Category: DonaldTrump

It’s time to get in Good Trouble to preserve the legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Of course we’re crying. A woman who held us all up for so, so long has finally laid down her burden after the literal fight of a lifetime. We’re hurting. We’re afraid. We miss her already. 

But Republicans are already celebrating the death of pioneering Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an opportunity. Donald Trump is calling on Republicans to act quickly to confirm whatever nominee he puts forward. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is contemplating whether a no-witnesses impeachment can be topped with a no-hearings confirmation. Ted Cruz is thinking about nothing except what he won’t be wearing under that black robe. Tom Cotton is speeding through his collection of KKK-approved all-white handkerchiefs mopping up all of the drool. And Josh Hawley is … probably shooting something.

There is absolutely no doubt that the GOP will now engage in the Hypocrisy Olympics, working hard to master the art of the 180-degree turn and racing to put Trump’s nominee across the line in record time. But a mere willingness start a hell-in-a-handbasket assembly line may not be enough to put another butt in Ginsburg’s seat on the Court before it even has a chance to cool. Democrats are not about to roll over. This is a fight worth having.

2020 may have robbed us of both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rep. John Lewis, but it’s time to get in Good Trouble. And there are multiple ways to fight.

“From where I sit, Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dying wish was not that McConnell would do the right thing. She knew he wouldn't. It was that we would FIGHT LIKE HELL to preserve her legacy.” — Elie Mystal, The Nation

Hillary Clinton has offered a three-part plan for fighting against the rapid replacement of Justice Ginsburg: 

1) Win over GOP Senators on principle.

There are dozens of Republicans who barely finished articulating why there could not be a nomination for a Justice during an election year. Not only did many of them voice this in 2016, some of them have continued to do so over the last four years in the most adamant terms; terms that having included things like “even if this was a Republican president.” It’s included telling America to “use my words against me” if they didn’t hold true to this claim. It may seem that there are no Republicans left willing to stand up for any principle, especially one they created out of convenience in the last election cycle, but that feeds right into the next point.

2) Pressure GOP Senators in tight re-election bids.

There are definitely Republicans in red states who will feel like falling in line behind Trump and McConnell is the only option. But there are also those—like Susan Collins—who are already finding that standing too close to Trump is leaving them with radiation burns. Push them. Make this an issue. There’s absolutely no doubt that, no matter who Trump nominates, it will be some Federalist Society-approved ultraconservative, ready to tear down everything Justice Ginsburg accomplished and paint the nation in a shade of industrial repression gray. Make it clear that anyone voting for Trump’s nominee—anyone who even supports a vote on Trump’s nominee—is supporting the reversal of every gain made under Ginsburg. 

3) Use procedural obstacles in the Senate.

There are not nearly as many obstacles here as there used to be, because the idea that the Senate runs on rules has been simply discarded by McConnell—who regularly discards the idea of regular order to simply do as he pleases. Still, there are some shreds remaining. To start with, Democrats must refuse  a continuing resolution so long as there is any threat of McConnell forwarding a nominee. Unless there is a binding agreement—an agreement that goes way beyond McConnell’s word—shut it all the #$%@ down. In addition, Democrats must deny the Senate unanimous consent. Not just unanimous consent on the nomination, but on everything. The Senate has less than two weeks of scheduled sessions in the remainder of the year. Democrats need to deploy every possible roadblock to scheduling hearings, holding hearings, bringing a nominee forward, scheduling a vote … these are delaying tactics, and there’s little doubt that McConnell will run over them all. Only, if the polls start to show that Americans aren’t happy about the nominee or the process, McConnell might start to lose some of these procedural votes.

And Americans are already not happy.

In Times/Siena polls of Maine, North Carolina and Arizona released Friday, voters preferred Mr. Biden to select the next Supreme Court justice by 12 percentage points, 53 percent to 41 percent. In each of the three states, Mr. Biden led by just a slightly wider margin on choosing the next justice than he did over all.

According to that poll, the desire to see Biden pick the nominee is actually higher than the base support for Biden. This could very well mean that the importance of this issue gets driven home to Republicans up for reelection in a very visible way.

But if any of the above is going to happen, it’s also going to have to happen in the streets, on the phones, and in every forum where Democrats—and everyone else—can make it clear that the legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg must be preserved at all cost. She carried us this far. Now we have to carry her dream.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s body isn’t even cold and Mitch McConnell is dancing on her grave. This is war. Dems have powerful weapons. Now is the time to use them.

— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) September 19, 2020

House Democrats ponder throwing in the towel on Trump oversight, letting voters bail out the nation

Posted on by Joan McCarter

House Democrats are not exactly presenting profiles in courage these days, generally putting the impetus for stopping Donald Trump on voters. Well, gang, we're all exhausted. But you can't just count on voters to bail you out. There's real impetus against Trump right now, yes, but motivating people to vote for something is just as important.

