This story from the South Florida Sun Sentinel is simply hair-raising. If this were any other country we would be demanding the arrest of a political leader who behaved in this way. It is criminal negligence — at best:
Throughout the COVID-19 crisis in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment that misled the public on the gravest health threat the state has ever faced, a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation has found.
DeSantis, who owes his job to early support from President Donald Trump, imposed an approach in line with the views of the president and his powerful base of supporters. The administration suppressed unfavorable facts, dispensed dangerous misinformation, dismissed public health professionals, and promoted the views of scientific dissenters who supported the governor’s approach to the disease.
The DeSantis administration’s approach to managing COVID-19 information carries costs. It supports a climate in which people proudly disdain masks, engage in dangerous group activities that could spread the disease, and brush aside information that conflicts with their political views. With partygoers packing Florida bars and holiday travelers filling hotels and guest rooms, the state faces a few difficult months before the possible relief of vaccines.
These findings are based on interviews with more than 50 people, including scientists, doctors, political leaders, employees of the state health department, and other state officials, as well as more than 4,000 pages of documents:
1. The Florida Department of Health’s county-level spokespeople were ordered in September to stop issuing public statements about COVID-19 until after the Nov. 3 election.
2. The DeSantis administration refused to reveal details about the first suspected cases in Florida, then denied the virus was spreading from person to person — despite mounting evidence that it was.
3. State officials withheld information about infections in schools, prisons, hospitals and nursing homes, relenting only under pressure or legal action from family members, advocacy groups and journalists.
4. The DeSantis administration brushed aside scientists and doctors who advocated conventional approaches to fighting the virus, preferring scientists on the fringes who backed the governor’s positions.
5. The governor’s spokesman regularly takes to Twitter to spread misinformation about the disease, including the false claim that COVID was less deadly than the flu.
6. The governor highlighted statistics that would paint the rosiest picture possible and attempted to cast doubt on the validity of Florida’s rising death toll.
“The governor is a smart, educated guy,” said Thomas Unnasch, co-director of the Center for Global Health and Infectious Disease Research at the University of South Florida in Tampa. “But he also is a politically savvy guy. He is encouraging people who are of the opinion that the virus is not as severe and profound as others say it is and putting politics before science.”
He is a monster. And it’s only getting worse. That picture above is from the day before Thanksgiving in a Florida bar.
I don’t know what to say about people like him. But it’s shown that if a competent authoritarian ever did what Trump did in this country there would be plenty of Republicans ready to run the camps for him. De Santis would be at the top of the list.
Read the whole thing. It’s an amazing investigative work that sadly, will probably have no more effect on DeSantis’s standing among the Trump cult than the many Trump exposés have done. They are so delusional that they have lost all sense of morality.
“I’ve seen people post TikToks about different journeys they’re having, like weight-loss journeys or moving to a new school and things like that, so I was, like, this vaccine trial is an interesting thing. I’ll post about that,” Locke said. “Maybe some people will find that interesting.”
The post has amassed about 2.7 million views, and she has been inundated with questions and comments about the vaccine trial.
An emerging group of TikTokers have gone viral for sharing information about the COVID-19 vaccines. Hashtags about the vaccine have millions of views as young people seek information about the trials in a format they can understand. Several other TikTok users have posted videos of themselves participating in trials, and at least one video, in which a doctor weighs the differences among some of the vaccine trials, has received more than a million views.
One hashtag, #COVIDVaccine, has more than 36 million views.
COVID-19 vaccines are nearing approval and distribution. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday that a vaccine could receive emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration as soon as Dec. 10. Distribution could begin soon after, Azar said.
The viral TikToks not only are feeding young people’s hunger for information about the vaccines; they are also having real-world influence — from users who say the videos have persuaded them to get vaccinated once the injections are approved to young people who say they influenced them to sign up for vaccine trials, according to those making the videos.
The TikTokers who have posted about trials are also putting their videos out to fight misinformation about the vaccines and COVID-19.
Recent viral videos spreading misinformation, like one falsely claiming that vaccines are how the government microchips Americans, have been widely mocked by young people who, in some cases, have debunked the unproven claims with facts that appear to have come from some of the informative videos.
And although they say they sometimes get anti-vaccine activists in their comment sections, those making the videos said the comments have been overwhelmingly positive, with many young people asking how the vaccines might work.
