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September 24, 2020 (Thursday)
Tonight, protesters in Louisville, Kentucky, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City, Rochester, and other cities are calling for justice and reminding observers that Black Lives Matter after a grand jury on Wednesday declined to charge the three officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s murder. The grand jury did indict Brett Hankison, one of the officers involved, on charges of first-degree wanton endangerment for shooting into her apartment and that of her neighbors without a clear line of sight. His actions, according to the charge, exhibited “extreme indifference to the value of human life,” Hankison had to post a bond of $15,000.
On March 13, three plainclothes Louisville police officers broke down the door of Breonna Taylor’s apartment as part of an investigation of a man they believed was a drug dealer in a different part of the city. Taylor had once dated the man, and police say they believed he had used her apartment to receive packages. They broke in without announcing who they were, and when they came through the door, Taylor’s boyfriend, who had a license to carry a gun, thought they were criminals and shot one of them in the leg. The three officers fired off 32 shots, six of which hit Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician.
She died within minutes.
The officers found no drugs.
After Taylor’s death, the officers involved filled out an incident report that said they had not forced their way into the apartment—witnesses and crime scene photographs show they did—and listed Taylor’s injuries as “none.”
On September 15, Taylor’s family and the city of Louisville announced they had reached a record-breaking $12 million settlement in the shooting, Louisville’s largest ever for police actions and one of the largest in the nation for the shooting of a Black American by law enforcement officers. The settlement includes a wide range of police reforms.
But when announcing the criminal charges, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron explained that Hankison’s bullets had not hit Taylor, so he could not be charged in her death. And since her boyfriend had shot at them first, the officers who did kill Taylor were justified in their use of force. It is unlikely there will be other charges, he said. The lawyer for Taylor’s family has called the six-month investigation a cover-up, and has asked Cameron to release the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings.
Democratic Governor Andy Beshear agreed that “It’s time to post all the information…. All the facts, all the interviews, all the evidence, all the ballistics, to truly let people look at the information…. One of the problems we’ve had over the last six months is a total lack of explanation and information,” he added. “And the vacuum that’s created there — our emotions, frustrations — can truly fill that. It’s time for people … to be able to come to their own conclusions about justice.”
Cameron, a Republican, cited the pending trial and an FBI investigation as a reason to keep the evidence under wraps. “At this point, I don’t think it’s appropriate” to release more information, he said.
“I have to say, as an attorney, that the decision didn’t surprise me,” said Savala Trepczynski of the University of California Berkeley School of Law. “It’s very hard to hold the police accountable in a deep way… given the system that’s in place and how it tends to favor police at every turn. As a person, though, the (decision) is upsetting, disappointing, angering — all of those things. I felt grief, a familiar grief.”
The idea that our laws are written in such a way that they privilege white people and disadvantage people of color, especially Black Americans, is the principle at the heart of critical race theory. This is the theory that Trump has called “un-American propaganda,” and which he has ordered federal agencies to stop addressing.
Trump learned about critical race theory from Tucker Carlson’s show on the Fox News Channel, and that show, too, was in the news today. A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against Carlson by Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claims to have had an affair with Trump before he became president. In 2018, on his show, Carlson accused McDougal of extorting Trump. She sued him for defamation.
Lawyer Erin Murphy argued for FNC that Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee, should toss the lawsuit because Carlson’s show is not news. It is commentary, Murphy said, and so he has no obligation to tell the truth. Murphy said that a reasonable viewer should recognize that Carlson simply provides hypothetical statements to offer “provocative things that will help me think harder,” and his accusations against McDougal, couched as questions, were simply provocations. “What we’re talking about here, it’s not the front page of The New York Times,” Murphy said. “It’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, which is a commentary show.”
Today Vyskocil agreed with FNC’s lawyers. “The statements are rhetorical hyperbole and opinion commentary intended to frame a political debate, and, as such, are not actionable as defamation,” she wrote. Vyskocil agreed with FNC lawyers that the “general tenor” of Carlson’s program indicates to the audience that he is not explaining the news, but rather is “engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘nonliteral commentary.’” She said: “Given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’” about anything Carlson says.
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Nice how at the end, she lets readers put two and two together.
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The judge only did half her job. If the conclusion was that Carlson’s show isn’t a news, then either the network needs to boot him or change their name.
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September 25, 2020 (Friday)
Trump’s refusal Wednesday to commit to accepting a loss in the November election with a peaceful transfer of power continues to make waves. Today the New York Times reported that military officers are worried that Trump will try to drag them into a contested election. But while people are rightly frightened about Trump’s increasing authoritarianism, it’s important to understand that he is deploying these particular threats about the election to create an impression that he has the option to control the outcome in November. He does not have that option.
Trump and his cronies are trying to create their own reality. They are trying to make people believe that the coronavirus is not real, that it has not killed more than 200,000 of our neighbors, that the economy is fine, that our cities are in flames, that Black Lives Matter protesters are anarchists, and that putting Democrats in office will usher in radical socialism. None of these things is true. Similarly, Trump is trying to convince people that he can deploy the power of the government to remain in power even if we want him to leave, creating uncertainly and fear. By talking about it, he is willing that situation into existence. It is a lie, and we do not have to accept it.
For his part, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden recognizes that Trump’s repeated threats not to leave office are both letting him convince us that leaving is his choice, rather than ours, and keeping the media focused on him when we should, in fact, be talking about real issues. Biden is refusing to give the idea oxygen, reminding reporters that it is a “typical Trump distraction.” “I just think the people in the country are going to be heard on November 3,” he told them. “Every vote in this country is going to be heard and they will not be stopped. I’m confident that all of the irresponsible, outrageous attacks on voting, we’ll have an election in this country as we always have had, and he’ll leave.” He said: “I don’t think he’s going to get the FBI to follow him or get anybody else to enforce something that’s not real.”
