Month: July 2020

The Mary Trump tell-all is making the rounds. There’s no turning back now.

It sounds like a lot of fun. Here are some of the highlights we know about so far:

Donald Trump’s sister, a future federal judge, did his college homework for him

While President Trump frequently boasts of his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance, he only ended up there after finishing the first two years of his undergraduate education at Fordham University, a half-hour drive from his parents’ Queens home.

As Dr Trump relates young Donald’s efforts to gain entry to the Ivy League school as a transfer student, she claims that despite the fact that his sister Maryanne did his homework for him, his grade point average placed him “far from the top of his class”.

He paid a fellow student to take the SAT for him

After noting that an obstacle to Donald’s desired transfer to Wharton was the fact that his sister Maryanne could not take tests for him, Dr Trump reveals that Donald solved the problem of the SAT (the most common US college entrance exam) by hiring a friend.

“To hedge his bets,” she writes, “he [Donald] enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him.”

His older sister isn’t a fan of Donald or his presidency

Early on in her manuscript, Dr Trump relates a conversation she had with her aunt, now-retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, in which Barry, then still a Circuit Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, dismissed his chances of winning the presidency.

“He’s a clown,” Barry said (according to her niece). “This will never happen.”

When Dr Trump asked her aunt what her uncle — merely a candidate for the presidency at the time — had accomplished on his own, the highly respected jurist replied: “Well, he has had five bankruptcies.”

Judge Barry, who retired from the bench amid an ethics investigation prompted by a New York Times report detailing the allegedly fraudulent methods her family used to avoid paying taxes, also objected to her brother invoking the name of her older brother (and the author’s father), Fred Trump Jr, to bolster his own anti-drug bona fides (the late Fred Trump Jr died of complications related to alcoholism).

According to the manuscript, Judge Barry told her niece that Donald was “using your father’s memory for political purposes,” adding that his doing so was “a sin, especially since Freddy should have been the star of the family”.

And when then-President-Elect Trump called his sister to ask how he was doing, she told him: “Not that good.”

When a number of high-profile evangelical figures — including Jerry Falwell, Jr — began endorsing Donald Trump in 2016, his sister, who converted to Catholicism more than 50 years ago, reportedly asked her niece: “What the f**k is wrong with them?”

“The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there. It’s mind-boggling,” she apparently said of her brother. “He has no principles. None!”

And as Donald Trump prepared to become the first American president to meet with a North Korean dictator, Judge Barry called the White House to leave a message for her brother: “Tell him his older sister called with a little sisterly advice. Learn from those who know what they’re doing. Stay away from Dennis Rodman. And leave his Twitter at home.”

According to Dr Trump, her aunt and uncle have not spoken much since then.

Diagnosing Donald Trump is impossible — especially in the White House

Dr Trump, a trained clinical psychologist, says her uncle does meet all nine criteria needed to be diagnosed as a narcissist. But she writes that his mental problems are far more complicated than mere narcissism.

“The fact is,” she explains, “Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.”

Moreover, she writes that trying to evaluate his day-to-day functioning would be “impossible” because “he is, in the West Wing, essentially institutionalized”.

Mary Trump says a second term for her uncle ‘would be the end of American democracy’

At the outset of the book, Dr Trump stresses that despite what her aunts and uncles might think, she did not write the book out of any desire for revenge or in an attempt to cash in on her uncle’s presidency.

“If either of those had been my intention,” she explains, “I would have written a book about our family years ago, when there was no way to anticipate that Donald would trade on his reputation as a serially bankrupt businessman and irrelevant reality show host to ascend to the White House; when it would have been safer because my uncle wasn’t in a position to threaten and endanger whistleblowers and critics.”

But “the events of the last three years” have “forced [her] hand,” she declares, adding that she “can no longer remain silent”.

“By the time this book is published, hundreds of thousands of American lives will have been sacrificed on the altar of Donald’s hubris and wilful ignorance. If he is afforded a second term, it would be the end of American democracy,” she warns.

“Donald, following the lead of my grandfather and with the complicity, silence, and inaction of his siblings, destroyed my father. I can’t let him destroy my country.”