That’s been the case for Kate Bredbenner, 29, a doctor of biomedical sciences with a focus on biophysics, who posted a TikTok on Nov. 11 explaining in simple terms how the COVID-19 vaccine that Pfizer is developing works. (Bredbenner said her explanation also applies to the Moderna vaccine, which was announced as being effective just days after she posted her video.)
Within days, the video had amassed several million views. As of Wednesday, it had reached 3.2 million views.
“I posted it and it got a decent amount of popularity right away, and I was, like, ‘Whoa, that’s really intense.’ … I have no idea what happened in the algorithm, but, like, five days after I posted it I started getting a ton of notifications,” Bredbenner said.
Bredbenner said that just by virtue of her being a woman on the internet, she had anticipated that her video might get some weird or nasty comments. But she said the comment section is almost exclusively filled by curious users asking her how the vaccine might affect them.
“It makes me feel so good. People are genuinely having real conversations, and people are asking questions, and I think that’s kind of magic,” Bredbenner said.
Locke’s video has been inundated with questions to the point that she has made several more to give her viewers more information. She said that she also checks out a profile before she responds to a question and that she has been pleasantly surprised to learn that many of those who are curious about the vaccine appear to be of high school age.
She has also come up with a game plan to respond to the questions she’s not qualified to answer.
“I talked to the communications director [of Clinical Research Associates]. Next time I go in, I’m going to be able to ask some of the questions I’m not able to answer. I’m going to be able to ask my doctors and hopefully have them on my videos to be a little more informative and answer some more of those scientific things that I don’t know, but still in a clear way that’s easy for our audiences,” Locke said.
Locke and Bredbenner said they’ve gotten a few “anti-vaxxer” comments on their videos, but both said other people will often reply armed with facts to debunk misinformation.
“It’s very interesting to see people having conversations around that,” Bredbenner said. “I have gotten some comments on the video that are like ‘I was really confused about this before and unsure, but this made me feel a lot more confident in how it works.'”
Locke and Bredbenner said that not only are the videos informing people but that they also appear to have some real-world influence.
TikTok users have told Bredbenner that although they were initially skeptical, they plan to get the COVID-19 vaccine once it is available after having watched her videos. Locke said several new trial participants have signed up with Clinical Research Associates after having seen her TikTok.
Hopefully we’ll see a lot of this sort of thing once the vaccine rolls out. If people see that others are having a safe experience it will make a difference.
But I’m positive there’s also gong to be ton of disinformation and misinformation out there too. In fact, there already is and it’s only going to get worse. everyone’s going to have to work hard to combat it.
Otherwise occupied, I missed Trump’s wounded ego-stroking last night. This one in Valdosta, Ga. As usual, Aaron Rupar was on it. At least it was outside.
Trump won the election. Every state. Did you not hear? Trump is a victim. His supporters are victims. Democrats are commies. Etc.
"We're all victims. Everybody here. All these thousands of people here tonight. They're all victims. Every one of you." — Trump pic.twitter.com/5dPtZCNGxa
The people positioned behind Trump wearing Trump face masks before the election are no longer wearing them, I see.
Josh Marshall caught this dog whistle:
2/ Confiscations of white farms in southern Africa is a huge topic on the white supremacist right in the US. He's dog whistling that, saying that slave reparations will mean black folks will be given your farm.
4/ Writing for Media Matters, TPM alum @EricKleefeld points out Trump appears to be riffing on a recent episode of Tucker Carlson's show where he predicts White Farmers in America will soon suffer the same fate as those in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. https://t.co/V3afQnzZCq
On the November 24 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson singled out the Justice for Black Farmers Act, a bill announced last week by Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). The bill appears to have gained attention on right-wing site Red Elephants, which said Tuesday that “an American nationalist” reached out to the site “to raise awareness” about the proposal.
The official press release for the bill said that it “will enact policies to end discrimination within the [U.S. Department of Agriculture], protect remaining Black farmers from losing their land, provide land grants to create a new generation of Black farmers and restore the land base that has been lost, and implement systemic reforms to help family farmers across the United States.”
Also to be clear, the bill’s own language makes it clear that land would be purchased from “willing sellers” at fair market value — not the sort of land seizures that were conducted in Zimbabwe during Mugabe’s long presidency.
Details, details. No reason to ruin a good dog whistle.