It's important because it sets up the momentum for a Joe Biden/Kamala Harris administration to jump in full throttle in January. It's also important because they're letting Team Trump get away with murder, literally and figuratively. Some investigations into the cozy deals Clown Prince Jared has been making using taxpayers’ dollars to fight the coronavirus would be one place to start. Attorney General William Barr's systematic dismantling of the rule of law is a pretty important one, too. So is enforcing the House's own subpoena power over Trump officials who aren't even legally officials! But House Democrats are projecting an entirely bad attitude.

Daily Beast reporter Sam Brodey says a question posed to Rep. Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat, about Trump administration efforts to paper over Russian interference in the election lead to a "disbelieving chuckle. Which then morphed into a full-on fake sob, played up for effect." And then this statement: “Impeachment is the tool the Constitution gives us to deal with serious abuse of power in between elections. […] When you're two months from an election […] the American people are going to have their say very, very soon.” So you don't raise holy hell about Russian interference in an election that's very, very soon because that election is so soon? Bullshit, not to put too fine a point on it.

At the suggestion that the House has reached the limits of its oversight powers, Michigan Democratic Rep. Dale Kildee said that “It feels that way sometimes,” then gave this contradictory explanation: “but I obviously think we still have to pursue every avenue, turn over every rock […] I mean, right now, it's pretty much in the hands of the American people.” Which is it? Turning over the rocks and exposing what we all need to see, or handing it over to voters? The House is the only institution we've got right now that can put Trump's malfeasance on display every single day until the election and prove to voters that 1) he's got to go; and 2) we need a Democratic Senate as well as House to tackle the enormous destruction he's wrought.

An unnamed Democratic aide was less careful about expressing the attitude in the caucus. They told The Daily Beast that Democrats are "finally confident" Trump will be voted out, and thus are mostly trying to "avoid Trump shit." Apart from trying to get further COVID-19 relief passed, doing much else is not on their radar, "even among members of the key committees that have led oversight for the past two years. 'The election is a month out. […] Most members are focused on putting their heads down and getting reelected.'"

The exhaustion is certainly understandable, but the certainty that Trump will be voted out is taking a little too much for granted and maybe, just maybe, the Democratic base needs to see Democrats keeping up the fight. For one thing, exposing Trump's corruption and keeping it in the spotlight could act as a deterrent for Trump to fight the election results, one thing that House Democrats are increasingly alarmed about. Maryland's Jamie Raskin is one of them. “In the age of Donald Trump, if we have learned nothing else it is that we must be prepared for the worst,” said Raskin. “We have to just go out and fight. We need to create a landslide election that cannot be stolen, and then we need to counter all of the propaganda and disinformation, and then we need to put all of our best lawyers in a position to block the efforts to obstruct the election.”

Both of those things are necessary. Preparing for that is necessary. Putting all of Trump's wrongdoing out in front of the public before, during, and after Nov. 3 is a key way of doing it. It's also giving a head start on what has to happen next year: prosecutions of Trump officials who have misused public funds and betrayed the public trust.

There's also the part about how the people's branch of government has to become that again, reassert its coequal power, and start fighting an out-of-control executive branch. It failed to do that with the Bush/Cheney regime and look where we ended up. There is going to have to be a reckoning and there's no time like the present to start preparing for it.

Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into John Bolton over his anti-Trump book

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Donald Trump is good for literature. Actually … that’s overstating it. A lot. But Trump is certainly good for publishers, and for dramatic titles. In one-word titles alone, it’s possible to build a pretty decent description of Trump using Rage, Unhinged, Disloyal, Fear, Hoax. You certainly don’t have to go to Insane Clown President, but … that’s also not a bad description.

The last few weeks have seen Trump’s leveraging his family to fight—and fail—to stop the publication of a book by his niece Mary Trump, and books by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and former journalist Bob Woodward. The trio of tomes are all hot off the presses and still in the headlines. But it requires rewinding to June 20 (also known as March the 121st , in pandemic dating) to find the focus of Trump’s current disloyal, unhinged, rage hoax. That was the date that a federal judge dismissed attempts by the White House to block publication of John Bolton’s book detailing his time as Trump’s national security adviser. 

During that court case, the judge pointed out multiple times that Trump was attempting to block a book that had already been printed, distributed to warehouses, was on the shelves at thousands of stores, and had already been read by hundreds of critics and journalists. Open barn door? Meet horse. But the judge did not address claims from the Department of Justice that Bolton may have violated national security, though he noted if it was true, Bolton could lose all the profits from the book deal that kept him conveniently mum during Trump’s impeachment. And now the Justice Department has announced an investigation into Bolton because … sure, why not?