Everything he touches dies. Including America.

And, by the way, there’s another tell all coming down the pike:

Following months of legal drama, threats, and public controversy surrounding multiple books published by former Trumpworld insiders, yet another blockbuster Trump book is set to hit shelves this summer and contain “explosive” revelations about first lady Melania Trump, written by her once close adviser and friend of 15 years.

According to people familiar with the project, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff—who was previously seen by the first lady as a loyal confidante and helped plan President Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration in Washington, D.C.—will release a tell-all, Melania and Me, on Sept. 1. 

People with knowledge of the project say the content of the book is largely negative and that the manuscript heavily trashes the first lady.

Winston Wolkoff previously worked for Vogue editrix and artistic director of Condé Nast Anna Wintour, who nicknamed her “General Winston” during her stint as the magazine’s special events director producing the celebrity-packed Met Gala.

After playing a vital role in plotting Trump’s inaugural festivities, Wolkoff landed the gig of senior adviser to the first lady. However, shortly after the start of the Trump era, the noted New York socialite had a dramatic falling-out with Melania Trump, triggered by news that Wolkoff’s own firm snagged a cool $26 million from the Trump inaugural committee to help plan the events.

“Was I fired? No,” Wolkoff told The New York Times last year. “Did I personally receive $26 million or $1.6 million? No. Was I thrown under the bus? Yes.”

Following Wolkoff’s departure from the White House’s East Wing, the first lady sent her an email. “I am sorry that the professional part of our relationship has come to an end, but I am comforted in the fact that our [friendship] far outweigh[s] politics,” she said in an email. “Thank you Again! Much love.”

According to the Times, the one-time Melania Trump confidante was also cooperating with Manhattan federal prosecutors investigating the Trump inaugural committee’s fundraising and spending. An SDNY spokesman declined to comment to The Daily Beast about the status of the investigation.

This one could be very juicy.

man, I don’t care if these guys are paying themselves in caviar and Supreme swag these ads are amazing. First one I’ve watched with sound. Not an ad so much as psychological warfare. pic.twitter.com/11QdLWOdo9

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 7, 2020

Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.

It’s no biggie. It’s not as if the governments there have anything better to do than fete the president in the middle of an emergency:

President Donald Trump is expected to travel to Doral, Florida, later this week, landing squarely in the center of a coronavirus hotspot and taxing the already limited local health resources.

Despite the raging coronavirus pandemic, Trump will turn his attention Friday to the issue of drug trafficking in South America, visiting US Southern Command for a briefing, a White House official confirmed to CNN. The trip was first reported by Politico.

Doral, Florida, where US Southern Command is located, is just under two miles from the President’s golf club. But it is also in Miami-Dade County, which is currently experiencing a coronavirus outbreak.CNN reported earlier Tuesday that Miami-Dade County has seen a 90% increase in the number of Covid-19 patients being hospitalized in the past 13 days, according to the latest data released by Miami-Dade County Government. It has also seen a staggering increase in the number of ICU beds being used (86%) and in the use of ventilators (127%).

A presidential visit — no matter who is in office — requires a significant amount of resources, with White House officials, White House Medical Unit representatives and US Secret Service agents traveling in advance of the president to coordinate with local officials on the ground. There is an extensive amount of medical preparation involved each time a president travels, with plans in place for the worst case scenario.

There is always a primary hospital, usually designated by the White House Medical Unit ahead of a trip. There is “an in-depth, comprehensive survey of that hospital” for its medical capabilities, said former Secret Service Agent Jonathan Wackrow, a CNN contributor.

The White House Medical Unit and Secret Service will assess the hospital and coordinate logistics with staff to be prepared for any type of medical emergency. They will also install secure communications such that agents traveling on the ground can quickly be in touch with the hospital, where an agent is always in place. Transportation routes and airlift options are planned and tested in advance.

When he was involved with presidential travel during the Obama administration, Wackrow said he would talk to several hospital officials ahead of a visit, doing a walk through and communicating with the charge nurse, attending doctors and multiple section chiefs. There’s also a press component involved — in the event of a transfer of power under the 25th Amendment, there are plans for a place for a news conference and where the transfer of government would take place.

