Conservative Columnist Sums Up Donald Trump’s Strong Case For Worst President In History
Lee Moran, Reporter, HuffPost October 14, 2020
Conservative columnist Max Boot asked a damning question of Donald Trump’s supporters as he summed up in his latest editorial for The Washington Post why he believed Trump had made a “strong case” for being the worst president in the history of the United States.
Boot reeled off in his column published Tuesday a long list of reasons for why Trump should take the “worst president” title — from his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and trafficking in racism to his inciting of violence, xenophobia and welcoming “of Russian attacks on our elections.”
The commentator, who quit the GOP following Trump’s 2016 victory, acknowledged “there are single-issue voters to whom Trump has a strong appeal.”
But he also asked of the tens of millions of people who still support the president, given his long list of controversies and scandals, “What are they thinking?”
As hearings begin, a ‘power grab without principle’ comes into view
A fundamental question hangs overhead: is there a coherent defense for launching a Supreme Court confirmation process right now?
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, meets with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., at the Capitol on Sept. 30, 2020.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will, as promised, begin consideration today of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination, and under normal circumstances, the political world would be pondering a variety of routine questions. What are the nominee’s qualifications? What do we know about her ideology? And judicial temperament?
With Barrett, in particular, there are a series of more specific questions. How eager is the young conservative to tear down the Affordable Care Act? What about the jurist’s record of fierce opposition to reproductive rights? How seriously should senators consider her recent disclosure failures?
But as critically important as those questions are, as this week’s proceedings get underway, a more fundamental question hangs overhead: is there a coherent defense for launching this process right now? A recent Washington Post editorial rings true:
Mr. Trump is asking Senate Republicans to perpetrate a damaging injustice by ramming through a nominee on the eve of a presidential election. This move threatens to sully the court and aggravate suspicions over the coming election. Senate Republicans should be disgusted at playing the role they are being asked to play. But so far they seem shameless in their hypocrisy and wanton in their willingness to poison the workings of our democracy.
The editorial added that the GOP effort to ram through Barrett’s nomination, even as millions of ballots are being cast, is “a power grab without principle.”
Much of the American mainstream agrees. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll found that a 52% majority of the country believes the Senate “should delay filling the court’s current vacancy,” leaving the matter to the winner of next month’s presidential election. This is roughly in line with other recent polling on the matter.
What’s more, USA Today reported last week on a focus group with Republican women in swing states, each of whom voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and “none of them favored the idea of moving forward with a confirmation process before the election, and several said they were more likely to support Biden as a result.”
What’s more, there aren’t just issues of basic fairness to consider; there are also pandemic-era practical considerations.
There are 12 Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and two of them — Utah’s Mike Lee and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis — recently tested positive for the coronavirus. Common sense suggested the diagnoses should delay the proceedings, but Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced he would push ahead anyway.
Indeed, Graham, who was recently with Lee — indoors, without a mask — is refusing to even be tested for the virus. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), another Judiciary Committee member, has also said he will not take a test to determine whether he’s contracted the virus.
There’s no great mystery here: if Graham and/or Grassley were to get tested, they might receive discouraging news, at which point they’d have to go into quarantine, putting Barrett’s confirmation at risk. It’s hardly a stretch to think this explains their reluctance to get tested.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a Judiciary Committee member facing a tough re-election fight, conceded over the weekend that it “would be smart” for senators on the panel to get tested before this week’s proceedings begin. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) aded over the weekend, in reference to Ernst’s comments, “She’s right, but will Senator Ernst do anything if Senators Graham and Grassley refuse? Or is this just an empty statement?”
Wisconsin is battling America’s worst coronavirus outbreak, and the state’s broken politics are partly to blame
Andrew Romano, West Coast Correspondent
Coronavirus By The Numbers
Look at a map of daily Covid – 19 cases in the U.S. Most of the Northeast and West Coast is yellow, indicating limited spread. The numbers across the Southeast tend to be moderate, or orange. Move into the Upper Midwest and more red hot spots start to appear.
