Trump's Dark, Dark Winter For America

 

Sunday morning, Trumpist chief of staff Mark Meadows, a former neo-fascist congressman from North Carolina (whose district is about to be flipped by Moe Davis), was on State of the Union fighting with Jake Tapper about the pandemic. As U.S. daily cases have spiked into the 80 thousands on both Friday and Saturday and as the death toll hurtles towards a quarter million, Meadows admitted the Regime isn't really trying to defeat the pandemic the way countries like China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have.

Trump seems so passive about anything that isn't related to lining his own pockets. And all his cronies, like Meadows, are just along for the ride-- "following orders." Especially that putrid excuse for a vice president. He's running around like Trump, criss-crossing the country, spreading COVID, which his whole staff is infected with. CNN reported that at least 5 of Pence's top aides-- including chief of staff Marc Short and outside adviser Marty Obst-- have tested positive. Pence's whole office is freaking out. Pence says he and mother have tested negative. "Despite contact with multiple people who recently tested positive," reported CNN, "Pence is refusing to quarantine in defiance of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines... Pence-- who is the head of the White House's coronavirus task force-- plans to continue traveling and campaigning every day in the final stretch to Election Day, an official told CNN."

Places where Pence is bringing more coronavirus this week: North Carolina, South Carolina, Minnesota. Last week, he was spreading sickness in Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. These are the number of cases per million residents in states Pence visited last week and is going to this week-- along with each state's polling average:

• North Carolina- 24,627 cases per million residents (Biden +1.2%)
• South Carolina- 32,890 cases per million residents (Trump +6.2%)
• Minnesota- 23,427 cases per million residents (Biden +6.0%)
• Florida- 36,142 cases per million residents (Biden +1.5%)
• Indiana- 23,824 cases per million residents (Trump +11.3%)
• Ohio- 16,759 cases per million residents (Trump +0.6%)
• Pennsylvania- 15,417 cases per million residents (Biden +5.1%)
• New Hampshire- 7,530 cases per million residents (Biden +11.0%)

Pence was in Kinston (Lenoir County), North Carolina yesterday and is spreading COVID in Hibbing (Saint Louis County), Minnesota today. Both counties are spiking badly-- Lenoir County:

And Saint Louis County (Minnesota):

Trump Is The Worst President In History-- And The GOP Deserves To Die With Him... But That Doesn't Automatically Make The Democratic Party Worth Anything

 

This morning, the NY Times editorial board asserted that Trump destroyed the Republican Party. They're wrong. The craven, spineless politicians who represent the party destroyed it. Then they claim "'Destroyed' is perhaps too simplistic, [and] Trump accelerated his party’s demise, exposing the rot that has been eating at its core for decades and leaving it a hollowed-out shell devoid of ideas, values or integrity, committed solely to preserving its own power even at the expense of democratic norms, institutions and ideals." OK, now they're talking. Pity they didn't throw the Democratic Party under the same bus; it would be just as accurate.

The Times bemoans the passing-- it really hasn't passed and it won't-- of the GOP because we won't have a "strong center right [party that] can co-opt more palatable aspects of the far right, isolating and draining energy from the more radical elements that threaten to destabilize the system." And yet that is precisely what the Democratic Party has turned into-- a center right party co-opting aspects of the far right (i.e., the GOP). These editors define the Republican Party that we see today as having an "ideology [that] has been reduced to a slurry of paranoia, white grievance and authoritarian populism. Its governing vision is reactionary, a cross between obstructionism and owning the libs. Its policy agenda, as defined by the party platform, is whatever President Trump wants."

With his dark gospel, the president has enthralled the Republican base, rendering other party leaders too afraid to stand up to him. But to stand with Mr. Trump requires a constant betrayal of one’s own integrity and values. This goes beyond the usual policy flip-flops-- what happened to fiscal hawks anyway?-- and political hypocrisy, though there have been plenty of both. Witness the scramble to fill a Supreme Court seat just weeks before Election Day by many of the same Senate Republicans who denied President Barack Obama his high court pick in 2016, claiming it would be wrong to fill a vacancy eight months out from that election.

Mr. Trump demands that his interests be placed above those of the nation. His presidency has been an extended exercise in defining deviancy down-- and dragging the rest of his party down with him.

Having long preached “character” and “family values,” Republicans have given a pass to Mr. Trump’s personal degeneracy. The affairs, the hush money, the multiple accusations of assault and harassment, the gross boasts of grabbing unsuspecting women-- none of it matters. White evangelicals remain especially faithful adherents, in large part because Mr. Trump has appointed around 200 judges to the federal bench.

For all their talk about revering the Constitution, Republicans have stood by, slack-jawed, in the face of the president’s assault on checks and balances. Mr. Trump has spurned the concept of congressional oversight of his office. After losing a budget fight and shutting down the government in 2018-19, he declared a phony national emergency at the southern border so he could siphon money from the Pentagon for his border wall. He put a hold on nearly $400 million in Senate-approved aid to Ukraine-- a move that played a central role in his impeachment.

So much for Republicans’ Obama-era nattering about “executive overreach.”

Despite fetishizing “law and order,” Republicans have shrugged as Mr. Trump has maligned and politicized federal law enforcement, occasionally lending a hand. Impeachment offered the most searing example. Parroting the White House line that the entire process was illegitimate, the president’s enablers made clear they had his back no matter what. As Pete Wehner, who served as a speechwriter to the three previous Republican presidents, observed in The Atlantic: “Republicans, from beginning to end, sought not to ensure that justice be done or truth be revealed. Instead, they sought to ensure that Trump not be removed from office under any circumstances, defending him at all costs.”

