This week the president went from peddling deadly hydroxychloroquine as a game changer to promoting the idea of bleach taken internally as a cure. It will also kill you, but more quickly.

The next day, Trump tells us he was being sarcastic, as his worst remarks, like roughing up protesters, loving Wikileaks, wanting to stay in office for 10 years, all are when challenged. For those who dont process irony, Lysol issued an immediate warning not to ingest its productin case the skull and crossbones on the container isnt enough.

As for the phony cure, Trump was unapologetic. Obviously there have been some very good reports and perhaps this ones not a good reportbut well be looking at it.

Thats where we are, four months into a pandemic everyone but the president saw coming, Trump is acting out the movie Groundhog Day in reverse. Instead of learning and growing like Bill Murrays Phil Connors, Trump is getting dumber and shrinking before our eyes. In rushing to end restrictions, Trumps repeating the mistakes he made during the lost weeks of winter when, stuck in a protective crouch, he cost the country lives.

Hes in denial again as he races to open businesses, essential and not, by May 1, in hopes of resurrecting the Dow (buy on the dip!), lowering unemployment, raising his poll numbers, and throwing open the doors to his shuttered hotel down Pennsylvania Avenuethe one his sons are hoping the federal government will give a break. If the president moves fast enough, it could be in time for his wealthy supporters to spend their outsized winnings from the stimulus bill on $25 craft cocktails.

Theres another victim of the hydroxychloroquine infomercial in addition to the 28 percent of 396 veterans treated with hydroxychloroquine whose hearts failed, as opposed to the 11 percent untreated who did not. Its the country, desperate for a vaccine. For not diverting precious time and resources to legitimizing Trumps game changer, Dr. Rick Bright, the highly experienced vaccine developer running the agency racing to find one, was removed from his job.

Expertise is worthless, especially if it clashes with revenge in this White House, as we learned this week from reporting that revealed Trumps first director of the pandemic task force had no relevant experience whatsoever. He was a breeder of Labradoodles.

The bleach gambit may be the moment when the presidents followers finally realize theyre smarter and mentally healthier than he is. The country has devolved into two camps. On one side are stir crazy people with chapped hands and a few extra pounds; theyre drinking at all hours, and theyre fuzzy on what time it is.

Still by more than 80 percent, they agree with experts that the better path is to stay home for now. Theyre deeply worried about the economy but also believe that to bring back 26 million lost jobs, the virus must first be contained.

The other group is taking its cues from the president, who feels its high time to get our beautiful economy, the likes of which no one has ever seen before, back on track. Hes joined by a number of governors from GOP states, like Georgias Brian Kemp, overenthusiastic even by Trumps loose standards, but enabled by him. Kemp freed his citizens as of Friday to roll a four-bagger, sit for a tattoo, or get a blow-dry even if it means risking that the next months appointment might be in the basement of a funeral home.

Then theres the voluble Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, who believes if gamblers all take long showers before hitting the slots, the Strip will light up again. She offered her constituents as a control group to see if her strategy works. Amplifying all is 20 percent of the citizenry, great people who like Trump, demonstrating in full Charlottesville regalia, and who want to be liberated immediately.

Of course, the latter group has more sway with the president. And now it has legal backup. Trumps Attorney General Bill Barr, with the largest law firm in the country on retainer, told radio host Hugh Hewitt that if his jawboning against house arrest wasnt successful, he would file in favor of plaintiffs suing to have restrictions lifted.

Trump gets more antic by the day, apropos of nothing squeezing in some campaigning against Joe Biden, the sleepy guy in the basement, and slamming the most popular governor in the country, Marylands Larry Hogan, for stupidly buying testing materials from South Korea.

He relishes taking questions for the thrill of cutting off and insulting reporters, particularly women, whom he tells dont talk to me, lower your voice, and relax. He lectures them about doctors never seeing anything like his handling of the virus and sulks that if he provided 325 million tests, his antagonists would ask for more.

The press is an easier enemy to quell than the virus. In a piece of North Korean theater, Trump summoned his rarely seen director of the Center for Disease Control, Dr. Robert Redfield, to the podium to recant a quote in The Washington Post warning that opening early would result in a second and more difficult wave of cases in the fall. Redfield went to the microphone but couldnt, confirming that he was quoted accurately. Watch for him to be banished like Dr. Bright.

One job thats safe is Dr. Deborah Birx, as long as shes willing to sit placidly when Trump turns to her for approval of his sarcastic life-hack using bleach and UV rays. When asked how Kemp could justify opening up massage parlors, Dr. Birx answered he would be creative. How about I cant think of any, it cant be done? White lies are black when lives are at stake. Im waiting for her riffMonday on how a waitress is going to hurl a burger to a table six feet away.

