Would You Trust A Trump-Endorsed Vaccine In October?

What would Trump not do to win? After all, he's obsessed with the idea of going down in the history books as the first American president to go to prison. If he loses in November, it may happen-- not likely, but possible. Even a worthless corporate shill like Biden has publicly pledged to not pardon him. I suppose Señor T could try pardoning himself but that might not stand up. Or he could make a deal with Pence at some time between tomorrow and Wednesday, January 20, 2021-- exactly 24 weeks from today-- when Biden is inaugurated, and resign so that Pence will be able to say he was once president and so that Trump and his family have iron-clad presidential pardons.

Reporting for Raw Story yesterday, clinical psychologists John Gartner and Alan Blotcky wrote that Trump is becoming increasingly dangerous and mentally unhinged. "Trump," they wrote, "is a malignant narcissist, a diagnosis introduced by the famed analyst Erich Fromm, a refugee from Nazi Germany, to explain the psychology of Hitler, Stalin  and other grandiose destructive dictators throughout history. It has four components: narcissism, paranoia, psychopathy and sadism. Malignant narcissists enjoy destroying their real and imagined enemies. It makes them feel powerful, they enjoy inflicting pain, and it is an effective gangster’s tool to intimidate others to do their bidding. If they have been publicly humiliated, made to look weak, they must exact revenge viciously, fiercely, dramatically and preferably publicly. Trump’s philosophy: 'When somebody screws you, you screw them back in spades... You’ve gotta hit people hard. And it’s not so much for that person. It’s other people watch.' Since June 1, Trump’s polls have plummeted, he has been widely mocked and jeered for his dishonest and  ineffective response to the pandemic, protestors have continued in the streets, and his humiliation has continued. His response has been to bring Lafayette Park to scale. Unmarked military have abducted protestors off the streets of Portland despite the outrage of local and state officials. Trump has signaled an intent to send troops to Albuquerque, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore-- none of whom want them-- arguing he must 'dominate' US cities."

When a malignant narcissist like Trump says “Make America Great Again,” what he really means is make ME great-- or else. Malignant narcissists will demonize and destroy anyone who gets in their way, and the list of enemies always grows both because they are paranoid, and because their behavior provokes real opposition. Staffs are purged over and over for disloyalty. And the categories of people in the population who are enemies grows. First, we were defending the border from “infestations” by immigrants, sadistically taking away their children and putting them into concentration camps in the desert. Now those same Border Patrol agents-- who have shown their willingness to commit crimes against humanity for Trump-- are being drafted into service as Trump’s personal Republican Guard to attack our citizens in our streets.

...[W]with Trump, we have a Reichstag fire every night, as we watch a similar process take place in slow motion.

How bad can it get if Trump feels power slipping away? When Hitler knew his war was lost, he too went into a bunker. Before he committed suicide, he issued an order known as the “Nero Decree” calling for “scorched earth.” “All military transport and communication facilities, industrial establishments and supply depots, as well as anything else of value within Reich territory…will be destroyed.” Hitler told Speers, “It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival…it is best for us to destroy even these things” because “only those who are inferior will remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.”

In other words, they failed to make Hitler great, and so the surviving Germans deserved to perish alongside him. Like a homicidal abusive spouse, he was determined that if he couldn’t have Germany then nobody would.

Trump is not Hitler. But like Hitler, he is a malignant narcissist. If we don’t make Trump great, he will predictably use his power to punish us. And if we don’t submit–he may just try to destroy us. Tear gas in the streets and one hundred and fifty thousand dead would suggest that he has already begun.

So what would Trump do to win? Anything. And one he is sure to try is announcing, perhaps distributing, some partially safe-- which means partially unsafe-- vaccine. The NY Times had a team of reporters-- Sharon LaFraniere, Katie Thomas, Noah Weiland, Peter Baker and Annie Karni-- look into it over the weekend. Trump has something called Operation Warp Speed whose goal is to develop a vaccine, something that usually takes 2 years, in October, in time for the election. The quintet wrote that "The ensuing race for a vaccine-- in the middle of a campaign in which the president’s handling of the pandemic is the key issue after he has spent his time in office undermining science and the expertise of the federal bureaucracy-- is now testing the system set up to ensure safe and effective drugs to a degree never before seen. Under constant pressure from a White House anxious for good news and a public desperate for a silver bullet to end the crisis, the government’s researchers are fearful of political intervention in the coming months and are struggling to ensure that the government maintains the right balance between speed and rigorous regulation, according to interviews with administration officials, federal scientists and outside experts. Even in a less politically charged environment, there would be a fraught debate about how much to accelerate the process of trials and approval. The longer that vaccines are tested before being released, the likelier they are to be safe and effective... [E]xperts inside and outside the government still say they fear the White House will push the Food and Drug Administration to overlook insufficient data and give at least limited emergency approval to a vaccine, perhaps for use by specific groups like front-line health care workers, before the vote on Nov. 3."




Trump will stop at nothing. And neither will Kushner-in-law, who is also more than a little concerned about a blanket pardon before Biden takes over.

“There are a lot of people on the inside of this process who are very nervous about whether the administration is going to reach their hand into the Warp Speed bucket, pull out one or two or three vaccines, and say, ‘We’ve tested it on a few thousand people, it looks safe, and now we are going to roll it out,’” said Dr. Paul A. Offit of the University of Pennsylvania, who is a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee.

“They are really worried about that,” he added. “And they should be.”

Mr. Trump relentlessly touts progress toward a vaccine, raising hopes of quick approval. Touring a North Carolina biotechnology lab last week, he vowed to “deliver a vaccine in record time.” In a tweet last month, he explicitly tied vaccines to his re-election hopes.

On a campaign call with supporters in Pennsylvania on Sunday evening, Mr. Trump said the “F.D.A. has been great, at my instruction,” and he again raised hopes of rapid progress.

“We expect to have a vaccine available very, very early before the end of the year, far ahead of schedule,” he said. “We’re very close to having that finalized.”

The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who is helping to steer the re-election campaign from the White House, is a regular participant in meetings of a board formed to oversee the vaccine effort.

...White House officials said that Mr. Trump would not distort the vaccine review process to help his campaign. “The rapid research, development, trials and eventual distribution of a Covid-19 vaccine is emblematic of President Trump’s highest priority: the health and safety of the American people,” said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman. “It has nothing to do with politics.”