And then there’s one state that’s covered in crimson: Wisconsin.
Right now Wisconsin is battling the worst coronavirus outbreak in America. The question is why. What about Wisconsin is different from, say, the neighboring states of Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois, where the virus isn’t spreading nearly as fast?
The answer, at least in part, is politics: specifically, the brand of cavalier, it-will-go-away politics propagated by President Trump and parroted by lower-level Republicans who seem hell-bent on resisting efforts to sustain social distancing and mask wearing when the spread is still low enough to contain — and in Wisconsin’s case, who continue to resist even after infections spiral out of control.
As Trump resumes in-person campaigning with a White House event Saturday and a rally Monday in Florida — and with cases rising nationally to their highest level since August — Wisconsin has emerged as a cautionary tale for the rest of the country about what could be coming this fall and winter to places that let politics get in the way of commonsense precautions. Last month Trump held an outdoor rally in Mosinee that attracted thousands of people, most of whom were not wearing masks. Even as case counts soared, he planned to return for back-to-back rallies in Janesville and Green Bay earlier this month — plans that were scrapped only after the president himself tested positive for the virus.
Wisconsin’s numbers are sobering. On Thursday the state’s new daily case count cleared 3,000 for the first time. Its seven-day average (2,491) has more than tripled since the start of September. Daily hospitalizations have also tripled over the same period. Nearly 20 percent of Wisconsin’s COVID-19 tests are coming back positive.
Overall, the Badger State has logged 17,437 new cases over the last seven days — more than any other state except the far more populous Texas and California. On a per capita basis, that’s more new cases (299 per 100,000 residents) than any other state except the far less populous Dakotas, and several times more than Michigan (75), Illinois (123) or Minnesota (137).
Meanwhile, on a list of the 100 counties nationwide with the highest number of recent cases per resident, all but two counties with more than 300 cases in the last seven days are located in Wisconsin: Oconto (365), Winnebago (1,439), Shawano (337), Calumet (395), Waupaca (307), Outagamie (1,023) and Brown (1,409). In total, there are 16 Wisconsin counties on that list — the most of any state. And unlike other hard-hit states such as Idaho, Montana and the Dakotas, Wisconsin’s hot spots aren’t dispersed across vast distances; they’re contiguous and concentrated around cities such as Green Bay in the state’s northeast corner, making the spread harder to contain.
Next week Wisconsin officials plan to open a 530-bed field hospital at the state fairgrounds to keep COVID-19 patients from flooding heath care facilities, which Democratic Gov. Tony Evers recently characterized as being “on the brink” of collapse.
“We hoped this day wouldn’t come,” Evers lamented. “But unfortunately, Wisconsin is in a much different, more dire place today. … There’s no other way to put it: We are overwhelmed.”
As Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told NBC News earlier this week, “Wisconsin has become the poster child for how things can go wrong.”
Nursing assistant Monica Brodsky, left, and nurse Taylor Mathisen at a drive-through COVID-19 testing site in Middleton, Wis., on Monday. (Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)
So what went wrong?
The most disturbing thing about Wisconsin’s outbreak is that it didn’t have to be this bad. NBC described the problem as “political trench warfare between the Democratic governor and the Republicans who control the state Legislature.” That’s technically accurate, but it also makes it sound like both sides are defending equally sensible positions aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19.
They’re not. On the one hand, Evers has repeatedly tried to do everything in his power to contain the pandemic. On the other, Republicans have repeatedly challenged Evers’s authority and thwarted his efforts, blocking the sort of basic public-health measures other states have enacted while touting themselves as champions of “individual liberty.”
The first and perhaps most consequential of these skirmishes came in the spring, when the Legislature’s Republican leaders filed a lawsuit arguing that Evers’s “safer at home” order would leave the state’s economy “in shambles” — even though it was no stricter than dozens of other shelter-in-place orders in effect across the country. On May 13 the state’s Supreme Court, which was also controlled by conservatives, sided with the GOP and overturned the order. Evers was not pleased, telling CNN that the court’s ruling “puts our state into chaos.”
