Month: December 2020

The U.S. is one month away from inaugurating a saner president. One more month for the incumbent to try pardoning or martial lawing his way out from under the damoclean sword awaiting his return to civilian life. He’s cracking under the strain, or is he?

Michael Kruse writes at Politico:

“He’s never been in a situation in which he has lost in a way he can’t escape from,” Mary Trump, his niece and the author of the fiercely critical and bestselling book about him and their family, told me. “We continue to wait for him to accept reality, for him to concede, and that is something he is not capable of doing,” added Bandy Lee, the forensic psychiatrist from Yale who’s spent the last four years trying to warn the world about Trump and the ways in which he’s disordered and dangerous. “Being a loser,” she said, for Trump is tantamount to “psychic death.”

The combination of an unprecedented rebuke meeting an uncommonly vulnerable ego has some people wondering if there is a chance that Trump’s unusual actions suggest something potentially more dire. Could he be on his way to a mental breakdown?

No, says former Trump political aide Sam Nunberg and fleeting White House spokesman Anthony Scaramucci. Not so fast, say others closer to the inveterate con man.

Everybody, after all, has a breaking point. “And he’s not indestructible,” said Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive vice president who was the construction manager for Trump Tower and just wrote a book called Tower of Lies. “I do think Trump is struggling,” Tony Schwartz, the actual author of The Art of the Deal, told me, “and that this is far and away the toughest time he’s ever had.”

“His fragile ego has never been tested to this extent,” Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney and enforcer before he turned on him, told me. “While he’s creating a false pretense of strength and fortitude, internally he is angry, depressed and manic. As each day ends, Trump knows he’s one day closer to legal and financial troubles. Accordingly, we will all see his behavior deteriorate until it progresses into a full mental breakdown.”

Seeing people celebrate the demolition of the decaying Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino on Atlantic City’s boardwalk, watching it on an endless loop on social media and on the evening news (perhaps even on Fox), should not add to his stress level at all.

“The probability of something very bad happening is very high, unacceptably high, and the fact that we don’t have guardrails in place, the fact that we are allowing a mentally incapacitated president to continue in the job, in such an important job, for a single day longer, is a truly unacceptable reality,” said [Bandy Lee, the Yale forensic] psychiatrist. “We’re talking about his access to the most powerful military on the planet and his access to technology that’s capable of destroying human civilization many times over.”

That’s comforting. Good thing Cohen does not see Trump going that route. Trump will instead go back to Mar-a-Lago and MAGAstan where sycophants will “bolster his ego and he can go from table to table, listening to people placate him about how the election was stolen from him. And that’s just going to further create that mishigas in his head.” Whatever keeps him the center of attention.

If only we can stop him from being ours.

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Pharmaceutical manufacturers may have delivered serviceable COVID-19 vaccines in record time, but for others in both the U.S. public and private sectors timeliness is not exactly a virtue.

Congress has approved a deal to provide a $900 billion coronavirus aid package. “If things continue on this path and nothing gets in the way, we’ll be able to vote tomorrow,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters late Saturday. A deadline for preventing a government shutdown looms tonight, and congressional leaders plan to pass the stimulus bill today alongside a $1.4 trillion government funding package.

The stimulus plan includes $300 per week in unemployment benefits and a single $600 payment to individuals. The agreement gelled after senators resolved an impasse involving Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania’s insistence that the Federal Reserve’s lending powers be restrained. Details of the agreement are not clear at present, but CNN reports it includes $330 billion for small business loans, plus over $80 billion for schools, and billions more for distributing COVID-19 vaccines. Stories I scanned provided no update on eviction protections in the stimulus bill.

It is not enough, of course. The compromise represents perhaps as much as Democrats can get and the most Republicans will concede to the incoming Biden-Harris administration while trying not to appear Scrooges the week of Christmas. Should the bills pass the House and Senate today, someone will have to get the outgoing president’s phone out of his hand long enough to sign them both before funding expires.

The dealmaker-in-chief is nowhere to be found. He is too busy trying to cover Russia’s backside over the massive network hacks being discovered by government agencies. That is, when he is not in the Oval Office with his merry band of lunatics plotting and screaming about how he might still overturn the results of the November election. Declaring martial law was even under consideration, per reports.