Trump obviously prefers Dr. Birxs musical stylings to Faucis Brooklyn truth. In a surprising departure, Trump broke with Fauci publicly for the first time this week over his requirement for much higher testing before a phased re-entry. If he said that, I dont agree, Trump sniffed about a quote in Time magazine, which he pretends to have been on the cover of many times.

If only Trump were a neurotic and believed everything was his fault, instead of being a narcissist who thinks its all someone elses.

He then repeated his tired excuse that weve done more testing than every other nation combined, which is untrue but even if it were true would be irrelevant, like the random numbers and products he recites to justify holding a briefing. In fact, per capita, the U.S. is fifth in testing, only slightly higher than Venezuela. As for whether the virus will return, Fauci and Trump go back and forth like an old couple arguing over the thermostat: We will have coronavirus in the fall, I am convinced of that (Dr. Fauci). It may never come back (Dr. Trump).

For now, Trump knows it would be risky to highlight disagreements between them. Trump has his MAGA hats, but Fauci has cupcakes with his face on them and an 80 percent approval rating in a recent Fox poll. After this week, less than half of Republicans say that have a lot of trust in Trumps information on the pandemic and 22 percent say they have little or no trust, according to an AP-NORC poll.

If only Trump were a neurotic and believed everything was his fault, instead of being a narcissist who thinks its all someone elses. No one appreciates that hes the king of ventilators and a hero for closing down travel from China, although with loopholes, 40,000 people flew in. So if he golfed and held rallies until March, he routinely accuses Speaker Nancy Pelosi of worse by holding events in Chinatown and proposing a parade that would violate Californias lockdown.

That would be lie 23,001. Back on Feb. 24, she tweeted out a brief video making fortune cookies with a constituent in a neighborhood which had no cases then or now. She mentioned a parade that happened two weeks earlier, not one to come.

It took Phil Connors a long time to become a decent guy, to build an ice sculpture, play the piano like Mozart, and realize thatonly love could save him. We dont have the luxury of time. Its running out, and Trump isnt improving.

Link:

Donald Trump Is Living Groundhog Day in Reverseand We're All Stuck in His Nightmare - The Daily Beast

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

Like many hotels in America, Donald Trumps luxury downtown DC hotel has taken a massive hit from the COVID-19 pandemic and is asking its landlord for a break on its monthly rent. But this particular property is unique in that the landlord takes its orders from the president himself.

The Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, operates out of a federally owned property, an old post office building just blocks from the White House. In 2013, the Trump Organization signed a lease to operate a hotel in the building and promised to pay at least $3 million a year in rent. When Trump took office, he refused to sell or give up control of his businesses; he simply declared that his two adult sons and some company executives would take charge of the daily operations. The hotel has been a bright spot in Trumps portfolio during his presidency, if not always as a business then at least as a symbol. Many of his properties have seen declines in revenue, but the DC hotel, which opened in 2016, just days before the election, injected tens of millions of dollars of new revenue into the Trump Organization and has become a popular hangout for lobbyists and foreign officials seeking to get Trumps attention. The president himself dines at the steakhouse in the hotels lobby on a regular basis.

But for all the attention the hotel has gotten, in the months before the pandemic began spreading, it reportedly had an occupancy rate of around 57 percent, less than what hotel business experts say is needed to turn a profit, and the Trumps had begun shopping around their 60-year lease on the property. All that suggests that the hotel was not as profitable as it might appear. The hotel has remained open through the pandemic, unlike most other luxury hotels in DC, but with an occupancy of about 2 percent, according to an official with the hotel workers union.

That, apparently, is not cutting it. TheNew York Times reported on Tuesday that the Trump Organization has approached the General Services Administration (GSA), the federal agency that operates as landlord for the Trump hotel and other government-owned properties, about some kind of break on the rent. The Trump Organization confirmed to theTimes that they had done so:

The Trump Organization is current on its rent, according to Eric Trump, the presidents son, but he confirmed that the company had opened a conversation about possible delays in future monthly payments.

The younger Mr. Trump said the company was asking the G.S.A. for any relief that it might be granting other federal tenants. The president still owns the company, but his eldest sons run the day-to-day operations.

Just treat us the same, Eric Trump in a statement on Tuesday. Whatever that may be is fine.

But will it be fine? TheTimes also reported that the Trump Organization has asked Palm Beach County in Florida for a break on its rent for property it leases from the county for a golf courseand that county officials are fretting that if they refuse to give the Trumps a break, they may be shorted on federal pandemic aid.