While the Senate voted unanimously yesterday to commit to the peaceful transfer of power in January, it was actually Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, who gave Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power the dripping disdain it deserved. Speaking to reporters, Baker defended the mail-in ballots that Trump is saying will invalidate the election, and called Trump’s suggestion that he wouldn’t leave office peacefully “appalling and outrageous.” Baker said he would to do everything in his power to defend the results of the election.
“A huge part of this nation’s glory, to the extent it exists as a beacon to others, is the peaceful transfer of power based on the vote of the people of this country,” he said.
Trump responded with an insulting tweet, but one that suggested he was deliberately stoking the story to try to get free media coverage.
This makes sense, because there are signs that Trump and the Republicans have a real money problem. We know that the Trump campaign has run through close to a billion dollars, leaving him and other Republican candidates short of cash for the last weeks of the campaign. At the same time, Democratic fundraising in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has been unprecedented. The squeeze showed clearly in three highly unusual appearances by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on the Fox News Channel begging for donations.
Two new ploys to advance Trump’s reelection, one claiming to address healthcare concerns and one claiming to address coronavirus concerns, reveal both the campaign’s attempts to construct their own reality and to do it on someone else’s dime.
The president has repeatedly promised his own healthcare bill to replace the Affordable Care Act that his administration is currently trying to kill. Under criticism for trying to end the law that protects people with preexisting health conditions from discrimination in buying insurance—the ACA will come before the Supreme Court a week after the November 3 election-- Trump on Thursday abruptly signed an Executive Order affirming that “it is the official policy of the United States government to protect patients with preexisting conditions.” The Executive Order is toothless; if the Supreme Court overturns the ACA, the Executive Order will mean nothing.
But Trump also suggested that he might be willing simply to keep the law and call it his own. “Obamacare is no longer Obamacare, as we worked on it and managed it very well,” Trump said of the law that continues to provide coverage for more than 20 million Americans. “What we have now is a much better plan. It is no longer Obamacare because we got rid of the worse part of it — the individual mandate.” “We’ve really become the health-care party — the Republican Party,” he said.
Trump also announced he would give $200 toward the cost of their medicines to 33 million older Americans. That’s $6.6 billion dollars that he will be putting in the pockets of key voters just before the election. Apparently, his plan is to take money from Medicare under a rule that allows the Medicare to test out new programs. Authorization for such a shift in funding usually requires a lengthy approval process, and the new program needs to be cost neutral. Ameet Sarpatwari, assistant director of Harvard Medical School’s Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law told NPR’s Sydney Lupkin: I think the administration is pushing the envelope in terms of classifying this as a demonstration."
The Trump campaign is also planning a taxpayer-funded advertising blitz, costing at least $300 million, to “defeat despair and inspire hope” about the coronavirus pandemic. According to Politico’s Dan Diamond, the ads will feature interviews between administration officials and celebrities. The ad campaign was conceived and begun by Michael Caputo, the top spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services before he stepped down last week for medical leave after an infamous Facebook rant.
Caputo claimed in his video that Trump has personally demanded the advertising campaign. “The Democrats — and, by the way, their conjugal media and the leftist scientists that are working for the government — are dead set against it,” Caputo said. “They cannot afford for us to have any good news before November because they’re already losing. … They’re going to come after me because I’m going to be putting $250 million worth of ads on the air.” The White House says it is not accurate that Trump “demanded” the campaign.
To pay for the ads, Caputo requisitioned $300 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and $15 million from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But he sidelined the Ad Council, which is a nonprofit consortium of advertising companies that since World War Two has worked on a nonpartisan basis with the government on public health or social issue campaigns. Instead, Caputo hired his own business partner to make the videos.
Josh Peck, the former HHS official who oversaw the Obama administration’s advertising campaign for HealthCare.gov, told Diamond that officials in the Obama administration were never featured in videos, and that the Trump administrations Covid videos sound like they are about more than Americans’ health. He said: "CDC hasn’t yet done an awareness campaign about Covid guidelines — but they are going to pay for a campaign about how to get rid of our despair? Run by political appointees in the press shop? Right before an election? It’s like every red flag I could dream of.”
Trump’s challenge to the outcome of the election is a sign of his desperation, but it is no less dangerous for all that: as they say, a cornered rat will bite the cat. While Democrats and a remarkable number of Republicans are speaking out against Trump, and while teams of lawyers are fighting his lawyers in court, ordinary Americans also have a crucial role to play in this moment. It is up to us to reject Trump’s fictions and reclaim the national conversation from the anger and hatred and fear Trump is stoking.
It is time to reassert our core American values so they dominate the public realm, demanding of our representatives a free and fair vote for everyone, a free and fair vote count, and a government of our own choosing.
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this plus the news that the administration is threatening to defund hospitals - take them out of medicare? medicaid? - if they don’t start perfectly reporting their covid numbers into that new, complicated, error prone hhs system they created… they seem to be taking aim at healthcare right before the election.
maybe another sign they they expect to lose? to break what they can before they’re gone?
i figure seniors would be up in arms, but maybe the dots aren’t being connected yet.
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September 27, 2020 (Sunday)
Late this afternoon, the New York Times published the story we have been waiting for since 2016: the story of Donald Trump’s taxes. There was never any doubt that whatever was in those taxes was bad or he never would have worked so hard to hide them. But the picture the New York Times story revealed was worse than expected.
The New York Times obtained more than two decades of Donald Trump’s tax information, including that of his companies, through his first two years in the White House. The picture they paint is of a man more than $300 million in debt; whose businesses are constantly losing money; who deducts personal expenses including houses, airplanes, and $70,000 in hairstyling; who is fighting with the IRS over the repayment of a $72.9 million tax refund which, if it has to be repaid, will run to $100 million; and who in his first year in office paid the most income tax he had paid in a decade: $750.
