately to hem in the virus, and the US was receiving accurate reporting from Americans embedded in the WHO. 
• In addition to all the security warnings Trump ignored, now we know that US intelligence warned Israel and the EU about the threat back in--wait for it--November.
• The New England Journal of Medicine released a report by the chief officer of a Massachusetss hospital, documenting how multiple federal agencies interfered in his attempts to acquire needed supplies.
• White House Press Secretary Keyleigh McEnany bragged about how the US has now conducted 4 millions coronavirus tests. Trouble is, Trump promised 27 million tests by the end of March. 4 million was the goal for March 9.
• On other empty Trump promises, see this Times story.

This is only the beginning of the ugly, friends. We'd best buckle up.

What the Hell Is Going On?

Let's start with this. It happened Friday morning.

For a few days I've been struggling to figure out why the hell FoxNews is pushing for us to fire up the business sector, why Dr. Oz is encouraging us to open the schools, why deplorables are marching on state capitals--using DeVos money, no less... I've been at a loss to figure out what's motivating people to promote as massive escalation in coronavirus infections.

I mean, we know these people are corrupt. Just yesterday Senator Kelly Loeffler thanked Donald Trump for putting her on the task force for reopening America. This is the same Kelly Loeffler who told us all everything would be ok while she was dumping stock and buying up investments in a company that makes protective gear for medical professionals.

And we knew they did sham policy initiatives before releasing guidelines for reopening society that included no plan for testing, an essential for opening anything.

But I have to tell you, I have no idea why Trump is pushing this. It makes no policy sense. Most Americans oppose it by far, so it makes no political sense. Even business leaders tried to dissuade Trump from opening without sufficient testing.

Pew

Honestly, the only thing that makes sense doesn't make sense. That would be that Donald Trump's actual aim is to create instability in the United States of America. I don't think we can rule that out.

This Is What Your Country Looks Like on Corruption

This will be brief. When you wonder why Trump appoints these people to decide when and how to "open America," consider one fact. (I missed this a few days ago, but thanks to Sarah Kendzior for pointing it out.)

In most emergencies FEMA supplies states directly. With this one, 50% of FEMA supplies are being distributed to corporations before those corporations sell them to the states at a profit. They're not being allocated according to need but according to what individual states are willing to pay. (Per CBS reporter Wiejia Jiang.)

In short, the Trump Administration is enriching cronies rather than saving lives. That simple.

One more note, and we're out. Trump threatens to shut down Congress because "hundreds" of nominees await votes. Actually, 82 nominations are currently pending, while 150 positions are vacant with no nominee. (Per Peter Baker.)

Honor the Fake

So much ridiculousness, right? All of it menacing in sort of a vague way. But lots of reason to mock Donald Trump.

The trick is: All these outrages are really just distractions. Trump knows Americans are angry because he delayed for about two months in taking serious action on the coronavirus. We have no idea how many Americans will die as a result. It's all a fake.

So while we have to call out every outrage, it's more important that we hold our attention on the big picture. It's a tough spot. That runner may be jumping around, faking a break for second base. We're like the pitcher with a fast runner on first base: you have to hold that runner accountable, but the main threat is holding a bat about 60 feet in front of you.

New York Times

First, he's gonna put his signature on the stimulus checks issued to ordinary Americans. This is problematic at several levels.

• There's a reason presidents don't sign checks. It's not their money to dish out. It's our money. By putting his name on the check, Trump pretends that he's giving us something that actually belongs to ordinary Americans in the first place.
• Trump wants people to think he's Santa Claus. Whatever.
• Some sources are reporting that this change will delay the release of the checks, while the Trump Administration says it won't. Practically speaking, there's no way this isn't going to (a) cost some additional money because Treasury took time in figuring out how to do it and (b) intuitively, that process necessarily takes a little time--whether days, we don't know. Trump's signature will actually go on the memo line, as he's not authorized to distribute funds directly.
• But the main threat? Day after day, and there's more today, Trump takes steps that put him in the place of a petty dictator. We can't have that.

Second, Trump clownishly pretended he was "authorizing" governors to manage their own states. 

I will be authorizing each individual governor, of each individual state, to implement a reopening and a very powerful reopening plan of their state in a time and a manner as most appropriate. Because certain states are in much different condition and in a much different place than other states.