There is usually a trauma bay reserved for the President, but it’s possible that one is just designated rather than taken out of commission when a hospital is particularly taxed.”We’re not going to displace any medical care to be on standby for the President, but if he goes there, there will be a significant impact to the hospital,” Wackrow said.

During a walkthrough before a trip like this, officials would don personal protective equipment, potentially moving through areas where Covid-19 patients are being treated and risking exposure. From a time perspective, doctors and nurses will spend some amount of time planning and communicating with the President’s team.

Additionally, there are “overflight hospitals” designated ahead of a visit, multiple hospitals where Air Force One could quickly land in the event of a medical emergency on its route.

Meanwhile, Miami’s Jackson Health System has seen an 120% increase in Covid-19 patients in the past two weeks, according to data posted by the hospital system on Twitter. On June 20, Jackson Health reported 157 Covid-19 patients. By Monday, they reported 345. Jackson Health System is a nonprofit academic medical system.

The state of Florida does not release the number of current Covid-19 patients in the state. The state only releases the number of available hospital beds, which is currently 14,324 (24%).

The 14-day average positivity rate in Miami-Dade County is 23%, according to data released by county government.

It’s possible the Friday event will coincide with an executive order on immigration. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters Monday the White House is “going to look at a number of issues as it relates to immigration” for a forthcoming executive order.

Sure, They need to have this big orange lummox in the middle of all this to talk about the drug war…

What a selfish jackass.

A classic illustration of the acting president’s upside-down and backwards logic leapt out of the Twitter machine this morning:

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1280460204639993856?s=20

Well, yes, of course:

— SEARCHING FOR LEAKERS … THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION has opened an internal investigation to try to uncover who leaked intelligence about Russians paying the Taliban bounties to kill American soldiers. The administration maintains the story is overcooked and the leaks cherry-picked despite a steady stream of follow-ups from media outlets across the globe.

THE ADMINISTRATION has interviewed people with access to the intelligence, and believes it has narrowed down the universe of suspects to fewer than 10 people.

THE ADMINISTRATION has said it would search for leakers in its ranks on many occasions. Notably, they vowed to find out who wrote an anonymous op-ed in the NYT almost two years ago. They said they’d find who leaked the president’s calendars in February 2019. Most of these probes fizzled out or faded away.

BUT, THE ADMINISTRATION seems a bit more worked up about these leaks, due to the highly classified nature of the intelligence.

How classified was it? The intelligence was so classified that multiple news outlets rapidly “confirmed” the unconfirmed initial New York Times report sourced from anonymous officials with more anonymous officials. So classified that after the initial report the National Intelligence Council rapidly produced a two-and-a-half page document acknowledging “that intelligence officials had assessed months ago that Russia had offered bounties, but the White House had yet to authorize a response,” the Times reported July 3:

The memo said that the C.I.A. and the National Counterterrorism Center had assessed with medium confidence — meaning credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of near certainty — that a unit of the Russian military intelligence service, known as the G.R.U., offered the bounties, according to two of the officials briefed on its contents.

That would have been after the acting president accused the report of being another media hoax. Now the White House wants to punish whoever leaked the information Donald Trump said the media “made up” and that his team subsequently acknowledged exists.

Reviewing the reporting through Sunday, Just Security concluded:

Our intelligence community has assessed that Russia is acting in a way that threatens American lives in Afghanistan. Yes, there are nuances and varying degrees of confidence in that conclusion. That’s normal. But there should not be any kind of debate about whether this conclusion should have been presented to senior policymakers and the President for their review and action—nor any doubt that they should have responded, urgently. In any other time, that would be a given. There might be a policy conversation to be had about what exactly to do in response, but no reasonable conversation can be had about whether to put this conclusion on the table at the level of the President and his National Security Council for discussion about what actions to take.

On Saturday, the Washington Post observed, “In the days since the reports became public, Trump has declined to criticize Putin or Russia, and senior administration officials say the White House isn’t planning a response.”