That’s not a typo.
In 11 of the 18 years the reporters examined, Trump paid no taxes at all. He has, however, paid taxes elsewhere. In 2017, Trump paid $750 to the U.S., but paid $15,598 in Panama, $145,400 in India, and $156,824 in the Philippines (rather undercutting the idea that American tax laws are too harsh on the very wealthy).
The information illuminates a number of the shadowy puzzles of the Trump presidency. It shows that he was deeply in debt in 2015, and was, as his former fixer Michael Cohen said, eager to rebuild his brand by running for the highest office in the land. He had a bad habit of running through cash and accumulating huge debt, a pattern that showed up first when he ran through the money his father gave him, and then when the brief popularity of The Apprentice put $427.4 million into his pocket. He threw the money from The Apprentice into failing golf courses.
The presidency has injected cash into Trump’s businesses, as lobbyists and foreign governments invest in them, but he is still losing money. The Times notes that “within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans—obligations for which he is personally responsible—will come due.”
This, of course, means that Trump is a huge national security risk. He owes money—to whom we don’t know—and he does not have it to pay his debts. It is no wonder that a bipartisan group of nearly 500 national security officials, past and present, last week endorsed Biden for president. According to Defense News, the list included “five former secretaries of the Navy, two former Army secretaries, four former Air Force secretaries, two retired governors, and 106 ambassadors.” Retired General Paul Selva, who served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the first two and a half years of Trump’s term, signed the letter.
The tax returns also suggest that Trump’s desperation to stay in office is sparked by the 1973 Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel memo saying a sitting president cannot be indicted. Former inspector general of the Department of Justice Michael Bromwich tweeted “Trump knew something we didn’t when he started balking at the peaceful transfer of power. If he loses the election, he faces federal and state prosecution for bank fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, and mail fraud, as does his entire family. No OLC memo will spare him.”
Among other things, the information revealed that Trump wrote off about $26 million in “consulting fees” between 2010 and 2018. This reduced his taxable income, but it appears it might have simply been a way to give money to his children without paying taxes on it: his daughter Ivanka appears to have received $747,622 from the Trump Organization in consulting fees, despite being an employee there.
Remember, this is the information Trump chose to tell the IRS. It seems worth wondering what he did not tell them.
The Times says it will not release the actual documents in order to protect its source(s). It also says it will continue to drop more news from this trove over the coming weeks.
A piece from Michael Kranish at the Washington Post today reinforced the New York Times story. Apparently, when he was on the verge of personal bankruptcy in the 1990s, Trump tried to trick his 85-year-old father, who was sliding into dementia, into signing a codicil to his will that would cheat Trump’s siblings out of their inheritance and give Trump control of his father’s entire estate. Trump’s mother stopped her husband from signing it.
Trump had a press conference scheduled for shortly after the New York Times story broke. When asked about it, Trump claimed the story was “totally fake news,” although a lawyer for the Trump Organization could only try to refute the story with misleading information. After the conference, CNN’s Ana Cabrera pointed out that Trump could stop the New York Times story if it were wrong by “releasing his tax returns, by making them public.”
This evening, news broke that Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, has been hospitalized after threatening suicide. While most commentators simply noted the story and warned against making this particular personal story political, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said: “Brad Parscale is a member of our family and we all love him. We are ready to support him and his family in any way possible. The disgusting, personal attacks from Democrats and disgruntled RINOs have gone too far, and they should be ashamed of themselves for what they’ve done to this man and his family.” There is no evidence linking Democrats or anyone else to this incident.
The big New York Times story came on top of yesterday’s big story: Trump’s announcement that he has nominated Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court, to take the seat formerly held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and like he was, she is an originalist. In a speech, she explained: “The constitution means what it meant to those who ratified it.” Scalia “interpreted that text as people would have understood that text at the time it was ratified…. if we change the law now to comport with our current understandings or what we want it to mean then it ceases to be the law that has democratic legitimacy.” Change must come from new laws and new constitutional amendments, not from the courts. Like Scalia, Barrett resists “the notion that the Supreme Court should be in the business of imposing its views of social mores on the American people.” This understanding does not bode well for the Affordable Care Act, which the court will begin to review on November 10, just a week after the election.
Trump elevated Barrett from her professorship at Notre Dame Law School to the U.S. court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on May 8, 2017, and the Senate confirmed her the following October 31. Now 48 years old, she is in line to join the Supreme Court.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has laid out a lightning fast schedule for Barrett’s expected confirmation. Today he told the Fox News Channel that his committee will approve her by October 22, so she will be on track for a full Senate vote before the end of October. It will be one of the fastest confirmations for a Supreme Court justice in history.
This is a huge scandal. In March 2016, when President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court after the death of Antonin Scalia the previous month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) insisted that it was inappropriate to confirm a justice so close to an election. That was ridiculous, of course, in our history 14 justices have been confirmed in an election year before the election (three more have been confirmed after it). But no Supreme Court justice has ever been confirmed later than July before an election. Now the Republicans are fast-tracking a nominee while people are literally already voting. And the president has said he wants Barrett confirmed because he expects the election results will be thrown into the Supreme Court where, presumably, she will vote in his favor.
Barrett is a devout Catholic who is a member of the charismatic Christian People of Praise community. Concern about the gender roles enforced in that patriarchal community have prompted her supporters to claim that her opponents are anti-Catholic. This claim is odd when both the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, are themselves devout Catholics who have endured Republican attacks on their faith, including Trump’s declaration that, if elected, Biden would "hurt the Bible, hurt God…. He’s against God.”
Rather than being prompted by concern for religious freedom, Republicans insisting that Democrats are anti-Catholic falls in line with a pattern identified by Brian Fallon, former director of public affairs for the Department of Justice and now the executive director of Demand Justice, which has tried to stop Trump’s packing of the federal judiciary. “It is a long running tactic of Senate GOP that, when they are about to do something unpopular, they invent some grievance to ‘psych’ themselves up and act like Dems forced their hand. This is why they are desperate to act like attacks on Catholicism are lurking out there.”