I might as well authorize my dog to take a poop. Again, it's ridiculous--gotta be called out--but there's that sinister dimension. Trump wants that authority so very badly. He wants to control when all of us poop.

Third, Trump is holding up funding to the World Health Organization in an attempt to blame the WHO for the severity of the pandemic. This is a transparent attempt to shift blame from himself, following his recent attacks on China. Was the WHO perfect? Nope. Nor was China. But Trump spent two weeks denying the seriousness of the threat. Again, we face multiple levels of evil.

• Chances are, Trump would want to defund the WHO on any given Tuesday. He's always against any kind of international collaboration, especially when it's multilateral.
• The WHO remains our best resource for collaborating with other countries when the next pandemic threatens us.
• But look at the problem structurally. The WHO isn't perfect, but on the whole it's been very helpful in helping nations understand the nature of the threat we face. How many Americans have died because Trump turned down the coronavirus tests produced by the WHO? 

This is the big pattern. Where Trump poops on the carpet, he doesn't clean up the mess. He just burns a really strong candle. In his remarks on the WHO yesterday, Trump mentioned China over 20 times. But Trump's record on China is embarrassing, and he doesn't want you to see the actual course of his behavior. Observe the dates.

Again, it's all about rewriting history. Trump pretends he's hard on China when he hasn't been. The WHO issue is just one way for him to play tough guy.

You gotta honor the fake. Trump's campaign has released an ad that tries to pin Joe Biden as being "soft on China": "Biden protected China's feelings while China cripples America." The ad even escalates Trumpist racism by including footage of Biden onstage with an apparently Chinese person--who happens to be an American, former Washington governor Gary Locke.

New York Times

Here's guessing the Trump people knew folks would call out the racism in the ad for a couple of reasons. The outrage makes a victim out of Trump in the eyes of his supporters, while it also distracts people from Trump's own pandering to Xi.

Remember, there's a batter at the plate, and they're holding a club. While all this foolishness is going on, Trump is diverting emergency resources to red states and holding them back from blue states. Again, people will die--and have died--because Trump is playing politics above valuing the lives of every American equally.

This Is a Test

Donald Trump does not like to be crossed. He doesn't like being confronted with his own words and actions. He doesn't like having his authority questioned. And he can't shake the facts concerning his own failures.

So he's lashing out. In his own words....

As conservative columnist David Frum observes, we have a contradiction between Trump demanding "absolute authority" and Trump saying, "I take no responsibility." Which is it? (Answer: he always plays both sides of a question.)

You can see him melting down when stuck between total control and no responsibility. CBS reporter Paula Reid sent him into total lockdown by confronting him with the gap between what he says he's done and what he never did.

Thing is, this could get dangerous. Trump is testing how far he can go. Does it look to you like he's threatening to take some kind of coercive action against the governors? (By the way, some of those governors are Republicans.)

Trump surely broke the law by showing a campaign video during yesterday's press briefing. (You don't get to use White House resources to campaign.) A video attacking the press, no less.

The problem is, Trump has no case to make. Which of these things is true? (H/t Times reporter Peter Baker.)

• Trump, Feb. 28: "The press is in hysteria mode" over coronavirus.
• Trump campaign video, April 13: "The media minimized the risk from the start."

The truth isn't flattering. Trump refused to act on the pandemic until Wall Street executives started leaning on him hard. Andy Slavitt reporting what he's learned:

Trump is making a decision about how he wants to proceed and so I called someone who knows how he operates better than anyone I could think of — Anthony Scaramucci.

Let me retrace events. As I learned today, he had to be told by Wall Street to shut it down in March. He wasn’t comprehending that he couldn’t gaslight the virus. And since Wall Street is his self-proclaimed report card (even though it’s not for many Americans), he had to listen.

In effect what he heard was even if you can’t see the virus, the economy won’t get better unless you shut it down. He couldn’t take the market drops. That — not a looming death toll — made him decide to get out front.

Confident in his ability to sell a narrative to the public, his press conference was born. In effect, he turned that into the Easter plan. All gut/instinct. All self-confidence. All show.

So he lies. For example, yesterday he claimed that Joe Biden has apologized for calling Trump xenophobic. "He has since apologized and he said I did the right thing." Biden's reply: Nope. Never apologized.

