Trump Has Been Bragging About HIS Foreign Policy. Meanwhile America's Foreign Policy Is A Shambles

Last week, anyone who didn't think "foul play" by Putin after reading reports of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny falling into a coma is either terribly naïve or a Trumpist Republican. And sure enough, after he was rescued an flown to Berlin, he was diagnosed with having been poisoned with a cholinesterase inhibitor, a family of central nervous system toxic agents.

Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released copies of Trump's pre-presidential love letters to Putin as part of their investigation into Trump's collaboration with Russia during the 2016 election.

Trump’s pandering to the Russian president was on full display in a 2007 letter congratulating Putin on being named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The letter read, “Congratulations on being named Time’s magazine ‘Man of the Year’-- you definitely deserve it. As you probably heard, I am a big fan of yours!”

The phrase “I am big fan of yours” was emphasised by the now US President with a thick underline.

The praiseful content doesn’t end there, with a 2013 letter containing an attempt by Trump to persuade Putin into attending a Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, an event owned by Trump himself.

The letter asked Putin to be Trump’s date for the evening, reading, “I want to take this opportunity to personally invite you to be my guest of honor in Moscow on November 9th. I know you will have a great time.”

In an attempt to double down on the persuasion (in true all-caps Trump-style), an added hand-written message read, “THE WORLD”S MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN!”

Putin did not attend the contest.

The letters are part of a more serious issue surrounding the 2016 election, with key findings from the Senate Select Committee revealing that Putin had weaponised the hacking of Democratic campaign emails, with Trump receiving assistance from various Russian pass-throughs.

Further findings reveal that former campaign chair Paul Manafort was deemed a threat to US intelligence due to his contacts with Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik.

The report essentially confirmed that the president had lied in a written testimony about not remembering a conversation with Roger Stone, who utilised his Julian Assange WikiLeaks back-channel to access Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.

While Trump’s unwavering love of Putin was put on full display, the report all but confirmed something more serious. Trump and his officials sought out and accepted Russian interference during the election.

Last week Juan Cole had a typically Trump-era headline at Informed Comment: Trump Walks Alone: Former U.S. Allies Britain, France, Germany Join Russia And China in Forcefully Rejecting Trump Iran Sanctions. The European countries hit Trump with a strong rebuke, thoroughly sick and tired of Trump's dysfunctional policies, and they sound more like Russia and China. Trump and Pompeo are now running around screeching that they're going to sanction the rest of the world. Trump should be dragged out of the White House and put in an insane asylum.

Kushner's Other Presidential Campaign-- Kanye

3 stooges

If there is a "brain" behind the curtain of Kanye West's dysfunctional presidential campaign-- a blatant attempt to bolster Trump by drawing black and millennial voters away from Biden-- it is Jared Kushner. Kushner has always projected a higher opinion of himself than his results have merited. His high school tutor told me he was incredibly stupid and could only get into college because of his father's multi-million dollar gifts.

That Kanye's campaign is a non-starter can be lain at Kushner's feet-- as can the illegal nature of the campaign, at least according to Paul Ryan, writing for JustSecurity.org last week.

A provision of federal law known as the “soft money ban” prohibits candidates and their agents like Kushner from soliciting contributions that exceed amount limits or come from prohibited sources (e.g., foreign contributions). Federal law defines “contribution” broadly to include “any gift... of money or anything of value made by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office” and “anything of value includes all in-kind contributions.” Contributions from one candidate committee to another are limited to $2,000. And the FEC by regulation defines “solicit” to mean “to ask, request, or recommend, explicitly or implicitly, that another person make a contribution, donation, transfer of funds, or otherwise provide anything of value.”

If Kushner has explicitly or implicitly requested or recommended that West spend money on West’s candidacy, with the motivation of having West siphon votes from Joe Biden, then Kushner has arguably violated federal law by soliciting in-kind contributions from West to Trump in excess of the applicable $2,000 contribution limit. Under this theory, every dollar West spends on his campaign with Kushner’s encouragement is an in-kind contribution. And West has spent well in excess of $2,000 on his campaign efforts to date, including, for example, payment of $35,000 filing fee to the State of Oklahoma to have his name on the ballot.

Now if Kanye siphons off a bunch of votes from Biden in totally red states like Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia, who cares? Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia aren't states where Biden will even be competing. And it doesn't matter in overwhelmingly blue states like Illinois and Vermont either, since Trump isn't competing in them. The problem is when Kushner tries getting him onto the ballot-- with the help of GOP operatives-- in swing states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Arizona, Montana and Virginia.

Yesterday Ben Jacobs reported that "In a span of two days, West was booted from the ballot in five states: Illinois, Montana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. In Illinois, Montana, and West Virginia, it was because he filed an insufficient number of valid signatures. In Wisconsin, it was because West did not file on time. In Ohio, the information and signature on West’s nominating petition and his statement of candidacy did not match those on petitions circulated to be signed. West has filed in several other states in this week: Louisiana, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Virginia, but it is unclear if he will ultimately qualify to appear on the ballot in all of them."

West may face particular issues in Virginia, where seven of the thirteen electors that West submitted told [Jacobs] they were either unaware that they signed up to cast electoral votes on his behalf, or that they had signed notarized paperwork connected to the rapper’s presidential bid at all.

“Is this a joke?” one of the electors, Ilisa Stillman, asked when reached by [Jacobs]. “Holy guacamole,” she replied when informed it was not. “I’m certainly not supporting Kanye West,” she made clear before ending the conversation.

Another elector, Sariah Cutler, said that someone approached her at the mall for what she was told was “a petition just to put somebody’s name on the ballot.” She went on to ask, “Is there any way I can take my name off?”