The book has been on the stands for four months and is no longer hanging onto a slot in even an extended list of best sellers. There’s nothing to be gained by going after Bolton other than the demonstration that people like Roger Stone, convicted of multiple crimes, get to walk away for being Trump’s pals, while people like Bolton get the weight of the DOJ tossed their way for the crime of insufficient toadying.

But it’s hard to feel like there’s a good guy on either side of this case. After all, Bolton failed to come forward when his testimony mattered, what he ultimately revealed was confirmation of things that had already been stated, and … he’s John Bolton. The best possible ending for this story is that both Trump and Bolton come out with their sub-mud reputations sullied by whatever it is that’s worse than mud.

According to The New York Times, a team within the DOJ has convened a grand jury to hear evidence about Bolton’s use of classified information in his book, aka I couldn’t think of a title so I just stole a line from Hamilton. Bolton has denied that he published classified information. Trump has argued back that Bolton is “a dope” and “incompetent” and “a washed up creepster who … should be in jail” for “trying to make me look bad.” It’s unclear if the grand jury will reward these rubber-meets-glue arguments with an indictment, but it would probably be pretty interesting—and kind of hilarious—to hear the presentation. 

And yes, to be honest it’s clear that the White House purposely refused to provide Bolton with responses on the classification of his submitted manuscript simply in an effort to delay publication and provide Trump with leverage to do exactly what he’s doing right now: conduct a political persecution of a perceived enemy. Bolton shouldn’t face charges for purely political reasons, if for no other reason than on a “first they came for John Bolton, and ...” basis. Still, every DOJ official tied up with going after John Bolton could be busy persecuting a human being instead, so let’s hope this takes some time. And please, if someone is going to leak classified information, how about the transcripts for the presentation to the grand jury?

More Republicans look to join the House ‘What coronavirus threat?’ caucus

Posted on (Updated by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump isn’t the only Republican downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic. He’s joined in that disregard for human life by many Republican lawmakers—and by many of the Republican candidates who hope to reclaim some ground in the House in 2020. That’s both because this is Trump’s party and because Republicans have long put their version of the economy (the economy of the rich and corporations) above the health and lives of working people.

Missouri’s Rep. Ann Wagner, for instance, went out on March 7 and, insisting on her knowledge of the situation—“We have had multiple, multiple briefings at the federal level for some time”—went on to assure the public, “As I said, this is, it's clear that the risk to our US public is low.” 

Let's turn it all blue. The whole government, at every level. Can you give $1 to each and every one of these Daily Kos-endorsed candidates? If you can't, how many can you help?

Former Democrat Jeff Van Drew, who became a Republican over the impeachment of Donald Trump, also downplayed the threat, insisting that “This is not mass destruction. This is not 9-11. This is a terrible situation that has happened. But at the same time, we know that we deal with the flu every year.” That was on March 11. Van Drew is from New Jersey, which has now lost more than 16,000 people to COVID-19—more than five times the death toll of 9/11 as a whole.

Other congressional Republicans have postured against public health restrictions, like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who encouraged a church to hold services despite a police order not to do so. “Hold the services anyway, using common sense spacing, separation, etc. ... encourage elderly to stay home. But this kind of authoritarian nonsense must be challenged. #SicSemperTyrannis,” Roy tweeted. The church was in Virginia, far from Roy’s home state.

Wagner, Van Drew, and Roy are not alone in downplaying the threat or opposing public health restrictions—and if the Republican Party has its way, they’ll get a whole lot more company after November’s elections.

Company like Michelle Steel, challenging Rep. Harley Rouda in California’s 22nd Congressional District, who sounded a lot like Trump on March 22 when she said “hopefully the weather gets better this will all disappear.” At the end of April, she complained that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order to close crowded beaches was “a clear example of unnecessary government overreach,” unnecessary because “Orange County has been successful in flattening the curve.” At the time, Orange County had reported 2,400 COVID-19 cases. That number has risen to more than 50,000.

In South Carolina, Nancy Mace is challenging Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham. On June 8, she said “Our health has not been adversely affected in the way we were told it was going to be. We should have opened up sooner.” COVID-19 cases had already started rising in South Carolina at that point, and would be over 1,000 new cases a day for most of the following two months.

In Texas, Sheriff Troy Nehls, who is competing against Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni for an open seat, has squawked loudly about mask rules, insisting “this government MANDATE from Harris County is unnecessary, unconstitutional, and unAmerican. It’s an unprecedented overreach which looks more like a communist dictatorship than a free Republic.” That was April 22. Texas, of course, went on to have a major spike.

