The Pandemic-- Whose Fault Is The Second Spike?

The Second Spike by Nancy Ohanian

The Wall Street Journal managed to do a whole piece on How the Covid-19 surge shifted to the South and West without once mentioning Trump or any of his stupid Republican enablers. It's not a bad post, although reporter Randy Yeip missed the whole meaning of "how" in his title.

Trump didn't invent coronavirus but the ferocity and endurance of the pandemic in America belongs entirely to him and that is the "how."

Friday was another terrible pandemic day for America. The country had 54,904 confirmed new cases. The 10 states with the most new cases Friday and ---> Saturday:

• Florida +9,488 ---> 11,458
• Texas +7,343 ---> 5,382
• California +4,509 ---> 3,718
• Arizona +4,433 ---> 2,695
• Georgia +2,784 --->2,826
• North Carolina +2,054 ---> 1,092
• South Carolina +1,831 ---> 1,854
• Tennessee +1,822 ---> 1,428
• Alabama +1,754 ---> 997
• Louisiana +1,728 ---> no report

Not in the "top 10," but also spiking badly: Mississippi, Ohio, Nevada, Missouri, Utah, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Yep noted that "Americans are seeing the coronavirus pandemic play out in two parts, as states that bore the brunt of cases in the early months of the pandemic have mostly contained the spread, while a new wave of infections is now threatening much of the rest of the country. At the start of April, New York and New Jersey accounted for fully half of all cases nationwide. Those two states plus five others saw a combined rate of confirmed infections that was nearly eight times that of the rest of the country. But mitigation efforts that brought everyday life practically to a standstill bent the curve dramatically." SO what about the states that eschewed those mitigation efforts? The curve bent-- but in the wrong direction.

Then just as life in many of those states tiptoed toward a new normal, Americans elsewhere saw a rapid rise in infections. The divergence has been so dramatic that through July 1 those other 43 states now account for two-thirds of all confirmed cases nationwide.

To be sure, there have been exceptions. While many of the states hit hardest in the earliest days have kept infections in check so far, states like Louisiana, Michigan and Washington are seeing a resurgence. But the center of gravity has clearly shifted south and west, as states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona experience explosive growth in case counts.

What might account for the shift? A look at the data suggests that mitigation efforts in the newest hot spots may not have gone far enough, or lasted long enough, to effectively tame the spread. In many of the states experiencing a surge in new infections, bars, restaurants and retail businesses were shut down for a much shorter period than in the states that saw the first wave of cases. And governors in places like New York and New Jersey were more aggressive in requiring the public to wear face masks.

States in the Northeast that accounted for much of the early surge in cases were among the first to implement restrictions. Confirmed infections in each peaked in April, but most didn’t lift restrictions on restaurants, bars and indoor retail until case counts had dropped considerably and were continuing on a downward trend.

Three other states that saw early surges also kept those restrictions in place until case counts were well off their peaks. But unlike New York and New Jersey, for instance, the downward trends had slowed or even reversed before restrictions were lifted. Washington state and Louisiana have seen a continued upward trajectory since then. Michigan’s rate of Covid cases initially resumed its decline but in recent weeks has seen cases rising again, including more than 130 traced to a bar in East Lansing, Michigan.

Many of the newest outbreaks are occurring in populous states in the South and West. California was the first state to implement a statewide stay-at-home order, but the state relaxed restrictions even while confirmed cases continued to rise. Arizona, Florida and Texas had kept case counts low, but never saw a significant decline in infection rates before reopening. Governors in all four states have now reimplemented some restrictions in an effort to contain the spread.

Is Trump and his sycophantic enablers to blame? That simple? Well, meet Pam Bondi, former Florida Attorney General and slimy corporate lobbyist; there is no worse Trump sycophant anywhere. She's also a psychotic anti-masker who has said that that Biden’s proposal to make masks mandatory nationally-- like most countries that have whipped the pandemic do-- is really a harbinger of Marxist totalitarianism. She was on Hannity's show this week comparing Biden to Castro.

