Birth of a Banana Republic: Trump in Complete Control

WE ARE SWITCHING CORONAVIRUS NEWS TO A NEW POST....TRUMP BLOWS HIS BIG CORONAVIRUS TEST.

Hard to remember, but in February 2020 it was the cherished rule of law that looked like it was about to die. 

TRUMP ARCHIVE

De regula iuris est et mori.

February 1, 2020: A new month begins. The “Ghost Trial” in the U.S. Senate continues. Democrats want to call witnesses and subpoena documents. Republicans would prefer sock puppets.

 

* 

THREE YEARS in the making, having taxed all the brain cells Jared Kushner could muster, the Trump administration’s Middle East Peace Plan is revealed. President Trump hails his son-in-law’s 181-page plan the “deal of the century.” 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his entourage, who attend a White House unveiling, can “barely conceal their glee, ” since even Fox News admits the Kushner plan is “unapologetically pro-Israel.” 

As expected, the Palestinians, who have to agree to the “deal of the century,” which has only one “minor flaw” – that it is “unapologetically pro-Israel” – refuse to attend. Even the Kingdom of Jordan, a key U.S. regional ally, boycotts the event. 

In theory, the “lure” for the Palestinians is foreign investment. According to Kushner, as much as $50 billion may flow into whatever scraps of territory they have left after they agree to give up chunks of the West Bank and all the best parts of Jerusalem.

 

Here, again, we see the shortcomings of the Trump Doctrine. This is the crass belief that the world’s most intractable problems can be resolved if all parties focus on what loot there is to grab. 

During an emergency meeting of the Arab League, the plan is summarily rejected. The League warns that the deal, “does not meet the minimum rights and aspirations of Palestinian people.” 

Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, explains his position to members from all 22 League countries: 

“They told me Trump wants to send me the deal of the century to read, I said I would not. Trump asked that I speak to him over the phone, so I said ‘no,’ and that he wants to send me a letter, so I refused to receive it.”

 

Holding up a map that [showed] the gradual geographic reduction of Palestine through four stages from pre-1948 to Trump’s Middle East plan, Abbas said: “I challenge any of you, if you can even see us on the map. If you ask a child in first grade to draw Trump’s map he will never know how to.”

 

“This is a disgrace,” he added.

Map of the Arab League nations.

___

2/2/20: President Trump spends another weekend at one of his private Florida resorts, this time in West Palm Beach, because…who knows…maybe the toilets don’t flush in the White House. 

Trump is all about good toilets. (See: 12/7/19.)

Like many Americans, the President of the United States invites a few friends over to watch the Super Bowl. Unlike most Americans, he charges everyone who shows up at his place $75. 

And you don’t get an invitation unless you first pay the estimated $450,000 fee to join the resort. 

Unfortunately, the free press soon spoils the fun, pointing out that every time the president jets south to one of his private properties – and he jets south with stunning regularity – the taxpayers are on the hook for the extra expense. The cost of each jaunt is estimated to be as much as $3.4 million. 

(Maybe the taxpayers should collect all those $75 payments Trump’s guests kicked in for the right to watch the game in his presence.) 

When Press Secretary Grisham (who still hasn’t held a press briefing) gets wind of the criticism, she emerges from her bunker and appears on Fox News. There she labels all talk about excess costs “Fake News.” 

She insists that the president went to his West Palm Beach club so he could work for the American people. 

Also, she pretty much says only commies would claim the Duffer-in-Chief went golfing again Saturday. 

Then Trump posts this picture. 

Trump tweets a picture of himself working for the American people on Saturday.

___

2/3/20: Airbus agrees to pay a $4 billion fine, related to a bribery scandal that affected a dozen countries, including the United States.

 

_____________________ 

Power concentrated is always a threat to the welfare of those who are weaker.

_____________________ 

 

We now know that Airbus repeatedly paid bribes to public officials around the world, all in an effort to win a greater share of aircraft sales. So, let’s be clear. Airbus was happy to corrupt governments to boost profits. In one case, the company paid the wife of a Sri Lankan Airlines executive $2 million to advance their scheme. In other cases, bribes went to communist officials in China, to executives at Korean Air, and expenses for foreign officials interested in luxury travel in the United States were paid. Airbus went to great lengths to keep crooked relationships and illicit payments secret, “including the use of code names such as ‘Van Gogh’ and payments described as ‘medications and dosages prescribed by Dr Brown.’” 

These stories continue to interest Mr. Blogger because President Trump continues to paint government regulation and oversight of business as the real problem. In his view all Big Business types are heroes. They can always be trusted, and they will always make life better for “we, the peons.” 

According to recent reporting, during a meeting with then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in early 2017, the president said he wanted help in scrapping the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That act forbids companies that operate in the United States (like Airbus) from bribing officials. Trump is said to have told Tillerson, it was “just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes [emphasis added] to get business overseas.”  

We do know Trump has long been troubled by a law that bans bribery. In 2012, when the Obama administration was enforcing the law, he grumbled, “the whole world is laughing at us.” 

Honesty. 

Laughable!

 

* 

FOR MORE FUN with twisted ethics, consider the scandal involving J&F Investimentos, the parent company of a meat packing business that organized a scheme to bribe almost 2,000 Brazilian politicians. 

J&F agreed to pay a fine of $3.2 billion in 2017. 

When Lord Acton famously said in 1887, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” his statement wasn’t applicable only to government. It held true then, and still does today, for powerful bosses who prey upon workers for sex. It applies to Catholic priests who abused choir boys, and to prelates who covered up sin, and to pharmaceutical giants who pay kickbacks to doctors to push more and more opioids out onto the streets. Lord Acton’s words fit when labor unions, like the Teamsters, under the guiding hand of Jimmy Hoffa, raided members’ pension systems. Gang power in the inner cities. The Mafia. Amazon and Walmart. The Top 1% manipulating the system and evading taxes by stashing cash in offshore havens like the Cayman Islands. Power concentrated is always a threat to the welfare of those who are weaker. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: One reason this liberal blogger is emphatic in insisting we need to see Trump’s taxes is to ensure that the leader who says he wants to drain the swamp isn’t an alligator in a suit and a too-long red tie. 

Does he stash his loot in the Cayman Islands, like Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross? Only one way to find out.

___ 

 

2/4/20: The “Ghost Trial” in the U.S. Senate continues. The Democrats present the evidence they have – and keep pointing out that they’d be happy to gather more. The Trump administration, they point out, has blocked every subpoena filed by the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Republicans don’t deny the evidence the Democrats present. They insist the evidence isn’t good enough to impeach. 

The Democrats in the House, they say, should have had more people to testify, even if the president told everyone, including the White House gardener, to ignore congressional subpoenas. 

Catch-22.

 

* 

TUESDAY EVENING, President Trump stands before Congress and delivers the State of the Union Address. 

He brags for over an hour about his successes and touts his orange greatness. He also goes out of his way to slam the “failed efforts” of the previous administration every time he can. His obsession with President Obama, who most Americans actually liked as a person, is on display from the start. 

After brief, formal introductions, Trump sets to work trashing Obama in paragraphs two and three. Here we consult the official White House transcript, which includes the word “applause” as often as possible. 

Trump sets the tone early: 

Three years ago, we launched the great American comeback. Tonight, I stand before you to share the incredible results. Jobs are booming, incomes are soaring, poverty is plummeting, crime is falling, confidence is surging, and our country is thriving and highly respected again. (Applause.) America’s enemies are on the run, America’s fortunes are on the rise, and America’s future is blazing bright.

 

The years of economic decay are over. (Applause.) The days of our country being used, taken advantage of, and even scorned by other nations are long behind us. (Applause.) Gone too are the broken promises, jobless recoveries, tired platitudes, and constant excuses for the depletion of American wealth, power, and prestige.

 

In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny. We have totally rejected the downsizing. We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never, ever going back. (Applause.)

 

There are some good moments in the Address, of course, as there always are. And we have a plethora of lies. 

 

“Yes. Under the Affordable Care Act.” 

One lie stands out. Trump claims to have always fought to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions from discrimination by health insurers. He tells the American people he always will. 

This is a stunning declaration, especially if you to check the website for Health and Human Services. HHS clearly explains what should be obvious even to Trump fans listening to the president talk. Under a section titled, “Can I get coverage if I have a pre-existing condition?” we find this: 

Yes. Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies can’t refuse to cover you or charge you more just because you have a “pre-existing condition”—that is, a health problem you had before the date that new health coverage starts. They also can’t charge women more than men.

 

If anyone is so obtuse as to not remember, the Affordable Care Act, which first created protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, was signed into law on March 23, 2010. 

Trump was not president at that time.

 

* 

THERE’S ALSO a stunning moment when Trump announces he is awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh. 

The First Lady, seated on the radio talk show host’s left, rises, as does Limbaugh. He’s suffering from cancer and looks both feeble and close to tears as she drapes the medal round his neck. 

So, I’m going to ignore the rest of what the president said and the rest of his lies. You can read the transcript yourself. 

The question many of us will ask is, why this guy? What has Rush Limbaugh done to rate any medal? 

He never served in combat, never put on the uniform, having won two draft deferments when he was young and other Americans were dying in Vietnam. The first related to his status as a college student – the second, either for an old football injury or a “boil on the butt,” as one critic later put it. 

So. No. He wasn’t a hero in any physical sense. 

True, Rush has been a pillar of the wedding planning industry. He’s currently married to Wife #4. 

Still, not much to go on, as far as a medal. 

Um…getting hooked on oxycontin…do we give Presidential Medals of Freedom for that? 

Ah! Rush has defended freedom with his lips! He has defended freedom by attacking, cumulatively, over half of all Americans. And here, let’s provide a partial list. (No doubt you can find other examples if you look, or tune in daily and find out who Limbaugh hates at present.)

 

We know, many years ago, that he got mad at a black listener who called in and told the man, “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” 

And you got another whiff of racism when Limbaugh had this to say back in the 80s: “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?” 

Nor was Rush a fan of First Lady Michelle Obama. He was outraged when she pushed an initiative to get schools to provide healthier meals. She “doesn’t look like” she eats healthy, he grumbled during one show – and if you ever looked at Limbaugh in those days, you had to wonder how he had the nerve to imply that anyone else looked like they ate a lot of chips and dip. 

In fact, Mrs. Obama was guilty of “uppity-ism,” he said. How dare she tell us what we should eat! 

Most historians knew immediately what Limbaugh was hinting at, sanitizing an old term about “uppity n***ers,” which would include any African American who forgot his or her proper place. Such as “uppity n***ers” who wanted to sit at lunch counters, marry whomever they wanted, or vote in an election. 

As for her husband, Limbaugh said there was no way Barack Obama should have been president. During a show in April 2011, he came out as a full-fledged Birther. Rush insisted that the president, “he’s got a grandmother or aunt in Kenya who said she saw him born there.” Rush was so sure of his sources he repeated his claim: “One of Obama’s relatives, aunt or grandmother, swears that he was born in Kenya. She saw it. She was there at the birth.” You figure it’s a pretty sketchy source when you’re not sure if it’s an aunt or a grandmother. 

What Rush really did was help guys like Trump push the Birther myth; and when Trump ran for office, a poll showed 59% of his supporters believed Obama was born somewhere other than the United States. 

Sometimes Rush fired off attacks against President Obama that didn’t make any sense at all. He insisted that Obama was going to mandate circumcision. That people wouldn’t be able “to go fishing anymore because of Obama.” He claimed the Obama administration “planned the influx of illegal alien children at the border” in 2014 and failed to screen the children for measles. That was why, he howled in 2015, that the U.S. was seeing an increase in the incidence of measles – among Orthodox Jews in New York City, for instance, none of whom sneaked across any border. 

All those claims and many more won Rush multiple “Pants on Fire” ratings from the fact-checking site, Politifact.

 

Having scared his audience into thinking Obama was born in Kenya, and that he was also a Muslim, Rush went for the trifecta in 2009. He warned that the president was a socialist or a communist. 

Hell, maybe both: 

What [Obama] is talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the U.S. government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work.

 

Neither did Mr. Obama; and during his two terms in office he did not absorb: 

1.     The banking business.

2.     The mortgage industry.

3.     The automobile business.

4.     Health care.

 

In other words, Rush has long been adept at slinging bullshit. Again: not a reason to give him a medal.

 

____________________ 

“Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns.” 

Rush Limbaugh, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom

____________________ 

 

Maybe the following comments will mark him as a hero in your mind. I’m going to tip my hand and say, I hope not. 

First, Rush didn’t believe Native Americans had been nearly wiped out after 1492, or if they had, big deal. Their population had recovered. “There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history,” he once insisted. 

“Does this sound like a record of genocide?” 

Even if he had his figures right (he didn’t), this would be roughly equivalent to saying, “There are more Jews in Israel today than at any other time in history. Does that sound like the Nazi’s had a record of genocide?” 

History was never his strong suit. Limbaugh once said, “If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it’s Caucasians.” 

Rush has always held himself up as a defender of the Second Amendment. He’s not as big a fan of other rights, such as the right to protest. In 2003, when people protested against the decision to go to war with Iraq, it caused him to explode. “It’s beyond me how anybody can look at these protestors and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-Marxist communists,” he fumed. 

This is almost funny – considering President Trump has called the decision to invade Iraq, “The worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country.” 

More recently, Limbaugh tried to slap down the kids who helped organize “The March for Life,” after another bloody school massacre in Parkland, Florida. In a show titled “Parkland-Age Kids Are Snorting Condoms!” he tried to prove, with the least amount of logic possible, that we shouldn’t listen to young people from Parkland High School, where the massacre occurred, or young people from anywhere else, if they talked about gun control. 

Here’s the “proof” he offered: 

Condom snorting has become the latest challenge taking place on social media. New York Post says: “Condoms might make for safer sex – but they’re at the center of the riskiest new social media challenge. The viral video craze – dubbed ‘The Condom Challenge’ – is striking fear into parents as teenagers record themselves dangerously snorting the rubbers and pulling them through their throats.

 

See! All the teenagers marching for sensible gun control (and there were hundreds of thousands) had to be idiots because a few teenage idiots tried to suck condoms up their noses. 

By the same logic, we shouldn’t have been listening to old white conservatives because Rush was a thrice-divorced, former drug addict. 

Speaking of which, Rush was for locking people up, when it wasn’t himself. In 1994 he had this to say: “Too many whites are getting away with drug use…Too many whites are getting away with drug sales...The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.” 

Liberals always seemed to get Limbaugh’s easily-gotten goat. He had a freedom-loving solution to end the liberal locust plague. 

From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It’s just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we’re gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can’t tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from ‘em, don’t let ‘em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech. You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society.

 

As for women, you might say Rush couldn’t muster up a great deal of respect. “Feminism,” he once grumbled, “was established so that unattractive ugly broads could have easy access to the mainstream.” 

By comparison, here a liberal might have said, “Feminism was established so women could have the right to fly combat jets, win college scholarships to play soccer, have bank accounts in their own names, run in marathons if they wanted, not get sexually harassed at work, and serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, if qualified.” 

Those were all battles feminists had to win. 

 

It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. 

You could listen to Rush almost any day, year-in, year-out, and come away disgusted with what you heard. When a young college student named Sandra Fluke had the nerve to testify before Congress and argue that contraceptives should be widely available and covered under Obamacare, Limbaugh went about as low as one American can go in attacking another. 

From his perch on high, with a radio voice reaching the nation, he savaged the young woman: 

What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps. (interruption) The johns? We would be the johns? No! We’re not the johns. (interruption) Yeah, that’s right. Pimp’s not the right word. Okay, so she’s not a slut. She’s “round heeled.” I take it back.

 

Then, I guess you could say he “earned” his medal from Trump and the First Lady with this: 

So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal: If we are going to pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is – we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch [emphasis added].

 

Finally, in an era of Bill Cosby and Bill O’Reilly, Bill Clinton and Roger Ailes, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Steve Wynn, and, of course, Donald J. Trump, let’s not forget Rush’s respect for women, generally. 

According to Limbaugh, liberal thinking was ruining the country. It was making it so you could hardly approach a woman without getting accused of sexual harassment. 

Let’s just say it figures, a guy who said he could grab women by the pussy because he was famous, would give a guy like Rush, who said the following, a Presidential Medal of Freedom: 

You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the Left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, so long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the Left.

 

Yeah, Limbaugh got that one right, although he was too clueless to understand why. Adults having consensual sex?  Yeah. The “Left” is okay with that. Rush having sex with four wives in succession – a Biblical “no, no” by the way. No problem. Gay men having sex. Fine. Not anyone else’s business. Trump banging a porn star while married to the current First Lady. Sleazy, but legal. But sex without consent? No. No pedophilia. No rape. No spiking a date’s drink and having sex. 

No sex unless adults give consent. 

See, how easy that was? 

A Presidential Medal of Freedom for what?

POSTSCRIPT: I’m not the only one to be horrified by Trump’s decision to award Rush a medal for anything. 

Hans Johnson, a gay man, remembers his father listening to Limbaugh’s show, and absorbing lessons in “freedom” as presented by a purveyor of hate. Johnson had come out to his parents several years before. 

One day, he asked his father about Issue 3, a proposal to amend the city charter of Cincinnati, Ohio, and forbid any law that granted “minority or protected status … or other preferential treatment” to gay men, lesbians or bisexuals.” He was curious. Would his father have voted for the issue? He didn’t directly answer the question, but channeling Rush, responded, “I don’t want a gay agenda forced on me.” 

Johnson saw it this way: 

Scathing criticism of “homosexuals” was Limbaugh’s consistent textual preference for on-air treatment of LGBT people. He mocked gay men who died of AIDS. He promoted the false narrative that gay men recruit children for sex, telling Playboy, “I do think that if you get hold of people young enough and attempt to sway them, that homosexuality can be steered into them.” 

 

This is what my dad imbibed on a regular basis. Limbaugh’s attempt at reversal of victimhood — that it was heterosexual people, not gays, who were the subjects of repression because their authority to lash out at people they despised was limited by law — could be read in the language of the Cincinnati policy itself. Limbaugh repeated the false accusation used to win passage of the law: that by trying to stop discrimination, gay people sought privilege, or “special rights.”

 

As in the “special right” not to be beaten to death like Matthew Shepard in 1998. Sixteen years later, Rush felt the need to relitigate the details of Shepard’s murder, insisting that he had read a book, or seen a book, or imagined a book, that proved Shepard was not beaten badly, tied to a fence post in Wyoming, and left to die because he was gay. The story that Shepard had been killed because he was homosexual, Limbaugh insisted, “it’s now been proven didn’t happen, but [he was] reputed to have [been] beaten up by a bunch of anti-gay bigots.” 

___

2/5/20: The U.S. Senate has heard the evidence against Donald John Trump. Only two GOP senators, Susan Collins, and Mitt Romney, have voted to call additional witnesses and seek documents. 

With that the “Ghost Trial” fizzles to an end. Fifty one GOP senators vote to acquit Trump on both impeachment charges.

 

____________________ 

“His personal interests do not take precedence over those of this great nation.” 

Sen. Lisa Murkowski

____________________ 

 

Even Republican senators who vote to acquit realize Trump’s behavior was questionable. “It is clear from the July 25, 2019, phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky that the investigation into the Bidens’ activities requested by President Trump was improper and demonstrated very poor judgment,” Sen. Collins says on the floor of the Senate. 

“I have consistently said that Mr. Trump’s request for an investigation of Joe Biden and any effort to tie the release of military aid to investigations were improper and shouldn’t have happened,” Sen. Rob Portman ventures. 

Sen. Lisa Murkowski describes the president’s actions as “shameful and wrong.” “His personal interests do not take precedence over those of this great nation,” she adds. “Degrading the office, by actions or even name calling, weakens it for future presidents, and weakens our country.” 

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) held out false hope. Of Trump, she said, “I think he’s learned that he has to be maybe a little more judicious and careful, the way he’s phrasing certain things.” She thought it over a moment and added, “Although he may not, because you know, as we’ve said, as was said, he is who he is.” 

Capito is right. He is who he is. The “trial” is over. And Trump never had to testify under oath. 

It may go down as the most craven display by the U.S. Senate in the history of this great Republic.

___ 

 

2/6/20: Having been acquitted by the Senate, President Trump attends the National Prayer Breakfast. This is normally a polite affair where politicians from across the spectrum gather and break bread in harmony.

 

_____________________ 

“You believe in Jesus! Follow his teachings.” 

Arthur Brooks, former head of the American Enterprise Institute

_____________________ 

 

The keynote speaker is Arthur Brooks, former head of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He appeals to his audience, including faith leaders, to see the “polarization and contempt” in American society “as a mission field, as an opportunity to model Jesus’ message to love one’s enemies.” 

“The problem is: The devil is in the details,” he continues. “How do you do it in a country and world roiled by hatreds we can’t seem to bridge? Contempt kills. Ask God to give you the strength to do this hard thing. To go against your human nature. To follow Jesus’ teaching. You believe in Jesus! Follow his teachings.” 

The president strides to the podium next. Eyewitnesses notice that Trump kept his hand down when Brooks asked attendees to raise their hands if they loved anyone who disagreed with them politically. Trump says, in his opening remarks, that he isn’t sure he agrees with Brooks. “Jesus,” he probably wants to say, “was weak. Low I.Q. Jesus. I like Saviors who don’t get crucified.” 

Fortunately, he refrains. 

Otherwise, he’s only there for the pancakes and a chance to vent. “When they impeach you for nothing, then it’s not easy to like them,” he says of his opponents. “It’s not easy, folks.” No one thought he could win in 2016, he explains, “except for the people in this room believed we were going to win. God was with them. God is with the people in this room.” 

Well: The people who support him in the room, he means. God is not with Nancy Pelosi and a few others, who are in attendance. 

True hate fuels the President of the United States. 

This blogger knows, from comments his conservative friends have made, that they are upset that Speaker Pelosi ripped up a copy of Trump’s State of the Union Address the previous night. 

Such a breach of decorum, they said!

 

* 

HERE WE HAVE TRUMP, 36 hours later. He doesn’t mention Sen. Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, or Pelosi, a staunch Catholic, by name. But he unleashes the vitriol. “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” he sneers. 

“Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so. So many people have been hurt, and we can’t let that go on.” 

Trump knows his campaign in 2016 had multiple contacts with Russians, offering him help to win. He said last summer that he didn’t see why you wouldn’t take help from a foreign country in 2020, if they had dirt on a political rival. He said he’d take it, hypothetically, from Norway. 

It seems, from the supine response of Republicans in the Senate, that they’d have been okay if he said he’d take it from North Korea. 