Today, Biden urged senators, many of whom he knows personally from his decades in the Senate, to de-escalate their stance on Barrett and to “do the right thing.” He warned that voters “are not going to stand for this abuse of power.” “This is where the power of the nation resides — in the people, in the rule of law, in precedents we abide by. To subvert both openly and needlessly, even as Americans cast their vote would be an irreversible step toward the brink and a betrayal of a single quality that America has born and built on — the people decide.”
“I urge every senator to take a step back from the brink,” he said. “Take off the blinders of politics for just one critical moment and stand up for the Constitution you swore to uphold.”
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September 28, 2020 (Monday)
After last night’s news dump, today was mostly follow up while everyone takes a deep breath before tomorrow’s presidential debates. Since last night was a late one and the morning early, I’m going to take advantage of the lack of big news to rest up for tomorrow.
First, though, a rundown of the little that hit the radar screen:
Wildfire risk in the West continues high, with more than 3.7 million acres burned in California alone and 26 dead there.
The Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, was overheard talking on a plane about Trump’s new medical advisor for the coronavirus task force, Scott Atlas, a radiologist and talking head on the Fox News Channel.
“Everything he says is false,” Redfield said. Atlas’s advocacy of exposing children to the coronavirus to achieve herd immunity has made public health experts blanch. “Many of his opinions and statements run counter to established science, and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy,” 78 of his former colleagues wrote in an open letter.
More than 200,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 and cases are currently rising in 21 states. Vice-President Mike Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus task force, says cases are going to continue to rise.
Meanwhile, the New York Times revealed today that, this summer, White House officials pressured the CDC to downplay the dangers of coronavirus to youngsters as the administration pushed the idea of reopening schools. White House officials actively sought to present the idea that the disease was less dangerous to children, and that the psychological damage of staying out of school would be more harmful to them than the coronavirus. While the CDC was trying to make the pros and cons of reopening schools clear, Trump said in early July that children handled the virus well, and “we want to get our schools open. We want to get them open quickly, beautifully, in the fall.”
Last night’s tax story earned Trump’s predictable angry tweets. But there was a thundering silence from Republicans about the tax story, while Democrats expressed alarm at the dangers of a president exposed to more than $300 million in debt. For ordinary Americans, even small debt can prevent obtaining a security clearance because it makes a person vulnerable to blackmail or other pressure.
After the Republican campaign’s initial reaction was to blame Democrats and “RINOs” for Brad Parscale’s suicide scare and hospitalization yesterday, it turned out today that the issue was domestic violence. A police report showed that Parscale’s wife called police when he loaded a gun. Arriving at the scene, police saw she was was badly bruised and scratched, and she “stated Brad Parscale hits her.”
The New York Times tonight issued part 2 of the story of Trump’s taxes, this time a deep dive into how The Apprentice rehabilitated Trump’s image as a wealthy businessman.
Finally, the day’s biggest news story dropped tonight, when a member of the grand jury that oversaw the Breonna Taylor case filed a motion asking the judge to release the grand jury proceedings. The motion suggests that the public statements of Kentucky Attorney General David Cameron contradict the evidence the grand jury saw. That grand jury was in charge of considering charges against the three law enforcement officers who executed a no-knock warrant on Taylor’s apartment and ended up murdering the 26-year-old emergency room technician after her boyfriend shot at the men he thought were intruders.
That’s it for me tonight, folks. I’m thinking tomorrow’s going to be newsworthy.
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It would tickle me pink if Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, and Mike McIntire received a pulitzer for this. Not as pink as getting trump out and up on criminal charges, I’d go full glittery rainbow for that.
Edited to correct spelling of reporter’s name.
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that person is a hero. turns out they grand jury never even got to consider murder as a charge, and the transcripts are going to be released.
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September 29, 2020 (Tuesday)
My house is blissfully quiet, but my ears are still ringing.
The first presidential debate of 2020 was unlike anything we have seen before. CNN’s Jake Tapper said: “That was a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck.” “He was his own tweets come to life.” “We’ll talk about who won the debate, who lost the debate … One thing for sure, the American people lost.” Conservative pundit William Kristol called it “a spectacle… an embarrassment… a disgrace… because of the behavior of one man, Donald Trump. The interrupting and the bullying, the absence of both decency and dignity—those were Donald Trump’s distinctive contributions to the evening, and they gave the affair the rare and sickening character of a national humiliation.”
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
In a normal presidential debate, both candidates try to explain their policy proposals, jab at their opponent, and convince undecided voters to move in their direction. If this had been a normal presidential debate, its weight would have fallen on Trump, who is significantly behind Biden, to win voters. Biden’s goal would simply have been not to lose anyone.
If we were calling this like a normal presidential debate, Trump lost. He did not move the needle in his direction. Biden won; he did not lose anyone.
But this was not a normal presidential debate.
Trump long ago gave up the pretense that he wanted to win a majority of voters. For months now, he has made no effort to reach outside of his base. Instead he has focused on solidifying and radicalizing it. As his trade war with China and the coronavirus has weakened his support, he has given massive grants to farmers, promised checks to 33 million elderly to help pay for prescriptions, splashed transportation grants around, and recently even offered grants to lobstermen who have lost business because of the trade war.
Trump set out tonight not to convince undecided voters to support him, but rather to harden his supporters and encourage them to disrupt the election so he can contest the results until the solution goes to the Supreme Court where he hopes a majority will rule in his favor. He laid it all out tonight.