“Now we have no plan and no protections for the people of Wisconsin,” the governor said. “When you have more people in a small space — I don’t care if it’s bars, restaurants or your home — you’re going to be able to spread the virus. And so now, today, thanks to the Republican legislators who convinced four Supreme Court justices to not look at the law but [to] look at their political careers, I guess, it’s a bad day for Wisconsin.”
“It’s the Wild West,” he added.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers speaks at a news conference in Kenosha, Wis., in late August. (Morry Gash/AP)
Bars and restaurants immediately reopened for business. Patrons crowded in. For a while, the state’s case count stayed relatively low, even as the virus surged to record levels in the South and West. But that only bred complacency, and by the time college students started returning for the fall semester, public health efforts had become so politicized that Evers had less power to slow the spread than governors in neighboring states.
In July, for instance, Evers issued a statewide order mandating masks in enclosed spaces, which he extended last month to Nov. 21. Yet even though nearly three-quarters of Wisconsinites favor Ever’s mandate, Republican lawmakers are backing another suit against it. A judge is expected to rule any day now.
Same goes for Evers’s latest order limiting indoor capacity at bars, restaurants and stores to 25 percent as the virus surges. “Do I expect there to be litigation on this?” Ryan Nilsestuen, Evers’s top attorney, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week. “Absolutely.”
This relentless campaign to delegitimize pandemic precautions as partisan overreach comes with a cost. It discourages compliance. It disincentivizes enforcement. And it preemptively restricts the government’s ability to address a worsening crisis.
Consider the fact that in California and New York, two of the hardest-hit states, indoor dining has only recently resumed at 25 percent capacity despite months of low or declining case counts.
Yet in Wisconsin, people have been drinking and dining indoors since the spring, and it took a full month of exponential spread before Evers felt like he could attempt to limit capacity statewide. (Local jurisdictions such as Madison and Milwaukee put limits in place earlier; today they have lower case counts.) Even now, in the midst of America’s worst outbreak, Wisconsinites can still drink and dine indoors. Partly as a result, infections have been radiating outward from college campuses and blanketing the state.
To be sure, Republicans elsewhere have resisted efforts to combat the virus, including in Michigan, where the state Supreme Court ruled last week that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lacks the authority to extend or declare states of emergency in relation to the pandemic. And of course there’s a reasonable debate to be had over the proper balance between business needs and pandemic precautions.
But Wisconsin isn’t having that debate. Instead, it has been fulfilling its role as America’s truest bellwether: a state that parallels our divided national politics both in the tightness of its elections and the conflicts that define them. Over the last decade, Republican activism funded by the Koch brothers has clashed with the state’s deep progressive tradition, tipping the scales in the GOP’s favor and exacerbating polarization between left and right, white and black, urban and rural. After Republicans took control of the governor’s mansion, the U.S. House delegation, one U.S. Senate seat and both chambers of the state Legislature in the 2010 tea party wave, they gerrymandered the state so aggressively that even when Democrats won 53 percent of assembly votes in 2018, Republicans still wound up with 64 percent of the seats.
Evers took office the following year, and Republicans immediately sought to render him powerless for partisan advantage. That was long before the pandemic. Now, with coronavirus cases skyrocketing, the life-or-death consequences of such polarization are becoming harder to ignore. With fall in full swing and winter looming, here’s hoping the rest of America doesn’t go the way of Wisconsin.
Donald Trump tried to go after former McCain Campaign Strategist Steve Schmidt, the head of The Lincoln Project, on Twitter. Schmidt didn’t hold anything back in his reply:
“You’ve never beaten me at anything. This is our first dance. Did you like, Covita? We are so much better at this than your team of crooks, wife beaters, degenerates, weirdos and losers.
You are losing. We heard you loved Evita. You saw it so many times. Where will you live out your years in disgrace? Will you buy Jeffrey Epstein’s island? One last extra special deal from him? Or will you be drooling on yourself in a suite at Walter Reed? Maybe you will be in prison?
