Month: October 2020

"There should be major criminal liability for some scum like this … He should be prosecuted. Are you listening to me back in Washington? He should be prosecuted. Along with the New York Times" — Trump on Miles Taylor, aka "anonymous" pic.twitter.com/cMk3fKLR9x

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2020

Trump fans direct chant "lock him up!" chants at Joe Biden. They've now chanted for both Joe and Hunter to be imprisoned. It's a hate movement. pic.twitter.com/6ac4wi3irE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2020

Notice they aren’t even bothering to make people wear masks behind him anymore. But that figures:

Despite publicly downplaying it, President Donald Trump and his team of White House advisers have embraced the controversial belief that herd immunity will help control the COVID-19 outbreak, according to three senior health officials working with the White House coronavirus task force. More worrisome for those officials: they have begun taking steps to turn the concept into policy.

Officials say that White House adviser Scott Atlas first started pushing herd immunity this past summer despite significant pushback from scientists, doctors and infectious disease experts that the concept was dangerous and would result in far more Americans getting sick and dying. Since then, various White House advisers have tried to play down the idea that the administration has implemented a strategy for COVID-19 based on herd immunity, which holds that if enough people contract a disease and become immune from it, then future spread among the broader population will be less likely.

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, told reporters in September that “herd immunity has never been a strategy” fostered by the Trump administration. And in a statement to The Daily Beast, Atlas insisted that it wasn’t a pursuit.

“As we have specifically stated many times on the record and in print, we emphatically deny that the White House, the President, the Administration, or anyone advising the President has pursued or advocated for any strategy of achieving herd immunity by letting the coronavirus infection spread through the community,” the statement read. “That has never been advised to the President nor has it ever been part of any policy of the President.”

But those working on the government’s COVID response say that the attempts by the White House and Atlas to steer clear from using the phrase “herd immunity” are merely a game of semantics. Privately,one of those sources said, the actual policy pursuits have been crafted around a plainly herd immunity approach; mainly, that the government should prioritize protecting the vulnerable while allowing “everyone else to get infected,” that source said.

In a recent call with reporters, in which The Daily Beast participated, administration officials laid out a new emphasis in the president’s coronavirus policy which underscored “protecting the vulnerable,” key among them nursing home patients. One official said the coronavirus was “dangerous for a certain subset of the population” and that “most people do extraordinary well.”

Officials on the call pointed to a Great Barrington study, which was assembled by a team of scientists who advocate for trying to reach herd immunity through the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19.

Though Atlas insists he has not pushed “herd immunity,” another official said Atlas actually began advocating for the concept—and the president became receptive to it—at the same time as task force officials were being sidelined from conversations about how the administration planned to handle what many predicted would be a difficult fall season. Since then, officials said, the White House has been largely focused on getting a vaccine out to the American people and has left the fight against the community spread to one task force official: Dr. Deborah Birx. Birx, the White House task force coordinator, has been on the road for months trying to convince Americans to wear masks and social distance. In her absence, and with the task force meeting less regularly, Atlas has thrived as a presidential confidante.

“This is all Atlas,” said one of the officials who spoke with The Daily Beast. “I find it disturbing … bordering on ludicrous. Everything that comes out of Atlas’ mouth is geared towards letting it rip and then just worry about protecting the vulnerable. Everything he says points to the fact that he believes herd immunity is a good option. Yet he denies he’s pushing herd immunity as a strategy saying ‘no that’s not what I’m doing.’ But he is.”

It appears that Trump and Giuliani think that all elections are decided by a member of the Justice Department dropping a bomb against their opponent in the final weeks. They were counting on it this time:

In the aftermath of the New York Post reporting earlier this month—for which Trump had personally greenlighted Giuliani’s decision to act as the paper’s source—the former New York City mayor has spoken with President Trump both about the Hunter Biden materials and what could be done about them from a law enforcement perspective, according to a White House official and a source close to Giuliani. Recently, the president and Giuliani discussed their mutual frustrations with the lack of action from Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray saying that the emails and Hunter files have provided legal ammunition to probe the Bidens, the person close to Giuliani said.

The Trump attorney had also advised the president that the events of the past two weeks underscore why Trump should fire Wray, arguing that it shows that the current FBI director is an anti-Trump subversive, according to the White House official. This official was not aware of Giuliani making as harsh a comment about Barr. Reached for comment on Wednesday night, Giuliani told The Daily Beast: “I don’t comment on my conversations with my client.”

