Leave It To Trump To Turn Masks Into A Divisive Political Weapon To Kill Americans

Back To School With Betsy And Donald by Nancy Ohanian

There are 22 states without statewide mask mandates. How the hell is that even possible? Well, let's begin by pointing out that of the 22 states, 20 have Trumpist Republican governors, one (Wisconsin) has a cowardly moderate Democrat who got barked at by the Republicans in the state legislature and state supreme court so he announced he was "giving up" and one (Wisconsin) has a worthless conservative Democratic governor who served in Congress as though he was a Republican anyway. Several of the states have pandemics that are completely out of control and dangerous not just for their own states but for the entire country, if not the world. These are the states without mask mandates, along with how many new cases each reported on Monday-- and the number cases they have per million residents.

• Florida +10,347 (16,780 cases per million Floridians)
• Georgia +2,452 (13,711 cases per million Georgians)
• Tennessee + 1,639 (11,678 cases per million Tennesseans)
• Arizona +1,559 (19,946 cases per million Arizonans)
• South Carolina +1,459 (cases per million South Carolinians)
• Mississippi +1,251 (14,747 cases per million Mississippians)
• Ohio +1,230 (6,519 cases per million Buckeyes)
• Minnesota +903 (8,353 cases per million Minnesotans)
• Wisconsin +703 (7,388 cases per million Cheeseheads)
• Indiana +635 (8,497 cases per million Indianans)
• Missouri +603 (5,836 cases per million Missourans)
• Iowa +527 (12,441 cases per million Iowans)
• Utah +409 (20,769 cases per million Utahns)
• Idaho +393 (8,542cases per million Idahoans)
• Oklahoma +168 (6,427 cases per million Sooners)
• North Dakota +107 (cases per million North Dakotans)
• Nebraska +264 (11,811 cases per million Cornhuskers)
• Alaska +75 (2,664 per million Alaskans)
• South Dakota +37 (8,979 cases per million South Dakotans)
• Wyoming +61 (3,779 cases per million Wyomingites)
• New Hampshire +46 (4,596 cases per million Granite Staters)
• Vermont +10 (2,180 cases per million Vermonters)

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp demands to go down in history as the worst governor of all... by suing cities and counties that pass their own mask mandates. And just as Señor T finally tweets out a picture of himself in Lone Ranger drag! That was the day after he got the crap kicked out of him by Chris Wallace in the middle of the Trumpanzee heartland: Fox News. Wallace was gentle compared to what Maddow of Chris Hayes would have done but he landed punch after punch right in that ugly face, as we noted yesterday. It must've shocked more than a few Fox viewers. "One of the greatest frustrations President Trump’s foes have," wrote Aaron Blake for the Washington Post "is how infrequently he’s called out-- in person-- on his bizarre theories and his 20,000 falsehoods and misleading claims. While journalists fact-check Trump relentlessly, there are relatively few instances in which he has received pushback to his face, in part because it takes a certain deftness and, arguably in even larger part, because he submits to so few interviews outside the Fox News and conservative media bubble." But on Sunday Wallace called him out on his lies and gaslighting.

The president has for months lodged and repeated a series of false statistics and dodgy ideas about the coronavirus outbreak. And in a matter of minutes, Wallace cast a spotlight on almost all the big ones.

Trump pushed back on questions about the ballooning number of cases we face, as he often has, by wrongly suggesting that this was a matter of increased testing. Wallace noted that the rising test-positivity rate and the comparisons we see in most other countries-- particularly Western Europe-- show our situation is particularly bad.

Trump then reverted to his fallback-- the number of deaths we’ve seen-- and things quickly went off the rails for him.

When Trump claimed the United States had one of the lowest mortality rates in the world-- or even the lowest-- Wallace made him prove it. Trump couldn’t, because it isn’t true.

