https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/st-louis-health-dept-issues-warning-after-people-flock-to-lake-of-the-ozarks
Trump ridicules Biden for wearing a mask: https://twitter.com/brithume/status/1265045009323241472
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/terry-moran-joe-biden-coronavirus-mask-tweet_n_5eccf624c5b66393174c786e
ABC News senior national correspondent Terry Moran faced fierce blowback on Twitter late Monday for asking this question about former Vice President Joe Biden . . .
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/exchange-of-the-day-145/
MASON: President Trump retweeted a criticism of Joe Biden wearing a mask. Why would he do that?
McENANY: It’s a bit peculiar that he doesn’t wear a mask in his basement, but he wears one outdoors.
MASON: Isn’t that the guidance though?
McENANY: It’s recommended but not required.
[NB: McAninny thinks it's "peculiar" that Biden doesn't wear a mask around his own house? Does she understand the purpose of wearing a mask? This mask business is getting crazy -- and it's all because they are trying to twist reality to defend the fact that Trump refuses to wear one.]
More: https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/trump-dismisses-face-masks-as-politically-correct/
Trump Dismisses Face Masks as ‘Politically Correct’
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/biden-says-trump-is-an-absolute-fool/
Joe Biden called President Trump an “absolute fool” for stoking controversy around the use of masks . . .
ABC News senior national correspondent Terry Moran faced fierce blowback on Twitter late Monday for asking this question about former Vice President Joe Biden . . .
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/exchange-of-the-day-145/
MASON: President Trump retweeted a criticism of Joe Biden wearing a mask. Why would he do that?
McENANY: It’s a bit peculiar that he doesn’t wear a mask in his basement, but he wears one outdoors.
MASON: Isn’t that the guidance though?
McENANY: It’s recommended but not required.
[NB: McAninny thinks it's "peculiar" that Biden doesn't wear a mask around his own house? Does she understand the purpose of wearing a mask? This mask business is getting crazy -- and it's all because they are trying to twist reality to defend the fact that Trump refuses to wear one.]
More: https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/trump-dismisses-face-masks-as-politically-correct/
Trump Dismisses Face Masks as ‘Politically Correct’
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/biden-says-trump-is-an-absolute-fool/
Joe Biden called President Trump an “absolute fool” for stoking controversy around the use of masks . . .
Trump's new line: If we had done nothing, two million would have died. Therefore anything less than that is a Big Victory
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265301249630654467
More: https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/extra-bonus-quote-of-the-day-581/
[NB: As opposed to, if we had done X, Y, and Z sooner, far fewer than 100,000 would have died.]
Trump's Big Obama Lie
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-obama-pandemic-budget-cuts_n_5eccc968c5b6ef8033030711
President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed former President Barack Obama for his own administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. “The last administration left us nothing,” Trump said last month. . . . [read on]
And another one: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/26/1947694/-Trump-dares-to-compare-his-COVID-19-response-to-the-Obama-Biden-handling-of-H1N1
Trump calls the handling of H1N1 a “complete and total disaster.” Below is a detailed timeline comparing the two pandemics. However, here’s the short form: Within a week of the first H1N1 case, the CDC was working on a vaccine. Within two weeks the virus had been completely sequenced, President Obama had declared an emergency, a test was ready to ship, and the federal government distributed protective gear and antiviral drugs to states. Within three weeks, Obama had issued guidelines for school and business closures, and 1 million tests had been shipped to states. Six months after the first case, a vaccine was available and a federally managed vaccination program began. The total number of people who died in the H1N1 pandemic over two years was fewer than the number who died from COVID-19 in the last two weeks. . . . [read on]
Trump's very very, very bad mood
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/05/trump-pals-plan-intervention-make-him-stop
As he headed into Memorial Day weekend, Donald Trump complained that he was COVID-19’s biggest victim. “He was just in a fucking rage,” said a person who spoke with Trump late last week. “He was saying, ‘This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to reelection!” Even as the death toll neared 100,000 and unemployment ranks swelled to over 38 million, Trump couldn’t see the pandemic as anything other than something that had happened to him. “The problem is he has no empathy,” the adviser said. Trump complained that he should have been warned about the virus sooner. “The intelligence community let me down!” he said. . .
Actually, U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the coronavirus “in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat,” The Washington Post has reported. . . .