“There was no mention of Kanye West,” explained Matthew Wilson, who said he was walking in downtown Norfolk when he was asked to sign for a third party candidate to be on the ballot. He sounded stunned when told what he had signed up for. “Ain’t no way in the world,” Wilson responded, adding that if he had known that he was being approached on the rapper’s behalf, “I would have walked away.”

...Invariably, the electors had been approached during the petition gathering effort in Virginia. The state requires at least 200 valid signatures from each of its 11 congressional districts and a total of at least 2500 valid signatures statewide.

The Virginia strategy marked a change in approach from the campaign’s earlier efforts finding electors-- the people who would, were the candidate to win the state, vote for them in the Electoral College. Early in West’s campaign, the rapper personally selected people to appear on his behalf as electors. The consultation process as he handpicked people reportedly delayed operations in several states and served as further impediment to the campaign’s already-rushed signature gathering efforts.

More recently, West’s elector slates have been jam-packed with Republican operatives and activists. In Vermont, Chuck Wilton, a GOP delegate to next week’s 2020 Republican National Convention, was selected as a West elector. The rapper’s elector slates in both Wisconsin and Colorado had a number of Republican activists, as well. In the latter state, Vice News reported that a Republican operative, Rachel George, had sent an email recruiting electors for West in advance of the filing deadline.

Indeed, a number of Republican operatives have been involved in West’s campaign. Gregg Keller, the former executive director of the American Conservative Union, appeared as the campaign’s point of contact when the rapper filed in Arkansas and, in Wisconsin, Lane Ruhland, a lawyer representing the Trump campaign in court, filed on West’s behalf. In Louisiana, West’s forms and elector slate were notarized by Bryan Jeansonne, a prominent Republican activist and member of the Louisiana Republican Party’s central committee. (His law firm, Doré Jeansonne, was co-founded with Jason Dore, a longtime GOP operative who is currently the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party.)

West’s campaign did have a bipartisan flourish in Tennessee, however: his slate of electors there included not only a 2016 delegate to the Republican National Convention, but two two scions of a Democratic Party political dynasty, Sir Isaac Ford and Newton Ford. They are the sons of former Congressman Harold Ford, Sr. and the brothers of former Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. The Ford family has long been a power broker in Memphis Democratic politics, although their influence has [THANKK GOD] waned in recent years.

Aside from his ballot woes, West also missed Thursday’s midnight deadline for him to file a report with the Federal Election Commission. The rapper was required to do so if he was intending to spend at least $100,000 in the course of his campaign. Considering West has mounted paid signature gathering efforts in over a dozen states, held a campaign rally in South Carolina, and paid multiple state filing fees, including $35,000 in Oklahoma alone, it’s almost certain he has exceeded that.

So far, Kanye West is officially on the ballot in four states: Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Vermont-- and almost certain to appear in several others including Louisiana and Utah. Despite the ongoing hiccups, his campaign is moving forward with efforts to appear on the ballot in the swing state of Arizona as well as the deep red states of Idaho, Kentucky, and Wyoming.

Although there has been strong speculation that West is a plant being used by Republicans in an attempt to steal Black voters away from Joe Biden this fall, the rapper’s motivation is certainly more complicated than that. Meanwhile, public polling data shows West being unpopular among all demographics; but particularly among those with an unfavorable opinion of Trump. And West’s candidacy may not benefit the president at all: a private poll fielded by West’s campaign early in the process, which was described as being commissioned by those close to West who did not want him to run, saw the rapper getting around 1 percent of the vote nationally and hurting Trump more than he hurt Biden.

All Kushner needs is for Kanye to get on one or two swing states--say Arizona and Ohio-- to actually deny Biden the electoral votes he needs to oust Trump.

Trump Was Right To Fire Brad Parscale... But It Won't Help Him Avoid His Destiny

One of the most discussed pieces of reporting over the weekend was Olivia Nuzzi's New York Magazine look inside the chaotic, desperate last-minute Trump 2020 reboot. She goes beyond the reasons why Trump fired his rarely present campaign manager, Jared-puppet Brad Parscale, while noting the " tiny Tulsa rally Parscale had organized-- which followed weeks of massive hype-- preceded a spike in coronavirus infections in the city that, local officials said, was probably born of the event, where the guest list included Herman Cain, who later died... The campaign was in a hole so deep it was actually historic-- a deficit not just bigger, at this point in the race, than any an incumbent had ever overcome, but bigger than any an incumbent had ever even faced."

Nuzzi wrote that "It was July before he 'saw for the first time' that he could be defeated, according to the [senior White House official] official. And he didn’t blame himself. He blamed a cruel world, a crueler media, and the Death Star’s failure to defend him from both. 'They thought they were running one campaign: We’re on cruise control for the president who gave us the greatest economy of all time, and all the messaging would flow from there. Which socialist are we running against? Bop, bop, bop. And everything changed, and they didn’t change,' the senior White House official said. 'The president started to hate the ads. He hated Beijing Biden-- he didn’t come up with that name.' In the West Wing, officials filed away gossip and unflattering data points about the campaign manager as if drafting a dossier. When it was reported that Parscale’s web of companies took in $38 million between Inauguration Day and the spring of the pandemic, according to the Federal Election Commission, the story circulated widely. Though Parscale has declined to make clear what portion of his bills to the campaign amount to his personal salary, the New York Times reported in March that Trump had imposed a salary cap on Parscale of somewhere between $700,000 and $800,000-- enough for him to become in midlife a collector of luxury cars and seaside real estate, or at least a media caricature of one. But it wasn’t only Parscale’s spending on Parscale that worried-- or 'worried'-- some of his colleagues; it was his spending on everything else, too, like the $15,000-a-month payments to Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, and to Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife, both of whom crisscross the country as campaign surrogates.