The FBI has declined to confirm or deny if it’s even investigating the Hunter Biden-related emails and images, and the bureau and Justice Department have remained tightlipped on the issue. There is a long-standing institutional aversion to publicly talking about these types of investigations this close to a presidential election—though there is still no evidence at the moment that one even exists, much to the consternation of much of Trumpworld.

Were Barr to make any announcement, said Matt Miller, the former director of the Department of Justice’s public affairs office, it would be a seismic politicization of the agency.

“Barr announcing an investigation at this point would make Jim Comey’s actions in 2016 look quaint by comparison. Comey at least wasn’t trying to hurt Clinton and he wasn’t getting involved at the behest of a candidate and his attorney,” said Miller. “A Barr announcement would be a full banana republic-style intervention in the political process. DOJ shouldn’t even be taking any new investigative steps involving either candidate at this point unless there is some reason to believe those steps couldn’t wait until after the election.”

In their private conversations, Giuliani has mentioned to Trump that Barr could be up to something that he and others simply do not know about, but that he thinks it’s unlikely, according to the source close to Giuliani. Trump campaign officials, meanwhile, do not appear to be banking on any intervention.

“We have one week left,” said one senior Trump campaign official. “I don’t think Bill Barr is going to ride into town and save the day.”

The resignation from both the campaign and Trump and Giuliani specifically, underscore the degree to which the president’s team was banking on an “October surprise” against the Biden family to change their political fates. It also illustrates the disappointment they’re experiencing that it hasn’t played out the way they’d hoped.

“Why aren’t they doing anything?…What the hell are they waiting for?!” President Trump has exclaimed to some close advisers this month, according to two people who’ve heard him say this.

Trump’s displeasure with Wray has long been brewing, with the president angling to oust the FBI director if he wins reelection. But last week, Trump took to his favorite morning cable-news show to signal his displeasure at Barr as well.

“We’ve got to get the attorney general to act,” the president said on Fox & Friends. “He’s gotta act, and he’s gotta act fast, and he’s gotta appoint somebody.”

[…]

On Monday, Giuliani went on the Fox Business program hosted by Lou Dobbs to argue that his findings “could be used in a court of law…There’s a trial here that could be done that would be fabulous for a trial lawyer, I’d love to try it.”

Dobbs, who moonlights as a Trump adviser and confidant, then contended that the FBI and Justice Department “don’t want any part of trying cases against prominent Democrats” in recent years. He then called out the U.S. attorney general: “Where is William Barr? He’s gone radio silent!” Dobbs said.

Here’s the thing about Barr. He has been a loyal Trump henchman but it was only in furtherance of his own agenda which is to further the cause of right wing autocracy. He’s a Republican first. So I would assume he sees that Trump is likely going to lose and so if he does have anything up his sleeve it will be more useful to the GOP agenda after Biden is elected.

This really cracks me up:

“It appears from what’s been uncovered so far that Hunter Biden was trading on his father’s name in order to make money for himself and his family. The question the DOJ has to answer is whether that constitutes a federal crime,” Steven Groves, who previously served as a lawyer and then spokesman in the Trump White House, said on Wednesday.

Golly, I don’t know. Maybe they could ask Donald Trump Jr what he has to say about all that:

Seriously. This is from a year ago:

Last month, the Trump family business received approval from a local government in Scotland for a major expansion of its golf resort near Aberdeen, marking the largest real estate development financed by the Trump Organization since the 2016 election.

In August, President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., flew to Jakarta to help kick-start sales at a pair of Trump-branded luxury resorts planned for Indonesia. He appeared at a private event with wealthy prospective buyers and joined his politically connected billionaire Indonesian business partner at a news conference.

And last year, Donald Jr. visited India to sell condos at future Trump-branded towers, appearing at an event that also featured India’s prime minister.

“I’m here as a businessman,” Mr. Trump told the gathering in New Delhi. “I’m not representing anyone.”

He brags incessantly about his allegedly “greatest economy in the history of the United States” … until “the plague” ruined everything. This is a lie, like everything else. It’s much more a matter of what Obama said on the stump the other day: “he wants full credit for an economy that he inherited, he wants zero blame for the pandemic he ignored.” That’s so him. He’s wanted credit for all the money he inherited too — and zero blame for his repeated business failures.