I bet you fear that. The Manhattan District Attorney may not be around to cover for you or your crooked kids anymore. Eliza Orlins doesn’t believe in different sets of rules for the Trumps. What about the State Attorney General? You know what you’ve done.
Oh, Donald. Who do you owe almost $500 million in personally guaranteed loans to? It’s all coming down. You think you and your disgusting family are going to be in deal-flow next year? Are you really that delusional?
You are lucky Chris Wallace interrupted you after Joe Biden said you weren’t smart. You started to melt down. That’s the place that hurts the most. Right? Fred Sr., knew it. You’ve spent your whole life proving it. You aren’t very smart. You couldn’t take the SAT on your own. What was the real score? 970? We both know you know.
Are the steroids wearing off? Is the euphoria fading? Do you feel foggy? Tired? Do you ache? How is the breathing? Hmmm. Are you watching TV today? We will have some nice surprises for you. Everyone is laughing at you. You are a joke. A splendid moron turned deadly clown.
Did you watch Martha McSally in her debate against American hero, fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly? She is so embarrassed by you. She is ashamed and full of self-loathing for the choice she made in following you over the cliff. She is in free fall now. She will lose, like most of them, because of you.
We hear from the White House and the campaign everyday. They are betraying you. They are looking to get out alive and salvage careers and their names. It’s Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner vs. Donald Trump Jr., and Kimberly Guilfoyle on the inside. They are at war over scraps and who gets to command what will be the remnants of your rancid cult.
It’s almost over now. You are the greatest failure in American history. You are the worst president in American history. Disgrace will always precede your name. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will grow up ashamed of their names.
One day, I suppose there will be some small and not-much-visited library that bears your name. It will be the type of place where a drunk walks by, staring at the wall for a minute, before deciding it is beneath his dignity to piss on. That’s what is waiting for you.
Joe Biden is a better man. He’s smarter. He’s winning.
Do you remember when you didn’t want to name Donald Trump Jr., Donald because you were worried about him being a loser named Donald? You were right about that. He is.
But it is you who will be remembered as America’s greatest loser. You will be crushed in the election!”
What if this is the last election in U.S. history?
People and entire organizations are working to discourage the American people from voting so the power elite can control the outcome and silence the working stiffs.
By Phil Kadner
On Sept 3, workers prepare absentee ballots for mailing at the Wake County Board of Elections in Raleigh, N.C. Nearly 10,000 North Carolinians had their mail-in ballots accepted in the first week of voting, according state data. North Carolina was the first state in the country to send absentee ballots to voters who requested them. Gerry Broome/AP
What if this were the last time you ever had a chance to vote? If your children and grandchildren and future generations were to look back on November 2020 as the end of free elections in the United States, would you fail to pick up a ballot this year?
There are those who say it doesn’t matter who you vote for, both political parties are corrupt, their candidates are unworthy and the election process itself is a sham.
That’s a bunch of garbage!
For decades there have been people, entire organizations, working to discourage the American people from voting. It is a political strategy called suppressing the vote, so the power elite can control the outcome and silence the working stiffs.
Should you choose to stay home don’t tell me you didn’t take sides, because you absolutely did.
You chose the side that is trying to destroy our democracy. You chose the side that favors political repression. You chose the side that wants to silence those who would use their voice to defend the defenseless.
Centuries ago, people came here because kings and queens, czars and emperors decided how people would live and how they would die.
Most people were not paid for their work. If they killed a deer to feed their families, they were executed. When there was a war, they were rounded up, handed a spear or a pitchfork and told to go to die for their beloved monarch. This went on for centuries.
People eventually left such places to come to America. They risked their lives on tiny ships trying to reach a hostile country that offered nothing but hope. And once they were here, they created a new kind of government where people had the right to vote for their leaders.
Slaves came here in ships as well. They did not choose to make the voyage. They were placed in chains, sold like cattle and made to work for people who would become rich off their blood, sweat and tears. They were beaten, whipped and lynched for trying to run away.