Then Trump asked Ukraine for a favor – a favor that numerous men and women working in his White House and for his diplomatic corps thought was wrong. But now he’s saying it’s not his fault. At the Prayer Breakfast, he rambles on for 20 minutes, spending a good chunk of that time attacking those who impeached him. The impeachment process, he says, was led by some “very dishonest and corrupt people.” 

“They have done everything possible to destroy us and, by so doing, very badly hurt our nation,” he fumes.

 

* 

“Some very evil and sick people.” 

BREAKFAST WAS BAD. An afternoon gathering in the White House is worse. With top GOP leaders and members of his defense team gathered to listen, Trump speaks with the tone and phrasing of a dictator at the founding of a banana republic. 

He waves copies of several newspapers, with headlines like, ACQUITTED or TRUMP ACQUITTED. 

“Maybe we’ll frame it,” he says of one copy, before handing it to his wife. 

Trump lashes out, as only a man driven by hate can. He labels congressional Democrats “scum.” Those who investigated him (who, by the way, were not accused by any witnesses of having put U.S. national security at risk, as several testified under oath that Trump had), those investigators are “sleaze bags,” “vicious and mean.” Their actions were a “disgrace.” A better man, a man of even minimal character, and not a man fueled by venom and warped by a narcissistic craving for adulation, might have struck a conciliatory tone. Such a man might have promised to learn from his mistakes. 

Not Trump. 

“I want to apologize to my family,” he says, “for having them have to go through a phony, rotten deal by some very evil and sick people. I just want to thank my family for sticking through it. This was not part of the deal.” 

It was “part of the deal” only because he himself held up aid to Ukraine. Because he sent a shady crew, led by Rudy Giuliani, to dig up dirt, and a good chunk of that crew has since been indicted. 

The people who tried to hold him to account? 

Sick. 

Evil. 

His hate is strong and the president continues to spew. “These people are vicious,” he says. “Adam Schiff is a vicious, horrible person. Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person.” (Neither has ever been accused of asking for foreign help in an election.) 

Trump did ask. 

For some reason, he brings up former F.B.I. Director James Comey. He calls him a “sleazebag.” He starts talking about the Russia investigation. “Had I not fired James Comey, who was a disaster by the way, it’s possible I wouldn’t even be standing here right now,” Trump continues. “We caught him in the act. Dirty cops. Bad people.” He says it’s “almost like” the Democrats “want to destroy our country.” 

They don’t. 

“We’ve been going through this now over three years. It was evil. It was corrupt,” the president concludes. “It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars. And this should never ever happen to another president….We went through hell, unfairly, did nothing wrong, did nothing wrong.” 

Finally, he says, “It was all bullshit.”

 

* 

“Maybe people should pay for that.” 

SOMEONE asks Press Enabler Stephanie Grisham later what she thinks about the way her boss has been treated. 

“Maybe people should pay for that,” she replies, just what every press secretary in every banana republic in history would have said.  

Speaker Nancy Pelosi responds to the president’s diatribe and Grisham’s comment that afternoon. See if you notice anything different about her tone. 

“They say there’s going to be payback for us – for honoring the Constitution,” Pelosi says. “He’s impeached forever, no matter what he says or what headlines he wants to carry around.”

Pelosi doesn’t talk about evil people, sick people, vicious people, sleazebags, or scum. She makes no threats.

___

2/7/20: Wasting no time after surviving impeachment, President Trump acts to clean up his administration by (you are thinking) cutting ties with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

 

Nope.

 

____________________ 

“The most powerful man in the world – buoyed by the silent, the pliable and the complicit – has decided to exact revenge.” 

David Pressman, lawyer for Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman

____________________

 

 

Trump has Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman escorted out of the White House by security guards.

 

Just to make sure, he also has Vindman’s twin brother, Lt. Col. Eugene Vindman, tossed as well.

 

Then he fires Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland.

 

What crimes did these three men commit? Were they working with Lev Parnas, now out on bail, alleged to have helped funnel foreign money into Trump and GOP campaign coffers? Did Sondland cheat on his taxes, like former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort? Did Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman tamper with witnesses before trial, like Roger Stone? Did his brother perjure himself, like Trump’s old personal lawyer, Michael Cohen? None of the above.

 

Two of the three testified under oath and made the president sound like the sneaky crook he is.

 

Lt. Col. Eugene Vindman just happened to be related to one of the others. 

David Pressman, the lawyer for Alexander Vindman, is blunt in his assessment of what has just occurred: “The most powerful man in the world – buoyed by the silent, the pliable and the complicit – has decided to exact revenge.”

 

* 

APPARENTLY, this blogger, and millions of others who think like he does…well…we’re just jealous of President Trump. 

On Friday’s episode of his radio program, Reverend E.W. Jackson insists that those of us on the Left hate Donald J. Trump because we hate masculinity and the president is “just too much of a man [emphasis added].” 

They just don’t like manhood, and I think that’s part of the problem too—the radical feminists, the homosexuals, the trangsenders, whatever bizarre idea they have of who we’re supposed to be, they’re not putting up with men who stand tall, who stand up straight and say, “Look, this is who I am, this is what I believe, you can like it, or you can lump it, but there it is.”

 

You got me, Pastor Jackson. I wish I could stand tall and cheat on three wives in a row. I wish I could lie about banging a porn star. I wish I could kick people out of the military who wanted to serve – “transgenders,” or “whatever bizarre idea they have of who” they are supposed to be. And I wouldn’t want to serve with people like my gay Cousin Bill, a door gunner on a helicopter in Vietnam in 1967. 

I just wish I knew who I was when I joined the Marines in 1968. 

The picture of masculinity, for sure.

* 

NOW THAT WE KNOW Trump has put two more U.S. soldiers out of action, namely the Vindman brothers, we might consider what Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s former supervisor, Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack, has to say of Vindman. “I think that he’s hurt and insulted, he’s uncertain about his future, and he wears – not wore – the uniform proudly.” 

Gen. Zwack is unhappy with attacks on the character of his former subordinate by the president and others in high administration circles. “I think that seniors at a very, very high level,” he says, “should not dump that way publicly by statement or the God gun of a tweet in demeaning his personality. And the other thing that offends me greatly is so many other people have piled in that don’t even know him.” 

“When you serve on the NSC, you do serve at the behest of the president,” he admits. “But there’s also the greater Constitution, and I think this was punitive. It didn’t have to be. He could have been allowed to say at least goodbye to his peers.” Instead, the Vindman brothers were marched out of the White House like criminals, flanked by security guards. “He was not allowed…It was just insulting and offending and wrong,” Zwack adds. 

Zwack also has harsh words for Sen. Lindsey Graham, who defended the president’s decision to oust the brothers. 

I’m a proud retired member of the intelligence community… I guess that that makes me a card-carrying member of the deep state. This is ridiculous, okay? Senator Graham, I’ve always had a lot of respect for you. I met you when you was in Afghanistan in 2008, when you arrived with Senator McCain and Joe Lieberman as part of the three amigos. We thought you guys were rock stars.

 

Where are you now, sir?

 

Cringing in fear, this blogger would venture to say.

___ 

We cover 2/8/20 in a separate post called: “Liberal Math vs. Trump Math.”

According to "Trump Math," we don't have to worry if global temperatures are rising.

2/9/20: If worrying about melting glaciers and rising oceans in 2100 is too much to grasp, consider an imminent threat. 

 

“If we are to sustain this experiment we call democracy.” 

President Trump is a lunatic and people who have worked with him know it. Consider former Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer. Spencer survived close contact, working with Trump. He now tells reporters that while he has been a “lifelong Republican,” and never voted Democratic in his life, he is endorsing Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2020. 

Spencer tells the crowd at a Bloomberg rally that he is “tremendously concerned.” He knows what Trump is like. “I don’t care if you’re a Republican, you’re a Democrat or independent, if we are to sustain this experiment we call democracy, America needs the best leader available.” 

It was “chaos” working for President Trump, Spencer explains. When our military talked to allied militaries, he says, there was great frustration. “It was fraying, it was confusing, it was exhausting. The message one way, the message the next way – it was untenable.” 

“We need honesty, we need integrity,” he says to Nora O’Donnell on NBC. Bloomberg, is not the “sole, ‘I have the only answer,’ kind of guy, which is a very dangerous position to be in, I think.” 

O’Donnell asks if that is how he views Trump. A Marine Corps veteran, himself, Spencer doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes,” he replies emphatically. “This decision here is for the good of the country…Loyalty is to the country, not to a person [emphasis added].” The Democratic candidate, he adds, is “respectful, inclusive and intelligent.” You know what he means. Bloomberg is the opposite of Trump.

 

* 

A DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION in Virginia decides to abolish Lee-Jackson Day, celebrating the two Confederate generals who did the most to win the Civil War and split the nation in two. 

Election Day will be a state holiday, instead.

___ 

 

2/10/20: It turns out, President Trump’s decision to take out an Iranian general in a drone strike had more serious repercussions than our fearless leader dared admit. “No Americans were harmed,” he reported shortly after the Iranians responded by hitting a U.S. military base with missiles. 

 

“I heard they had headaches and a couple of other things.” 

What he really meant was, “No one named Donald J. Trump was harmed, because this strike against the Iranian general might make me look fearless and help boost my approval ratings.” 

The Pentagon soon admitted that eleven U.S. personnel had been harmed in the attack. The number grew to 34. Then 50. Then 64. Now we learn that 109 soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries when the Iranians struck back. Most have returned to duty, but 21 have been sent to the United States. 

Nor do the words, “traumatic brain injuries” quite fit the description the president coughed up when he first heard our men and women in uniform had suffered serious concussions (which often happens when an enemy is dropping 1,500 pound explosive payloads on your heads). “I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things,” Trump explained. “But I would say, and I can report that it’s not very serious. I don’t consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries that I’ve seen.” 

One suspects that the president did not want to admit that Iran hit back hard because he might have had to go to war if he did. 

We do know the attack reduced several buildings, including at least one barracks on the base, to smoking rubble. 

CBS reporters spoke to one of the injured, Sergeant First Class Daine Kvasager, a few days after the attack. Kvasager was in the back of a truck, operating a drone, when missiles began exploding. “The truck I was in actually lifted up on two wheels and then came back down,” he explained. That might rattle your nerves a little. When a massive blast occurs close by, it might rattle your brain.

 

Iran scores a direct hit on U.S. barracks.

* 

THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE indicts four members of the Chinese military in the 2017 breach of the Equifax security system. More than 147 million Americans who had credit ratings done by Equifax were affected. The hackers got away with personal data, including names and addresses. 

The good news: the DOJ does something right under Attorney General “Banana Republic Bill” Barr for a change. 

The bad news: “Banana Republic Bill” is still AG and Trump is still President of the Banana Republic of Trumpistan. Recently, our fawning leader layered on praise for Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, saying that Xi was doing a great job regarding the spread of the new coronavirus. “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” Trump tweeted “The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!” 

Yes, “transparency.” 

A well-known attribute of the Chinese Communist regime – which, by the way, clamped down on media stories about the outbreak, almost the moment it began. (See: 2/11/20.)

___ 

 

2/11/20: Reporters ask the president if he thinks Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman should face disciplinary action for his crime. 

That crime being: testifying under oath. 

In the Trumpistan, you already know the answer. “That’s going to be up to the military,” the president says. “We’ll have to see. But if you look at what happened, they’re going to certainly – I would imagine – take a look at that.” (See: Trump interfering in the case of Roger Stone or the case of Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher; 2/5/20 and 2/13/20.) 

Trump admitted he “wasn’t happy” with a man who would testify under oath and tell the truth. He accused Vindman of having reported “very inaccurate things” about his perfect phone call in July. “After they said these horrible things and made up these horrible, horrible lies about what was said on the call, and then I said, ‘Here’s the call,’” Trump told reporters, “if I didn’t have a transcript, it would’ve been my word against their word.” 

So, let’s get this straight: testify under oath, and face disciplinary action. And “they” would be plural. 

Their word against Trump’s – and we all know Trump’s word is about as close to the gold standard as Monopoly money can get. 

Trump also devotes part of his valuable time as Leader of the Free World tweeting insults aimed at members of the DOJ and the judicial branch of the federal government who are involved in the Roger Stone case. Now that he has called for a lighter sentence for his prevaricating, perjuring pal Roger, and the prosecutors handling the case have resigned, it’s time to tweet. “Who are the four prosecutors (Mueller people?),” Trump wonders, “who cut and ran after being exposed for recommending a ridiculous 9 year prison sentence to a man that got caught up in an investigation that was illegal, the Mueller Scam, and shouldn’t ever even have started?” 

The president also decides that this would be a perfect time to attack the judge involved in the case too. “Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure?” he tweets. The man loves to tweet. 

Way more than he loves the rule of law.

De regula iuris non est ex mortuis.

___ 

 

2/12/20: This is how the rule of law dies. Prosecutors in the case against former Trump political adviser Roger Stone recommend a prison sentence of 7-9 years. 

____________________ 

“Investigations into election interference concern our national security, the integrity of our democratic processes, and the enforcement of our nation’s criminal laws.”  

Sentencing document

____________________ 

 

In a sentencing document they note that Stone “obstructed Congress’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, lied under oath, and tampered with a witness.” Even after the defendant was sentenced, as a result of information uncovered by the Mueller probe, Stone, “displayed contempt for this Court and the rule of law [emphasis added].” 

The prosecutors further conclude: “Investigations into election interference concern our national security, the integrity of our democratic processes, and the enforcement of our nation’s criminal laws.”  

(All of Stone’s lies shielded President Trump.)

 

President Trump hears the news and says it’s “disgraceful” to suggest one of the people who lied for his protection should have to spend so much time behind bars. “This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” he tweets. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” 

(Stone is the sixth member of Trump’s campaign to be convicted of a felony.)

 

Tuesday morning, someone wakes up at the DOJ and a different, much lighter sentence is recommended. 

The Department of Justice decides that Stone should receive a sentence that is “far less” than what prosecutors handling the case have demanded. Stone should serve 15-21 months. Perhaps he could be sent to his room without his supper. The judge in this case, the DOJ opines, should consider the “advanced age, health, personal circumstances, and lack of criminal history in fashioning an appropriate sentence.” 

Aaron Zelinsky, the lead prosecutor handling the case, immediately resigns. So do three top aides. 

Michael R. Bromwich, a former Inspector General at the DOJ, issues a warning in a tweet: 

Memo to all career DOJ employees. This is not what you signed up for. The four prosecutors who bailed on the Stone case have shown the way. Report all instances of improper political influence and other misdeeds to the DOJ IG, who is required to protect your identity.

 

Bromwich, whose job as IG was to make sure his agency didn’t break the law, later explains to the Washington Post that he hopes the federal judge in charge of the case will take necessary action. “The remedy,” he says, “is that it’s completely within Judge [Amy Berman] Jackson’s power to call a hearing and find out what the hell is going on. She now has two sentencing memos that conflict with each other. If I’m the judge, I want to know what explains this irregularity.” (See: 6/23/20 and 6/24/20.)

 

* 

AT LEAST two men in Washington D.C. are thrilled with the news. You have, of course, the convicted felon: Mr. Stone. 

He’s hoping to catch a major break. He could spend less than a year in jail, if he gets time off for good behavior. 

The other guy is President Trump. “Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr,” he tweets, “for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress!” 

(Trump doesn’t like it when juries convict his pals.) 

 

It’s not like Lazarus, rising from the dead. 

Several Republican lawmakers rise up, as if from the dead, to criticize the president’s involvement in the Stone matter. 

They don’t rise very far because they and their entire party have been emasculated in the last three years. It’s not like Lazarus, rising from the dead. More like the corpse gives a few twitches. 

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who may have cast the deciding vote in the “Ghost Trial,” when she decided she didn’t want to hear from any witnesses in the impeachment matter, is miffed – just miffed! – by the president’s latest attempt to flatten the rule of law like an egg and cheese omelet he sat on by mistake at one of his private resort buffets. “I don’t like this chain of events where you have a ... proceeding, a sentencing, a recommended sentence, the president weighs in and all of the sudden Justice comes back, says ‘change the deal.’ I think most people would look at that and say ‘hmm, that just doesn’t look right [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted].’ And I think they’re right.” 

Murkowski goes on to say, she doesn’t “think the president should be determining what the sentences are.” 

Or, as this liberal might say, “No shit!”

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, who often twitches, as if ready to rise up against Trump, but then reverts to a comatose state, tells reporters Mr. Trump “should not have gotten involved…I think the president would be better served by never commenting on a pending federal investigation. I said that back when the Mueller investigation was going on, and it’s certainly the case when you’re at a sentencing stage.” 

Senate Eunuch and Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham told reporters he didn’t think Trump was trying to “bully” the judge who will ultimately decide Stone’s sentence. Still, he added, “I don’t think he should be commenting on cases in the system. I don’t think that’s appropriate.” 

Not exactly a heroic stand. 

 

“I do not have an opinion on that.” 

Generally, speaking, GOP senators act like it’s fine if the President of the Banana Republic of Trumpistan comments on the sentencing of a man who lied in court to protect the president doing the commenting. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas says it’s “kind of immaterial,” when asked if he thinks Trump is interfering. The rule of law. Kind of immaterial. Sen. Graham returns to Eunuch Mode and says he isn’t “losing any sleep” over the resignations of the four prosecutors. 

Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, who cast a key vote against calling witnesses in the “Ghost Trial,” ducked a chance to criticize the president for putting a thumb on the scales of justice in a case where he had selfish motives to see that Stone didn’t earn a tough sentence. 

“The sentencing is in the hands of the courts, which should make an appropriate decision,” Alexander says. “And politics should never play a part in law enforcement. So that’s what I have to say about that.” 

It was left then to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to encapsulate the cowardice of the GOP crowd. Asked about the president’s actions regarding the Stone sentence, he replied, “I do not have an opinion on that.”

 

* 

THE “ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE” (a.k.a. “reporters doing their jobs”) have a chance to ask the president about the Stone case on Wednesday afternoon. Trump, too, is a coward when cornered. He insists he had nothing to do with the call by DOJ for a lighter sentence. But even if he did, he had every right to interfere with the workings of the courts because he’s President of Trumpistan. 

He wouldn’t do that, though. Because he’s a pillar of rectitude. But he could if he wanted. And it wouldn’t be his fault if someone down the chain of command in the Department of “Justice,” (as he used to put it, placing the word in parenthesis) understood the signals he was sending. 

“I’d be able to do it if I wanted. I have the absolute right to do it. I stay out of things,” he tells representatives of the free press. But, no, he didn’t interfere and ask the DOJ to change the recommendation. 

“I didn’t speak to them. I thought the recommendation was ridiculous. I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous,” he continued. “I thought it was an insult to our country and it shouldn’t happen.” 

(Did he mean the jury was ridiculous when it convicted Stone?)

 

Finally, reporters asked Trump what he had learned in recent days, what with getting impeached, and now his old buddy Stone maybe facing serious jail time, kind of like Paul Manafort, his other old buddy. 

Trump admitted he had grown wiser as a result. You figure he’s going to say, “I guess I should stop hiring people who get convicted of so many felonies.” 

Or: “I’m going to have to stop soliciting foreign help every time I run for president.” 

But this is the man who runs the Banana Republic. He has learned, he says. He has learned, “That the Democrats are crooked. They got a lot of crooked things going. That they’re vicious.” 

Okay: He hasn’t learned shit. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: It turns out this blogger is not overreacting in stating his concerns. Even “Banana Republic Bill” weighs in Thursday. AG Barr recognizes the problem the president’s tweets represent. 

That is, it appears Trump is trying to interfere with the normal patterns of American justice. And it appears that he is, because… 

He is.

 

____________________ 

The president’s comments, “make it impossible for me to do my job, and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity.” 

Attorney General Bill Barr (a.k.a. “Banana Republic Bill”)

____________________ 

 

In an interview with ABC, Barr says he was under the impression that prosecutors in the Stone case had planned to “defer to the judge” in sentencing. 

He said he was surprised when the 7-9 year sentence recommendation was announced by the media. 

He and top DOJ aides made the decision to recommend a lighter sentence, a decision that he “thought was fair and reasonable in this particular case.” 

Barr went on to assure his interviewer, “In fact, the president has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” 

However, to have the president making public comments, 

about the department, about people in the department, our men and women here, about cases pending in the department, and about judges before whom we have cases, make it impossible for me to do my job, and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity.

 

He insists he won’t be “bullied” by anyone. 

“I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me,” he adds. 

Barr agrees that the president can ask for cases to be opened that “don’t affect his personal interest.” Terrorism? the interviewer suggests. Yes, Barr agrees. Or “fraud by a bank.”

 

If the president suggests investigating a political opponent, however, “then an Attorney General shouldn’t carry that out. Wouldn’t carry that out.”

 

The Banana Republic of the United States.

___

2/13/20: A fourteenth case of COVID 19, the recently-named coronavirus that erupted in China, has been diagnosed in the United States. 

Then, later in the day, a fifteenth. 

The death toll rises in China to 1,310, with a handful of deaths reported round the world, including the first in Japan. Globally, there have been more than 60,000 confirmed cases. 

The number of infections reported on a cruise ship quarantined in a Japanese port rises to 219.

 

* 

IN OTHER NEWS, John McEntee is back at work in the White House. He’s just the kind of guy you want coming in one door while individuals who testified under oath are escorted out another. 

McEntee was last seen in 2018 leaving his old job in the White House, when he was fired because of a reported gambling habit. Now the 29-year-old is back and “tasked with vetting presidential appointments and recruiting candidates to work across various White House agencies.” According to The Hill, “The office is responsible for thousands of lower-level appointees [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted].” 

But wait! There’s more! Former White House Babe Hope Hicks, last seen telling major whoppers about Russian contacts with the Trump 2016 campaign, also returns. Hicks, still gorgeous, will work with Senior White House Advisor Jared Kushner and political director Brian Jack. 

She will not, however, be part of the communications team, which will greatly reduce her chances of lying to reporters. 

Kellyanne Conway will handle those duties. 

Hicks returns! She won't be lying as much as before.

* 

BUT WAIT, WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!! 

There’s still more! 

As reported by various media outlets, former White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly spoke for 75 minutes at Drew University Wednesday night. (We combine reports from The Atlantic, Politico, MorristownGreen, The Hill and NorthJersey.com. below.) 

Summing up, Kelly essentially let his audience know that Trump sucks at being president. Let’s go to examples:

 

The Media 

“The media, in my view, and I feel very strongly about this,” the general says, “is not the enemy of the people.” 

He adds, “We need a free media. That said, you have to be careful about what you are watching and reading, because the media has taken sides.” 

He mentions, for example, President Trump’s favorite channel. “So if you only watch Fox News, because it’s reinforcing what you believe, you are not an informed citizen.” Or an informed president.

