Month: September 2020

But this shamelessness goes all the way to the top. This piece by McCay Coppins should enrage the conservative evangelical Christians who love Trump but it won’t:

One day in 2015, Donald Trump beckoned Michael Cohen, his longtime confidant and personal attorney, into his office. Trump was brandishing a printout of an article about an Atlanta-based megachurch pastor trying to raise $60 million from his flock to buy a private jet. Trump knew the preacher personally—Creflo Dollar had been among a group of evangelical figures who visited him in 2011 while he was first exploring a presidential bid. During the meeting, Trump had reverently bowed his head in prayer while the pastors laid hands on him. Now he was gleefully reciting the impious details of Dollar’s quest for a Gulfstream G650.

Trump seemed delighted by the “scam,” Cohen recalled to me, and eager to highlight that the pastor was “full of shit.”

“They’re all hustlers,” Trump said.

The president’s alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion. “My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith,” he declared at a rally for evangelicals earlier this year. It’s a message his campaign will seek to amplify in the coming weeks as Republicans work to confirm Amy Coney Barrett—a devout, conservative Catholic—to the Supreme Court.

But in private, many of Trump’s comments about religion are marked by cynicism and contempt, according to people who have worked for him. Former aides told me they’ve heard Trump ridicule conservative religious leaders, dismiss various faith groups with cartoonish stereotypes, and deride certain rites and doctrines held sacred by many of the Americans who constitute his base.

Reached for comment, a White House spokesman said that “people of faith know that President Trump is a champion for religious liberty and the sanctity of life, and he has taken strong actions to support them and protect their freedom to worship. The president is also well known for joking and his terrific sense of humor, which he shares with people of all faiths.”

From the outset of his brief political career, Trump has viewed right-wing evangelical leaders as a kind of special-interest group to be schmoozed, conned, or bought off, former aides told me. Though he faced Republican primary opponents in 2016 with deeper religious roots—Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee—Trump was confident that his wealth and celebrity would attract high-profile Christian surrogates to vouch for him.

“His view was ‘I’ve been talking to these people for years; I’ve let them stay at my hotels—they’re gonna endorse me. I played the game,’” said a former campaign adviser to Trump, who, like others quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

It helped that Trump seemed to feel a kinship with prosperity preachers—often evincing a game-recognizes-game appreciation for their hustle. The former campaign adviser recalled showing his boss a YouTube video of the Israeli televangelist Benny Hinn performing “faith healings,” while Trump laughed at the spectacle and muttered, “Man, that’s some racket.” On another occasion, the adviser told me, Trump expressed awe at Joel Osteen’s media empire—particularly the viewership of his televised sermons.

Of course he did. He is one of them — a con artist.

The NY Times had this today:

[T]here was quiet concern within the campaign, where aides took note of daily tracking numbers from Rasmussen Reports, a typically rosy assessment of how the president is faring, that showed support falling after the tax report. Among Mr. Trump’s circle, there was finger-pointing about how the issue was handled and a hesitancy to discuss with him an issue they know he is sensitive about.

Even Rasmussen…

Needless to say, nobody could ever talk to him about this. But let’s not forget that they did more than that. They enabled him to hide those returns on several levels. They fought the congressional demand for the taxes, despite the clear language of the statute that allowed them to get them. They have fought state and local prosecutors subpoenas for his financial records, using spurious arguments that aren’t worthy of anyone with a law degree. And they have ignored his massive graft and corruption as president and decided his monumental conflicts of interest and vulnerability to blackmail and bribes from foreign actors isn’t as important as getting one more judge on the federal bench.

Oh, and the Mueller team didn’t look at Trump’s finances because they were so afraid of being fired if they did and that’s just sad.

It’s fairly obvious that nobody wanted to confront him about any of it. In fact, they were fine with it. So here he is, on the verge of re-election and now he’s been exposed as the tax cheat he is. I don’t expect any Republican officials to say a word about it. And his voters will stick with him. But it could persuade a handful of undecided voters that he’s even worse than they thought. Maybe.