Slate’s Lili Loofbourow frames Donald Trump’s movement of white nationalists and conspiracy cranks in a way I had not considered. Like Black Panther’s vibranium suit, the more ridicule cranks absorb the more powerful they become in a social-media world. Over-the-top craziness draws eyeballs. It upstages politicians and shifts the balance of power to the point that “laughing at a crank inflates his or her currency.” Makes them relevant. Turns them from “targets into lightning rods.”
Commenting on Rudy Giuliani’s election fraud sideshow in Michigan (and his viral star witness), Loofbourow writes:
Cranks matter now. They are being given seats at the table, not just as witnesses but as officials. The president is a crank. So is his team, which is trying to overthrow the results of the election. Sidney Powell is a crank. Rudy Giuliani is a crank. QAnon cranks have been elected to Congress. If Donald Trump has proven anything, it’s that a massive number of Americans don’t have a “bridge too far” when it comes to crankish excesses we still somehow think the public will find disqualifying. If anything, the opposite is true: Cranks who proudly own their eccentricities and brandish them have learned that much of the American public will perceive their success despite their crankishness as proof of their power.
Cranks possess a peculiar kind of American “authenticity,” Loofbourow writes, “a type as confident as it is ignorant, so righteous and blustery and simultaneously sincere and unhampered by facts or deference that it makes terrific TV.”
This echoes how Bill McKibben described American evangelicals a decade and a half ago:
The power of the Christian right rests largely in the fact that they boldly claim religious authority, and by their very boldness convince the rest of us that they must know what they’re talking about. They’re like the guy who gives you directions with such loud confidence that you drive on even though the road appears to be turning into a faint, rutted track. But their theology is appealing for another reason too: it coincides with what we want to believe.
Never mind Trump’s ignorance, his conspiracy-mongering, or his con jobs. Trump’s hair, like his makeup, is a loud external expression of nonconformity that his followers respond to precisely because it’s ridiculous. That it will court mockery is obvious, but indifference to mockery is power. The more they’re mocked, the more followers double down into hurricanes of tribalism that become a sincere and unshakeable loyalty. It’s why they claim him as theirs rather than relegate him to just another Manhattan millionaire. The memes of Trump’s head pasted on muscular bodies are expressive of the way satire collapsed into sincerity—they are ridiculous but also completely serious: Trump supporters know he is an old man who prefers riding in golf carts to walking, but celebrate him as the healthy and powerful epitome of American masculinity.
Yale history professor Beverly Gage draws parallels between Trump’s movement and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s. During the Red Scare, most Republicans displayed similar cowardice in failing to confront McCarthy’s threat to “democratic institutions and political fair play.” But as other Americans saw it, “the sheer volume of criticism aimed at the senator became proof that he was right all along: that the country was, indeed, run by a menacing but elusive liberal-communist conspiracy aimed at taking down right-thinking, God-fearing Americans.”
So that even with McCarthy’s downfall after “four years of lies and vitriol,” the resentments he stirred — supported by nearly half of Americans — spawned a new generation of right-wing activists, Gage explains:
After McCarthy’s censure, this tale — of a courageous warrior taken down by illegitimate foes — helped fuel a wave of institution-building on the right. In 1955, Buckley founded National Review magazine, a bid, as he described it, to break up the “identifiable team of Fabian operators” who were “bent on controlling both our major political parties.” Three years later, candy manufacturer Robert Welch established the John Birch Society, a conspiratorial far-right organization that attracted millions of members with claims that even Eisenhower secretly sympathized with communism. The two camps never saw eye to eye, with Buckley sneering at the Birchers’ paranoid style. When it came to McCarthy, though, they shared a common view: Though Buckley expressed certain reservations about the senator’s methods, he agreed that McCarthy’s censure in 1954 revealed the workings of a corrupt, soft and traitorous political establishment.
McCarthy managed to rise to stardom even with the opposition of media gatekeepers. Modern conspiracists have no such limitations. Trump’s movement may last far beyond Trump himself, Gage warns.
But I must point out once again the unintended consequences of seemingly benign, seemingly non-ideological technological advancements. TV, cars, the Internet, Facebook. The supposed decay of the atomic family decried by conservatives since the 1950s was not the product of teaching Marxism or eliminating official prayer in public classrooms. Automobiles made possible urban sprawl and bedroom communities. People could work miles away in one direction, go to church miles away in another; and school and play, etc. TV’s made it possible for families to entertain themselves inside the house rather than seek community out in the neighborhood. Societal changes are not always the products of the Devil or more terrestrial dark forces. Faceless technologies we adopt without weighing the costs. TV enabled the rise of Trump, the reality-TV president followed by a movement raised on it. Who could have seen that coming when a certain autocrat televised the opening of the Berlin Olympics in 1936?
