Sunday, May 31, 2020

WE DO NOT HAVE A PRESIDENT

The current resident of the White House has given up all pretense of being a national leader. He has no agenda, no plan for the future, except to secure his own re-election. He is in constant war with every one and every thing that he sees as an impediment to that aim. He has riots in the streets, and says nothing except "shoot the looters." He has a national health crisis and his only concern is "let's get things opened up and back to normal again." He is actively spreading false and deadly health misinformation. Except for getting more right-wing judges appointed, blocking immigration, and building more of his stupid Wall™ he has nothing specific to propose for the future well-being of society.

His daily preoccupations are a growing list of enemies. He is at war with the WHO for daring to spread information that doesn't fit his coronavirus narrative. He is at war with the G7, who won't come to his phony photo-op summit. He is at war with China, who he seems surprised to have discovered has been pursuing its own interests all along. He is at war with North Carolina because they won't let him have a 50,000 person gathering WITH NO SAFETY MEASURES AT ALL. He is at war with a growing number of Republicans who are just fed up with making excuses for his outrageous and corrupt behavior, and who don't want to be in a party with him as the standard bearer. He is at war with Twitter, his essential propaganda tool, because they have the audacity to suggest that not all of his tweets are entirely true. He is at war with Fox News, whose job it is -- he says -- to help him get re-elected. He is at war with the press more generally because he thinks their job is simply to repeat the nonsense he says without fact-checking or asking inconvenient questions. He is at war with the Democrats, of course, but I mean literally at war, seeming to suggest that they should simply be wiped out (tweeting "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat"). He is at war with states who are trying to make it easier and safer for people to vote, because more voters is the last thing he wants in the fall. And he is at war with all the individuals from both parties with whom he feels a personal rivalry or feud, because there is no slight so minor or trivial that he can ever let it go.

His vision of the presidency is as CEO of his own family business, because that is all he knows. He says or tweets what he wants, and thinks it is the job of government, even the other branches of government and independent agencies, to follow his whims. He talks to and listens to fewer and fewer people, and even then only people who will flatter and enable him. He has systematically removed everyone of character and integrity who will tell him when he is wrong, and he keeps piling more and more responsibilities onto his own family members. The job of his staff is to excuse and explain the uninformed nonsense he spews out, sometimes having to back-fill policies and facts to fit his misstatements. He reads nothing and spends more and more of each day watching TV, not to learn anything, but to see what they are saying about him -- because everything, everything he says and does is driven by a desire to appear "strong" and not "weak"

Trump ratchets up Twitter turmoil

Donald Trump will use this moment to fan the flames of hatred, just like every other moment

Violent Protests Could be a Gift to Trump

What the HELL is he talking about? (verbatim)

@realDonaldTrump · They professionally managed so-called “protesters” at the White House had little to do with the memory of George Floyd. They were just their to cause trouble. The @SecretService handled them easily . . . Great job last night at the White House by the U.S. @SecretService. They were not only totally professional, but very cool. I was inside, watched every move, and couldn’t have felt more safe. They let the “protesters” scream & rant as much as they wanted, but whenever someone have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. “We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and good practice.” As you saw last night, they were very cool & very professional. Never let it get out of hand. Thank you!

Trump: “MAGA Loves the Black People”

Trump says the DC police didn't protect the White House. That was a lie


Trump finally gets around to calling George Floyd's family. It did not go well


Can you feel it?

President Trump on Saturday called the death of George Floyd a “grave tragedy” . . .

More amazing (and peaceful) protest photos from around the country


Black protestors don't want white agitators messing with their thing



Trump "postpones" G7 meeting (they weren't coming anyway), and still wants to invite Russia back

President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will postpone until the fall a meeting of Group of 7 nations he had planned to hold next month at the White House despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. And he said he plans to invite Russia, Australia, South Korea and India as he again advocated for the group’s expansion. Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he returned to Washington from Florida that he feels the current makeup of the group is “very outdated” and doesn’t properly represent “what’s going on in the world.” . . .