The debasement goes beyond passive indulgence. Congressional bootlickers, channeling Mr. Trump’s rantings about the Deep State, have used their power to target those who dared to investigate him. Committee chairmen like Representative Devin Nunes and Senator Ron Johnson have conducted hearings aimed at smearing Mr. Trump’s political opponents and delegitimizing the special counsel’s Russia inquiry.

As head of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Mr. Johnson pushed a corruption investigation of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter that he bragged would expose the former vice president’s “unfitness for office.” Instead, he wasted taxpayer money producing an 87-page rehash of unsubstantiated claims reeking of a Russian disinformation campaign. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, another Republican on the committee, criticized the inquiry as “a political exercise,” noting, “It’s not the legitimate role of government or Congress, or for taxpayer expense to be used in an effort to damage political opponents.”

Undeterred, last Sunday Mr. Johnson popped up on Fox News, engaging with the host over baseless rumors that the F.B.I. was investigating child pornography on a computer that allegedly had belonged to Hunter Biden. These vile claims are being peddled online by right-wing conspiracymongers, including QAnon.

Not that congressional toadies are the only offenders. A parade of administration officials-- some of whom were well respected before their Trumpian tour-- have stood by, or pitched in, as the president has denigrated the F.B.I., federal prosecutors, intelligence agencies and the courts. They have failed to prioritize election security because the topic makes Mr. Trump insecure about his win in 2016. They have pushed the limits of the law and human decency to advance Mr. Trump’s draconian immigration agenda.

Most horrifically, Republican leaders have stood by as the president has lied to the public about a pandemic that has already killed more than 220,000 Americans. They have watched him politicize masks, testing, the distribution of emergency equipment and pretty much everything else. Some echo his incendiary talk, fueling violence in their own communities. In the campaign’s closing weeks, as case numbers and hospitalizations climb and health officials warn of a rough winter, Mr. Trump is stepping up the attacks on his scientific advisers, deriding them as “idiots” and declaring Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top expert in infectious diseases, a “disaster.” Only a smattering of Republican officials has managed even a tepid defense of Dr. Fauci. Whether out of fear, fealty or willful ignorance, these so-called leaders are complicit in this national tragedy.

As Republican lawmakers grow increasingly panicked that Mr. Trump will lose re-election-- possibly damaging their fortunes as well-- some are scrambling to salvage their reputations by pretending they haven’t spent the past four years letting him run amok. In an Oct. 14 call with constituents, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska gave a blistering assessment of the president’s failures and “deficient” values, from his misogyny to his calamitous handling of the pandemic to “the way he kisses dictators’ butts.” Mr. Sasse was less clear about why, the occasional targeted criticismnotwithstanding, he has enabled these deficiencies for so long.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, locked in his own tight re-election race, recently told the local media that he, too, has disagreed with Mr. Trump on numerous issues, including deficit spending, trade policy and his raiding of the defense budget. Mr. Cornyn said he opted to keep his opposition private rather than get into a public tiff with Mr. Trump “because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.”

Profiles in courage these are not.

Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on his party would fill a book. It has, in fact, filled several, as well as a slew of articles, social media posts and op-eds, written by conservatives both heartbroken and incensed over what has become of their party.

But many of these disillusioned Republicans also acknowledge that their team has been descending into white grievance, revanchism and know-nothing populism for decades. Mr. Trump just greased the slide. “He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party has become in the last 50 or so years,” the longtime party strategist Stuart Stevens asserts in his new book, It Was All a Lie.

The scars of Mr. Trump’s presidency will linger long after he leaves office. Some Republicans believe that, if those scars run only four years deep, rather than eight, their party can be nursed back to health. Others question whether there is anything left worth saving. Mr. Stevens’s prescription: “Burn it to the ground, and start over.”

Sick of this? But don't buy into the concept of backing the lesser of two evils in politics? The Democratic Party sucks-- not as bad as the GOP-- but too much to support? Well, until the morning, Blue America hadn't opened our anti-DCCC page, which helps support progressive candidates that the DCCC is starving for resources while they support their Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the Democraps. Access it by clicking on the Cheri Bustos thermometer on the right. Every two years the crooks among the Democratic Party establishment elites persuade you toehold your nose and vote for their shit candidates because they're better than the Republicans even shittier candidates. How you going to ever break out of that cycle? If you're in a New York district offering you Anthony Brindisi, Max Rose or Sean Patrick Maloney, support candidates from other districts in your state-- say Jamaal Bowman, Dana Balter, AOC for example. The DCCC wants you to back Jackie Gordon on Long Island but she's been endorsed by both the Blue Dogs and the New Dems and that tells you exactly what kind of a member of Congress she's going to make. He may live an hour away but, put your energy behind Mondaire Jones instead. But you live in Oklahoma and there are no good Democrats-- just reactionary quasi-Republican Blue Dog Kendra Horn? Texas isn't that far away-- and you can do the country-- the Democratic Party-- a lot of good by backing progressive stalwarts like Julie Oliver and Mike Siegel. Trade in Kendra Horn for Julie and Mike-- deal of the cycle!

Trump Is Acting As If He Could Gaslight The Coronavirus Away-- Too Bad Normal People Will Die, Not Just His Followers

Polling has shown that almost a third of Americans believe whatever Trump says. Despite Trump's delusional bragging at Fox's Scranton town hall on Thursday, the Trump Regime has entirely botched the American response to the coronavirus pandemic. Testing is the key to community transmission and less than 2,000 people have been tested, almost exclusively people with symptoms or known exposure. The modest goal-- a sensible one expressed by Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, was a million people tested by yesterday-- considerably more than 200. (CoronaCzar Pence said a million and a half tests would have been done by today.)