“Trump is doing it to himself by tweeting idiotic conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough. Women are tired of this shit,” said another former West Wing official. An outside adviser agreed. “Trump can’t pivot to a different strategy,” the adviser told me. “He only knows one strategy—which is attack. It worked in 2016. But now it’s not what people are looking for.” The adviser told me that Trump’s New York friends are planning an intervention to get him to stop tweeting about the Morning Joe cohost.
Why Trump's "war" rhetoric when talking about the virus is a problem
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/26/21267396/coronavirus-trump-war-fauci-ppe
Calling Dr Trump! Calling Dr Trump!
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/trump-wonders-if-he-should-take-insulin/
“I don’t use insulin. Should I be? Huh? I never thought about it. But I know a lot of people are very badly affected, right? Unbelievable.”
When the history of this administration and its many failures is written, one factor will be the inexplicable range and importance of responsibilities piled upon one unqualified, unelected (and corrupt) person, and his inability to manage any of them successfully
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/this-is-still-happening-jared-kushner-pandemic-czar.html
And now . . . the Boy Genius is rewriting the entire GOP platform
https://www.salon.com/2020/05/26/kushner-wants-to-remove-word-freedom-from-gop-platform-in-effort-to-appeal-to-black-voters-report/
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump whose volunteer coronavirus task force was compared to a "frat party," told associates he wants to cut down the Republican Party's entire 2020 platform to fit on one pocket-sized card . . . Kushner wants to reduce the GOP's entire 2020 platform — which will cover domestic, economic, foreign and policy; ideology; and the national response to the coronavirus pandemic, among other topics — into 10 bullet points. For comparison, the 2016 platform was 58 pages long. . . . [read on]
More: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/05/26/the-gops-incredibly-shrinking-policy-agenda/
Kushner’s efforts are the perfect example of how the entire GOP is about to complete its journey toward being the post-policy party. . . .
After spending trillions on its priorities, the WH suddenly becomes deficit conscious
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mick-mulvaney-white-house-spending-pandemic
The problem with the personalization of foreign policy
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/499567-trump-displeased-with-chinas-proposal-to-crack-down-on-hong-kong
Trump 'displeased' with China's proposal to crack down on Hong Kong, White House says
How bad is Trump's choice as DNI?
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/trumps-new-intelligence-chief-spells-trouble/
In investigation news . . .
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-obama-pandemic-budget-cuts_n_5eccc968c5b6ef8033030711
President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed former President Barack Obama for his own administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. “The last administration left us nothing,” Trump said last month. . . . [read on]
And another one: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/26/1947694/-Trump-dares-to-compare-his-COVID-19-response-to-the-Obama-Biden-handling-of-H1N1
Trump calls the handling of H1N1 a “complete and total disaster.” Below is a detailed timeline comparing the two pandemics. However, here’s the short form: Within a week of the first H1N1 case, the CDC was working on a vaccine. Within two weeks the virus had been completely sequenced, President Obama had declared an emergency, a test was ready to ship, and the federal government distributed protective gear and antiviral drugs to states. Within three weeks, Obama had issued guidelines for school and business closures, and 1 million tests had been shipped to states. Six months after the first case, a vaccine was available and a federally managed vaccination program began. The total number of people who died in the H1N1 pandemic over two years was fewer than the number who died from COVID-19 in the last two weeks. . . . [read on]
Trump's very very, very bad mood
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/05/trump-pals-plan-intervention-make-him-stop
As he headed into Memorial Day weekend, Donald Trump complained that he was COVID-19’s biggest victim. “He was just in a fucking rage,” said a person who spoke with Trump late last week. “He was saying, ‘This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to reelection!” Even as the death toll neared 100,000 and unemployment ranks swelled to over 38 million, Trump couldn’t see the pandemic as anything other than something that had happened to him. “The problem is he has no empathy,” the adviser said. Trump complained that he should have been warned about the virus sooner. “The intelligence community let me down!” he said. . .
Actually, U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the coronavirus “in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat,” The Washington Post has reported. . . .
“Trump is doing it to himself by tweeting idiotic conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough. Women are tired of this shit,” said another former West Wing official. An outside adviser agreed. “Trump can’t pivot to a different strategy,” the adviser told me. “He only knows one strategy—which is attack. It worked in 2016. But now it’s not what people are looking for.” The adviser told me that Trump’s New York friends are planning an intervention to get him to stop tweeting about the Morning Joe cohost.
Why Trump's "war" rhetoric when talking about the virus is a problem
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/26/21267396/coronavirus-trump-war-fauci-ppe
Calling Dr Trump! Calling Dr Trump!