The courtiers surrounding Trump began wondering aloud about what Parascale was even doing aside from milking the campaign for his own accounts. Nuzzi spoke with one of the country's most prominent #NeverTrumpers, Lincoln Project founder George Conway, who told her that the Orange Menace "wonders who’s truly loyal to him and who’s not and who’s making a buck on him," noting that "triggering Trump’s paranoia" is one way to defeat him. "It doesn’t matter who is the captain of the SS Trump, because Trump is the one who is going to run it into the iceberg in the end. If there’s more chaos, all the better. We try to trigger the chaos in Trump’s DNA."

It started eating away at Trump that Pascale was making so much money off him. Three weeks after Tulsa, he was unceremoniously fired-- replaced by Bill Stepien. Right after Trump fired him, Parscale tweeted a Bible verse: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them." No one has seen him since.

Parscale’s value, as some saw it, lay not in what he could do for the campaign but in what he could do for Kushner. “Brad was willing to do whatever Jared said and keep quiet about it. Brad was willing to get yelled at by the president and not say to the president, ‘Well, actually, this was Jared’s decision,’ ” the first senior White House official said. “And Jared got to rule from afar because Brad would do whatever he said. In return, Brad made a fuck-ton of money and got to live by the pool in Florida. It was almost like this weird mutual partnership, whether they knew it or not.”

...In the case of the reelection campaign, what appeared to be a civil war at the highest levels of Trumpworld, with anti-Kushner factions inside and immediately surrounding the West Wing positioned against representatives of his interests at campaign headquarters, and a last-minute last chance for a reboot before November, was more like WrestleMania. The drama was both all-consuming and self-contained. Parscale and Stepien were both seen as Kushner allies, yet the regime change was nevertheless regarded as revealing some aspect of Kushner’s shifting status-- even as he remained functionally in charge the whole time. Kushner’s influence is so total that, even when his proxy is removed, he’s just replaced by yet another proxy. After all, if you’re not a “Kushner guy,” the dismissive term for officials perceived to carry out his will, what kind of guy could you even be?

...But while replacing Parscale with Stepien has the look of a reboot, at the strategy level it does not seem much has changed or is likely to. Asked how the campaign can formulate a coherent message, given what life is like for most people across the country today, senior adviser Jason Miller said, “It’s very direct: President Trump built the greatest economy in the history of the world, and he’s doing it again.”

But what about the polls? “I’d push back on that,” Miller said. “I have much more timely data, and much more accurate data, than what you have access to. And it’s improved over the last four weeks, and over the last two weeks, it definitely improved. We’re headed in the right direction.

...If I just woke you up in the middle of the night and told you a guy who is deeply involved in Bridgegate is now calling himself campaign manager for Donald Trump, you wouldn’t have said, ‘You’re kidding me! I’m shocked. How did that happen?,’ ” Stuart Stevens said with a laugh. You’d have said, Of course.

Stevens is a veteran of Republican presidential campaigns whose latest book, It Was All a Lie, is about his newfound realization-- at 67 years old-- that his life’s work was a mistake. As he sees it, Trump has a “management philosophy” that has guided him from the Trump Organization to the 2016 campaign to the White House and now to the campaign for reelection. “What Trump does is take people who are mediocre talent at best, who know they could never have the position they have if it were not for Trump, and it creates this instant loyalty to Trump. When you look at Trumpworld, it’s all these people who weren’t involved in presidential races, and it wasn’t because they didn’t want to be; it was because nobody would hire them. It’s not like Steve Bannon woke up one day and said, ‘I think I’d like to get involved in campaigns!’ Or Corey Lewandowski, all of these people. It’s how you end up with Brad Parscale. Top professionals won’t work for you.”

Almost all Democrats I know-- basically I know progressive Democrats-- abhor Biden's record. They're going to mostly hold their noses and vote for him-- a vehicle for saving the country from Trump and Trumpism. Not the #NeverTrumpers. They're enthusiastic. Biden's lifelong fiscal conservatism is just what they want in a president. Just ask Susan Molinari. "When Joe Biden makes a commitment, he always sees it through," the narrator says in this new Lincoln Project ad. Does that mean that we're about to vote someone in who is going to kill Social Security and Medicare?

Has Jared Kushner Taken Over Kanye's Mind On Behalf Of The Trumpanzee Campaign?

There are always contrarians-- people who go against the grain just to... go against the grain. In the early 1930s, a Jew voting for Hitler as Germany's fragile democracy was collapsing-- and there were some-- would likely have been a severe contrarian. Those votes didn't prevent them from being rounded up and exterminated in gas chambers. According to Pew Research, 6% of 2016 Black voters cast their ballots for Trump. Contrarianism is one explanation. Can you think of a more clownish contrarian than deranged rap star Kanye West? We covered his presidential "campaign" late Monday night.

The idea behind it was simple: Trump isn't going to get many Black voters-- maybe even less than the 6% he got in 2016. But preventing some from voting for Biden-Kamala in a few swing states-- like Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa-- could swing the electoral college to Trump again. Black voters, it turns out, are way too smart for that, as is apparent in the Morning Consult poll for Politico yesterday. Just 2% of voters say he's their choice and just 2% of African-American voters say he's their choice. Most people see it as either a Trumpist ploy or a typical Kanye publicity stunt. People don't tale his bid seriously, despite a gaggle of experienced Republican Party operatives, like Gregg Keller, former executive director of the American Conservative Union, working to legitimize him and get him on the ballot in key states. This is his 10-point Bible-driven "platform" (for lack of a better word):

• Restore faith and revive our Constitutional commitment to freedom of religion and the free exercise of one’s faith, demonstrated by restoring prayer in the classroom including spiritual foundations.
We will not hide the truth from our children, but will declare to the next generation His praises and wonder. Psalm 78:4

• Restore the sound national economy. Reduce household debt and student loan debt.
God has plans to give us hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