CHUCK TODD: What did you — what went through your head on June 1st when you saw what happened at Lafayette Square?

LT. GEN. H.R. McMASTER: Well, it was just wrong. It was, you know, more than unfortunate because what we can’t do — and this is really across the political spectrum, Chuck, which really bothers me these days — we can’t try to pull the military into politics. Some of the things the president said I think have been irresponsible. But often times, the reaction to what he says is equally irresponsible. So I think all politicians have a responsibility of keeping that bold line in place.

This latest round of interviews by HR McMaster illustrates perfectly what I think we’re going to see from a whole lot of Republicans if Trump loses. Oh, I was very critical but I also criticized the other side for its reactions to him. They are just as much as fault for everything that happened as he was. And I, in my infinite “adult in the room” superiority, am the real conservative who is now going to save the country from irresponsible left now that Trump is gone. You need to put us back in power as soon as possible. ..

It is going to be infuriating, because they were just cowards who enabled Trump as much as possible even though they knew he was destroying the country. They just wanted the Democrats to do their dirty work and get rid of him so they could step in afterwards and tut-tut what it took to do that.

Here he is on Andrea Mitchell’s show managing to say that Trump’s foreign policy is really just like Obama’s — not good, exactly, but you really can’t hold it against the president since Obama was just as bad as he is.

Jonathan Chait had a smart piece last week about this situation:

The Republican Establishment perspective is perfectly reflected by the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Journal editorial strategy is to cluck its tongue every few months at one of the president’s more counterproductively deranged outbursts, while ignoring his substantive abuses, resolutely opposing any measures to subject him to accountability or oversight, and occasionally mocking anybody who deems his authoritarian maneuvers dangerous.

Today’s Journal editorial is especially comic. Its main thrust is that delusional Democrats (not to mention formerly loyal Republicans now rallying to defend the rule of law from his predations) are going to make a big deal over the no-peaceful-transition thing:

The sad reality is that Democratic opinion leaders have been waiting for a Reichstag fire moment from the minute Mr. Trump took office. Their thirst to be vindicated has grown more intense as his term draws to a close. Perhaps they want to save face after misunderstanding their country and its citizens so fundamentally for four years.

The Reichstag fire is a dodge favored by anti-anti-Trumpists. Despite the popular misconception, it is historically rare for a democracy to perish in a sudden dramatic gesture. Every democracy expert who has been sounding the alarms has been patiently explaining that the threat is not a fascist coup, but a slow breakdown of democratic norms, enabled by mainstream allies who would rather cooperate with authoritarian allies on their own side than allow the opposition to win.

It is true that Trump has limited tools at his disposal with which to operationalize his authoritarian impulses. He has, however, already weakened or disabled a number of constraints. Trump has, among other activities, been busy:

Stoking baseless claims that mail balloting is inherently fraudulent

Calling armed supporters into the streets

Advocating violence against reporters

Strong-arming companies to support him politically

Promising pardons to government employees and co-conspirators who break the law on his behalf

Firing officials who refuse to violate the law on his behalf

Refusing outright to cooperate with any congressional oversight

Just today, his son is on social media, in an official campaign message, raising an “army” of supporters to come to the polls.

The election will probably proceed in a peaceful fashion, largely because Trump will probably lose by a margin too wide for him to cheat. But given the high-magnitude impact of the other scenarios, working to safeguard the republic seems like a worthwhile precaution.

The Journal explains there’s nothing to worry about, since the military has been raising alarms about his authoritarian inclinations. “As for the notion that Mr. Trump could execute a coup—he’s been warring with his own security agencies as long as he’s been in office,” the editorial coos. “He’s been denounced by dozens of retired generals, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff apologized for appearing with him publicly during the unrest in Washington, D.C.”