 

 

Firing Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman 

The former White House Chief of Staff has harsh words for Trump, in regard to his decision to fire Lt. Col. Vindman. 

When Vindman listened to the president’s call on July 25, 2019, and came away deeply disturbed, Gen. Kelly says he did exactly what young U.S. military officers are trained to do. “We teach them to always tell the truth, to tell truth to power,” Kelly said. “He did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave.” 

Kelly is clear: 

Through the Obama administration up until that phone call, the policy of the U.S. was militarily to support Ukraine in their defensive fight against…the Russians. And so, when the president said that continued support would be based on X, that essentially changed.

 

And that’s what that guy [Vindman] was most interested in.

 

When Vindman heard Trump tell Zelensky he wanted to see the Biden family investigated, that was like hearing “an illegal order.” “We teach them, ‘Don’t follow an illegal order. And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.’” 

 

Kim Jong-un and North Korea 

What about North Korea? Kelly says President Trump is not making headway in his efforts to disarm the North. Kim Jong-un “will never give his nuclear weapons up.” Trump “tried –that’s one way to put it. But it didn’t work. I’m an optimist most of the time, but I’m also a realist, and I never did think Kim would do anything other than play us for a while, and he did that fairly effectively.” 

 

Interference with Military Courts 

We know the president has no respect for the federal courts. Kelly was also disgusted by Trump’s decision to overturn a military court’s war crimes conviction of Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher, a Navy Seal. 

“Gallagher,” he explains, 

was not a guy who represents our military in any way, shape or form. The military justice system worked, he was found guilty of certain things. He should have been ashamed of himself, and he should have been sent home. So the idea that the commander-in-chief intervened there, in my opinion, was exactly the wrong thing to do.

 

When a woman shouts that Trump had “elevated” Gallagher, Kelly looked out at the audience. 

“Yep,” is all he says. 

The crowd, mostly college students, reportedly applauds. 

(Gallagher had been charged with multiple war crimes, including murder. He was convicted of only one. Wikipedia has an excellent review of his case and the president’s intervention. We have already mentioned Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer, who resigned as a result.)

 

* 

YOU HAD TO KNOW that President Trump wasn’t going to take this kind of criticism lying down. And so, he reacted as he often has before, by making it clear he has terrible judgment. 

 

“He knew full well that he was way over his head.” 

Having promised to bring only “the best people” to work with him in Washington D.C., Trump keeps hiring people who he later says he never should have hired. Rex Tillerson, his first Secretary of State, he later said, “was as dumb as a rock.” His first Secretary of Defense, Gen. James Mattis, Trump eventually labeled the “most-overrated general” in history. His personal lawyer for a decade, Michael Cohen, was a man Trump said he greatly respected, a “good family man.” That was: until Cohen began cooperating with investigators. Then Trump sent out his new personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to call Mr. Cohen “a pathological liar.” 

So, now it was General Kelly’s turn to face the Twitter wrath. “When I terminated John Kelly, which I couldn’t do fast enough, he knew full well that he was way over his head. Being Chief of Staff just wasn’t for him,” the president tweeted on Wednesday. Kelly, he continued, “came in with a bang, went out with a whimper, but like so many X’s, he misses the action & just can’t keep his mouth shut, which he actually has a military and legal obligation to do.” 

It’s interesting to note that the president claims he couldn’t get rid of General Kelly “fast enough.” Kelly took the White House job on July 31, 2017. He remained in his position until January 2, 2019. 

Not the first person to work with Trump and come away appalled.

2/14/20: Happy Valentine’s Day, America. I think we can all agree, General John Kelly is not getting a card from the president today.

Speaking of “love,” remember the good old days when Republicans loved balancing the budget?

 

____________________ 

“When you’re in a hole, you stop digging. When you’re broke, you stop spending.” 

Senator Mike Enzi

____________________ 

 

If you’ve been hiding out in your basement to avoid contracting the coronavirus, you may have missed the rollout of the Trump budget for Fiscal Year 2021. If you did, it’s looking like another year marked by a river of red ink. The federal government is expected to spend $4.8 trillion. And that’s assuming a number of cuts, which Congress is unlikely to approve. The Department of Education, for example, would face a cut of 8%. Popular student loan forgiveness programs would be curtailed, even though 80% of Americans favor making it easier for students to pay what they owe. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would see funding cut to zero. Other reductions: Housing and Urban Development, 15%; and the Interior Department, 13%. 

Bad news for national parks, in other words. 

But, hey, the budget is going to balance…in 2036. 

The White House insists it can trim deficit spending by $4.4 trillion over a decade if all the cuts it wants are agreed to in Congress. And by 2036, when President Trump will be in his sixth term as President of Trumpistan, the budget will finally balance. Meanwhile, there will be $2 billion for the border wall and E.P.A. will get a 26% cut in FY 2021. Bad news for the environment. 

Revenue is expected to total $3.6 trillion. Expenditures will include $479 billion to pay the interest on the debt, with that cost expected to double in years ahead. It won’t be long until interest costs more than defense. Social Security is projected to be the biggest driver of debt, costing a trillion dollars in FY 2021. Medicare will require $679 billion, Medicaid $418 billion. And the deficits could be worse. The Trump administration is projecting annual GDP growth of almost 3%. 

Growth in the last three years: 2.2% in 2017, 2.9% in 2018 (partly fueled by massive tax cuts), and 2.3% in 2019. 

Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi said that he would not be bothering to hold a hearing on Trump’s $4.8 trillion budget, telling reporters it would only turn into a “diatribe against the president.” 

It’s fun to go back and see what people like Sen. Enzi used to say when Obama was in charge and – remember – trying to dig us out of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Crash of 1929. 

In February 2012, the senator had not the slightest doubt about what Mr. Obama needed to do: 

Despite his promises of fiscal discipline and cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term, President Obama today presented the American people with another budget that spends too much, borrows too much and taxes too much. Four years of trillion dollar deficits is not just poor policy, it’s a failure of leadership that ignores our debt crisis and punts the tough decisions [emphasis added] until after the next election.

No amount of blaming or budget gimmickry can hide the fact that this budget and the President’s past budgets have grown the deficit and put our economy on ever more shaky ground….When you’re in a hole, you stop digging. When you’re broke, you stop spending.

 

Mr. Obama, with Republican help, did shrink the deficits in his second term. The red ink for Fiscal Years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, was, in order: $679 billion, $485 billion, $438 billion, and $585 billion. 

FY 2017 saw a deficit of $665 billion, most of that cooked into the books before Trump took over. 

Then the deficit fell in FY 2018, under Trump’s guiding orange hand to $779 billion. Wait. 

It went up??? 

Then it fell “again” in FY 2019 to $1.092 trillion. 

It is expected to “fall” even farther to only $1.101 trillion by the end of FY 2020. 

And now… more “fiscal conservatism” ahead for FY 2021. 

In other news, the president decides to heed AG Barr’s plea not to tweet about Department of Justice cases – until he gets up Friday morning. At 8:33 a.m., in his first tweet of the day, he taps out a quote from Bill Barr: “‘The President has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.’” 

Then he decides to add, “This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!” 

Great! So far, Trump hasn’t trampled all over the rule of law. But he has “the legal right to do so,” whenever he wants.

 

* 

IN CHINA, the government takes care of the “Enemies of the People” in a way Trump only dreams he could. Two video bloggers, who were posting stories about the spread of the coronavirus, disappear. 

Let’s not forget. 

Trump really likes Xi Jinping. China arrested more journalists last year than any other country on earth. 

If you are a Trump fan, and you are so clueless as not to realize why any assault on the free press, by any leader, in any county, now, or in the future, as in the past, is a dire threat to freedom – not only for those of us who don’t like Trump – but those of you who do – then you need to have your MAGA hat slapped (figuratively, only) off your empty head.

De regula iuris est et mori.

We love you, young Americans. And we're going to stick you with the bill.

Budget cuts are coming: Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

More the Trump style: Massive spill from coal plant "holding pond." Kingston, Tennessee.

___

2/15/20: Remember back in 2012 when Citizen Trump said new energy-efficient light bulbs caused cancer? Of course, you don’t because Trump was just a nitwit with a Twitter account in those days. 

Now he’s the most powerful nitwit in the world – with a Twitter account – and 64 million followers. 

So, here’s a taste from October 2, 2012: “Big cancer risk from new ‘environmental light bulbs’ – a big price to pay!” 

A few days later, he insisted that the people who came up with these bulbs knew about the cancer risk, but “don’t care.” 

These were only two simplistic tweets, but might have served as a template for thousands of tweets to come. In just two sentences, Donald J. Trump managed to: 

1.     Exaggerate the danger out of all proportion, appealing to emotion, not logic. The new light bulbs weren’t going to send you or your loved ones to intensive care. 

2.     Trash environmentalists – and by implication President Obama – insisting they didn’t “care” about the health of the American people. 

3.     Undercut those who believed it was time to address a growing climate change threat.

 

Sadly, the same gentleman is now in charge of the United States of America. And it’s like tasking a first grader to come up with a rational approach to handle the issue of climate change. 

Unfortunately, climate records continue to fall with increasing frequency. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared January 2020 the hottest January in 141 years of record-keeping. 

 

An iceberg the size of Seattle. 

In related news, the European Space Agency released video this week of an iceberg the size of Seattle breaking off the Antarctic ice sheet. Up close, one scientist said it looked like a giant wall of ice, 500 meters in thickness. For “fun,” scientists combined images of other icebergs forming as new bergs “calved” from the Pine Island Glacier. Several bergs in recent years were even more massive. 

Even Sen. James "Snowball Jim" Inhofe should be getting it.

* 

“The worst Interior secretary ever.” 

EVEN TRUMP’S CULT FOLLOWERS in Congress are growing worried, though they dare not admit it. It they admit it they would have to admit they have been deluding supporters for years. 

The president did say in his State of the Union Address, however, that the U.S. would join the One Trillion Trees global initiative. He did not mention that this initiative is part of a growing realization, around the world, that we’re all screwed if we don’t address climate change. 

So: Rep. Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican, has introduced the One Trillion Tree Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. As part of the initiative, to plant a trillion trees by 2050, and slow warming, the U.S. would commit to do it’s share by planting 3.3 billion trees annually. 

Impressive as that might sound, especially coming from a party dedicated to climate-change denial, it’s worth noting that 2.5 billion trees are already planted in the United States yearly. What might sound like four steps forward is one, and one step per year won’t get us where we need to be by 2050. 

Plus, we have people in charge of – for example – the Department of the Interior, whose wet dream involves opening up millions more acres of public land to drilling, mining, and logging. The Wilderness Society, for example, labeled Ryan Zinke, Trump’s first choice to head the department, “the worst Interior secretary ever.” And that was after only a year on the job. He got worse, and then got axed, in the face of multiple investigations into shady dealings. 

Just a taste of Zinke’s misdeeds and missteps: He wanted to spend $139,000 on new doors for his office. He took $53,000 worth of unnecessary helicopter rides at taxpayer expense, including a flight to a stable so he could ride horses with Vice President Pence. And he was a big fan of expanding offshore drilling all along the U.S. coastline – although that changed when someone realized…. 

What about…Mar-a-Lago? An exception was quickly included in the plans being pushed by the Interior Department. 

One step forward, and ten steps backward, led by Trump and his enabling crew, will only hasten the catastrophe that our descendants will  face, unless we get our act together. (See: 2/17/20.)

Trump won't ever visit Mt. Rushmore, unless they carve his face on it.
Teddy Roosevelt knew a century ago we had to protect the environment.

Florida Keys: What we need is more offshore drilling.
Like: Deepwater Horizon! But not offshore from Mar-a-Lago.

2/16/20: If you missed this story, pay attention. So far, 1,142 veterans of the Department of Justice have signed a letter calling for Attorney General “Banana Republic Bill” Barr to resign. (See: 2/18/20.)

 

____________________ 

“Those actions, and the damage they have done to the Department of Justice’s reputation for integrity and the rule of law, require Mr. Barr to resign.” 

Letter signed by hundreds of DOJ veterans

____________________ 

 

This comes in the wake of Barr’s meddling with a sentencing recommendation involving Trump adviser Roger Stone. 

In their letter, these men and women – who, combined, have at least ten thousand years of DOJ experience – explain: 

We, the undersigned, are alumni of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) who have collectively served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice.

 

It is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case. Those actions, and the damage they have done to the Department of Justice’s reputation for integrity and the rule of law, require Mr. Barr to resign.

 

You can check the names on the list and see which presidents these men and women served. Selecting four at random, we have Paul Blaine, who spent 41 years at DOJ, serving every president from Nixon to Obama. We have Michael Bromwich, who started under Reagan and rose to become Inspector General. We have Susan Park, who served for eighteen years as an attorney with the Public Integrity Section. And we have Mary Spearing, whose highest position was Chief of the Fraud Division, under Clinton. 

At this point, if you’re a true patriot and you’re not worried about Trump’s assault on the rule of the law, you should be.

The Banana Republic of the United States.
First President: Donald John Trump.

___

2/17/20: If you think the Trump administration has been terrible for the environment, you’re not dreaming. 

A little-noticed facet of the problem is the president’s complete failure to appoint heads to important government agencies. For three years, the National Park Service has been without a Senate-confirmed Director. As of today, more than half the top leadership posts in the Service are vacant or filled by men and women in “acting” positions. Several of the gems in the parks system, Yosemite, Denali, and Grand Canyon, are currently without permanent superintendents. The Trump administration has continued to press Congress to cut funding for both the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service, which Interior oversees. 

With only a skeleton leadership force in place, there are fewer and fewer voices to speak up for the nation’s parks and fight for the best ways to meet the needs of more than 300 million visitors annually. 

But, hey, Trump has been “saving” coal mining jobs (by the hundreds) during his three years in office. 

And his administration has been relaxing rules meant to curb air pollution, including the release of mercury and lead from coal-fired power plants, both of which can cause serious health problems in children. 

Also, companies will have more time to deal with coal ash holding ponds, which may be leaking contaminants into the groundwater. 

So, there’s that!

 

* 

PRESIDENT TRUMP keeps thanking the Chinese government for its fine efforts to control the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. But the Chinese continue to have difficulty containing the disease. A cruise ship, turned away at several ports, finally docked in Cambodia this weekend, after company officials assured the government no one aboard was carrying the virus. 

Nearly 2,000 passengers and crew disembarked and scattered, happy to be heading home after a long, enforced isolation. 

Unfortunately, an American passenger, almost immediately tested positive after coming ashore. Now tracking down hundreds of potential carriers who have scattered round the globe, and deciding who they might have come in contact with, presents a daunting health challenge. 

As of this morning, the death toll from the disease stands at 1,770, with more than 71,000 cases reported. 

The threat of a pandemic has disrupted supply chains and businesses around the globe. The Tokyo Marathon has banned all but elite runners, affecting 38,000 competitors. Chinese factories are running on a limited basis. Casinos in Macau are closed. Taiwan reports 22 cases, Thailand 35. In China more than 1,700 health care workers have been infected. Aboard the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama, the virus has continued to spread, with 454 cases reported. 

The strangest example comes from Hong Kong, where people have been hoarding food, water and supplies and hunkering down at home. With store shelves emptied, a gang of three men decides to hold up a supermarket delivery man at knife point and steal fifty packs of toilet paper worth $220.

Yellowstone River. You can keep it clean for trout fishing.
Or you can allow mining nearby.

___

2/18/20: If you’re not following this story you should: As of this morning, more than 2,000 veterans of the Department of Justice have signed a letter calling on “Banana Republic Bill” Barr to resign.

That would be 2,003, to be exact.

 

____________________ 

“As former DOJ officials, we each proudly took an oath to support and defend our Constitution and faithfully execute the duties of our offices.” 

2,003 signatories

____________________ 

 

Based on a quick estimate, it seems likely they represent more than 20,000 cumulative years of experience at DOJ. Signatories have served every president, back as far as Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

These are people dedicated to the rule of law, men and women from both parties, and of no party affiliations, and they are deeply concerned. 

You can listen to them. Or you can listen to Trump, a profoundly flawed human being, and a prolific liar. 

The American system of justice is not “a disgrace” as Trump has said repeatedly, every time he doesn’t get his way. Rather, Trump is a threat to the independence of the judicial branch of the federal government. 

If one leg of the Constitutional stool is broken, we’ll need a new seat to replace it, only this time a throne. 

The signatories agree: 

As former DOJ officials, we each proudly took an oath to support and defend our Constitution and faithfully execute the duties of our offices. The very first of these duties is to apply the law equally to all Americans. This obligation flows directly from the Constitution, and it is embedded in countless rules and laws governing the conduct of DOJ lawyers. The Justice Manual — the DOJ’s rulebook for its lawyers — states that “the rule of law depends on the evenhanded administration of justice”; that the Department’s legal decisions “must be impartial and insulated from political influence”; and that the Department’s prosecutorial powers, in particular, must be “exercised free from partisan consideration.”

 

…President Trump and Attorney General Barr have openly and repeatedly flouted this fundamental principle, most recently in connection with the sentencing of President Trump’s close associate, Roger Stone, who was convicted of serious crimes.

 

The president, of course, has been calling for Stone to get a much lighter sentence than was originally recommended (see below).

 

* 

IF THAT isn’t enough to worry you, it might be time to read a related story. Even Fox News has been forced to pay attention to an account that first broke in USA Today earlier this morning: 

A national association of federal judges reportedly called an emergency meeting Tuesday to tackle mounting concerns about President Trump and senior Justice Department officials’ intervention in cases involving Trump associates.

 

USA Today first reported that the independent Federal Judges Association would hold the meeting.

 

Philadelphia U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who leads the group of more than 1,000 federal judges, told USA Today that the group “could not wait” until their originally scheduled spring conference to address the issues.

 

…The emergency meeting comes after a tumultuous week at the Justice Department. Last week, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr intervened in the cases involving Trump associates Roger Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

 

…Last Monday, federal prosecutors recommended a sentence of between 87 and 108 months in prison for Stone after he was convicted on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering, and making false statements to Congress on charges that stemmed from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

 

As this blogger has repeatedly and correctly noted, every lie Stone told (and he told a great many) had the effect of shielding President Donald J. Trump during the Mueller investigation.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: When editing my blog, on 9/25/21, I checked the list of signatories on the letter calling for Barr to resign. 

That list eventually grew to 2,689. 

De regula iuris est et mori.

2/19/20: You might imagine the Attorney General is the head of the Justice Department. But we have a new cop on the beat: Donald Trump. On Tuesday, he declared himself the “chief law enforcement officer of the United States.” For fun, he tried out his pardon powers on a bunch of scuzzy white collar criminals, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Rod is famous for trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder, among other faux pas of a criminal kind. 

The president commented specifically on the Blagojevich case, saying, “That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence, in my opinion.” Then he pointed out that the people who charged Blagojevich had been involved in charging and convicting several of his felonious 2016 campaign aides. Really, what was with all these juries and lawyers and court procedures anyway! 

“In my opinion,” will soon replace the rule of law. 

Consider this flurry of pardons warmups for the pardons of Roger Stone and the whole den of thieves, sometimes known as the Trump inner circle.

 

*

_____________________ 

“A soulless beast that cares about neither the people nor the planet.” 

Martin A. Hewitt, former GOP candidate for Congress, describing his party

_____________________ 

 

WITH THAT, let’s close with an article this blogger stumbled upon, by former Republican candidate for Congress, Martin A. Hewitt. Let’s see what he thinks of his party and his party’s president these days: 

I always hoped this day would never come and that the proud history of past Republican presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower would save the party. Unfortunately, that is not where we are. Today the Republican Party has died. It has been replaced by a soulless beast that cares about neither the people nor the planet. Its only purpose is to grow and takeover its host - the United States of America.

 

The party died when the Senate voted against witnesses. It was the last chance for the leadership to actually lead and provide an essential check [emphasis added] on what has now become unfettered power in the executive branch.

 

Hewitt goes on to speak of a “circular firing squad” being conducted by Democrats, which he fears will lead to the re-election of an unleashed Trump. He pillories his colleagues in Congress, and the president, for fiscally irresponsible policies, and says conscience leaves him no choice. 

“I am forced to quit the Republican Party,” he says. He will fight for a better future for the country in his own way.

___ 

 

2/20/20: Today was a miserable day for the rule of law. Our justice system is under sustained attack by a president with the instincts of a famished Doberman. With Sen. Milksop Mitch McConnell trembling in his Nikes, there’s a possibility we’re going to end up corrupted, like Brazil. 

Wednesday, the attorney for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a man currently under indictment in multiple jurisdictions, alleged that his client was offered a pardon by… go ahead …try to guess. 

Righto! It was Trump! 

As reported by CNN, or “Fake News” if you don’t like dealing with uncomfortable facts, 

Lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told a court on Wednesday that a witness statement application [in his client’s case] claimed that then-California representative Dana Rohrabacher went to visit Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London on the instruction of the “President.”

 

According to the statement…Rohrabacher’s mission was to offer Assange a U.S. pardon [emphasis added], if he would “play ball” by saying the Russians had nothing to do with the leak [of stolen Democratic National Committee documents during the 2016 campaign].

 

In August 2017, the Washington Times began reporting that after Rohrabacher met with Assange, he rushed home to let everyone know. It would soon be proven. The Russians did not hack the DNC! 

For all Rohrabacher could tell, the hacking might have been the work of a gang of lesbian midgets. 

But Assange had told him, it wasn’t Russians!

 

____________________ 

“At no time did I offer a deal made by the President, nor did I say I was representing the President.” 

Former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher

____________________ 

 

Now, with Assange’s lawyer talking, Rohrabacher has some serious explaining to do – and ends up offering one of the stupidest denials in the history of stupid denials. He says he didn’t really offer a pardon from the president. It just sounded like he did. “When speaking with Julian Assange, I told him that if he could provide me information and evidence about who actually gave him the DNC emails, I would then call on President Trump to pardon him,” the former congressman said Wednesday. 

“At no time did I offer a deal made by the President, nor did I say I was representing the President.” 

He said he’d talk to the president – if Assange did what the president would clearly want Assange to do – and they’d talk about, maybe, the Houston Astros’ chances of winning the World Series. 

Or Rohrabacher and Trump might talk about what a sleazebag former F.B.I. Director James Comey was for investigating Roger Stone who also denied he ever met with Assange before or after the 2016 election. 

But a pardon deal! Who would think it?

 

* 

“He knew I could get to the president.” 

THURSDAY MORNING, Rohrabacher elaborated on his denial and, if possible, sounded even stupider. 

Okay. He had contacted White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to inquire about a possible pardon for Mr. Assange. 