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/trump-wonders-if-he-should-take-insulin/
“I don’t use insulin. Should I be? Huh? I never thought about it. But I know a lot of people are very badly affected, right? Unbelievable.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/this-is-still-happening-jared-kushner-pandemic-czar.html
And now . . . the Boy Genius is rewriting the entire GOP platform
https://www.salon.com/2020/05/26/kushner-wants-to-remove-word-freedom-from-gop-platform-in-effort-to-appeal-to-black-voters-report/
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump whose volunteer coronavirus task force was compared to a "frat party," told associates he wants to cut down the Republican Party's entire 2020 platform to fit on one pocket-sized card . . . Kushner wants to reduce the GOP's entire 2020 platform — which will cover domestic, economic, foreign and policy; ideology; and the national response to the coronavirus pandemic, among other topics — into 10 bullet points. For comparison, the 2016 platform was 58 pages long. . . . [read on]
More: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/05/26/the-gops-incredibly-shrinking-policy-agenda/
Kushner’s efforts are the perfect example of how the entire GOP is about to complete its journey toward being the post-policy party. . . .
After spending trillions on its priorities, the WH suddenly becomes deficit conscious
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mick-mulvaney-white-house-spending-pandemic
The problem with the personalization of foreign policy
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/499567-trump-displeased-with-chinas-proposal-to-crack-down-on-hong-kong
Trump 'displeased' with China's proposal to crack down on Hong Kong, White House says
How bad is Trump's choice as DNI?
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/trumps-new-intelligence-chief-spells-trouble/
In investigation news . . .
ANOTHER inspector general forced out
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pentagon-watchdog-that-trump-sidelined-from-covid-oversight-resigns
Republican-when-that-used-to-mean-something Chuck Grassley (IA) has been demanding that the WH explain their firings of inspector generals. In response, they just blew him off
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/499657-grassley-white-house-failed-to-address-if-there-was-a-good-reason-for-ig
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pentagon-watchdog-that-trump-sidelined-from-covid-oversight-resigns
Republican-when-that-used-to-mean-something Chuck Grassley (IA) has been demanding that the WH explain their firings of inspector generals. In response, they just blew him off
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/499657-grassley-white-house-failed-to-address-if-there-was-a-good-reason-for-ig
In other news . . .
It's an endless contest to find Trump's low point, but one of the candidates must be his posting of a vile accusation that Joe Scarborough was responsible for the death of one of his staffers. Now the dead woman's husband has asked Twitter that these despicable posts be pulled down
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/05/klausutis-widower-asks-twitter-ceo-remove
He's still doing it: https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/26/trump-keeps-pushing-unfounded-conspiracy-theory/
“The opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough was not a Donald Trump original thought, this has been going on for years, long before I joined the chorus. . . .”
[NB: As if that absolves HIM of responsibility.]
Twitter lets those posts stand -- but does fact-check lies in some other Trump tweets
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/05/twitter-finally-slaps-fact-checks-trumps
More: https://www.axios.com/trump-accuses-twitter-2020-election-interference-bb980ee5-7f36-4db3-a3f5-4bb9de71f0ae.html
President Trump responded via tweets Tuesday evening to Twitter fact-checking him for the first time on his earlier unsubstantiated posts claiming mail-in ballots in November's election would be fraudulent . . . "Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election.They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post . . . Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!"
Trump's stupid new campaign slogan
https://politicalwire.com/2020/05/25/trump-picks-a-terrible-slogan/
More: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/transition-to-greatness-is-a-confession-of-failure/612073/
Trump continues his assault on mail-in voting. The more he howls about it the more worried you know he is
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-california-mail-in-ballots
Trump is reshuffling his campaign team
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/499510-trump-campaign-taps-new-deputy-campaign-manager
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/26/grenell-to-join-trump-campaign-283026
I HOPE Trump pulls his convention from North Carolina because they won't let him pack the convention hall like a can of sardines. That could cost him the state, for one thing -- and it places front and center his complete lack of concern for people's health
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/kemp-texas-florida-gop-offer-states-move-rnc-host
More: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/report-trump-blindsided-rnc-planners-threat-relocate-convention-north-carolina
Trump Blindsided RNC Planners With His Threat To Pull Convention From NC
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/26/gop-north-carolina-convention-282493
North Carolina throws convention threat back at Trump and GOP
Joe Biden's agenda
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/26/21257648/joe-biden-climate-economy-tax-plans
The voters Biden needs
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/26/21264719/joe-biden-election-coalition
Bonus item: Jimmy Kimmel is ON FIRE
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