The question is, backed against the wall, what will Trump do? It's looking very much like he'll test the Constitution. That's not new, but the stakes are way high.

Not a Good Day for Presidential Stability

Over the past week or so, Donald Trump has faced one story after another that documents his failures to address the coronavirus pandemic quickly or efficiently. I've shared several on this blog. This morning New York Times columnist David Leonhardt took recent Times reporting to pose the question: just how many deaths are actually Donald Trump's fault? No chance Trump missed the headline:

As we know, Trump can only tolerate so much discomfort before he goes off. It's straight-up child behavior, but that's his pattern.

Trump had already launched prior to Leonhardt's column. What really got his goat was Anthony Fauci's Sunday morning interview with CNN. Asked the inevitable question, "What if we'd gotten on this virus sooner?", Fauci made the abominable error. He played it straight.

Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated. But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.

Oh dear. 

Trump lashed out. Of course he did. He RTed a tweet calling for Fauci's dismissal.

This is Trump's line: he "banned China" early. To be clear, he didn't "ban China"; he banned travel from internationals who had been to China within 14 days. And Trump is correct: he did face criticism for that.

But there's also the utter lack of logic. Day after day Trump minimized the crisis, said it was under control, said we'd be fine. This went on for nearly two months after Trump had received warnings from inside the White House and beyond, including from senators. Trump might as well say,

I did my homework one day, sort of. How unfair for the instructor to grade me on the basis of stuff I didn't study!

It's pitiful. So pitiful his followers believe it.

Some say, "Sure, there'll come a time for holding Trump accountable for his past failures. It's called the presidential campaign. For now, we should offer him all the support we can." But that logic folds like a cheap umbrella in the face of two realities. One, Trump is already campaigning, as are his opponents. But two, Trump is still screwing things up--and he will continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

Let's take two examples. Today NPR released a report concerning the failed promises Trump has made since he declared an emergency.

• He promised drive-through testing at retail partners. Largely, no.
• He promised web-supported access to testing. Contracted it to a Kushner-associated company, and basically, no.
• He promised home testing. Nuh-uh.
• He promised to full up the national reserve of crude oil to buttress the economy. No.

But the greatest reason to be afraid is that Trump may open the country too soon, prompting another spike in coronavirus activity. We're doing as well as we are not because Trump did anything but because governors and mayors shut down major parts of the country ahead of Trump's actions. Here in Pennsylvania, Gov. Wolf closed down the public schools on March 13. According to Trump's own website, Trump offered his “15 days to slow the spread” guidance on March 16. (Universities began shutting down campuses March 8 and 9.)

Now Trump is threatening to overrule those governors and local authorities in order to "open up" the country, claiming he has powers he does not have. (Trump didn't shut anything down, and he doesn't have the authority to open anything up.)

And this is why we can't give Trump a pass on failures that have already happened. He's still a threat to our safety.

"Late-Stage Corruption"

Donald Trump is using the coronavirus to distract us. The shadow cast by the epidemic allows him to extend the corruption of his administration.

Over the past couple of weeks we've been focused on the coronavirus and the Trump administration's response to it. Every once in awhile we've also called attention to the corruption that attends everything Donald Trump does.

Donald Trump has fired the official responsible for overseeing how the government spends the money Congress designated to stimulate the economy through this crisis. Walter Schaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, put it this way:

Trump's assault on Inspectors General is late-stage corruption. 

I don't know about you, but "late-stage corruption" caught my attention. I think Schaub is correct: we're far along the path toward a full-blown kleptocracy like the ones in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and Brazil. We're not early on the path. We're at a late stage.

(I'm copying Schaub's entire Twitter thread at the bottom of this post.)

The process is tricky because it's so gradual. At a given moment in time, what happens today doesn't seem that different from what happened a year ago or five years ago. Imagine, if you will, what would have happened if Barack Obama had taken the 2009 stimulus and kneecapped all oversight. Imagine.

The context for all this is significant. Trump's already used the epidemic to suspend enforcement of all EPA regulations.

It's not just Trump. Powerful forces are lined up. Trump himself has said that if people extend voting by mail, "you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again." Republicans know they cannot win national elections if lots of people vote?