The L.A. Times reported that "Federal officials said nearly 1 million tests were expected to be available by the end of this week. But in California, one of the country’s hardest-hit regions with 60 cases, the total testing capacity is limited to only 7,400 through the weekend, according to the California Department of Public Health. The inability to test widely and swiftly for the novel coronavirus has impeded the country’s ability to beat back the spread of the virus, experts say. Without testing, public health officials don’t know where the virus is spreading and where to target efforts to contain it." See, sometimes it actually matters who you vote for. Wait for a month or two to process that, when people you know are dead or dying.

Toluse Olorunnipa, a Washington Post reporter, wrote thatTrump himself is the greatest obstacle on responsible coronavirus messaging. "As leading public health experts from across the government have tried to provide clear and consistent information about the deadly coronavirus, they have found their messages undercut, drowned out and muddled by President Trump’s push to downplay the outbreak with a mix of optimism, bombast and pseudoscience. Speaking almost daily to the public about an outbreak that has spread across states and rocked the markets, Trump has promoted his opinions and at times contradicted the public health experts tasked with keeping Americans safe. The president has repeatedly misstated the number of Americans who have tested positive for the virus and claimed it would 'miraculously' disappear in the spring. He has given a false timeline for the development of a vaccine, publicly questioned whether vaccinations for the flu could be used to treat the novel coronavirus and dismissed the World Health Organization’s coronavirus death rate estimate, substituting a much lower figure and citing a 'hunch.'"

Even as pusillanimous and spineless a figure as Lindsey Graham told CNN's Manu Raju in an impromptu interview while he was sashaying down the hall near his office that Trump should pay attention to scientific facts and stop pulling lies out of his ass. "I don’t know what he was talking about," said the South Carolina Trumpist. "I would encourage the president, if he’s going to report things, to make sure that the science is behind what he says. I listen to the scientists when it comes to the numbers."

Remember when Trump's chief economic adviser, the coked up and alcoholic freak Lawrence Kudlow claimed last week that "We have contained this; I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight.". Yesterday he was on CNBC urging American workers should "stay at work" despite coronavirus. CNBC reporter David Faber points out that the former FDA commissioner has criticized the administration for "encouraging people to do things that they shouldn't" which helps spread the virus. Kudlow says to just avoid Seattle and California. He sounded drunk-- and besides, he says, only 20% of Americans who get it will die... so-- worst case scenario-- just 65 million Americans. What's to worry?





Trump's political advisors have told him that coronavirus could kill his reelection efforts, primarily because his regime's response has been doomed from the start. "The Trump Administration’s strategy to combat COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, began with a relatively simple focus: keep it out of the United States. In service of that goal, the White House issued drastic travel restrictions, imposed mandatory quarantines, and repeatedly told the public that these steps were working... [T]he administration’s rosy messaging was fundamentally at odds with a growing cacophony of alarm bells inside and outside the U.S. government. Since January, epidemiologists, former U.S. public health officials and experts have been warning, publicly and privately, that the administration’s insistence that containment was-- and should remain-- the primary way to confront an emerging infectious disease was a grave mistake. In congressional testimony, in medical webcasts and in private discussions with health officials, they warned that the unique features of this flu-like virus made it impossible to control, and that the administration must use any time that containment measures might buy to prepare the country for an inevitable outbreak. The administration was using all its resources to blockade the doors, they warned, but the enemy was likely already in the house."

In a world linked by tens of thousands of flights a day, it’s nearly impossible to completely contain the transmission of an infectious disease like COVID-19, in part because people carrying the virus do not necessarily show symptoms. An effective response, experts say, would have required that administration officials capitalized on the temporary delay of new infections offered by containment strategies in order to aggressively prepare for inevitable outbreaks. But not one of the dozens of experts, doctors or former public health officials who spoke with Time thought that the Trump administration used that delay effectively.

...The problem, they say, is partly that the administration misallocated limited resources. By being told to focus on monitoring a small number of quarantined travelers returning to the U.S., public health departments were not fully engaged in preparing mitigation efforts in communities, where we now know the virus was already infecting more people. Healthcare workers could have used that time to coordinate with hospitals, track suspected cases, funnel resources to diagnostics, prepare vulnerable populations, like nursing homes, and promote mitigation measures, such as isolating known cases outside of a hospital.

Instead, the administration telegraphed that such mitigation work would only be necessary if containment failed. “Community mitigation work is not a failure, and part of the problem is not recognizing that,” Nuzzo tells Time. “Sending the message that we are stopping this at our border, keeping this from coming in from China, has a psychological impact not on just on the American people but on practitioners as well.” The President’s repeated assertions that the containment strategy was working also diminished the sense of urgency, causing delays in community preparedness, public health experts and doctors told Time.

“Quarantines are intended to buy us time. Did we make good use of the time? No-- and now we’re hustling,” says Steve Morrison, the director of the CSIS global health center and a former State Department official who served in the Clinton administration.

The Trump Administration only last week began authorizing disease surveillance within major American cities, where the medical community has been blind for weeks to the expanding number of new cases. Additionally, the drive to quarantine individuals from certain countries-- China, Italy, Korea-- discounted those from other nations, where the virus was also being transmitted. Taken together, the federal government’s singular focus on containment came at the expense of a more comprehensive-- and more effective-- approach, Nuzzo said.

In ideal circumstances, infectious disease experts tell Time, the government would also have focused on mobilizing capacity to test for COVID-19 prior to the first reported case on U.S. soil. It would have sent test-kits to hospitals and clinics around the nation to identify any new infections and, armed with that data, officials would have tailored a rapid response, issuing public recommendations on sanitation practices, when to seek medical treatment, and how to limit the spread of the disease.

Instead, public health departments in some parts of the country were blindsided. As experts predicted a month ago, some state coronavirus hotlines and hospitals have been overwhelmed.