Another way in which Trump helped make the virus death toll worse


Trump's pandemic lies


Trump has been spreading medical disinformation for decades

“In 1993, Trump promoted the widely-debunked claims that AIDS could be spread by kissing and that AIDS patients intentionally spread the virus. As the swine flu pandemic began in 2009, he warned Americans against taking flu vaccines. When the Ebola virus outbreak devastated West Africa in 2014, he disputed guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how it spreads.

“Today as the nation’s chief executive overseeing his own public health crisis, Trump continues to comprehensively misinform the public about the coronavirus, offering remarks riddled with false, misleading or scientifically questionable claims.”

In investigation news . . .

The release of (some) Michael Flynn conversations certainly doesn't help his case

Michael Flynn did something far worse than lie to the FBI. He betrayed the United States. That’s the major revelation of the just-released transcripts of the conversations he had during the presidential transition with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. . . .

The Purge

The FBI's top lawyer is resigning amid renewed pressure from President Donald Trump and Republican allies for the bureau to remove any remaining officials associated with the Russia investigation.  . . .

In other news . . .

A breath of sanity

The Supreme Court issued a rare late-night ruling on Friday against a California church challenging their state’s stay-at-home order. In a 5-4 vote, Chief Justice John Roberts broke from other conservative justices to rule in favor of the state. The case was brought by the South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista, Calif., which said Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) stay-at-home order ignored religious freedoms. Roberts noted in an opinion concurring in the unsigned ruling that the restrictions in place are applied to non-religious gatherings and therefore don’t pose a threat to religious liberties. “Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the free exercise clause of the First Amendment . . . Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time,” he wrote.

Roberts  . . . opinion ends with a clear swipe at Kavanaugh: “The notion that it is ‘indisputably clear’ that the Government’s limitations are unconstitutional,” the chief justice wrote, “seems quite improbable.” Roberts went out of his way to telegraph his displeasure with the raft of lawsuits contesting COVID-19 restrictions as unconstitutional burdens on religious liberty. Even in borderline cases, he suggested, courts must defer to the people’s representatives if they decide the health crisis requires limitations on public assemblies. . . .

Supreme Court denies Illinois churches' request for action after state eases restrictions

Kansas has only had three Democratic senators, ever. It tells you something that it could happen again this fall


Bonus item:  SpaceX


***If you enjoy Progressive Blog Digest and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sharing its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com) with others via email or social media. Thanks for helping to spread the word!

I don’t get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don’t run ads, etc.). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a “mission,” it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

Saturday, May 30, 2020

ALL IN

The WH reposts Trump's “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet on its official site -- even though Twitter flagged it for glorifying violence


[NB: Or, rather, BECAUSE Twitter flagged it for glorifying violence. Criticize him, and he comes back twice as loud.]

The Racist Origins Of Trump’s ‘When The Looting Starts, The Shooting Starts’ Quote

Trump walked back the latter statement a few hours later, saying he only meant that looters could end up shooting people, not that they should be shot. “I’ve heard that phrase for a long time. I don’t know where it came from or where it originated,” he declared later. “I wouldn't know a thing like that.” But his immediate jump to a forceful and potentially deadly resolution to the unrest underscored what knowledgeable sources said is deep distress at events that, in Trump’s view, make him appear weak.

GO JOE!

Biden Blasts Trump for ‘Calling for Violence’ Against Americans During ‘Moment of Pain’

Former Vice President Joe Biden stepped up on Friday and showed a grieving nation what humane, moral leadership could look like. Calling the killing of George Floyd “an act of brutality so elemental it did more than deny one more Black man in America his civil rights and his human rights, it denied him of his very humanity, it denied him of his life,” Biden described the United States as “a country with an open wound” that must be healed, not denied. . . . He closed with a promise to George Floyd’s family, with whom he’d spoken, that “we’ll do everything in our power to see to it that justice is had in your brother, your cousin’s case.”

A revealing contrast

President Trump held what was billed as a news conference by the White House and briefly spoke about U.S. policy towards China and “terminating” the U.S. relationship with the WHO but did not address the death of George Floyd or the protests breaking out across the country. He left without taking any questions. . . .