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told lawmakers on Friday that he remained “cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the end of this year and as we go into 2021.”

Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has not ruled out emergency approval of a vaccine.

“We would consider using an emergency use authorization if we felt that the risks associated with the vaccine were much lower than the risks of not having a vaccine,” he told the Journal of the American Medical Association in an online interview.

...Kushner, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus coordinator, and others interviewed Dr. Moncef Slaoui, a pharmaceutical industry veteran, and orchestrated his appointment as chief scientific adviser despite concerns within the Food and Drug Administration about conflicts of interest because of his financial ties to two companies that are developing a vaccine. Rather than being bothered by the conflict, Mr. Kushner and others reasoned that it took someone with such industry experience to oversee the effort.

Dr. Slaoui resigned from the board of Moderna, which has received nearly $1 billion in federal support to develop a vaccine. But as of May he still had nearly $10 million of stock in GlaxoSmithKline, a partner with the French drugmaker Sanofi, which last week signed a $2.1 billion agreement to produce 100 million doses. Dr. Slaoui, who is working on a $1 contract, cleared an ethics review by the Department of Health and Human Services and has said he is determined to avoid any conflict.

Shortly after Dr. Slaoui’s appointment, Dr. Marks resigned from the project he conceived and returned full-time to his post as a senior regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, where he will be the key decision maker on whether a vaccine merits approval.

The administration has conducted the vaccine hunt with a focus lacking in much of the rest of its pandemic response. Contracts have been executed at a brisk pace. Mobile trailers have been speedily delivered for experimental doses to be administered. When a company was short on needles, the Pentagon dispatched planes to deliver supplies within 48 hours.

The pharmaceutical companies are reporting the results of their trials at regular intervals, accelerating the review process. With the government paying much of the cost, the companies are beginning the process of manufacturing millions of doses of vaccine essentially on spec so that they can be distributed quickly if they secure approval.

The process has moved at a remarkable clip. Two vaccine candidates, one developed by Moderna in conjunction with Dr. Fauci’s institute and another by Pfizer, last week began Phase 3 trials, the final stage of clinical experimentation. Others are expected soon.

...Scientists have argued that it would be unwise to cut corners on a vaccine that is to be injected into some 300 million Americans, adding that a failed effort would fuel public distrust of vaccines generally.

...It is not clear that a vaccine approval shortly before the election would be an “October surprise” sufficient to alter the outcome of the vote. An announcement could give Americans hope that the end is in sight. But some Republican strategists said that it might not help Mr. Trump because his opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, would surely continue the vaccine process if elected.

“Does it turn everything around for him politically? I don’t know,” said Sarah Longwell, a conservative strategist and prominent Republican opponent of Mr. Trump who regularly conducts focus groups and has found that public attention is more focused on government relief checks and school reopenings.

“If the vaccine is an October surprise, there’s a lot of other things that are cutting against” it as a game-changer, she said.

The drug companies find themselves caught in the middle. While eager to bring products to market as quickly as possible, they face risks in moving too quickly in order to fit an election calendar, analysts said.

“They are acutely aware of the political dynamic here,” said Rob Smith, the director of Capital Alpha Partners, a research firm. A vaccine that flopped would jeopardize their broader business, he said, and it would not make sense “to take a huge reputational risk not just for your vaccine but for all the products across your portfolio to benefit the president politically.”

Dr. Fauci has expressed confidence that the system will hold.

“Historically, the F.D.A. has based their decisions on science,” he told a House committee last week. “They will do so this time also, I am certain.”

I'll wait a little and see-- like another six months or so after Trump, who has never cared much about "reputational risk," is gone.

Pandemic Bullies

If you're not wearing a mask yet... you'd better, first and foremost to protect yourself and others you interact with for the virus. But there's something else you may have to protect yourself from as well. I'm noticing an increase in hostility towards people who aren't wearing masks. I saw my first case of violence against some guy who got on a line without a mask and them mouthed off to someone with a mask-- someone much bigger than him with a mask-- when he was asked to get out of the line and move away. He wound up with a bloody nose or mouth because he mouthed off, not because he wasn't wearing a mask per se but, it's early yet. Better to wear a mask and observe all the social distancing etiquette the risk some jerk shooting you for decideing you're endangering him.

I was not surprised to see the video above with day one reactions from Indian police, always happy-- like police anywhere-- to have an excuse to physically abuse someone and play the dominance and submission game.

In the U.S., a majority of people tell pollsters they are fine with following social distancing rules, but... not everyone. And the more Trump makes up crap on TV that indicates the pandemic isn't that bad or almost over, the harder it is going to be to get his followers to change their behavior. Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't mind if every Trump supporter died tomorrow. The problem is they'll increase the infection rate and the death rate for normal people. But it's heartening to see even Republican governors now ignoring him and moving forward with the behavior-changing orders that can stop this thing. Take Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), who's been one of the most proactive of any governor, regardless of party. "When people are dying and people don't feel safe, the economy is not going to come back. We have to #FlattenTheCurve so that when the wave comes, it's not as big as it would have been and we are prepared for it. We are going to get our economy back, but we have to get through it, protect as many lives as we can, and then move forward. I'm looking forward to that day, but it's not here yet."

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan: "We don't think that we're going to be in any way ready to be out of this in five or six days or so, or whenever this 15 days is up from the time that they started this imaginary clock"

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R): "Whatever messages that are coming out of Washington, we are going to make sure we take care of the needs of New Hampshire first. What we aren’t going to do is overly accelerate or loosen regulations just for the sake of the economy and at the risk of public health."

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R): "I hope the president's right, let me just say that. But the reality of it is, we’re planning this much longer than two weeks here in the state of Missouri. And I think that’s how you do-- to make a good plan-- how you’re going deal with the crisis."

And this week the Republican governors of Massachusetts, Georgia, Indiana, Vermont, Idaho and West Virginia all issued stay-at-home orders, while Mike Dunleavy (R-AK) "ordered," whatever that means, anyone entering the state to self-quarantine. Worst governor of a big state so far: Florida's Ron DeSantis, who's basically recommending measures. What a clown!