I’m not sure this point means what the Journal thinks it does. Yes, after Trump ordered the military to violently attack a completely peaceful protest in June, several military officials expressed their regrets afterward. And yes, as the New York Times reports today, Trump’s expressed desire to quell additional peaceful protests “has incited deep anxiety among senior military and Defense Department leaders.” If Trump tries to order troops to crack down on protests that may follow his expected attempt to discredit the election or cut short vote counting, there will likely be pushback. It seems odd to understand this state of affairs as reason to laugh at the silly liberals who worry about the president’s authoritarianism.

The actual scenario that most concerns the opposition is that Trump’s Republican allies in state legislatures will cite disputes over mail ballots as a pretext to appoint Trump electors, regardless of the intent of the voters in their state. Notably, neither the Journal nor any leading Republicans have renounced such a step.

What’s unfortunate about Trump’s threat, complains the editorial, is that it “hands Democrats a ready-made line of attack in Supreme Court confirmation hearings” and his reckless comments give credence to Democratic hysteria, and he should clarify his views if he doesn’t want to lose more voters who think he lacks the temperament or self-control for the office.” (Genghis Khan’s ill-advised threat to burn Samarkand to cinders just feeds into the narrative that he’s some kind of “bloodthirsty conqueror.”)

Trump of course has clarified his views. He has clarified them for decades, since he began praising authoritarian rulers who forcefully suppress popular demonstrations in Russia or China, or refusing to accept the result of the 2016 election, or calling for the mass imprisonment of his political opponents and independent media.

The Journal doesn’t want him to “clarify his views.” It wishes he would obscure them, for the convenience of his allies who are trying to deny their existence.

I wish I could say that libertarians and progressives were different. But there’s quite a bit of tut-tutting going on from those quarters as well. There is going to be a full-blown festival of Superior Dancing, from a whole lot of people if Trump loses. If he wins, well, we have much bigger problems.

Ed Kilgore:

[Now] that Murkowski is back in the news again for vacillating on a Trump Supreme Court nominee, Palin is back as well, this time with a rather peculiar homemade video that she put up on Instagram. It’s very much worth the two-and-a-half-minute viewing time:

I don’t know if this means Palin has been taking some sort of community-college filmmaking course or has developed a previously obscured artsy touch. I do think it’s likely Murkowski may welcome a Palin 2022 challenge as one that would dry up more credible opposition by attracting national wing-nut money to Mama Bear’s cause. It is clear Palin will do just about anything to stay in the public eye, as illustrated by her performance of “Baby Got Back” on The Masked Singer earlier this year:

I’ve been known to hoist a few from time to time. But I know better than to go out and film something and put it on the internet when I’m in that condition.

By the way, this is from a couple of months ago, which may explain this a little bit:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband of more than 30 years, Todd Palin, quietly finalized their divorce this spring, according to court records.

Though the case has long been sealed from view, the docket shows their divorce was granted on March 23 after a non-contested hearing, which an Alaska court official confirmed.

Todd first filed for divorce on Sept. 6 — his 55th birthday. In his initial complaint, he cited “incompatibility of temperament between the parties such that they find it impossible to live together as husband and wife.” (Such language is not dissimilar from “irreconcilable differences” in other divorces.)

Todd was seeking joint custody of their youngest son, Trig, and fair division of their assets, according to his complaint. Other documents in the case were kept confidential after it was sealed, though the docket shows no child support order was issued.

Sarah, Todd and their attorneys in the split did not return messages seeking comment this week.

In her only public interview about the end of her marriage, Sarah, 56, told Dr. James Dobson in a podcast last fall that “a week after our 31st anniversary is when he [Todd] filed.”

“It’s not easy to talk about,” she said then. “It was devastating,” she said. “I thought I got shot.”

Still, she said at the time, “We’re going through counseling now” and “it’s not over over.”

“My kids are cool because they don’t like it and that that helps me, you know. It helps me. They’re not ones to say, ‘Oh, it takes two to tango,’ ” she said on Dobson’s podcast in November. “No, they’re mad, because they have been brought up with that teaching that you have made a covenant with God.”

Since Barton Gellman’s “The Election That Could Break America” last week, months of whispers went public about Democrats needing a 12th Amendment backup plan for securing the presidency for Joe Biden. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says her team has been gaming this out for some time behind the scenes. Now she is publicly recommending a belt-and-suspenders approach.