“What’s it similar to? In Cuba, where Castro makes all school-aged children wear a Pioneer Scarf,” Bondi said Friday night on Fox News’ Hannity.

“What’s going to be next? Banning guns,” Bondi added. “The first words out of his mouth are talking about making every American wear a mask.”

Bondi said that was part of the Biden “socialist agenda,” a creed the Delaware Democrat purportedly shares with “Bernie Sanders and AOC.”

“That’s the path America would be headed down if that man was elected as President,” the former Attorney General contended.

...“We hope that people are going to stay socially distanced, are going to wear a mask, [use] hand sanitizer and be respectful of each other,” Bondi said to The Guardian.

“It’s not a legal requirement, it’s people’s own free choice. But we hope everyone will be peaceful and happy and have a great rally and social distance,” she added.

With Republicans desperate to hold onto Florida, facing polls that show a strong Biden lead consistently, expect more comparisons between Biden and Castro.

The hopes for Trump partisans is that some of them will stick.

Meanwhile, NBC News reported that After several months of mixed messages on the coronavirus pandemic, the White House is settling on a new one: Learn to live with it. Administration officials are planning to intensify what they hope is a sharper, and less conflicting, message of the pandemic next week, according to senior administration officials, after struggling to offer clear directives amid a crippling surge in cases across the country... At the crux of the message, officials said, is a recognition by the White House that the virus is not going away any time soon-- and will be around through the November election. As a result, President Donald Trump's top advisers plan to argue, the country must figure out how to press forward despite it. Therapeutic drugs will be showcased as a key component for doing that and the White House will increasingly emphasize the relatively low risk most Americans have of dying from the virus, officials said. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for his part, has been issuing dire warnings on the future of the pandemic... He testified on Capitol Hill this week that if current trends continue, Americans could see as many as 100,000 new cases daily. In an interview with BBC Radio on Thursday, Fauci said: 'What we've seen over the last several days is a spike in cases that are well beyond the worse spikes that we've seen. That is not good news, we've got to get that under control or we risk an even greater outbreak in the United States.'"

DC Rumor Mill: Trumpanzee Plans To Fire Mueller December 22

The Simpsons come through... bigly. Less hilarious is the Newsweek suggestion that Señor Trumpanzee may fire Mueller next week while Congress is away for holiday vacation. That's what Jackie Speier (D-CA) says she's hearing in the Capitol-- specifically that he'll fire Mueller on Dec. 22. Democrats will want to impeach him if he does-- but so what? Republicans control both houses of Congress and there aren't many who would go along either. Adam Schiff, who has been drumming up Trump fear-monger so he can raise immense sums of money for an eventual Senate run-- with no 2016 opponent, Schiff goes from his Rachel Maddow appearances directly to fundraisers and had already brought in $1,667,276 by October 1.

Meanwhile Florida dimwit, Matt Gaetz, one of only 5 millennials in the House, has been running around trying-- successfully-- to sound even stupider than Louie Gohmert, demanding Mueller be fired for corruption. Walter Shaub, former head of the Office of Government Ethics, noted that "the coordinated effort by President Trump and his surrogates to discredit the Mueller investigation raises serious alarms. Rather than making themselves complicit in this assault on the rule of law, Members of Congress should send a clear message to the President that firing Mueller is a red line he must not cross," no doubt a jab at the hyperbolic Gaetz.

And Gaetz is hardly the only dim bulb in Florida schreiking for Mueller's head. The most corrupt Attorney General in America, Pam Bondi, was on Fox with Hannity last week, along with neo-Nazi nutcase Sebastian Gorka, making an idiot out of herself. Speaking on Mueller's sterling team, the imbecilic Bondi babbled That "They need to be dissolved, and they need to be investigated. This team needs to be wiped out." When Hannity said that the level of corruption inside Mueller’s team is "worse than Watergate," Bondi butted in to slobber her agreement. But Hannity was on a tear and continued, "By the time we entangle this massive web of corruption, it will be worse than Watergate... Watergate on human growth hormone and steroids combined at massive levels."