It's not just Trump. Because of the need for social distancing, Wisconsin's governor, a Democrat, wanted to postpone the state election--it included a critical seat on the state Supreme Court--but Republican legislators sued. Ultimately the United States Supreme Court ruled that the governor could not delay the vote.

We received another crucial 5-4 Supreme Court verdict, justices appointed by Republicans all choosing to make Wisconsinites gather publicly in the midst of a pandemic. Voters in Milwaukee, by far the center of African American life in Wisconsin, faced special obstacles. According to the New York Times,

Republicans ... said they knew of few problems outside of Milwaukee, which has long been portrayed by the state’s conservatives as the source of Wisconsin’s problems. There was little sympathy.

Few problems outside Milwaukee. Interesting. I wonder how many people will die because folks fought for their right to vote in Wisconsin.

Trump won't do this alone. Attorney General William Barr is supposed to be independent, but he's always carried 45*'s Bic Macs. But on FoxNews today Barr called the Mueller investigation "one of the greatest travesties in American history." He also called social distancing "draconian" and accused the media of a "jihad" against hydrochloroquine.

Trump can't do it alone. Mike Pence said he's blocking public health officials from interviewing on CNN unless CNN starts broadcasting Trump's daily clown shows in their entirety. Maybe that was a step too far, as today he backed off of that stance.

Catching up on some other items.

• This week ABC learned that the White House was getting alarming intelligence on the coronavirus as early as November. The information made it into the president's daily intelligence brief in early January.
• Garrett Graff of the Aspen Institute did a deep dive into how badly Trump had incapacitated the agencies responsible for responding to epidemics before this crisis emerged. For example, according to Graff only 35 percent of top roles in the Department of Homeland Security have been filled. 

Here's the full text of Schaub's tweetstorm.

Trump's assault on Inspectors General is late-stage corruption. The canary in the coal mine was the government ethics program, which began engaging with the Trump team long before the election. The general public got it, but too many people in positions of influence missed it.

Then, there was the open presidential profiteering and clues that hard-to-prove conflicts of interest were significantly influencing policy. But Republicans in Congress ensured that no one could dig too deeply into those, and they enabled it by refusing to conduct oversight.

Next came Trump's tests of the enforceability of laws--a little push against the tent wall here and a big jab against it there, followed by even bigger tests and a growing awareness that many laws don't have teeth or depend upon the executive branch to enforce them.

Along the way came the firings of the two most critical law enforcement officials precisely because they permitted investigations of Trump. The Attorney General's firing should have triggered his removal from office. But wild-eyed Senators were hot on the trail of more judges.

This emboldened Trump and taught him a lesson. He had come into government unaware that "personnel is policy." Now he both understood that and knew the Senate would let him treat the government like The Apprentice: only the most slavishly obedient appointees would survive. 

Ordinarily, the game of musical appointees would have concerned members of Congress, particularly as Trump began to find replacements who didn't care about their oaths of office. But those judges continued to excite Republican Senators, and Trump's base made them nervous.

Oversight began only after the Democrats took the House. But Trump's hold on the Senate was absolute. We don't know what assurances he received behind the scenes, but we saw even longtime Republican Senators abandon previously espoused principles to protect him in plain sight.

With that protection, Trump engaged in a previously unthinkable level of resistance to congressional oversight. The collapse of this Constitutional safeguard was a potentially mortal wound. It didn't go down without a fight, the House included "obstruction" in his impeachment.

But the Senate has the final say. With one exception, Republican Senators didn't even maintain a pretense of honoring their oaths. They ended the sham impeachment trial quickly. The failure of this second constitutional safeguard, moved the republic into a life-or-death crisis.

What remained was the hope that whistleblowers and witnesses could still come forward. Maybe the people could demand action—if they knew the facts. But Republicans in Congress and their staffs, aided by fringe media outlets, worked to terrorize a suspected whistleblower. 

Witnesses faired no better. Even some Senators who had spent their careers professing support for witnesses, gave Trump free rein to retaliate against them too. The stakes became high enough that whistleblowers and witnesses would henceforth think twice about coming forward.

But Trump wasn't done. The White House began to speak of expanding its purge beyond political appointees to include career Feds, whose due process rights exist to prevent politicians from harnessing them for corrupt aims or, at least, silence any who might report wrongdoing. 