• Provide leadership to restructure our country’s education system to serve the most at-risk and vulnerable populations allowing the widest possible range of educational and vocational paths to job opportunities and career success.
Direct your children on the right path. Proverbs 22:6

• Maintain a strong national defense, fully prepared, but not so quick to tie up our country’s young men and women in foreign quagmires that do not advance our national interest, and which last for decades.
Through God we shall do valiantly. Psalm 60:12

• Reform the legal system to provide true justice, equitable for all citizens, regardless of race or ability to defend oneself in court. Recognize the disparity in verdicts and prison sentences, caused by the lack of financial resources or legal assistance.
There will not be differing weights and differing measures. Proverbs 20:10

• Reform the approach to policing in a manner that treats all Americans the same, regardless of race, color, or ethnicity. Refocus police forces on real crime. Eliminate federal sentencing guidelines that tie the hands of judges, resulting in ridiculous sentences for the most minor offenses.
We will speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Proverbs 31:8

• Take care of the environment, diligently pursuing clean air and water as a national security priority and making renewables top priority.
The past is forgotten and everything can be new 2 Corinthians 5:17

• Ensure that we always place Americans’ best interest first and foremost in dealing with foreign affairs. We must project strength, not aggression. We want trust, but we must also verify. We want fair trade, not one-sided deals that hurt American workers.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9

• Support faith-based groups to provide vital local services, giving communities a shared purpose in government.
We will provide ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works Hebrews 10:24

• Creativity and the Arts can be an important source of innovation and development of other national strengths and resources.
He has given them skill in all kinds of work done. Exodus 35:35

The only semi-significant support the poll found for him was among the youngest-- and least reliable-- cohort of voters, Gen Z, where he could get 6% of the vote. Oh... and then there's Jared Kushner, who, the NY Times reported yesterday, "met privately last weekend with Kanye" in Telluride, Kanye leaving a family camping trip to fly in and meet with Trumpanzee's campaign overseer.

After an inquiry, Mr. West tweeted Tuesday evening: “I’m willing to do a live interview with the New York Time about my meeting with Jared,” adding that they had discussed a book about Black empowerment called Powernomics.” He did not elaborate on his meeting with Mr. Kushner in a brief follow-up interview. He instead expressed anger about abortion rates among Black women and said he didn’t reflexively support Democrats.

Forbes went further in their reporting: a Kushner-Kanye yack session daily. A friend of Kanye's told Randall Lane explained that Kanye is "mentally ill. When you have people around him who have the best intentions and don’t need anything from him, you can steer him when he’s in that space into a positive place. When you have people around him who see him as an opportunity, they create a very, very bad scenario." Some in Kanye's circle "feel that Kushner now falls into that latter camp in ways that flirt with exploitation-- concerning, after Kardashian West asked publicly for 'compassion and empathy.' One described their understanding of Kushner’s conversations with West as 'reverse psychology.' Others prescribe less malicious intent, though that narrative would require a level of naiveté that would rank up there with sitting in a meeting at Trump Tower with Russians who promise to have dirt on Hillary Clinton."

I'm not sure how big Kanye is in Montana but the Billings Gazette reported yesterday that Republican operatives are trying to get him on the ballot there, specifically to draw voters away from Biden/Kamala. They've been gathering signatures and telling people explicitly it was to siphon off Biden votes in November.

"You want to help Trump?" one of the organizers called out Tuesday afternoon in front of the Yellowstone County Courthouse. "We're trying to take votes away from creepy Uncle Joe."

...A similar group of organizers were at MetraPark on Tuesday using the same pitch, calling out to fair-goers as they approached the gate, sometimes not even mentioning West's name.

The organizer on the sidewalk in front of the county courthouse called to people as they approached or left the building Tuesday afternoon. His pitch was always the same, help Trump, sign the petition, get West on the ballot and draw votes away from Biden.

The man declined to give his name, saying he had been "told expressly to stay away from the media." He also declined to name the group that recruited him to gather signatures, describing them as clients of the West campaign.

About 6,400 of Montana's 1.1 million people are Black. Kanye probably has a lot more fans than that in the state. The Republican organizers of his ballot effort have until August 19, a week from yesterday, to gather 5,000 verifiable signatures. Many-- in some cases, most-- of these signatures the GOP operatives have been turning in in other states are forgeries. And that's hardly the only dirty trick the GOP is trying to pull off in Montana to protect Trump and Daines and their other candidates. They're also trying-- so far unsuccessfully-- to use the Montana Green Party as a way to divert progressive votes away from Biden.

A couple of free thinkers. How would you like a tape of their presidential strategy meeting? 

How Badly Will Trump's Mismanagement Of The Pandemic Hurt The Republican Party In November?

Starting To Lose My Temper by Nancy Ohanian

Writing for New York Magazine, Eric Levitz introduced his readers to a new study by political scientists Lynn Vavreck, Christopher Warshaw and Ryan Baxter-King who examined the political consequences of COVID-19 fatalities for Trump and other Republican candidates for federal offices. Their conclusion-- and Levitz's-- is that Voters Are Turning Against Trump In Places Hit Hard By COVID-19. "Although Trump’s political decline is more modest than one might hope," wrote Levitz, "given the widespread tendency of the mass public to rally behind incumbent leaders when faced with an acute crisis-- and the exceptional power of right-wing media in the U.S.-- the fact that the president’s mishandling of the pandemic has turned his reelection into a long shot is cause for encouragement."