Anyway, CNN put together some useful charts to compare Trump’s economic success with other recent presidents. It’s not good:

At the start of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2017, the economy was healthy.

Employers had added jobs for 76 months straight — the longest hiring streak on record at the time — and unemployment was just 4.7%, a 10-year low. Corporate profits were near all-time highs, and so were stocks. Overall, gross domestic product was growing around 2.5% a year — a modest rate for the world’s largest economy. Not everything was rosy: the federal debt was at its highest level since the 1950s. But by most metrics, it was hard to deny: the economy was on solid footing. And fortunately for Trump, the growth continued from there.

Then came the pandemic.

Below, we’ve tracked some indicators to show how the economy evolved under each president from Ronald Reagan to Trump. Keep in mind, each presidency started under different circumstances. George W. Bush’s first year in office was plagued by the dot-com bust and the September 11th attacks. Barack Obama’s started with the Great Recession, following a devastating housing crash and a global financial crisis. Despite these crises, however, most recent presidents have presided over a growing economy during their time in office. The Trump presidency will be characterized by the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is still playing out both as a health crisis and an economic one.

Up until 2020, President Trump’s first term was characterized by solid job growth, but then the pandemic wiped out about 15% of American jobs in just two months. Since May, the economy has recovered only about half those jobs, and Trump is heading into the election with the worst job losses on record under any president.

In contrast, at this point in Obama’s presidency, the job market was up 0.4%. He took office at a time when employers were cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. Hiring kicked into higher gear later in his presidency.

By the time Trump entered office, he had inherited one of the strongest job markets in American history from Obama. But Covid-19 swiftly put an end to that. The unemployment rate shot to 14.7%, up 10 percentage points from when Trump took office. Although it has improved slightly since then, unemployment still remained elevated in September. No other president has encountered such a sudden spike in joblessness.

Trump loves to talk about how middle class incomes have increased during his presidency — and that was true in his first three years. In September, the Census Bureau released data showing that the median American household earned $68,703 in 2019 — up $5,800 or 9% from 2016, after adjusting for inflation. A strong job market helped lift incomes, as more people worked full-time, year-round. And more than 20 states also raised their minimum wage, boosting earnings for low-income workers.

We don’t have data for 2020 yet, but the pandemic will surely impact those numbers in a big way. For some families, $1,200 stimulus checks and a temporary $600 boost in weekly unemployment benefits actually lifted incomes during the pandemic. But many others, especially those who have lost businesses or are grappling with long-term joblessness, are struggling to make ends meet.

The longest bull market in history began shortly after Obama entered office and continued well into Trump’s presidency. Investors welcomed Trump’s corporate tax cuts in 2017, and although the trade war with China put them on edge, stocks enjoyed a record-breaking run all the way up to 2020. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, the S&P 500 plunged 34% in about a month, before recovering later in the summer. As of October 27, the index was up 49% in Trump’s presidency, overall. While that quick bounce-back is a bright spot for him, it also contrasts with 76% stock gains under Obama and 64% gains under Clinton at the same point in their presidencies.

The housing market is one of the few parts of the economy that hasn’t dramatically declined during the pandemic. That’s in part because record-low interest rates and the work-from-home trend have led city dwellers to buy homes in suburban and rural areas, boosting home prices in many regions. It’s also because extensive measures, including a moratorium on evictions and forbearance programs for mortgages, have helped struggling families weather the crisis so far. Those unpaid bills could eventually catch up to millions of families, causing distress in the housing market. But so far, home prices are up 21% since Trump’s inauguration.

American consumers are the backbone of the US economy and are not easily fazed. Although consumers sharply cut back on spending at the start of the pandemic, they were quick to reopen their wallets in May and June once stimulus checks and unemployment benefits came to their aid. Retail spending on goods, particularly through online retailers, rebounded swiftly. (Meanwhile, spending on services like haircuts, travel and dining out at restaurants remains well below pre-Covid-19 norms.) Even with a quick recovery, though, consumer spending has grown less under Trump than under any of the prior five presidents.

American manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979, and no president other than Clinton has presided over gains in factory jobs since then. So when Trump promised to bring back factory jobs, it was a tall order. In Trump’s first three years, the manufacturing sector did add some jobs, but in 2020, the pandemic ruined what little progress those workers had enjoyed. As of September, the sector was down 164,000 jobs, or 1.3% from when Trump took office. That said, layoffs at factories were even steeper under Presidents Reagan, Obama and the Bushes, as globalization and technological progress reduced America’s manufacturing workforce.

The federal government’s debt burden hasn’t been this high relative to the size of the economy since World War II, but it didn’t get there during Trump’s presidency alone. The debt grew under Reagan, who ushered in massive tax cuts, and it surged under Obama, who used federal stimulus funds to aid the economy during the Great Recession.

At the time Trump took office, the debt totaled around 76% of GDP. But by mid 2020, it was 105% – a 29 percentage-point increase during his presidency. Economists often argue for paying down the debt when the economy is strong, and spending more when the economy is weak. But despite his promises to “get rid of” the debt, Trump has grown it in both good times and bad. While much of that increase came from coronavirus relief funds, earlier policies like corporate tax cuts and an increase in defense spending also fueled the rise.

The widest measure of economic activity — gross domestic product — measures the value of the goods and services produced in the country. It typically grows between 2% to 3% per year after adjusting for inflation. Trump’s first three years were all within that range, but 2020 saw a deep decline. We don’t have a full year of data yet, but the second quarter was the worst in records going back to 1947. Third-quarter data is due out on Thursday, and is expected to show some improvement — but not a full recovery.

Many economists predict businesses and workers will not fully bounce back from this severe economic downturn for years.

He likes to use that term. And here he is calling a US Senator to the stage like she’s a golden retriever:

Martha McSally has done everything she can to appeal to Trump & his base

This is how he introduced her:

"Just come up fast. Fast. Fast. Come on. Quick. You got one minute! One minute, Martha! They don’t want to hear this, Martha. Come on. Let’s go. Quick, quick, quick. Come on" pic.twitter.com/3caQZaAmx9

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 28, 2020

He hates her because she didn’t declare her undying devotion to him in a recent debate. That is not acceptable.

The way things are going, his odious treatment might have even helped her if she didn’t race on to the stage apologizing. If she’d ambled up slowly, in dignified fashion, given him a look and then ignored him some voters actually may have been impressed. Trump is behind in Arizona.

None of these Republicans have an ounce of self-respect.

BAH GOD, THAT MAN HAD A FAMILY!!! https://t.co/INNFObHi9q

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 29, 2020

*Sen. David Perdue is no relation to the Purdue Chicken empire. And BTW, Fred Trump was not an immigrant, no matter what the L.A. Times Editorial Board thinks.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Tomorrow begins Get-Out-The Vote weekend.
If your county is not prepared for it by now, it’s kinda late.

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.

Not to put too fine a point on it:

It’s a “win for democrats” when people’s votes are counted tells you a lot about 2020. https://t.co/zwzQzEEAE5

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) October 29, 2020

From that AP story:

The justices, by a 5-3 vote Wednesday, refused to disturb a decision by the State Board of Elections to lengthen the period from three to nine days because of the coronavirus pandemic, pushing back the deadline to Nov. 12. The board’s decision was part of a legal settlement with a union-affiliated group.

Republicans had asked the high court to step in.

Under the Supreme Court’s order, mailed ballots postmarked on or before Election Day must be received by 5 p.m. on Nov. 12 in order to be counted.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices in the majority. Three conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, dissented.

The ruling is here. Rick Hasen adds at Election Law Blog:

The Gorsuch dissent primarily argues that a North Carolina election board settlement approved by a state court usurped the power of the state legislature, although he also analogizes the holding to the one in the Wisconsin case, which involved a federal court and totally different issues (i.e., the power of a federal court, close to the election, to alter election rules to protect constitutional rights). Justice Gorsuch seems to be trying to move the Purcell principle to apply to state agency actions, and that would be an even bigger problem than applying it to federal court decisions.

There are a few reasons to explain why this position did not attract the votes of CJ Roberts or J. Kavanaugh. First, the issue is messier; to some extent the legislature delegated the power to the state agency to enter into settlements. There’s also the timing and reliance issue; many, many voters have already made their voting plans dependent on the deadlines announced in the settlement, and now we are just days away from the election and there would be no other recourse for some of those voters to vote.