The decision will be up to the GSA, but agency officials all ultimately work for Trump. The kind of conflict of interest could have been avoided. In the lease that Trump signed in 2013, a clause prohibited federal office holders from participating in the arrangement. But after he had already taken office, the GSA determined that it did not apply to Trump, because he wasnt a federal office holder when he signed the deal. Steven Schooner, a law professor at George Washington University who specializes in government contracting and who has long been a critic of the GSAs decision not to apply the conflict-of-interest rule to Trump, says this is the scenario the rule was designed to prevent.

Under no circumstances should GSA reduce the rent, Schooner said. Any reasonable person would worry about the undue pressures and the inherent risk of favoritism that the government might show to such a well-connected contractor.

See original here:

Like You, Donald Trump Wants a Break on His Rent - Mother Jones

') : ""; }, t.getDefinedParams = function (n, e) { return e.filter(function (e) { return n[e]; }).reduce(function (e, t) { return p(e, function (e, t, n) { t in e ? Object.defineProperty(e, t, { value: n, enumerable: !0, configurable: !0, writable: !0 }) : e[t] = n; return e; }({}, t, n[t])); }, {}); }, t.isValidMediaTypes = function (e) { var t = ["banner", "native", "video"]; if (!Object.keys(e).every(function (e) { return s()(t, e); })) return !1; if (e.video && e.video.context) return s()(["instream", "outstream", "adpod"], e.video.context); return !0; }, t.getBidderRequest = function (e, t, n) { return c()(e, function (e) { return 0 t[n] ? -1 : 0; }; }; var r = n(3), i = n(115), o = n.n(i), a = n(12), c = n.n(a), u = n(10), s = n.n(u), d = n(116); n.d(t, "deepAccess", function () { return d.a; }); var f = n(117); function l(e) { return function (e) { if (Array.isArray(e)) { for (var t = 0, n = new Array(e.length); t n ')) : ""; } function ae(e, t, n) { return null == t ? n : J(t) ? t : Q(t) ? t.toString() : void j.logWarn("Unsuported type for param: " + e + " required type: String"); } function ce(e, t, n) { return n.indexOf(e) === t; } function ue(e, t) { return e.concat(t); } function se(e) { return Object.keys(e); } function de(e, t) { return e[t]; } var fe = ge("timeToRespond", function (e, t) { return t = e.length ? (this._t = void 0, i(1)) : i(0, "keys" == t ? n : "values" == t ? e[n] : [n, e[n]]); }, "values"), o.Arguments = o.Array, r("keys"), r("values"), r("entries"); }, 101: function _(e, t, n) { "use strict"; var r = n(102), i = n(72); e.exports = n(104)("Set", function (t) { return function (e) { return t(this, 0 >> 0, o = 0; if (t) n = t;else { for (; o = b.syncsPerBidder ? a.logWarn('Number of user syncs exceeded for "'.concat(t, '"')) : d.canBidderRegisterSync(e, t) ? (f[e].push([t, n]), (r = p)[i = t] ? r[i] += 1 : r[i] = 1, void (p = r)) : a.logWarn('Bidder "'.concat(t, '" not permitted to register their "').concat(e, '" userSync pixels.')) : a.logWarn("Bidder is required for registering sync") : a.logWarn('User sync type "'.concat(e, '" not supported')); var r, i; }, d.syncUsers = function () { var e = 0 Object(y.timestamp)(); }, s = function s(e) { return e && (e.status && !S()([O.BID_STATUS.RENDERED], e.status) || !e.status); }; function w(e, r, t) { var i = 2 i && (r = !1)), !r; }), r && e.run(), r; } function g(e, t) { void 0 === e[t] ? e[t] = 1 : e[t]++; } }, addWinningBid: function addWinningBid(e) { g = g.concat(e), x.callBidWonBidder(e.bidder, e, o); }, setBidTargeting: function setBidTargeting(e) { x.callSetTargetingBidder(e.bidder, e); }, getWinningBids: function getWinningBids() { return g; }, getTimeout: function getTimeout() { return S; }, getAuctionId: function getAuctionId() { return m; }, getAuctionStatus: function getAuctionStatus() { return b; }, getAdUnits: function getAdUnits() { return y; }, getAdUnitCodes: function getAdUnitCodes() { return d; }, getBidRequests: function getBidRequests() { return h; }, getBidsReceived: function getBidsReceived() { return f; }, getNoBids: function getNoBids() { return l; } }; }, n.d(t, "c", function () { return H; }), t.f = d, t.d = J, n.d(t, "e", function () { return Y; }), n.d(t, "h", function () { return f; }), n.d(t, "g", function () { return l; }), t.i = p; var C = n(0), s = n(9), w = n(42), a = n(26), o = n(78), j = n(11), _ = n(3), r = n(32), i = n(13), c = n(12), B = n.n(c), U = n(33), u = n(2); function R(e) { return (R = "function" == typeof Symbol && "symbol" == _typeof(Symbol.iterator) ? function (e) { return _typeof(e); } : function (e) { return e && "function" == typeof Symbol && e.constructor === Symbol && e !== Symbol.prototype ? "symbol" : _typeof(e); })(e); } function D() { return (D = Object.assign || function (e) { for (var t = 1; t e.getTimeout() + _.b.getConfig("timeoutBuffer") && e.executeCallback(!0); } function J(e, t) { var n = e.getBidRequests(), r = B()(n, function (e) { return e.bidderCode === t.bidderCode; }); !function (t, e) { var n; if (t.bidderCode && (0 t.max ? e : t; }, { max: 0 }), g = 0, b = v()(e.buckets, function (e) { if (n > p.max * r) { var t = e.precision; void 0 === t && (t = y), i = (e.max * r).toFixed(t); } else { if (n = t.length ? { value: void 0, done: !0 } : (e = r(t, n), this._i += e.length, { value: e, done: !1 }); }); }, 62: function _(e, t, r) { function i() {} var o = r(28), a = r(94), c = r(63), u = r(50)("IE_PROTO"), s = "prototype", _d = function d() { var e, t = r(55)("iframe"), n = c.length; for (t.style.display = "none", r(97).appendChild(t), t.src = "javascript:", (e = t.contentWindow.document).open(), e.write("