In addition to bypassing big-media gatekeepers, social media allows the darker side of human nature to flourish and spread like a virus. “The fact is we’re in a crank pandemic and there’s no vaccine,” Loofbourow concludes. Like the coronavirus, Trumpism may be with us a while longer.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
— Hamlet, as he ponders the skull of a deceased friend (from Act 1, Scene 5 of Hamlet)
Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now.
— From the Epilogue title card of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of Barry Lyndon.
Alas. It’s so sad, their grandma died. Oh dear, he was only 60…what a pity. Rich or poor, revered or despised-Fate befalls all. What a tragedy. Nobody can escape.
— ICU nurse in 76 Days, as she disinfects personal effects of deceased COVID patients.
You know what “they” say about death and taxes. Well…what Christopher Bullock said:
’Tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes.
Speaking for myself (although I suspect I speak for many here), one thing I surely did not see coming was the possibility of death by plague, especially as I careen toward my 65th birthday in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century. With apologies to Douglas Adams, the mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.
Yet here we are, 10 months into a global pandemic. “Wallet, keys, mask” is now my mantra before leaving the house. It’s been some time since I reached the final stage of the Kübler-Ross model (“Acceptance”). For all I know, COVID-19 was, is, and will always be here.
But it had to start somewhere, right? According to an unpublicized report from the Chinese government, the first traceable case was in November 2019; a 55-year old citizen in Hubei province. 4 men and 5 women were reported to be infected in November; none were “patient zero”. However, the eyes of the world would soon focus on the city of Wuhan. From a New York Times piece by Donald G. McNeil, Jr. published February 28th this year:
There are two ways to fight epidemics: the medieval and the modern.
The modern way is to surrender to the power of the pathogens: Acknowledge that they are unstoppable and to try to soften the blow with 20th-century inventions, including new vaccines, antibiotics, hospital ventilators and thermal cameras searching for people with fevers.
The medieval way, inherited from the era of the Black Death, is brutal: Close the borders, quarantine the ships, pen terrified citizens up inside their poisoned cities.
For the first time in more than a century, the world has chosen to confront a new and terrifying virus with the iron fist instead of the latex glove.
At least for a while, it worked, and it might still serve a purpose.
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, was able to seal off the city of Wuhan, where the Covid-19 outbreak began, because China is a place where a leader can ask himself, “What would Mao do?” and just do it. The bureaucracy will comply, right down to the neighborhood committees that bar anyone from returning from Wuhan from entering their own homes, even if it means sleeping in the streets.
So, putting aside for a moment any finger-wagging regarding totalitarian vs democratic societies, or the ethics of “medieval vs modern” methods in dealing with dire public health emergencies…how did Wuhan do? Here’s an recap from CNN, published in April 2020:
Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, reopened this month after a 76-day lockdown.
“People are visiting parks, markets, malls. On the roads there are many cars,” said Hector Retamal, a photojournalist with Agence France-Presse. “I have seen people who go swimming in the Yangtze River, other people dancing in a park. No big crowds yet, but step by step the life is returning to the city.”
The tough measures that were put in place — most people couldn’t even go grocery shopping or bury their dead — seem to have worked. New coronavirus cases, which used to number in the thousands each day, have slowed to a trickle.
Wuhan didn’t do too badly, considering they got the virus under control within 3 months, whereas here in the U.S. some 7 months later, COVID continues to rage…with impunity.
But that transition from initial mandatory lockdown to a virtually COVID-free city didn’t occur in a vacuum, nor was it facilitated by the wave of a magic wand. What exactly went down during those 76 days? What was it like to be a citizen of Wuhan during this period?
A remarkable documentary called 76 Days fills in some of the blanks. Released by MTV Films, it was co-directed by New York filmmaker Hao Wu (People’s Republic of Desire) in association with China-based journalists Weixi Chen and “Anonymous” (the choice of anonymity by one of the trio indicates this project was likely not sanctioned by Chinese authorities).
Filmed during the early days of the epidemic and focusing on the day-to-day travails of Wuhan’s front-line health workers as they attend to the crush of first-wave COVID patients, the film was shot at great personal risk by the two journalists (Weixi Chen and Anonymous) and their small camera crews.