Unlike Justice Alito’s statement in today’s Pennsylvania ruling, Justice Gorsuch’s statement does not talk about any post-election action or any segregation of ballots. But segregation of those late arriving ballots might still make sense, for reasons I explained here in the context of Pennsylvania: it would make it harder for the NC General Assembly to declare the election somehow void and try to get around with the appointment of separate presidential electors.

What Hasen wrote earlier reflects on the PA attorney general’s instructions to “securely segregate all mail-in and civilian absentee ballots received between 8:00 p.m. on
Tuesday, November 3, 2020, and 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 6, 2020, from all other voted
ballots”:

Why would Democratic state officials do this? The most logical answer I can think of is that they want to prevent a situation where the later ballots are commingled with the earlier ballots, and in response the Republican state legislature says that the election was fundamentally unfair and the legislature tries to appoint its own state of electors by claiming that the state “failed to make a choice” for president under the Electoral Count Act. the logic is that it is far better to take that potential argument away than to allow those additional ballots to be counted in the event they are found to be illegally accepted.

Great. Just great. Hoping now that NCDP’s Election Protection team is reviewing this. If NC Republicans think they might get away with something like this, Team “Surgical Precision” will try if the state goes blue.

Aaaand with the Roberts court, there is always a dark side:

I’m afraid it’s even worse now. Federal courts need to defer to state legislatures about how to balance voting rights against purported state interests and not second guess whether these actors are acting in self-interest https://t.co/6V7JQvkyzm

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) October 29, 2020

Until the GOP and the Federalist Society disappear altogether, this weary nation may have gone from permanent campaign to permanent court battle.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Tomorrow begins Get-Out-The Vote weekend.
If your county is not prepared for it by now, it’s kinda late.

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.

https://twitter.com/Sifill_LDF/status/1321521987550879744

Perhaps someone has told him that his Supreme Court will “find” a constitutional prohibition against counting ballots after election day. And they very well create one. After all, the Court found a very weird violation of the equal protection clause in Bush v Gore in which they said that counting votes after an arbitrary deadline disenfranchises those whose votes were counted before the deadline.

More likely they will find some constitutional prohibition against counting votes that were received after election day. This could throw the election into chaos since many states have laws that allow votes postmarked on or before election day to be counted if they arrive before the election is certified. If the court steps in to protect Donald Trump it would mean throwing out tens of millions of legal votes and further delegitimize the Supreme Court.

It isn’t at all clear that even if they do this that Trump will win. Biden could hit 270 electoral votes within the first 24 hours. But I’m not sure they care. If they can just create chaos and call the legitimacy of the results into question that will be good enough for Republican work. The question is whether or not the Federalist Society Fraternity on the courts will be the good collaborators they were chosen to be.

So a judge in Michigan has ruled that people can carry guns in polling places. What could go wrong? It’s not as if Michigan has any recent history of right wing extremists plotting violent actions. (Actually….)

Here’s what FBI Director Chris Wray had to say about the domestic terrorist threat last month:

“within the domestic terrorism bucket category as a whole, racially-motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group, and within the racially-motivated violent extremists bucket, people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that. Racially-motivated violent extremists over recent years have been responsible for the most lethal activity in the U.S. Now this year, the domestic terrorism, lethal attacks we’ve had have, I think, all fit in the category of anti-government, anti-authority, which covers everything from anarchist violent extremists to militia types. We don’t really think in terms of left, right.”

There may be some violent leftist extremists out there but it’s the violent right wing extremists who are making a profit at it.

Here’s a nice fellow talking about taking members of the “deep state into custody.”

Oath Keepers militia leader Stewart Rhodes said members of his militia will be at polling locations on Election Day to “protect” Trump voters during an appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ program.

After making that claim, Rhodes made a number of unhinged statements, including saying Oath Keepers would follow directives from President Donald Trump to take members of the “deep state” into custody and “do what we have to do,” that Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act before the election, that Oath Keepers will “be in range” of Washington D.C., to stop a “Benghazi-style” attack on the White House on election night, and that a war will have to be fought against Democrats on the West Coast who are “bought” by the Chinese government. Rhodes also hyped the possibility of a second civil war where his “battle-hardened” supporters kill the “street soldiers” and “command and control” of “the radical left.” He later claimed the United States is already in a civil war because “you have sitting politicians who are part of the enemy’s ranks.” 