“I spoke to Julian Assange and told him if he would provide evidence about who gave WikiLeaks the emails I would petition the president to give him a pardon,” Rohrabacher said. “He knew I could get to the president.” 

He admits he got to the White House Chief of Staff. 

For now, put aside the fact Rohrabacher was once known as “Putin’s favorite congressman.” Pretend we never knew he hung out with Maria Butina, an attractive young Russian, who posed as a student attending a U.S. college and a gun rights advocate, during the lead up to the 2016 election. Pretend Butina never got sent to prison for secretly serving the interests of the Russian Federation. Forget that Ms. Butina used her charms to gain entry to leading conservative circles – and that she sometimes gave access to some of her most luscious body parts in return for such access. 

Let’s just go with what GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy had to say about Rohrabacher and Trump, back in the day. It was the summer of 2016, a time when no one thought a shady operator like Donald would ever have a chance to become the next President of the United States. 

McCarthy said what he said on tape (see below). But McCarthy didn’t know he’d been taped by another Republican in the meeting. When the free press broke the story, Rep. McCarthy insisted he never said what the free press said he said. 

Well, the “Fake News” folks pointed out, “We’ve got a recording of what you said; and our source will verify.” 

McCarthy suddenly remembered that he did say what reporters said he said, but now he remembered that he was joking all along, when he said he thought the two men, Dana and Don, were paid by Vladimir Putin.

And there, in a nutshell, we see the outlines of a budding threat to the rule of law that has metastasized in the interim. You had McCarthy lying about what he said, until he heard there was tape. You had Rohrabacher floating the idea of a pardon. This week, you had the White House Press Secretary saying none of this ever happened. Then Rohrabacher admitted it had. 

These are the kinds of shady friends who always orbit President Trump, and we need to face facts, before it’s too late. 

Trump is happy to bend the rule of law when it serves his purpose, and ready to break it if he has the chance.

 

* 

SPEAKING OF shady friends of President Trump, on Thursday, Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in jail. 

Again, Stone’s story is not hard to grasp. We’ve laid it out before. So, today, the capsule version: Stone meets in secret with a Russian in May 2016. Russian guy offers dirt on Hillary. Guy wants $2 million. Stone says no, too much moola! Stone forgets having meeting! So does pal, Michael Caputo, who helped set meeting up. Stone tells Senate committee he never met with Russians. Stone soon admits he did because he realizes he’s facing a perjury rap if he doesn’t. 

Stone starts threatening a witness in his trial, which involves seven felony charges. A jury convicts Stone on all seven. 

The president then says, Stone got a raw deal – and, who knows, maybe he’ll have to grant him a pardon! 

But no, we’re supposed to believe that when Rohrabacher said he’d offer to get Assange a pardon, that wasn’t fishy. He never told Assange he had a deal with the president to help him out. What would ever give Assange, or now the American public, that wrong idea????? 

And when Trump pals signaled Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, that he too might be up for a tasty little pardon – if he kept his mouth shut about criminal doings by his old boss, Donald J. Trump? 

And when Paul Manafort got convicted on eight felony counts – by a jury – and then admitted to more – and then Manafort started tampering with a witness – and then the authorities got wise – but the witness Manafort was tampering with fled to Russia – and then Trump said this? 

Sure. 

We can totally trust this crew.

 

* 

MEANWHILE, John Rood, a top official at the Defense Department, who did tell the truth, and warned the White House against withholding military aid to Ukraine, announced he was resigning. That resignation came at the express request of President Trump. 

Why was Rood asked to leave? 

As UPI explains, “Rood informed the U.S. Congress in May 2019 that Ukraine had made adequate progress in combating corruption to receive a promised $250 million in military assistance.” 

According to Rood, there was no reason to hold up the aid.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Michael Caputo, who “forgot” he helped set up a meeting between Roger Stone and a Russian, bringing frankincense and myrrh and dirt on Hillary, is rewarded for his forgetfulness with a cushy government job in April 2020. He becomes spokesperson for the Dept. of Health and Human Services. 

That job lasts until September, when he has a meltdown, and takes a leave of absence (with pay, of course).

___ 

 

2/21/20: If Thursday was a terrible day for the rule of law, Friday was worse. President Trump went on another rant about the free press, speaking like any of the worst dictators in history, just getting started in his career. We learned that the Russians were already interfering in the coming election and Trump addressed the issue by firing all the people who said so.

 

____________________ 

“The central tenet of our legal system and our justice system is that no person is above the law.” 

Former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer

____________________ 

 

Slowly but surely, the parameters of the new system of Trump Justice become clear. And, unbelievably, Trump’s approval ratings rise. 

One man who recognizes the danger is former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer, who served in that capacity under President George H. W. Bush. Sadly, he explains, he has no choice but to label his colleague from the late 80s, now Attorney General William Barr, as “un-American.” 

“The reason I say he’s un-American,” Ayer told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “is that the central tenet of our legal system and our justice system is that no person is above the law. Bill Barr’s vision is that there is one man – one person – who needs to be above the law and that is the president.” 

Ayer went on to explain that there was no problem with Barr’s thinking when he served as Attorney General the first time, under Bush 41. There was no reason to “test” Barr’s views, because Mr. Bush “had no interest in being an autocrat [emphasis added].” 

By comparison, Ayer said, Trump does. And Trump spent the weekend validating Ayer’s concern. 

Mr. Ayer’s immediate fear involved the meddling in the criminal case of Roger Stone. He called that the “tip of the iceberg.” Then he slammed Barr for claiming in a 2018 memo that the president “is the executive branch and that he necessarily has complete and unlimited discretion to oversee criminal cases.” 

Call that one pillar of Trump Justice. 

In an opinion piece for The Atlantic, Ayer went on to warn, “Bill Barr’s America is not a place that anyone, including Trump voters, should want to go. It is a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen. To prevent that, we need a public uprising demanding that Bill Barr resign immediately, or failing that, be impeached.” 

Vain hope, of course.

 

* 

Trump lashes out. 

IN THE MEANTIME, sensible heads continue to roll. On Thursday, there were reports that U.S. intelligence experts had warned the U.S. House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee that Russians were already meddling in the 2020 election. 

As NPR explained Friday, 

And at the briefing, the election threats executive, Shelby Pierson – she’s the intelligence community’s coordinator for election security against foreign threats – she relayed that there was intelligence that Russia essentially wanted to see Trump re-elected, that Russia had developed a, quote-unquote, “preference” for the incumbent, for Donald Trump.

 

Republican lawmakers sitting in on the briefing pushed back on Pierson’s assessment. The New York Times reported that Trump was angry and feared Democrats would “weaponize” the story. 

The problem was in how the president responded. He lashed out at everyone involved and hurled unfounded accusations in all directions. The fact that the Russians might be meddling again (and let’s not forget it took Trump more than two years before he admitted they meddled the last time) barely dented his consciousness. He refused to heed the warning and order our defenses against the Russians bolstered. 

Instead, we had a flurry of sometimes bizarre, sometimes dangerous decisions. First, Trump went to work tweeting. “Another misinformation campaign is being launched by Democrats in Congress,” he growled, “saying that Russia prefers me to any of the Do Nothing Democrat candidates who still have been unable to, after two weeks, count their votes in Iowa. Hoax number 7!” 

A keen observer would quickly note that the “Democrats in Congress” weren’t responsible for what Pierson said. What Pierson said was that the Russians were again messing in our elections. 

In normal times that would be the story. The Russians. These are not normal times. Trump moved “decisively” and axed Joseph Maguire, the Director of National Intelligence, who allowed Pierson to present the intelligence community assessment to members of Congress.

Trump didn’t go after the Russians. He didn’t warn Putin to stay out of our business. He cut off the head of the messenger. 

One is reminded, when considering the dangerous tendencies displayed by Donald Trump, of the unhinged behaviors of all-powerful Persian rulers, centuries ago. Xerxes the Great, ruler of a mighty empire, once asked how the Battle of Salamis was going, a naval contest against a much smaller Greek fleet. His adviser Demaratus replied, “Would you like a truthful answer, my Lord, or a comforting one?” 

 

The truth Xerxes did not want to face was that the Greeks were smashing the larger Persian navy.

This guy threatens to disrupt the next U.S. election.

* 

For Trump and his minions, the threat was truth. 

TRUMP MADE SURE he’d get no more truthful news, by announcing that he would recall Richard Grenell, Ambassador to Germany. Grenell would be the new acting Director of National Intelligence. 

In an “acting” capacity, barring confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Grenell could serve for no more than 210 days. 

You might assume Grenell’s first order of business would have been to call a meeting of top aides to gather information and figure out how to deal with the Russian threat. Not even close. This was Trump’s administration, and Grenell was the typical toady. What Grenell did was get rid of Andrew Hallman, Maguire’s second in command, a gentleman with three decades of experience in C.I.A. and intelligence circles. 

Or, to put it another way, Mr. Grenell addressed the danger of foreign meddling by getting rid of a man with three decades more experience in intelligence than the new Acting DNI possessed at that moment. 

Grenell’s background is in public relations, not intelligence, including a stint working for Fox News. 

At least one key GOP senator was unhappy, although we have little evidence that any Republican lawmakers will ever show they have any nuts. Senator Richard Burr, head of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, did at least praise both men who had been fired. “For nearly four decades, Joe Maguire has dedicated his career to securing our country, both in and out of uniform,” Burr told reporters. As for Hallman, Burr said he appreciated “his extensive knowledge of intelligence matters and his deep respect for the men and women” of the intelligence community. 

Reporters began hearing rumors that Grenell was hiring Trump loyalists to support him, come in, and “clean house.” That is, the threat wasn’t Russians. For Trump and his minions, the threat was truth. 

And truthful Americans.

 

* 

Trump’s most dangerous speech ever. 

FRIDAY NIGHT, the president took his freak show on the road to Las Vegas for another rally. 

The speech he delivered before an adoring crowd, roaring like Germans at Nuremberg in 1934, was his most dangerous ever. 

Trump did mention Russians at the start – namely the Russian hockey team we defeated in the 1980 Olympic “Miracle on Ice.” Then he thanked himself for bringing the Olympics back to the U.S.A., adding an oddly authoritarian twist. “And by the way, we got the Olympics coming back or coming to Los Angeles. Thank you. Thank you, President Trump. Thank you, President Trump. Thank you very much. Thank you, President Trump,” he said. “Eight years. Eight years, 2028 you know what? Unless I’m still president then, which is a distinct possibility…” 

Trump would be finishing up a third term in office, and running for a fourth by the time the Summer Olympics come to L.A. in 2028. 

And you figure the Russians would still be helping. 

What made this speech even more toxic than usual were the sustained attacks on political foes and the free press. It turns out Trump had invited some of the stars from the 1980 Olympic hockey team to attend. He brought Mike Eurzione, one of the heroes of the games, up on the podium. “Look at that,” he shouted at one point. “Look at the press. Hey Mike, look at the fake news back there.” 

Then he turned his fury, not on Vladimir Putin, but on Chairman Adam Schiff, head of the House Intelligence Committee. “These people are sick,” he said, meaning Schiff and the Democrats. “That’s pencil neck, pencil neck again.” 

That’s his insult for Schiff. 

(A Democrat with similar juvenile tendencies would have to start calling the president, “Pig Jowls.”) 

Trump told the crowd he was told “a week ago” that the Russians were meddling in our election. Oddly enough, that didn’t rile him. What did rile him was when the story started leaking, that the Russians were trying to help. “It’s disinformation,” he groaned. “That’s the only thing they’re good at. They’re not good at anything else. They get nothing done. Do nothing Democrats.” 

Russian disinformation wasn’t what troubled Trump. It was Democratic disinformation that boiled his blood. He scoffed at the idea Putin wanted to make sure he won a second term. “So doesn’t he want to see who the Democrat’s going to be? Wouldn’t you rather have, let’s say Bernie? Wouldn’t he rather that Bernie who honeymooned in Moscow? Wouldn’t that be?” 

Naturally, he labeled the Democrats “crazy.” “Trust me,” he told the crowd, “I like what we’re doing and I love this country. I love this country.” 

He wants them to believe the Democrats don’t. 

He’s not mad at the Russians or Chinese, Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jinping, or Kim Jong-un. He’s made at Schiff, Schumer, and Pelosi. “Who the hell needs to have conflict?” he says of Russia and China. North Korea still has all its nukes; and it’s building more. But it’s the Democrats he hates. They’re “sick, they are sick people. The radical left’s attempts to poison our democracy and overturn the last election have totally ended in a big fat failure.” 

The Russians interfered in the 2016 election. Trump wanted the Ukrainians to help him win again in November. The Democrats weren’t the problem. 

Childish insults filled up Trump’s rally speech. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, he labeled “Mini Mike.” 

(Again, a Democrat might have to call the president “Extra-Large Trump,” to get the same childish effect. I kind of like “President Blubber.”) 

At one point the president shouts toward the back of the auditorium, where the free press is filming. “You fake news people…The way I look at it, when fake news CNN, oops, there goes the camera off. Red light just went off.” Trump shades his eyes, the better to see the fake news folks in back. “See, I can tell every one of them. I know them by heart. I know the operators. I know the camera men,” he tells his cheering MAGA fans. “They’re okay. They’re all on our side by the way.” 

Then he claims the cameras go off on the orders of some unknown CNN “Enemy of the People.” The camera persons get “screamed at. Get that camera off.” The camera guys protest. “Get that camera off, or it’s going to be your job,” Trump says the unknown “Enemy of the People” insists. There is no known evidence for this charge. It sounds like paranoia. Trump doesn’t care because he knows his adoring fans don’t care about evidence. 

At one point, he goes off on a particularly dangerous riff, attacking MSNBC, which he calls MSDNC. It seems he has a little good, old-fashioned, Soviet-style censorship in mind if he gets re-elected: 

They’re worse than CNN. And they’re owned by people that really are bad. I think they’re very bad for our country. The owners of Comcast, rotten company, bad for our country, very bad. They try, they have all these PR things to try and keep their image nice and clean. What they do on television is so disgusting. I think in the old days you had to have licenses for this stuff, right? They can say whatever they want to say. Let’s see what happens over the next period of time. Bunch of dishonest people. Comcast, terrible company. Terrible people running that company.

 

He spends the next several minutes bragging about the fourteen successful seasons of his show, The Apprentice. Then he’s back to attacking the free press. “They’re very ruthless people,” he says. “Comcast is a rotten company.” 

He mentions two journalists by name, Jake Tapper and A.B. Stoddard, and attacks them both. 

Then he assures the crowd, “But we’re standing up for the defense of our constitution, for our freedom, and democracy itself.” 

To prove the point, he brings up a guy from the crowd. The man appears on the podium, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned in red letters: “CNN, FAKE NEWS.” In smaller black letters, his shirt lists ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC. “Thank you for saving America,” the man in the anti-free press shirt says. 

Trump falls back on juvenile insults. Elizabeth Warren. He saw her in the Democratic debate. She embarrassed “Mini Mike.” He got destroyed “by Pocahontas. Pocahontas. And she’s mean, isn’t she? Did you see that? Do you see the anger on her face? That nervous energy. She’s jumping up and down. She’s a mess.” 

He tells his fans that Pete Buttigieg is a good debater; but neither he nor Warren will be the Democratic candidate. “It can’t be Buttigieg. Can’t be, I don’t think. Alfred E. Neuman, ladies and gentlemen, introducing President Alfred E. Neuman.” He thinks Mayor Buttigieg looks like the old Mad Magazine character. Then he suggests, maybe he should call Buttigieg, “Howdy Doody.” 

Again, I find myself leaning towards calling Trump, henceforth, “President Blubber.” 

As for Sen. Sanders, Trump grumbles, “Bernie is too emotional. He’s screaming, going crazy. And Biden is angry. Biden is angry. Everything’s anger.” Then he takes a cheap shot, hinting at Biden’s tendency since he was a boy to stutter. “And that’s what happens when you can’t get the words out.” 

The president starts bragging about his daughter Ivanka and some magical job-creating power she must possess. “She’s gotten these great companies like Walmart, and many others, Exxon, she’s gotten them to take millions of people. She’s now over fifteen million jobs [emphasis added] where they train people and bring them into the companies. It’s incredible,” he says. “Fifteen million. And she’s smart. She got it figured out, but most people can’t, but she does.” (See: Trump Math, 2/8/20.) 

He points again, menacingly, at reporters in back of the crowd. “I can’t say it because I got all these maniacs back there. They’re trying to find... ‘He put the comma in the wrong place. He didn’t make that word plural, therefore he lied.’” 

(Well, in fact, he did lie. And it wasn’t about the comma. The claim of 15,000,000 jobs is preposterous.) 

Then he decided it would be fun to slam his predecessor – for lying. And he set up another pillar of Trump Justice. 

In a second term – and maybe a third and even a fourth – Trump’s enemies would be at his mercy.

Remember president Obama? Remember, he said, “you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan.” 28 times, he lied, so we should impeach him. We’re going to impeach him. We’ll do a belated impeachment. Twenty-eight times, “you can keep your doctor,” right? Remember, you could keep your doctor. Unfortunately, when they found out you can’t keep your doctor, he said, “I was just kidding.” Now, we should impeach him. We’ll do a belated impeachment. Fake news, you have it. See, you have to be very careful when you say impeachment because you know what they do? They go back and they write. President Trump said that Obama should be impeached, but he’s not in office and so therefore they can’t impeach. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he’s not in office, so therefore they can’t. So, you have to be very careful. That’s why I use the word belated impeachment. Belated, meaning I’m just kidding, okay?

 

Yes, and he’s just kidding about requiring licenses for news organizations, so he and his enablers can deny them to anyone whose views they don’t approve. 

And how funny he is, talking about impeaching a former president he hates, for lying about healthcare. 

For no apparent reason, the president starts riffing about the Academy Awards. He’s still upset that a movie from South Korea won for “Best Picture.” He says he thinks they should do more movies like Gone with the Wind. Now he’s a movie critic. “What I say is make great movies, not this computerized garbage. And I was never a fan of Brad Pitt, I will tell you that.” 

Trump is venting as only Trump can: 

No, I thought he was a stiff. He was a stiff, it’s like a boring guy. All of a sudden, he wins the Academy Award, so fitting. Their ratings aren’t so good at the Academy Awards. You know when that stopped? When they started attacking us, their ratings went right down the tubes. I told somebody, the evening newscasts, they’re terrible for conservative people and they’re crooked, they’re absolutely dishonest ….But ABC is terrible and NBC is terrible and CBS is terrible. They’re all the same.

 

Trump suggests that if the other networks would just hire away some Fox News folks, their ratings would go up “five-fold.” 

They could hire Pete Hegseth or Jessie Waters, he says. Just like he hired Grenell to be Director of National Intelligence. 

(What could go wrong?)

 

* 

“She did terrible things and said terrible things.”

AT TIMES, Trump sounds merely delusional. All too often he sounds dangerous. He’s a demagogue. His fans don’t notice. He begins to talk about Trump Justice, more specifically. “We have two sets of justices in this country,” he sneers. “It’s no good. It’s no good. It’s no good. You know the thing we’re working on right now? We’re trying to get fairness for a certain person who’s been treated very unfairly.” 

Trump means Roger Stone, one of six campaign aides from the last election to be convicted of at least one felony. What he really means is that we need one “justice.” 

We need “good” justice. 

Trump Justice. 

All kinds of voices have sounded warning in recent days about what “Trump Justice” will look like if he wins a second term. 

His fans don’t care. 

The speech continues. Trump adopts the role of both hero and martyr: 

A man [Stone] who had a juror, who was a radical anti-Trump person, and she didn’t say that when she went up there and she became the foreperson of the jury and she did terrible things and said terrible things. And you know how they caught her. When he was convicted and then a statement was made, she started jumping up and down screaming, “Yes, yes.” And started telling everybody. They said, “Wait a minute. Wasn’t she just a juror?” The woman was totally biased. How do you do this? So I fight. Look, I fight. A lot of times it’s not worth it, but I got to fight for fairness. 

I got to fight for fairness. Got to fight for fairness. It’s a very unfair system. I guess it’s called the swamp.

 

The charge, that the jury forewoman did and said “terrible things” is about as vague as any charge could be. It doesn’t matter. The crowd roars. In fact, with Trump Justice, we can dispense with juries in the future. We can send cases to the Oval Office, for the president to decide alone. 

Trump hits at the free press again, telling his fans how hard his job has been. “I only didn’t know how disgusting and dirty the swamp is and a lot of the media is a big part of the swamp,” he says. 

And that’s the final pillar of Trump Justice. The system will rest on a foundation of press control. 

Trump and his allies will drain the swamp of reporters who refuse to toe the administration line. 

Finally, Trump drapes his authoritarian plans in an American flag, and hopes his MAGA cult won’t notice. He spends the last third of his ninety-minute speech listing his many, many, many great accomplishments. 

So many. Such greatness! 

Then he ends with a stark warning:

At stake in our present battle is the survival of our nation. If you want your children to inherit the blessings that generations of Americans have fought and died for to secure, then we must devote everything we have toward victory in November of 2020. November 3rd. November 3rd. Only this way can we save the America we love and drain the Washington swamp once and for all.

 

You almost expect him to spread his arms, Christ-like on the cross, the Savior of the Nation, ready to rule.

___ 

 

2/22/20: The president responds to intelligence reports (see: 2/21/20) that the Russians are already doing what they can to interfere in the coming election. Still, Trump doesn’t warn of increased sanctions. He doesn’t call Mr. Putin to warn him not to meddle. He doesn’t do anything. 

Well, except start tweeting. Having been informed that the Russians want to boost Sen. Sanders’ campaign, and again split the Democrats, Trump tweets insults about “Crazy Bernie.” He attacks MSNBC, which he labels “MSDNC,” as “Comcast Slime.” He notes that some people are saying Jill Stein of the Green Party is a Russian agent – without addressing the fact that Stein and General Michael T. Flynn, his feloniously-inclined former National Security Advisor, were once fêted at a 2015 dinner in Moscow, both seated at the same table with Putin. And then Flynn violated regulations and never told the U.S. Army he was paid $45,000 to give a talk afterwards. 

Finally, the president attacks Rep. Adam Schiff, who he refers to as “Shifty Schiff,” and predicts he’s going to win the State of Nevada in November. Once again, he fails to stand up to Russia.

___ 

 

2/23/20: All the usual sycophants came crawling out of the woodwork to defend the president this weekend. At first, they claimed U.S. intelligence experts were wrong. No way would Putin and the Russians prefer Trump to win again. 