While the film is slickly edited in such a way to suggest everything occurs at one medical facility, it was actually filmed at four different Wuhan hospitals over a period of several months. Eschewing polemics or social commentary, the filmmakers opt for the purely observational “direct cinema” approach (there’s no narration).
One thing that gets lost in the politicization and finger-pointing surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic is the ongoing human cost; and nothing hammers it home like the film’s powerful and affecting opening scene, where a distraught woman (a hospital worker in full PPE) has to be restrained by fellow medical personnel as her deceased father is wheeled out of the ICU, zipped up in a body bag.
“I’ll never see my Papa again! I want to listen to my Papa sing!” she keens as her father is whisked off to the morgue.Her compatriots are sympathetic, but remind her that she must stay strong for the sake of fellow hospital staff and all of the patients in their care. The 3-minute sequence is heartbreaking and sobering.
A harrowing scene in the ER admittance area could be from a zombie apocalypse film. People are pounding on the door and wrenching on the handle. Hospital workers keep the door locked, straining against it to keep the pressing mob of anxious souls on the other side at bay as they attempt to let in only several patients at a time.
The filmmakers follow the progress of a number of patients, from their admittance to their release (or fate). One particularly truculent elderly fisherman is so reticent to be hospitalized he keeps his cap and coat on even as he is tucked into bed by the orderly.
Afflicted by the early stages of dementia, he wanders the halls at night like a Flying Dutchman, delivering soliloquies. “How could it have come to this? This place is not bad. Free medication and hot meals,” he muses aloud to no one in particular as he shuffles along. When he reaches the end of the hall, he tugs at the doors. “It’s locked? I need to get out, to go home. Can someone please just let me go? Who doesn’t have a home? Why can’t I go home?”
A pregnant woman undergoes a C-section, but has a negative antibody test prior to the birth, so she and her husband must quarantine for 2 weeks before she can hold her newborn for the first time. Following the progress of the baby girl (affectionately nicknamed “Little Penguin” by the attending ward staff) becomes a much-needed beacon of hope in the film.
The compassion and dedication of the attending staff shines throughout. “Your family is not here. So we are your family now,” a nurse assures one elderly patient in a touching moment. “You are all fearless soldiers,” marvels one tearful patient to a hospital worker.
If there is a “philosopher” of the film, it’s the nurse who spends a portion of each day notifying next of kin (you wonder how she absorbs all that grief from the other end of the call). She is determined to return personal items to families of the deceased. “Perhaps when the epidemic is over, we’ll find ways to return them to families. To keep them…perhaps…as mementos,” she offers, as she disinfects cell phones, watches, and such. One basket is labeled “ID CARDS AND PHONES OF THE DEAD”. One cell phone beeps and reads “31 UNREAD MESSAGES”.
So what is the takeaway? Granted, the question could be “Why buy a movie ticket to wallow in more COVID misery when all I need do is turn on the news to get it for free?” For me, it gets back to that “medieval vs. modern” conundrum.
It’s wonderful that we have dedicated front-line health workers all over the world to treat the symptoms, but their number is finite. More often than not they are over-worked, and hospital capacities are maxed out with existing COVID patients. What will it take to finally eradicate the cause?
Would it kill our democracy to get just a little “medieval” on COVID’s ass, just this once?
Since 9-11 it’s become reflexive for travelers to dutifully remove shoes and belts and unpack and repack carry-on luggage before boarding a plane, but being asked to wear a mask on a long crowded flight in the midst of a pandemic crosses the line of “oppression” for some? Can all Americans be convinced to make this temporary sacrifice of personal comfort for the common good?
China has had imperial rule since 221 B.C. The United States, born of rebellion, prizes individual rights.
There will be no national lockdown. No threats to have anyone “forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame,” as one of Mr. Xi’s underlings warned those who hid cases of infection.
But local control — and the political factionalism that is endemic to democracy — can carry grave risks in the face of a crisis, [medical historian Dr. Howard Markel] noted.
In 1918 and 1919, as the Spanish influenza swept across the country in waves, various cities reacted in their own ways.
Cities like St. Louis that reacted quickly — canceling parades and ballgames, shutting schools, transit systems and government offices, ordering the sick to stay home — ultimately had fewer deaths.
In cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which were paralyzed by political feuds or pressure from local businesses to avoid shutdowns, many more ultimately died.