Except to try to hunt down the internal source of the report. “For Trump’s critics,” the Post adds, “the silence on Putin is part of a disconcerting trend.” And perhaps for more reasons than “all roads lead to Putin.”

The acting president presently is too busy defending statues of dead Confederates to defend live Americans in Afghanistan or at home.

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

From the New York Times:

As the pandemic took hold, most epidemiologists have had clear proscriptions in fighting it: No students in classrooms, no in-person religious services, no visits to sick relatives in hospitals, no large public gatherings.

So when conservative anti-lockdown protesters gathered on state capitol steps in places like Columbus, Ohio and Lansing, Mich., in April and May, epidemiologists scolded them and forecast surging infections. When Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia relaxed restrictions on businesses in late April as testing lagged and infections rose, the talk in public health circles was of that state’s embrace of human sacrifice.

And then the brutal killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis on May 25 changed everything.

Soon the streets nationwide were full of tens of thousands of people in a mass protest movement that continues to this day, with demonstrations and the toppling of statues. And rather than decrying mass gatherings, more than 1,300 public health officials signed a May 30 letter of support, and many joined the protests.

That reaction, and the contrast with the epidemiologists’ earlier fervent support for the lockdown, gave rise to an uncomfortable question: Was public health advice in a pandemic dependent on whether people approved of the mass gathering in question? To many, the answer seemed to be “yes.”

“The way the public health narrative around coronavirus has reversed itself overnight seems an awful lot like … politicizing science,” the essayist and journalist Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote in The Guardian last month. “What are we to make of such whiplash-inducing messaging?”

Of course, there are differences: A distinct majority of George Floyd protesters wore masks in many cities, even if they often crowded too close together. By contrast, many anti-lockdown protesters refused to wear masks — and their rallying cry ran directly contrary to public health officials’ instructions.

And in practical terms, no team of epidemiologists could have stopped the waves of impassioned protesters, any more than they could have blocked the anti-lockdown protests.

Still, the divergence in their own reactions left some of the country’s prominent epidemiologists wrestling with deeper questions of morality, responsibility and risk.

I’ve been wondering when someone would broach this difficult issue. How is it that epidemiologists felt (still feel) it was their scientific duty to warn people not to protest the lockdowns or go to a Trump gathering but support the Black Lives Matter protests?

I did not understand why they could not say they personally supported the moral cause of the BLM demonstrations and still say that it was a bad idea to gather in large crowds in the middle of the pandemic. They weren’t going to stop them, of course. People were going to hit the streets either way. But as scientists, I felt they should have maintained their credibility in the middle of this horrible pandemic over everything else and frankly, I think the fact they didn’t has contributed to the way people reacted in all these hot spots.

Whether or not the protests end up having spread the virus isn’t the point. They didn’t tell the truth about the potential dangers and now a whole lot of people, and not just people with political axes to grind, don’t respect what they say. I’ve heard countless rightwingers point out the hypocrisy and plenty of young partiers clearly don’t think the disease is any threat to them.

There were millions of voices rising up to support BLM. Scientists could have done so also but they should have been telling the truth which is that gathering in large crowds, even masked, where there is shouting, tear gas, and plenty of people going home to loved ones who may have health problems or other vulnerabilities, is potentially dangerous. They have a special responsibility and I think they mostly failed. In fact, there are a few public health experts on TV that I no longer listen to at all because of the way they twisted themselves into big, fatuous pretzels rather than tell the truth from a scientific standpoint.

According to this article, they knew what they were doing. They just believed that the BLM cause was so important that they wouldn’t say so. And now, whether or not the BLM protests contributed to this big spike in cases among young people directly, the message they sent was clear: young people don’t have to worry. If there’s something they think is more important than protecting their own health and loved ones, go right ahead and do it.

It turns out that a whole lot of young people think drinking in bars and at huge parties is more important. And they are spreading this thing everywhere.