USA Today:

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has urged Democrats to win more House seats if a scenario unfolds in which the House of Representatives would vote to determine the outcome of the presidential election in November.

In a letter to Democrats on Sunday, Pelosi outlined an option in which neither President Donald Trump nor former Vice President Joe Biden win a majority of votes in the Electoral College, meaning the House of Representatives would have to decide the election by a vote. Pelosi referenced remarks from Trump, who said in mid-September that “at a certain point, it (the election) goes to Congress.” 

Politico:

Under that scenario, which hasn’t happened since 1876, every state’s delegation gets a single vote. Who receives that vote is determined by an internal tally of each lawmaker in the delegation. This means the presidency may not be decided by the party that controls the House itself but by the one that controls more state delegations in the chamber. And right now, Republicans control 26 delegations to Democrats’ 22, with Pennsylvania tied and Michigan a 7-6 plurality for Democrats, with a 14th seat held by independent Justin Amash.

Democrats need to flip control of House delegations to ensure they control that process. Two of the lightest lifts are in Montana and Alaska, states with only one representative. Both are now in GOP hands but with polls turning against Republicans, they could be one-seat delegation pickups for Democrats. Cook’s rates both seats “lean Republican,” but the races themselves may be closer.

New: seven more House rating changes at @CookPolitical, including five in Democrats' direction. Full analysis ($): https://t.co/ZPxcWHnNOU pic.twitter.com/MFMRuAeTT2

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) September 29, 2020

Democrat Kathleen Williams is running for the open Montana seat vacated by U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, now running in a toss-up race for governor against incumbent Steve Bullock. An August poll from the House Majority PAC showed state Rep. Williams leading state Auditor Matt Rosendale (R) 49%-47%. An earlier poll from July showed the two tied, with Williams more popular than Rosendale. Her ActBlue page is here.

Alyse Galvin is running as a Democratic-nominated registered independent against 24-term Republican Don Young for Alaska’s at-large House seat. The Emily’s-list endorsed candidate recently sued the election commission for stripping candidates’ political registrations from the ballot because Galvin “has heavily advertised herself as an independent candidate.” The new ballots identify her as the Democratic party’s nominee. The state Supreme Court declined to order reprinting of the ballots. “The fact that neither campaign has released or leaked polling data suggests, however, this is a real horse race,” the Washington Post’s Henry Olsen believes. Galvin’s ActBlue page is here.

The Senate would decide the selection of Vice President by a majority vote under the 12th Amendment. Alaska’s U.S. Senate seat is also in play (Dr. Alan Gross). So is Mississippi’s (Mike Espy). Plan your donations accordingly.

This is why Trump's game plan is to stop the vote counting after election night. This right here. https://t.co/lT9pHIZg9o

— 🕷Dante Atkins🕷 (@DanteAtkins) September 29, 2020

A couple of polls now show Biden up 9 points over Trump in Pennsylvania. Winning a landslide electoral victory on Nov. 3 could make all this electoral college intrigue moot. But do not trust to that.

Remember, Trump is no longer trying to win the election outright at the polls. He is hoping to stop the vote count on Election Day. And, if that doesn’t work, to challenge the count in enough states to tie up in court certification of a majority of electors until Dec. 8. That throws the election into the House of Representatives. It is his last line of reelection defense. After that, there is resignation and hope for a Pence pardon that won’t cover all his legal exposure.

Better to kick his ass with Democratic turnout. But cover yours just in case.

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The acting president craves attention. A history professor suggests Senate Democrats make him the center of it at the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. (Bill Svelmoe confirmed to me that the Facebook post in circulation is his.)

Others have recommended Democrats avoid questioning Barrett’s character and focus on the process that got her there since confirmation is all but a done deal. Svelmoe suggests instead that Judiciary Committee Democrats formulate questions that put the past four years of the Trump administration on trial just ahead of Nov. 3:

Judge Barrett, would you please explain the emoluments clause in the Constitution. [She does.] Judge Barrett, if a president were to refuse to divest himself of his properties and, in fact, continue to steer millions of dollars of tax payer money to his properties, would this violate the emoluments clause?