The administration’s failure to quickly disseminate enough working COVID-19 test-kits has also had lasting repercussions, likely exacerbating the spread of the disease and robbing public health officials of vital data about the spread of the virus.

...“Given the features of this virus, we knew from the onset that it’s not the type of virus that is amenable to containment,” says Luciana Borio, who served as director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the White House National Security Council from 2017 through 2019 and as chief scientist for the Food and Drug Administration. “And that only works if you use the time really wisely. It’s possible that the time that it bought us wasn’t used in the best possible manner to help us get ahead of the curve in terms of preparing the homeland for the eventual epidemic.”

Public health and infectious disease experts have been urging the Trump administration to take actions to mitigate an outbreak for more than a month. As early as Jan. 28, Borio, along with former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, began publishing op-eds highlighting the ways the U.S. healthcare system needed to prepare. The first one was titled “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic.” They warned that more cases in the U.S. were inevitable, that the CDC would struggle to keep up with the volume of screenings, and that hospitals and public health workers needed to prepare for an influx of patients. While U.S. containment measures could stall an outbreak, they wrote that officials needed to start testing patients with symptoms who had not traveled to China.

Several former government officials also warned Congress in early February to resist the temptation to focus on travel bans and restrictions from affected areas. “Congress should press the administration for the science behind recently announced quarantines….and inquire as to the effectiveness of the measures being implemented,” Ron Klain, who served as Ebola response coordinator under President Barack Obama, told Congress on Feb. 5. He called the travel ban a “band aid.”

Other former U.S. officials have put it more bluntly, calling the administration’s focus on restricting flights and quarantining travelers the “original sin” of the Trump administration’s response. “The containment strategy was doomed from the start,” says Jeremy Konyndyk, who directed USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the Ebola outbreak and is a member of the World Health Organization committee overseeing health emergencies.

The containment measures were meant to buy the Trump administration time to move aggressively, but they didn’t do that, Konynkyk added. “What did you do with the delay?” he tells Time. “If you buy time, you need to use that time to prepare. It’s insane to me that they’re still harping on containment and travel controls and keeping the disease out when that is not going to be the driver of transmission at this point.”

Even as the coronavirus spread from Asia to Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and North America, and tracking and quarantining travelers became increasingly ineffective, the White House doubled down, insisting that containment was working. For weeks, both the President and administration officials repeatedly claimed that the decision to impose travel restrictions and quarantines was the reason for the low number of cases, and that the media and Democrats were exaggerating the threat. In fact, the low number of cases appears to be due to the fact that very few people were being tested for the disease.

“We have had tremendous success, tremendous success, beyond what people would have thought,” the president said at a Feb. 27 press conference in which he often appeared to contradict his own administration’s health officials. “At the same time, you do have some outbreaks in some countries-- Italy and various countries-- are having some difficulties.”

Two days later, the administration increased travel restrictions on South Korea, Iran and Italy, and a man in Washington state-- who had not been to any of those countries-- became the first to die of COVID-19 on American soil.

“Every state should be in the middle of mitigation planning at this point,” says Paul Biddinger, director of the Emergency Preparedness Research, Evaluation and Practice Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s an urgent need. Everything we’ve seen indicates this disease will be widespread within weeks, not months.”

Once it became clear that the crisis was unavoidable, the administration should have pushed harder, Nuzzo says. “What was missing was the sense of urgency. They were still so mentally focused on ‘we just have 15 cases.’”

So now the White House is left looking at how to mitigate the effects of their incompetnce. The Washington Post reported yesterday, for example, that "White House officials are considering deferring taxes for industries hurt by the coronavirus outbreak, including the cruise, travel and airline industries, among other options and speculated that "The discussions are a sign that the White House is grappling with the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, while publicly downplaying the financial pain." And,yes, it would be a shame if there's no Summer Olympics in Tokyo this year or-- if they foolishly decide to go forward-- there are no fans watching the events. The NY Times reported that "the option that nobody in the Olympic movement wants to talk about... [is] just 10,000 athletes competing in front of seas of empty seats. As the coronavirus continues to spread, with more than 3,000 deaths and 90,000 documented cases worldwide, sporting events without fans are edging toward becoming a kind of new normal." That report is insane-- it won't be sporting events without fans; it will be no sporting events period, especially not international competitions. Closer to home, the city of Austin canceled SxSW which was do to start in a few days.

We are devastated to share this news with you. “The show must go on” is in our DNA, and this is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place. We are now working through the ramifications of this unprecedented situation.

As recently as Wednesday, Austin Public Health stated that “there’s no evidence that closing SXSW or any other gatherings will make the community safer.” However, this situation evolved rapidly, and we honor and respect the City of Austin’s decision. We are committed to do our part to help protect our staff, attendees, and fellow Austinites.

We are exploring options to reschedule the event and are working to provide a virtual SXSW online experience as soon as possible for 2020 participants, starting with SXSW EDU. For our registrants, clients, and participants we will be in touch as soon as possible and will publish an FAQ.

We understand the gravity of the situation for all the creatives who utilize SXSW to accelerate their careers; for the global businesses; and for Austin and the hundreds of small businesses-- venues, theatres, vendors, production companies, service industry staff, and other partners that rely so heavily on the increased business that SXSW attracts.

Politico's Jake Tapper and Anna Palmer didn't beat around the bush yesterday, going right to the point that Trump and his henchmen will never mention publically: "What if this is only the beginning of the coronavirus economic downturn? Imagine if stocks keep on slipping and, even more concerning, if Americans truly stop traveling domestically and internationally over the spring and summer. Many of the members of Congress we spoke to this week were worried about the virus reemerging this fall, pressing the pause button on the economy again. Could Congress be forced into some kind of economic stimulus this spring or summer right before the election? Could Washington be forced to try to help airlines, hotels and even individuals in the middle of a political season? More bluntly: Would Democrats want to vote for any kind of bailout package that could help with President Trump’s reelection? And could Trump’s administration handle a legislative crisis with precision under pressure?”