It's The End Of The World As We Know It? Maybe... And Maybe Soon-- Or Maybe I'm Being Too Alarmist

I was just talking with a very credible candidate for Congress about how an increasingly senile Biden could turn out to be the Democratic nominee; he-- the congressional candidate, not Status Quo Joe-- told me he almost hopes the apocalypse comes soon because he wants to pick up the pieces. Wow! And I thought I was nuts! As speaking of government by the senile, last night, the clownish Trump ran to Sean Hannity on Fox to dispute the WHO report that the death rate for coronavirus is 3.4%, asserting that it's "a false number." Claiming he's "had a lot of conversations with a lot of people," he noted that "They don’t know about the easy cases because the easy cases don’t go to the hospital, they don’t report to doctors or the hospital in many cases so I think that that number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under one percent."

Look, I'm no financial advisor but take this warning from me: don't fall into a bull trap. That's when the stock market is plunging and it goes up a bit and fools rush in hoping for a quick profit only to see the plunge continue the following day, taking their investment gamble with it. I think we had one of those yesterday, when the Dow Jones bounced up over a thousand points-- very tempting. Don't do anything crazy today. The Dow headed straight down when it opened this morning and has given back all the fake "winnings" from yesterday.

The American government has quite a lot in common with Iran's government, whose response to the pandemic has been characterized as being motivated entirely by pride, paranoia, secrecy and chaos. Have you ever pictured Señor Trumpanzee as a mullah or even an ayatollah?

Bloomberg News warned that "It is hard to exaggerate the historic significance of Tuesday’s events in the bond market… According to historical work by Robert Shiller, the Nobel laureate economist at Yale University who has reconstructed the 10-year interest rates available in the U.S. back to 1871, it has never before dropped this low. Many momentous events have shaken the U.S. since Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency, but none of them were sufficient to drive long-term money down to such cheap levels." The Financial Times put it more succinctly: "The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield dropped below 1 per cent for the first time on Tuesday, after the Federal Reserve delivered its first emergency rate cut since the financial crisis in order to stave off the long-term economic impact from the spread of the coronavirus." That was first time-- as in first time ever.

That's because markets saw the rate cut-- by a Trump-badgered Fed-- as pure desperation. Canadian financial expert and author Kiril Nikolaev wrote yesterday that emergency interest rate cuts are always bad news for the stock market and-- they're not going to stop this Trump Market from turning into full fledged bear market-- as opposed to a correction. "The Federal Reserve shocked market participants on Tuesday after announcing an aggressive 50-point rate cut. The move was intended to shore up liquidity in an effort to combat the economic impact of the coronavirus. Unfortunately, the big rate reduction did not drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average higher as expected. On the contrary, the index ended the trading day down nearly 3% despite the Fed’s intervention. This indicates that the market is pricing in factors that cannot be solved by loose monetary policies. Over the last two decades, we’ve seen six instances where the Fed reduced rates by 50 basis points or higher. Every single one of them preceded a bear market."

Since 2001, the Fed has been introducing emergency rate cuts of 50 basis points or higher in an attempt to avert a crisis. History tells us that this strategy doesn’t work. If anything, it’s a sign that the stock market is headed for a monumental collapse.

In 2001, the Federal Reserve cut rates by 0.5% three times within six months. The stock market dumped over 30% despite the central bank’s intervention.

It’s the same story in 2007 and 2008, where the Fed introduced three aggressive rate reductions. The result? A massive stock market collapse of over 50%.

It appears that history is showing that emergency rate cuts are desperate measures. The Federal Reserve knows there’s a big crisis coming but its measure likely won’t stop the bleeding.

The stock market tanking in spite of the Fed’s emergency intervention is a signal that the risk of the coronavirus to the economy is bigger than anticipated. That statement appears to be true as the World Health Organization (WHO) released new figures regarding the mortality rate of the coronavirus.

On Tuesday, WHO officials said that the global death rate for the COVID-19 is actually 3.4%. This number is significantly higher than the previous estimate of 2.3%. The seasonal flu has a mortality rate of 1%.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press conference in Geneva, "globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died.

"WHO official Dr. Mike Ryan paints an ominous picture of how little we understand about the virus: "Here we have a disease for which we have no vaccine, no treatment; we don't fully understand transmission; we don't fully understand case mortality."

In the United States, there are now 122 confirmed cases and nine total deaths. Globally, the number of confirmed cases soared above 93,000.

Hedge fund manager Will Meade sums up the magnitude of the impact of the virus to the economy. "The last time the FED did an emergency 50 point rate cut was after Lehman collapse in 2008. Anyone tells you the coronavirus isn't a big deal is either stupid or naive."

Coronavirus Could Halve The U.S. Economic Growth This Year

As illustrated, an emergency rate cut often doesn’t bode well for the stock market. Will Meade echoes this view. The former Goldman Sachs analyst said that an emergency rate cut this big means that the economy would tank this year.

This sentiment is confirmed by a new Brookings Institution study. Brookings concluded that the mild coronavirus pandemic would wipe out around $420 billion from this year’s growth. In 2019, the current-dollar GDP surged by 4.1% or $848 billion. In other words, the least severe scenario effectively halves 2020’s economic expansion.

If worse comes to worst, Brookings projects that coronavirus will obliterate $1.78 trillion from GDP growth. According to the study, global GDP would contract by over $9 trillion in case the global pandemic leads to a “more serious outbreak similar to the Spanish flu.”

In either case, the economy and the stock market have a bleak outlook this year. It’s likely that no amount or quantity of rate cuts will stop the Dow Jones from plunging into a bear market.

Wall Street Journal reporters Jennifer Calfas and Mike Cherney are following the steady spread of coronavirus across the U.S. Yesterday saw the 11th fatality-- one in California and 10 inWashington. Leaders of both houses of Congress agreed to an $8 billion package to tackle the disease, including $3 billion to develop treatments. Two mentally deranged right-wing nuts-- Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Ken Buck (R-CO)-- were the only votes against it.

Soon after the agreement's overall framework was released, lawmakers released the 28-page bill. Two Democratic leadership sources told NBC that the House is expected to vote on the deal later in the day. It will need two-thirds of the House to pass it and leadership expects it to pass with bipartisan support.

The bill includes a provision that requires that funds are only used to fight the coronavirus and other infectious diseases as some Democrats feared that the Trump administration could raid the funding and use it for other unrelated purposes.