")); var s = v(b[r.size_id].split("x").map(function (e) { return Number(e); }), 2); a.width = s[0], a.height = s[1]; } a.rubiconTargeting = (Array.isArray(r.targeting) ? r.targeting : []).reduce(function (e, r) { return e[r.key] = r.values[0], e; }, { rpfl_elemid: o.adUnitCode }), e.push(a); } else u.logError("Rubicon: bidRequest undefined at index position:".concat(t), d, c); return e; }, []).sort(function (e, r) { return (r.cpm || 0) - (e.cpm || 0); }); }, getUserSyncs: function getUserSyncs(e, r, t, i) { if (!R && e.iframeEnabled) { var n = ""; return t && "string" == typeof t.consentString && ("boolean" == typeof t.gdprApplies ? n += "?gdpr=".concat(Number(t.gdprApplies), "&gdpr_consent=").concat(t.consentString) : n += "?gdpr_consent=".concat(t.consentString)), i && (n += "".concat(n ? "&" : "?", "us_privacy=").concat(encodeURIComponent(i))), R = !0, { type: "iframe", url: o + n }; } }, transformBidParams: function transformBidParams(e) { return u.convertTypes({ accountId: "number", siteId: "number", zoneId: "number" }, e); } }; function y(e, r) { var t, i = 0 969, isMobile = window.innerWidth b ? a : b; } /** * Fast loop through watched elements */ function onScroll() { list.forEach(updateVisibility); } /** * updates seen property * @param {Visble} item * @param {{}} evt * @fires Visible#shown * @fires Visible#hidden */ function updateSeen(item, evt) { var px = evt.visiblePx, percent = evt.visiblePercent; // if some pixels are visible and we're greater/equal to threshold if (px && percent >= item.shownThreshold && !item.seen) { item.seen = true; setTimeout(function () { item.trigger("shown", new VisibleEvent("shown", evt)); }, 15); // if no pixels or percent is less than threshold } else if ((!px || percent = 0 && rect.left >= 0 && rect.bottom 1) { result += getLinearSpacialHash(remainder, Math.floor(stepSize / base), optimalK - 1, base); } return result; } /** * @param {ClientRect} rect * @param {number} innerHeight * @returns {number} */ function getVerticallyVisiblePixels(rect, innerHeight) { return min(innerHeight, max(rect.bottom, 0)) - min(max(rect.top, 0), innerHeight); } /** * Get offset of element relative to entire page * * @param {Element} el * @returns {{left: number, top: number}} * @see http://jsperf.com/offset-vs-getboundingclientrect/7 */ function getPageOffset(el) { var offsetLeft = el.offsetLeft, offsetTop = el.offsetTop; while (el = el.offsetParent) { offsetLeft += el.offsetLeft; offsetTop += el.offsetTop; } return { left: offsetLeft, top: offsetTop }; } /** * Create a new Visible class to observe when elements enter and leave the viewport * * Call destroy function to stop listening (this is until we have better support for watching for Node Removal) * @param {Element} el * @param {{shownThreshold: number, hiddenThreshold: number}} [options] * @class * @example this.visible = new $visibility.Visible(el); */ Visible = function Visible(el, options) { options = options || {}; this.el = el; this.seen = false; this.preload = false; this.preloadThreshhold = options && options.preloadThreshhold || 0; this.shownThreshold = options && options.shownThreshold || 0; this.hiddenThreshold = options && min(options.shownThreshold, options.hiddenThreshold) || 0; list.push(this); updateVisibility(this); // set immediately to visible or not }; Visible.prototype = { /** * Stop triggering. */ destroy: function destroy() { // remove from list list.splice(list.indexOf(this), 1); } /** * @name Visible#on * @function * @param {'shown'|'hidden'} e EventName * @param {function} cb Callback */ /** * @name Visible#trigger * @function * @param {'shown'|'hidden'} e * @param {{}} */ }; Eventify.enable(Visible.prototype); VisibleEvent = function VisibleEvent(type, options) { var _this = this; this.type = type; Object.keys(options).forEach(function (key) { _this[key] = options[key]; }); }; // listen for scroll events (throttled) $document.addEventListener("scroll", _throttle(onScroll, 200)); // public this.getPageOffset = getPageOffset; this.getLinearSpacialHash = getLinearSpacialHash; this.getVerticallyVisiblePixels = getVerticallyVisiblePixels; this.getViewportHeight = getViewportHeight; this.getViewportWidth = getViewportWidth; this.isElementNotHidden = isElementNotHidden; this.isElementInViewport = isElementInViewport; this.Visible = Visible;}]);}, {}];require=(function e(t,n,r){function s(o,u){if(!n[o]){if(!t[o]){var a=typeof require=="function"&&require;if(!u&&a)return a(o,!0);if(i)return i(o,!0);var f=new Error("Cannot find module '"+o+"'");throw f.code="MODULE_NOT_FOUND",f}var l=n[o]={exports:{}};t[o][0].call(l.exports,function(e){var n=t[o][1][e];return s(n?n:e)},l,l.exports,e,t,n,r)}return n[o].exports}var i=typeof require=="function"&&require;for(var o=0;o