And to cap off the week, the L.A. Times' Melissa Healy reported that "The global outbreak that has sickened nearly 100,000 people across six continents may actually be fueled by two variants of the same coronavirus: one older and less aggressive and a newer version whose mutations may have made it more contagious and more deadly, according to a controversial new study. Chinese scientists who compared the genetic sequences of 103 viral samples from patients infected with COVID-19 said their evidence suggests that the virulent version of the coronavirus-- which they tagged the 'L-type' version-- was the dominant strain in the earliest phase of the outbreak that began in Wuhan late last year. That strain, they said, appeared to recede as the epidemic progressed. But among samples collected later, as COVID-19 spread across China and into other countries, a variant of the virus they dubbed the 'S-type' was more common, the scientists reported. They suggested that the genetic makeup of the S version more closely resembles coronaviruses circulating in bats and pangolins, the animals that are thought to have incubated the virus before it jumped to humans. And they surmised that it is a less virulent version. The findings suggest the S-type version of the coronavirus may have escaped its animal hosts earlier than previously believed-- and that it may have been circulating longer without causing enough illness to set off alarm bells."

Is Long Island Republican Lee Zeldin Throwing Away His Career Defending Trump?

I went to college at Stony Brook University in Suffolk County. Before I started school there, Democrat Otis Pike was the congressman. And when I graduated in 1969 he was still Suffolk's representative in Congress, a job he kept for another decade. I was never a big fan. He was too conservative and way too militaristic-- and at the height of the Vietnam War. When he retired he was succeeded by a far right crackpot, William Carney, best known for having been the first member of the Conservative Party to serve in the House. He later switch to the Republican Party and then retired after 4 term and was succeeded by Democrat George Hochbrueckner and was beaten by Republican Michael Forbes in 1994. Forbes, noting that the GOP was "tone deaf" to the plight of working families, switched to the Democratic Party in 1999, while still in Congress, but was so right-wing that he lost the Democratic primary to a 71 year old librarian (who was financed by the GOP to the tune of a quarter million dollars). Republican Felix Grucci beat her and represented Suffolk County in Congress for one term before being beaten by Democrat Tim Bishop, who served from 2003 to 2014 when he was beaten by Lee Zeldin, 55-45%, primarily because of a scandal in which a hedge fund manager paid him off in return for getting the family a fireworks permit for their kid's bar mitzvah.

Got it? That's Suffolk County, a quintessential swing district on the high growth eastern end of Long Island. When I lived there, it was the biggest potato-growing county in the U.S. Now it's 99.9% suburban (actual statistic) and 0.1% rural. It's also the 28th richest congressional district-- in terms of median income-- in the country. The more diverse and more Democratic western parts of the county are no longer part of the first congressional district. The northwestern area is part of NY-03 (Tom Suozzi's district) and the southwestern area is part of NY-02 (Peter King's district, soon to turn Democratic). Zeldin's district, which still includes Stony Brook starts at Nissequogue in the north, encompasses Smithtown, the eastern shore of Lake Ronkokoma and Patchogue. Everything to the east of that is Zeldin's district, including Port Jefferson, Brookhaven, Fire Island, the Hamptons, Riverhead and Montauk. It was an R+2 district until Hillary's abysmal campaign resulted in it being reclassified as an R+5. Obama won the district both times but Trump crushed Hillary 54.5% to 42.2%.

Last year Zeldin hung on, beating Perry Gershon 139,027 (51.5%) to 127,991 (47.4%), Zeldin having successfully labeled him "Park Avenue Perry." Gershon out-raised Zeldin, $5,017,361(about 40% of it self-financed) to $4,447,149. This cycle Gershon is trying again, but he has a strong primary opponent he has to get through first, Nancy Goroff, a distinguished scientist from Stony Brook. So far Zeldin has raised $1,855,879 to Gershon's $605,891 and Goroff's $521,006.

This morning, when Robert Reich wrote to his supporters that "Republican members of Congress are shredding reality to protect Trump in the face of mounting evidence that he and his administration are a criminal syndicate" he could well have been referring to Zeldin, who is apparently staking his whole career on Trump coattails. "Here's the truth," wrote Reich: "Congressional Republicans know that Trump is guilty, and they know that they look like damn fools for protecting him. Every day, they are making a calculation of how far they can take this without losing their careers."

Long Island media is covering Zeldin's role as a Trump enabler very closely and it is likely the 2020 congressional election will hinge, at least in part, on how Suffolk County voters view Trump. As of November 1, this is how party registration looked in the first district:

• Republicans- 159,329
• Democrats- 151,357
• Decline-to-state- 131,158

In other words, it will be the unaffiliated voters--who have been turning sharply away from Trump-- who determine Zeldin's fate next year. Last week a high-dollar donor fundraiser Zeldin held in St James-- one of Suffolk County's toniest neighborhoods-- attracted a strong contingent of protestors. Newsday interviewed several of them who complained about how Zeldin had "decided to throw his lot completely into the Trump camp and to adopt, in full, the Trumpian agenda." Some talked about organizing and how determined they are to remove Zeldin from office.

Last night Perry Gershon told us that "Lee Zeldin hasn’t held a town hall in over two years, and is consistently inaccessible to his constituents, which is why there is such dissatisfaction with him. To make matters worse, most people these days only see him when he is on cable news portraying himself as Trump’s #1 defender and cheerleader. I just held my third town hall in three months where we discussed affordable healthcare and the climate crisis we are in, as well as local issues like dangerous drinking water, lack of federal funding for our antiquated sewers and the crippling tax burden Long Islanders face. It has become crystal clear that residents are sick of Lee Zeldin and itching for a change."