“This should not be about politics; this is about doing our job to protect the American people from a potential pandemic," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby said. "We worked together to craft an aggressive and comprehensive response that provides the resources the experts say they need to combat this crisis. I thank my colleagues for their cooperation and appreciate President Trump’s eagerness to sign this legislation and get the funding out the door without delay.”

The legislation would provide more than $2 billion to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for public health funding for prevention, preparedness and response.

It also would allocate more than $3 billion to a public health emergency fund and the National Institutes of Health for research and development of vaccines, treatment and testing of the coronavirus. The bill would also provide nearly $1.3 billion to help protect the health of Americans living abroad from the coronavirus.

A House Democratic aide said that the legislation would provide more than "$300 million to help ensure that, when a vaccine is developed, Americans can receive it regardless of their ability to pay."

"The legislation ensures that the federal government will only pay a fair and reasonable price for coronavirus vaccines and drugs and provides HHS the authority to ensure that they are affordable in the commercial market," the aide said.

I got an e-mail from the mayor of Los Angeles today-- back from his trip to Dallas to help Biden get elected, thereby destroying America. (Bernie led Biden in L.A. by about 11 points but maybe someone in Dallas gives a shit about what Eric Garcetti has to say.

If you've been following our coverage of the pandemic you already know that the official coronavirus numbers are wrong, which is no secret. And we're not just talking about China. The numbers are all wrong in the U.S. too. "The data are untrustworthy," wrote Alex Madrigal, "because the processes we used to get them were flawed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s testing procedures missed the bulk of the cases. They focused exclusively on travelers, rather than testing more broadly, because that seemed like the best way to catch cases entering the country.

This artificially low number means that for the past few weeks, we’ve seen massive state action abroad and only simmering unease domestically. While Chinese officials were enacting a world-historic containment effort-- putting more than 700 million people under some kind of movement restriction, quarantining tens of millions of people, and placing others under new kinds of surveillance-- and American public-health officials were staring at the writing on the wall that the disease was extremely likely to spread in the U.S., the public-health response was stuck in neutral. The case count in the U.S. was not increasing at all. Preparing for a sizable outbreak seemed absurd when there were fewer than 20 cases on American soil. Now we know that the disease was already spreading and that it was the U.S. response that was stalled.

Meanwhile, South Korean officials have been testing more than 10,000 people a day, driving up the country’s reported-case count. Same goes for Italy: high test rate, high number of cases. (Now some Italian politicians want to restrict testing.) In China, the official data say the country has more than 80,000 cases, but the real number might be far, far higher because of all the people who had mild(er) cases and were turned away from medical care, or never sought it in the first place. That may be cause for reassurance (though not everyone agrees), because the total number of cases is the denominator in the simple equation that yields a fatality rate: deaths divided by cases. More cases with the same number of deaths means that the disease is likely less deadly than the data show.

The other problem is, now that the U.S. appears to be ramping up testing, the number of cases will grow quickly. Public-health officials are currently cautioning people not to worry as that happens, but it will be hard to disambiguate what proportion of the ballooning number of cases is the result of more testing and what proportion is from the actual spread of the virus.

People trust data. Numbers seem real. Charts have charismatic power. People believe what can be quantified. But data do not always accurately reflect the state of the world. Or as one scholar put it in a book title: "Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron.

The reality gap between American numbers and American cases is wide. Regular citizens and decision makers cannot rely on only the numbers to make decisions. Sometimes quantification actually obscures as much as it reveals.

This is the letter the mayor's staff drafted for him to send out. Keep in mind that some the information is correct and some of the stuff they've written about the disease is absolutely wrong and not helpful (even if he wasn't a Biden supporter).

Here’s what you should know: COVID-19 symptoms include fever, cough, and shortness of breath-- and may appear as few as two days or as long as 14 days after exposure. Person-to-person spread mainly occurs from contact with an infected person coughing or sneezing (similar to the flu). In rare cases, it may be possible that COVID-19 can be transmitted by touching an infected surface or object.

Here’s what the City is doing:

• We’ve declared a local state of emergency to access additional resources that will help our region prepare.
• We’ve activated our City Emergency Operations Center to a heightened level of vigilance.
• The City is working closely with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) and the County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) to share updates, guidance, and information on COVID-19.
• All City Departments are reviewing and updating Continuity of Operations Plans to ensure that they can continue delivering essential services in the event of an emergency.
• The Port of Los Angeles and San Pedro Bay Complex are on heightened alert. The Coast Guard is assessing all inbound vessels to determine whether the vessel has visited a country impacted by COVID-19 within the last five ports of call. Vessel operators are required to report ill crewmembers and passengers within 15 days of arrival to any U.S. port.
• LAX is following the guidance provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and L.A. County DPH-- including screening travelers with possible exposure and following best practices to keep travelers and employees safe. This includes installing more than 250 additional hand sanitizer stations and using virus and bacteria-killing disinfectants throughout the airport. We’re cleaning public areas and restrooms at least once every hour, and increasing deep cleaning-- focusing on high touch areas like handrails, escalators, elevator buttons, and restroom doors. We’re also adding signage with information on COVID-19 symptoms and how to reduce the spread of illness.

Here’s what you can do:

• Take precautions: If you are sick, stay home. Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands. Cover your cough or sneeze. Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces. Get a flu shot to prevent the flu, which has similar symptoms to COVID-19. If you have recently traveled in an area with COVID-19 infections and are showing symptoms, monitor your health and seek guidance from a medical professional. Currently, the CDC and DPH are not recommending personal face masks be used by people who do not have prolonged exposure to individuals identified as at risk.
• Plan ahead: Living in earthquake country, we know the importance of personal preparedness on any given day. Have extra food, water, medical supplies, and emergency kits in your homes and offices. Talk to your family, friends, and neighbors to develop emergency plans.

Scapegoating Immigrants Wasn't Invented By Trump Or Hitler-- Let's Look At India And Israel Today

Far right political leaders Modi and Netanyahu

You’ve probably read about serious riots in India in the last week-- and if you’ve been online much, you have probably come to see that many people are openly referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a fascist and genocidist, something DWT readers have known for over 2 decades. India has over 200 million Muslims and the Modi government has always been eager to target them. A new law, the Citizenship Amendment Act passed in early December, offering amnesty to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

There have been massive protests in Delhi, Chennai (Madras), Bangalore, Jaipur (where 300,000 people took to the streets) and Kolkata (Calcutta), not to mention throughout the states of Assam and Uttar Pradesh.