Originally posted here:

A Brief List of the Times Donald Trump Tried to Punish Jeff Bezos - Slate

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

Though President Donald Trump has been not big in the empathy department during the coronavirus pandemiche more often talks about his own TV ratings than the tens of thousands Americans who have died during the crisisthe Trump campaign wants his supporters to know that Trump truly cares about them during this time of tragedy and hardship. As proof of Trumps deeply felt concern, his campaign is offering to send his devotees a set of Trump-Pence pint glasses. All for just a contribution of $31.

Yes, the Trump campaign is exploiting the coronavirus to sell campaign swag to Trump supporters. And it is claiming this is a beneficent act on the part of Trump himself.

This week, the Trump campaign sent out a bizarre email to its lists of supporters. Friend, it began, We have some exciting news to tell you. It noted that Trump knows the past few weeks have been extremely difficult for Americans from all across the Nation. Trump, the email said, appreciated those who have stood with him and wanted to do something special for them.

That special act Trump wished to perform for his supporter during this difficult stretch was to offer them EXCLUSIVE ACCESS to Official Trump-Pence Pint Glasses. Isnt that special? Though you may be suffering due to the coronavirus, you now can buy Trump junk. But, the email pointed out, you have to send in $31 for the set of these glasses by midnight. (That was a crockbecause the campaign zapped out this email two days in a row. There was no actual midnight deadline.)

This sounds like a bad joke. But its not. While tens of thousands of Americans are dying, Trump and his campaign decided he could console his supporters and show them hes on their side by peddling them campaign tchotchkes. And this emailsent out with the subject heading Cheersalso requested contributions of $250 and more. What could be more Trumpian? I will recognize this is a difficult period for you and other Americans by offering you the opportunity to help me.

The Trump campaigns fundraising emails often have the whiff of grift. They frequently tell supporters they can join an exclusive group of donorsbecome part of the Trump Gold Card Member circle!and be placed on a list of names that Trump will review personally, as long as they send in a donation immediately. (It can be as small of $35.) This is all bunk and goes above and beyond the usual political sales pitches.