To overcome the divisiveness that would imperil a cohesive national response, Dr. Markel said, “you need leadership from the top — and there has to be trust. In an epidemic, the idea that ‘everyone is entitled to their own facts’ is really dangerous.”
More prophetic words have rarely been written. One thing lacking since the pandemic blew up in March is “leadership from the top”. (To paraphrase General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove: “Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you were more concerned with the American People than with your image in the history books.”)
It’s great news that major pharmaceutical companies could begin distributing vaccines in a few weeks, but it will still be months before enough of the population is inoculated to flatten the curve (hopefully) for good. That means there has to be trust in what epidemiological experts are advising us to do in the meantime to keep everyone safe.
And hopefully the incoming administration, which is already demonstrating a desire and willingness to coordinate a better-late-than-never “cohesive national response” to the pandemic can hit the ground running and send COVID-19 packing once and for all.
(“76 Days” is currently playing in virtual cinemas nationwide)
I just thought it might be worthwhile to gather some of what the Trump cult is saying to each other on twitter. (I shudder to think what they’re saying on Gab, Parler, 8-chan and the rest …)
I don’t know how this level of delusion gets unwound. What happens if nearly half the population remains brainwashed for the foreseeable future?
This piece in the New York Times drawing parallels between Trump’s final days and Shakespearean tragedies (and toppled authoritarian regimes) is well written and certainly worth reading. If you’ve been reading his twitter feed you know that he’s losing it, but this description really brings it home:
Over the past week, President Trump posted or reposted more than 130 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.
Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results. He has fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News.
It was inevitable that we’d start to see pieces about King Lear and Richard III, so I won’t excerpt that. This was more interesting:
Alina Polyakova, the president of the Center for European Policy Analysis and a Russia scholar, said Mr. Trump reminded her of President Vladimir V. Putin, who has largely withdrawn from view recently amid public discontent in the late stages of an aging regime.
“Both also seem to be living in alternate realities surrounded only by those who confirm those realities,” she said. “But whereas one brooder will weather a slow and long decline, the other is increasingly facing a rapid decline and scrambling to do what he can to save his family and loyalists — and of course himself.”
I guess I didn’t know this about Putin. It’s fascinating that there might be such parallels between him and Trump in this regard.
And then there’s this:
Students of the American presidency, on the other hand, could think of no recent parallel. “As we move toward Inauguration Day, I have thought almost daily of a remark attributed to Henry Adams: ‘I expected the worst, and it was worse than I expected,’” said Patricia O’Toole, a biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as well as Adams.
Unlike any of his modern predecessors, Mr. Trump has not called his victorious opponent, much less invited him to the White House for the traditional postelection visit. Mr. Trump has indicated that he may not attend Mr. Biden’s inauguration, which would make him the first sitting president since 1869 to refuse to participate in the most important ritual of the peaceful transfer of power.
He has been enabled by Republican leaders unwilling to stand up to him, even if many privately wish he would go away sooner rather than later. After being called “profiles in cowardice” by an ally of the president, 75 Republican state legislators from Pennsylvania on Friday disavowed their own election and called on Congress to reject the state’s electors for Mr. Biden. Only 25 of 249 Republican members of Congress surveyed by The Washington Post publicly acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory.
“He really has paid attention to the base,” said Christopher Ruddy, a friend of the president’s and chief executive of Newsmax, part of the conservative news media megaphone that has supported and amplified Mr. Trump’s allegations. “They got him elected and in his mind got him elected the second time. And they’re strongly in favor of this recount effort and they want him to continue this. In his mind, he’s not just doing this for himself he’s doing it for his supporters and for the country. He’s on a mission and he’s not going to be easily swayed.”
That is, of course, bullshit. He is doing this for himself. Period. He thinks it will keep his base close to him and, not incidentally, keep the money flowing to his slush fund which has already collected over 200 million dollars since the election. 200 million dollars! He literally has millions of reasons to keep his deluded base agitated and engaged.
Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed is a fire hose of denial. “NO WAY WE LOST THIS ELECTION,” he wrote at one point in recent days. “We won Michigan by a lot!” he wrote at another of a state he lost by more than 154,000 votes. He reposted a message seeking to delegitimize Mr. Biden: “If he is inaugurated under these circumstances, he cannot be considered ‘president’ but instead referred to as the #presidentialoccupant.”