Donald J. Trump was too preoccupied with himself to celebrate the emergency use authorization of a second COVID-19 vaccine last week, or to model responsible behavior by getting the shot on camera as his vice president did. On “Saturday Night Live,” Vice President Mike Pence (played by Beck Bennett) assured Americans the vaccine is safe, “That’s why President Trump refuses to take it about it or talk about it.” And because while Trump may have deserted his post, “he still cares deeply about not going to prison.”

After allowing said president to firehose disinformation via its platform for years — much of it deadly in 2020 — Twitter finally began adding disclaimers to Trump tweets this spring. Over six weeks after the Nov. 3 election, Twitter finally has added a new advisory label to Trump’s tweets:

“Following certification of the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we’ve updated our label to reflect the latest information,” a Twitter spokesperson told Variety.

If cleanliness is next to godliness, timeliness saves lives. How many might have been saved this year had more people in leadership positions acted sooner rather than dragging their feet?

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BREAKING: Dr. Fauci has vaccinated Santa Claus.

Because… #2020. https://t.co/WLRWw56pjC

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) December 19, 2020

Awww.

A 79 year old virologist from the National Institute of Health being a hero to the majority of Americans in this day and age gives me hope.

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Paul Waldman at the Washington Post makes an excellent observation that I think we should probably keep in mind as we try to understand what’s going on with the right wing. He discusses Jared Kushner’s shell company into which they funnelled almost 700 million dollars of campaign cash this year without ever disclosing who or where the money was going.

And then he notes this:

We may never know [where it went]. But I know this: Trump’s supporters couldn’t care less, even if it’s their money.

That’s because he has spent years convincing them that self-dealing and graft are perfectly fine. The only question is whether it’s the people you like who are benefiting.

This was always Trump’s argument about unethical behavior: not that he’s innocent and others are guilty, but that everyone is guilty, so we shouldn’t worry about his misdeeds. Everyone is corrupt, everyone is on the take, everyone mistreats women, we’re living in a world without morals or principles and all that matters is whether you win.

He never made any bones about it. Even in 2016, when Hillary Clinton charged that he was probably refusing to show his tax returns because he paid no taxes (which turned out to be pretty much true), he replied, “That makes me smart.” Obeying the rules is for suckers and chumps.

By now, Trump’s supporters — who will remain his supporters after he leaves office — firmly believe that. If he pulls a new scam and they’re his victims? That just shows what a genius he is.

I’m not even exaggerating. If you took 100 people committed enough to Trump to send donations when he solicits help with the Georgia Senate runoffs, then told them that much of it ended up in Trump’s bank account, do you think they’d feel cheated? Of course not.

And that could well happen. Since Election Day, Trump has raised $250 million, $60 million of which has gone to his new leadership PAC — and he’s done it by telling supporters that he needs the money to fund lawsuits trying to overturn the election or keep up the fight in Georgia. He will be able to use that money for a wide variety of vaguely defined purposes, as long as it is not used explicitly in support of another presidential run.

He could, for instance, fund his own travel around the country, or pay for advertising getting his ideas out, or donate money to other candidates to maintain their loyalty. In other words, it’s basically a slush fund.

But there are many ways Trump could use his leadership PAC to put money in his own pocket by applying the techniques he used quite profitably as president. The PAC could rent office space in Trump Tower, just as Trump’s reelection committee did. (As the Times notes, the reelection continues to pay $37,000 a month for space there, even though its headquarters is in an office building in Virginia.)

The leadership PAC could also hold events at other Trump properties, just as many Republican organizations have for the past four years. This began early on: As the District of Columbia attorney general charges in a lawsuit, Trump’s inaugural committee paid inflated rates to rent space in the Trump International hotel. At first the hotel was going to charge a mind-boggling $450,000 a day for the use of a ballroom; that number was eventually reduced to a still-incredible $175,000 a day.

The inaugural committee was a nonprofit, which subjects it to rules that may have been violated, as the D.C. suit alleges. But the leadership PAC may be able to get away with more. It could, for instance, hold monthly “Thank you President Trump!” events at his properties— mini-Fyre Festivals that Trump would charge enormous rates to host, while attendees got a mayonnaise sandwich, a cash bar and the knowledge that they were helping the Trump Organization cling to profitability.

They’d consider it an honor.

Something very disturbing has happened to the right wing during this period and this is at the heart of it. The amorality in pursuit of power,is a reflection of Donald Trump who has never tried to hide his greed and avarice and it seems to have invaded the collective psyche of his entire following. There has always been hypocrisy, of course. And shamelessness is their superpower. But this is even deeper than that. It’s celebration of corruption as “the smart thing” because they believe they must win by any means necessary. It’s the Wall Street ethos trickled down to the masses. I guess that’s what Trumpian “populism” is all about.