They dreamed of a better life. Of freedom. One day they were granted that right and tried to exercise it at the election polls.
Black people were burned alive in churches just for holding meetings where they talked about voting. They were shot on the streets walking to the polls. They were lynched from trees because they dared to run for office.
Still, they tried to vote. Still they fought for the right to cast a ballot. And you dare wonder today why you should bother to vote.
There are women who took their small children and walked in the streets campaigning for the right to vote. They worked 18 hours a day in sweatshops, came home and were forced to turn over their money to husbands who beat them and spent their savings at local bars.
They had almost no rights. They couldn’t even own their own homes in some places. But they realized at the ballot box, if they had the vote, they might be able to change that for all women in the future.
They were verbally and physically abused and sent to prison. Some died trying to make the dream of universal suffrage a reality. All so you could vote.
Yet, today there are some women who don’t care to vote. It is their right, they say.
The fate of our country is at stake this November. There are those who may try to stop the election, or at the very least stop you from casting a ballot. You must take a stand and tell your friends and neighbors in other states to do the same.
We vote for all of those who have suffered and died for this right. We vote to preserve this legacy for future generations. We vote to protect the most powerful revolutionary tool in the history of the world: The election ballot.
If fiscal probity is your top election issue, there’s no candidate for you this year, according to a new report by deficit hawks in Washington.
The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden would each send the federal debt spiraling higher during the next several years. If Trump wins and enacts his agenda, it would push the national debt $5 trillion higher by 2030. Biden’s plan, if fully enacted, would push the deficit up by $5.6 trillion. The national debt held by the public is already equal to 98% of GDP. It would rise to 125% of GDP under Trump and 128% under Biden.
This kind of analysis is a bit of a political parlor game, because no president ever gets his entire agenda passed into law, and sometimes it’s not even clear what their policies are. Trump’s second-term agenda, for instance, is nothing more than a list of 54 bullet points on the campaign website, with no cost estimates or documentation. So CRFB researchers had to hunt around for Republican proposals in Congress or elsewhere that indicate what Trump seems to be proposing.
Biden’s agenda is far more thorough, with 48 discrete plans and more than 800 individual proposals. But those aren’t always spelled out either, with Biden explaining how he’d pay for some plans, but not others.
Biden wants to ramp up spending on education, health care, child and elder care, affordable housing and infrastructure. He’d pay for much of that with higher taxes on businesses, households earning more than $400,000 per year and wealthy investors. Overall, Biden has outlined about $7 trillion in new spending over a decade, along with $4 trillion in new taxes.
Trump’s plan is harder to summarize because of the scarce detail in bullet points such as “return to normal in 2021” and “create 10 million new jobs.” Trump’s main economic idea seems to be to cut or eliminate payroll taxes, but that’s very unlikely because those taxes fund Social Security and Medicare. Trump would presumably continue to axe regulations and press trading partners such as China for better trade deals.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden boards his campaign plane at New Castle Airport in New Castle, Del., Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020, to travel to Gettysburg, Pa. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Biden gets an edge
Most analysis of the two candidates’ plans give Biden an edge. The whole point of a sound spending-and-taxing plan is to boost economic growth and make more people better off. The Penn Wharton Budget Model finds that Biden’s plan would do that, boosting GDP by 1.4% by 2040, while pushing federal debt 1.5% lower than it would otherwise be.
Moody’s Analytics analyzed four election scenarios—a Democratic sweep, a Republican sweep, a Biden win with split control of Congress, and a Trump win with split control of Congress—and found that a Democratic sweep would be best for the economy. If Biden were able to largely enact his policies, the research firm found, GDP growth would average 2.9% during the next decade and the economy would add 21.7 million jobs. Under the status quo—with Trump as president and Congress split—growth would average just 2.4%, with 13.9 million new jobs.