Now the coronavirus pandemic has been seized upon by the Trump campaign as a marketing opportunity. Especially, given that so many Americans are currently self-isolating in their homes. In other recent fundraising solicitations, the campaign has peddled BRAND NEW Trump-Pence 2020 Playing Cards. Two decks for only $30. And the email for this offer proclaimed this was another special deal, for Trump has requested that we give you EARLY ACCESS to get these iconic cards before anyone else. Moreover, the email stated, this is the perfect time to buy playing cards: We know youre at home right now, doing your part to Keep America Safe, and there is no better way to keep yourself entertained AND support your President than by purchasing our Official Trump-Pence 2020 Playing Cards. Another campaign email offered an Official Trump Puzzle for $45. This note, too, declared that during a time of social isolation there is no better way to pass the time with family AND show your support for President Trump than by purchasing a Trump Puzzle.

Trump glasses, Trump cards, Trump puzzles. Theyre part of a long tradition: Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump University. If theres a chance to sell something, Trump will give it a try. (Another recent email from the campaign promoted Trump-Pence welcome mats.) Blatant commercialism and self-promotion is no surprise for Trump. That is his brand. But this week he and his campaign showed that they can surpass the usual Trumpish crassness by using the horrific coronavirus nightmare to make a buck by selling pint glasses bearing the campaigns logo. How long can it be before Trump and his campaign attempts to raise money by hawking MAGA face masks?

Go here to read the rest:

Donald Trump Is Exploiting the Coronavirus Pandemic to Sell Campaign Swag - Mother Jones

I want to introduce myself first and tell you why I wanted to write this letter. My name is Cecil Laurenson. I am 84 years old and worked all my life since I was 14 years old. I cannot tell you what a wonderful country we live in and how the good Lord has blessed me and given me four wonderful children.

I want to tell you what a great job you have done with the economy along with building the wall and approaching China on the tariffs on balancing the trade to equalize the difference in pricing goods, etc. I like you, as you call a spade a spade and have the other countries respect.

What I want to suggest is for the government to set up a lottery to cover all 50 states and call it COVID-19 so the people know what it is for. I would suggest we have 10 winners in each state across our country and this would get the interest just like the Powerball drawing. I dont know how much revenue it would bring but make it 50/50 with 50 percent going to the government and 50 percent going to the states of the drawing winners.

Once it starts we should first pay back or pay off the stimulus package, then work on paying off the national debt. Then, I think we could work on our bridges and roads that need replaced. I know Im from the old school, but you cannot spend more that what you make or have coming in.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Yours truly, A proud American.

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

Read this article:

To Mr. Donald Trump, President of the United States | News, Sports, Jobs - Lock Haven Express

The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is chaired by Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, released its long-awaited 156-page report detailing its investigation into allegations that Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 election.

And what did their investigation find? That Russia engaged in a deep and broad effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 race, aiming to help Donald Trump win. "The Committee found no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community's conclusions," said Burr in a statement on his committee's findings.

Which now means that the following committees and communities have concluded the exact same thing about Russia's attempted interference in the last presidential election:

* The Senate Intelligence Committee

And to be honest, Trump has made his feelings about the proof that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him very, very clear. He's, um, skeptical.

So, yeah.

Here's the thing that the Senate Intelligence Committee report should drive home for Trump -- and everyone else: it is now entirely and completely beyond dispute that Russia sought to interfere in the last presidential election to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

In order to not believe that, you have to accept that the entire intelligence community, Mueller and his entire team and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee are ALL in on some sort of elaborate and incredibly well-coordinated scheme to deceive the American public because, uh, they all don't like Trump or something?

It's fanciful. It's a conspiracy theory without even any nuggets of fact.

Why, then, is the President of the United States not convinced? Simple: Because he has never been able to hold these two ideas in his mind at the same time: 1) Russia meddled in the election to help him and 2) He's President anyway.

"That was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily. And, frankly, we beat her -- and I'm not even saying from the standpoint -- we won that race. ... We ran a brilliant campaign, and that's why I'm President."

In Trump's mind, acknowledging the fact -- and yes, it is a fact -- that Russia tried to help him win somehow robs him of the credit for winning that he obviously thinks he so richly deserves. I did this, not Russia, Trump is essentially saying. I get the credit. Not them. Me. Me!

It's, of course, obvious to anyone paying attention that both things can be true: Russia tried to interfere in the election and Trump ran a great race. Elections are very rarely won by a single factor alone. Luck, skill, your strengths, your opponent's weaknesses, uncontrollable outside events -- all of these things go into who wins and who loses. In 2016 and every other election.

Trump's blindness to the Russia reality isn't just a chapter for the history books either. Because we know Russia viewed its involvement in the 2016 race as a success and are hungry to create more chaos this November.