He wrote that Vavreck, Warshaw and Baxter-King "set out to determine whether the rise in COVID-19 deaths is directly costing Trump and the Republican Party voter support. To explore this question, they looked at whether areas with a high level of accumulated COVID-19 deaths by the end of May were less likely to support the president and his party, after controlling for all other relevant variables (such as the partisan and demographic composition of areas impacted by the virus and changes in national public opinion during the period in which deaths rose in those areas). Here’s what they found:

The gap between stated voting support for Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. grows by about 2.5 percentage points in Mr. Biden’s favor when a county has extremely high levels of coronavirus-related deaths relative to when it has low levels … A doubling of cases per capita in a county over the last 60 days drops Mr. Trump’s two-party vote margin against Mr. Biden by a third of a percentage point-- a seemingly small gap, but not when you consider that several recent elections have been won by narrow margins. In 2016, the critical state of Michigan was won by less than a third of a point; Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were won by less than a point. And some places are seeing a tripling or quadrupling of cases.

Levitz continued, sadly, that "Ordinary people do not reliably hold their leaders accountable to their interests and avowed preferences in our present social context, which is to say: in a society where civic and communitarian institutions are in decay, economic power is concentrated in the hands of the few, and most people rely on television news for their political information. One could read this fact as an indictment of ordinary people’s capacity for self-government. But it could also be interpreted as an indictment of an economic system and social order that frustrates that capacity. The grotesque class and regional inequalities that define American social life were not born of tyrannical majorities but of reactionary and/or technocratic elites who enacted regressive tax, trade, and monetary policies, often in defiance of popular preferences. (And, of course, the most democratic features of America’s constitutional order were not what put Donald Trump in the White House; its most counter-majoritarian did.)

The study from Vavreck, Warshaw, and Baxter-King suggests that when voters are exposed to the worst consequences of Trump’s misgovernance-- not through cable news or social media but through the lived experiences of friends and neighbors-- they become more likely to hold their leaders to account. To improve and fortify our democracy, we must strive to provide Americans with the tools, information, and social institutions necessary to make the less spectacular failures of governance politically salient.

The 3 researchers concluded that "COVID-19 deaths could cost Trump and other Republicans several percentage points in the 2020 election. This could swing the presidential election toward Democrats, with particularly high effects in swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Florida. All of these states had tight margins in the 2016 presidential election. Michigan’s margin was particularly narrow (.2%) as was New Hampshire’s (.4%), suggesting that COVID-related fatalities may be consequential not only at the individual level in 2020, but also in terms of Electoral College results. In addition, a number of swing Senate elections are in states currently suffering from an explosion of COVID-19 cases, including Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas. The growing pandemic increases Republicans’ vulnerability in these crucial states. These narrow margins in recent elections, coupled with the realization that fatalities from COVID-19 are not unlike casualties of war in voters’ minds, suggest that a winning strategy for President Trump and other Republican candidates on the ballot in 2020 should be to adopt mitigation strategies to limit the spread and consequences of COVID-19 in the American population. Increasing fatalities from the disease lead to losses for Republicans."

When Will People Start Calling It What It Is-- Trump Genocide?

Poof! into thin air- by Nancy Ohanian

There are a lot of ways to interpret the data Worldometers puts out on the pandemic. One that I find useful is to look at daily new cases, which generally track future mortality. Cases per million residents is also important since it's otherwise pointless to compare a state with very few people to a state with many millions of people. But however you look at it, when it comes to U.S. states, the ones that have followed Trump's denialism are generally the ones in the worst shape.

Yesterday, for example, 16 states had more than a thousand new cases. Eleven have Republican governors and of the 5 with Democratic governors, two-- North Carolina and Louisiana-- have Trumpist state legislatures that have interfered with their ability to protect the state from the pandemic.

• Texas +9,750 (15,279 cases per million Texans)
• Florida +9,007 (21,901 cases per million Floridians)
• California +7,878 (12,703 cases per million Californians
• Georgia +4,066 (17,552 cases per million Georgians)
• Arizona +3,212 (23,907 cases per million Arizonans)
• Tennessee +3,088 (15,516 cases per million Tennesseans)
• North Carolina +2,012 (11,691 cases per million North Carolinians)
• Illinois +1,980 (14,214 cases per million Illinoians)
• Alabama +1,961 (17,891 cases per million Alabamans)
• Louisiana +1,799 (25,013 cases per million Lousianans)
• Missouri +1,547 (8,295 cases per million Missourans)
• Ohio +1,531 (7,800 cases per million Buckeyes)
• South Carolina +1,444 (17,289 cases per million South Carolinians)
• Nevada +1,264 (15,612 cases per million Nevadans)
• Maryland +1,169 (14,613 cases per million Marylanders)
• Mississippi +1,168 (19,739 cases per million Mississipans)

Most Americans blame Trump and knee-jerk Trumpist governors, particularly Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Greg Abbott (R-TX), Doug Ducey (R-AZ), Brain Kemp (R-GA) and Bill Lee (R-TN). But there were actual plans-- or semi-plans-- within the Trump White House that could have averted the catastrophe... and were sabotaged because some didn't want to see the catastrophe averted. Huh? Yep... there were some with genocidal thoughts dancing in their twisted brains. On the face, it looks like the person who needs to be tried is Jared Kushner-- and maybe he does; but not by himself.

Kushner headed "a secret project to devise a comprehensive plan that would have massively ramped up and coordinated testing for COVID-19 at the federal level," wrote Katherine Eban. He did a terrible job, but it can't all be chalked up to the incompetence that is his trademark.

Six months into the pandemic, the United States continues to suffer the worst outbreak of COVID-19 in the developed world. Considerable blame belongs to a federal response that offloaded responsibility for the crucial task of testing to the states. The irony is that, after assembling the team that came up with an aggressive and ambitious national testing plan, Kushner then appears to have decided, for reasons that remain murky, to scrap its proposal. Today, as governors and mayors scramble to stamp out epidemics plaguing their populations, philanthropists at the Rockefeller Foundation are working to fill the void and organize enough testing to bring the nationwide epidemic under control.