No, Trump CAN'T punish social media via Executive Order

Even before it was signed Thursday, President Donald Trump’s executive order encouraging federal regulators to reconsider legal immunity for social media companies was pilloried by a diverse coalition of opponents who questioned the order’s legality and Trump’s motivations. . . .


Just for the record: Donald Trump’s executive order today about social media is meaningless, illegal, and unenforceable. It’s red meat for the rubes and nothing more. Don’t be a rube.

Trump once again explains why he doesn't want people voting by mail

Mail-in voting will be the “end of of great Republican Party,” President Trump tweeted late Thursday night, continuing his baseless assault on voting by mail amid the coronavirus pandemic. . . .

[NB: Now IF mail-in voting were an invitation to fraud, why assume that it would only happen on the Democratic side?]

These two moments, Trump's thermonuclear attack on social media platforms and his daily rants about nonexistent "voting fraud" tell you just how important these areas are to his re-election plans

Lara Trump: Twitter no longer 'a platform for free speech'

Trump’s social media executive order, explained

White House Pushes Debunked Fraud Claims In Trump’s Anti-Vote By Mail Crusade

[NB: The hyperbolic level of these attacks tells us, first of all, how worried he is about losing. And it tells us that he is laying the groundwork for the inevitable claim, if (when) he does lose, that the process was "rigged" against him. I would not put it past him to sue to nullify the results of the election, possibly extending his term in office, but certainly upsetting the transfer of power to the next administration.]

Where is the coronavirus task force?

The deaths of more than 100,000 Americans from coronavirus this week has not been marked officially by the White House. The White House coronavirus task force headed up by Vice President Mike Pence hasn't even issued a statement, much less conducted a briefing. But more disturbing, it has had just one meeting in a week . . .

Trump wants to do what Trump wants to do

Trump May Defy Congress to Sell More Arms to Saudis

Trump announced US withdrawal from the WHO. It’s unclear if he can do that.

The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to secure land along the U.S.-Mexico border for construction of a wall by increasing the pace at which it brings lawsuits against private landowners . . .

In investigation news . . .

DNI declassifies (some of) Michael Flynn's conversations with Sergey Kislyak


Flynn has never particularly hid that he saw Russia as a means to the end of confronting what he variously refers to as “radical Islam,” “radical Islamist terror,” and “radical Islamic terror.” . . . On the phone with Flynn in December 2016 – something surreptitiously intercepted by the FBI as a matter of course for the Russian ambassador’s conversations –  Kislyak saw the leverage Flynn’s perspective provided. Talking about Obama’s sanctions, which included the expulsion of Russian diplomatic and intelligence personnel, Kislyak told Flynn that the sanctions seemed to indicate the U.S. was unwilling to work together against “terrorist threats.” [read on]

Kisylak argued that the Obama administration sanctions were aimed at damaging the incoming Trump administration just as much as they were the Kremlin. . . . The documents at one point show Flynn engaged in a prolonged discussion with Kislyak over the sanctions the outgoing administration had slapped on Russia hours earlier for its campaign meddling, an apparent effort to convince Moscow not to retaliate and to embrace a new relationship with the incoming Trump team. They show no sign that he condemned Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to Kislyak. [read on]

As I have repeatedly noted, the Mueller Report is very coy about whether Mueller obtained evidence that Flynn spoke directly with Trump about his calls with Kislyak, going so far as to withhold details of the timeline of events on December 29 . . . Flynn even claimed that he and Trump didn’t speak about the substance of the calls until February 6 . . . But the transcript of Flynn’s December 31, 2016 call makes it clear that Mueller had proof that Flynn had talked with Trump about the Kislyak call, because Flynn told Kislyak that the “boss is aware” of the secure video conference that Kislyak wanted to set up immediately after Trump was inaugurated. . . [read on]

The Cesspool

Trump Official Used Office for Personal Gain

[NB: Shouldn't that headline begin "ANOTHER. . . ."?]