We are in a major ethical and moral crisis in this country. But then, the mere fact that Donald Trump was ever elected president is ample proof of that.

And Happy Hollandaise everyone! 2021 is bound to better than 2020 — it’s hard to imagine it can be any worse.

cheers,
digby

In my featured post today I mentioned the reports that Trump spent Friday night spitballing the various paths to a coup. Here’s more on that:

Axios reports:

Senior Trump administration officials are increasingly alarmed that President Trump might unleash — and abuse — the power of government in an effort to overturn the clear result of the election.

 These officials tell me that Trump is spending too much time with people they consider crackpots or conspiracy theorists and flirting with blatant abuses of power.

There are 32 days until President-elect Biden’s inauguration.

Their fears include Trump’s interest in former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s wild talk of martial law; an idea floated of an executive order to commandeer voting machines; and the specter of Sidney Powell, the conspiracy-spewing election lawyer, obtaining governmental power and a top-level security clearance.

A senior administration official said that when Trump is “retweeting threats of putting politicians in jail, and spends his time talking to conspiracy nuts who openly say declaring martial law is no big deal, it’s impossible not to start getting anxious about how this ends.”

“People who are concerned and nervous aren’t the weak-kneed bureaucrats that we loathe,” the official added. “These are people who have endured arguably more insanity and mayhem than any administration officials in history.”

Jonathan Swan added this on his twitter feed:

What is different is these are NOT the Never Trumper types. These are people who have fully thrown their lot in with Trump but are legitimately worried about his receptivity to Flynn and Powell’s ideas and conspiracy theories. One month seems like an eternity in this context. https://t.co/7t5oWkg1ht

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) December 19, 2020

I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while. I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell / Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top. https://t.co/NxjC0sUrzI

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) December 19, 2020

They’re just getting worried now?

Here is Maggie Haberman’s twitter thread which hits all the highlights of her New York Times story:

SCOOP – Sidney Powell was in Oval Office last night as POTUS discussed making her special counsel for election fraud. @KannoYoungs and me

Among those pushing back on the idea was Pat Cipollone, Meadows and even Giuliani. But Giuliani separately pushed DHS this week to seize control of voting machines to examine them for possible fraud. DHS said it has no authority to do that.

The meeting got raucous, with various administration members drifting in and out and different people arguing. Powell told others they were quitters, people people briefed on the meeting

The fact of the meeting – and Giuliani hope of seizing the voting machines – has alarmed some of the president’s advisers, who see his desire to take his refusal to accept the election results as in a dangerous new place

Meadows and Cipollone strenuously and repeatedly objected to these suggestions, saying there was no constitutional basis, according to the people briefed.

One person floated an executive order to seize the voting machines. That was also shot down by Cipollone, per the people briefed.

Adding to the story but two people briefed said Flynn was there as well for this meeting.

During the meeting, the president asked about Flynn’s suggestion of deploying the military, those briefed said. That was also shot down.

MORE – POTUS asked about possibility of Powell being given security clearances to pursue her theories, per people briefed on the meeting.

In the president’s mind, “special counsel” is what DoJ made happen with Mueller, but what was being discussed was Powell working inside the White House – and Trump came very close to hiring her, per multiple people briefed.

Originally tweeted by Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) on December 19, 2020.

I realize that much of what Trump does is nothing more than a grift. And maybe this is just another one of his ploys to keep the rubes sending their social security checks to his “Stop the Steal” con. It’s certainly possible.

It’s also possible that he’s very, very stupid and very, very psychologically damaged and he simply cannot accept this monumental loss. The first is bad, the second is kind of terrifying. He’s still the president of the most powerful nation on earth.

Our annual Hullabaloo fundraiser continues. If you’d care to participate you can do so below. And Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who has contributed to the Hullabaloo Happy Hollandaise fundraiser so far. It truly means the world to me. And to those of you who can’t contribute anything please believe me when I say I’m extremely grateful for my readership regardless. It’s a labor of love here and all of us are honored to be part of this great political conversation. Thank you for coming by and reading and sharing what we write.

Donald Trump is acting crazier than ever and today we were reminded that even though he will be gone soon, we aren’t out of the woods. He’s plotting a coup inside the White House with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn. I’m not kidding. They are reporting that he’s becoming more unhinged by the day. Luckily, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows seem to be able to contain him so far, but who knows whether he will do something dangerously loony before he goes?