His performance was no accident. He came out determined to dominate the debate in much the same way as Fox News Channel personalities or talk radio hosts dominate their shows. He interrupted, argued, lied, and generally sucked the oxygen out of the room. He cheated, refusing to follow the rules that he had agreed to, thus demonstrating that he would not be bound by the rules everyone else had to live by. He bullied moderator Chris Wallace of the Fox News Channel into repeatedly appeasing him by saying, for example, “Mr. President you’re going to be very happy, because we’re going to talk about law and order,” and “Let me ask — sir, you’ll be happy, I’m about to pick up on one of your points to ask the vice president.” Trump was attempting to demonstrate his dominance.
He went on to echo the grievances and lies that his supporters have come to believe. Ignoring the more than 200,000 Americans dead of Covid-19, he insisted he was the victim of Democrats’ lies about the disease. When Wallace tried to rein him in, he attacked him for being unfair, although Wallace never once fact-checked Trump’s lies.
If Trump had a strategy at all that involved voters, it was to try to keep them from backing Biden. Trump kept yelling at him about “Law & Order,” as he likes to tweet, and kept trying to drive a wedge between Biden and the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, finally saying to him: “You just lost the left.”
Trump tipped his hand, though, when Wallace asked: "Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down?” Trump demanded names of such groups, and Wallace named, among others, the Proud Boys, the hate group that helped to organize the riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. After hedging, Trump finally answered: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by! But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.” “That’s my president,” the head of the Proud Boys posted on the social media chair that will still host them. Within an hour the group had new shoulder patches designed with the words “Stand Back and Stand By.”
Trump called for his supporters to act as poll watchers to prevent a fraudulent vote. He is losing badly in Pennsylvania, a state he needs, and tonight he lied that Philadelphia election officials refused to permit his poll watchers to observe voting. “Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” he said, “bad things.” The truth is that seven satellite offices where voters can register and apply to vote, complete, and drop off mail in ballots opened in Philadelphia. Poll watchers are not allowed because there is no polling taking place. Trump’s calls for poll watchers are pretty clearly calls for voter intimidation.
Tonight, again, Trump refused to commit to accepting a Biden victory, saying that he could not agree to fraudulent results. He suggested the election could take months to solve, and that he “definitely” wants the Supreme Court, including his new nominee Amy Coney Barrett, to “look at the ballots.” (Democrats have said Barrett should recuse herself from any election-related cases; Republicans say that is “absurd.”)
It was a performance designed to show a strong man who is calling out his armed supporters to enable him to seize an election he cannot win freely.
But Trump performed as he did because it’s all he’s got. He has no policies, no platform, no plans that he can sell to the American people, and no attention span either to govern or to explain how he wants to govern. So his only option is to dominate. Even he knows that ploy is a desperate one. Tonight’s tell was actually in his dominance play itself: overt bullying like he displayed tonight is actually a sign of weakness and abuse, not of true power.
The bar for Biden going into this debate was low: since he is so far ahead, he simply needed not to lose votes. But he did well. First of all, he managed to retain his train of thought, which was no easy thing with Trump interrupting and lying and yelling, clearly trying to derail him and, at the very least, bring out his stutter. He put to rest Trump’s insistence that he is failing mentally.
Despite Trump, Biden also managed to explain some of his policies, too, as well as pointing out that more than 200,000 Americans have died on Trump’s watch, and that he has done the economy no favors. Under Trump, he said, America has become “weaker, sicker, poorer, more divided and more violent.”
But Biden’s strongest moments were ones Trump teed up. When Biden defended our troops from Trump’s “losers” and “suckers” comments, citing his son, Beau, who died of cancer after his service in Iraq, Trump missed the opportunity to acknowledge Biden’s loss, and instead repeatedly attacked Biden’s son Hunter, who struggled with substance abuse. Trump insisted—incorrectly—that Hunter was dishonorably discharged from the Navy (in fact, he was administratively discharged), and tried to smear him. Biden looked directly at Trump to say that Hunter had a drug addiction he is managing, and Biden is proud of him. While Biden spoke as a father defending his son, his message will resonate with the 20 million Americans who are battling addiction.
Most important, though, Biden made the debate about the country and the American people, not about Trump. While Trump listed his own grievances, Biden spoke to the camera, asking Americans what they needed, what they think. He promised that we can accomplish anything if only we work together. He urged people to ignore the chaos and vote. “Vote whatever way is the best way for you,” he said. “Because he will not be able to stop you from determining the outcome of this election.”
Biden also refused to be scared off by Trump’s threats not to honor the election results. He brushed them off, saying “I will accept it, and he will, too. You know why? Because once the winner is declared once all the ballots are counted, that’ll be the end of it.”
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September 30, 2020 (Wednesday)
So what was happening while we were distracted by Trump’s debate performance?
First of all, his tax returns, publicized by the New York Times since Sunday, have taken a back seat to his support for the white supremacist gang the Proud Boys and his attacks on a peaceful election.
Second, coronavirus news is not getting the airtime it should. More than a million people around the world have died of Covid-19, including more than 205,000 Americans. Florida is seeing a surge in new cases since Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order allowing restaurants and bars to reopen. The Midwest is also in a surge, with record numbers of new cases in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Kansas. Wisconsin hospitals are nearing capacity and South Dakota has the highest rate of spread in the country. Experts worry about a dramatic rise in cases as cold weather settles in.
Third, Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, left the Trump campaign today after his involuntary hospitalization for psychiatric evaluation over the weekend after threats to self-harm. He cited his need “to focus on my family and get help dealing with the overwhelming stress.” Parscale knows the secrets of the Trump campaign since the heady days of 2016, and the family is reportedly worried he will begin to cooperate with law enforcement about possible campaign finance violations. Campaign staff is scrubbing his presence from the campaign’s website.
These three big stories are on the back burner because last night Trump told white supremacist thugs to “Stand Back and Stand By” before saying that “somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left," a statement observers note sounds much like a precursor to calling them to action against those he perceives to be enemies.