In other news . . .

Images from Floyd protests around the country


How will the Floyd case, and other recent racial tragedies, affect Joe Biden's VP choice?


Trump's new ad: Trump, maskless, in front of an American flag, Biden with a mask, with a China flag behind him. Very subtle, guys. . .


Good news: Trump is trailing in battleground states that helped him edge out a win in 2016. Now states he won easily are moving into contested status


It really is remarkable to see organized groups from the President's own party mobilizing to block his re-election. When have you ever seen that before?


North Carolina wants to know the RNC's plans for health safety at their convention. The RNC wants NC to tell them the minimum they have to do. This is going nowhere


[NB: The big problem is that whatever the RNC might say they've planned, their convention will have a lot of yahoos who will refuse to do it. So then what?]

President Trump called North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) on Friday and insisted on a full Republican convention this summer with no face masks or social distancing, CNN reports.

Trump wants to host a G7 meeting, another sign that all is back to normal. But of course the other leaders are too smart to come to an event with no protections



What a bunch of hypocrites

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel repeatedly voted by mail before suing California for expanding the practice . . . So did Kayleigh McEnany. So did Kellyanne Conway. So did Trump

“It was a stunning accusation: Two days before the 2018 election for Georgia governor, Republican Brian Kemp used his power as secretary of state to open an investigation into what he called a “failed hacking attempt” of voter registration systems involving the Democratic Party.” “But newly released case files from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reveal that there was no such hacking attempt.”

Bonus item: Jimmy Kimmel on Trump's war with social media


***If you enjoy Progressive Blog Digest and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sharing its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com) with others via email or social media. Thanks for helping to spread the word!

I don’t get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don’t run ads, etc.). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a “mission,” it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

Friday, May 29, 2020

WHO CARES?

As coronavirus deaths pass 100,000, a supercut of the gag-inducing self-congratulations of "the most caring president this country has ever had"



Your caring president posted this video

'The Only Good Democrat Is A Dead Democrat'

The ghostwriter for Trump's "Art of the Deal" knows him well

How do we deal with a person whose core impulse in every part of his life is to deny, deceive, deflect, disparage and double-down every time he is challenged? And what precisely is the danger such a person poses if he also happens to be the leader of the free world, during a crisis in which thousands of people are dying every day, with no letup in sight? . . . [read on]

In the past few days Donald Trump has . . . [read on]

As the nation mourned 100,000 dead Wednesday and Trump tweeted out claims of being the country's "best president" in history, Republican strategists are quietly mulling the possibility that Trump could ultimately sink them all in November. CNN talked to seven GOP operatives not directly involved with Trump's campaign and they were, let's just say, sounding grim. . . . [read on]

Trump wants unfettered access to spew his filth on social media -- and any attempt to identify lies and disinformation is a direct threat to him. So, he attacks

Trump said he would retaliate against Twitter for fact-checking his tweets. He just made good on that threat . . .



Trump’s executive order on social media is legally unenforceable, experts say

Twitter doesn't back down, does it AGAIN

Twitter: Trump's Minnesota tweet violated rules on violence


Trump DOESN'T WANT people to wear masks


“A contingent of House Republicans continues to defy the recommendations of public health experts and Congress’ top physician to wear face coverings to limit the spread of Covid-19, refusing to wear them on the floor of the chamber, in the hallways of the Capitol or when chatting with aides and colleagues — even when they’re unable to maintain a social distance . . . Some members say they will wear masks in more crowded locations, like in airports, on airplanes and in grocery stores. And others flatly refuse to wear them at all.”

Huh?

For reasons which escape me, President declares, “I just beat COVID.”

Economic projections are gloomy -- so the WH won't issue them any more


More indications that Florida is undercounting its virus death total



In investigation news . . .

The investigations into the Russia investigation have taken longer than the investigation itself

Why Trump has it in for inspectors general


The Cesspool

Pence chief of staff owns stock affected by boss's coronavirus work

In other news . . .

Thanks to FR for the meme



Why is Trump trying to frame the 2020 election as a campaign against . . . Obama?