And he has turned on his own party, angry that Republican leaders have refused to accept his baseless claims and overturn the will of the voters. He referred to Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, once a favorite ally, as “the hapless Governor of Georgia.” and the “‘Republican’ Governor of Georgia” using his quotation marks ironically. Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, another Republican stalwart, has joined the target list. Mr. Trump retweeted a post saying “Gov Ducey has betrayed the people of Arizona,” adding, “TRUE!”
In a rambling 46-minute rant transmitted from the White House to the outside world by videotape this past week, Mr. Trump denounced “corrupt forces” stealing the election and insisted it was “statistically impossible” for him to have lost. If only everyone would accept his unfounded claims, he said, then “I very easily win in all states.”
“Many people in the media — and even judges — so far have refused to accept it,” Mr. Trump said, more as accusation than concession. “They know it’s true. They know it’s there. They know who won the election, but they refuse to say you’re right. Our country needs somebody to say, ‘You’re right.’ ”
There is no one in a position of authority in the courts or the legislature who will do that. And that’s because it’s batshit insane. […]
As the circle around Mr. Trump shrinks and even allies like Mr. Barr distance themselves, the president resists any suggestion that he stand down. “I’m never, ever going to concede,” he told one ally who urged him to prepare to do so. And if he is not listening to advisers, many are no longer listening to him.
At one point, Mr. Trump appeared to call Mr. Ducey even as he was certifying Arizona’s results on television and the governor refused to take the president’s call, which was announced by a “Hail to the Chief” ring tone.
Top Republican lawyers have dropped off his election lawsuits, which have been dismissed by the dozens and even in one case declared “bizarre,” by a judge appointed by Mr. Trump. Five courts in five battleground states rejected his latest legal challenges to the election in a little more than three hours on Friday, with a Wisconsin judge warning that “this is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”
Sliding further away from the mainstream, the president has aligned himself more clearly with fringe news outlets like One America News Network and the conspiracy theorists of QAnon, who believe the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles plotting against Mr. Trump. In a meeting with Republican senators, according to an official confirming a report in The Post, Mr. Trump said QAnon followers “basically believe in good government,” a comment that left the room silent until his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, volunteered that he had never heard them described that way.
With more than six weeks until he leaves office, Mr. Trump remains as unpredictable and erratic as ever. He may fire Mr. Barr or others or issue a raft of pardons to protect himself and his allies or incite a confrontation overseas. Like King Lear, he may fly into further rages and find new targets for his wrath.
“If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said Mr. Wilson, the Shakespearean scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”
We are in a very dangerous period. The country is being overrun with a deadly virus, the economy is cratering, and the demented president is howling at the moon. I would say the catastrophe is here. But, of course, it can always get worse. I just hope there is someone left in the chain of command who isn’t completely corrupted or insane — or both.
Just 27 congressional Republicans acknowledge Joe Biden’s win over President Trump a month after the former vice president’s clear victory of more than 7 million votes nationally and a convincing electoral-vote margin that exactly matched Trump’s 2016 tally.
Two Republicans consider Trump the winner despite all evidence showing otherwise. And another 220 GOP members of the House and Senate — about 88 percent of all Republicans serving in Congress — will simply not say who won the election.
Those are the findings of a Washington Post survey of all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate that began the morning after Trump posted a 46-minute video Wednesday evening in which he wrongly claimed he had defeated Biden and leveled wild and unsubstantiated allegations of “corrupt forces” who stole the outcome from the sitting president.
The results demonstrate the fear that most Republicans have of the outgoing president and his grip on the party, despite his new status as just the third elected president to lose reelection in the past 80 years. More than 70 percent of Republican lawmakers did not acknowledge The Post’s questions as of Friday evening.
Pretty incredible that Biden only improved on Hillary Clinton's 16% county share by a point, despite winning 15 million more votes (81.2 million to 65.8 million) and double her popular vote margin (4.5% vs. 2.1%).
Final figure is actually 71% of GDP generated in counties Biden won, once Nassau (NY) finished counting. Plus Biden won 91/100 largest counties in US, more even than HRC 16 or Obama 12. Clinton's counties generated 64% of GDP. High-output diverse metro US loudly said no to Trump https://t.co/5x2TmKK37V
The idea that we even count “counties” and think that means anything is part of our problem. Democracies are supposed to represent humans, not rocks, cows and corn fields. But if we are going to talk about them it behooves us to be precise about what those counties represent as Brownstein and Harwood do there. Yes, Biden only won 17% of America’s counties. But they are the largest counties and they happen to support the other 83%.