Right now it’s impossible to pick apart how much Republicans downplay coronavirus and rail against restrictions aimed at slowing its spread because that’s what Donald Trump does, and how much it’s because they themselves, independently, think if they clap loud enough it will just go away. Either way, though, Republicans join Trump in owning the United States’ pandemic failures. And they must not get the power to make things even worse.

This scandal has to be the last, no this scandal has to be the last, no this scandal has to be …

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Since Tuesday, America has been caught up in the effort to process the fact that Donald Trump wasn’t simply ignorant and bull-headed when it came to failing to address the coronavirus pandemic. Trump was fully aware of the danger, repeatedly briefed on necessary actions, and fully cognizant of what was required to save American lives. He choose to … go another way. A way that involved repeatedly lying to the nation and talking about how the virus would “just disappear” even as he was privately admitting that he knew better.

That admitted lie is so shocking that it’s hard to remember that, just a week ago, the nation was busy being shocked to learn about the depth of Trump’s disdain for veterans. Multiple sources both within the White House and the military confirmed that Trump had not only displayed incredible disdain for John McCain, but for fallen soldiers at a military cemetery, calling them “suckers” and “losers.” Even Fox News had no problem confirming the story. Trump even explained to military leaders—military leaders—that he didn’t want veterans in his parade, because he found amputees unsightly.

A week before that was the news that the Department of Homeland Security had deliberately covered up evidence that Russia was working behind the scenes of the 2020 election to assist Trump with false claims about Joe Biden’s competence. That effort included dismissing the official in charge of counterintelligence, telling Congress they would get no more briefings on election security, and refusing to hand over standard reports. All while Trump was not only continuing to lean on the Russian talking points, but making racist claims about Kamala Harris. And in the middle of all this, snippets from Michael Cohen’s book suggested that not only had Trump extorted support from a televangelist with threats of revealing a pool boy three-way, but he gave a pretty good indication that the Russian “pee tape” is a real thing. 

There’s a reason the Fascism Watch ticked down to midnight back on Jan. 31. That’s when Republican senators made it clear that Trump was free to do anything he pleased, no matter how odious. America might not have gotten that message. Trump already knew it. 

It wasn’t until Feb. 6 that the Senate actually voted to give Donald Trump an official pass, despite a mound of evidence that he had used his high office to extort a foreign power into lying about a political opponent under threat of withholding military and economic assistance. It was exactly the sort of abuse of power available only to the White House. Exactly the kind of crime for which impeachment was created. There is not the slightest shred of doubt that Trump did it. But Republicans not only refused to hold Trump accountable—on Jan. 31 they made it clear that they would not even allow a single witness to speak in Trump’s “trial.” They didn’t care about Trump’s misuse of power. They didn’t care about lying to both Congress and the public. They just “owned the libs,” gave themselves a high five, and went on vacation.

Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans handed Donald Trump not just an absolute pass, but a clear signal that they would neither hold him to account for any action, nor challenge any statement he made. Why is it then any surprise that the next day Trump felt free to say that COVID-19 would go away in April? Why is it any surprise that Trump decided to cancel a planned national testing strategy because he thought COVID-19 would kill more people in Democratic states? What possible reason would there be for Trump to not cooperate with Russia in planting rumors about Biden? It’s not like anyone is going to do something about it. 

And, of course, why shouldn’t Trump feel free to lie about COVID-19? It’s not just the Senate that’s happy enough to go along with whatever Trump has to say. The media is right there for him, supporting him in a very special way.

A tale of two front-pages: @nytimes the morning after the Comey letter telling of discovered duplicative emails...and this morning's after we discover Trump knew and lied about a virus which has gone onto kill almost 200,000 Americans. pic.twitter.com/VjdgmvmmR0

— person woman DAN camera tv (@DaytimeDan) September 10, 2020

Following the astounding revelation that the FBI had found some additional copies of unimportant emails it had already seen, The New York Times not only filled every single column of its front page with this critical story, it handed over a large portion of that page for comments from Donald Trump. When Trump admitted lying to the nation about COVID-19, the “paper of record” not only thought this was a good day to devote two-thirds of its front page to an accidental explosion had happened over a month before and 9,000 miles away, but neither Biden nor any other Democratic leader was sought out for comment. Instead, the Times continued to represent the epitome of access journalism. It may seem that they, like much of the media, have learned nothing since 2016, but that’s not really true. They’ve learned exactly what it takes to keep getting interviews with Trump.