Nonetheless, he will be leaving the White House in a month. Thank God. But our problems are far from over as we can see by the amount of sabotage Trump GOP collaborators are already preparing. They not only stonewalled the relief package for months, now that we are down to the wire they have decided to push a poison pill at the last minute to cripple the Biden administration’s ability to deal with the economic crisis in the spring.

This wld literally be worse than no stimulus since they are pushing for mandated Depression policies from the Federal Reserve as the price. This is what's kept the economy alive. McConnell's strategy is to push the economy off a cliff (yes, a much higher one) in time for Biden. https://t.co/4gWuWlruU0

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 19, 2020

Politico reported that the Toomey Fed language “would curtail the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending authority in the economic relief deal taking shape, a move that would seal off major avenues of future aid without congressional action.”

In other words, there will be no more future federal aid if Republicans control the Senate as there is a 50/50 chance they will. They are intent upon forcing austerity policies on the Biden administration at a time when it will strangle the economic recovery. The only thing they care about is winning the 2022 elections and ensuring that Biden’s presidency is a failure.

We are in for a rough time, especially if McConnell maintains control of the Senate. It will be different in character than these last four years. In some ways it will be more familiar but it’s important to recognize that today’s Republican Party has been radicalized beyond even what we came to expect of is during the Bush years and the Gingrich revolution. The Trump era has pushed them completely over the edge. They are both in thrall to a brainwashed cult and ruthlessly dedicated to maintaining power by any means necessary.

It’s going to be a very bumpy ride, I’m afraid. And we will be here trying to make sense of it all and hopefully help you sort out what’s going on as well. If you’d like to help us keep the lights on here, you can throw a few coins into the old Hullabaloo Christmas stocking by clicking on the buttons below or using the snail mail address on the left column.

And Happy Hollandaise everyone. We are in the midst of a tough, scary time but we do have each other. And remember, there are more of us than there are of them …

cheers,
digby

This is the first time Donald Trump has mentioned the massive Russian government cyberattack:

….discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!). There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. @DNI_Ratcliffe @SecPompeo

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2020

Of course it’s all about him.

We can’t expect anything more from him. He’s overwhelmed with the reality that he’s the biggest loser and sorest loser in world history. But I don’t think we’ve fully grasped the national security threat he poses after he is out of the White House .

Think about this for a moment:

In his calls to allies, Trump has been asking them specifically how he can campaign for four years, and soliciting advice on how to navigate the first two years. He has talked about traveling to the Middle East, a region where he would be well-received, according to the two people familiar with the calls. The visit would allow him to promote his policies there, including agreements his administration helped negotiate to normalize relations between Israel and several Arab nations.

He has never been trustworthy with America’s secrets and has had access to all of them. I think his state of mind today indicates that he’s becoming actively hostile to the United States. Imagine what kind of trouble he can cause, particularly if he’s saying he’s running again and foreign actors believe he is worth investing in.

I honestly don’t know what is to be done about this but it seems to me that it’s a very dangerous situation.

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Michael Lind restates the dumbest cliche in modern American politics: progressives can’t win unless they act like a doormat and abandon tolerance, helping others in need, free speech, justice, and equality:

…progressives must accept that they are only a quarter of the US population and cannot hope to win or exercise power without teaming up with people who reject many progressive views.

Funny. how no one makes the argument that the far right needs to compromise despite the self-evident fact that far less than a quarter of the US population is made up of white male extremists with a penchant for venality. And yet, somehow, the worst bottom feeders in America managed to take over a major political party and nearly pulled off an authoritarian coup.

But yes, things are returning to normal in America. The problem is that despite my headline, we can’t relax because “normal” in American before Trump was, in so many ways, exactly what empowered Trump and Trumpism.

Nothing is to be gained by compromising the fundamental human values that progressives rightly celebrate. And there is nothing about a refusal to compromise that even remotely suggests a refusal to engage in effective real world politics.

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Cracked me up, anyway.

If I owned that much bacon, I’d carry protection too. https://t.co/WzdELxwUdL

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) December 19, 2020

And if you have not seen this performance by Patti Austin, treat yourself.

This is the best. Wow. pic.twitter.com/DdWCWl02Mz

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) December 19, 2020

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Not meaning to summon the Ghost of Fundraisers Past, but this morning Digby’s “The Art of the Hissy Fit” from October 2007 was on my mind and a Christmas pitch from 2012 was the first link a quick search found. It came to mind in pondering how many hissy fits there are to come in the early months of the new Biden-Harris administration. As if the coronavirus death toll and its other torments were not enough.