Oxford Economics found that “Joe Biden’s fiscal policy proposals would provide the U.S. economy with a booster shot as it recovers from the global coronavirus recession.” Even if Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, Oxford argues that Biden’s full plan couldn’t pass in the Senate, where a narrow Democratic advantage is the party’s best scenario. But a more modest “Biden lite” plan might be able to pass, and if it did, it could boost GDP growth by a couple of percentage points and push employment back to pre-pandemic levels sooner.
Another element of a Biden presidency would probably be a large stimulus bill in early 2021. Stocks sank on Oct. 6 as President Trump said he was done negotiating with Democrats on a fourth stimulus bill, and would now wait until after the election. But if Biden wins and Democrats take the Senate, Congress would probably pass a much larger bill than the parties have been negotiating this fall—most likely similar to the $3.4 trillion package House Democrats passed all the way back in May. That would send the 2021 deficit soaring, without a doubt. But most economists think it’s better for Uncle Sam to borrow now and juice the economy than to risk chronic recession and the ongoing misery that entails.
Lindsey Graham, in a dead heat with Senate challenger, pleads for help
Christopher Wilson, Senior Writer
With less than a month until Election Day, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s reelection bid, once thought to be a walkover, is now considered a toss-up, as his Democratic opponent, Jaime Harrison, continues to rake in and spend cash.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report announced Wednesday morning that it had moved the South Carolina race’s rating from Lean Republican to Toss-Up. Graham has represented the Palmetto State in the Senate since 2003 and won his most recent race by nearly 20 points in 2014, but Harrison’s fundraising and the national political climate have imperiled his seat.
Harrison, who is Black, is a South Carolina native who attended Yale and Georgetown Law before serving as chairman of the state’s Democratic Party. He has raised tens of millions of dollars and has been airing commercials in the state since April. According to Cook, the Harrison campaign has spent or reserved time with TV and digital ads to the tune of more than $60.3 million, versus just $20.6 million spent or reserved by Graham. Harrison has been focusing on Graham’s attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including legislation he co-authored that would have knocked 21 million Americans off their insurance.
Graham, who opposed Donald Trump in the last election, turned into a golf buddy of the president and one of his biggest supporters in the Senate. A group called Republican Voters Against Trump has been running ads with a clip of Graham in 2016 calling Trump “ a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” which are meant to boost former Vice President Joe Biden but incidentally highlight what opponents call Graham’s opportunism.
As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham displayed high-profile support for the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh as Supreme Court justice in the fall of 2018 that made him a prime target for Democrats. Now, as the committee chairman, Graham has vowed to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, resulting in a flood of donations to Harrison’s campaign.
In late September, Graham started appearing on Fox News repeatedly, begging for conservatives to help him keep up with Harrison.
“I’m getting overwhelmed,” he told host Sean Hannity. “LindseyGraham.com. Help me. They’re killing me, money-wise. Help me. You helped me last week — help me again. LindseyGraham.com.”
Jaime Harrison. (Joshua Boucher/The State via AP)
Last week the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican PAC, announced it was spending $10 million on radio and TV ads in the state in an attempt to boost Graham’s chances. Harrison said on Twitter Sunday that he had raised over $1.5 million following a Saturday debate with Graham. During the debate, Harrison erected his own plexiglass barrier on the stage, a precaution in response to Graham’s repeated close contact with a number of Republican officials who had tested positive for COVID-19.
“Tonight I am taking this seriously,” Harrison said. “That’s why I put this plexiglass up. Because it’s not just about me — it’s about the people in my life that I have to take care of as well. My two boys, my wife, my grandmother.”
Adding to Graham’s trouble is a national climate that appears to be souring on President Trump and many of his GOP supporters. Multiple national polls released in the past few days have shown Biden with a double-digit lead over Trump as the president attempts to recover from a COVID-19 hospitalization and a poor debate performance. Trump currently holds an approximately 5 point lead in the South Carolina presidential race.