Republicans have learned they can get from Trump an endless stream of judges whose reading of the Constitution includes only one amendment, massive breaks for billionaires, and dropping all pretense of fighting corruption. And outlets like The New York Times have also learned that Trump will come through for them with an endless stream of jaw-dropping scandals that make great copy … so long as no one sticks with one story long enough to make impact. All for the low, low price of surrendering any pretense of integrity. A bargain.

Republicans are not about to call out Trump for his murder of 200,000 Americans. Or for his lies. Or for anything else. They made it all possible. So did a media more interested in seeing what the next scandal is than really driving home the impact of the last one.

For both of them, Trump is the fascist goose who laid heaps of gold-plated, if foul, eggs. Propping him up may be distasteful, but they like the results.

Senate Republicans privately more worried that Trump talked to Woodward than about his deadly lies

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Three days into the revelation that Donald Trump willfully lied to the American people about the deadly coronavirus from the absolute beginning of the crisis, and Senate Republicans are still hiding out, avoiding the press, pretending like they missed the biggest news of the week entirely.

"Haven't seen it." "Didn't read it." Or, in the case of Sen. Susan Collins, pretending like she's invisible. Collins "walked quickly into Thursday's morning series of votes, flanked by an aide who shielded her from a reporter who yelled a question in her direction about Trump downplaying the threat of coronavirus," The Hill reported. CNN adds she refused to take any questions on Wednesday or Thursday. At least her fellow vulnerable colleague, Iowa's Joni Ernst, took the question. She waffled it—"I haven't read it, I haven't seen it, so give me a chance to take a look"—but she answered the damn question.

We'll never get out of this crisis without taking back the Senate. Donate now to help make that happen.

Same with Arizona's Martha McSally and Colorado's Cory Gardner. Not reading or paying any attention to any news at all has become quite fashionable among Republicans. If you haven't read it or listened to the tapes with your very own ears, it didn't happen. At least that's Texan John Cornyn's take. He said he didn't have "personal knowledge" and didn't "have any confidence in the reporting," so he couldn't weigh in on it.

Others decided their best bet was going all in with the Trump excuse that he was trying to avert a national panic. Because if there's anything the guy who screams about antifa and Mexicans and Black Lives Matter protesters coming to rape and pillage and loot in the suburbs wants, it's not to cause a panic. North Carolina's Thom Tillis endorsed Trump's excuse. "When you're in a crisis situation, you have to inform people for their public health but you also don't want to create hysteria." When Tillis was pushed and asked if Trump should have been comparing the virus to the flu when he knew that it was far deadlier, Tillis wouldn't answer.

Trump's little golfing buddy, Lindsey Graham, piped up: "I don't think he needs to go on TV and screaming we're all going to die." Georgia's David Perdue agreed. "I understand trying to manage the psyche of the country and also look at the actions that he took. […] I look at what he did—and it was certainly a strong response." In no universe whatsoever was it a strong response, but that's a popular lie among Republicans. "Actions speak louder than words," said Louisiana's Bill Cassidy, another Republican up for reelection. "The President tends to speak loosely. We know that. That's just his pattern." And of course there’s Sen. Mitch McConnell, who combined the professed ignorance and defense of Trump into one: "Well, I haven’t read the Woodward book, but we all knew it was dangerous. The president knew it was dangerous and I think took positive steps very early on, for which he should be applauded, not criticized," he said.

Anonymously, Republican senators were less bothered by Trump's lies to the American public about a pandemic that has gone on to kill 200,000 Americans than about the fact that he would talk to Bob Woodward. "Most of us say, 'What the hell is he doing talking to Bob Woodward at 11 at night?'" one of them told The Hill.

Remember back in March, when McConnell talked about how Trump's flat-footed response to the pandemic was the fault of House Democrats and impeachment? How he said that it "diverted the attention of the government?” Yeah, that. The refusal of McConnell and fellow Republicans to actually look at the evidence, to put country over party in the impeachment, has led directly to this: 200,000 people dead. McConnell's continued insistence on putting party over country means that six months into the pandemic, he's abandoned it.

Senate Republicans don’t want to talk about what Trump knew about COVID-19 and when he knew it

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

Donald Trump knew. He knew in February how dangerous, how deadly coronavirus was going to be and he deliberately played the severity of it down. Some of the revelations from the Bob Woodward interviews now surfacing are old news. Everyone watching knew he's been lying through his teeth from January onward about the disease and the crisis surrounding it.

No one knew better than the people closest to Trump, including Republican senators. When they voted to acquit Trump on February 5, they knew. They knew that he had obstructed justice, they knew that he was a liar and a cheat and they knew this epidemic had reached our shores and that Trump was likely the least capable person imaginable to deal with what was coming. They let this happen. And now that it's all out in public, not a one of them wants to talk about it. Especially Mitch McConnell. "I didn't look at the Woodward book," he told MSNBC's Kasie Hunt. "I will later. But I haven't even seen what you're referring to yet."