ANOTHER Republican anti-Trump group gets into the campaign

“A new effort called Republican Voters Against Trump is hoping to chip away at Mr. Trump’s support from white, college-educated Republican voters in the suburbs, hoping a more surgical approach will help to elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., his expected Democratic opponent.” “The new group is set to begin a $10 million digital and television advertising campaign that will use personal stories of conservative voters giving voice to their deep — and sometimes brand-new — dissatisfaction with the president.”

Trump is spending money for ads in states he won easily in 2016. That tells you something


A tale of two states

All-GOP Texas Supreme Court, voting from home, rules fear of coronavirus no excuse to vote by mail

Bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Panel Votes To Send Mail-In Ballot Applications To All Voters

Trump's war against vote by mail will only escalate, and his accusations grow wilder and more frantic

Trump Sends Unhinged Email Railing Against Vote By Mail

President Trump launched into an unwieldy rant on Thursday when asked about his false claims that mail-in ballots leads to voter fraud. . . . [A] reporter pointed out his erroneous claim that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) plans to send ballots out to everyone in the state. The reporter then clarified that mail-in ballots will only be sent to registered voters in California. Trump responded by going on an unhinged rant that similarly echoed his recent tweets falsely accusing Newsom of sending millions of ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are,” before baselessly passing the buck to children. “Kids go and they raid the mailboxes and they hand them to people that are signing the ballots down at the end of the street — which is happening — they grab the ballots,” Trump said. “You don’t think that happens?”

Federal Election Commission (FEC) commissioner Ellen Weintraub on Wednesday strongly hit back at claims from President Trump that mail-in voting leads to high levels of fraud, asserting that there is "no basis" for such allegations and that the falsehoods "may well undermine the American people's faith in our democracy." . . .

The new line is that you need a REALLY GOOD reason to get a vote-by-mail ballot, not just because you are afraid of getting sick and dying from contagion. Trump votes by mail: here is his really good reason


The Repubs are now urging older judges to step down NOW so they can replace them, limiting the number of vacancies that might open up under the next president's watch


[NB: I have said it before, the GOP understands the importance of controlling the courts, including the Supreme Court. They are ruthless in pursuing it, and they have been enormously successful. And the next time someone says, "There isn't any difference between the Democratic and Republican candidates for President," remember that the Repubs understand that there sure as hell is.]

Joe Scarborough slaps back

Joe Scarborough: “The pace of those hateful lies ebbed and flowed with the years, until they swelled recently into a slimy tsunami of bilge spewing from President Trump’s 80-million-strong Twitter feed. I have never been able to grasp Trump’s bizarre fixation with ‘Morning Joe,’ but that sad obsession has driven him to weaponize Lori’s memory in an attempt to settle some perceived grievance against me. Or perhaps to deflect from the 100,000 Americans lost . . . I have been a public figure for more than 25 years, so I pay little attention to public lies. T.J. and Lori’s family, however, are innocents in this. To have the commander in chief torment a patriot like T.J. is disgusting, but sadly, not surprising. Despite the pain he endured from discredited websites and Twitter accounts, T.J. kept his peace for nearly two decades, until the most powerful man on Earth began slandering his wife’s good name.”

Trump says he would like to quit Twitter, really he would. Twitter replies


McAninny offers a "defense" of Trump's lies that is more damning than the accusation in the first place

“You have pledged in this briefing room to never lie to the American people,” Acosta said. “Are you saying the President has never lied to the public before?”

“His intent is to always give truthful information to the American people,” said McEnany

One America News reporter Chanel Rion on Thursday continued her habit of promoting President Donald Trump’s favorite conspiracies via loaded questions. This time, she asked White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany whether the president could ultimately depose MSNBC host Joe Scarborough to see if he murdered a former staffer. . . .

Joe Biden posts two tweets posted on the same day in October, one by him, one by Trump


Biden said the other day that African-Americans need to be crazy to support Trump. He said it in a cringe-inducing way, but everyone knew what he meant. And he was basically right. But he was slammed for being "racist." Now where are all those same people?