“We are seeing the emergence of what I call a ‘new South,’” Harrison told Yahoo News in September. “[It’s] a new South which is bold, inclusive and diverse. You’re seeing African-Americans being able to run statewide for the nominations and win and be on the cusp of changing the history and direction of this country. It’s great to have people who are allies to the issues that impact all of our communities, but there’s nothing like having people from those communities sit at those tables and make decisions that impact the folks in their communities.”
While Republicans are expected to pick up one Senate seat in Alabama, they’re currently playing defense on roughly a dozen seats, including eight rated as either Lean Democratic or Toss-Up by Cook.
Ego maniac trump’s disregard for anyone and anything except his narcissistic self interest. “Don’t Cry for Me Secret Service”
Lincoln Project Trolls Trump’s Balcony Stunt With Singalong ‘Evita’ Parody
Ed Mazza, Overnight Editor, HuffPost October 7, 2020
President Donald Trump marked his return to the White House on Monday from hospitalization for the coronovirus with a photo-op at the Truman Balcony ― a scene his critics likened to the iconic moment from the musical “Evita.”
Now his critics on the right turned that comparison into a song parody.
The Lincoln Project ― a group of never-Trump Republicans ― released “Covita,” a parody based on the musical’s showstopper:
The Lincoln Project did not say who sang the track. Asked on Twitter, co-founder Rick Wilson responded: “I’ll never tell.”
Patti LuPone, who originated the role on Broadway and won a Tony as Eva Peron, weighed in on Trump’s balcony appearance a day earlier on social media.
“I still have the lung power and I wore less makeup,” she wrote on Twitter. “This revival is closing November 3rd.”
The “Covita” video was one of several released by The Lincoln Project on Tuesday. The group also dropped a much more somber video on the toll of the infection amid Trump’s continuing efforts to downplay it:
Michael Moore floats conspiracy theory that Trump may be faking Covid diagnosis
Graig Graziosi October 2, 2020
Documentarian Michael Moore suggests Donald Trump may be faking his coronavirus diagnosis to garner sympathy before the election. Trump political advisor Hope Hicks, as well as another White House staffer and two reporters working in the White House also have tested positive since Mr Trump was diagnosed. (Getty Images North America)
Documentarian and left-wing activist Michael Moore has floated a conspiracy theory on his Facebook page that suggested Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis was faked.
Mr Moore justified his skepticism of Mr Trump’s diagnosis by citing the president’s many lies and incorrect statements.
“There is one absolute truth about Trump: He is a consistent, absolute, unrelenting, fearless, and professional liar. A serial liar. A factually proven liar. How many lies now has the Washington Post proven in these four years? 25,000? A lie at least twice during every waking hour? Think of all the bad people you’ve known in your life. Even the worst ones you couldn’t say that about.,” he wrote.
Mr Moore then asked “so why on earth would we believe him today? Has he earned your trust now?”
He pondered why Mr Trump would “all of a sudden just start telling the truth.”
“Why would you believe him now?” he asked. “…Trump has a history of lying about his health. His longtime New York doctor, Dr Bornstein, admitted a few years ago that Trump dictated his perfect ‘doctor’s letter’ during the 2016 campaign. Then there was the White House doctor who said Trump could live “200 years!” What about his lying about that emergency trip to Walter Reed “to complete his physical?”
Mr Moore said that Mr Trump may have the virus, but said the president lying about the virus had to be considered.
He went on to speculate as to why Mr Trump would fake having the virus after spending months downplaying its danger and publicly undermining guidelines meant to mitigate its spread.
Mr Moore believes the president is responding to polling data that suggests he is falling behind his campaign rival in the 2020 US election, Democrat Joe Biden. Under Mr Moore’s theory, Mr Trump hopes to change the media narrative and garner sympathy amoung the public by pretending to have the virus.
