Uglier and Uglier, Redux

We don't know how bad things will get. We know they'll get worse, much worse, as Donald Trump and his minions desperately try to save his election chances. We know racism will play a massive role in the story. We know our souls will be tried.

Protests continue in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after police fired seven rounds into the back of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was unarmed and presenting no threat. It looks like Blake will live with paralysis. His three sons witnessed the shooting from close range.

While people are protesting police violence, let's remember that Donald Trump has emboldened police violence. In 2017 he offered this encouragement to an audience of police members:

Please don't be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? You can take the hand away, OK?

Wednesday night a 17 year-old decided to "protect" Kenosha from the protesters. Armed with an AR-15, he wound up killing two people and maiming a third. 

The shooter, who wanted to be a police officer and identified himself as a pro-police vigilante, was a big Trump supporter. He may have been part of a group of armed people who asked Kenosha officials to deputize them--so there are more like him.

And let me say this plainly: this white boy walked right by police with his rifle across his body after a shooting while people shouted at police that he was the killer. Walked right by. Police had already tossed water bottles to the kid and other vigilantes, thanking them for their support--after curfew.

But here's what's scary. The right wing is rushing to defend this kid who rushed into conflict with a deadly weapon. Fox luminaries Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter publicly expressed their sympathies for the shooter, Coulter tweeting, "I want him as my president."

These people realize public violence gives Trump a shot. Kellyanne Conway said so:

The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.

This is a strong signal that things are intensifying. Coulter is a Trump critic. But she's also a racist menace. When you have public figures expressing support for a vigilante murderer, you're looking at a plan to stir up violence. That's where we are.

Flashing Red Lights

Let's say you're visiting the NASA Command Center in Houston during a space launch. You notice a flashing warning signal coming from a technician's computer screen. The technician gets activated, and you know a problem needs to be solved. But then two, three, four other screens light up, and pandelirium ensues. You go from concerned to scared. It's one thing to address a problem on a space mission. That's complicated enough. But what chance do you have when multiple problems flare up at the same time?

That's Donald Trump's presidency. Way too many flashing red lights. And today was one of those days.

First, all day long Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, was flashing lights about the intelligence his committee was receiving on Russian election interference in 2020. Yes, Blumenthal's a Democrat, but he's usually fairly measured.

Tactics & techniques described frighteningly in this global report make past Russian disruption look quaint & rudimentary—like child’s play.

So 2016 was bad, but it was just child's play compared to what the Russians are already cooking up. But he can't share it because it's classified.

Then the Republicans announce that Trump may make his Republican Party nomination acceptance speech from the Rose Garden, almost surely an illegal use of government resources for campaign purposes according to the Hatch Act. Asked about that today, Trump replied:

There is no Hatch Act because it doesn't pertain to the president.

He's not entirely wrong. There are certainly technicalities. But we've never had a president use the White House as a campaign prop in the ways Trump does.

Earlier in the day, Trump was saying vote by mail is okay in Republican-run states because they're managed well, but no way in Democratic states. He : 

You'll never know who the winner is, but the winner's going to be me.

How comforting, right? The Russians are cheating, but the Republicans don't want us to know. And Trump is cheating. So it's all good. 

Of course we're still in a pandemic. As his press conference was ending, more news broke out: for the first time, Facebook took down a Trump post because it was, well, a lie. Trump told Fox News that children are "almost immune" from Covid-19, then posted the clip on social media. Facebook and Twitter both took it down.

During today's coronavirus press briefing Trump had already said, "“It’s going away. It’ll go away. Things go away."

Poof. Like magic.

One more item. Yesterday, and with zero evidence, Trump told reporters the massive explosion in Beirut was likely a terrorist attack. It's hard to overestimate the irresponsibility of this claim, which Trump attributed to generals. As experts began ruling out that theory, today Trump lowered his claim essentially to, some people say this, and some people say that. That left it to Defense Secretary Mark Esper--how does he still have a job?--to correct Trump: although the US is "still getting information on what happened," "most believe" the explosion "was an accident, as reported."

In some ways Trump is dumber than a box of rocks. But do not underestimate him. 

1. Maybe he's dumb in some ways, but he still has a certain kind of crocodile intelligence that allows him to amass power and money. He's still considered charismatic by his followers.
2. Trump is surrounded by people who are less stupid and quite strategic. They give him advice.
3. Republican politicians are terrified of Trump and will back him up on every point. 
4. Sometimes it's accidental. And sometimes it's strategic. But every day Trump sets off so many fires that nobody can keep up. That makes him very dangerous.

Update: Reports indicate that Deutsche Bank has complied with NY prosecutors, sending them Trump's financial records. 

"Extensive and Protracted Criminal Conduct"

Seeking Donald Trump's tax records, New York DA Cyrus Vance cited public reports of "extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization." According to a court filing,

These reports describe transactions involving individual and corporate actors based in New York County, but whose conduct at times extended beyond New York’s borders. This possible criminal activity occurred within the applicable statutes of limitations, particularly if the transactions involved a continuing pattern of conduct.

Prosecutors 

cited several newspaper articles, including one in the Washington Post examining allegations that Trump had a practice of sending out financial statements to potential business partners and banks that inflated the worth of his properties by claiming they were bigger or more potentially lucrative than they were.

It really is about the corruption, which continues through government even now.

Deutsche Bank is conducting an internal investigation of the banker who supplied "favorable" loans to Trump and to Jared Kushner, including why said banker bought a $1.5 million apartment from a company partially owned by Kushner.