Disturbingly, Rhodes telegraphed how he will interpret election results, saying that he would consider a win by Democratic nominee Joe Biden illegitimate and evidence the election had been stolen, presaging how he and his militia might react to that outcome.

Rhodes’ Oath Keepers militia, which is comprised of “former law enforcement officials and military veterans,” is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today.” The Los Angeles Times reported Rhodes has indicated that some Oath Keepers “have signed up as poll watchers, while others plan to monitor the election armed and ‘undercover,’ drawing their weapons if needed.”

During an October 27 appearance on The Alex Jones Show, Rhodes said members of his militia are going to “stand up and protect people on Election Day” at the polls because opponents of Trump will be supposedly “coercing and threatening” his supporters as part of an effort by Democrats to steal the election.

Will any of these cosplaying idiots actually do anything? Who knows? But I know that if I were trying to vote and these bozos showed up I’d be at least a little bit nervous they were going to accidentally shoot somebody even if they didn’t decide to take someone “into custody.” These people are a joke but they are a dangerous joke because they are armed to the teeth.

Bob Woodward released another taped interview today. This one is with Jared Kushner, who admits that Trump took over the pandemic response from the doctors last April:

There were three phases. There’s the panic phase, the pain phase and then the comeback phase. I do believe that last night symbolized kind of the beginning of the comeback phase. That doesn’t mean there’s not still a lot of pain and there won’t be pain for a while, but that basically was, we’ve now put out rules to get back to work. Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors. They’ve kind of – we have, like, a negotiated settlement.

“Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors.”

Kushner’s comments reflect what many health experts say is at the heart of the administration’s flawed approach to the pandemic — a premature push to reopen the country and sideline medical professionals that led to waves of new infections during the summer and record-setting cases this fall.”It was almost like Trump getting the country back from the doctors. Right?” Kushner told Woodward on April 18. “In the sense that what he now did was, you know, he’s going to own the open-up.”

Yes, he owns the open-up. His exhortations to his death cult members resulted in a summer surge that nobody else in the world experienced and led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. He does own that for sure. His abdication right now is going to result in even more preventable death. He is overseeing a mass death event in his own country and he has never given a damn about anything but how it will affect his re-election.

He made the wrong decision on that as well:

Kushner also described for Woodward the political calculations for the President — instead of coming up with a federal plan to tackle the virus, Trump put that responsibility on governors. In his April 18 interview, Kushner described how he believed Trump had set himself up to reap the political benefits of a successful containment of the virus while ensuring that state governors, and not the President, would be blamed for any failure to stop the spread.

“The states have to own the testing,” Kushner said. “The federal government should not own the testing. And the federal government should not own kind of the rules. It’s got to be up to the governors, because that’s the way the federalist system works.” He went on: “But the President also is very smart politically with the way he did that fight with the governors to basically say, no, no, no, no, I own the opening. Because again, the opening is going to be very popular. People want this country open. But if it opens in the wrong way, the question will be, did the governors follow the guidelines we set out or not?”

In a second interview with Woodward on May 8, Kushner insisted that one of Trump’s tasks for boosting the economy was to be a “cheerleader.” Kushner referred to this as taking care of the “psychology of the market.””So if you basically say this is coming back in the fall, don’t gear up, then people won’t rehire, people will stay unemployed,” Kushner told Woodward. “And if you’re planning for the worst-case scenario, that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. One of the things that the President’s great at is he’s a cheerleader. He’s trying to make people feel good about the outcome.

“The President himself supported Kushner speaking to Woodward for “Rage,” according to another audio clip obtained by CNN, calling him “one smart cookie.””I told Jared to speak to you, and I believe he has,” Trump told Woodward on February 19. Trump said he asked Kushner to coordinate with others in the administration “so that Bob can speak to anybody he wants to. Jared will handle — very capable guy, Jared. You can’t get people like this.”

Oh you can get people like this easily. They are the conceited, ignorant scions of wealthy parents who believe they are geniuses because they inherited a bunch of money. You know, like Trump himself. You find these fools in every business, the ones who are hired because of their family name and connections.