The head of the Office of Special Counsel, which protects career Feds from political retaliation, remained silent—as did Republican Senators. Whether or not Trump follows through, the mere threat pressures career Feds to put loyalty to Trump above loyalty to the Constitution. 

Individual government officials may have the moral fiber and ethics to resist the pressure. But the legal safeguards that help the federal workforce as a whole remain loyal to the American people and the rule of law over a rogue politician have been weakened. That's dangerous.

A last line of defense in this war on ethics and law is the Inspector General community. They're the eyes of the American people, objective investigators traditionally freed to pursue accountability by the safeguard of bipartisan congressional protection.

But the Trump era is a bad time for safeguards. Trump's eye has turned to the IGs, and Republican Senators have forsaken them—no hearings, no media blitz, only a few meek chirps of mild concern. Even the self-anointed patron saint of IGs, Chuck Grassley, has abandoned them. 

What began with the fall of the ethics program is entering the end game with the potential fall of the Inspector General community. The government is failing us, safeguards that took two centuries to build have crumbled, and fascism is eyeing this republic like lunch. 

It's down to the people. There is a chance in November to reclaim this land for democracy and reject fascism. But the obstacles are tremendous. Trump has the advantage of incumbency, decades of Republican voter suppression, and a third branch that increasingly seems political.

A sign of things to come, the Supreme Court ramped up the voter suppression by sending Wisconsin voters into a war zone in our species' fight against an ancient enemy, disease. A global pandemic has ground America to a halt, complicating the upcoming presidential election.

Republican Senators are trotting out their Hillary Clinton playbook, hoping to abuse their authority again and wound Trump's leading political rival by Benghazi-Uranium-One-But-Her-Emailsing him. And they've given Trump their blessing for him to solicit foreign interference.

Trump's Attorney General has even opened a special channel for Trump's private attorney to funnel information from abroad to the Justice Department. Fascism is having a hell of a day in America, and things will get much worse before November. 

All is not lost. The American people are fired up. But it'll be hard and the outcome's uncertain. That's why I want you to understand how big a deal it is that Trump is going after Inspectors General. This is a late-stage move in an authoritarian coup against the rule of law.

The Leadership We Need

I'm not much into the royals, but did you see the Queen's address to the people last week? I just watched it, and it's stunning the difference between the leadership she provided and the poop show we see every day on TV here in the US. She acknowledges the scale of the challenge, thanks the heroes who risk their lives to save others, expresses confidence in the people, expresses solidarity in their present sacrifice, and calls forth their highest virtues.

We lack that leadership at a national level. I don't even want to use an adjective. But I cannot recall Donald Trump ever acknowledging the actual losses we've incurred.

Meanwhile, if you want a definitive chronicle of how this administration has failed us, here's an AP story. Masks, ventilators, and other equipment weren't ordered till mid-March. Only last week did Trump order companies to produce supplies.

And for a scathing, detailed opinion piece on that same set of factors, conservative writer David Frum has one out this morning. There's no dodging the reality: when Trump's defenders say he was distracted by impeachment (well, he was playing golf), they're implicitly acknowledging his lack of leadership.

The logic is clear: when Trump was telling us everything was fine and we'd have a happy ending, that's when the government should have been acting. They had a policy playbook handed down from Obama. They had run simulations just last year. They knew everything they needed to know, and parts of government were flashing the warning. What they lacked was leadership, a problem that hasn't changed.

We want Trump to act aggressively, even late. We want him to succeed as much as is possible. There's evidence right now that, while even worse days await us, the United States is slowing down the epidemic's spread. Where we were doubling our cases every 2-3 days, Andy Slavitt points out that the rate is now every 6-7 days. What we're doing is working. Maybe Trump will be proven correct that we don't need 30,000-40,000 ventilators in New York. I hope so.

But it sure would be nice to have a real leader in place.

And don't lose sight of what's going on beneath the surface.

For starters, Trump just dismissed the one person responsible for overseeing spending on the $2 trillion federal coronavirus response initiative, Pentagon acting Inspector General Glenn Fine. In case you wondered whether Trump might intend to corrupt the process. Wasn't it just yesterday that, asked about the inspector general's report from Health and Human Services that pointed out our shortages in vital supplies, Trump replied:

"It's just wrong. Did I hear the word 'inspector general,' really? It's wrong."