Inside the White House, over much of March and early April, Kushner’s handpicked group of young business associates, which included a former college roommate, teamed up with several top experts from the diagnostic-testing industry. Together, they hammered out the outline of a national testing strategy. The group-- working night and day, using the encrypted platform WhatsApp-- emerged with a detailed plan obtained by Vanity Fair.

Rather than have states fight each other for scarce diagnostic tests and limited lab capacity, the plan would have set up a system of national oversight and coordination to surge supplies, allocate test kits, lift regulatory and contractual roadblocks, and establish a widespread virus surveillance system by the fall, to help pinpoint subsequent outbreaks.

The solutions it proposed weren’t rocket science-- or even comparable to the dauntingly complex undertaking of developing a new vaccine. Any national plan to address testing deficits would likely be more on the level of “replicating UPS for an industry,” said Dr. Mike Pellini, the managing partner of Section 32, a technology and health care venture capital fund. “Imagine if UPS or FedEx didn’t have infrastructure to connect all the dots. It would be complete chaos.”

The plan crafted at the White House, then, set out to connect the dots. Some of those who worked on the plan were told that it would be presented to President Trump and likely announced in the Rose Garden in early April. “I was beyond optimistic,” said one participant. “My understanding was that the final document would make its way to the president over that weekend” and would result in a “significant announcement.”

But no nationally coordinated testing strategy was ever announced. The plan, according to the participant, “just went poof into thin air.”

The White House did not respond to Vanity Fair’s request to interview Mr. Kushner or to a detailed list of questions.

This summer has illustrated in devastating detail the human and economic cost of not launching a system of national testing, which most every other industrialized nation has done. South Korea serves as the gold standard, with innovative “phone booth” and drive-through testing sites, results that get returned within 24 hours, and supportive isolation for those who test positive, including food drop-offs.

In the U.S., by contrast, cable news and front pages have been dominated by images of miles-long lines of cars in scorching Arizona and Texas heat, their drivers waiting hours for scarce diagnostic tests, and desperate Sunbelt mayors pleading in vain for federal help to expand testing capacity. In short, a “freaking debacle,” as one top public health expert put it.

We are just weeks away from dangerous and controversial school reopenings and the looming fall flu season, which the aborted plan had accounted for as a critical deadline for establishing a national system for quickly identifying new outbreaks and hot spots.

Without systematic testing, “We might as well put duct tape over our eyes, cotton in our ears, and hide under the bed,” said Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux, research director for the Harvard Medical School Program in Global Public Policy.

Though President Trump likes to trumpet America’s sheer number of tests, that metric does not account for the speed of results or the response to them, said Dr. June-Ho Kim, a public health researcher at Ariadne Labs, a collaboration between Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who leads a team studying outlier countries with successful COVID-19 responses. “If you’re pedaling really hard and not going anywhere, it’s all for naught.”

With no bankable national plan, the effort to create one has fallen to a network of high-level civilians and nongovernmental organizations. The most visible effort is led by the Rockefeller Foundation and its soft-spoken president, Dr. Rajiv Shah. Focused and determinedly apolitical, Shah, 47, is now steering a widening and bipartisan coalition that includes three former FDA commissioners, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, a movie star, and 27 American cities, states, and tribal nations, all toward the far-reaching goal of getting to 30 million COVID-19 tests a week by autumn, up from the current rate of roughly 5.5 million a week.

“We know what has to be done: broad and ubiquitous testing tied to broad and effective contact tracing,” until a vaccine can be widely administered, Shah told Vanity Fair. “It takes about five minutes for anyone to understand that is the only path forward to reopening and recovering.” Without that, he said, “Our country is going to be stuck facing a series of rebound epidemics that are highly consequential in a really deleterious way.”

Countries that have successfully contained their outbreaks have empowered scientists to lead the response. But when Jared Kushner set out in March to solve the diagnostic-testing crisis, his efforts began not with public health experts but with bankers and billionaires. They saw themselves as the “A-team of people who get shit done,” as one participant proclaimed in a March Politico article.

Kushner’s brain trust included Adam Boehler, his summer college roommate who now serves as chief executive officer of the newly created U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, a government development bank that makes loans overseas. Other group members included Nat Turner, the cofounder and CEO of Flatiron Health, which works to improve cancer treatment and research.

A Morgan Stanley banker with no notable health care experience, Jason Yeung took a leave of absence to join the task force. Along the way, the group reached out for advice to billionaires, such as Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen.

The group’s collective lack of relevant experience was far from the only challenge it faced. The obstacles arrayed against any effective national testing effort included: limited laboratory capacity, supply shortages, huge discrepancies in employers’ abilities to cover testing costs for their employees, an enormous number of uninsured Americans, and a fragmented diagnostic-testing marketplace.

According to one participant, the group did not coordinate its work with a diagnostic-testing team at Health and Human Services, working under Admiral Brett Giroir, who was appointed as the nation’s “testing czar” on March 12. Kushner’s group was “in their own bubble,” said the participant. “Other agencies were in their own bubbles. The circles never overlapped.”

As it evolved, Kushner’s group called on the help of several top diagnostic-testing experts. Together, they worked around the clock, and through a forest of WhatsApp messages. The effort of the White House team was “apolitical,” said the participant, and undertaken “with the nation’s best interests in mind.”

And for all Kushner's tragic flaws, the plan was a good one, with the federal government coordinating distribution of test kits, overseeing a national contact-tracing infrastructure, blowing out contracts with laboratories and incompetent companies that couldn't deliver testing results but, wrote Eban, "the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it-- efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically-- and erroneously, it would turn out-- predicted the virus would soon fade away. Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

Eban wrote that "that logic may have swayed Kushner. Her expert source told her that 'It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out.'" Trump never delivered any part of the plan and instead shifted the problem of diagnostic testing almost entirely to individual states, abrogating all responsibility and telling each of the 50 states that they were on their own-- "a recipe for disaster," wrote Eban, "not just in Democratic-governed areas but across the country."