Then simply go down the list of specific cases in which Trump and his family of grifters have used the presidency to enrich themselves. Ask her repeatedly if this violates the emoluments clause. Include of course using the American ambassador to Britain to try to get the British Open golf tournament at a Trump property. Judge Barrett, does this violate the emoluments clause?

Then turn to the Hatch Act.

Judge Barrett, would you please explain the Hatch Act to the American people. [She does.] Judge Barrett, did Kellyanne Conway violate the Hatch Act on these 60 occasions? [List them. Then after Barrett’s response, and just fyi, the Office of the Special Council already convicted her, ask Barrett this.] When Kellyanne Conway, one of the president’s top advisors openly mocked the Hatch Act after violating it over 60 times, should she have been removed from office?

Then turn to all the other violations of the Hatch Act during the Republican Convention. Get Barrett’s opinion on those.

Then turn to Congressional Oversight.

Judge Barrett, would you please explain to the American people the duties of Congress, according to the Constitution, to oversee the executive branch. [She does so.] Judge Barrett, when the Trump administration refuses time and again [list them] to respond to a subpoena from Congress, is this an obstruction of the constitutional duty of Congress for oversight? Is this an obstruction of justice?

Then turn to Trump’s impeachment.

Read the transcript of Trump’s phone call. Judge Barrett, would you describe this as a “perfect phone call”? Is there anything about this call that troubles you, as a judge, or as an American?

Judge Barrett, would you please define for the American people the technical definition of collusion. [She does.] Then go through all of the contacts between the Trump administration and Russians during the election and get her opinion on whether these amount to collusion. Doesn’t matter how she answers. It gets Trump’s perfidy back in front of Americans right before the election.

Such questions could go on for days. Get her opinion on the evidence for election fraud. Go through all the Trump “laws” that have been thrown out by the courts. Ask her about the separation of children from their parents at the border. And on and on and on through the worst and most corrupt administration in our history. Don’t forget to ask her opinion on the evidence presented by the 26 Trump accusers. Judge Barrett, do you think this is enough evidence of sexual assault to bring the perpetrator before a court of law? Do you think a sitting president should be able to postpone such cases until after his term? Judge Barrett, let’s listen again, shall we, to Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape. I don’t have a question. I just want to hear it again. Or maybe, as a woman, how do you feel listening to this recording? Let’s listen to it again, shall we. Take your time.

Taking this approach does a number of things.

(Emphasis added below.)

1. Even if Barrett bobs and weaves and dodges all of this, it reminds Americans right before the election of just how awful this administration has been.
2. None of these questions are hypothetical. They are all real documented incidents. The vast majority are pretty obvious examples of breaking one law or the other. If Barrett refuses to answer honestly, she demonstrates that she is willing to simply be another Trump toady. Any claims to high moral Christian character are shown to be as empty as the claims made by the 80% of white evangelicals who continue to support Trump.
3. If she answers honestly, as I rather suspect she would, then Americans get to watch Trump and his lawless administration convicted by Trump’s own chosen justice.

Any of these outcomes would go much further toward delegitimizing the entire Republican project than if Democrats go down the typical road of asking hypothetical questions or trying to undermine her character.

Use her supposed good character and keen legal mind against the administration that has nominated her. Let her either convict Trump or embarrass herself by trying to weasel out of convicting Trump. Either way, it’ll be great television …

The professor is not the first to suggest that Judiciary Committee Democrats cede all their questioning time to Sen. Kamala Harris. Not that that is going to happen.

But a couple of committee Democrats might take his approach during the Barrett hearings. It would allow the rest of us to go to the kitchen for a sandwich while their colleagues ask predictable questions that elicit predictable answers.

(h/t AL)

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Golly, it seems as if the oldest scion of the Trump family may not know what he’s talking about. Who could have guessed? Via Oliver Willis:

BRIAN KILMEADE, Fox News: It goes on and on for days, but you guys’ organization have $300 million in loans due in the next three years. What could you tell us about that story?