In June Trump thanked Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn for blocking legislation that would require campaigns to report receiving foreign assistance. 

After the Senate refused to act on Trump's nomination of retired Gen. Anthony Tata as Defense undersecretary for policy, Trump simply appointed him as "the official Performing the Duties of...."

Trump is using the coronavirus to advance the concerns of his super-rich cronies. 

All skeevy, all the time. 

It's taken the pandemic to sour key supporters on Trump, opening the space for people to see just how corrupt his government is. In current pandemic news,

• Today the FDA "revoked the emergency use authorization (EUA) that allowed for chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine."
• Barron Trump's private school announced online-only learning for the time being while Trump cajoles schools into opening. 
• Most alarming, yesterday Dr. Deborah Birx told CNN's Dana Bash that we're in a world of hurt. "What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread. It's into the rural as equal urban areas." She even advised people who live with elderly relatives to wear masks in the home.
• Finally, just read this by an Arizona public school superintendent. 

And isn’t it fun to check this out? Once busted, Trump deleted his ridiculous tweet.

 

 

Hold On to Your Democracy

Every day is a new shock or an aftershock from a day before. The center of our attention now has to lie with voting.

The big threat today is Trump's attack on the US Postal Service. Recent decisions by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a huge Trump donor, have slowed down deliveries, leading to a backlog. Alarm bells are going off, alerting us to the threat that Trump may be undermining mail-in voting in an attempt to skew election results. During a pandemic, no less.

There's a context for this fear. Trump is doing everything he can to undermine the legitimacy of the election.

A little over a week ago Donald Trump started the shenanigans by threatening not to honor the election results "if" he loses. Asked by Congress, Attorney General William Barr offered no assurances to the contrary--he'll leave office "if the results are clear"--and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held Trump's back as well. 

Then Trump tweeted the suggestion that we might postpone the election due to the coronavirus. Some commentators maintain we shouldn't be anxious, since the Constitution doesn't allow Trump to make that call. I'm not so sure. Congressional Republicans generally haven't stood up to Trump on such matters, and his action could undermine the election's credibility. Remarkably, Steven Calabrisi, co-founder of the Federalist Society, spoke out to declare Trump's tweet both fascistic and impeachable. Those were his words. 

We need to be vigilant about voting. The White House is laughing about it. Today Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany condemned the Hong Kong government for delaying their election. One day after Trump threatened our own election.

Making things worse, the DHS indicates foreign enemies could "mislead" the public based on unproven claims of voter fraud--like those promoted by Trump and Barr. (Just seen on CNN.)

On the horizon: Vanity Fair has a big story on the vanishing of Jared Kushner's big push to promote a national testing plan. The big stink: the White House decided the pandemic was a blue state problem. According to one source, 

The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.

We already knew Trump was letting blue state folks die because he said out loud that he wouldn't fulfill requests from blue state governors. Maybe some die-hard Trumpsters won't care, but most Americans won't stand for a government that chooses who lives and dies according to voting patterns. 

We'll see. The CDC says we're gonna lose 30,000 more Americans in the next 3 weeks. 

A Racist Fog

You know what happened yesterday? The COVID Tracking Project reported that coronavirus cases may be flattening again, but: 

Once again, the state data on current COVID-19 hospitalizations is unstable. CA, SC, and TX have all posted notices stating their hosp. data is incomplete because of the HHS changeover. We’ve maintained the freeze on their hospitalization data again. More on that tomorrow.

In other words, the Trump administration's determination to shift data from the CDC to the Department of Health and Human Services is doing just what we feared: making it harder to understand the full scope of the pandemic's devastation. 

The official death count is nearing 150,000. We know there are more, simply because we have what they call "excess deaths" on the books. 

And since Donald Trump's poll numbers are down, he needs distractions. One of his go-to distractions is race. 

Sure enough, Trump indicated he won't show up in person to pay his respects to the deceased Member of Congress and civil rights hero John Lewis. Possible explanations abound, including that Lewis was a vocal critic of Trump, but one sure effect of the decision is to signal to his racist followers that Trump just doesn't give a flip about Lewis.

But that's petty stuff for Trump. His new line is that he's gonna protect the suburbs from "those people." By all accounts the United States would be better off if we distributed affordable housing more broadly. I won't go into it. But Trump?

That's right. "Those people" are a threat. You'll be "bothered." You'd have "crime." And by the way, the AFFH is not an Obama rule. It goes back to 1968.

Prominent Trumpians couldn't wait to pile on to the racism distraction wagon. Senator Tom Cotton described American slavery as a "necessary evil." And Trump evangelical Eric Metaxas, who sure enough knows better, tweeted that Jesus was white--and therefore white supremacy can't be a problem.

It's easy to pass off Trumpism as a clown show. Jealous that the Washington Nationals invited Dr. Anthony Fauci to toss the Opening Day first pitch, Trump announced that he'd had to decline the Yankees offer to do the same.

(Remember, Trump was roundly booed when he showed up for a Washington game last year.) 

Trump had not been invited. He is scheduled to throw the first pitch at a game in August.

So you might be tempted to write all off as tomfoolery. But remember: Tom Cotton went to Harvard. Eric Metaxas went to Yale. And there's a totalitarian playbook about how to help your guy. They make mistakes, but when you see coordinating messages, guess what? 

They're coordinating messages.