As late as Sunday, Trump seemed bizarrely out of any loop. When reporters asked about the Russians’ supposed preference, Trump replied, “Nobody said it to me at all.” Then he honed in on the real issue. “They ought to investigate Adam Schiff for leaking that intelligence,” he fumed. 

Again, the president had no evidence for that claim; but once Trump Justice kicks in, should he win a second term, evidence will be a luxury. 

In a tweet later that day, the president seemed to threaten the Democratic lawmaker. The Russians were the ones interfering; but Trump was threatening a political opponent, instead of focusing on Putin and his machinations. 

Somebody please tell incompetent (thanks for my high poll numbers) & corrupt politician Adam “Shifty” Schiff to stop leaking Classified information or, even worse, made up information, to the Fake News Media. Someday he will be caught, & that will be a very unpleasant experience [emphasis added]!

 

And yet, the story only got weirder by the hour. 

Reporters made it clear that U.S. intelligence had already warned Sen. Bernie Sanders that the Russians were trying to advance his campaign. Unlike Trump, who seemed to know nothing about what briefers had said, Sanders told reporters, yes, he had been informed that the Russians were trying to boost his chances. Sanders then did what any patriotic American should do. He denounced Russian interference. 

“I don’t care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president,” Sanders made plain. “My message to Putin is clear: Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.” 

He went on to add emphatically, 

In 2016, Russia used internet propaganda to sow division in our country, and my understanding is that they are doing it again in 2020.

 

…Let’s be clear, the Russians want to undermine American democracy by dividing us and, unlike the current president, I stand firmly against their efforts, and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our election.”

 

Assuming Trump fans cared, you could point out: That’s how it’s done. You don’t deny, as Trump did, that the Russians interfered in 2016. You don’t deny – when you had to know, even before you won the election – and we all know now – because a dozen members of that first campaign have since admitted (usually under legal duress) that, yes, they did meet with Russians offering help. (See: 9/24-30/19.) 

You don’t say last summer that if “Norway” had dirt on an opponent running against you in 2020, why wouldn’t you take it? 

You don’t ask Ukraine to gather dirt on an opponent. 

You don’t ask China to investigate Joe Biden. You condemn foreign meddling in our democratic processes.

___ 

 

2/24/20: Trump is traveling in India, but finds time to tweet: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

___ 

2/25/20: I think we know whose head will roll next for telling the truth in Trumpistan (see: Vindman and Sondland, 2/7/20 and Joseph Maguire, 2/21/20, for example). 

Dr. Nancy Messonier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should start packing up her office tomorrow morning. 

Today, Dr. Messonier informed reporters that CDC expects the COVID-19 coronavirus to spread in the United States. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore,” she explains, “but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”  

So far, the disease is contained. 

With new clusters appearing round the globe, chances the virus will spread increase. If strict quarantine measures become necessary, as in Italy and South Korea, “The disruption of daily life could be severe.”

 

* 

AN OBJECTIVE OBSERVER would not blame President Trump for the spreading virus. But we do remember how ludicrous and twisted his attacks were when his predecessor was dealing with an outbreak of the far-deadlier Ebola virus in 2014. 

Who, for example, can forget this “assessment” offered up by Citizen Trump in October 2014, after Obama refused to block all flights from Africa, where the disease had erupted, to this country:

 

____________________ 

“I am starting to think that there is something seriously wrong with President Obama’s mental health. Why won’t he stop the flights. Psycho!” 

Citizen Trump

____________________ 

 

When all was said and done, eleven Americans contracted Ebola, seven of them while working in Africa. All were strictly quarantined. Two persons died. But that was all it took to unbalance Donald J. Trump. He insisted that Obama should have to hug and kiss all the Ebola patients. 

So, let’s poke a little fun at “President Blubber” here. (We are adopting a juvenile nickname for Mr. Trump, which is another tried and true Trump trick.) Pucker up, you giant bag of lard and cellulite! 

You’re kissing your first COVID-19 patient tomorrow! 

We jest, of course. And we should note again: No objective observer would fault Mr. Trump for the spread of disease around the globe and the threats of economic dislocation that have followed. Still, we know how much he loves to claim every ounce of credit when the stock markets go up. 

So, let’s be like President Blubber. Let’s credit him for everything that happens to the Dow Jones. 

It plunged a thousand points on Monday. 

It plunged another 900 today. 

It’s not his fault. Let this blogger be clear. But if Obama were in charge, you know Trump would be howling.

 

* 

WHILE A DEADLY VIRUS was threatening lives around the world, President Trump kept busy today, threatening to forever unbalance the federal judicial system. 

 

Trump aims to remake the courts in his own image. 

Traveling in India today, where another authoritarian rules, Trump lashes out at the U.S. Supreme Court. He has previously attacked the U.S. military justice system, “out of control,” lower federal courts, a biased “Mexican” judge, who just so happened to be from Indiana, FISA courts, “Obama judges,” “slow and weak courts,”  sentences he considers too lenient, people he thinks should be in jail even though they haven’t been charged with any crimes – and even more people he’d like to see behind bars, trial or no trail – plus people he thinks should be found guilty of treason. He has criticized the use of search warrants to gather evidence against one of his felonious pals, the “cruel” mistreatment of a second felonious friend, and the unfair sentence meted out to a third felonious aide – and much, much more. 

In fact, Trump aims to remake the courts in his own image. And, in that, there’s grave danger. 

Today, he tweets: “While ‘elections have consequences’, I only ask for fairness, especially when it comes to decisions made by the United States Supreme Court!” 

How can he “insure” fairness. In any case where his interests are involved, only seven judges shall vote. 

According to the president, two liberal members of the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Ruth Ginsburg “should recuse themselves on all Trump, or Trump related, matters!”  

The system of Trump Justice we can expect to see put in order in a second term for Donald J. Trump becomes clear. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Think this president can’t blow the rule of law to bits? Consider evidence from 2/5/20 (Trump assembles a team of corrupt individuals to “fight corruption” in Ukraine); 2/7/20 (the president ousts two men who testified under oath in the impeachment inquiry); 2/9/20 (Trump’s former Secretary of the Navy warns that the president is a threat to democracy); 2/11/20 (Trump suggests that one of the men who testified under oath should probably face military discipline); 2/12/20 (Trump and his Attorney General interfere in the case of Roger Stone, who has been convicted of seven felonies); 2/13/20 (former White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly says Trump gave his aide an “illegal order” and the aide did exactly right in refusing to follow it); 2/14/20 (the president says he has a legal right to interfere in any criminal case, because he’s president); 2/16/20 and 2/18/20 (thousands of former officials from the Department of Justice warn against assaults on the rule of law by this president); 2/19/20 (Trump practices pardoning scuzzy criminals) and 2/20/20 (former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher is accused of offering a pardon from Trump for Julian Assange, if Assange will “play ball.”) 

And that’s just in February.

___

2/26/20: President Trump is back from India. Did anyone miss him? While he was there, he avoided any comment regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new citizenship law, which most observers agree discriminates against Muslims. Instead, he praised the Indian leader for “working very hard on religious freedom.” A few miles away from where he spoke, Hindu vs. Muslim mob violence flared, leaving 30 dead and hundreds injured. 

Trump certainly didn’t remember, either, when sectarian violence exploded in 2002 in Gujarat, the state where Modi was governor, leaving more than 1,000 dead. 

Then again, how often do we have to be reminded that Trump has a soft spot for any and all authoritarian leaders?

 

* 

WORRIES ABOUT A PANDEMIC continue to rattle global nerves. But not Trump’s nerves of steel. He’s totally oblivious to science. Just to be safe, however, on Wednesday, he placed VP Mike Pence in charge of the battle to stop any spread of the COVID-19 virus in this country. 

 

The president says the “U.S.A is in great shape.” 

Breaking developments are coming fast and furious. A person in California, with no known exposure (no previous trip to China, for example), tests positive for the virus. South Korea has 1,600 cases, including at least one 23-year-old U.S. service member. Korean and American generals cancel joint military exercises. The State Department warns against travel to that nation. 

Around the world, the dominos continue to topple. A 38-year-old Greek man who had traveled to Northern Italy tests positive. Seton Hall University cancels all spring study abroad programs. A Romanian citizen, who had direct contact with an Italian citizen who traveled to Romania, sickens, making that country the forty-fourth to report at least one case. Norway and Georgia (the country) join the COVID-19 club, with the patient in Georgia having recently traveled to Iran. The first case in Brazil is a that of a tourist who just returned from Italy. That would mean anyone aboard the ship or plane he boarded would be at risk. Twenty cases are under investigation in San Paolo, a city of twelve million, each a potential nexus for spread of disease. China reported “only” 433 new cases and 29 deaths on Wednesday; but since the Chinese government is known to censor everything, including the word “democracy” on the internet, you figure their numbers are suspect. So far, China has admitted to having 78,497 cases of the disease. 

HHS Secretary Alex Azar told reporters that masks aren’t the “be all, and end all” of virus protection, which is a good thing, since he admitted the day before that we were a little low in the mask-supply area. As for any vaccine that might be developed to fight the threat, well, Azar said, it “might not be affordable” for all Americans, because the Trump administration would have to “trust the private sector to invest.” 

Members of Congress, of course, are in a dither, thinking they might not get re-elected if Americans in large numbers begin toppling over dead. Sen. Chuck Schumer called on colleagues to approve $8.5 billion in emergency spending to deal with the COVID-19 threat. 

On Wednesday, the Dow Jones rose 300 points in morning trading, on good news about the “slowing” spread of COVID-19 in China. The market retreated again and lost another 123 points. Late Wednesday, futures were trading lower as a number of companies began reporting expected sales and earnings declines. 

President Trump said on Wednesday that the fears of a pandemic were overblown and the “U.S.A is in great shape.”

 

* 

“Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared.” 

IS THE DANGER overblown? At this point, the simple blogger would say, in the United States, it is. Then again, do most of us really believe the Trump administration knows what it’s doing? Or would tell the truth if it doesn’t? 

After Trump congratulated himself yesterday for having done a great job so far of limiting the spread, a top health official at the Centers for Disease Control gently added, “Our aggressive containment strategy here in the United States has been working,” Principal Deputy Director Ann Shuchat said. “However, we do expect more cases, and this is a good time to prepare.” 

When asked by reporters what Trump thought would happen – would the disease spread – he decided that the best way to avoid lying was to talk total nonsense instead. “I don’t think it’s inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared.” 

So, what will happen? We don’t know. Trump doesn’t know. If scientists try to explain the threat, his mind will no doubt wander. Meanwhile, our government has warned us to “exercise increased caution” if we plan to travel to Italy. Soccer games in several countries have been cancelled or will be played in empty stadiums. Spain announces a cluster of five new cases in one day. Hundreds of tourists in the Canary Islands remain penned up in a four-star hotel, after several guests test positive. At least they’re near the beach. Bahrain has 26 cases, Kuwait, 25, Germany 19, France 18, as of Wednesday. Nepal reports one, a traveler who visited China. Iran, another country known for authoritarian control of “Fake News,” has 245 confirmed cases, and 26 dead. Turkey and Pakistan have closed their borders with Iran as a result. In Japan, the Diamond Princess cruise ship, still under quarantine in the port of Yokohama, has 705 cases aboard; and another 179 cases are reported ashore. Japan announces that all schools should be closed through spring break, which occurs in April. Singapore reports 91 cases, Thailand 40, including an 8-year-old boy, Taiwan 31, and Vietnam 16.

___ 

 

2/27/20: Early Thursday, the government of India announces it will evacuate 76 of its nationals from Wuhan, China, where the virus erupted. 

The prime minister of Australia has told his nation that a pandemic is inevitable. But since his country is on fire – as a result of climate change, according to scientists – it may not matter. 

Saudi Arabia, home to the most holy sites in Islam, has banned all pilgrimages to Mecca, until the threat subsides. 

A woman in Japan has the dubious distinction of testing positive for COVID-19 for a second time.

___

2/28/20: The question Friday was, “How low could Donald Trump Jr. (and the Dow Jones average) sink?” 

 

Democrats want to “kill millions of people.” 

Let’s start with that smarmy scion of Family Trump, for whom there is no bottom when it comes to how low he’s willing to stoop. 

And where does an idiot go to go low? Don Jr. oozed onto the set of Fox & Friends on Friday morning. 

What Jr. was there to do was defend Don Sr., and to do so by making one of the most idiotic claims in American political history. According to the son of the Science-Moron-in-Chief (see: 2/29/20), Democrats “seemingly hoped” the COVID-19 virus would spread to our shores “and kill millions of people.” According to Jr., his father’s foes wanted a spread of the Black Death, so that they could “end” his dad’s “streak of winning.” According to Don Jr., this marked “a new level of sickness.”

 

If the COVID-19 virus does spread on American soil it will not differentiate between fans and foes of President Trump. No American, then, wants a deadly disease to spread across the land. 

Nor is there currently cause for panic, on Don Jr.’s part or anyone else’s. As of late Friday, there had been only 65 cases diagnosed in the U.S., almost all contracted by people who had traveled overseas. 

Better yet, no American, save for one unlucky woman who had been traveling in China at the time, had died. 

In other words, it might have been nice if one of the hosts on Fox & Friends had shot Don Jr. with a tranquilizer dart and sedated him for the remainder of the month.

 

* 

AS FOR HOW LOW the Dow Jones would sink, the answer turned out to be 3,600 points for the week. 

First, let me say, we shouldn’t kick a man while he’s down – save for the fact that we all know President Trump delights in kicking others when they’re up, or down, or standing around on the fairway on one of the holes at one of his private golf resorts where he loves to hang out. 

We also know that President Don relishes basking in the orange light of glory whenever the stock market goes up. Today, no doubt, he’s happy the markets are closed. With the spread of the coronavirus around the globe, dislocations in the world economy have been a pronounced result. 

To be fair, this is not President Don’s fault. But since President Don has gobbled up every fragment of credit whenever markets go up – and since he insisted that if Democrats took charge in 2016 or 2018, markets would inevitably plunge – which kind of plunge under a Democrat has not occurred since The Panic of 1893 – it’s amusing, to consider the bloodbath on Wall Street this week. 

Full disclosure: this blogger has a lot of cash in the markets. So, a good deal of the blood spilled was his O+ type. 

Ignoring the fact that the blogger could use a large bandage about now, it has been amusing to look at charts and see how Donald J. Trump has actually done, in terms of juicing the stock markets. 

Since President Don sat his orange tush down in the Oval Office, there has never been a point at which the markets were faring significantly better than the markets did under President Obama at the same point during their first terms. Check out the graphic supplied below. That much should be clear. 

And now, Trump fans, the markets are doing way worse. 

POSTSCRIPT: We’ve all heard Trump whine about how he inherited a mess. Let’s take a second look at the graph. On the day George W. Bush left office, the stock market had fallen 26.5 percent. 

On the day Obama packed up and went home, the market was up 148.3 percent. I think even the MAGA crowd can tell who inherited the mess, assuming they can read an actual graph.

By the end of February 2011 the markets were up 61.9 percent.
They're up only 27.9 percent under Trump.

 ___

 

 

2/29/20: President Trump announces that the uproar over the coronavirus is a “hoax” cooked up by Democrats to make him look bad.

 

____________________ 

Those of us on the other side of the political fence don’t want plague to sweep the land.

____________________ 

 

In fact, it pissed him off, he told another cheering throng at one of his rallies, Friday night, to think that these un-American Democrats would stoop so low as to “politicize” the crisis just to score cheap points. 

Unfortunately, in the real world, where disease can kill regardless of politics, the first U.S. citizen to contract the COVID-19 virus on these shores has died. 

(If the past is prologue, we know Trump won’t spend much time thinking about the first person to die.)

 

* 

ON FRIDAY, Don Jr. did his best not to politicize the crisis by insisting Democrats wanted millions of Americans to die, just so the last survivors could vote against his dad. 

So, once again, let’s be clear. Those of us on the other side of the political fence don’t want plague to sweep the land. 

We do, however, believe that Jr.’s dad must be stopped at almost any cost from gaining a second term. 

To drink deep the toxins President Trump has spilled into the waters of political discourse, let’s go back and see how he assessed the handling of an even more dangerous disease when Barack Obama was in charge. It was the summer of 2014. A new outbreak of Ebola was threatening to spread in West Africa, and, of course, by plane or boat, around the globe. 

If we do a little digging, we quickly learn that Citizen Trump went bonkers as soon as the first case reached our shores. When I checked his Twitter archive, I was surprised to see he fired off 103 tweets and retweets on the topic of Ebola. 

Don Jr. might want to look at the hysterical responses posted by his dad, that summer and fall. If people were stirring up panic in those days, for political points, his father was stirring with the biggest ladle of all. The nadir may have been reached been when dad labeled Obama a “psycho” for the way in which he was handling the disease. Going low, in other words, is a Trump family trait. 

One of the most striking aspects of those five score and three tweets/retweets is how little sympathy Citizen Don had for others. That includes his own countrymen and women when they fell ill. Once it became known that Dr. Kent Brantley, who had been working in West Africa and contracted the disease, was allowed to return to the U.S., Trump howled as if the doctor was going to come traipsing into Trump Tower and spit in his soup. On August 1, 2014, Trump had this to offer: “The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!”  

Remember that line.

How did our current president respond when his predecessor had to handle an Ebola crisis?
His reaction, and now his son's, tells us a lot.

 

One good howl deserved another, and Trump howled long and loud and with no more grasp of the science than a coyote on a hill. Trump screamed that all flights from West Africa must be stopped. No infected patients should be allowed to return. Send the doctors to them instead. The fact we were taking infected patients, he said, was “absolutely CRAZY – stupid pols.” 

To listen to Trump was to believe that every move Obama made was meant to unleash pestilence in the streets. Below are some of Trump’s worst posts, with editorial comment supplied. Each and every one helped fuel hysteria and not one but was meant to score sleazebag political points. 

Sept. 16: “Can you believe that the U.S. will be sending 3000 troops to Africa to help with Ebola. They will come home infected? We have enough problems.” 

(No member of the U.S. military was infected while deployed.)

 

Sept. 19: “Why are we sending thousands of ill-trained soldiers into Ebola infested areas of Africa! Bring the plague back to U.S.? Obama is so stupid.” 

Sept. 30: Here we go! I stated long ago that we should cancel all flights from West Africa. Now we have Ebola in U.S., AND IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE! 

(Trump had already perfected the all-caps Twitter YELP.)

Same day: “The United States must immediately institute strong travel restrictions or Ebola will be all over the United States-a plague like no other!  

(Seven Americans who contracted Ebola overseas were brought home.)

 

Oct. 2: “The Ebola patient who came into our country knew exactly what he was doing. Came into contact with over 100 people. Here we go-I told you so!” 

(Thomas Duncan, a Liberian citizen, had been visiting family in Texas when he fell sick.)

 

Same day: “How incompetent are our leaders allowing these Ebola infected people to come into our country with all of the problems and danger entailed!” 

(Obama failed! He let the guy in.)

 

Oct. 4: “This Ebola patient Thomas Duncan, who fraudulently entered the U.S. by signing false papers, is causing havoc. If he lives, prosecute!” 

(As for prosecuting, Duncan soon dies.)

 

Same day: “Something very important, and indeed society changing, may come out of the Ebola epidemic that will be a very good thing: NO SHAKING HANDS!” 

(Trump, the germaphobe, can only hope.)

 

Same day: “President Obama - close down the flights from Ebola infected areas right now, before it is too late! What the hell is wrong with you?”  

Citizen Trump, who probably knew no more about Ebola, or science in general, than a lazy fourth grader, announces on October 6: “I will be on Fox & Friends (@foxandfriends) at 7.00. Fighting Ebola will be a topic!” 

(This is a guy who believes exercise depletes the body’s finite supply of energy.)

 

Oct. 7: “Despite the ever increasing Ebola disaster, Obama refuses to stop flights from West Africa. It’s almost like he’s saying F-you to U.S. public.” 

Oct. 9: “Obama won’t send troops to fight jihadists, yet sends them to Liberia to contract Ebola. He is a delusional failure.” 

The next day Trump makes a second appearance on Fox News and tells the gaping boobs who watch why he doesn’t trust Obama when it comes to Ebola. 

Or Benghazi! 

Same day: “Obama is making the Ebola problem much worse than it needs to be in the U.S. by not halting flights from West Africa. Airport testing a joke.” 

(Airport testing is currently our first line of defense against COVID-19.)

 

Oct. 12: “Here we go - A healthcare worker who treated Thomas Duncan, the man who flew into the U.S. from West Africa infected with Ebola, caught it!”  

(A total of four Americans, in addition to the original seven, will be infected in weeks ahead.)

 

Same day: “I don’t know if President Obama isn’t stopping the flights from Ebola torn West Africa because he is stubborn, stupid, or just doesn’t care!” 

(What kind of people would politicize a health crisis!!!)

 

Same day (a retweet): “‘@trucksellr2007: 150 travelers arriving daily in the U.S. from the Ebola hot zones of west Africa? This is insanity! #StopTheFlights.’” 

Then we had this classic piece of what passed then – and still passes in similar forms – for Trumpian thought: 

Oct. 15: “President Obama has a personal responsibility to visit & embrace all people in the US who contract Ebola! 

Same day: “A nurse in Dallas who treated Ebola patient Thomas Duncan was allowed to fly to Cleveland. She should never have been so allowed! The real JV.” 

(With Trump human sympathy rarely intrudes.)

 

Oct. 17: “Obama just appointed an Ebola Czar with zero experience in the medical area and zero experience in infectious disease control. A TOTAL JOKE!” 

(Trump puts VP Mike Pence in charge of his COVID-19 team!)

 

Oct. 20: “I will be on @foxandfriends at 7.00 - 45 minutes. Talking about Ebola, Obama and other strange U.S. happenings!” 

(Trump, talking science!!!)

 

Oct. 23: “There is a good possibility that a person who treated patients in West Africa and who FLEW into New York has Ebola. Touched many, bedlam!” 

(Bedlam!)

 

Same day: “If this doctor, who so recklessly flew into New York from West Africa, has  Ebola, then Obama should apologize to the American people & resign!” 

(See. Not scoring political points at all!)

 

Same day: “President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!”

Risking what little energy his body has left!

Oct. 24: “The Ebola doctor who just flew to N.Y. from West Africa and went on the subway, bowling and dining is a very SELFISH man-should have known!” 

(Human kindness is not in Trump’s box of tools.)

 

Oct. 28: “President Obama strongly considering a plan to bring non-U.S. citizens with EBOLA to the United States for treatment. Now I know he’s nuts!” 

The next day, October 29, it’s back to Fox News! This time Citizen Trump is there for an “interview @seanhannity discussing Obama’s failed presidency, Ebola, DC Post Office, midterms & 2016.” 