This morning we heard from Nancy Goroff. Zeldin, of course, is the issue where she and Gershon are in complete sync. "Zeldin continues to lie and obfuscate in order to protect a corrupt President," she wrote. "He muddles the discussion of timeline, of what the President requested and of who knew about those requests when, to pretend that the President did nothing wrong. Zeldin has shown over and over that he cares more about getting on TV than about helping the people of our district. And by his metric, he has been enormously successful in the last month, because of his willingness to lie on camera on behalf of the President. Unfortunately, he does not show similar diligence when it comes to looking for solutions for healthcare, climate change, or financial security for his constituents. We deserve better!"

Reporting for NBC News, Allan Smith asked one salient question: how could some virtually unknown GOP lawmaker become a point man for Trump's impeachment defense? Zeldin might not be paying any attention to the water crisis in Southampton, but he's spoken more than any other Republican in the House about Trump's impeachment, which he insists is a "charade," a "clown show," and a "cocktail that is" House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff's "favorite drink to get America drunk on." He's become as much a Trump favorite as Gym Jordan and Mark Meadows. The difference is that they're both in super-gerrymandered districts created to elect Republicans. Zeldin's district is a true swing district and, unlike them, he's endangering his career. "Zeldin's loyalty to Trump," wrote Smith, "as well as his attacks on the impeachment process, has been met with much chagrin from Democrats. One House Democratic aide said Zeldin was 'maybe the best instance I’ve seen of someone using emulating Trump as a pathway to relevance.'"

How Dangerous To National Security Are Trump's Daily Flood Of Lies?

Sometimes I check Google for my least favorite Members of Congress to see what they've been up to. That's how I learned, for example, that New Jersey Blue Dog Jefferson Van Drew went on Fox News a few days ago to say Trump's impeachment is "like something you would see in Europe or third-world nations" and to read Republican Party talking points. (Now Trump tweets nice things about him now and I have a feeling in my gut that he'll soon be switching parties like so many Blue Dogs have in the past.)

But most of the villains are just playing low and trying to not draw any attention to themselves. Many are just there to collect their corporate bribes, vote for their paymasters and hope their constituents never figure out what's up. So they kick back under the back benches and never say "Boo!" Look at these half dozen Google searches, all for Democrats who have earned "F" scores from ProgressivePunch:

Trump, on the other hand, has the opposite kind of narrative. A malignant narcissist, he is a firm believer that the only bad news is no news. He's out hogging the cameras constantly. And what he does most of the time is gaslight and lie. Have you forgotten what gaslighting is?

Yesterday, Trump decided the Fox & Friends audience needed a little gaslighting so he called in and stayed on their air for 53 minutes, riffing and gaslighting. He pretty much ignored the show's imbecile hosts. Daniel Dale counted 18 lies

A factory in Texas

Trump said, "I just got back from Austin, Texas, where I was with Tim Cook. He's going to be building a $1 billion facility to make whatever he makes. You know, that's Apple. And he's gonna build this incredible facility. We toured another facility where they make the Mac Pro, which is phenomenal, which was opening-- the reason we, you know-- it opened that day."

Facts First: The plant Trump visited did not open that day. The Flex Ltd. facility has been making Apple's Mac Pro computers since 2013.

Apple did break ground that day on a $1 billion campus in Austin, about a mile from the plant Trump toured with Cook, but no manufacturing is expected to be done at the campus. You can read a full fact check here.

The Ukraine scandal and impeachment

CrowdStrike

Trump said that Democrats gave a computer server that was hacked in 2016 to "a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian."

Facts First: The cybersecurity company that investigated the hack, CrowdStrike, is a publicly traded American company co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch, an American citizen who was born in Russia, not Ukraine. Regardless, such firms do not typically take possession of physical servers to conduct their analysis.

Asked if he is sure the Democrats gave the server to Ukraine, Trump did not cite any specific evidence. He said, "That's what the word is."

The accuracy of the whistleblower

Trump said that the whistleblower complaint about his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "bore no relationship to my call."

Facts First: The whistleblower's account of the call has largely been proven accurate.

In fact, the rough transcript released by Trump himself showed that the whistleblower's three primary allegations about the call were correct or very close to correct.

You can read a full fact check here.

The identity of the whistleblower

Trump said "a lot of people think" that the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, is "essentially the whistleblower."

Facts First: This is simple nonsense. Schiff is not the whistleblower, "essentially" or otherwise.

The whistleblower is someone who works in the intelligence community. The whistleblower sought guidance from Schiff's committee before filing their complaint, but there is no evidence Schiff dictated the content of the complaint, much less that Schiff can himself be considered the whistleblower.

The timing of Schiff's comments

Trump said that Schiff made up what Trump said on the call with Zelensky, but then, when Trump released his rough transcript of the call, everybody was "embarrassed."

Facts First: Trump can reasonably criticize Schiff for Schiff's comments at a House Intelligence Committee hearing in September; as we've written before, Schiff's mix of near-quotes from Trump, his own analysis, and supposed "parody" was at the very least confusing. But Schiff spoke the day after Trump released the rough transcript, not before.

Before he started claiming that Schiff did not expect a transcript to be released, Trump had complained that Schiff did not read the transcript available to him.

European aid to Ukraine

Trump said of aid to Ukraine, "Why isn't Germany putting up money? Why isn't France putting up money? Why isn't all of the European nations, why aren't they putting up?"

Facts First: European countries have provided hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of assistance to Ukraine since Russia's invasion in 2014. (Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade told Trump in this interview that Europe has indeed provided aid.)