Ready to blow him-- in her barely controllable excitement-- Bondi said, "And you’re the one who had to untangle it, Sean, not the federal government. That’s the shame of it."

Trump Isn't Just Losing Because Of His Policies-- His Corrupt Nature And Personal Essence Make Women Want To Puke

The Pam Bondi/Trumpanzee case isn't going away. It's classic Trump. As Paul Waldman put it in yesterday's Washington Post, "Bondi’s office had received multiple complaints from Floridians who said they were cheated by Trump University; while they were looking into it and considering whether to join a lawsuit over Trump University filed by the attorney general of New York State, Bondi called Trump and asked him for a $25,000 donation; shortly after getting the check, Bondi’s office dropped the inquiry." Clearly, Bondi should not be Attorney General, not even of Florida, and should certainly be in prison. What about Trump? He insists she's "upstanding" but Trump himself certainly isn't; he has a pattern of behavior that this episode typifies, a pattern going all the way back to when he was a crooked young real estate developer, emulating his crooked, racist father and bulldozing the rules and getting away with everything from racial discrimination to Mafia funny business. But Waldman's point yesterday was that we don't know anything much about the Bondi scandal because the media has just let it die.

[T]here was only one mention of this story on any of the five Sunday shows, when John Dickerson asked Chris Christie about it on Face the Nation (Christie took great umbrage: “I can’t believe, John, that anyone would insult Pam Bondi that way”). And the comparison with stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails or the Clinton Foundation is extremely instructive. Whenever we get some new development in any of those Clinton stories, you see blanket coverage-- every cable network, every network news program, every newspaper investigates it at length. And even when the new information serves to exonerate Clinton rather than implicate her in wrongdoing, the coverage still emphasizes that the whole thing just “raises questions” about her integrity.

...[T]he truth is that you’d have to work incredibly hard to find a politician who has the kind of history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump has. The number of stories which could potentially deserve hundreds and hundreds of articles is absolutely staggering. Here’s a partial list:

• Trump’s casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money

• Trump’s habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses

• Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed.

• The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money

• The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins

• Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did

• Trump’s employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t find Americans to do the work

• Trump’s use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work

• Trump’s history of being charged with housing discrimination

• Trump’s connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction

• The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company

• The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. According to the allegations, Ailes’s behavior was positively monstrous; as just one indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his key role in getting Nixon elected.

And that last one is happening right now. To repeat, the point is not that these stories have never been covered, because they have. The point is that they get covered briefly, then everyone in the media moves on. If any of these kinds of stories involved Clinton, news organizations would rush to assign multiple reporters to them, those reporters would start asking questions, and we’d learn more about all of them.

That’s important, because we may have reached a point where the frames around the candidates are locked in: Trump is supposedly the crazy/bigoted one, and Clinton is supposedly the corrupt one. Once we decide that those are the appropriate lenses through which the two candidates are to be viewed, it shapes the decisions the media make every day about which stories are important to pursue.

And it means that to a great extent, for all the controversy he has caused and all the unflattering stories in the press about him, Trump is still being let off the hook.

When Kellyanne saw the recent polls of Trump losing Pennsylvania decisively, she immediately said Trump can win the presidency without Pennsylvania. But he can't. He's looking more and more like a candidate who's going to win big among racist males, which is enough for victories in the more backward southern states, and not much else. Ginning up deranged Clinton-hatred might bring in a few more low-info voters that could help in a handful of non-Confederate states. But educated suburban voters-- especially women-- they're not even listening to his message any longer. They've written off the messenger. To the Toronto Star it looks like "simple math... is leading Donald Trump toward a devastating Pennsylvania defeat," primarily because he's "getting trounced in the prosperous suburban communities."