Same day: Trump quotes himself in a retweet: “Donald Trump says it’s ‘morally unfair’ of Obama to send soldiers into Ebola hot zone.” 

(Morals – always a Trump strong suit.)

 

Same day: “Obama will quarantine all soldiers returning from Africa for 21 days. But he still allows all who contract Ebola into country? Hypocrite.” 

(All Americans brought back since the COVID-19 outbreak have been quarantined.)

 

Then, with all the various measures taken to control the spread of Ebola, not only inside the U.S.A., but also overseas, the outbreak was over. 

There was no “bedlam” in the United States. Only eleven Americans contracted Ebola, seven overseas, four inside the United States. Two died. Trump had panicked his fans for no good reason. 

Save to rack up political points.

 

* 

IT’S TELLING, too, that only twice since, has Trump tweeted about Ebola. Once was to retweet Reverend Franklin Graham, on August 2, 2019. That was the fifth anniversary of Dr. Brantley’s return to the U.S. The good Christian doctor contracted Ebola in West Africa while doing both medical and missionary work. It was Brantley who was allowed to return for treatment, to Emory University in Atlanta, a decision that first set Citizen Trump off. 

Now Trump approved of Pastor Graham’s take. Thank God, Dr. Brantley had recovered, Graham said, a “Good Samaritan” who had gone to Africa to do the Lord’s work. 

The last mention, of course, was Trump bragging about himself. Again, it was a retweet of a post from HHS Secretary Alex Azar: “Thanks to US leadership under @POTUS, vaccines & therapeutics are saving lives and helping those affected by the #Ebola outbreak in the #DRC. Working with regional and international partners to stop the outbreak is one of our top global health priorities. 

Exactly as it was back in 2014.

 

* 

SO: WE’RE NOT ALL going to die. The spread of the COVID-19 virus is a serious issue. But we’re not all going to keel over dead. 

Three new cases on Friday were found in the U.S. One in Oregon, particularly worrisome, since it was a school employee, one in Washington State, and one in California, and all rattled people’s nerves. That brought to four, cases in the U.S., where patients are not known to have traveled to infected regions, nor thought to have had contact with anyone who did. 

That means the threat may grow – and the Trump administration may face a burgeoning problem. 

But who could ever doubt Trump will rise to the occasion, and find someone else to blame if anything goes wrong?

The COVID-19 virus threatens your health.
The president threatens the judicial system of the United States.

BLOGGER’S NOTE (9/25/21): This was not a risky prediction to make. Who did Loser Don blame in the end? Everyone else.

___

March 1, 2020: It’s a quiet day in America. Trump’s staying put at the White House for a change, probably out of fear of the coronavirus. He isn’t even tweeting much. 

Could he be dead? 

Or is the world’s most powerful germaphobe simply hiding out…and letting Mike Pence put his life at risk?

 

____________________ 

South Korea has 3,736 cases, the U.S. only 71 confirmed.

____________________ 

 

The coronavirus continues to spread, disrupting the flow of travel around the globe, cutting trade networks, rattling the world economy. The outbreak is no fault of Trump’s. But it’s a growing problem and one he seems ill-prepared by temperament or inclination to address. Today, Rhode Island authorities announce they have a suspected case of COVID-19, first in the state. Researchers in the State of Washington believe the virus may have been circulating, unsuspected, for weeks. An estimated 150 to 1,500 people are likely infected or were infected and didn’t realize it. The United States currently has 71 confirmed cases. Qatar and Luxembourg announce their first patients. Two people in Azerbaijan are quarantined and the border with Iran is shut. There are dozens of cases in the United Kingdom. Both the Netherlands and Lebanon confirm three new infections, bringing their totals to seven each. By the time I finish typing this post, the number in Lebanon rises to ten. France, with more than 100 confirmed cases, is on high alert. In Paris, the Louvre is closed. Iran reports 978 cases and 53 deaths, a mortality rate of 7%. Italy reports 1,128 cases, up from 888 two days ago. Turkey has halted passenger flights to and from Italy, Iran, Iraq, and South Korea. According to the BBC, Italy’s economy has “taken a body blow.” Tourism is a casualty. Restaurants and public places are deserted. South Korea reports 3,736 cases. Saudi Arabia has warned citizens not to travel to Lebanon. Kuwait, with 45 confirmed cases, and Russia, with only two, have advised citizens not to travel at all. 

Nobody in their right mind wants to visit North Korea, of course. But Kim Jong-un, ever the dictatorial nut, threatens “serious consequences” if the COVID-19 virus spreads to his land. 

Death by anti-aircraft gun, maybe? 

So far, there have been 87,138 confirmed cases around the globe, with 2,980 deaths, a mortality rate of about 3.4%.

___ 

 

3/2/20: Hooray for Donald Trump! His stock market mojo is back. The Dow Jones soars 1,300 points on Monday. 

Then again, the coronavirus “hoax” he insists Democrats are pushing continues to spread in non-hoax-like fashion. 

 

“Similar to seasonal flu.” 

It hasn’t helped that top Trump administration aides and the Science-Moron-in-Chief keep bumbling their assessments. Larry Kudlow, an expert in economics, but not in medicine, insists Team Trump has a “pretty close to airtight” grip on the COVID-19 spread. But that grip has been loosening badly. Chad Wolf, acting head of Homeland Security, botched his answers completely, telling members of Congress, hey, why worry! This virus is “similar to seasonal flu.” 

To be more precise, the death rate from seasonal flu is roughly 1 in 1,000 cases. The death rate for COVID-19 has been roughly 1 in 30. (That would be 3,000 dead among 90,000 cases.) 

Trump himself seemed to address the topic by winging it – or, worse – making shit up. He said that we would “essentially have a flu shot for this [virus] in a fairly quick manner.” Except it wasn’t a flu outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control had to disinfect that remark as soon as it left his lips. Experts said a vaccine was unlikely in the next 12 to 18 months. Then Dr. Trump said we wouldn’t need a vaccine, because the number of cases in the U.S. was “going very substantially down, not up.” There were fifteen cases at the time, and, he promised, “within a couple of days, [that number] is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” 

Dr. Trump, now known as “Dr. Zero,” predicted the virus might go away in April, as it got warmer, which scientists said no one could predict. Then Dr. Zero tried to explain why he attacked Obama for his handling of Ebola in 2014 – when there were only 11 cases in the U.S. and two deaths. Well, he said, he attacked Obama because Ebola was so much more deadly, and people “disintegrated.” With Trump trying to explain science you wouldn’t have been surprised if he had claimed Ebola patients were blown to bits by their own flatulence. 

The COVID threat may not be as severe as has been portrayed. But the “hoax” has killed six Americans and more than a hundred cases are confirmed. Infections have been discovered in twelve states, including New York, Nebraska, Florida, and Arizona. If either of the two known cases in Florida are within 100 miles of any Trump property, Dr. Zero might give golf a rest and stick around D.C. for once. 

Reports of new cases in China are tapering, but no one trusts communist officials to tell the truth. China reported only 125 new cases today, but an additional 31 deaths. South Korea has 4,300 cases. France, Germany, and Singapore all have a hundred or more. There are 900 confirmed cases in Japan, 1,500 in Iran and 1,600 in Italy. Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Morocco, and Jordan all report their first cases.

 

* 

STILL, GOOD NEWS!!! We now learn that scientists are wrong about climate change too! Stupid scientists, with their stupid science! 

 

“Gok’s uncertainty language.” 

According to the sterling “scientific” work performed by Indur M. Goklany, a Trump appointee at the Department of Interior – and a man armed with only an eraser and an editor’s pencil – we’re all going to love rising global temperatures because we’ll stay toasty and warm. 

The New York Times, having reviewed internal documents, finds that real scientists at Interior are less than impressed. They refer to Goklany’s edits of studies and reports as “Gok’s uncertainty language.” 

Climate science, Goklany insists that all reports read, “may be overestimating the rate of global warming, for whatever reason.” Yeah, whatever reason! He has no idea what that reason might be. 

But sure! Who needs science? 

Even better, rising temperatures “may increase plant water use efficiency” and “lengthen the agricultural growing season.” 

Indeed, a longer growing season should result. Maybe we should pump more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. 

Then we can grow wheat in Greenland.

 

____________________ 

The language “takes very specific and isolated pieces of science, and tries to expand it in an extraordinarily misleading fashion.” 

Samuel Meyers, Harvard research scientist

____________________ 

 

This is not the first report of Trump administration stooges “cleaning up” climate change language. The E.P.A. removed entire web pages from its site in April 2017, to bring the “science” into accord with the preachments of President Trump. Someone with a sharp editor’s pencil went to work in June, too. The site for the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Tribal Climate Resilience Program got a sprucing. The word “climate” was cut from the title and 59 other mentions were erased, only a single use of the word “climate” surviving. The Union of Concerned Scientists condemned similar erasures in the Strategic Plan for Interior in October 2017. 

The assault on real science continued. In January 2018 the magazine Scientific American warned, “Thousands of webpages with climate change information have been removed or buried at agencies including U.S. EPA, the Interior and Energy departments and elsewhere across the government.” 

As the Times put it today, Goklany’s work is bad editing at best, fabrication at worst: 

Samuel Myers, a principal research scientist at Harvard University’s Center for the Environment who has studied the effects of climate change on nutrition, said the language “takes very specific and isolated pieces of science, and tries to expand it in an extraordinarily misleading fashion.”

 

Reporters from the Times asked the Interior Department to make Mr. Goklany available for comment. 

They also contacted him directly. Goklany decided he’d rather not explain his editing standards in a public forum.

 

* 

SO, WHERE DO WE STAND, if we want to come to grips with this topic? NASA still tells the truth on its website. So does the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. 

Here, in Cincinnati, we can do a little experiment. It’s been an unusually mild winter. If we check average daily highs, we find that starting December 21, we had a streak of ten days with highs above normal, including eight that were at least 12 degrees warmer. In January we had 24 days above normal, including thirteen at least ten degrees above average. February gave us 13 days above normal, including three warmer by more than 20 degrees. One day had a normal high. The other fourteen had highs below normal. On Valentine’s Day we were 18 degrees below the expected high. The first day of March saw Cincinnati register 65°, sixteen above normal. We were above average again today, and are forecast to hit above normal highs fourteen of the next seventeen days. Should forecasts prove correct it would give the city 63 highs above normal, 25 lows, and several normal readings. 

High temperatures in one city do not prove climate change, of course. But when we realize  – if we don’t fall for Mr. Goklany’s tricks – that 2019 was the second hottest year ever recorded – that 2016 was the hottest – that the five hottest years are the last five – and that according to NASA and NOAA, we have now had 43 consecutive years nominally above average? 

Yeah. 

Then we have a concerning trend. 

As for this past January, NOAA supplies us with this global map:

 

POSTSCRIPT: One reason this blogger is a liberal is because he can remember growing up in an era when women were told they should remain in the home and cook dinner at the same time every evening for the man of their dreams. 

Feminists should shut up if they didn’t like it and study the cookbook. 

It was said, in those days, that females were too delicate to participate in strenuous sports. So, this blogger remembers 6-on-6 girls’ basketball games, where no player could cross the center line, because running the full court would have taxed girls too much. 

For the same reason, marathon running was not an Olympic event for women until 1984. Yesterday, by comparison, Molly Seidel, running her first marathon ever, finished second in the Olympic trials for the U.S. team. She covered 26.2 miles in 2 hours, 27 minutes, 31 seconds. That’s an average pace, in cold, windy conditions, on an unusually tough course, of a little less than 5:40 per mile. 

Congratulations to Ms. Seidel, who is joined on the team by first-place finisher Aliphine Tuliamuk and Seidel’s idol growing up, Sally Kipyego. Both women are natives of Kenya, proof again that not all immigrants who enter the country legally or illegally come here to kill Trump fans. 

The men representing the U.S. in the marathon will be Galen Rupp, Jacob Riley and Abdi Abdirahman. 

Abdirahman was born in Somalia.

___

 

3/3/20: It turns out Trump doesn’t have his stock market mojo back! The Federal Reserve cuts interest rates ½ percent to counteract any slowdown in the U.S. economy due to the coronavirus threat. 

The Dow still drops 786 points.

Meanwhile, Dr. Zero (a.k.a. Donald J. Trump) continues to insist that a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus might be just around the corner. Kind of like he convinced Kim Jong-un to give up all his nukes back in June 2018. 

Anyway, the president finds himself in a bit of a pickle. First and foremost, he’s clueless when it comes to the science of the virus. For sure, he’s too lazy intellectually to study the topic. That means he’s reduced to shouting nonsense at rallies and tweeting nonsense in between.

 

* 

TODAY, HE POSTED NONSENSE about how he wants, “Congress to send me a Bill that fully and permanently funds the LWCF [Land and Water Conservation Fund] and restores our National Parks. When I sign it into law, it will be HISTORIC for our beautiful public lands. ALL thanks to @SenCoryGardner and @SteveDaines, two GREAT Conservative Leaders!” 

This would be truly HISTORIC news – because Trump keeps trying every year to cut funds for the Interior Department, which runs the parks. 

As the National Parks Conservation Association, or NPCA, noted just last month, the proposed federal budget for Fiscal Year 2021 would cut park funding by $587 million (a 17 percent reduction). 

Trump and his buds also hoped to slash funding for the E.P.A. by $2.4 billion (a 26 percent cut). 

In addition, the NPCA noted, the proposal “nearly zeros out funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a critical conservation tool that supports local tourism and recreational economies and enhances opportunities for the American public to enjoy access to its public lands.” 

In other words, someone must have poked Trump with a sharp stick and informed him how unpopular his administration’s ideas were. 

As far as protecting the parks, you could go back to FY 2020, when Team Trump tried to cut funding for the Interior Department by 14 percent. 

Or FY 2019, when the national parks were supposed to absorb a 7 percent cut. 

And, of course, you had the 12 percent cut proposed in FY 2018.

Trump has tried to cut the parks budget every year since taking office.
And you know he's never going to get his lard ass out and go hiking.

Dr. Trump gets his predictions on the coronavirus completely wrong!

3/4/20: Remember how Donald J. Trump solved the problem of nuclear weapons in the hands of the North Koreans, by waving his magic wand and repeating three times, “North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat?” 

And then clicking his heels.

 

____________________ 

The peace deal with the Taliban looks shaky from the start.

____________________ 

 

Well, two developments recently call into question Trump’s magic powers, related to international diplomacy. First, North Korea still has all its nuclear weapons and continues to add to its arsenal. Second, inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency warn that Iran has ramped up production of nuclear materials – and now has enough for an atomic bomb. 

The New York Times has produced this handy graph:

Tearing up the "terrible" deal Obama had with Iran now looks pretty dumb.

Once again, President Trump learns the hard way that diplomacy is a bitch! He just can’t admit it. 

In the same way, the peace deal with the Taliban looks shaky from the start. First, the deal was negotiated without participation of the Afghan government. Kind of like Trump screwed our allies, the Kurds, last fall. 

The Afghans say they’re not ready to abide by one of the main principles of the deal, that they will release 5,000 Taliban prisoners currently in custody. (Remember how furious Trump was when Obama worked out an agreement to free a few dozen prisoners at Guantanamo!!!) 

As always you have to wonder how much Trump knows about what’s going on. Yesterday, he told reporters he had talked with the leader of the Taliban by phone. The first problem was that he had talked to Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader. The second was that you could sense Trump was desperate for a deal because it’s an election year. He doesn’t care what happens if he pulls U.S. forces out and Afghanistan goes to hell in a picnic basket, so long as he wins again in November. 

Even more to the point, Trump says what he always says in such cases. As The New York Times reports: 

“I spoke to the leader of the Taliban today. We had a good conversation,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House, slightly inflating Mr. Baradar’s position.

“They’re looking to get this ended and we’re looking to get this ended,” Mr. Trump said later in the day. “The relationship is very good that I have with the mullah [emphasis added].”

 

Let’s be clear. Trump has NO “relationship” with the mullah, let along one that is “very good.” Just as he has no real relationship with Kim Jong-un. He’s trying to work out deals with our enemies. 

These guys aren’t his buds.

 

* 

WHILE YOU were stocking up on hand sanitizer and hoping Team Trump knew what it was doing about the spread of COVID-19, Team Trump decided it would be a good time to sue two leading newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post, for libel. According to the president’s lawyers, both papers defamed the Orange Fuhrer when they published opinion pieces, saying that Trump and his pals encouraged Russia to help him win the last election and won’t mind helping him win the next. 

It’s important to note that the piece in The New York Times was clearly labeled “opinion,” and posited the idea that the Russians had agreed to help Trump in 2016, in return for a change in U.S. foreign policy. 

The two pieces in the Post are also prominently labeled “opinion.” One is titled, “Trump: I can win reelection with just my base.” The second warns that the Russians will attack our elections again, and carries the title, “Trump just invited another Russian attack. Mitch McConnell is making one more likely.” 

You should be much more worried about Trump’s sustained attacks on the free press than you are about contracting the coronavirus.

 

* 

THEN AGAIN, Trump has his market mojo back – like Monday – but not Tuesday – or last Friday. 

The Dow Jones soared a little more than 1,100 points on Wednesday. Time for some tangerine-tinted Trump bragging.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (9/25/21): In editing this blog, I note that my prediction on negotiating with the Taliban was spot on; as for worrying more about attacks on the free press than contracting the coronavirus, I got that one wrong. 

In fact, my wife and I both got COVID-19. 

But attacks on the free press? Yeah, Trump was then, and remains, eight months out of office, still nuts.

___ 

 

3/5/20: Okay, Trump’s market mojo is not back. The Dow Jones average dives again. This time the drop is 970 points. 

Part of the problem is that the president has zero understanding of the science related to the virus outbreak. To make matters worse, he denies what experts are saying. This week he insisted that the World Health Organization was wrong when it said the death rate from the virus was around 3.4%. Dr. Zero (as we now like to refer to the man) wanted us all to know. We needn’t worry. 

Not with Dr. Zero prescribing just the medicine we needed if we wanted to survive!

 

_____________________ 

“This is just my hunch...it’s very mild.” 

Dr. Zero – President Trump

_____________________

In a conference with Dr. Sean Hannity, on Fox News, Dr. Zero explained: “Now, this is just my hunch ... based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this [virus], and it’s very mild.” 

Later, Dr. Zero scratched his chin thoughtfully and assured Dr. Hannity that he had a hunch the death toll was only 1%. In fact, Dr. Zero suggested that this virus was so not a big deal that a lot of people got better, “by, you know, sitting around and even going to work.” 

In other words, get your coughin’ ass back to the factory, office, store – or school! 

Don’t worry about spraying germs on fellow employees! Only a 1 in 100 chance you kill any of them! 

Dr. Zero offered similar spot-on advice last week when he said we had only 15 cases in the whole country, thanks to his fine work, and promised that we were headed toward zero. Today a twelfth American died and the number of known cases rose to 225. A cruise ship remains anchored off the coast of California, with 20 suspected cases aboard. People ashore were so excited about being coughed on by debarking passengers that it was decided to fly in medical supplies by helicopter and lower them with a winch. 

In fact, Dr. Zero suddenly seemed more concerned about this “very mild” virus than he had been before and said if it was up to him, he’d order the 3,000 passengers and crew to stay aboard that boat. 

Cough, cough, cough.

How’s it going elsewhere – as the world tries to stop the spread? South Korea now has 6,284 cases. China reports 80,500, with 3,042 deaths. The airlines are seeing business evaporate. Costco reports sales are up as worried shoppers stock up on hand sanitizer, baby wipes and water filtration systems – plus extra food – so that when everyone else is dead, they’ll still have bags of potato chips to live on and they can survive. On Amazon, some scammer is offering eight-ounce bottles of Purell hand sanitizer for the bargain price of $90. Cheap, when you figure some sick, dumb bastard is going to show up where you work and cough in your face. 

Around the world there have been more than 98,000 cases. There have been 3,386 deaths and 6,273 patients are in serious or critical condition. There were only 580 known cases on January 22.

 

The numbers since then: 

January 29:           7,813

February 5:          28,266

February 12:        59,285

February 19:        75,500

February 26:        81,820

March 4:              95,308

 

John Hopkins University has a most interesting interactive map (screen capture below). The spread in Europe is quite pronounced in just the last few days. Iran is having a difficult time getting a grip on the disease. 

And in the U.S., it could be the barn door was left open too long and the COVID-19 horse is on the loose. 

Cough, cough, cough. 

POSTSCRIPT: No matter how many months or years or decades Dr. Zero might spend in office he’s always going to blame his problems on President Obama. 

Last seen leaving Washington D.C. on January 20, 2017. 

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Dr. Zero said he and his virus-fighting team had been slow getting test kits out to people who might be sick, because the first kits they did send out didn’t work. So they had to start over. Definitely, Obama’s fault! Besides, Dr. Zero complained, any spread of the virus was due to the fact that, “The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing. And we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion.” 

Alas, As ABC and other news outlets quickly pointed out, 

1.     Dr. Zero has had three years to change any rulings he might have wanted to change. 

2.     And, in fact, there was no “decision” made by the Obama administration that had to be changed. 

3.     The Obama administration suggested limits on testing, so that doctors didn’t give patients tests they didn’t need, and jack up their bills. 

4.     Those tests had nothing to do with COVID-19. 

5.     No decision was involved. A “discussion paper” was left behind for Trump and his advisors to consider once they took charge.

 

As in 1,142 days ago. 

Cough, cough, cough.

___

3/6/20: Friday was another rough day for Dr. Zero (a.k.a. President Trump). First, the stock market continued to have chills and fell 256 points. 

At the close Friday, the Dow Jones stood at 25,865. That left the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite all down at least 10% since February 24, putting them in “correction territory.”

 

* 

IN THE MEANTIME, the spread of COVID-19 continued to baffle Dr. Zero and his virus-fighting team. New cases popped up in several more states. The total rose to 307, and the death toll to 17. Friday morning, it was announced that Dr. Zero would not be stopping by the headquarters of Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta – on his way to Mar-a-Lago for a restful weekend. 

Why no stop, reporters wondered, since the schedule Thursday night said there would be one?

 

____________________ 

“I told Mike not to be complimentary of the governor, because that governor is a snake, okay, Inslee.” 

Dr. Zero

____________________ 

 

The White House explained: “The CDC has been proactive and prepared since the very beginning and the president does not want to interfere with the CDC’s mission to protect the health and welfare of their people and the agency.” 

See. Dr. Zero had the best possible reasons not to stop and disrupt the fine work CDC was doing. 