All of which means that the President's unwillingness to accept the FACT that Russia interfered once and they will do it again makes it much more likely that we won't be properly prepared for what's coming over the 195 days between now and November 3.

Visit link:

The Senate just proved Donald Trump wrong -- again -- on Russian interference in 2016 - CNN

Many Americans who were children sometime between the 1950s and the 1980s no doubt remember Game of the States. It was (and evidently still is) a simpleminded catch-and-carry board game through which multiple generations learned vague, generic facts about the 50 states. That game is probably the reason I know all 50 state capitals to this day. Massachusetts and Georgia are tough because the answers are too obvious; South Carolina and West Virginia are tough because the answers seem almost intentionally confusing.

But the most important teaching tool in Game of the States was its playing surface, which depicted the United States floating in a sea of blue, an innocent island of Idaho potatoes, Missouri hams and Pennsylvania steel. If as economic history the game was completely devoid of context or dynamics, as geography it was even worse. Canada? Mexico? What and where are they, exactly? Both our neighboring nations appear to have vaporized. If any trade exists with them or anyplace else in the outside world, it's entirely invisible.

Far too much about America is explained by Game of the States. We have an ingrained national tendency to behave as if the rest of the world simply doesn't exist or, on a slightly more sophisticated level, as if it were just a colorful backdrop for our vastly more important national dramas. The only time "foreign policy" plays a significant role in American politics for liberals or conservatives or really anyone is when a major overseas war becomes an unavoidable and damaging issue, as with Vietnam in 1968 and 1972, and Iraq in 2008.

But the constant level of U.S. military intervention or interference in numerous countries since then none of it rising to the level of official, acknowledged conflict is completely invisible to American voters, and therefore not controversial. Hardly anyone ever talks about how the United States bankrupted itself and destroyed its future by pouring trillions of taxpayer dollars into two decades of massively destructive war in the Middle East. I mean, the Roman Empire and the British Empire and the Ottoman Empire all overextended themselves and collapsed too; such is the nature of things. But I don't think any of them were guilty of a massive self-own on quite that scale, all while pretending it wasn't happening. In hindsight, Osama bin Laden's box-cutter scheme was more successful than he could ever have imagined.

This tendency toward national blindness is especially pronounced in the case of the coronavirus pandemic as it was also with the surge of anti-democratic populism and the election of Donald Trump. Both things are unmistakably part of larger global patterns, yet many or most Americans continue to behave as if they were unique and unparalleled, and happening only to us.

Advertisement:

What the coronavirus has shown us, if we're willing to see it, is America as an imperial power in steep decline, revealed before the world as a weak, divided and ineffectual nation albeit one with the greatest military force in world history. To put it in the mildest possible terms, that's a dangerous combination; it might better be described as profoundly terrifying.

It isn't just that the U.S. response to the pandemic has been among the worst of any major nation OK, let's make that clearly the worst utterly bereft of coherent national leadership. With barely 4% of the world's population, the U.S. has by far the largestshare of COVID-19 cases and deaths, and is apparently about to risk a second upward spike in both statistics.

It isn't just that our paralyzed political system has offered nothing close to a clear national emergency plan to support both businesses and ordinary citizens through this unprecedented crisis. Other national leaders in the Western economic zone, including those who seemed embroiled in permanent internal discord, such as French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have at least done that. But our dysfunctional government has flung billions at big corporations and one monthly paycheck at regular folks, followed by the stupidest and starkest form of social-Darwinist choice: Go broke or risk your life.

It isn't just that our corrupt, conniving and alarmingly incompetent president has repeatedly made a fool of himself in public, whether through outright lies, unfounded speculation, flatulent boasting or pseudo-scientific blather. We ought to be used to that by now. But I don't think we have fully registered how it looks to the rest of the world that the self-appointed greatest nation in the world and guiding light of freedom and democracy elected this person in the first place, and that close to half our population continues to view him with reverence and adoration, as a supreme symbol of our national values and aspirations. (The very deepest level of historical irony here, of course, is that those people may be right about that. It may be the rest of us who are deluded.)

It isn't just that Donald Trump has been repeatedly played like a worn-out lake trout, now and throughout his presidency, by both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who have clearly perceived the downward trajectory of the United States and are positioning themselves for maximum influence within a reconfigured world order. I don't know whether Xi and Putin ever had a private meeting or trebly-encoded phone call where they told each other, Ha ha, this guy is like totally our word-rhyming-with-witch. Should be fun! Quite likely a backstage eye-roll or a wordless clink of vodka glasses was all it took.