He also called for “poll watchers” to prevent fraudulent ballots and warned that Democrats are going to steal the election from him. He said he expects the election results will take “months” as the campaign challenges mail-in ballots, and that he hopes the case will end up in the Supreme Court.
Today, it feels like Trump’s embrace of white supremacist gangs and his open declaration that he is planning an assault on our democratic process was a turning point for the campaign, and for the nation.
The president reportedly is happy with the way the evening went, believing his supporters love to see him go on the attack. Today he has complained that he “was debating two people last night,” but that he had won and it was “fun.”
Trump’s team is dutifully echoing his talking points. Campaign spokeswoman Thea McDonald told the Washington Post that “Poll watchers are critical to ensuring the fairness of any election, and President Trump’s volunteer poll watchers will be trained to ensure all rules are applied equally, all valid ballots are counted, and all Democrat rule breaking is called out…. And if fouls are called, the Trump campaign will go to court to enforce the laws, as rightfully written by state legislatures, to protect every voter’s right to vote. President Trump and his team will be ready to make sure polls are run correctly, securely, and transparently as we work to deliver the free and fair election Americans deserve.”
This high-minded language is a weird echo of the language white supremacists used in the American South after the Civil War, as they drove Black voters and white Republicans from the polls and turned the region into a one-party state for generations.
Neo-Nazis and right-wing thugs are thrilled they have a fellow traveler in the White House. “I got shivers,” Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, wrote Wednesday. “I still have shivers. He is telling the people to stand by. As in: Get ready for war.”
But not everyone was thrilled with Trump’s performance. Focus groups of women were turned off by his bullying, and his male supporters thought he interrupted too much. An adviser called it “a disaster.” Politico’s chief political correspondent Tim Alberta thought Trump looked exhausted and “behaved like cornered prey.” The Commission on Presidential Debates is reworking its rules to try to prevent another spectacle like last night. Foreign observers were “aghast,” according to an AP report; Kenyan commentator Patrick Gathara wrote: “This debate would be sheer comedy if it wasn’t such a pitiful and tragic advertisement for U.S. dysfunction.”
Even within the White House people were dismayed. “It’s nuts…” “total lunacy,” an official and a staffer told Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman. A prominent Republican added: “Trump didn’t win over any voters, and he pissed off a lot of people.”
Trump’s people are trying to walk back Trump’s support for the Proud Boys. They are also trying to convince him to temper his future performances. Dana Bash from CNN reported today that “A source familiar with the president’s debate prep tells CNN that they wanted him to be aggressive, but not act like Jason from Friday the 13th.” Republican lawmakers were largely silent today about Trump’s performance, although Susan Collins (R-ME) agreed that Trump should have condemned white supremacist gangs after she first tried to blame both sides for the debacle.
At his rally tonight in Minnesota, Trump said Biden is cancelling the next two debates, although Biden has said he’ll be there. Trump is also talking about getting rid of a term limit on the presidency and serving another 8, 12, or 16 years.
Americans who care about our electoral process are now trying to prepare for crisis at the polls. “This is a blatant attempt at voter intimidation,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat. “It’s very important to be clear about that. It’s illegal. It is a crime to engage in voter intimidation or election interference.” Several state attorneys general say they will arrest anyone who tries to intimidate voters.
Perhaps most important today was the news that the FBI’s Dallas Field Office yesterday released an intelligence report warning that a “violent extremist threat” is imminent, and that the period between now and the inauguration next January is a “potential flashpoint.” That threat comes not from the “left,” as Trump charges, but from the right-wing gangs that Trump is encouraging, including the Boogaloos, a staunchly anti-government group that is working to bring about a race war to speed up the collapse of the government. The report, which was obtained exclusively by The Nation, is titled “Boogaloo Adherents Likely Increasing Anti-Government Violent Rhetoric and Activities, Increasing Domestic Violent Extremist Threat in the FBI Dallas Area of Responsibility.” The report warns that there is “increased ‘patrolling’ or attendance at events” that serve the Boogaloo’s cause, including “otherwise peaceful and lawful protests.”
Today a federal judge in Montana rejected the attempts of the Trump campaign to stop the state from expanding mail-in voting. He permitted the new system to go into place, and called the idea of widespread voter fraud “fiction.”
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this one i think:
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October 1, 2020 (Thursday)
This evening, I talked to a woman who said she cannot read the news any more. It’s all just too much. If you feel this way, please understand that it is fine to look away when you need to. We are already exhausted, and we are entering a period that is going to be chaotic. Even a normal campaign year is crazy, but this year, the extraordinary chaos feeds the needs of this president to destabilize the country and emerge as a savior. The current chaos is designed to make you hopeless about creating change so that you give up. To combat that, look away and recharge your batteries. Focus on the things that ground you: family, friends, pets, gardening, movies, books, biking, church… whatever works. Just come back when you can… and remember to vote.
It’s going to be nuts from here on out.
In the first draft of this October 1 letter, I wrote that presidential adviser Hope Hicks has tested positive for coronavirus. Trump tweeted that he and the First Lady “will begin our quarantine process!” CNN’s White House correspondent John Harwood noted at 11:30 pm: “curious that neither Trump nor WH have disclosed any test results for him more than 3 hours after news broke that Hope Hicks tested positive. Trump’s typical approach is boasting that he doesn’t worry because he gets tested so much. He told Hannity he doesn’t know if he has it.” MSNBC justice and security analyst Matthew Miller tweeted “Thank god the White House has a history of being completely honest about the president’s health. It would be awful if we couldn’t trust them right now.”
At about 1:30 am on October 2, the White House announced that Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for coronavirus. This will be the first time I break my midnight rule—in the past, I have always cut the news off at midnight, no matter what happens at 12:01—but this has such huge implications for national security, the economy, and, of course, the election that it has pushed everything else off the media radar screen and I cannot justify leaving it for a day.