Polls show that educated white women, in particular, appear to be rejecting Trump in favour of the educated white woman running against him.

For all the talk of Trump’s toxicity with racial minorities, it is easy to forget that he is poisonous to much of the white population, too. In fact, because he has alienated white women and white people with college degrees, he is actually doing worse with whites than Mitt Romney did in 2012.

His issues are most acute in manicured oases like Montgomery County’s affluent Blue Bell, 40 minutes north of Philadelphia. A summer day spent talking to 37 women at McCaffrey’s Food Market, a store offering artisan pizza and custom cakes, corroborated the basic finding of data from Pennsylvania to Virginia to Colorado: Trump is staring at a suburban whupping.

...Trump is badly lagging every previous Republican nominee with educated white women. Among white women with a college degree, Romney earned 52 per cent to Obama’s 46 per cent in 2012. Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first female nominee of a major party, is trouncing Trump 58 per cent to 38 per cent, ABC/Washington Post polling suggests.

No Republican has won Pennsylvania since 1988. Trump, behind in more diverse states, needs it desperately. He is trailing by seven percentage points. The four “collar counties” around Philadelphia-- Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware-- are a large part of the reason why.

...The counties have been trending toward the Democrats for 25 years. Republican voters there, [director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College Terry] Madonna said, tend to mix fiscal conservatism with liberal positions on issues like gun control, abortion rights and climate change. Trump has staked out right-wing stances on all three.

Educated women overwhelmingly-- including Republican women and even ones who agree with him on issues-- "find his personality intolerable... Their chief concern about Trump was not policy. They objected most strongly to his behaviour, to his attitudes toward women, and to his disparagement of Muslims, Hispanics and African-Americans. "I think Trump is disgusting and awful and everything about him makes me sick,” said Stefani Bohm, 43, a psychotherapist... Miranda Sarwer, 44, who works in the pharmaceutical industry: “He’s a bigot, he’s a racist.”

...“He’s very arrogant, he doesn’t understand foreign policy, and he doesn’t understand this country,” said Maria Maman, 51, an undecided self-employed independent who usually votes Republican. “He’s a horrible guy. He’s just like a bigot, and so nasty,” said a 63-year-old retired school principal, Joanne, a Republican supporting Clinton who declined to give her last name. “No experience, no empathy, no policies.”

Amazing that this isn't a contest between people who identify as Democrats versus people who identify as Republicans as much as it is between people with two-digit IQs and people with three-digit IQs. Does that mean I'm saying only a moron can be backing Trump? Certain overlays notwithstanding, pretty much.

Trump Fined For Using His Charitable Foundation To Bribe Pam Bondi To Cover Up Trumpanzee University Crimes

Back in June, as a caption to a Trumpanzee gif I wrote that "Hillary isn't my idea of an honest politician but her level of crookedness is nowhere near Trump's," a corollary, I suppose of the lesser-of-two-evils theorem of American politics. Although neither has been charged-- let alone in prison-- it's been known for several months that Trumpanzee bribed Florida's shady Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to drop her investigation into the fraud charges against Trumpanzee University, which had ripped of hundreds of Florida students. Worse, yet, Bondi solicited the bribe from Trump-- a quid pro quo if I ever heard one! AP reported then that Bondi "personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates." The $25,000 was funneled to her PAC-- And Justice For All, illegally, through a tax-deductible charity, a Trump family foundation, on Sept. 17, 2013-- four days after Bondi's office publicly announced she was considering joining a New York state probe of Trump University's activities. As soon as she basically shook Trump down for the $25,000 her office claimed there was "insufficient grounds to proceed." That in spite of "thousands of pages of records related to consumer complaints about Trump University and its affiliates filed with Bondi's office... Many of the Trump-related consumers alleged that they paid money for training materials and personalized instruction which were never delivered." Bind lied to the media and claimed she only got one complain, when in fact, there were at least 20.