America's worst mass casualty deadliest days ever… 👇

All due to Trump WH failed to respond to the pandemic. This is forever his legacy for centuries to come. #COVID19

(HT @CAPAction) pic.twitter.com/ycFOxBiHCj

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) December 17, 2020

Timothy Egan at the New York Times likens the winter months ahead to Lewis and Clark’s stay on the Oregon coast in the winter of 1805-1806. The Corps of Discovery hunkered down near what would become Astoria and saw only about a dozen days without rain.

Clark wrote of their winter, “O! How disagreeable is our Situation dureing this dreadful weather.” And so with us:

During the coronavirus pandemic, the number of adults exhibiting symptoms of depression has tripled, and alcohol consumption has risen. We are prisoners of our homes and our minds, Zoom-fatigued, desperate for social contact. As a nation, we are diminished and exhausted, and millions remain out of work.

Further, it has been a long fall from that crude but egalitarian vote at the mouth of the Columbia to one that is among the nadirs of democracy, when 60 percent of Republican House members joined a court effort this month to negate the sovereign right of the people to elect their leaders. Vladimir Putin acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory before Mitch McConnell did.

It’s equally troubling that Biden won the popular vote by 7 million, but came within 43,000 votes of losing the election because of the anti-democratic relic of the Electoral College.

The Corps of Discovery made it back without losing a person (one man died during the westward half of the expedition). They fared well once they emerged from their long winter. We, on the other hand, face a brutal early spring. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects that more than 500,000 Americans likely will have died from Covid-19 by the end of March.

This forever is Trump’s legacy “for centuries to come,” tweets Eric Feigl-Ding, Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC. And more.

Misinformation about the disease robotically repeated by Trump’s cult has been one of the enduring irritants. Instant experts in the science of respiration confidently — nay, defiantly —tell us masks are useless, even harmful as they refuse them and spread the disease in their communities. No sooner had the masked vice president received his inoculation on camera Friday to reassure Americans the vaccines are safe than his boss retweeted a right-wing radio host questioning the effectiveness of masks.

Adding to the anti-science tropes from the cult, from Trump’s Republican enablers, and from armchair statisticians is misinformation that COVID-19 isn’t really that deadly compared to flu. They are wrong, of course. It is five times more deadly for hospitalized patients, and 305,000 to 320,000 official American deaths so far this year (depending on who’s counting) lend credence to that. Not including the still-incomplete excess deaths associated with COVID tracked by the CDC. Those might push the death count to 400,000 once factored in.

But Trump supplicants are running out of fingers to stick in the dike holding back the reality of his epic, deadly failure. Beside deaths, the long-term effects for survivors of the virus are still not well understood. Some are irreversible. Kidney (and other organ) damage perhaps requiring dialysis or transplants. Or amputation as happened to a White House staffer. Or permanent brain damage.

Seriously bad news. If the damage to the brain is permanent, #COVID19 "long haulers" might be facing lifelong symptoms. We desperately need to know more about how the virus gets into the brain, and which cell populations it destroys. https://t.co/mG4UI3F5lA

— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) December 17, 2020

All of it dismissed as “not that bad” or a hoax or an infringement on personal freedom by believers committed more to their liege lord than to their country or their communities. What is the loss of a foot or a kidney compared to protecting He Trump from having his makeup smeared?

Even so, FDA authorized a second vaccine to fight the virus on Friday. The rollout will have the major hitches we have come to expect from the Trump administration. And one cannot help but wonder if the unexplained shortages reported this week might have more to do with someone in the administration not getting his kickbacks than with disorganization. Still, the “unprecedented scientific feat” might just be the Christmas miracle the world needs.

Egan concludes his Lewis and Clark reverie:

Still, we look to the spring, as did they. We rely on our ingenuity, as did they. Even as we mourn the dead, we cheer the first people to get a shot in the arm. “I feel like healing is coming,” said Sandra Lindsay, the Long Island nurse who had the distinction of becoming the first to be vaccinated on our shores, after getting her coronavirus inoculation.

We cling to the coming spring because it’s far better than thinking about tomorrow’s dreary sameness. We look forward to a new president and the return of the simple joy of human touch.

The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center at Cape Disappointment, Ore. is, like so many other government installations, closed until further notice due to the pandemic.

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