Candace Owens: Black People 'Jump Up Like A F**ing Trained Chimpanzee'

Amy Klobuchar was an outside prospect for VP already. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis pretty much ended it


Bonus item: Jimmy Kimmel on the phony debate over "voting fraud"


***If you enjoy Progressive Blog Digest and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sharing its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com) with others via email or social media. Thanks for helping to spread the word!

I don’t get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don’t run ads, etc.). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a “mission,” it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

Thursday, May 28, 2020

NOT IN A HAPPY PLACE

Trump is ranting and raving

"Close them down": Trump threatens action against social media platforms

“The House will vote Wednesday on additional limitations of federal law enforcement’s ability to collect internet search histories as it reauthorizes three national security surveillance authorities that expired in March,” CNN reports. “The House initially voted in March to renew the FISA authorities after President Trump’s Republican allies negotiated a deal with Democratic leaders and Attorney General William Barr that included additional civil liberties protections and changes to the FISA court process.” “But Trump threw a new wrench into the matter Tuesday evening when he urged Republicans on Twitter to oppose Wednesday’s vote.”

Wall Street Journal editorial: “Donald Trump sometimes traffics in conspiracy theories—recall his innuendo in 2016 about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination—but his latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him . . . There’s no evidence of foul play, or an affair with the woman, and the local coroner ruled that the woman fainted from an undiagnosed heart condition and died of head trauma . . . [T]he parents and husband of the young woman accepted the coroner’s findings and want the case to stay closed . . . We don’t write this with any expectation that Mr. Trump will stop. Perhaps he even thinks this helps him politically, though we can’t imagine how. But Mr. Trump is debasing his office, and he’s hurting the country in doing so.”

Washington Examiner editorial: “Whatever his issues with Scarborough, President Trump’s crazed Twitter rant on this subject was vile and unworthy of his office . . . To say Trump owes Scarborough an apology is to put it mildly. But in the end, Scarborough won’t be the one hurt by this. Against a weak opponent, Trump somehow managed in 2016 to win despite carrying on with sad, deluded conspiracy theories about Sen. Ted Cruz’s father being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Against a less reviled opponent, he may not be so lucky in 2020. . . . And observers might even someday look back at this incident as the instant when things began to unravel.”

New York Post editorial: “There is a difference between mocking someone’s ratings and hurting an innocent family with the memories of their tragic daughter because of a petty feud… Is that really the president you want to be, sir?”

[NB: These are CONSERVATIVE papers.]

Well, THAT calmed him down

President Trump on Wednesday yet again raised a conspiracy theory about the death of an aide to former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), despite a barrage of criticism about his earlier tweets from lawmakers, the media and the widower of the woman who died. . . .

We pass the 100,000 death mark



• Alabama • Arkansas • California • Florida • Maine • Mississippi • Nevada • North Carolina • North Dakota • South Carolina • Tennessee • Virginia • Wisconsin


Wearing a mask is a sign of concern and protection for others. For medical professionals this is good public health practice and shared commitment to the common well-being. For Trump this is "political correctness" and he won't do it. But now even Sean Hannity is calling him out for that



[NB: Thanks to Trump, wearing a mask -- or refusing to -- has become the new symbol of yet another culture war. Wearing one is a sign of wussy fear and liberal do-goodiness; not wearing one is a sign of macho independence and respect for individual freedom. That is stupid . . . and deadly.]

Nevertheless, science persisted

France Bans Hydroxychloroquine For Treating COVID-19 Patients

Fauci: Hydroxychloroquine not effective against coronavirus

Fauci: Too Soon To Guarantee Political Conventions In August

President Donald Trump mused about taking insulin during a White House event for seniors with diabetes, even though he does not have the disease . . . "I don't use insulin," Trump said. "Should I be? Huh? I never thought about it . . ."

"Is there any reason why someone who does not have diabetes would take insulin?" a reporter asked. "Is there any sort of medical reason for that?" Trump asked Surgeon General Jerome Adams to respond. Adams explained to the president that people without diabetes do not need to take insulin.