It's about basic decency. It’s about the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Donate now to help save the nation.  

That must have been the talking point sent out to the conference. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Kennedy and Shelley Capito and Rob Portman—not a one of them would comment. They "haven't seen" it, "haven't read it," practically stopped up their ears when it was read to them. Florida man Sen. Rick Scott is the only one ready to make himself complicit by willfully burying his own head in the sand: "I have not read it. I don't want to read it. I think the president did the right thing by stopping flights from China."

You won't be shocked to find out that the Republicans up for reelection in a matter of weeks haven't been rushing out with statements. Remember what Sen. Susan Collins said in April? She said "the president did a lot that was right in the beginning." That's what she said. In the beginning, when he was telling Bob Woodward that he understood the disease was transmitted through the air, that he knew how deadly it would be, that he was deliberately downplaying its dangers. That he was setting up the deaths of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Americans. He "did a lot that was right," she said.

Here's what she said last week. Last. Week. "[H]e has also done some things right. […] On January 31st, he ended travel to and from China, where the virus and the pandemic originated. He was roundly criticized for that, but it saved lives." She said that. Just like Rick Scott. We haven't heard from her today, though. We haven't heard from most of them.

All these deaths, they're on Trump's head. But not on Trump's head alone. Every single one of those Republican senators who voted against his impeachment bear responsibility. They could see what was coming. They knew Trump would be just as likely to do precisely what he did—try to figure out a way to profit from it, lie about it, blame everyone else for it, and fail to protect the people who elected them.

Fox News has more important things to cover than pandemics and fires—where important means ‘silly’

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Wednesday—as the pandemic approaches 195,000 victims in the United States, the Department of Justice (DOJ) goes all in on defending Trump against allegations of rape, and California firefighters are dealing with the states’ second, third, and fourth largest fires all at the same time—Fox News has decided to spend the morning giving extensive coverage to a much more vital, serious story. Donald Trump … has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yes, that’s a real thing. Trump was totally nominated for the prize by a single far-right member of the Norwegian parliament—the same anti-immigration member who nominated Trump for the same prize in 2018. It’s not clear exactly what Trump has done to warrant this honor, but there’s a considerable list of possibilities. 

For example: Since Trump broke the nuclear treaty with Iran and did everything possible to make it impossible for anyone else to follow the extensive regime of inspections and limitations that assured Iran could not build a nuclear weapon, Iran’s stockpile of enhanced uranium has now grown to 10 times the limit allowed under that treaty. And that’s just one of several reasons why Trump really has had an enormous impact on world peace.

In addition to setting Iran up to be the next nuclear power, Trump could collect a prize for his handling of nuclear weapons in North Korea. Because after exchanges of cake and birthday cards, receiving beautiful notes, stamping out thousands of genuinely hideous commemorative coins, and falling into mutual authoritarian love, the number of nuclear weapons controlled by Kim Jong-un is up to somewhere between 30 and 40; the isolated dictatorship has conducted a expanded program of missile launches; and Kim maintains large stockpiles of both chemical and biological weapons. Trump’s entire outreach to North Korea appears to have resulted in an expanded travel schedule for Kim and excuses for other countries to ignore international sanctions. That’s certainly worth a No Prize.

Or perhaps Donald Trump was nominated for one of his truly outstanding international moments: The abandoning of America’s Kurdish allies. Trump pulled out the small number of U.S. forces helping to maintain order along the border between Syria and Turkey, not only allowing Kurdish fighters who had long sided with the U.S. to be trampled on by a one-two-three dictator punch of Bashar al-Assad, Recep Erdoğan, and Vladimir Putin—he also paved the way for a resurgence of ISIS, created a chaotic power vacuum ripe for creating new terrorist groups, and permanently damaged both the reputation and power of the United States. A big No Prize for that one.

Or Trump could be up for getting that big lump of gold in exchange for his sterling work in selling the bombs that are blowing up civilians in Yemen. Trump’s first out-of-the-U.S. visit was a stop with Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, where Trump talked up the big heap o’ arms that he was selling the kingdom. Since then, Trump has defended the Saudis’ right to dictate to other nations in the region, including tweeting his wholehearted support of conducting a long-running blockade of a U.S. ally for the crime of having a free press. Trump also hasn’t let little things like the kidnapping, torture, dismemberment, and murder of a U.S. journalist get in the way of his ability to provide the bombs that are blowing up wedding tents, and hospitals, and fishing boats, and school buses, and homes, and … Quick, bring out the No Prize.