Zelensky acknowledged European "help" during his meeting with Trump at the United Nations in September, though he said the world's efforts had been inadequate so far: "And, I'm sorry, but we don't need help; we need support. Real support. And we thank-- thank everybody, thank all of the European countries; they each help us. But we also want to have more-- more."

You can read a full fact check here.

Obama's aid to Ukraine

Trump said President Barack Obama sent only "pillows and sheets" in aid to Ukraine, adding, "He wouldn't send anything else."

Facts First: Obama did refuse to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, but he didn't send mere pillows and sheets; he sent counter-mortar radars, drones, armored Humvees and night vision devices, among other things.

You can read a full fact check here.

Hunter Biden's career

Trump said that Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden managed to get business opportunities during Joe Biden's vice-presidency even though Hunter Biden "never made 10 cents in his life."

Facts First: This is an exaggeration. While it's certainly fair for Trump to raise questions about how qualified Hunter Biden was for the positions he secured while Joe Biden was vice-president, Hunter Biden did have prior professional experience.

Hunter Biden has acknowledged that he probably would not have gotten a seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, if his dad were not Joe Biden. However, it's not true that he had never made "10 cents." Hunter Biden, a lawyer, had worked prior to Joe Biden's vice-presidency as a bank executive, at the Department of Commerce and as a lobbyist. He had also served on the board of Amtrak.

Prosecutor Viktor Shokin

Trump said that the Ukrainian prosecutor Joe Biden had pushed to oust, Viktor Shokin, was "prosecuting" the company where Hunter Biden sat on the board, Burisma.

Facts First: Shokin was not prosecuting Burisma.

While there had been an investigation of the company, Shokin's former deputy, Vitaliy Kasko, has said that it was dormant at the time of Joe Biden's intervention. (The former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, George Kent, testified in Trump's impeachment inquiry that Shokin was corrupt; the US and its allies had made a coordinated effort to oust him.)

Zelensky and Marie Yovanovitch

Trump said of former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch: "By the way, when I was talking to President Zelensky, it's right on the phone, you can read it. He didn't like her. He brought up her name and he didn't like her at all."

Facts First: The rough transcript of the July phone call shows that Trump, not Zelensky, was the one who brought up Yovanovitch: "The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that," Trump said. Zelensky responded, "It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%."

Zelensky did criticize Yovanovitch, saying, "Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough." But he had been prompted by Trump, not disparaging her on his own.

Marie Yovanovitch and Trump's photo

Trump claimed about Yovanovitch: "This ambassador that everybody says is so wonderful, she wouldn't hang my picture in the embassy... She's in charge of the embassy. She wouldn't hang it. It took like a year and a half, or two years, for her to get the picture up."

Facts First: There is no evidence that Yovanovitch refused to hang Trump's photo. It took the Trump administration more than nine months after his inauguration to distribute an official photo of Trump to government buildings such as embassies, CNBC reported in 2017. More than seven months into the term, the White House told The Washington Post that Trump had not yet sat for the photo.

A State Department official who has recently served in Kiev said Yovanovitch never sought to prevent Trump's photo from being put up at the embassy. The official said the photo did not arrive until late 2017.

Yovanovitch's legal team did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment, but NBC received this response from a person "connected to her legal team": "The Embassy in Kyiv hung the official photographs of the president, vice president, and secretary of state as soon as they arrived from Washington, D.C."

Soldiers

The treatment of veterans

Trump said, "The vets: for years you would turn on your television, every night you'd see a story about the vets and how badly they're being treated, it's a horror show. You don't hear that anymore."

Facts First: We can't speak for what Trump himself has seen on television, but it's just not true that the rest of us no longer hear about veterans being treated badly at VA facilities.

Merely since August, there have been news stories about "11 suspicious deaths at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center," "how Veterans Affairs failed to stop a pathologist who misdiagnosed 3,000 cases" and wasn't fired until 2018, how "a Veterans Affairs medical center in West Virginia is being investigated over allegations that one of its physicians sexually assaulted more than a dozen patients," and how a veteran at a VA facility in Georgia was allegedly bitten by ants "100 times before his death."

Veterans Choice

Trump claimed to have been the one who passed the Veterans Choice health care program.

Facts First: The Choice bill, a bipartisan initiative led by senators Bernie Sanders and the late John McCain, was signed into law by Barack Obama in 2014. In 2018, Trump signed the VA Mission Act, which expanded and changed the program.

The U.S. presence in Syria

Trump said: "I'm pulling back. I just pulled out of Syria, except I kept the oil, if it was okay with you."

Facts First: Trump did not "pull out" of Syria. While he did withdraw US troops from the northeastern region, in advance of a Turkish offensive in that region, he has kept hundreds of troops in the country-- as Kilmeade noted to Trump, responding, "You have 600 guys there, right?"

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said two weeks ago that there would be "probably in the 500-ish frame. Maybe 600" soldiers left in northeast Syria (he said the number would definitely be less than 1,000), in addition to the separate force of more than 100 soldiers stationed in southern Syria near Jordan.

Military leaders have said that the US will not keep any revenue from the Syrian oil fields they are securing, but Trump has continued to suggest that the US is seizing the oil for itself.

China

China's economic performance

Trump said China is having its worst economic year in "57 years."

Facts First: China's second-quarter GDP growth of 6.2% and third-quarter GDP growth of 6% were its worst since 1992, 27 years ago. Trump has repeatedly made clear that he knows that 27 years is the reported figure, but he has added additional years for no apparent reason.

Who is paying for Trump's tariffs on China Trump blamed "the media" for trying to convince people that Americans are paying for Trump's tariffs on China.

Facts First: A bevy of economic studies have found that Americans are bearing the overwhelming majority of the tariff costs, and Americans make the actual tariff payments.

The history of tariffs on China

Trump said the U.S. has never previously taken in "10 cents" from tariffs on China.