DONALD TRUMP JR.: Listen, it’s ridiculous. My father’s paid tens of millions of taxes. If he does things in certain years where you get depreciation, where you get write off, where you get historical tax credits, like we did when we took on the risk of building the Old Post Office in D.C., it’s the perfect example.

That was literally a government contract. We bid against every hotel company in the world. Historical tax credits that you use to offset tax payments for taking the risk to build that. That was done under the Obama administration. It literally took an act of Congress to get it done.

So with that comes historical tax credits. That’s the reality. People don’t understand what goes into a business. It doesn’t include property taxes, it doesn’t include payroll taxes, it doesn’t include real estate taxes, it doesn’t include so many of the things that he has been paying taxes on forever as he’s also putting thousands and thousands of people to work on an annual basis.

But of course the New York Times does this. They put out a selective, you know, picture of all of these things the day before a debate to try to give someone like Joe Biden, you know, an attack line. They come up with one or two catchy sound bites, and that’s the game.

He may not be able to explain why rich people don’t have to pay income taxes while the rest of us do but you have to be impressed by the fact that he’s become such a good little wingnut. That combination of Trumpian whining combined with right-wing grievance and verbal gobbledygook is such a perfect combination.

*And yes, there is such a thing as “historic tax credits” and it may have applied to the old Post Office. But that doesn’t explain the 11 years out of the last 18 in which Trump paid no taxes. It’s not like he’s been doing nothing but restoring old buildings.

I wrote about this before, and last night 60 Minutes did a full expose:

Three former administration officials tell us President Trump “pressured” government officials to direct wall contracts to Fisher Sand and Gravel. The company has been awarded almost $2 billion in contracts, despite questions about the quality of its work. https://t.co/EOvKj97JeV pic.twitter.com/dqL1TeZ64p

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 27, 2020

This summer, Federal agents arrested President Trump’s former Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, on a yacht off the coast of Connecticut. Bannon and three others are accused of defrauding donors to We Build the Wall, a conservative fund raising campaign that raised millions of dollars to privately build sections of wall on the border with Mexico. Prosecutors say the defendants took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fund for their own personal use. They’ve pleaded not guilty. Before the arrests, We Build the Wall had completed two walls. Less than a mile in New Mexico and three miles in Texas.  
 
Tonight, you will hear about the contractor who built both of those walls, Fisher Sand and Gravel out of North Dakota, and how they leveraged those jobs to earn billions of dollars in government contracts with support from President Trump. Last month, reports surfaced that one of their private walls was falling apart. So, we went to Mission, Texas, to see for ourselves. 

We drove over the flood levee, down a dusty road that dead-ends at a sugar cane farm. And there it was. The so-called “wall” looks more like a fence. It’s steel spine curves three miles down the banks of the Rio Grande and stretches upwards of 18 feet high. It sits on private property, so the only way for us to get a better look is from the water. From here, it appears fine. But Javier Peña, an attorney who represents neighboring landowners, noticed erosion from summer storms was quite literally covered up. He hired engineers to inspect it.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What have you seen?

Javier Peña: Massive erosion. There’s cracks in the foundation. The foundation is crumbling.  There was an 8 foot hole under the fence. There are these trenches all along the wall, the sand just washing away. From the experts that have actually reviewed the site there is no differing opinions.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What is the opinion?

Javier Peña: That it’s not a question of whether it will fail, it’s when it’s going to fail and it already started to fail.

Of course it has.

This is my favorite part. This guy went on Fox repeatedly and said he could build the wall more cheaply:

Tommy Fisher’s showcase wall seems to have paid off. Despite questions about his partners and the quality of his work, Fisher Sand and Gravel has been awarded almost $2 billion in government contracts to build miles of wall.

Javier Peña: We live in a very divided country right now. We Build the Wall,  Kolfage and Fisher took advantage of that, found a way to target that fight and profit off of it.  
   