In India, scapegoating and ratcheting up the hatred and bigotry is backfiring on Modi and his government. This kind of thing is slightly less obvious in Israel, which has better p.r. than Modi’s government. A few days ago Haaretz reported that a government report classifies more than a third of immigrants to Israel as “not Jewish,” although most actually are Jewish. It’s a matter of definition... and government aid. Jews from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the U.S. have been having trouble being accepted as “legitimate” Jews and getting automatic citizenship and welfare. Even the right to marry is in jeopardy. Presumably, 2018 marked the first time in Israel’s history when Jewish immigrants were outnumbered by non-Jewish immigrants, although most of the non-Jewish immigrants self-identify as Jews. Since independence in 1948, Israel has welcomed over 3 million immigrants.

More than one out of three immigrants moving to Israel since 2012 is not considered Jewish by the state, according to figures published on Tuesday by the Interior Ministry’s Population Registry. Among immigrants originating from the former Soviet Union, who account for the majority of immigrants to Israel in recent years, the share was significantly higher.

The Interior Ministry, which does not typically publish such figures, was forced to release them in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Hiddush, an organization that advocates for religious freedom in Israel. But the initial figures, which Hiddush published on Monday, contained glaring errors that were quickly picked up on by organizations active in aliyah.

According to the updated figures, 61 percent of immigrants arriving from Russia since 2012 and 66 percent of those coming from Ukraine are not considered Jewish by the state. By contrast, fewer than 5 percent of those moving to Israel from the United States fit this definition. Among immigrants from France-- another major source of aliyah during the period in question-- under 4 percent were considered not Jewish.

During the period in question, a total of 199,876 immigrants became Israeli citizens under the Law of Return. Among them, 37.5 percent were registered as not Jewish.

To qualify as Jewish under the Law of Return, which governs eligibility for aliyah, an individual must have either been born to a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism in a recognized Jewish community. Although all such converts are registered as Jewish in the Population Registry, if they were not converted by rabbis approved by the Orthodox-run Chief Rabbinate, they are prohibited from marrying other Jews in Israel. Therefore, the percentage of immigrants deemed ineligible to marry other Jews in Israel among those who arrived in the country in the last eight years is likely higher than 37.5 percent (although no exact figures were provided by the Interior Ministry).

Under the Law of Return, the spouses, children and grandchildren of Jews are allowed to immigrate to Israel, even if they do not fit the Population Registry’s definition of Jewish. These individuals belong to a category designated as “other” or “no religion” by the Population Registry and Central Bureau of Statistics.

According to estimates published by Prof. Sergio DellaPergola of Hebrew University, Israel’s leading demographer, a total of 426,700 Israeli citizens, or just under 5 percent of the total population, currently fall into this rather bizarre category. Because only a small percentage of these “others” opt to convert to Judaism, and given their childbearing rate, their numbers have been growing by thousands every year.

Responding to the Population Registry figures, Rabbi Seth Farber, the founder and executive director of ITIM— an organization that advocates for immigrants— said: “The numbers reflect the new reality of Jewish peoplehood:  There are tens of thousands of people who identify as Jews and seek to tie their destiny to the Jewish future and the Jewish state, but do not meet the halakhic definition of Jewish [meaning under traditional Jewish religious law]. The State of Israel and the halakhic community have a great responsibility to find ways to enable these individuals and families to join the halakhic community-- should they seek to. The diversity represented in these numbers is real, and we must create conversion reform in Israel. The alternative is to blind ourselves to the future of the Jewish people and to our present reality.”

Israel is in a serious demographic war with Arabs-- who have a much higher birthrate than Israeli Jews-- and the only way to keep up has been to vigorously encourage non-Muslim immigrants. There were over 37,000 in 2018 and Israel is on track to increase that by 20% this year. In 2018, about 10,500 people came from Russia, 6,400 from Ukraine, 2,400 each from the U.S. and from France. Meanwhile, Israel has completely shut off asylum seekers from Africa. Not a single one was admitted in 2018.

Today, Trump Is Scaling Back Rules Restricting Air And Water Pollution

Last week, Roland made an announcement: we're done with India. I've been there at least half a dozen times since 1970-- once for over a year-- so I wasn't especially disturbed by the proclamation but I asked why. He said that the air pollution is so deadly in the major cities that it was absolutely unsafe. He has some app he uses that measures air pollution around the world. Last week when the fires in California had driven L.A.'s pollution levels into "unhealthy" (150 was the number and we were supposed to not go outside), the Delhi number was 999, and would have been higher had the app gone into 4 digits. Over the weekend, The Economist backed Roland up. "As part of a 'public-health emergency' declared on November 1st in Delhi, millions of face-masks are being distributed to children. Schools will shut until at least November 5th. The cause is polluted air, which Delhi’s chief minister says has turned the city into a 'gas chamber'. The measures are severe but not unusual. In the past year, schools around the world-- in Thailand and Malaysia, Mexico and America-- have cancelled classes on bad-air days. Air pollution does indeed do terrible things to schoolchildren. Globally, says the World Health Organisation, more than 90% of children under 15 breathe air that puts their health at serious risk. The young are especially susceptible, because their lungs are still developing and their breathing is faster than adults’, so they take in more pollutants relative to their body weight. A British study found that on school-runs young children were exposed to 30% more pollutants than the adults accompanying them, because their height puts them closer to exhaust pipes. One of the most common ailments that results is asthma. Poorer children are still more vulnerable, since their schools tend to be near busy roads."

Children’s brains are also at risk. This is not because pollution confines them to home. Assiduous teachers in Malaysia and China may instruct students online on days when the smog keeps them away from school. In any case, research in 2014 by the Harvard Kennedy School into the effect of shutting schools because of snow shows that missing a few days does not appear to impair learning.