Late last week, David Fahrenthold, writing for the Washington Post, reported that Señor Trumpanzee paid an IRS fine for how he paid the bribe, rather than anything to do with the criminal nature of the bribe itself.

Trump's charitable foundation-- through which he funnels other people's money into "charities" he wants to be perceived to be supporting-- paid Bondi's PAC $25,000 to shut down the case, an improper use of a charitable foundation. Slyly Trump tried to cover his tracks by claiming the gift was for an actual charity in Kansas. Once exposed, the Trumpanzee Organization called it a mistake and agreed to the small fine. A Trumpanzee lackey claimed "It was just an honest mistake... It wasn’t done intentionally to hide a political donation, it was just an error."

[T]he Trump Foundation did not notify the IRS of this political donation. Instead, Trump's foundation listed a donation-- also for $25,000-- to a Kansas charity with a name similar to that of Bondi's political group. In fact, Trump's foundation had not given the Kansas group any money.

The prohibited gift was, in effect, replaced with an innocent-sounding but nonexistent donation.

...[W]hen the Trump Foundation sent in its tax filings that year, it compounded the original error by leaving out any mention of a political gift. When the IRS form asked if the Trump Foundation had spent money for political purposes that year, the foundation wrote "No."

Then, the Trump Foundation told the IRS about a gift that did not exist.

The foundation told the IRS that it had given $25,000 to a third group, a charity in Kansas with a similar name, "Justice for All." In fact, the Trump Foundation had not actually sent the Kansas group any money.

This new, incorrect listing had the effect of camouflaging the prohibited gift. Trump's CFO said that the listing of the Kansas group was another mistake, made by the foundation's accountants.

Meanwhile, Bondi has attempted to return the bribe that is likely to end her political career and force her to stand trial one day, but Trump has refused to accept it back!

"Lock up Crooked Hillary Clinton!"

Trump University Isn't The Only For-Profit College Scam Defrauding Students-- Guest Post By Annette Taddeo

Going to college, getting an education, and having a career is part of the American Dream many people strive for. However, today this is becoming less of a reality for so many aspiring students. For-profit colleges have crept into the mainstream of higher education and taken advantage of students. They charge high tuition fees and provide little in return. These “colleges” use a classic bait and switch strategy targeted at unsuspecting students. They lure in students expecting to learn, improve their lives, and get a job but instead of degrees, students receive costly excuses and a string of lies, while investors prosper. Trump University is clearly the most obvious and egregious example of this fraud and exploitation, yet in Florida, we have our own brand of for-profit exploitation.

These for-profit colleges now account for over 18% of the higher education market share, significantly higher than the national average of 12%. And like Trump University and Corinthian College, they have shut their doors in the middle of the night, leaving students with nothing to show for their attempt to get a good education but large amounts of debt. The obvious questions that come to mind are “where was the oversight”, “where were the state and federal officials?”

Well, as we are now learning through released documents, it’s all about the money. And no surprise, much of these money grabs tie back to Florida. For example, Corinthian College donated over $27,000 to Marco Rubio over the last few years and surprise, surprise, he wrote a letter to the Department of Education asking for “leniency” in maintaining the college’s access to Federal Student loans. As we have seen all over the news, the attorney general of Florida, Pam Bondi, solicited and received a $25,000 donation from Donald Trump for her campaign. And then lo and behold, she drops the planned lawsuit against Trump and Trump University.

Apparently, Florida politicians are quite good at finding their golden goose. Instead of cracking down on fraudulent for-profit colleges, our Representatives in Congress, have chosen to cash in. The now defunct Dade Medical College, which left thousands of displaced students in FL-26 with no recourse, has been stacking the deck in government by buying on both sides of the aisle. In 2012, Dade Medical College donated $16,500 and $17,500 to former South Florida Congress members Joe Garcia and David Rivera, respectively.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. South Florida politicians have collected tens of thousands of dollars in donations from these organizations in just the past few election cycles. Garcia and Rivera, as well as current FL-26 Representative, Carlos Curbelo have collected over $60,000 in for-profit money. It is abhorrent that these are the same people who write our country’s national education policies. But apparently money is more important than protecting constituents.