Sharyn Alfonsi: And when you say profit. It’s not just filling the coffers of We Build the Wall. I mean, Fisher now has almost $2 billion of contracts to build more walls–  
   
Javier Peña: Of taxpayer-funded contracts to build more walls when this wall is already falling down.  
   
So how did that happen?  Three former administration officials tell 60 Minutes that President Trump quote “pressured” government officials to direct wall contracts to Fisher Sand and Gravel.

Those same sources say that on March 7, 2019, the president summoned DHS officials and Lt. General Todd Semonite, who ran the Army Corps of Engineers, to the Oval Office. 

Sources inside the room say the president wanted to know why Tommy Fisher, who promised he could build the wall cheaper and faster, wasn’t selected to build it and “exploded into a tirade.”   

They say DHS officials explained to the president that it was inappropriate for the president to influence the bidding process. But according to those sources, the “pressure continued” with a handwritten note from the president, an email from his personal secretary and calls from his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Administration officials did not respond to our request for a comment.

[…]

Sharyn Alfonsi: What is the problem with the president advocating for a specific contractor?  

Bennie Thompson: It’s against the procurement regulations of the federal government. 

Fisher Sand and Gravel has a checkered past. In 2009, the company admitted to tax fraud.  They’ve racked up thousands of environmental and safety violations in six states, and almost $2 million in fines.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Do those things figure in typically when you’re– when you’re deciding who should get a contract?  
  
Bennie Thompson: Fisher could potentially have been debarred from bidding on any federal contracts. But they weren’t. 

Bennie Thompson: The president made no bones about his support for Fisher. And– and  guess what? Fisher got the contract. It speaks for itself. 

Yes, it speaks for itself.

He unethically harragued the government to give this joker 2 billion in contracts because he saw him on Fox and the guy said he could build the wall cheaper and faster. That’s what impressed him. Nothing unusual in that, of course. He has put a radiologist he saw on Fox in charge of the global pandemic because he backed his view that we can open up the economy fully even as bodies are piling up all over the country.

This is how he’s running the government. And elected Republicans know all about it. They do not care.

I know we’re not supposed to “shame” people for failing to follow COVID guidelines. But come on. Over 200,000 Americans are dead with hundreds of thousands more horribly ill and billions and billions of dollars spent in health costs and economic losses.

But this is the only thing that matters, I guess:

DeSantis opened all Florida bars Friday. They are celebrating at Elbo Room in Fort Lauderdale https://t.co/9Fx9qFvAS6

— Daniel Uhlfelder (@DWUhlfelderLaw) September 27, 2020

It’s heartbreaking to think of all the preventable deaths because people just don’t care about spreading this thing around.

On Sunday evening, the New York Times published a blockbuster story based on the tax returns that Donald Trump has gone all the way to the Supreme Court to keep hidden. He didn’t want Congress to see it, he didn’t want the Manhattan district attorney to see it and he didn’t want us to see it — and now we know why. He is deeply in debt and has paid virtually no federal income taxes for the last 15 years. Last year he paid $750. There are no zeros missing from that sentence.

It’s surely coincidental that this big story hit just two days before the next big event of the presidential campaign: Trump’s first debate with Joe Biden on Tuesday night. but you may recall this exchange in the debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016:

It’s a stark reminder of just how successful Trump has been at keeping this information away from the public.

It will be interesting to see how Biden handles all this in the first debate in Cleveland, or whether it will make any difference one way or the other. Trump likes to say that he won the general election debates with Hillary Clinton in 2016, and there even seems to be some conventional wisdom in the press that he’s right, but it couldn’t be further from truth.

Gallup polls after all three debates in 2016 made clear that Clinton cleaned his clock as far as the public was concerned. She won by 34 points in the first debate, 18 points in the second and 29 points in the third. Viewers preferred her positions on all the issues including the deficit, Social Security, Russia, foreign crises, the economy, the Supreme Court, immigration and overall fitness to be president. (In fact, 60% of those polled even found her to be more likable!) And 83 percent disagreed with Trump’s refusal to agree to abide by the results of the election, including 77 percent of Republicans. Imagine that.