Much more dangerous is the toll that pollution takes on cognitive development and mental health. Research, also conducted in 2014, found that air pollution harmed Israeli students' exam performance. A study in Cincinnati, Ohio, showed an increase in pollution to be correlated with a higher number of psychiatric-hospital visits by children troubled by anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Even very young students are aware of the pollution problem: in a survey by Sustrans, a charity that aims to reduce car use, 45% of British pupils aged four to 11 said they were worried about air quality. Such “eco-anxiety” is the reason that some American school boards are riven by disagreements between environmentalists, who maintain that children need to understand climate change, and administrators who say studying it will traumatise them.

Clean-air campaigners have tried to stem the damage. In Britain, for example, they have, besides encouraging student pick-ups and drop-offs on foot or by bicycle, recommended imposing no-car zones around schools in Birmingham, or, in Sheffield, placing hedges between roads and playgrounds. Such measures are no substitute for bigger changes, though. If trends persist, warns the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, air pollution will cut 1% from global GDP by 2060, in large part from lost agricultural yield, lower worker productivity and higher health costs. Apart from choking on the fumes, today’s school children can look forward to bearing those burdens, too.

None of that bothers Señor Trumpanzee in the least. He has an election to win and he believes there's a constituency that demands deadly air pollution, particularly coal burning pollution. Yesterday, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, reported for Washington Post readers on how Trump is working diligently to hamper cognitive development among children and worsen mental health in our own country. Today, the EPA is relaxing "rules that govern how power plants store waste from burning coal and release water containing toxic metals into nearby waterways. The proposals, which scale back two rules adopted in 2015, affect the disposal of fine powder and sludge known as 'coal ash,' as well as contaminated water that power plants produce while burning coal. Both forms of waste can contain mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals that pose risks to human health and the environment." Take that, Obama!

The new Trumpist rules reflect Trumpanzee’s "broader goal of bolstering America’s coal industry at a time when natural gas and renewable energy provide more affordable sources of electricity for consumers. Under the Obama-era rule, coal ash ponds leaking contaminants into groundwater that exceeded federal protection standards had to close by April 2019. The Trump administration extended that deadline until October 2020 in a rule it finalized last year. In August 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit instructed the EPA to require that companies overhaul ponds, including those lined with clay and compacted soil, even if there was no evidence that sludge was leaking into groundwater.

In a statement, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the Obama-era rules “placed heavy burdens on electricity producers across the country.”

Andrew Wheeler by Nancy Ohanian

“These proposed revisions support the Trump administration’s commitment to responsible, reasonable regulations,” Wheeler said, “by taking a common-sense approach that will provide more certainty to U.S. industry while also protecting public health and the environment.”

... [I]f a company can demonstrate that it is shutting down a coal boiler, it can petition to keep its storage ponds open for as long as eight years, depending on their size. Slurry ponds smaller than 40 acres could get approval to stay in place until Oct. 15, 2023, officials said, while larger ones could remain open until Oct. 15, 2028.

Environmentalists have sharply criticized the proposals, arguing these containment sites pose serious risks to the public at a time when more frequent and intense flooding, fueled in part by climate change, could destabilize them and contaminate drinking water supplies that serve millions of people. The rules will be subject to public comment for 60 days.

During the past decade, Tennessee and North Carolina have experienced major coal ash spills that have destroyed homes and contaminated rivers, resulting in sickened cleanup workers and massive lawsuits.

The question of how to handle coal waste, which is stored in roughly 450 sites across the country, has vexed regulators for decades. The Obama administration negotiated for years with environmental groups, electric utilities and other affected industries about how to address the waste, which can poison wildlife and poses health risks to people living near storage sites.

Lisa Evans, an attorney specializing in hazardous waste law for the environmental group Earthjustice, said allowing the electric industry to extend the life of coal ash pits represents a particular threat to low-income and minority Americans, who often live near such installations.

“Allowing plants to continue to dump toxic waste into leaking coal ash ponds for another 10 years will cause irreversible damage to drinking water sources, human health and the nation’s waters,” Evans said in an email. She added it was not surprising the coal industry had lobbied against closing these storage sites. “Operating ponds is cheap. Closing them costs the utilities money,” she said.

It is also likely to add to ordinary consumers’ costs. Last year, for example, a member of the Virginia State Corporation Commission estimated it could cost ratepayers as much as $3.30 a month over 20 years-- between $2.4 billion and $5.6 billion-- to clean up Virginia-based Dominion Energy’s 11 coal ash ponds and six coal ash landfills in the state.

The Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, which lobbies on coal ash issues on behalf of electric utilities, said in its 2017 petition that the Obama-era rules were “burdensome, inflexible, and often impracticable” and that they “created a monolithic, one-size-fits-all regulatory regime.”

Delia Patterson, general counsel of the American Public Power Association, said the proposed rules would “bring more certainty to the industry and facilitate the safe management” of waste ponds.

...The vast majority of ponds and landfills holding coal waste at hundreds of power plants across the country have leaked toxic chemicals into nearby groundwater at facilities from Texas to Pennsylvania to Maryland, according to that analysis. The report acknowledged, however, that the groundwater data alone does not prove drinking-water supplies near the coal waste facilities have been contaminated. Power companies are not routinely required to test nearby drinking water wells. “So the scope of the threat is largely undefined,” the report stated.

The EPA on Monday will also revise requirements for how power plants discharge wastewater, which contain some of the same kind of contaminants. Under the Obama administration, EPA staff had concluded it was feasible to prohibit any releases of such toxic materials by having the units continually recycle their water. The agency has now concluded this is far more costly than originally anticipated, and technological advances have made it cheaper to filter and capture the waste through a membrane system, officials said.

Under the new rule, plants would be allowed to discharge 10 percent of their water each day, on a 30-day rolling average. The administration projects that the regulation would prevent 105 million pounds of pollutants from being released compared with the old standards because 18 affected plants would voluntarily adopt a more advanced filtration system. The administration also estimated it would save the industry $175 million each year in compliance costs and yield an additional $15 million to $69 million in annual public health and environmental benefits.

However, even if the 18 plants voluntarily adopted more advanced filtration techniques, they represent a minority of the nation’s total number of plants.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland, former director of science and technology at the EPA’s Office of Water, said the proposed rule “relaxes the 2015 treatment requirements allowing increased selenium discharges and [the] release of contaminated water from coal ash handling. Even worse, it exempts a large number of plants from these relaxed requirements, allowing them to discharge more pollutants and continue disposing of ash in leaking ponds.”