Far too much virtual ink has been expended exploring Trump's mysterious relationship with Putin, and in all likelihood we will never know the whole story. I don't pretend to know whether blackmail of some kind was at work personal or financial or both or whether it's just that Trump, like so many moral weaklings who fancy themselves strong, was irresistibly drawn to a despotic leader who clearly has a powerful command of craft and strategy.

In the larger scheme of things, it strikes me as more important to take a few steps back and appreciate that Putin who, despite all the mythology Americans project onto him,commands a second-rate military power with a struggling economy has deployed a sophisticated understanding of the information age to exploit the weak spots in the U.S. and other Western democracies. Russia's presidentdidn't create any of those weaknesses; they were already there and visibly getting worse.

It is a fatuous and narcissistic disorder of American "resistance" to claim that Putin elected Trump, or that without Russian interference we would be sailing along in the demi-paradise of Hillary Clinton's presidency. I'm not saying Clinton wouldn't be a "better" president than Trump, since she obviously would be. But that would have solved exactly none of the deeper structural, cultural, social and ideological problems that have been targeted by Russian propaganda and made even worse, arguably, by exaggerated paranoia about Russian propaganda. Every time an American leftist on Twitter gets called a Russian troll by some purportedly sensible centrist, some guy in St. Petersburg shakes his head in wonder: We had no idea how easy this would be! We sent them half a can of gasoline and a damp book of matches, and they burnedthe place down themselves!

But I suspect the U.S. relationship with China is more significant, in historical terms. I claim no expertise in the internal logic or strategy of Xi and the Chinese leadership, but I don't think it's remotely controversial to say that China will be the leading economic and industrial power of this century, and that its current regime has expertly caught Trump in a Heffalump trap of his own design.

On one hand, Trump has empowered and enabled China hawks on the Republican right like the terrifying Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who is clearly preparing for a future presidential campaign based on the promise of apocalyptic imperial conflict. On the other, although Trump's trade policies have been primitive, he understands the issue slightly less poorly than he understands everything else, and knows that a trade agreement with China is crucial to his dwindling hopes of re-election. He has gone out of his way to avoid antagonizing Xi another despot for whom he feels unearned personal affection and has repeatedly undercut right-wing attempts to frame the 2020 election as a nationalist crusade against the "China virus."

So it isn't any of those things individually it's that they're all happening at once. This pandemic has stripped away much of America's pompous, self-aggrandizing faadeand has made many aspects of the nation's decline, and its fast-decaying claim to world leadership, even more obvious than they already were. I'm deliberately stepping around the even larger question of historical framing, and what might be called the Chomskyite argument that the United States has largely been a baleful force in human history over the last seven or eight decades, and that overall its decline is more a good thing than a bad thing.

That may be true; it's certainly a defensible claim, although it leads too many leftists toward incomprehensible excuses for the tyranny inflicted on the Chinese and Russian people. Personally, I'm inclined to believe that history rarely renders clear verdicts of that kind, and that the results of American imperial decline will be a mixed bag, full of dire peril and possibility. But one thing is for sure: We need to stop pretending that America after the coronavirus, and after the Trump presidency, will be the same kind of nation it was before, with the same role of more-or-less unquestioned global dominance. We have deluded ourselves far too long on that front already. There is no making America great again, and it's time to move past that. But there'sa real chance to make a betterfuture for this country and the world.

More:

Trump and the coronavirus have exposed America as a declining empire: Time to face the facts - Salon

Trevor Noah doesnt like much of what Donald Trump is doing to protect the country during the pandemic. His Daily Social Distancing Show makes that clear.

Tonight, he likened the President of the United States to the detached narrator dealing with a deranged fan in Eminems Stan, all because Trump said he disagreed with Georgia Governor Brian Kemps decision to open up certain businesses in that state soon. I respect him, Trump said. But Id wait a little longer.

Because Kemp is a Republican and supports Trump, Noah saw that as the ultimate betrayal, akin to telling Kemp to show up on a road at a certain time while Trump drove a bus over him.

This is what you get, said Noah. These guys trying so hard to suck up to him, then Bam!

Noah also took issue with Trump not knowing the name of a scientist dismissed from his job who was working on a coronavirus vaccine. He felt since Trump has time to watch television, including reruns of baseball games, that he should know the man.

If you have time to watch reruns of baseball, you have time for anything, Noah said, mentioning that baseball is boring even in real time. Reruns of it? Its like watching paint dry through a PowerPoint slide.

Read the original post:

Trevor Noah Says President Donald Trump Is Like Eminem In The Song Stan - Deadline