But let’s not forget that he vanquished 17 more or less qualified opponents in the Republican primaries with his wild and unpredictable debate antics. The country wasn’t used to his insults and crude behavior at that point so perhaps it all seemed like fun and games. But he had all those men (and one woman) on their heels from the very beginning.

They tried everything. They went after his businesses, they demeaned his knowledge and intellect, they tried to disarm him with insults and humor, they tried to ignore him and talk past him. None of it worked. He wasn’t debating, he was performing, and it was like trying to play chess with someone who is just moving the pieces randomly on the board.

Clinton did well against him in spite of that, but she had to put up with some outlandish antics. He stalked her all over the stage like the Incredible Hulk, called her “the devil” and said if he were president she’d be in jail — all to her face. She gamely moved past it and people believed she won the debates. But will that work for Joe Biden?

Biden’s campaign spokesperson Kate Bedingfield appeared on CNN on Sunday and said he was planning to talk about all the great things he will do for the country, indicating that he is planning to try to ignore Donald Trump. Good luck with that. According to Jonathan Swan at Axios, Trump’s strategy, to the extent he has one, is to show the country that he’s a “tough guy.” So he’s been trying out attack lines at his COVID-19 super-spreader rallies “seeing what ignites his crowds or falls flat.”

One of his favorites is obviously the idea that Biden is on drugs:

I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night. Naturally, I will agree to take one also. His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly. Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2020

This actually qualifies as a Trump greatest hit at this point. In October of 2016 he said the same thing about Clinton.

Many observers have noted that his depictions of Biden and Clinton as doddering invalids would seem to be counterproductive, setting the bar so low that they end up looking great. That’s why Trump uses this drug charge — yes, they are doddering invalids, which is why they need all those drugs! Trump “explained” all this at his rally in North Carolina last week:

According to Swan, Trump’s people are worried that he is overconfident, hasn’t prepared, doesn’t know anything about policy or what he wants to do in a second term, will attack the moderator and downplay the pandemic. They are clearly correct to be concerned, although apparently Trump and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have been working with some flash cards, so it’s all under control.

Biden’s people are worried that he’ll commit some gaffe, lose his temper, talk too much or take the bait from Trump, all of which are reasonable worries. He’s not what you’d call a disciplined, precise speaker and Donald Trump can get under anyone’s skin.

There is a lot of advice floating around. Philippe Reines, who played Trump in the mock debates with Clinton, suggested in a Washington Post op-ed that Biden “preempt” the president by telegraphing for the audience what they’re about to hear:

C’mon, Mr. President. Everyone knows that whatever you call fake is real. Whatever you call a lie is the truth. Whatever you accuse others of doing is what you’ve done. And whatever you make fun of me for saying by accident only serves to deflect from what you say on purpose.

Dr. Richard Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College wrote in the New York Times last week that Trump is best disarmed with humor and ridicule, suggesting that his fragile self-esteem can’t take it. I can’t help but recall Sen. Marco Rubio’s sad attempts at doing that during a Republican primary debate in 2016 and wonder if that’s really a good idea. On the other hand, Rubio isn’t exactly a natural comedian, while Biden got off one of the best debate zingers of all time back in 2008 when he accused then-GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani of starting every sentence with “a noun, a verb and 9/11.” (Maybe Giuliani’s bizarre obsession with Biden has less to do with loyalty to Trump than with his own desire for revenge?)

The Commission on Presidential Debates has announced that moderators will not be doing any fact-checking, so Biden will have to decide whether to spend his time doing that or try to control the debate on his own terms. It occurred to me over the weekend, as I watched the two men closely, that while Trump can accurately be described as that arrogant blowhard at the end of the bar who forces you to move to a table to get away from him, Joe Biden is the fellow at the other end of the bar who’s buying everyone drinks and telling funny stories. It could be that he’s just the kind of guy who knows how to handle Donald Trump. We’ll find out on Tuesday night.

My Salon column reprinted with permission