We had over 813,000 college students enrolled in the state of Florida in 2015. These young minds are future business leaders, academics, health practitioners. They depend on state and the federal government to make sure they have all the tools they need to succeed. Our elected officials, the people we have entrusted with looking out for best interest of the people, haven't done their job.

Higher education ought to be a pathway to a fulfilling career, not a pitfall into crippling debt. I remember being a struggling student, waiting tables to pay for books. I see students everyday, working twice as hard just to make it to class and get by. It’s time we took higher education out of the hands of corporations, investors and fraudsters and put it back into hands of educators. It’s time we fight for students, not for profits.


Editor's note: Annette has been a friend of this blog since her run for Congress in 2008 against Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the campaign that Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- then chair of the DCCC Red to Blue program-- sabotaged and set herself on the path to the calumny in which most Democrats hold her today. This cycle Annette is running with the DCCC's blessing-- one of the only progressives anywhere they are backing-- for the seat held by Carlos Curbelo. If you'd like to contribute to her campaign, you can do it by clicking on the thermometer:

Is Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi In Prison Yet? Sure... Right Next To Rick Snyder's Cell

Hillary isn't my idea of an honest politician but her level of crookedness is nowhere near Trump's

As we mentioned last weekend, Pam Bondi took a bribe from Donald Trump to halt an investigation into his fraudulent Trump "University" scheme. In fact, she directly solicited the $25,000 bribe from Trump-- an absolute quid pro quo for shutting down her office's investigation. By Monday, AP was painting a rather bleak picture of Biondi in action, now a Trump campaign surrogate. AP made it clear that Bondi "personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates." The $25,000 was funneled to her PAC-- And Justice For All, illegally, through a tax-deductible charity, a Trump family foundation, on Sept. 17, 2013-- four days after Bondi's office publicly announced she was considering joining a New York state probe of Trump University's activities. As soon as she basically shook Trump down for the $25,000 her office claimed there was "insufficient grounds to proceed." That in spite of "thousands of pages of records related to consumer complaints about Trump University and its affiliates filed with Bondi's office... Many of the Trump-related consumers alleged that they paid money for training materials and personalized instruction which were never delivered." Bind lied to the media and claimed she only got one complain, when in fact, there were at least 20.

The timing of the donation by Trump is notable because the now presumptive Republican presidential nominee has said he expects and receives favors from politicians to whom he gives money.

"When I want something I get it," Trump said at an Iowa rally in January. "When I call, they kiss my ass. It's true."

In addition to the money given by his foundation, Trump himself has donated $253,500 since in Florida since 1999, most of it going to Republican candidates, the state party or political committees affiliated with GOP officials. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, also gave a $500 check to Bondi a week before her father's money came in, as well as another $25,000 to the Republican Party of Florida the following year.

Ivanka is notorious for funneling Trump family money to the sleaziest and most corrupt politicians Trump is working. Donald Norcross, brother of New Jersey political machine boss George Norcross, has accepted over ten thousand dollars in bribes from Ivanka while Papa Trump was scamming tax benefits for his New Jersey properties-- not just in Atlantic City but nonsense like calling his golf courses "goat farms" so they could get agricultural tax deductions. She gave another $10,000 to the New Jersey Democratic Party at the same time. Ivanka has also contributed generously to the most blatantly corrupt cash-on-delivery whores in Washington-- from career criminals Chuck Schumer and John McCain to Charlie Rangel and Cory Booker. And, of course tens of thousands to the DCCC, RNC, DSCC, NRCC, NRSC... the whole array of crooked Beltway money machines that have shamelessly sucked up to the Trump family for years.