Evans said environmentalists are likely to challenge the new rule on coal ash storage and the federal government could again reverse course if a Democrat wins the presidency next year. She noted that, because 95 percent of coal ash ponds remain unlined, two-thirds lie within five feet of groundwater and 92 percent leak more than federal health standards allow, they could pose a risk to the public even as litigation winds its way through the federal courts.

“We have to hope that no wells are poisoned and no toxic waste is spilled in the interim,” she said. “Crossing your fingers is not a legal or sane way to regulate toxic waste.”

ScienceAlert warned last month that air pollution had gotten significantly worse in the U.S. since Trump occupied the White House, "a reversal after years of sustained improvement with significant implications for public health. In 2018 alone, eroding air quality was linked to nearly 10,000 additional deaths in the US relative to the 2016 benchmark, the year in which small-particle pollution reached a two-decade low, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University... Last year, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler disbanded the expert academic panel that reviewed and advised the agency on its standards for small-particle air pollution. In its place, the administration has hired consultants with links to the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and tobacco industries... One thing that's clear at the moment is the effect that rising pollution is having on mortality and life expectancy."

Two congressional candidates from Chicago had a lot to say about Trump's-- and conservatives' in general-- love affair with pollution-for-profit and how it impacts the families in their neighborhoods. Kina Collins: "In the predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods in IL-07, we see food deserts with a lack of fresh produce, industrial corridors pumping toxins into the air, and some areas that have higher levels of lead in the water than Flint, Michigan. In Chicago, there are hotspots where Black children are dying from asthma attacks at eight times the rate of white children because of the air quality and healthcare inequities. This is an environmental crisis. We need to be increasing funding for the EPA and other agencies to immediately and aggressively combat the causes of climate change, not cutting back on regulations and giving tax breaks to polluters. We cannot separate environmental justice from economic justice, and I plan to bring training and opportunities for green jobs into the south and west sides of Chicago so that they do not get left behind as we push to become the world leaders in the green industry. And we need leaders who are at the forefront of Congress pushing for the Green New Deal, who are actually fighting for Generation GND. We can afford to invest in the infrastructure and clean technology needed to end problems like lead in the water, we just need to have the moral authority to put the money where it is needed most. We don't need a Congressman who sits on the sidelines, because our planet doesn't have 20 more years to 'wait and see.' I will be fighting for environmental justice policies from Day One like my life depends on it-- because the future matters to me and to millions of other young Americans who are ready for bold action."

Marie Newman is also running for a seat held by a Democrat who doesn't seem to give a damn about corporate pollution. "With the undeniable amount of rebuilding and work we will have to do to address the climate crisis, my opponent’s lack of understanding and dismissal of the climate crisis alongside the amount of funding he is getting from the fossil fuel industries is truly disturbing. We must push past dinosaurs like Lipinski and get progressives elected ASAP. It is why I’m running."

What If Trump Loses And Refuses To Leave? Would America Want A Satwant Singh and Beant Singh To Step Up To The Plate?

I've been a Biden watcher since the 1970s and, although my disdain for him has ebbed and flowed, my opinion of him has never gotten as high as "tolerable"-- and most of the time it was far lower. He has never been someone I would have ever considered voting for-- and still isn't. The lesser of two evils is still evil... and Joe Biden is not some minor evil, not by a long shot. I don't need any excuses to sit out a Trump-Biden contest (God forbid) but one would be my absolute certainty-- as a 4 decades Biden follower-- is that he would quickly pardon Trump and his family to, you know, unite the country. Did you hear Eric Holder getting people ready for it yesterday on CNN? He agreed with Ford's decision to pardon Nixon and told David Axelrod that the costs to the nation of putting Trump on trial might be too great. "I think there is a potential cost to the nation by putting on trial a former president, and that ought to at least be a part of the calculus that goes into the determination that has to be made by the next attorney general. I think we all should understand what a trial of a former president would do to the nation."

In a discussion with national security expert Josh Geltzer, Dahlia Lithwick tacked an even more disturbing question: What Happens if Trump Won’t Step Down? Trump is, in all likelihood, going to be defeated a year from now. He'll be squealing like a stuck pig and accusing everyone and everything on cheating him out of his second term. Geltzer, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council wrote that Trump "has repeatedly shown a willingness to overstep his constitutional authority" and wouldn't be surprised if he just flat out refuses to step down. Recall Michael Cohen testifying that "given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 there will never be a peaceful transition of power?"

Lithwick: When did you actually start thinking about the possibility that Trump might simply reject the 2020 election results?

Geltzer: July 24, 2018. Let me tell you why it’s that exact date. By then, I’d pretty much forgotten Trump’s comment from the October 2016 debate amidst everything else. But his answer snapped back in my mind on July 24, 2018. The midterm elections were approaching, and President Trump tweeted that he was “very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election,” adding that the Russians “will be pushing very hard for the Democrats.”

That tweet just didn’t make sense. It was, of course, the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election specifically to help Trump against the Democratic candidate, among other goals. And there had been nothing-- no intelligence community public statements, no scholarly analysis, no media reporting-- suggesting that the Russians were poised to push for the Democrats in the 2018 elections. So what was Trump talking about?

That’s when I began to wonder if he was using the tweet as he seems to use many tweets: to test out new lines and see if he can get away with them. And this notion that there might be foreign election interference in favor of the Democrats seemed to test Trump’s ability to call into question election results he didn’t like. So, if the Dems won big in a way that embarrassed Trump, he might say the results were inflated-- and, at least conceivably, even contest them.

And that’s when I remembered his earlier refusal to commit to honoring the 2016 election results. It made me worry a bit about 2018, but after all, Trump himself wasn’t on the ballot then. The real thing to worry about seemed to be 2020, which would once again be, for Trump, personal. And let me be very clear what the worry is: It’s about Trump not honoring valid election results if he in fact loses. If he wins, he wins! But if he loses, he needs, well, to lose.

...[T]here’s been another development: change in intelligence community leadership. Think about the departure of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Coats more or less stood up for the intelligence community-- publicly-- at some key moments, such as when Trump rejected its views in favor of Putin’s at Helsinki. I think it’s important to inspect whoever Trump nominates as DNI (there’s currently an acting) to make sure he or she will tell Congress and the American people whether there’s really been foreign election interference that casts doubt on the accuracy of election results in 2020, or whether Trump’s just claiming as much...