Then, a change of plans! Not long after the trip was canceled, for the best of reasons, Trump told reporters that the trip might be on again – for the best of reasons. “They thought there was a problem at CDC with somebody that had the virus,” Dr. Zero explained. “It turned out negative so we are seeing if we can do it. They’ve tested the person fully and it was a negative test. So I may be going. We’re going to see if they can turn it around with Secret Service. We may be going.” 

And go he did! For the best of reasons. Namely a photo op that might make him look like he was involved. 

The change, on top of the other change, really did cause confusion at CDC, as officials scrambled to make arrangements. But then, there he was. The great Dr. Zero, laser-focused on the COVID-19 case. At times he asked penetrating questions, like, what did the medical people think of a Fox News town hall he participated in Thursday night? “How was the show last night?” he asked. “Did it get good ratings by the way?” 

Really. He asked. 

Even better, Dr. Zero decided he could help CDC out by talking about the spread of the virus in Washington State, where most of the deaths have occurred. He wanted reporters to spread the word. He had sent Vice President Pence out to the coast to examine the situation firsthand. Pence had met with Gov. Jay Inslee to ask what he might need in the way of help. “All of America’s hearts are with you,” Mr. Pence said. (Mr. Pence actually has a heart, unlike his boss.) 

To make a point about safety, the VP and the governor elbow-bumped rather than shake hands. Mr. Inslee said that it was nice to know about all those hearts being with the people of his state, but added that doctors needed more testing kits. 

He explained later that the State of Washington would pick up the cost of testing for those who lacked health insurance. State workers’ compensation rules would be adjusted to provide for healthcare workers and first responders who were forced into quarantine as a result of the risks of their jobs. 

Dr. Zero was ready with his own heartfelt response. “I told Mike not to be complimentary of the governor,” Trump told reporters trailing him at CDC, “because that governor is a snake, okay, Inslee. I said if you’re nice to him he will take advantage ... Let me just tell you, we have a lot of problems with the governor, the governor of Washington ... so Mike may be happy with him, but I’m not.” 

Dr. Zero was having a tough week and people weren’t calling him the greatest president ever. And he kept venting.

 

If we came up with a cure today and tomorrow everything is gone and you went up to this governor, who’s not a good governor by the way, if you went up to this governor and you said to him, “How did Trump do?” He’d say, “He did a terrible job.”...it makes no difference.

 

I told Mike that would happen, I said no matter how nice you are, he’s no good, that’s the way I feel.

 

Having vented his fury, the good Dr. Zero was off to Mar-a-Lago yet again, where he would treat any patient who could afford the $450,000 initiation fee to join him at his private club.

 

* 

ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY, the situation was much the same. Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina weighed in on the threat. “It’s clear,” he said, that, “North Carolina and other states need more test kits from the CDC.” In fact, he labeled it “a critical need.” Gov. Ned Lamont, of Connecticut, where 18 people had been tested – and 13 cleared – with five cases pending – also said Connecticut needed more kits. Health officials in New York City pleaded for kits, warning that a shortage was impeding their ability to “beat back” the spread of COVID. By Friday night, New York State had 33 confirmed cases, with five patients hospitalized, and 4,000 people in quarantine. 

 

“America should stay at work.” 

Dr. Zero’s economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, insisted everything was going pretty great! “I don’t want to downplay anything,” he said during an appearance on CNBC. “Worry about the effect on human beings, for heaven’s sake. But I’m just saying, let’s not overreact. In many ways, America should stay at work.” 

Cough, cough, cough. 

For good measure, he added, “We don’t actually know what the magnitude of the virus is going to be, although frankly so far it looks relatively contained.” 

Cough!!!!!!

___ 

 

3/7/20: Dr. Zero will be resting at Mar-a-Lago today and counting up all the cash he’s raking in every time he visits. It turns out, after documents are pried loose under a Freedom of Information Act request, that the Trump Organization has been charging fat fees for Secret Service Agents to stay at Trump properties. 

In fact, call those fees “obese.” 

For some reason, the federal government fought the FIA request for three years. Now we know. Trump’s companies have charged the Secret Service at least $628,000 for the privilege of guarding Dr. Zero at Dr. Zero’s own resorts. And this figure is based on partial documentation. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, for example, we know Trump has been charging $396.15 per night for comfy beds and chocolates on the pillows when agents stay at Mar-a-Lago.

 

* 

AS OF THIS AFTERNOON, the COVID-19 virus continues to spread. Thirty states have confirmed cases. Washington has 102 cases, California 79, New York 76, Texas 19, Nebraska 14. The District of Columbia reports its first presumptive case of COVID-19. A “critically ill” American passenger, and that passenger’s companion, are taken off the Grand Princess, the cruise ship parked off the coast of California. The other 3,000 passengers and crew are stranded in a giant floating petri dish. Another cruise ship bobs on the waters of San Diego harbor, with no one allowed ashore, while one passenger is tested. Israel is considering quarantining visitors from some parts of the United States, the first such ban aimed at the U.S. that would be put in place. 

According to Johns Hopkins, the U.S. has 401 confirmed cases and there have been 105,820 cases globally. South Korea has passed the 7,000 mark, Iran is heading for 6,000, Italy has an additional 1,247 cases confirmed in the last 24-hours. France has 949 cases and Germany 799. Just five days earlier both were reporting only 100. So COVID-19 still has long legs to run. Two resorts on the Maldives Islands report employees have tested positive after contact with an infected Italian tourist. Two French tourists were infected at other resorts in the Maldives, each infection opening up new pathways for the virus to spread. The worldwide death toll stands at 3,558. 

The dominos continue to topple in all directions. And not even Dr. Zero can predict when they might stop falling, or how deadly they’ll be when they do. Amtrak has canceled nonstop service between New York City and Washington D.C. A U.S. sailor in Italy is infected. The University of Washington says it will cancel in-person classes for 50,000 students. A Starbucks employee at a downtown store in Seattle has the virus. Stanford University is canceling in-person classes on Monday. Scheduled exams will be changed to take-home format. 

Don’t cough on your exam papers, young people! 

New rows of dominos are lined up every hour and the first ones are knocked over. In London, a gang of thugs attacks a college student from Singapore. “I don’t want your coronavirus in my country,” one attacker shouts. In Denmark, people are advised not to shake hands. A church group from Alabama, hoping to visit sites in the Holy Land, is quarantined outside Bethlehem. Other Americans are cut off in Egypt. The cruise ship Costa Fortuna has been turned away from ports in Thailand and Malaysia on fears of infection. The South by Southwest music and technology festival which last year attracted 400,000 visitors to Austin, Texas, is canceled. The Vatican has a confirmed COVID-19 case and several of Pope Francis’s “signature public events” are suspended. 

Iran is suspected of censoring the worst news about the outbreak, which President Trump may soon start wishing he could do.

 

* 

BUT, WHILE HE’S AT IT , his 2020 campaign has sued a third U.S. media outlet, CNN, again for something that was said in a piece clearly marked “opinion.” (See: 3/4/20.) 

Coming soon, if Dr. Zero can pull it off, with Mitch McConnell’s connivance: official government censorship. 

If Team Trump gets its way, here’s how next week’s news would read in a futuristic Trumpistan: “One American got sick this week with the coronavirus. But don’t worry. Dr. Zero was right there by her bedside. She was so happy to see him she recovered and went dancing down the hospital hallway.” Or: “Secret Service agents staying at Mar-a-Lago say the rooms they rented were the best ever! And so cheap! Such fluffy pillows!!” Or: “Dr. Zero weighed himself on the scale at Mar-a-Lago, during what was a rare visit, since he is always working for the American people. Press Secretary Grisham, who watched, says he is now 200 pounds of rock hard abs and muscle.” 

Finally, this headline and opening line:

 

ALL POLLS EXCEPT RASMUSSEN BANNED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE 

“President Trump announced that starting tomorrow all opinion polls, related to politics, other than Rasmussen, have been banned for spreading false and malicious stories about his popularity. According to Rasmussen, if the election were held today, Trump would defeat Joe Biden by 50,000,000 votes.” 

 

POSTSCRIPT: At least one attendee at the Conservative Political Action Convention, where Dr. Zero, himself, spoke, has tested positive. 

Which is certainly ironic.

___ 

 

3/8-11/20: What did I miss while I was off hiking in the Virginia mountains? When last I checked Sunday, Donald J. Trump, called “Dr. Zero” by all his biggest fans, was headed for the golf course. 

That made 264 days, since taking office, spent in golf spikes, baggy white polo shirt, khakis and red MAGA cap. 

____________________ 

“I would not be a president who took vacations.” 

Then-Candidate Trump

____________________ 

 

Just like he promised! 

In a June 2015 interview he said he’d be too busy, if elected, working for the American people, to play golf. “I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” he promised. “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.” 

I had to assume, by the time I got home Thursday, that the coronavirus problem was solved. On February 26, Dr. Zero said he didn’t think he’d need all the money Congress was allocating to fight the spread of COVID-19, because he was doing such a great job of deciding. He was deciding with fantastic skill. This was the most amazing deciding ever done by any president. The Democrats in Congress wanted to give him $8.5 billion to address the problem. Bah! He was only asking for $2.5 billion. He wouldn’t need all that money. He said we were heading for zero cases. 

I saw him say that with my liberal peepers. 

Plus, I had watched Trump talk to reporters (before heading off to Mar-a-Lago) during his visit to the Centers for Disease Control on March 6. He said none of the real doctors could believe how much he knew about this new virus. He would have made a great real doctor, himself. 

So, I got home on Thursday, after my walk in the mountains. And I rushed to check the stock market reports. I figured the stock market was soaring again. “I bet it’s up to 35,000,” I said to myself. 

And… 

“WTF!!!!!” I said in amazement. 

The market had taken a giant skid! I thought Dr. Zero had market magic in every finger and thumb and toe! The Dow had closed at 23,553 on Tuesday, down from 29,551 on February 12. 

It had plunged 6,000 points! 

 

Just a “fraud” perpetrated by the Deep State. 

As of Thursday morning, Johns Hopkins was reporting there had been 126,660 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide and 4,641 deaths. Italy’s caseload jumped to 12,462 and there were 827 deaths. Iran had 9,000 cases, but only 354 reported deaths. That number hadn’t changed for days – which may have something to do with authoritarian censorship, not miraculous medical care. South Korea had 7,869 cases. France, Germany, and Spain had all surpassed 2,000. 

But Dr. Zero said he had kept us all safe. So, I figured the U.S. must be down to about… 

“WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I screamed when I looked at the latest list. We had gone from 15 cases to 1,321. 

It got me thinking that Dr. Zero and some of his right-wing buddies were just a bunch of quacks. 

Still, Dr. Don and his good friend, Dr. Sean, on Fox News, kept insisting the liberal media was overreacting. Dr. Hannity said the coronavirus wasn’t much worse than the flu. In fact, Thursday night, Dr. Hannity called the whole COVID-19 mess a “fraud” perpetrated on the American people by the Deep State.

 

* 

FOR NOW, all we can do is look at the evidence before us. We can’t just pull medical diagnoses out of our asses. We know more than half the patients with confirmed cases have recovered. Of the 54,000 current sufferers, worldwide, 89% have what are considered to be “mild” cases. But 5,710 people are in “serious” or “critical” condition. So far, the fatality rate seems to be running at 1 in every 27 cases. If we count current patients, 1 in every 9.5 cases end up hospitalized. 

For seasonal flu, even in a really bad year, the hospitalization rate is 1 in every 563 cases. The death rate is 1 in every 750. 

Around the globe, the virus continues to spread, and economic damage snowballs. Wednesday night, an NBA game between the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma Thunder was postponed at the last minute, after one of the players warming up had a positive test result confirmed. The doctor for the Jazz came racing out to the court and ordered both teams to their locker rooms. By the time I headed for bed Thursday night the NBA had suspended its season. 

Problems continue to multiply. The Coachella Festival in California, which drew 600,000 music fans last year, was pushed back from April to October. “The whole live music industry,” said one executive, “is really being shaken and challenged by this.” Harvard cancelled in-person classes. Florida colleges began telling students to leave early for spring break. Mark Emmert, NCAA president, announced that all March Madness games would be closed to the general public. New Rochelle, New York, with a cluster of more than a hundred COVID-19 cases, was cordoned off by the National Guard. 

Still, the virus continued to find avenues to spread. Three TSA agents at an airport in San Jose, California tested positive. An Uber driver in New York City likewise. Chinese officials say new cases are falling. But visitors to Beijing must remain under quarantine for fourteen days. One Chinese citizen who traveled to the United States was found to have been infected here. Older Americans have been advised not to travel on airplanes. Most nursing homes are banning unnecessary visitors. Kentucky churches are being asked to cancel services. The two remaining Democrats vying for the presidential nomination decided not to hold rallies. 

But Dr. Zero is staying strong! He’s not going to worry about some liberal hoax. He’s going to keep holding his big rallies, because you know…this virus isn’t really any worse than the flu. 

Trump spoke briefly to the American people Wednesday evening. He wanted to reassure us all. He said his administration was doing great. They had this crisis covered. They were all over it, like germs on a toilet seat. I figured he was going to say we were headed for zero cases soon. Instead, he decided to ban flights to and from 26 European nations, for the next 30 days. He also said trade, and cargo would be banned. 

That didn’t even make sense. 

Not long after he finished his chat, the Trump campaign announced that it thought it might be a good idea to prove the coronavirus story was totally overblown by canceling all rallies scheduled in coming days. 

Also, Trump had to tweet-correct his own speech. Trade and cargo would not be banned. Because…yeah…that didn’t make any sense. 

Thursday came. The stock market opened again, and investors proved how reassuring the president’s speech had been, by panicking and starting a monster selloff. By the time the trading day was over, the Dow Jones average had fallen another 2,353 points, ending the session at 21,101.

___ 

 

3/12/20: It would seem we’re in for more wild and wooly days to come, both here and around the globe. For god’s sake, if Tom Hanks and his wife can be infected with COVID-19, who among us can be safe! 

This blogger happens to have three daughters in healthcare, including one who works at the Centers for Disease Control. All three are advising their parents not to go to crowded restaurants. That meant we skipped a planned dinner out with our daughter, Emily, the nurse, on Tuesday. As for our nurse practitioner daughter, who is moving to Portland, Oregon, to work for the University of Oregon’s medical training program, we elbow-bumped goodbye when we saw her Tuesday in Washington D.C., before driving home. 

When I visited Costco on Wednesday, I noticed the first hints of panic buying here in Southern Ohio. A crowd of anxious shoppers was gathered round an employee unloading a pallet of toilet paper. 

Not me, baby. I was there to panic-buy potato chips. Because if I’m going to die a hideous death, I want chips.

 

* 

THEN AGAIN, if you don’t believe in scientific evidence, you might want to contact either of two  big fans of Dr. Zero. Take your pick: Mr. Alex Jones of Infowars, recently arrested on a DUI charge, or Pastor Jim Bakker, who will always pray for people if he can profit. 

For $90, Jones will sell you a vial of 120 pills of his fine product DNA Force, which he swears will protect you from the virus. 

Rev. Bakker, who once spent five years in prison for fraud, will sell you a “Silver Solution” guaranteed to cure the virus. 

That’s assuming the Attorney General of Missouri doesn’t shut him down before Bakker can cash your check and send you his fine product. For only $40 you can have a 16-oz. bottle of Bakker’s elixir.

___ 

 

3/13/20: A reporter asked the president on Friday if he takes any responsibility for the slow rollout of testing in this country.

 

____________________ 

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all.” 

President Trump

____________________ 

 

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all,” he replied. “Because we were given a – a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn’t meant for this kind of – an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.” 

He’s only been in charge for the last 38 months. And he had a lot of important tweeting to do. (See: 3/15/20.)

 

* 

DR. ANTHONY S. FAUCI, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, also spoke with reporters Saturday. He was asked if he believed we had a grip on the spread of the coronavirus? “We have not reached our peak,” he admitted. “We will see more suffering and death, predominantly among the vulnerables in our society.”

___

3/14/20: If you were thinking maybe Dr. Donald J. Trump (commonly known as “Dr. Zero”) is a quack, the evidence is now irrefutable. 

This is the same Dr. Zero who told us the COVID-19 virus was no worse than the flu. Now, Dr. Zero has had to admit we face a National Emergency, “two big words,” as he put it when making the announcement yesterday.

 

____________________ 

“There are no good choices, but there are good decisions.” 

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan

____________________ 

 

And here, let us remember what may have been his worst prediction of all: We were sitting on 15 cases of the novel coronavirus on February 26. But thanks to him, we were headed for zero. 

There was no reason to worry whatsoever. 

(You can find that prediction in the official White House transcript, if you don’t believe me. This isn’t “Fake News.”)

As of Saturday evening, Johns Hopkins University has increased its running totals for worldwide COVID-19 cases to 156,099 (see above). The worldwide death toll now stood at 5,819, which would indicate a mortality rate of 3.7%. As for the United States approaching “zero,” we stand at 2,572 cases. Like Italy, we may be in for worse to come. Despite having shut down their entire economy, and told everyone to stay home, the Italians report 21,157 cases and 1,441 deaths. The situation in Iran is dire, with 12,729 cases and an admitted 611 dead. Iraqi citizens returning home from Iran say the situation is far worse. Iraq has sealed its border with Iran, except to its own citizens. 

The spread of the virus is so rapid that what Trump said Wednesday night, when he tried to reassure the nation, is already out of date. He said he wasn’t going to need to ban travelers from Ireland or the United Kingdom, even though the U.K. had more reported cases of COVID-19, than several countries included in the ban. The next day, Dr. Don defended his decision not to ban travel from the United Kingdom. He said the Brits were “doing a good job” of containing the virus. Less than 48-hours later, the U.K. had seen confirmed cases rise to 1,143. 

So, as of today, Dr. Trump has banned travelers from the United Kingdom, too. Same with travelers from Ireland. 

In fact, the president has been forced to admit that this virus is not just like the flu. He recommends today that if you don’t have to travel within the United States, you should stay home. 

Meanwhile, economic damage continues to spread across the world, and hamstring large sectors of the U.S. economy. The stock market plummeted more than 2,300 points on Thursday, rebounded almost 2,000 on Friday. The Dow ended Friday at 23,186, a drop of 6,365 points in a month. Trillions in equity have been wiped from the books. Cancellations of all kinds are drying up business. The local economy of Austin, Texas, suffered a $350 million hit when the South by Southwest Festival was canceled. That was without a single confirmed case in the city. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan may have said it best when she explained the decision to shut down city schools for six weeks: “There are no good choices, but there are good decisions.”

 

Travel bans round the world, and an expected slowdown in economic activity, caused oil prices to drop. It was good news for drivers (who have few places to go for the foreseeable future) but catastrophe for drilling companies. Benchmark U.S. crude oil fell to $31.50 per barrel on Friday. 

Nor is there any end in sight for the spread of the virus or the spread of the damage, both to health and economy. Saturday morning, my youngest daughter, Emily, a nurse in Columbus, Ohio told us the first confirmed case in the city had been revealed, a 49-year-old man who traveled on a Carnival cruise ship, the Valor. He left the ship on March 5, and has likely been infecting others since. The state has 26 confirmed cases, seven requiring hospitalizations and all Ohio public schools will be shut down for three weeks, starting Monday. 

The coronavirus is spreading rapidly around the world. Spain saw a jump of more than 2,000 cases this weekend. It was announced that a two-week state of emergency would be implemented, basically shutting down the country. At least five flights from England were alerted to the news in midair and turned around, rather than land passengers in a two-week quarantine. France, which had only a hundred confirmed cases on March 2, now has 3,672. The government has ordered closure of all non-essential businesses, starting at midnight. Even war-torn Syria has announced the closure of schools and universities to stem the spread of disease – at least all the schools and universities that haven’t been blown to bits during the long and bloody civil war.

 

There’s no end in sight and anyone who said this was “just like the flu” was ill-informed or obtuse. Dr. Trump decided he had better get tested, after his doctor said last night there was no need. The fact that two people who visited Mar-a-Lago last weekend and tested positive apparently convinced Dr. Trump this morning he had to get checked. Attorney General Bill Barr was already in self-quarantine. So, too, were Rona McDaniel, the chairwoman for the Republican National Committee, and her family, after Ms. McDaniel began experiencing fever and other flu-like symptoms. The Pentagon has put almost all domestic travel for service members and families on hold through May 11. The Archdiocese of New York announced it was canceling masses starting today, and the Boston Marathon has been postponed till September, the first such disruption in 124 years. The Masters Tournament has been postponed. Panic shopping has begun emptying shelves in groceries across the U.S. 

Toilet paper has been a flash point.

 

POSTSCRIPT: The State of New York has issued a “cease and desist” order to Alex Jones and Infowars. 

Officials warn Jones that he may no longer sell toothpaste, claiming that it will protect users from the COVID-19 virus. 

Also receiving a “cease and desist letter” for selling bogus products to protect against the novel coronavirus: Pastor Jim Bakker.

___ 

 

3/15/20: While you were snoozing safely in your bed, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in this country spiked from 2,726 yesterday evening to 3,244 this afternoon. In other words, we’re tracking like Spain and France. Both countries have basically shut down, like Italy. 

Or, to put it another way, Dr. Zero’s prediction that we were headed for zero cases has proven to be grossly misinformed.

It’s also interesting to look back at a time when Dr. Zero (a.k.a. Donald J. Trump) was just a TV-reality show schmuck running a scam university. In those days, if anything went wrong while Barack Obama was in charge, Trump was happy to attack. In 2014 he called Obama a “psycho”  when he allowed seven Americans who contracted Ebola in West Africa to return to the United States for care. Four other Americans ended up infected. One of those four died. So did one of the original seven. 

That was the extent of the “outbreak,” during which Trump predicted there would be “bedlam” in the streets. 

As for Dr. Zero now, vs. Citizen Donald then, Dr. Zero takes no responsibility for the current spread of COVID-19. He says Obama is to blame, even though Mr. Obama left office 1,151 days ago. 