The below is a lengthy exchange, but it’s worth [watching] in full:





Or not. Not only didn’t Wallace claim the United States had the worst, but Trump didn’t prove the opposite either. Wallace cut to a voice-over.

“The White House went with this chart from the European CDC, which shows Italy and Spain doing worse, but countries like Brazil and South Korea doing better,” Wallace said. “Other countries doing better, like Russia, aren’t included in the White House chart.”

So not even the cherry-picked data that the White House furnished backed up Trump’s claim. (In fact, the U.S. mortality rate ranks on the high end of all countries, according to Johns Hopkins University.)

Apparently unchastened by this, Trump later decided to repeat another false claim-- and was again exposed.

Trump again claimed, as his campaign ads have, that Joe Biden wants to defund the police. In fact, Biden has said explicitly that he disagrees with that idea.

“Look, he signed a charter with Bernie Sanders,” Trump said. “I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate.”

But just as with the mortality rates, Trump promised proof that didn’t exist. As Wallace said in yet another voice-over, “The White House has never sent us evidence that Bernie-Biden platform calls for defunding or abolishing police, because there is none. It calls for increased funding for police departments that meet certain standards. Biden has called for redirecting some police funding for related programs like mental health counseling.”

Republicans have indeed tried to substantiate Trump’s claim by noting that Joe Biden called for redirecting police funding-- arguing that’s in line with the defunding movement. But even if you accept that strained argument, the proof Trump offered didn’t at all prove what he claimed.

The confidence Trump displayed in his false claims was truly something to behold. (“Ready?” “I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate.”) The question has often been whether he truly believes his own hype or is just committed to the lie. Either way, Wallace laid it bare.

In between these rare live fact checks was arguably an even worse moment for Trump.

Trump has downplayed the coronavirus threat from the very beginning, but rarely has his dismissiveness been revealed so plainly. Trump continued to press Wallace on the metric he argues is most important, and he challenged Wallace to show a chart on deaths. Wallace noted that we’re seeing around a thousand per day, at which point Trump reverted to another fallback: blaming China.

“They should’ve never let it escape; they should’ve never let it out,” Trump said. “But it is what it is.”

It is what it is. With nearly 140,000 deaths. Expect that to feature in some anti-Trump campaign ads.

Wallace’s ability to reinforce Trump’s constant lack of specificity stretched into a conversation about schools. Wallace asked Trump what would seem to be a pretty simple question: He noted that Trump said schools are teaching students to hate America, and he asked where Trump was seeing that.

“Now they want to change 1492, Columbus discovered America,” Trump said. “You know, we grew up, you grew up, we all did, that’s what we learned. Now they want to make it the 1619 Project. Where did that come from? What does it represent? I don’t even know."

The reference was to the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which has been a lightning rod in conservative circles for its portrayal of slavery’s role in our country’s origins. Wallace quickly noted, “It’s slavery,” not redefining when our nation was founded.

“That’s what they’re saying, but they don’t even know,” Trump said. “They just want to make a change.”

If that wasn’t confusing enough, Wallace later raised Trump’s attacks on Biden’s sharpness, and when Trump trotted out his claims to acing a cognitive test, Wallace was ready. As The Post's Philip Bump has noted, the kind of test Trump has bragged about is remarkably simple because it aims to ferret out obvious mental impairments. Wallace noted that he can attest to this, because he took a similar exam.

“It’s not the hardest test,” Wallace said. He noted that one question asked him to identify an elephant by looking at a picture of one.

Trump then conceded that some questions are easy but then remarkably contended that some are difficult as the test goes on: “But I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. I’ll bet you couldn’t. They get very hard, the last five questions.”

Wallace shot back: “Well, one of them was count back from 100 by seven.” He began counting: “Ninety-three.”

In other circumstances, this could have come off as overly adversarial. But Wallace was putting his finger on the ridiculousness of the claim-- just as he had so many times previously in the interview.