Facts First: Again, these tariffs are paid by Americans. Aside from the question of who is paying, it's not true that the Treasury has never received "10 cents" from tariffs on China. The US has had tariffs on China for more than two centuries; FactCheck.org reported that the US generated, from such tariffs, an "average of $12.3 billion in custom duties a year from 2007 to 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb."

Trump's claim also ignores China's hundreds of billions of dollars in purchases of US goods-- more than $300 billion during Trump's presidency alone. The US had generated over $37 billion from Trump's new tariffs on China as of November 20, according to official data published by Customs and Border Protection.

The trade deficit with China

Trump said the U.S. has for years had a "$500 billion" trade deficit with China.

Facts First: Through 2018, there had never been a $500 billion trade deficit with China. The deficit was $381 billion last year when counting goods and services, $420 billion when counting goods alone.

Politico's Michael Calderone looked into Jake Tapper's CNN special, All The President’s Lies-- scheduled for tomorrow night at 9 PM-- exploring the effects on foreign policy, business and the national culture of the president’s compulsive lying. Tapper said he "isn’t afraid to ascribe motive when the president repeats a false claim 'over and over and over' despite evidence to the contrary. It’s not an honest mistake; it’s a lie. And yet, nearly 30% of Americans refuse to accept the fact that Trump is a compulsive liar, incapable of being truthful.

Take the whistleblower complaint that kick-started the Ukraine scandal. Trump has repeatedly said it’s inaccurate, which Tapper considers a “lie” given that an investigation and testimony have largely corroborated the whistleblower’s claims.

“He’s repeated that so many times that there’s obvious malice of forethought,” Tapper said of the president. “He’s obviously saying this in order to undermine a fact, in order to try to gaslight the country.”

Trump’s dishonesty in the White House has been thoroughly documented. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler and his team have tallied more than 13,000 false or misleading claims since taking office, while CNN’s Daniel Dale this week highlighted 45 false claims specifically about impeachment and Ukraine. The New York Times counted more than 1,700 conspiracy theories on Trump's Twitter feed.

But Tapper said he’s trying to go beyond the sheer volume of erroneous and misleading claims... and address the impact on business, science, international relations and the national psyche. For instance, how might a false claim about trade talks with China affect global markets-- and more broadly America’s credibility on the world stage?

“God forbid there should be some major international crisis where the United States president needs the people of this nation and the world to believe what he says about something,” said Tapper, asking, “What would the result be?”

...“Facts are facts. The earth is not flat,” Tapper added. And the news media, he said, is supposed “to provide accurate information” and “sort through the spin-- what really happened, and what is the truth, regardless of who’s asserting it.”

And yet facts may not always be enough to convince the public what really happened.

Nearly half of Americans recently polled believe “it’s difficult to know whether the information they encounter is true,” the Times noted this week. One can find dramatically different framing of events on television in prime time and on social media.

The president’s desire for Ukraine to launch investigations stemmed largely from conspiracy theories, like the debunked claim that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election, which Trump again pushed Friday in an interview on Fox & Friends. Also, there’s also no evidence former Vice President Joe Biden urged the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son Hunter’s business interests.

Tapper said some of Trump’s defenders are claiming he “never requested a foreign government to look into the Bidens.”

“That’s just a lie. That’s just false,” said Tapper, citing the rough transcript of Trump’s infamous July 25 call with Ukraine’s president. (Tapper tweeted Friday it is “not in dispute” that Trump sought the investigations from Ukraine into the Bidens and the 2016 election).

“There is an attempt among some individuals to create an alternate reality where the president did not say what he clearly said,” Tapper said. “And we just have to state what the facts are.”

How Old Was Trump When He Started Lying Incessantly?

On CNN yesterday, Jake Tapper reminded CNN viewers that regardless of White House claims to the contrary, Trump doesn't have a "communications problem," he has "a facts problem and the facts are bad for the president, so he seems to be trying to change them by lying." The describes more than just the Ukraine scandal. And it describes more than just his presidency. It describes the man's entire life. He's been lying about everything-- big and small-- since the first time he appeared in the New York Times, October 16, 1973. Trump was 27 years old then and the headline was Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City. "The Department of Justice, wrote Metro reporter David Dunlap, "had brought suit in federal court in Brooklyn against Mr. Trump and his father, Fred C. Trump, charging them with violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in the operation of 39 buildings. The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals 'because of race and color.' It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.

Donald Trump’s first quoted words in the New York Times expressed his view of the charges:

“They are absolutely ridiculous.”

“We never have discriminated,” he added, “and we never would.”

Two months later, Trump Management, represented by Roy M. Cohn, turned around and sued the United States government for $100 million (roughly $500 million in today’s terms), asserting that the charges were “irresponsible and baseless.”

“Mr. Trump accused the Justice Department of singling out his corporation because it was a large one, and because the government was trying to force it to rent to welfare recipients,” The Times reported.

Decades later, Trump, hero at Palmyra

Under an agreement reached in June 1975, Trump Management was required to furnish the New York Urban League with a list of all apartment vacancies, every week, for two years. It was also to allow the league to present qualified applicants for every fifth vacancy in Trump buildings where fewer than 10 percent of the tenants were black.

Trump Management noted that the agreement did not constitute an admission of guilt.

Mr. Trump himself said he was satisfied that the agreement did not “compel the Trump organization to accept persons on welfare as tenants unless as qualified as any other tenant.”

It was, literally, one lie after another. It was Trump then and it is Trump now. Did anyone think otherwise during the 2016 campaign? Unfortunately, yes. There is no IQ test to exercise the right to vote. I wish more people understood that the "emoluments mess," as Professor Robert Reich calls it, is a bribery case. That's easier for a Trump supporter to understand.