Trump still did not seem to understand why there was anything off about someone without diabetes taking insulin. "The question I found to be a very interesting one . . . I thought it was a very good question, actually."

In investigation news . . .

Pelosi pulls FISA bill


In other news . . .

Update on the Wall™

Although 194 miles of border barrier have been under construction since President Trump took office, just three miles of the border wall has been erected in places where no barrier had previously existed . . .

Trump REALLY wanted to get hardliners on the immigration appeals board

The Justice Department offered buyouts to pre-Trump administration career members on its influential immigration appeals board as part of an ongoing effort to restructure the immigration court system . . . .

Trump (and Mitch McConnell) are packing the courts, here's how to make that an election issue in the fall


Rasmussen is the poll that Trump likes to brag about on his social media feed. It has been consistently friendlier to him than any other poll, often over 50% popularity

President Trump's job approval sank towards a two-year low on Wednesday, according to poll from the right-leaning polling firm Rasmussen. The poll released Wednesday shows 42 percent of likely U.S. voters approve of Trump's job performance while 57 percent disapprove. . . .

More on Trump's campaign shakeup

When President Trump installed Bill Stepien as his new deputy campaign manager, it was “a DC-style coup that still lets Brad Parscale keep his title of campaign manager,” Business Insider reports. Said one adviser: “Trump never fires people. He works around them.” Some Trump advisers note that Stepien’s ascendance “gives Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and arguably the most important staffer on the entire 2020 effort, almost singular control over the 2020 re-election campaign.”

The Trump campaign’s new chief of staff, Stephanie Alexander, was charged with conspiracy to violate Oklahoma election laws in 2016 . . .

What would have happened if Rush Limbaugh had become president? We are finding out



Conservative radio host and recent Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh praised President Donald Trump on Wednesday as “clever” for falsely accusing MSNBC host Joe Scarborough of murder, claiming the president is “just throwing gasoline on a fire” because he’s “having fun.” . . .

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

While White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defends President Trump’s assault on voting-by-mail, insisting that it invites election fraud, the Tampa Bay Times finds McEnany “has taken advantage of its convenience time and time again.” “In fact, the Tampa native has voted by mail in every Florida election she has participated in since 2010… Most recently, she voted by mail in the state’s March 2020 presidential primary, just as Trump did after he made Florida his new permanent home.”


We have found the mail-in voter fraud!

A West Virginia postal carrier has been charged with attempted election fraud after he admitted to altering the party affiliations of five mail-in requests for absentee ballots from Democrat to Republican.

Inside OAN

“I spoke with more than a dozen former and current employees of OAN, some on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal. A few had kind words for the network and for their coworkers, but collectively they described a circus, where ethics are absent, turnover is high, and dissent is met with rage. At the helm, they say, is Robert Herring, a wealthy businessman and kind of mini-Trump, whose near-singular focus seems to be supporting the president and his policies.”

Joe Biden's secret tech army


Bonus item: I say, good

The tweets, and the subsequent trending hashtag, were all about a fabricated former personal assistant to Trump named “Carolyn Gombell.” . . .

Donald Trump killed his personal assistant, Carolyn Gombell, in October 2000. He strangled her because he'd gotten her pregnant and was threatening to tell the press. Then he bribed NYPD Police Chief Bernie Kierik to cover it up. IT'S TIME TO INVESTIGATE. #JusticeForCarolyn . . .

For her parents. For her friends. For the country. For democracy. For truth. For the fiance she was two weeks from marrying. But most of all... for her. #JusticeForCarolyn . . .

I can't find proof that @realDonaldTrump didn't murder Carolyn Gombell in 2000. I just want to know if even Twitter #ProLife people care that she may have been pregnant at the time when he and @DonaldJTrumpJr may have killed her. This needs to be investigated! #JusticeForCarolyn . . .

#JusticeForCarolyn Massive candle light vigil for Carolyn. @realDonaldTrump has tried to erase her memory . . .

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