Second Spike by Nancy Ohanian

There's no doubt the decision was ultimately made by Trump with the advise of Stephen Miller, his Minister of Genocide. They thought they were smart and that lots of dead folks in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Connecticut would be a plus, especially since the pandemic was hitting minority communities hardest. But today, none of those states are being hit with large numbers of new cases or large numbers of new deaths. Trump was probably going to lose reelection anyway but he's going to drag the GOP down with him because of the way they all handled the pandemic, especially in the states where his brain trust thought it wouldn't speed to. And the most new deaths on Thursday and Friday?

• Texas- 617
• Florida- 508
• California- 305
• Arizona- 240
• Georgia- 110
• Mississippi- 100
• South Carolina- 97

Thursday and Friday saw 29 new deaths in Massachusetts, 28 in New York, 31 in New Jersey, 15 in Maryland and 7 in Connecticut. The death rates are rapidly declining in those states-- and rapidly increasing in the 6 Trump states (+ California) above.

Donald J. Trump, Bringer Of Death And Destruction

The Dakotas are Trump country. Both states are red hellholes-- 2 right-wing Republican senators each, one at-large right-wing House member each, and each has a crackpot Trumpist governor and a sociopathic state legislature controlled by the GOP. In 2016, North Dakota gave Trump a 216,133 (64.1%) to 93,526 (27.8%) landslide over Hillary. He won 51 of North Dakota's 53 counties. The two he lost, Sioux and Rolette counties are around 80% Native American. The 2016 picture in South Dakota wasn't much different. Trump beat Hillary 227,701 (61.5%) to 117,442 (31.7%). He won all but 5 of the state's 66 counties.

The biggest county in South Dakota, Minnehaha-- the closest thing to an urban center in the state-- went to Trump by a smaller margin, 53.7% to 39.1%. Today Minnehaha County is one of the worst hit COVID-county hotspots in America. Murderess Kristi Noem, playing at being governor, seemed determined to show how ideologically pure she was by refusing to recognize the coronavirus. As of Monday, the state had 2,245 confirmed cases with 150 in the hospital. 11 had died from COVID-19. Two days later there were 6 more dead and the case load had risen to 2,449. There were 2,834 cases per million, worse than France, Britain, Sweden, Germany, Canada... More than 80% of the state's cases have been tied to a local outbreak at the Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls (Minnehaha County)-- 1,880 positive tests and six deaths.

Monday North Dakota was reporting 991 cases (79 in hospital) and 19 deaths. That's 1,373 cases per million. Gov. Doug Burgum isn't considered quite as insane as Noem, but the difference is barely detectable. Yesterday the case load had risen to 1,067-- and 1,419 cases per million.

Neither of the Dakotas will be contested in November. It doesn't matter how many Dakotans become infected or die. Those are both Trump states. Yes, his job approval has waned-- but not nearly as much in most red states. According to the Morning Consult Trump Tracker, Trump's net approval since his inauguration had decreased by 14 points in North Dakota and by 11 points in South Dakota. As of February 20th, 53% approved and 44% disapproved in North Dakota and 54% approved with 44% disapproving in South Dakota. Democrats have no viable candidates for any statewide office and a pointless state Democratic Party that has long since given up the ghost in all but name.

It's not as dire in other states Trump won in 2016. Trump is a distinct underdog in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. And he is fighting for survival in states he never imagined would be up for grabs in November. Here's the net approval for 10 battleground states-- listed by the number of COVID-19 cases per million:

• Michigan- 4,057 per million-- Net approval- minus 10
• Pennsylvania- 3,586 per million-- Net approval- minus 1
• Georgia- 2,528 per million-- Net approval- +2
• Iowa- 2,281 per million-- Net approval- minus 5
• Florida- 1,636 per million-- Net approval- +3
• Ohio- 1,486 per million-- Net approval- even
• Wisconsin- 1,186 per million-- Net approval- minus 10
• Arizona- 1,101 per million-- Net approval- +1
• North Carolina- 1,035 per million-- Net approval- +4
• Texas- 1,007 per million-- Net approval- +7

Those approval ratings, were before the pandemic struck. Local polls show Trump's approval ratings have sunk in every swing state since then-- even Texas, where the crackpot Trumpist governor has virtually removed effective social distancing rules just as the pandemic is seriously getting started. Trump's approval in Texas is now underwater-- 46% approving and 49% disapproving. A Fox News poll of Florida voters last week shows Trump's unfavorables at 49% with his favorables at 48%. The most recent Arizona poll looks absolutely catastrophic for Trump:

Yesterday, Washington Post reporter Toluse Olorunnipa seemed to indicate that the only positive strategy Trump has left is to use his signature lies to persuade voters they are not worse off but better off-- or soon will be. "Before the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the country," he wrote, "President Trump’s campaign had a simple, economy-focused reelection pitch: 'Keep America Great.' Now, with the economy in free-fall less than six months before voters cast their ballots and daily life disrupted, Trump is trying a new tact: making bold new promises about a swift economic rebound that experts and even members of his own party say are unrealistic." Are Trump's supporters that simpleminded? Is the average IQ of a Trump voter significantly below 85? Well... There were substantial reporters of Trump supporters drinking bleach and other disinfectants in the last week or two-- Trump voters in New York City, in Maryland and especially in red states like Kansas and Georgia.

The president and his allies have embraced optimism as a central part of his new reelection push, offering a rosy message about a swift return to normal life despite the rising death toll and jobless claims resulting from the outbreak.