These were the kinds of things that have been pointed out ad nauseam outside the audience of the president; Wallace just had the venue and the wherewithal to actually press him on them. And the result was something unlike we’ve seen thus far in Trump’s presidency.

Orlando Welcomes Trumpanzee's Reelection Campaign: "Anybody But Trump"

Early this morning, around sunrise, the Washington Post published a piece by Aaron Blake, This Is Trump's Worst Poll Number-- And What It Means. "There is one poll question I keep coming back to when I think about President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign," he wrote. "It’s the one in which pollsters ask whether people would definitely not vote for him. This is an especially bad number for Trump. National polls generally show a majority of people (51-56 percent) say they wouldn’t-- with Fox News polls being the exception. And now a poll also shows that number is remarkably bad for Trump in a surprising place: Texas. The University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll shows 43 percent say they’d never back Trump, and another 7 percent say they’re inclined to vote against him. That’s half the state intending not to vote for a Republican president... in Texas."

Personally, the Trump polling number I think is the most important one is about his honesty. I've watched it descend over the last two years. In the most recent polls I've seen where they ask questions about his honesty and trustworthiness, he's down in the 20s. That's lower than the percent of people who say they are definitely voting for him. How sick is that. If 28% of voters say he's honest and 36% say they're definitely voting for him... well, 8% of the general population seems content to vote for someone they know is a liar and deceiver.

I recall a few years ago having a discussion with a member of Congress who was pissed off about the overly partisan nature of the Orlando Sentinel, long practically an arm of the Florida Republican Party. The paper did everything it could to twist even its news coverage against Democrats. He fantasized about fairer-minded citizens buying it. The Sentinel, with its 151,000 daily circulation (over quarter million on weekends), plays a huge part in shaping the narrative along the I-4 Corridor, the key to statewide electoral victories in Florida.

Today, Trump officially kicked off his national reelection campaign in Orlando. (The Baby Trump blimp was also on hand.) The Sentinel's editorial board welcomed him with this: Our Orlando Sentinel endorsement for president in 2020: Not Donald Trump. "We’re here to announce," wrote the editors, "our endorsement for president in 2020, or, at least, who we’re not endorsing: Donald Trump."

Some readers will wonder how we could possibly eliminate a candidate so far before an election, and before knowing the identity of his opponent.

Because there’s no point pretending we would ever recommend that readers vote for Trump.

After 2½ years we’ve seen enough.

Enough of the chaos, the division, the schoolyard insults, the self-aggrandizement, the corruption, and especially the lies.

So many lies-- from white lies to whoppers-- told out of ignorance, laziness, recklessness, expediency or opportunity.

Trump’s capacity for lying isn’t the surprise here, though the frequency is.

It’s the tolerance so many Americans have for it.

There was a time when even a single lie-- a phony college degree, a bogus work history-- would doom a politician’s career.

Not so for Trump, who claimed in 2017 that he lost the popular vote because millions of people voted illegally (they didn’t). In 2018 he said North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat (it is). And in 2019 he said windmills cause cancer (they don’t). Just last week he claimed the media fabricated unfavorable results from his campaign’s internal polling (it didn’t).

According to a Washington Post database, the president has tallied more than 10,000 lies since he took office.

Trump’s successful assault on truth is the great casualty of this presidency, followed closely by his war on decency.

Trump insults political opponents and national heroes alike with middle-school taunts. He demonstrates no capacity for empathy or remorse. He misuses his office to punish opponents, as when he recently called for a boycott of AT&T to get even with his least favorite media outlet, CNN. He tears down institutions, once airily suggesting the U.S. should try having a leader for life as China now allows. He seems incapable of learning a lesson, telling an ABC interviewer last week-- just two months after Robert Mueller’s report on election interference was released-- that he would accept dirt on an opponent from Russia or China.

Trump has diminished our standing in the world. He reneges on deals, attacks allies and embraces enemies.