Stock futures plunged more than 400 points immediately after the news broke, but right now that’s the only result of this news that we can measure.
The story has been coming clearer in the last three hours since the story broke. Apparently, Hicks tested negative on Wednesday before she boarded Air Force 1 with the president and most of his closest advisers, but developed symptoms during the day. A second test on Thursday morning was positive. Nonetheless, the president and his aides and advisers flew to New Jersey on Thursday, where he attended a fundraiser, gave a speech, and attended a roundtable with supporters, all without a mask. It was only the leaking of the Hicks story that shook loose the information that the Trumps are infected.
According to CNBC, those on Air Force 1 on Wednesday were White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; national security advisor Robert O’Brien; Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani; White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany; Ivanka; Jared Kushner; Donald Jr.; Eric; Donald Jr’s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle; Eric’s wife Lara; Tiffany; campaign manager Bill Stepien; campaign official Jason Miller; White House social media director Dan Scavino; White House counselor Derek Lyons; political advisor Stephen Miller; Representative Jim Jordan, (R-Ohio), [and] Alice Marie Johnson, the criminal justice reform advocate Trump pardoned.
Trump also stood inside near Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for an hour and a half on Tuesday, yelling and spitting—the very conditions that are most likely to spread the disease. At the debate, his entourage, which included Hicks, Jordan, and the four older Trump children, refused to wear masks despite the mandate that they do so.
This story proves how crucial it is to have a White House we trust. Immediately, Twitter users noted that someone had suggested this very scenario back in September as a way for Trump to steal headlines away from Biden, emerge victorious over the virus, and claim credit for a new treatment that had cured him. Elections almost always feature an “October Surprise” to move voters in the last few weeks of the election when it is too late for the other side to challenge that surprise move. And while this news certainly looks genuine—the White House doctor issued a statement after Trump announced the test results—there is plenty that the Trump campaign would like to distract us from.
On October 1, alone, we learned that a study of more than 38 million articles about the coronavirus pandemic between January 1 and May 26 published in English shows that Trump was “likely the largest driver of… Covid-19 misinformation.” The Cornell University study found that 37.9% of misinformation mentioned Trump.
Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster told MSNBC that Trump is “aiding and abetting Putin’s efforts” to disrupt the November election. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge that Putin is engaged in a “sustained campaign of disruption, disinformation and denial” helps the Russian leader.
It turns out that Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, in 2006 signed an anti-abortion “right to life ad” near another ad from the same organization that called for putting “an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore laws that protect the lives of unborn children.” While such a stance will thrill anti-abortion voters, in fact a majority of Americans does not support ending Roe v. Wade, and senators up for reelection have been saying that Barrett would not interfere with the law.
A former senior adviser to Melania Trump today released tapes of the First Lady complaining both about being criticized for her lack of involvement with the children held at the border and for having to decorate the White House for Christmas. “I’m working … my a** off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?.. OK, and then I do it and I say that I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a f****** break. Where they were saying anything when Obama did that? I cannot go, I was trying get the kid reunited with the mom. I didn’t have a chance – needs to go through the process and through the law.” (Under President Barack Obama, children were separated from their parents or someone who presented as a guardian only when officials were concerned for their safety. Under Trump, such separations were routine until a judge stopped the practice.)
Don Jr.’s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was a co-host of a Fox News Channel show, was also in the news today. It turns out that she left FNC abruptly after an employee complained of sexual harassment. According to a story by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, Guilfoyle required her former assistant to work at her apartment, where Guilfoyle would sometimes be naked, and would share with the assistant inappropriate pictures of men, discussing her sexual activities with some of them. Guilfoyle denies any workplace misconduct, but the story grabbed headlines. FNC settled the case against her for $4 million.
Tonight the House of Representatives, controlled by Democrats, passed a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief measure. No Republicans voted for it.
Right-wing conspiracy theorists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have been charged with four felonies in Michigan for intimidating voters, conspiring to violate election laws, and using a computer to commit a crime. The two allegedly sent robocalls to voters in five states to discourage mail-in voting. The calls falsely said that personal information of those people who vote by mail would be shared with police, credit card companies, and the CDC, which would then require vaccinations.
Finally, a story from Texas shows just how concerned the Trump campaign is about the upcoming election. Today Texas Governor Greg Abbott limited the number of locations for dropping off mail in ballots to one site per county. This hits Democratic Harris County the hardest. It is huge, and has the state’s largest population count. Currently, it has 12 drop off locations. Democratic Travis County, which includes Austin, currently has four. Other large counties, more reliably Republican, only had one. Abbott argued that this measure would prevent voter fraud, but Democrats pointed out this is a “blatant voter suppression tactic.” It should indeed reduce Democratic ballots in the state… and, mind you, this is Texas! That the Republican governor feels the need to suppress Democratic votes in Texas shows just which way the wind is blowing.
As I say, the next few weeks are going to be wild. But don’t let it knock you off course.
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October 2, 2020 (Friday)
Today’s media was consumed with news of the spread of coronavirus to the president and First Lady, as well as concern over the degree to which it has spread to other people associated with the White House. A number of those who attended the Rose Garden announcement of Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court have tested positive. That number includes the Trumps, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), and Fr. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame. Also infected are Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, and at least three journalists who have attended White House events in the past week.
And tonight, presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway reported that she, too, has tested positive.
As I write this, just before midnight, Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien has just announced he, too, has tested positive for the coronavirus.
Five minutes after midnight (sorry for breaking the midnight rule again), we learned that 11 staffers from the Cleveland debate also tested positive.
We will not learn of infections among the Secret Service.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tested negative, as have Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.
This evening, medical professionals transferred the president to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center “out of an abundance of caution.” He walked from the helicopter under his own power, and posted a short video to his Twitter account assuring viewers that he is doing “very well.” He remains in charge; power has not transferred to Vice President Mike Pence.