The Orlando Sentinel's Scott Maxwell has been holding Bondi's feet to the fire by comparing her corruption in this case with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's devotion to protecting the New Yorkers who were scammed and fleeced by Trump, while Bondi, classic gangster style, was just looking to get a cut from herself. This week Sentinel readers got to think about this statement:

It was wildly unethical for her to accept this money. No self-respecting prosecutor would take money from a potential target... It's time for an independent investigator to probe this.... [I]f you want to try to defend Bondi's actions, try finishing this sentence for me: "I think it is perfectly appropriate for a prosecutor to take big chunks of money from someone she has been asked to investigate because ...."

If you can finish that sentence with a straight face, OK. I can't.

And you know what?

I don't think Pam Bondi can either.

I have repeatedly asked her to explain why she thinks her actions were appropriate.

She has yet to provide an answer... probably because she knows there isn't a legitimate one.

Republican Politicians Find Themselves Hopelessly In Trump's Toxic Embrace

Claiming Trump is the lesser of two evils-- as many, if not, most of his Republican congressional supporters now do-- won't save the GOP from Trumpism. When asked if Trump would make a good president, top Oklahoma establishment Republican, Tom Cole, couldn't say he would. "He's a work in progress... To me this is a question of alternatives. I'm comfortable that he will be a better president than Hillary Clinton." Paul Ryan, Trump's latest reluctant endorser-- one who wants everyone to know he is holding his nose when doing so-- "did not," points out the Associated Press, "express support for any of Trump's policies"-- nor for "his confrontational style." Ryan: "he clearly says and does things I don't agree with and I've had to speak up on time to time when that has occurred, and I'll continue to do that if that's necessary-- I hope it's not."

Several other Trump backers on Friday had trouble detailing which of his policies they support and expressed continued concern about his temperament as president.

And, keeping the candidate at arm's length, still others reassured nervous colleagues by citing constitutional protections that could help limit the risks.

"I still believe we have the institutions of government that would restrain someone who seeks to exceed their constitutional obligations," Arizona Sen. John McCain told the New York Times. "We have a Congress. We have the Supreme Court. We're not Romania."

"Our institutions, including the press, are still strong enough to prevent" unconstitutional acts, he said.

New York Rep. Peter King, another Trump backer, suggested his party's resistance to the New York businessman is fueled by his outsider status. While Trump has long been a political donor, he has no direct experience in governing and remains unfamiliar to many GOP leaders.

"It's not like the boardroom when you can just fire somebody. He's not going to be able to fire Nancy Pelosi," King told the AP on Friday. "It's not a question of intelligence or ability but is he ready for all the uncertainties that go with politics and government?"

Georgia Sen. David Perdue offered a simple message for his reluctant colleagues: "Get over it. Do you want Hillary Clinton?"

"I mean, that's the alternative," the Republican senator told the AP. "This is not about whether we're agreeing with every single thing Donald Trump says. We never agree 100 percent with any presidential candidate."

...GOP operative Tim Miller, among a shrinking group of vocal anti-Trump Republicans, offered a warning to any party leaders who believe they can influence Trump by joining his campaign.

"If you sign up with Trump, you get unadulterated Donald and all the bad that comes with it," he said.

Every Republican-- from Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McCarthy right down through House backbenchers proudly wearing "Make America Great Again" baseball caps like Cresent Hardy and Rod Blum-- who embraces Trump will be tarred and scared by his toxicity. The cartoon above depicts Florida's corrupt Trumpist Attorney General Pam Bondi, one of Trump's earliest supporters in Florida, whose name was even bandied about as a possible running mate for a time. When Florida students started complaining they were being ripped off and conned by Trump's so-called "university," a scam operation set up to separate desperate people from their money, Pam Biondi was one a group of both Democratic and Republican attorneys general across the country to file suit. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman declared it a "straight-up fraud." Greg Abbott, then Teaxs' Republican Attorney General, now the state's governor, opened a civil investigation of "possibly deceptive trade practices."