This nation must never forget that humiliating public moment in Helsinki in 2018 when the president of the United States chose to accept Vladimir Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 election over the unanimous assessment of the American intelligence community.

Such a betrayal by a U.S. president would have been the unforgivable political sin in normal times.

As if that’s not enough, Trump declares his love for North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, a genuine villain who starves and enslaves his people and executes his enemies with antiaircraft guns and flamethrowers.

But he wrote the president a “beautiful letter.” Flattery will get you everywhere with this president, and that’s dangerous.

Domestically, the president’s signature issue-- immigration-- has moved in fits and starts. Happily, he abandoned pursuing an outright-- and unconstitutional-- ban on Muslims entering the U.S., opting instead to restrict travel for people from a handful of nations, most of them majority Muslim.

He’s tried separating families, sending troops to the border and declaring a national emergency. For all of that, illegal border crossings are, as the president himself calls it, at crisis levels.

He blames House Democrats because casting blame is Trump’s forte. But Republicans controlled the House and the Senate for two full years. That seemed like an ideal time to fix what the president believes ails our immigration laws.

Even with Democrats now controlling the House, where is Trump’s much-touted deal-making mojo, an attribute he campaigned on?

“But the economy!”

Yes, the market has done well since Trump’s election.

The S&P 500 was up about 21% between Trump’s inauguration and May 31 of his third year in office. Under President Obama, it was up about 56% in that same period.

Unemployment is headed down, as it was during seven straight years under Obama.

Wages are up, and that’s a welcome change. But GDP increases so far are no better than some periods under Obama. Deficit spending under Obama was far too high, in part because of the stimulus needed to dig out of the Great Recession. Under Trump, it’s still headed in the wrong direction, once again pushing $1 trillion even though the economy is healthy.

Trump seems to care nothing about the deficit and the national debt, which once breathed life into the Tea Party.

Through all of this, Trump’s base remains loyal. Sadly, the truest words Trump might ever have spoken was when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose his supporters.

This non-endorsement isn’t defaulting to whomever the Democrats choose. This newspaper has a history of presidential appointments favoring Republicans starting in the mid-20th century. Except for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the Sentinel backed Republican presidential nominees from 1952 through 2004, when we recommended John Kerry over another four years of George W. Bush.

As recently as 2012 we recommended Republican Mitt Romney because of what seemed at the time to be Obama’s failure to adequately manage the nation’s finances.

If-- however unlikely-- a Republican like Romney, now a senator from Utah, or former Ohio Gov. John Kasich successfully primaried the president, we would eagerly give them a look. Same if an independent candidate mounted a legitimate campaign.

We’d even consider backing Trump if, say, he found the proverbial cure for cancer or-- about as likely-- changed the essence of who he is (he won’t).

The nation must endure another 1½ years of Trump. But it needn’t suffer another four beyond that.

We can do better. We have to do better.

Quinnipiac also welcomed Trump to Florida today-- with more horrible news for him and his campaign (and for the Russians, Saudis and other plutocratic governments)  Quinnipiac's new poll of Florida registered voters shows all the viable 2020 Democrats beating Trump in head-to-head match-ups.

• Biden beats Trump- 50-41%
• Bernie beats Trump- 48-42%
• Elizabeth Warren beats Trump- 47-43%
• Kamala Harris beats Trump- 45-44%
• Beto beats Trump- 45-44%
• McKinsey Pete beats Trump- 44-43%

Among Florida independent voters, Biden leads Trump 54-32%, Bernie leads 51-34%, Warren leads 47-47%, Kamala leads 44-38%, McKiney Pete leads 44-37%, and Beto leads 44-38%.

Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll: "Florida Republicans have won the last five major statewide elections, all by very close margins, but Sunshine State Democrats see these very early numbers as a sign that their losing streak might be coming to an end... While most Florida voters are feeling better financially, President Trump remains underwater with a 44 percent job approval rating and a 51 percent disapproval rating."