Of course, it’s hard to consider Trump’s achievements in international peace without looking at the one that has already earned him a major award: extorting the leader of Ukraine with threats to withhold U.S. military assistance unless Trump was provided with lies he could use against Joe Biden. That one earned Trump an impeachment. (If there was no medal, I would personally like to offer Trump a commemorative plaque celebrating this achievement.) The result of this action wasn’t just the immediate harm it did to Ukraine, or making the United States seem even more ridiculous. It also gave Russia a long-lasting power boost in the region and helped assure that NATO would not expand eastward. Give him all the No Prizes!

Speaking of NATO, Trump’s really outstanding achievement award might be in how much he’s weakened the military and economic relationship with Europe that has prevented World War III since World War II. Every member of the NATO alliance provided forces to assist the United States when it went into Afghanistan, and many of them suffered substantial losses. Trump has made sure that will never happen again by constantly attacking allies and turning the United States into a laughingstock. No Prize for that. 

Trump can have an auxiliary No Prize for how he’s damaged the relationships between the United States and South Korea, and the United States and Japan. But his biggest No Prize of all might be how Trump has so mishandled the relationship with China that he’s generated what’s being described as Cold War II. Having surrendered any claim to the defense of human rights, the United States is now completely ineffective at addressing genuine moments of oppression and genocide. And because Trump has been utterly ineffective at anything other than alienating allies, China has been emboldened to move faster, both internally and externally, to confront the U.S. and make its own demands on the world.

But if Trump is up for the big prize for his unmatched ability to generate worldwide conflict and destabilize the planet as it faces twin crises over the coronavirus and climate, he’s in good company: 

Adolf Hitler was nominated once in 1939. As unlikely as it may seem today, Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939 by a member of the Swedish parliament.

Hello, history, are you rhyming again?

The statements being made about Trump’s handling of the pandemic demand to be met with outrage

Posted on by Mark Sumner

In a convention where a genuine fact might die of loneliness, the biggest lies are all about COVID-19. That’s quite a claim at an event where a parade of wealthy Republicans is taking the stand to claim different varieties of victimhood, and where speakers are painting a vision of what will happen when Trump departs the White House that would make Hieronymus Bosch run screaming. However, while lying about the economy is bad, and lying about Donald Trump being a “uniter” is simply ridiculous, lying about how we ended up as the worst of the worst when it comes to reacting to COVID-19 is dangerous.

It’s dangerous not just because Trump continues to promote quack “cures,” continues to override experts on both policy and treatment, and continues to undercut the need for action. It’s dangerous because the way the RNC is presenting Trump as someone who “understood the threat” while Democrats and the media “downplayed the danger” is such an obvious 180-degree inversion of reality that just presenting it displays an amazing contempt for facts, science, and history that isn’t even history yet. It’s not just that Donald Trump is covering up failure. He’s covering up genocide.

The chart at the top of this article hasn’t been updated in weeks, but it’s still a guide to some of the statements that Trump was making even as COVID-19 marched across the nation. Far from taking COVID-19 seriously, Trump was playing golf, making flu jokes with Sean Hannity, and generally basking in the warm afterglow of Republicans handing him a free pass by not calling so much as a single witness to his impeachment hearing.

It wasn’t until the near end of this chart that Trump showed up in the (then unmutilated) Rose Garden with an array of Big-Box CEOs to announce a national testing strategy that would involve tens of thousands of parking lot testing centers coordinated by a website to route patients and provide results. The website was a lie. Those centers never appeared. And it wasn’t until July that we learned that Trump killed the whole idea of having coordinated testing as attempted genocide against states governed by Democrats. Trump’s “political instincts” were that it was better to continue downplaying concerns about COVID-19, keep the federal government out of the testing business, and let citizens of Blue states simply die. Trump dumped the whole idea of launching a testing plan. 

It wasn’t difficult to see the impact that a national program of testing and case tracing could have. Not only did South Korea use that strategy to wrangle an early epidemic there into one of the great success stories of the pandemic, but even nations as hard hit as Italy were able to use testing in conjunction with a tough national lockdown to stop the virus in its tracks. At one point, Italy had far more cases and far more deaths than the United States. Now it has a fraction of either, and the rate of new cases there is lower than many individual states.

Donald Trump’s response to COVID-19 wasn’t just the worst on the planet. It wasn’t just malignant incompetence. It was intentionally bad. Trump did less than he could have done on purpose, in the hopes that he could make political gains by pointing fingers at Democratic governors as Americans died. And he did. Trump went to war with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, refused to talk to him, failed to provide requested assistance, and saying “I want them to be appreciative” before providing any help. He did the same with attacks on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. And on other Democratic governors who were complaining as Trump refused to start a testing program, refused to support a national lockdown, refused to centralize purchases of protective gear and medications, and actually confiscated materials purchased by blue states to send to his favored red states.