Bondi and Abbott were different from other Attorneys General inasmuch as they both accepted bribes from Trump to drop their states' suits. AP reported that "Abbott's probe was quietly dropped in 2010 when Trump University agreed to end its operations in Texas. Trump subsequently donated $35,000 to Abbott's successful gubernatorial campaign, according to records... Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi briefly considered joining with Schneiderman in a multi-state suit against Trump University. Three days after Bondi's spokeswoman was quoted in local media reports as saying the office was reviewing the New York lawsuit, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made a $25,000 contribution to a political fundraising committee supporting Bondi's re-election campaign. Bondi, a Republican, soon dropped her investigation, citing insufficient grounds to proceed."



It's hardly a secret that Greg Abbott and Pam Bondi are corrupt politicians who take payoffs and Trump, who brags about buying politicians, is hardly the first criminal to bribe Bondi and Abbott for special treatment. But the attention to Trump University as a criminal enterprise is embarrassing to both of the ambitious politicians now. When Adam Liptak reported in yesterday's NY Times that scholars see Trump as a threat to the rule of law, callow political hacks like Bondi and Abbott, as well as pusillanimous members of Congress, from Lamar Smith and Jeb Hensarling in Texas to Lee Zeldin and Peter King on Long Island, were very much on his mind. "Trump’s blustery attacks on the press," he wrote, "complaints about the judicial system and bold claims of presidential power collectively sketch out a constitutional worldview that shows contempt for the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the rule of law, legal experts across the political spectrum say. Even as much of the Republican political establishment lines up behind its presumptive nominee, many conservative and libertarian legal scholars warn that electing Mr. Trump is a recipe for a constitutional crisis."

With five months to go before Election Day, Mr. Trump has already said he would “loosen” libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations. He has threatened to sic federal regulators on his critics. He has encouraged rough treatment of demonstrators.

His proposal to bar Muslims from entry into the country tests the Constitution’s guarantees of religious freedom, due process and equal protection.

And, in what was a tipping point for some, he attacked Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of the Federal District Court in San Diego, who is overseeing two class actions against Trump University.

Mr. Trump accused the judge of bias, falsely said he was Mexican and seemed to issue a threat.

“They ought to look into Judge Curiel, because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace,” Mr. Trump said. “O.K.? But we will come back in November. Wouldn’t that be wild if I am president and come back and do a civil case?”

David Post, a retired law professor who now writes for the Volokh Conspiracy, a conservative-leaning law blog, said those comments had crossed a line.

“This is how authoritarianism starts, with a president who does not respect the judiciary,” Mr. Post said. “You can criticize the judicial system, you can criticize individual cases, you can criticize individual judges. But the president has to be clear that the law is the law and that he enforces the law. That is his constitutional obligation.”

“If he is signaling that that is not his position, that’s a very serious constitutional problem,” Mr. Post said.

Beyond the attack on judicial independence is a broader question of Mr. Trump’s commitment to the separation of powers and to the principles of federalism enshrined in the Constitution. Randy E. Barnett, a law professor at Georgetown and an architect of the first major challenge to President Obama’s health care law, said he had grave doubts on both fronts.

“You would like a president with some idea about constitutional limits on presidential powers, on congressional powers, on federal powers,” Professor Barnett said, “and I doubt he has any awareness of such limits.”

...Post said there was a difference between Mr. Obama’s view of executive power and that of Mr. Trump. “Whatever you think of Obama’s position on immigration, he is willing to submit to the courts,” he said. “There is no suggestion that he will disobey if the courts rule against him.”

Several law professors said they were less sure about Mr. Trump, citing the actions of another populist, President Andrew Jackson, who refused to enforce an 1832 Supreme Court decision arising from a clash between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation.

“I can easily see a situation in which he would take the Andrew Jackson line,” Professor Epstein said, referring to a probably apocryphal comment attributed to Jackson about Chief Justice John Marshall: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

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