Scientists are all we really have to guide us through this pandemic. Black Lives Matter didn’t need them to lie or obfuscate about the effects of the virus. Their moral cause was righteous and people were going to make their own decisions about whether to bear the risks. But by failing to be clear about those risks, and in many cases sweeping them completely under the rug, these scientists sent the message that what they say is contingent upon their sense of morality, not scientific reality. And we have enough of that coming from politicians.

The virus has no morals. It is a mindless organism looking for a host wherever it can find one. And somebody has to keep us focused on that reality. If it isn’t the scientists, who is it?

Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2020

NEW: NASCAR driver Tyler Reddick fires back at Pres. Trump's call for an apology from Bubba Wallace: "We don’t need an apology. We did what was right and we will do just fine without your support." https://t.co/1jG3rmUT4w pic.twitter.com/ALoZefkGhe

— ABC News (@ABC) July 6, 2020

Aaaand, here’s a dispatch from Real America:

Multiple polls show Trump facing a ~30 point deficit among college educated white voters-much bigger than any data source had for 2016 (some showed him slightly ahead). How many of those voters look at this and say: yes, where I belong is in the same coalition as this woman? https://t.co/zHYYf338ZD

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) July 5, 2020

I don’t think I belong to the same species as this demented twit.

My God:

Trump’s advisers … are seeking ways to reframe his response to the coronavirus — even as the president himself largely seeks to avoid the topic because he views it as a political loser. They are sending health officials to swing states, putting doctors on TV in regional markets where the virus is surging, crafting messages on an economic recovery and writing talking points for allies to deliver to potential voters.

The goal is to convince Americans that they can live with the virus — that schools should reopen, professional sports should return, a vaccine is likely to arrive by the end of the year and the economy will continue to improve.

White House officials also hope Americans will grow numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day, according to three people familiar with the White House’s thinking, who requested anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. Americans will “live with the virus being a threat,” in the words of one of those people, a senior administration official.

“They’re of the belief that people will get over it or if we stop highlighting it, the base will move on and the public will learn to accept 50,000 to 100,000 new cases a day,” said a former administration official in touch with the campaign.

I guess that’s possible. Will we all just play Russian Roulette with our own lives and the lives of every vulnerable citizen we could be giving it to because our government has been unable to do what all the other developed countries in the world have done which is suppress the vrius so their economies can open up?

If Trump had the capability of doing the job properly we wouldn’t be in this position. But he didn’t and so he’s now going to try to persuade a majority of the people that tens of thousands of preventable deaths and massive sickness and economic devastation is just fine.

I honestly don’t know what to say to this. It is the most irresponsible, nihilistic political gambit ever.

Trump’s fatuous crowing about his allegedly “greatest economic performance in history” prior to the pandemic was nonsensical enough. But bragging about an 11% unemployment rate, trying to pretend that the big improvement from the month before represented anything but a bounce back from the most devastating drop in employment in history takes the cake. He even went so far as to say it wasn’t luck it was “talent.”

Trump is depending on the fact that his poll numbers still inexplicably show him having a slight advantage on the economy. Ads like this are sadly necessary.

Fergawdsakes:

The photo appears to have come from an online database of free stock images.

The ads, which ran on Facebook and Instagram, come as the Trump campaign is increasingly focused on the destruction and removal of historic monuments and statues by protesters around the country—many of them relics of the Jim Crow era but others tied to colonial America and even some honoring abolitionist and civil-rights icons. Trump focused significant attention on the matter during a speech at Mount Rushmore over the Fourth of July weekend.

Unlike the statues Trump and his team have focused on to date, though, Christ the Redeemer is not in the United States. There’s no indication that the 125-foot sculpture, which sits at the peak of Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio, is at risk of vandalism or removal. It’s also not clear how Trump or Pence might go about protecting it if it were threatened, which, again, it does not appear to be.

And contradicting Fauci and other public health experts, the president offered a wildly optimistic prediction: “We’ll likely have a therapeutic and/or vaccine solution long before the end of the year.” The presidential election is on 3 November.

This ignorant happy talk combined with the ugly divisive culture war rhetoric is what’s done it. That combination is bizarre and frankly, frightening, showing as it does that the president is delusional and dangerous. He’s ignoring the pandemic and leading the confederacy…

Who does that?