So clearly Trump is big on accountability. It was an inspector general, of course, who alerted Congress to the Ukraine whistleblower report. Trump fired him Friday night.

A couple of weeks ago the government suspended enforcement all EPA environmental regulations for the duration of the crisis. Just try to get your mind around how that makes sense. Just try.

Too Much to Believe?

Last night I may have crossed a line. I've come to believe that Donald Trump's corruption is so pervasive, it's more than most people can take in. Psychologically, we're just not prepared to believe the truth about him: it's so much worse than we're wired to accept. I don't even believe Trump is trying to help Americans survive--at least, it's not high among his priorities.

Two things, plus a background issue, brought me to this line.

The first was a CNN interview with Lt. Gen. (ret.) Russel Honore, who expressed profound frustration with the administration's logistical work. Among other things, he said, "It looks like they have left the literal wolf inside the henhouse." (Twitter video here.)

That's as straight as it gets.

The second moment involved Rear Adm. John Polowczyk's appearance at yesterday's press briefing and propaganda extravaganza. States and hospitals are complaining that they're forced to bid against one another for urgently needed supplies, jacking up prices unnecessarily.

Asked about the complaint, Polowczyk replied that he's not here to disrupt a supply chain. By why the hell would the government sell supplies to corporations, who then sell the supplies to states and hospitals? That results in both higher prices and massive inefficiency.

In an NPR interview the other day retired General Stanley McChrystal subtweeted Trump on this issue and a few others.

• On Trump leaving states, cities, and hospitals to fend for themselves: "We should not be fighting COVID-19 as 50 separate fights, 50 separate states and territories and certainly not at individual municipal levels. This needs to be a collaborative, national-level fight. When the president talks to the nation about COVID-19, I wish he'd stand up in front of a map and he'd show what things are and he'd say, America, this is an American problem - it's also a global problem - we're going to fight it as an American fight, not as leaving any city or state off on their own to do as well as they can."
• Regarding leadership: "the leader has to, first and foremost, be absolutely straightforward with all the people they're leading, has to tell them the truth." (That ain't Trump.)
• Regarding a leader's capacity to inspire the nation: "And what he didn't say was - he didn't say, we're winning. He didn't say, we're about to win. He said, we'll never surrender. He built their confidence for the long haul. I think that's what leaders have to give at every level." (Cough.)
• Regarding communication: "And so I think it's much better for us to get the best information we can, give transparency as best we can. People can handle bad news or frightening news if it's put into context for them and they believe it's accurate."

These things are not controversial; they are obvious. Yet Trump refuses to do them. Why?

The background issue is that Trump seems to direct help toward states that support him, while minimizing help to those that vote against him--or whose governors criticize him. (Just Google "Trump blue states coronavirus.") This is close to manslaughter, in my opinion.

While all this is going on, we have to remember how invested Trump is in saving face from one minute to the next. Yesterday I wrote about Jared Kushner's absolutely false assertion that federal stockpiles of supplies are for the federal government rather than for the states. Once people pointed out that the stockpile's website directly contradicted Jared, here's what the White House did:

THEY CHANGED THE CONTENT OF THE WEBSITE. Just to save face, they changed the stated purpose of the stockpile after Jared screwed up.

So, no, we shouldn't be surprised that Trump has fired the intelligence community's inspector general last night, the guy who received and passed along the whistleblower complaint that led to the Ukraine impeachment investigation. And he did it on a Friday night to diminish the news effect.

We're talking about a level of corruption truly profound.

Washington Post

It's no secret: I've always loathed Donald Trump. I knew he was famous for cheating at golfhttps://ultimateclassicrock.com/alice-cooper-golf-donald-trump/ and lying about pretty much everything long before he ran for president. If you cheat at golf, you're just a bad person. All along, I've known that Trump did not place America First, only himself.

But with the coronavirus I've crossed this line. It's not just that I think Trump governs badly. It's not just that he's so compromised, he can't develop a positive response. I don't think he gives a damn about the suffering of ordinary Americans, period.

I don't know why. It's evident he has no sense of compassion or empathy. It's also clear that he holds a governing philosophy in which government and regulation are bad things. But it also seems he's committed to giving things away to corporations and to the super-rich that's just beyond explaining...unless it boils down to a massive corruption scheme. That's my best guess.