Lithwick: When you wrote about this last winter you suggested that there were four powerful checks on this possibility: the Electoral College, Congress, state governors, and the Defense Department. I wonder if you are more or less sanguine about each of them, seven months later?

Geltzer: I’m an optimistic guy, but I have to be less sanguine-- because, seven months later, I haven’t seen any of these checks taking seriously this concern. In fairness, some need prompting to do so. For example, it’s the political parties that should require their electors for the Electoral College to pledge that they won’t withhold, delay, or alter their votes based on the claims or protestations of any candidate, including Trump himself. But I don’t see the parties requiring that, or even discussing whether to require it. And others-- such as Congress or state governors-- don’t need prompting at all to make the sort of commitments I urged back in February. Yet they don’t seem to be making those commitments. And remember: This is about ensuring that valid election results are respected, whichever way that cuts. That shouldn’t be controversial.

...The four checks I listed are all actors that, either without prompting or with it, could make commitments right now that, to my mind, would at least mitigate the risk we’re discussing. That’s not true of the courts: They wait until cases or controversies are brought to them and only then get involved, though of course their role at that point can sometimes be the most important of all. So I think there are probably other checks, like the courts, that would, I hope, play their own important roles if this nightmare scenario really played out. But my goal in writing the piece in February wasn’t just to flag a possible problem, but specifically to encourage those who might be able to get ahead of that problem to do so. And that’s why I focused on actors suited to that...

Lithwick: What’s your best advice on what we should be doing to at least prepare for the possibility that at minimum, Trump will dispute the election results and that should he do so, many of his followers will similarly reject them?

Geltzer: We need political leaders-- especially Republicans-- to make clear, both publicly and privately, that for Trump to contest the valid results of an election would be a redline, and that he’d have zero support from them-- indeed, impassioned opposition from them-- should he cross it. We need it sooner rather than later, too.

By the way, after Satwant Singh and Beant Singh assassinated Indira Gandhi in 1984, thousands of their co-religionists were slaughtered in retaliation. Satwant and Beant themselves were tried, found guilty and executed in 1989. This movie of their lives-- and deaths-- was never released:

Orange-Hued Crazy Asshole Threatens To Nuke Afghanistan

Trump has always been physical coward. President Obama isn't-- and he visited American fighting men and women in Afghanistan... four times

I spent a lot of my life on the road, living abroad, traveling, working, exploring...  People always ask me what my favorite place to visit was. I can never just come up with one. But if it could only be 3... it would be Afghanistan, Morocco and Nepal-- although France, Turkey, Holland, Italy and Thailand are just fractionally not on that "best of" list. Nepal's air-- or at least Kathmandu's-- is too polluted to go back to now and Afghanistan has been ravaged and destroyed by a couple of decades of war and is way too dangerous for anyone to consider traveling to. But I will always remember and be thankful for my two trips to Afghanistan-- one in 1969 and one in 1971 or '72. Wonderful people, beautiful country, absolutely fascinating culture! All these years later and I have lost my ability to speak Dari (Farsi) and Pashtun, although... when I'm in DC and run across the inevitable Afghan taxi driver, it slowly starts coming back to me.

I can guarantee you though, that the bristling warthog in the White House pretending to be president has never been to Afghanistan, not before he stole the election and not now with American troops stationed there. North Korea is more up his alley. Yesterday, the grotesque slob-- may he never see another morning-- speaking alongside Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in the Oval Office, threatened to obliterate Pakistan's next door neighbor.

The smarmy half pig, half something else-- who lies so much that no one believes anything he says-- boasted to the media, and the Pakistanis, that "If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don't want to kill 10 million people." 10 million people in a week? That means nukes-- with plenty of radioactivity for Pakistan, India, Iran, Russia and China. More bullshit from God's curse on America: "I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone. It would be over in-- literally in ten days. And I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go that route."

If Trump had even the slightest inkling of understanding of Afghanistan and its people and culture, he wouldn't have made the deeply insulting comments about a country that has never been conquered-- not by Alexander the Great, not by the British, not by the Russians nor-- after 2 decades, by the Americans. This morning, Afghanistan reacted badly to moronic Trump's remarks. The country's president, Ashraf Ghani: "The Afghan nation has not and will never allow any foreign power to determine its fate. While the Afghan government supports the U.S. efforts for ensuring peace in Afghanistan, the government underscores that foreign heads of state cannot determine Afghanistan’s fate in absence of the Afghan leadership." Former intelligence chief Rahmatullah Nabil addressed the despised Trumpanzee directly on Twitter: "Your insulting message to (Afghanistan) is either accept the (Pakistani) proposal for peace or eventually you may have to use nukes."

Trump continues bribing, begging and blackmailing Pakistan into taking Afghanistan out of his incapable tiny hands. He whined to Imran Khan: "Basically, we’re policemen right now, and we’re not supposed to be policemen. We’ve been there for 19 years in Afghanistan. It’s ridiculous, and I think Pakistan helps us with that because we don't want to stay as policemen. If we wanted to, we could win that war. I have a plan that would win that war in a very short period of time, you understand that better than anybody. [But instead of] "fighting to win," [we're too focused on] "building gas stations" [and] "rebuilding schools. The United States, we shouldn't be doing that. That’s for them to do. But what we did and what our leadership got us into is ridiculous."

Khan also made a diplomatic ask of Trump from the White House, requesting that his American counterpart step in to broker talks between Pakistan and India aimed at ending the more than 70-year Kashmir territorial conflict.

“I feel that only the most powerful state, headed by President Trump, can bring the two countries together," Khan said, adding that the U.S. "can play the most important role in bringing peace in the subcontinent.”

Trump told Khan that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also extended the invitation to arbitrate the negotiations two weeks ago, and that he would "love to be a mediator" for the South Asian nations.

“President, I can tell you that right now, you will have the prayers of over a billion people if you can mediate and resolve the situation," Khan replied.

But Raveesh Kumar, the spokesman for India's Ministry of External Affairs, tweeted Monday afternoon that Modi never called on Trump to intervene in the Kashmir dialogue, writing online: "It has been India's consistent position ... that all outstanding issues with Pakistan are discussed only bilaterally."