“Democrats, liberals, the media and others have always been wrong to simply treat him as a buffoon and a dummy and a jackass. Yes, he is all those things. But he’s also canny. He’s clever. He outfoxed Comey. He outfoxed Mueller. He outfoxed 20 Republicans in the GOP primary and then did the same to the Democrats, winning the White House despite receiving fewer votes than his opponent,” Mr Moore wrote. “He’s an evil genius and I raise the possibility of him lying about having Covid -19 to prepare us and counteract his game. He knows being sick tends to gain one sympathy. He’s not above weaponizing this.”
He then went on to claim that Mr Trump may use his potentially phony diagnosis to attempt to delay or otherwise postpone the election. Mr Moore notes that the US Constitution does not grant the president the power to move the election, but says Mr Trump and his administration will simply ignore it.
“He and his thug Attorney General Barr have no shame and will stop at nothing to stay in power. He may even use this as an excuse for losing,” Mr Moore wrote.
He concluded by admitting that Mr Trump “probably does” have Covid-19, and calling on voters to stick to their plans to vote and to be sceptical about what they read and hear. He then offered his well-wishes – mixed with a sizeable amount of indignation – to Mr Trump.
“Finally, on a personal note: Stay alive Mr. President. Your exit from public life must happen in the right and decent way. You have many years to live. You have a child to raise. Grandchildren who need you. A base that loves you,” Mr Moore wrote. “And the families of nearly the quarter-million dead who might be alive today had you done your job, had you cared, had you not played politics with people’s lives. Over 200,000 lost souls — and YOU KNEW! You told Woodward in February it was a plague. 200,000 dead because of decisions you made, because you denigrated science and ignored the doctors.”
Just before Mr Trump and First Lady Melania Trump announced their diagnosis, White House staffer Hope Hicks tested positive for Covid-19. Since their diagnosis, several other individuals in Mr Trump’s orbit over the past few days have tested positive as well, including the president of Notre Dame, a White House staffer, and two reporters who work in the White House.
White House struggles to understand the ACA case it supports
If the White House is going to fight to take health care benefits from millions of families, it should at least try to get the details right.
By Steve Benen, Repeated from June 30, 2020
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaks during a press briefing at the White House on May 1, 2020.Evan Vucci / AP
Last week, Donald Trump and his team asked the Supreme Court to tear down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, despite the ongoing pandemic. If the president succeeds in getting what he wants, his own country’s health care system would be left in shambles, and tens of millions of families would lose benefits they’ve come to rely on.
It was against this backdrop that White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Fox News yesterday morning, and one of the co-hosts asked about the potential political fallout of destroying the existing system without having a replacement ready. The president’s chief spokesperson made the case that it’s actually Democrats who’ll have a political problem.
“Look, the American public looks at this and what they say is this: If Democrats passed an unconstitutional law several years ago, then it’s on Democrats to come forward with a solution.”
McEnany went on to argue that the Affordable Care Act represents a “government takeover of health care” (that’s not true), that the White House has “put forward solutions” (that’s not true), and that Democrats are moving toward “eliminating Medicare” (that’s not true).
There was, in other words, quite a bit wrong with the press secretary’s pitch. But let’s focus on two key elements.
First, to hear McEnany tell it, if Supreme Court conservatives agree to destroy the existing health care system, it will be because Democrats “passed an unconstitutional law several years ago.” She’s confused: the pending ACA case is not a test of the original law’s constitutionality. That case has already come and gone.
Rather, the current case relates to the Republicans’ 2017 tax plan and the GOP’s apparent belief that it altered the ACA in such a way as to render it unconstitutional. It’s the sort of detail the White House really ought to know while it tries to take health care coverage from millions of families.
Second, it’s almost amusing to hear McEnany insist that it’s “on Democrats to come forward with a solution.” In other words, if Republicans make a mess, the White House expects Democrats to clean it up.
In reality, however, it’s Democrats who’ve already “come forward with a solution” — it’s the ACA, and it’s working — which they continue to take steps to improve. Meanwhile, it’s Republicans who’ve spent more than a decade promising to craft an alternative to “Obamacare” that does more and costs less.
At least so far, McEnany’s party has failed to keep that promise.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, meets with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., at the Capitol on Sept. 30, 2020.
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