But no successful businesses put one of the nepotism hires in charge of anything. They give them a little sinecure and pay them a handsome sum and then ignore everything they do. But America decided to put one of these doofuses (but with a whole boatload of psychological pathologies on top of everything else) into the most powerful job on earth, largely because he was on TV playing the role of a successful businessman.

Jared made clear how that’s worked out in yet another interview:

The most dangerous people around the president are over-confident idiots. Right? Because that has a way, sometimes, of getting past his defense mechanism because if you’re overconfident, then sometimes, you know, on a topic where he doesn’t have other people around to kind of validate it, then he can sometimes say, okay, let’s go with that.

So that’s kind of – I think if you look at the evolution over time, we’ve gotten rid of a lot of the over-confident idiots, and now he’s got a lot more thoughtful people who kind of know their place and know what to do.

He’s so stupid that he doesn’t know that he’s just described a very stupid leader getting rid of anyone with expertise and installing a bunch of yes-men who tell him only what he wants to hear. He thinks that’s a good thing. Because he is one of those entitled morons as well.

The New York Times reports that Trump once again made a ridiculously shitty business deal that lost massive sums of money. And then he blackmailed his favorite lender Deutche Bank and another partner into forgiving the debt and took advantage of a tax loophole to avoid paying taxes on the money he saved. According to a former IRS commissioner on CNN, it doesn’t appear that he broke any laws but was extremely “aggressive” with his tax avoidance.

That’s nice. Only “little people” have to pay for their mistakes.

The story shows that Trump once again lost a massive amount of money on a project that was badly executed. (I mean, he put Ivanka and one of the winners of “The Apprentice” in charge.)This one is the one that ruined his relationship with the regular lending arm of Deutche Bank but a few years later Jared Kushner introduced Trump to that strange little “private wealth” section of the bank that started lending to him again. (That’s the section people suspect might just be some kind of money laundering operation.) And apparently other partners in the deal agreed to take a haircut and later came onboard the Trump train when he ran for president.

If you are a member of that 001% you literally can do no wrong, even lose vast sums of money for your investors.

Trump didn’t like this story and tried to deflect from the central fact that he is a terrible, terrible businessman by blaming politicians and pretending that his failure was actually a success. That’s just how he rolls.

As a developer long ago, and continuing to this day, the politicians ran Chicago into the ground. I was able to make an appropriately great deal with the numerous lenders on a large and very beautiful tower. Doesn’t that make me a smart guy rather than a bad guy?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2020

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported some new details about how Trump has been bilking the taxpayers.

President Trump welcomed the Japanese prime minister at Mar-a-Lago, in front of a towering arrangement of roses. The two could have met in Washington, but Trump said his private club was a more comfortable alternative.

“It is, indeed, the Southern White House,” Trump said, greeting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in front of the press in April 2018.

For Trump, there was another, hidden benefit. Money.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s company would get paid to host his summit.

In the next two days, as Trump and Abe talked about trade and North Korea, Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., club billed the U.S. government $13,700 for guest rooms, $16,500 for food and wine and $6,000 for the roses and other floral arrangements.

Trump’s club even charged for the smallest of services. When Trump and Abe met alone, with no food served, the government still got a bill for what they drank.

“Bilateral meeting,” the bill said. “Water.” $3 each.

Those 2018 payments, revealed here for the first time, are part of a long-running pattern whose scope has become clear only in recent months.

Since his first month in office, Trump has used his power to direct millions from U.S. taxpayers — and from his political supporters — into his own businesses. The Washington Post has sought to compile examples of this spending through open records requests and a lawsuit.

In all, he has received at least $8.1 million from these two sources since he took office, those documents and publicly available records show.

The president brought taxpayer money to his businesses simply by bringing himself. He’s visited his hotels and clubs more than 280 times now, making them a familiar backdrop for his presidency. And in doing so, he has turned those properties into magnets for GOP events, including glitzy fundraisers for his own reelection campaign, where big donors go to see and be seen.

The man never leaves a penny on the sidewalk. And that’s because he needs every penny due to his disastrous business failures. This is why he insisted on never staying anywhere but his own properties so he could pay himself all the attendant costs. It is an amazing scam that happened right before our eyes. He should have been impeached for that alone.

Republicans have no problem with any of this but will shriek to high heaven about any costs incurred by the government to support Joe Biden’s travel. Just you watch. And not one penny of that will be going into Biden’s pockets as it all did to Trump.