(Right now the Trump Organization is seeking debt and tax relief from creditors and from governments.)

I also don't understand why 8 Republican governors refuse to issue stay at home orders. The Atlantic just reported that Southern states are experiencing worse outcomes from the epidemic than are other parts of the country, largely due to poverty and obesity. (Another problem might be the lack of health care coverage.) Yet the governors of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida are among the worst in the country in terms of their epidemic response. I have no idea how to account for this.

Today the Washington Post ran a major story about Trump's response to the coronavirus. It's worth reading.

Just Jared

My poker career would be brief and tragic, so I'll hold on to my bluff. This post is mostly about Jared, but not only about him.

The New York Times is reporting that Jared's involvement in the coronavirus response is creating all kinds of management complications. There's the problem of whether Jared is effective at all, and there's the standard problem of disorganization in the Trump Administration. There's the reporting side, and there's columnist Michelle Goldberg's take.

But let Jared speak for himself. He did yesterday.

Here's Jared on depleted supplies. The video was posted via Twitter:

The notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states stockpiles that they then use.

First, this is a terrible way to handle a crisis. But second, it's fucking wrong on a legal basis.  Former White House ethics officer Walter Schaub replied:

It is for the American people...as the federal government's OWN strategic national stockpile website assures us!

And here's Jared doing what Jared does best: taking a full minute to say absolutely nothing (also via Twitter.)

I did say it wasn't all about Jared. This is our leadership. Asked why we haven't stopped air and train travel, Trump said that wasn't necessary. After all (he said), we're checking temperatures on everyone who boards. Welp. (1) That's a lie: we're not checking people. And (2) it shows how little Trump understands the virus: you can be highly contagious with no symptoms. This is serious.

Flim-Flam, by Damn

Over the past few weeks I've written a lot about Trump's cover-up of his failure to take aggressive action on the coronavirus outbreak. He's lied repeatedly, first about the severity of the epidemic and then about his own leadership.

But there's a more fundamental, maybe more deadly, dimension of the scheme. Every day, Trump goes before the cameras and holds a pep rally. Real news organizations have learned these little dog and pony shows are both campaign rallies and misinformation sessions, so they cut away when Trump talks. But FoxNews viewers still think the media have overhyped the virus. Whatever.

The big news is how many times Trump has led us to believe he was doing something when actually he wasn't--and when he was doing something crooked.

Today we learned--only because the House Oversight Committee took testimony--that the 100,000 ventilators Trump had promised won't arrive until June at the earliest, per FEMA. What's especially informative about this: Trump has also claimed states need fewer ventilators than they're begging for--so is he really committed to this project?

Where the White House had promised 27 million tests by the end of March, just over a million have been delivered. On March 10 Pence promised more than 4 million tests by the end of that week. Still just over a million.

Yesterday Mike Pence was asked if the government might open Obamacare enrollment in the crisis. He went on and on, finally to say, "It's something we're looking at." Trump loved this.

I think that's one of the greatest answers I've ever heard because Mike was able to speak for five minutes and not even touch your question. I said that's what you call a great professional.

No honesty here.

You have to wonder: which is it? We'd all assumed the federal government was on point for a major crisis like that. Stung by criticisms of his response, Trump made big promises. But today? Trump tried an alternative move: states should be stockpiling supplies in case of events like this.

The states should have building their stockpiles ... we're a backup. We're not an ordering clerk.

This is TrumpSpeak. If you say A once, B five times, and opposite-A three times, you've covered your bases. You can't be accused of being wrong. You're never right, but you can always defend yourself.

I've mentioned this before, but remember when Trump promised that Google was working on making testing more accessible? Well, he didn't hire Google. He passed along the business to a Kushner-tied company, and they accomplished basically nothing.

So Trump's failure amounts to more than a slow start. His administration lacks the capacity to adapt--and it may not even be committed to adapting. They'll do anything to distract. We live in a country in which the Governor of Georgia explained his delayed reaction by confessing ignorance:

those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad, but we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours.

Hell, we knew that in January!

The country we live in has a president who starts his coronavirus press briefing by telling us he's #1 on Facebook--when he's actually 20 million followers behind Barack Obama.