Trump’s handling of COVID-19 hasn’t been bungled or mishandled or poor. It’s been murder. It’s been deliberate. It’s been death-as-a-political-strategy. And now the Trump convention is running film clips from Thailand as part of a propaganda piece claiming it was Trump who took the virus seriously, Trump who took action, and Trump who whatever. 

This level of propaganda might not quite match that of the Nazis … but it’s getting damn close. Not only should Trump’s actions in canceling a national testing strategy be the subject of a second impeachment, they are crimes against humanity deserving of a trial before the world. That the media is sitting quietly by as Trump claims to be the hero of the crisis he created, should be the focus of outrage.

Republicans think 175,000 dead Americans is okay, and that’s not all

Posted on by kos

The sorry, sad state of the morally bankrupt Republican Party: 

57 percent of Republicans think 176,000 coronavirus deaths (and counting) is acceptable. Holy shit. pic.twitter.com/dd737aoOmj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 23, 2020

By double-digit margins, Republicans think 175,000 Covid-related deaths (and counting) are “acceptable.” These are the same Republicans who now think that Russian meddling in our politics is okay, that “family values” was a cynical joke on our moral discourse, that “law and order” was something that mattered, that no one stood above the law, that leading the world in pursuit of shared democratic ideals is best replaced by boyish fandom of murderous despots, and that the entire purpose of the Republican Party is nothing more than the singular worship of their idiotic man-boy president. 

Oh, and the response to anything is whine, whine, whine:

.@GOPChairwoman responds to @CBSNewsPoll showing 57% of Republicans say the number of those dead from #COVID19 is acceptable at 175,000: "I think that is a really unfair poll..Republicans do not want to see people suffering from this pandemic." pic.twitter.com/E43B4p9rck

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 23, 2020

Republicans literally are okay with people suffering during this pandemic because they—like their dear leader—are utterly devoid of empathy for their fellow neighbors. It’s the reason so many still resist wearing face masks, putting everyone around them at risk. It’s the reason Republicans continue to support their president despite knowing what they know now, which is exactly what they knew then:

Ted Cruz knew. Rand Paul knew. Nikki Haley knew. Marco Rubio knew. Kellyanne Conway knew. Mike Pompeo knew. Glenn Beck knew. Rick Perry knew. Susan Collins knew. They all knew. pic.twitter.com/73XyJkiNkv

— act.tv (@actdottv) August 21, 2020

Nothing about Donald Trump has been a surprise. Everything that has happened was predictable. We didn’t know we’d suffer a global pandemic, but we knew Trump would be tested during his first term—every president is—and that he would fail spectacularly. 

What wasn’t predictable was how quickly his whole party would become as sociopathic as Trump himself, how quickly they’d acquiesce to his rampant lawlessness. The party that once went into hysterics because former President Bill Clinton had a quick chat on an airport runway with Attorney General Loretta Lynch is now silent as the curent attorney general acts as Trump’s private lawyer. The same party that went into hysterics and filed multiple lawsuits over former President Barack Obama’s executive orders now turns the other way as Trump escalates the same practice. 

And a whole party that once declared fealty to “law and order” is totally mum as Trump literally thumbs his nose at the Supreme Court. What army do they have, anyway? 

USCIS makes it official. They will ignore SCOTUS ruling and, "will reject all initial DACA requests from aliens who have never previously received DACA and return all fees." Furthermore, renewals will be limited to one year. https://t.co/RUIZ3LXw3n

— Ali Noorani (@anoorani) August 24, 2020

There is a single constitutional remedy for such defiance of our nation’s laws: impeachment. But Republicans decided that they were okay with Trump’s lawlessness, and he’s returned the favor by making an even greater mockery of the very institutions that make our democracy work. 

It turns out they're quite fragile, indeed. All it takes is one despot and an enabling party to watch those institutions crumble. Turns out, the only thing keeping them in place was a belief in our democratic system. Republicans don’t care for our system. Or democracy.

The “party of life” never was, but at least now everyone can stop pretending. Their opposition to abortion has nothing to do with “life,” and everything to do with controlling women. 

The “party of national security” is a laughable joke. Russia strongman Vladimir Putin pulls the strings. 

The party of “law and order”? Trump has literally argued that as president, he is above the law, and Republicans have been happy to play along. 

Tax cuts is all that’s left of what Republicanism was all about. The rich and powerful still get their payday. They always do. Nothing like global economic devastation to redistribute even more wealth to the top 0.01%. 

But the stuff that was supposed to trickle down to the masses? All of that is shredded, in tatters, as the Republican Party devolves into an outright cult of personality and Q-inspired conspiracy mongering.