Aside from the personal implications of the spread of this illness—and let’s remember that there are 46,459 other Americans who have contracted the coronavirus in the last day-- this major news story has huge implications for the upcoming election. It also illustrates how the administration’s secrecy and lies take away our ability to make informed decisions about our own lives, as well as about the nation.
The Trump entourage has refused to wear masks, social distance, or follow the advice of public health experts for reducing the spread of the virus. Now it appears that White House officials deliberately withheld information about their condition, directly endangering other people who acted on the presumption that the Trump people weren’t infected. The Washington Post reported that Secret Service agents, who risk their lives to protect the president, are angry and frustrated: “He’s never cared about us.” The 30-50 Republican donors who met with Trump Thursday night at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, are “freaking out,” one report noted. Tickets had cost up to $250,000, and Trump met privately with about 19 people for 45 minutes. Trump knew his adviser Hope Hicks had tested positive when he left for the club, but he went anyway. He did not wear a mask.
Reporter Chris Wallace of the Fox News Channel, who moderated Tuesday’s debate and so was one of those the Trumps’ entourage endangered, revealed today that Trump arrived too late on Tuesday for a COVID-19 test, as the venue required. Instead, there was an “honor system.” Organizers assumed the people associated with the campaigns would not come unless they had tested negative. Trump’s people arrived wearing masks, which they had to have to enter the auditorium, but then removed them shortly after sitting down, and refused to put them back on. During the debate, Trump mocked Biden for his habit of wearing a mask.
The campaign did not tell the Biden camp that Hicks, who attended the debate, had tested positive for coronavirus the day after the event. The Biden organization learned it from the newspapers. The White House did not even tell former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who spent four days in close quarters with Hicks and Trump, helping the president prepare for the debate. He, too, learned the news from the media.
This crisis shows how the administration’s refusal to share information and its insistence on its own version of reality creates confusion that leaves Americans vulnerable and anxious. Its history of secrecy and lies means that few people actually trust anything its spokespeople say. It was striking how many people did not believe the Trumps were actually sick when the news broke; we are so accustomed to Trump’s lies that many people thought he was simply looking for a way out of future debates.
The constant lies—about coronavirus and virtually everything else—destabilize the nation because we cannot know what the truth really is. And if we don’t know what is actually happening, we cannot make good decisions. Today the editorial board of the Washington Post warned that the White House simply must let us know the truth about the president’s health so that we know who is actually running national security, the economy, and the election on our behalf.
That plea did not appear to make much of an impression on the White House: it did not bother to tell Pelosi, who is third in line for the presidency, that Trump was being helicoptered to Walter Reed Hospital.
And so we are facing a pandemic spreading through the upper ranks of the government just before an election with little faith that we will learn the truth about what is happening. That, just as much as the infections in the administration, is a crisis.
To its credit, the Biden campaign has identified this crisis and is doing its best to restore our sense of a shared reality, based in our history and our better principles. Rather than expressing outrage that the Trump camp exposed him and his wife and guests to coronavirus, Biden offered his best wishes for Trump and the First Lady, as did his running mate Kamala Harris. Biden’s campaign pulled all its negative ads out of respect for the president’s illness (the Trump campaign refused to follow suit).
Biden spoke in Michigan today, assuring the audience that “We can get this pandemic under control so we can get our economy working again for everyone.” But, he emphasized, “this cannot be a partisan moment. It must be an American moment. We have to come together as a nation.” He promised to get rid of the toxic partisanship that is keeping us all off balance. “I’m running as a Democrat,” he said, “but I will… govern as an American president. Whether you voted for me or against me, I will represent you… and those who see each other as fellow Americans who just don’t live in red states or blue states but who live in and love the United States of America. That’s who we are.”
To an increasingly weary country, he offered hope that we really can heal the nation’s ills. “There’s never been a single solitary thing America’s been unable to do. Think of this. Not once. Not a single thing we’ve not been able to overcome when we’ve done it together. So let’s get the heck up. Remember who in God’s name we are. This is the United States of America,” he said. “There’s nothing beyond our capacity.”
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I cannot believe those involved in running the event didn’t know there is no honor among thieves. After all the lies and distrust this administration has sown, only a fool would give them the benefit of the doubt - especially in matters of health and safety.
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I suspect the decision to go on with the debates was purely financial. Cancelling at the last minute would have cost lots of $$ - though it was the correct thing to do! “Honor system,” my foot! Big excuse is more like it.
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Now I’m wondering if the folks infected by that group (at the debate and the GOP fundraiser) could sue them. That should make them think twice about the consequences of their actions, since they’ve made it clear they don’t care if anyone else gets sick.
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Interesting. I hadn’t thought about law suits!
I heard about the “honor system” over the past couple of days, but it didn’t occur to me until I read your post that whatever network(s) were airing the debate would have stood to lose a whole bunch of $$. Shouldn’t the network(s) be culpable in addition to Team 45 for any spread due to the debate?
I’m internet only, so I have no idea who aired the debate. What little I could stand to watch I saw on a Facebook watch party.
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their excuse about “arriving too late” and the honor system doesn’t pass the smell test. it doesn’t take any time to take the test. granted ivent done it myself but it seems to be well under a minute.
maybe they wouldn’t have had time for the results before they went on ( also ridiculous though unless he literally walked in from the plane to the stage ) - but it basically means they didn’t take it seriously enough to want to know the results.
same with the family not wearing masks. it’s a game of chicken. they agreed to certain rules. tell them loudly you won’t start the debate, and let america watch them act like children.
more than 200,600 americans dead. with bunkerboy up there saying no cases have ever been traced to his events. well, they have now.
people can and will likely die now as a result of the debates and as a result of the trump family’s refusal to follow the rules. testing at the debate, like the rules required, would have saved people’s lives.
let me predict: no one from the trump family ever apologizes.
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