In happier times, when all Citizen Donald had to do was tweet-bitch about Obama and claim he could prove his predecessor was born in Kenya, or on some other planet, Citizen Don had this to say about leadership in any endeavor: 

 

*

____________________ 

“I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and in bars. Whatever it takes to do that, that’s what I’d like to see.” 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

____________________ 

 

AS FOR BEING FOCUSED, Dr. Zero still seems more interested in stock market reports than numbers of sick and dying. The damage to the U.S. and world economies is going to be acute. The $160 billion sports industry in this country is paralyzed. Even the Golden Raspberries awards show has been cancelled – which means Dame Judi Dench won’t get a chance to “celebrate” a possible win in the category of “Worst Supporting Actor” in the musical mega-flop, “Cats.” The governments of Great Britain and Hong Kong have warned against travel to the United States. Lithuania has closed its borders to all foreigners. Israel has shuttered cafes, malls, movie theaters, and restaurants. Morocco has canceled all flights to and from 21 countries. Sudan has closed all schools and universities for a month. The government of Austria has shifted to emergency operating procedures, warning that freedom of movement will be “massively restricted.” The governor of Ohio warns it’s “absolutely possible” that schools could remain closed the remainder of the year. Hoboken, New Jersey has responded to the crisis by instituting a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, except for essential workers. We know the virus can spread quickly, with 27 residents and 25 healthcare workers at one nursing home in Kirkland, Washington infected. Italy is reporting more than 21,000 cases. But the more ominous news is this: among those cases there have been 1,441 deaths and 1,518 patients are currently being treated in intensive care units. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the voice of the Trump administration on the topic of containment (until he tells too many truths), made it clear this morning. “I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and in bars. Whatever it takes to do that, that’s what I’d like to see.” Indeed, Dr. Fauci said on CNN’s morning program, State of the Union, that he could not rule out a temporary lock-down across the country. 

So, what will Dr. Zero do or predict next? We do know, he decided to take a “Victory Lap” on Friday, after announcing a National Emergency. 

What the perpetually-clueless Dr. Zero did was sign a chart showing how the stock market soared after his speech. Then he sent it out to all his loyal followers. 

The accompanying note read: “The President would like to share the attached image with you, and passes along the following message: ‘From opening of press conference, biggest day in stock market history!’”

CLUELESS PEOPLE tend to bond together, which explains the link between Dr. Zero and Rep. Devin Nunes – who is definitely not a medical expert – or even a very smart member of Congress. 

On Fox News today, Rep. Nunes told host Maria Bartiromo that this was, in fact, a perfect time to get out and mingle with humanity. “There’s a lot of concerns with the economy here [in California] because people are scared to go out. But I will just say, one of the things you can do if you’re healthy, you and your family, it’s a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant.” 

You might not stay healthy, but, hey, you don’t want the economy to stall out with Trump in the White House, right!

___ 

 

3/16/20: No matter how fast Dr. Zero tries to run from reality, reality and the virus continue to gain.

 

____________________ 

Trump gives himself a “10” on a scale of 1-10.

____________________ 

 

As of this morning: the U.S. had 3,744 confirmed cases. That was 3,729 more than the president predicted. 

Now, just a few hours later, we have hit 4,093. 

Trump might like his ill-informed followers to keep believing this is only flu by another name. A recent estimate from the CDC, puts the mortality rate from COVID between 5x to 35x greater. 

There was never going to be any way anyone could completely stop this. The overarching problem has been that Dr. Zero was a month too slow in realizing the gravity of the threat. For instance, Trump was absolutely the last person running for president to accept the fact that holding large rallies might enhance the spread. Now, CDC is recommending no gatherings of more than 50 people, for the next eight weeks. That includes political rallies – and even weddings. 

While the president dawdled, governors and others stepped up and made hard choices, shutting down large swaths of the country. Trump didn’t want to do anything drastic because the stock market might dive, and he couldn’t brag about it going up anymore. Now it’s diving anyway. Schools have been ordered closed in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington D.C., Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

 

On Sunday, the Federal Reserve made an emergency decision to slash interest rates to nearly zero and take a number of steps to prop up the U.S. economy, which will be staggered in weeks ahead. 

Dr. Zero spoke for several minutes yesterday, as part of a news conference, and said he was “thrilled” by the Fed’s decision. 

He said Wall Street would be very happy. 

Dr. Zero really cares about Wall Street. 

While the number of infected persons rose dramatically, the economy took hit after hit. New York City shut down its school system, the largest in the country. The governor of Ohio ordered bars and restaurants to close starting Sunday at 9 p.m. A sliver of good news: a patron at the Tailgate Grill in North Canton, Ohio left a $900 tip, to be split between the nine people working when he stopped in for a final drink. California and Massachusetts followed suit in closing bars and restaurants. The governor of California ordered “entertainment venues” to shut down and asked people over age 65 to “self-isolate.” Connecticut shut down all gyms, movie theaters and casinos. 

Thousands gathered for a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago on Sunday. By nightfall Illinois had joined the list of states closing bars and restaurants. “There are no easy decisions left to make as we address this unprecedented crisis,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker explained to the people of his state. “As your governor,” he said, he could not allow the “gravity of these decisions” to dissuade him “from taking the measures that the science and the experts say will keep people safe.” 

Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts explained his decision to close so many businesses, saying the virus was “incredibly contagious.” 

NBA star Karl-Anthony Townes decided to do his part and donated $100,000 to the Mayo Clinic to assist with testing. 

Meanwhile, Trump focused during his talk on Sunday on how unfair the free press was being to him. 

The nation finds itself in uncharted territory, and the president is whining, not winning. Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach have closed their beaches. The Kennedy Space Center is closed. Columbus, Ohio shut down all parks. Chick-fil-A has announced it will be closing dining room seating. The price of Brent crude oil, the world benchmark, fell to $31.83 per barrel, on slumping demand. Gasoline prices will be going down, which consumers will like. But many drilling outfits in the U.S. will be idled since that’s below their break-even point. Two ER doctors in the U.S. have fallen ill with the coronavirus and are in critical condition.

 

The president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, William Jacquis, offers these frank words of warning: 

I am deeply saddened by this news, but not surprised. As emergency physicians, we know the risks of our calling. We stand united with our colleagues and our thoughts and prayers for a full and speedy recovery are with each of them and their families.

 

It is my hope that these colleagues and their cases serve as a reminder to each of us to stay vigilant. This virus is dangerous, and its impact is still unfolding. 

 

Even Mar-a-Lago has been shut down for a deep cleaning, after several people who partied with the president there, weekend before last, tested positive for COVID-19. 

Worldwide, the news is mostly grim. Italy saw a spike of more than 3,500 COVID cases Sunday, bringing the total number of infections to 24,000, and then spiked again today, to 28,000. Iran has almost 15,000. The death toll, globally, has topped 7,000. In France, health experts warn that the situation is “deteriorating very quickly.” Air France and British Airways announced they were cutting flights by 80 percent. Massive layoffs are sure to follow. Germany sealed its borders and the German Minister of Economics warned that the nation’s economy was going to contract. The only question was by how much. The Czech Republic, Cyprus, Poland and Slovakia have joined a growing list of countries banning foreign travelers. The number of confirmed cases in Spain soars to 9,400. Germany has nearly 6,700. Switzerland, a nation of less than nine million people, has 2,200 cases. By comparison, Russia has only 90, although you know Vladimir Putin would never allow the truth to emerge if there were more. China, South Korea, and Singapore seem to have stemmed the spread. So there’s hope; but those nations are worried that their citizens, returning from Europe and the United States, will bring the infection with them. 

And this worrisome sign: the Chinese economy is expected to contract in the first quarter of the year, for the first time since 1989. Retail sales for the first two months fell a staggering 20.5%. That was much, much worse than a predicted 4% drop. Industrial output fell by 13.5%. 

As Quartz reported this morning, 

“The impact of the coronavirus on consumption has really started since late January. Almost the whole February saw retail sales halted. Apart from daily necessities and food, other categories of retail goods have all been impacted hugely by the epidemic,” Terry Hong, an analyst with Chinese brokerage Guotai Junan International, told Quartz. He also expects retail sales for March to continue declining, and the first half of the year to sustain “significant impact” from the virus.

 

Significant damage in this country is almost certainly on the way, and one thing is sure if it occurs. 

Dr. Zero will say it wasn’t his fault. 

Asked in today’s press conference how he thought he and his administration were doing in addressing the coronavirus crisis, Dr. Zero went high for once instead of low. Trump gave himself a “10,” on a scale of 1-10, 10 being highest. 

Of course, he did.

___ 

 

3/17/20: There’s not much left to close. That means the news today is brief. We started Monday with 3,774 known coronavirus cases in the U.S. to report. As of this morning, Johns Hopkins reported 4,661. 

That number rose to 5,702 when I checked at 2:26 p.m. and will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. New York State, alone, reports more than 1,300 confirmed cases. 

Schools in 38 states are closed. Individual districts in the other twelve states have turned out the lights until further notice. According to Education Week, more than 74,000 of the nation’s 98,000 schools are shut.

*

 

Already swimming in red ink. 

LAWMAKERS AND THE PRESIDENT remain divided over what should be done to help the economy avoid plunging into recession. One idea being floated to stave off a meltdown is to give every adult $1,000 to spend. If we estimate that there are 270 million Americans, age 18 and up, the cost would be $270 billion. 

The problem, of course, is that Trump and his band of fiscal fools have already ballooned the federal deficit since taking charge – and future deficits are projected to remain high through at least 2030. 

And that’s assuming GDP growth of three percent or more per year. 

That level has not been achieved in three years under Trump. Now we’re certain to miss that mark again in 2020, by a wide margin. We know that in the first five months of Fiscal Year 2020, even before the crisis hit, the federal deficit had increased by 14.8 percent, rising from $544.2 billion in FY 2019 to $624.5 billion. 

Now our leaders are faced with trying to goose spending to avoid falling into an even deeper recession and we’re already swimming in red ink. 

Deficits under Trump have already doubled: 

FY 2016: $587 billion (last year under President Obama). 

FY 2017: $666 billion (much of this deficit was cooked into the books before Trump took charge). 

FY 2018: $779 billion.

FY 2019: $984 billion.

FY 2020: $1 trillion, estimated (and this was before the COVID-19 outbreak).

FY 2021: $1.1 trillion, estimated.

 

By comparison, we have the “pie in the sky” thinking of the first budget submitted by the Trump administration. The federal deficit was predicted to fall by 2021 to only $456 billion. Current projections from the Congressional Budgeting Office project deficits averaging $1.3 trillion annually, until 2030.

___ 

 

3/18/20: Dr. Zero (a.k.a. President Trump) coughed up another colossal lie yesterday. After spending weeks insisting that the coronavirus was no big deal – and the media and the Democrats were terrible because they said it was – he changed his tune on Tuesday. He went from humming “Pop Goes the Weasel” to trying to sing opera. And he has no talent for opera.

 

____________________ 

“This is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” 

President Trump

____________________ 

 

“This is a pandemic,” he told reporters on Tuesday. They already knew that. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” In other words, Dr. Zero was claiming he was way ahead of everyone else. 

Yet, we know, if we are not nincompoops, that it was three weeks ago that Dr. Zero earned his sobriquet. It was then he predicted that in a “couple of days,” the U.S. would see cases of the virus drop to zero. 

As of this evening, the United States has 7,769 confirmed cases. As testing finally ramps up, that number will go higher. 

Trump’s prediction of “zero” cases was wildly off target, and not the prediction a man who knew a pandemic was coming (which he now says he knew) would have made.

 

* 

WITH EACH PASSING MINUTE, the economic damage piles higher. The airline industry is running empty planes. Restaurants have chairs piled atop tables and closed signs on front doors. Movie theaters are dark. No popcorn is popped. No sodas are poured. No Milk Duds (Mr. Blogger’s go-to movie snack) are chewed and stuck to patrons’ teeth. ESPN is showing reruns of old college basketball games. Except for bull riding that’s about all they’ve got to offer. Schools in 39 states are closed. An estimated 41.7 million students are stuck at home, as are millions of parents who would normally be at work. On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin warned GOP lawmakers that short of strong federal intervention, unemployment could spike to 20 percent.

___ 

 

3/19/20: The coronavirus continues to spread. Italy has almost 41,000 cases and 3,400 deaths. Cases have surged in Iran (18,000), Spain (18,000), Germany (15,000) and the United States, as well as other countries. The world total stands at 243,000 and nearly 10,000 deaths. 

At 11:13 a.m. today, the U.S. had 9,415 confirmed cases, 9,400 more than Dr. Zero predicted on Feb. 26. 

But when I checked back before posting this at 9:13 p.m., that number had surged to 13,678.

 

____________________ 

“Perhaps that’s been the story of life.” 

Dr. Zero

____________________ 

 

If you wanted to encapsulate President Trump’s grasp of the crisis in just a couple of quotes, here would be one. When a reporter asked what he thought yesterday about reports that rich and well-connected individuals were able to get tested, when sick patients who might be infected could not, here was his answer. “You’d have to ask them [those getting tested] that question,” he said. “Perhaps that’s been the story of life. That does happen on occasion, and I’ve noticed where some people have been tested fairly quickly.” 

It was the verbal equivalent of a not-my-problem shrug. 

Then you had the typical Trumpian attempt to dodge any criticism: “You’d have to ask them.”

 

* 

“The only thing we weren’t prepared for was the media.” 

TODAY, DR. ZERO stepped before the press again, flanked by leaders of his coronavirus-fighting team. Since he was calling himself a “wartime president,” he was asked about shortages of safety gear in hospitals across the country. He had invoked the Defense Production Act, which allows a president to demand that manufacturers shift to meeting wartime needs. Why wasn’t he getting medical supplies to the people fighting on the front lines? 

“Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work,” Dr. Zero replied, dodging as much responsibility as possible, “and they are doing a lot of this work. The Federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.” 

Sure. Wartime president. 

And you thought he might get ammunition to the troops! 

Rather than focus on getting bullets to the soldiers, Trump wasted a chunk of his press conference blasting the free press, mainly because the free press fails to praise him. His irritation arose when Kristen Welker of NBC asked him why the White House was so unprepared to implement widespread testing, especially since Trump claimed recently he had known all along a pandemic was coming. 

“We were very prepared,” Trump replied. “The only thing we weren’t prepared for was the media. The media has not treated it fairly. I’ll tell you how prepared I was,” he continued. “I called for a ban from people coming in from China long before anybody thought it was” necessary. “In fact, it was your network – I believe they called me a racist because I did that. It was many of the people in the room, they called me racist and other words because I did that.” 

At that moment, only fools could fail to notice. Being called a “racist,” a “raconteur” or a “race car driver” would be irrelevant if the matter at hand was ramping up testing. You could ramp up testing in any case. 

And Dr. Zero had failed to ramp up testing – because Dr. Zero was the greatest fool of all. As recently as February 26, he made it clear he didn’t believe testing was going to be necessary. He had closed off travel from China. That was the magic bullet to fire. We wouldn’t need testing.

 

Another week went to waste. Dr. Zero was still patting himself on the back. On March 5, the president tweet-congratulated himself: “With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and 3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11 deaths.” 

Finally, let’s be clear. The media couldn’t stop the government from testing more people. 

All the media did was report on the testing. 

Dr. Zero screwed the pooch, not the free press.

 

* 

Like a “ghost town.” 

THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE continues to come in ripples and waves. The Big Three automakers are shutting down North American production until at least March 30. The New York City Metropolitan Opera has laid off chorus, singers, and musicians. The film industry estimates 125,000 jobs will be temporarily lost. Marriott International plans to furlough tens of thousands of workers. Two other hotel chains have laid off 50% and 80% of their employees. A coffee shop company in Seattle, a Starbucks competitor, is keeping on 39 of 189 employees. The Carson’s Cookie Fix Bakery in Omaha cut a number of bakers. A Minnesota cabinet-making company threw in the hammer and saw and sent all 140 workers home. The Philadelphia International Airport plans to lay off as many as 1,000 of its 1,400 subcontractors. The Port of Los Angeles is sending 145 truck drivers home, as shipments from around the world are halted. The port, says one worker, is like a “ghost town” with almost no activity of any kind. 

Predictions for the coming months have turned grim. As many as 3,000,000 jobs could be lost by June. S&P Global warns, “While economic data for March is just starting to be released, the severity of the blow from the coronavirus leads us to believe that the U.S. is entering recession – if not already in one.” The economy could shrink by 1% in the first quarter of this year, and 6% in the second. Growth for the year had already been expected to slow. Goldman Sachs predicts a recession, but not one so pronounced as in 2008-2009. Kevin Hassert, a former Trump economic advisor, has a sunnier view of how the U.S. economy will fare, but does say, “The odds of a global recession are close to 100% right now.”

___ 

 

3/20-21/20: President Trump continues to flail away as the coronavirus spreads and the U.S. economy tanks. He can’t lie his way out of this mess because the damage is clear and omnipresent. 

 

____________________ 

The ghost of Herbert Hoover is rattling his chains.

____________________  

Hoover didn't cause the Great Depression. But his mistakes made it worse.

As of 11:43 a.m. on Saturday, the U.S. has 19,931 confirmed cases of COVID-19, exactly 19,916 more than Dr. Zero predicted on February 26. We don’t have a “pretty close to airtight” grip on the disease as Larry Kudlow, White House economic adviser said the same day. We don’t have much of a grip at all. And this disease isn’t like a common cold, as Rush Limbaugh claimed. Nor is it something that “should be compared to the flu. Because at worst, at worst, worst case scenario it could be the flu,” as a guest on Sean Hannity’s show said fifteen days ago. 

Dr. Zero can’t blame Obama this time – although he’s tried. He can’t brag about how the stock market is going up because of him, and if we elect Democrats, the market will tank. The market has tanked. And he’s in charge. The ghost of Herbert Hoover is now rattling his chains. 

Dr. Zero can’t blame the media for his problems – although he tries – because the media folks don’t determine how soon, or how aggressively the government starts testing for COVID-19. The president fumbled the ball weeks ago. Reporters didn’t rip the ball from his grip. The media doesn’t control how many ventilators hospitals have or whether doctors and nurses have the safety equipment they need. The free press doesn’t decide how much financial aid to get to waves of workers who are suddenly unemployed. Trump can determine all of that; and, to this point, he has failed. 

Let’s start with the last. The U.S. Senate, under the guidance of Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell is trying to get a vote on a rescue package – that, as of now, has a price tag of $1 trillion. Kudlow – he of “pretty close to airtight control” fame – now says the package may need to be much larger, perhaps $2 trillion. 

The problem is clear. 

The projected federal deficit for this year was $1 trillion before the crisis. That was assuming solid three percent growth. The budget was already been blown. 

And may we take a moment to mention the incredible hypocrisy of those on the right? When it looked as if Bernie Sanders was going to be the Democratic nominee for president, we heard the howling from Tucker Carlson, Judge Jeanine Pirro, and the rest of that zany Fox News crew. The U.S. was going to end up like Venezuela! Socialism would rot our children’s brains. Socialists are homicidal maniacs. Only Mitch and Donald and the GOP could save us from a terrible fate. 

Now, McConnell thinks we need to pass out checks to most Americans – “socialism” by any other name. The plan is still in the works, and to say that fiscal conservatives are having trouble swallowing the medicine McConnell wants them to take, is a fantastic understatement. Most adult taxpayers would get checks for $1,200. Married couples, filing jointly, would get $2,400. Some adults would get only $600. A family of six, with four children, aged 17 or younger, would get an extra $2,000 ($500 per child). But not so fast. If you made more than $75,000 last year and you’re single, or more than $150,000, and you’re married, you’ll get less – and at some point, depending on how much you made, you’ll get zero. 

Plus, the McConnell plan is to bail out all kinds of businesses that find themselves in trouble. That goes double for businesses that can afford high-priced lobbyists to roam the halls of Congress (at least when social distancing is not in play) and fight for what they need.

 

* 

TO BE FAIR, Dr. Zero is not to blame for a large percentage of this mess – although we know if Hillary had won the election, and this happened on her watch, he’d be blasting her at every chance. 

So far, what are the damages? First, the coronavirus caseload: worldwide, as of 3:43 a.m. on Saturday morning, there were 275,452 confirmed cases. Less than ten hours later, that number has grown to 287,239. China, if Chinese communist officials can be believed (they can’t), has nearly halted the spread. Italy has 47,021 confirmed cases and 4,032 deaths. Spain has 25,374 and 1,375. Iran has 20,610 and 1,566. And those mortality rates are what rattle healthcare experts. By comparison, Germany, with 21,652 confirmed cases, reports only 73 deaths. The United States is in sixth place: 19,931 cases, with roughly 190 dead (if we use the figure from Johns Hopkins). 

Worldometers, has higher totals but the websites are usually more or less in sync, the only real difference being when they update. According to the latter the U.S. now has 22,132 cases, with 282 dead.

In the early stages of the spread, Dr. Zero and his team failed to do enough testing.
Each infected person can create a lengthy chain of transmissions.
And each case identified early can have a huge positive effect.

 

* 

WITH EACH PASSING HOUR, the damage increases. Worst-case predictions one day prove rosy the next. A headline Saturday, from Newsweek, sums it up: GOVERNORS LOCKDOWN A QUARTER OF THE U.S. ECONOMY AS AMERICA HURTLES TOWARD RECESSION. Some experts fear the U.S. has lost two million jobs in the last week. “Recession is now unavoidable,” analysts at ING Bank warned Friday. “Our current best guess,” they said, “is for the economy to contract by around 10 percent in the second quarter although even this figure is looking increasingly too optimistic.” 

The bad news piles up. As Newsweek notes, California, New York, and Illinois are locked down. If they were nations, they would represent the fifth, twelfth and twenty-second largest economies in the world. Florida, where tourism brings in $40 billion annually, is in store for a massive hit. The governor has ordered “all beaches, movie theaters, concert houses, auditoriums, playhouses, bowling alleys, arcades, gymnasiums and fitness studios to close in Palm Beach County and neighboring Broward County.” Here in Hamilton County, Ohio, jury trials have been halted. The Kentucky Derby is likely to be postponed or run without spectators. That would put a huge dent in the “Big, Weird Hats for Ladies industry.” Home sales, which hit a 13-year high in February, have been slowed by, among other problems, a bottleneck in the supply of marble for countertops, which come from Italy. Walmart if handing out small cash bonuses to employees, and the company that runs Olive Garden and Outback Steakhouse restaurants has promised to pay all 190,000 hourly employees two week’s wages if they are laid off. Abercrombie & Fitch has closed all its stores for the week. 

The Trump Organization itself has laid off workers at hotels in Washington and New York City and at golf courses across the land. In Washington D.C., where occupancy had tumbled to only 5%, 160 workers were handed pink slips. In New York, the carnage was not as severe, but 51 workers were let go. In fact, with Trump so heavily invested in tourism-related hotels and golf resorts, and many of his properties carrying significant mortgage debt, it’s possible that he will be in a position to order the federal government he runs to bail himself out. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: South Korea seems to have slowed the spread of COVID-19 by means of aggressive testing: 300,000 tests so far. 

The U.S., with six times the population has apparently tested only 170,000 individuals to this point. 

Asked yesterday, if the U.S. had the needed testing capacity in this crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted, “We are not there yet.”

___

HERE WE TRANSFER THE STORY OF DONALD J. TRUMP TO A NEW POST.