Vice President Pence predicted the virus’s impact will be largely over by Memorial Day. Much of the country will be back to normal by June, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a key campaign and White House adviser, told Fox News on Wednesday.

“The hope is that by July, the country’s really rocking again,” Kushner said.

For his part, Trump has already declared that the economy has begun a “comeback,” predicting “phenomenal” growth in the fourth quarter and arguing that he will quickly reconstruct what he describes as history’s “greatest

economy.” It’s a high-risk strategy that will require Trump to evade the political ramifications of a health crisis and a steep recession with the same sense of invulnerability that has kept his presidency afloat through numerous other controversies. As economists and health experts warn that this crisis is likely to linger longer and have a more severe impact than anything in recent memory, Trump is essentially risking his reelection on proving them wrong.

“The economists said a lot of things before Trump got elected-- and he proved all of them wrong,” said Bryan Lanza, who advised Trump’s 2016 campaign and transition. “The good news is that President Trump doesn’t give a rip about what economists think.”

But economists from his own party and within his own administration are offering sober assessments that are at odds with the lofty projections from Trump and his top aides about a year-end resurgence. On Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that the U.S. economy contracted at a 4.8 percent pace from January through March, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell indicated that the second quarter would see even steeper declines.

Even some Trump allies agree that more economic pain is ahead.

“I don’t see a quick recovery,” said Stephen Moore, a conservative writer and activist who advised Trump’s 2016 campaign. “I think it’s going to take longer than most people seem to think it will.”

Moore, who serves on the White House council to reopen the country, added that it was “perfectly appropriate” for the president to put forward an optimistic message, and said voters would be willing to back him if the economy has emerged from the deep recession and things are trending in the right direction by November.

Trump’s willingness to personalize the economy-- and the broader pandemic response-- has opened him up to criticism from Democrats, who are more than willing to draw a link between the president’s performance and the country’s struggles.

“As Trump downplayed the threat of the coronavirus, his White House was caught flat-footed by the economic fallout that resulted from his complete mismanagement of this crisis,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Daniel Wessel said Wednesday.

The White House has increasingly formed the backdrop for the president’s positive messaging campaign. In recent days, Trump has reconfigured his daily appearances at the White House to focus more on the economy than the ongoing health crisis that has killed more than 60,000 Americans and continues apace. He has hosted dozens of CEOs and small business owners, holding celebratory news conferences to tout the federal aid that has been distributed so far.

As Trump has shifted his focus toward reopening the economy, the health experts on the White House’s coronavirus task force have taken on a less prominent public role, even as their warnings about a lingering crisis have become more direct.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force’s coordinator, predicted Sunday that social distancing will continue for months, undercutting more optimistic messaging from Trump and his allies.

“Social distancing will be with us through the summer to really ensure that we protect one another,” she said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Trump counts on them to not pay any attention to the mass media, which he has worked hard to discredit from the moment he occupied the White House. It's always what fascists and authoritarians do. Matt Kiser's report yesterday would be devastating to Trump if Trump supporters read it and understood it. Top points:

• U.S. GDP contradicted 4.8% in the first quarter-- the first negative reading since the first quarter of 2014 and the worst result on record since the Great Recession of 2009. Economists say the first quarter is a precursor to a far grimmer report to come on the April-June period, with business shutdowns and layoffs striking with devastating force. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that economic activity will plunge this quarter at a 40% annual rate.
• Trump said existing coronavirus social distancing guidelines-- set to expire with the end of April-- will not be extended further. The administration said the existing social distancing recommendations will “be fading out, because now the governors are doing it.”
• Millions of municipal workers could find themselves out of a job or without pay as cities and states face an urgent financial crisis, according to a new estimate from the National League of Cities. The reductions in staffing could affect education, sanitation, safety and health, and more.
• Several states warned residents who are called back to work that they may be cut off from unemployment benefits if they refuse to return because they don’t feel safe. Concern about exposure to coronavirus is typically not a sufficient enough reason to stay home and continue collecting benefits, according to a recent guidance from the US Department of Labor.
• Jared Kushner called the coronavirus crisis “a great success story” as the U.S. death toll crossed 60,000, with more than one million COVID-19 cases confirmed. “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this,” Kushner claimed in an interview with Fox News without citing evidence. “We’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed. The federal government rose to the challenge.” Kushner also promised that that much of the country could be “back to normal” by June and for the nation to be “really rocking again” by July. [Editor’s note: Jared Kushner is a shithead.]

Moron by Chip Proser

• Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that a second round of the coronavirus is “inevitable.” He added that “we have put into place all of the countermeasures” to address the pandemic, but “If we don’t do that successfully, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter.” If states begin lifting restrictions too early, Fauci said the country could see a rebound of the virus that would “get us right back in the same boat that we were a few weeks ago.”
• Trump-- providing no evidence-- promised that the U.S. will be able to carry out more than five million coronavirus tests per day “very soon” after a Harvard University study said the U.S. needed to be capable of carrying out at least 5 million tests a day by early June-- and 20 million per day by late July-- in order to safely reopen the economy. He later claimed that he never said that, blaming it on a “media trap.” Since the beginning of the year, however, the Trump administration has conducted 5.7 million tests in total. And, the largest number of tests conducted by the U.S. in a single day was 314,182. Trump didn’t offer how his administration was going to account for the 1,500% increase in testing, but assured those at the briefing: “If you look at the numbers, it could be that we’re getting very close,” adding “I don’t know that all of that’s even necessary.” Trump also credited expanded testing for the 1 million confirmed cases of coronavirus that the U.S. has reported, saying “It’s a number that in one way sounds bad but in another is an indication our testing is more superior.” On March 6, Trump said that anyone who wanted a coronavirus test could get one. Dr. Fauci, however, said Tuesday that “Hopefully, we should see that as we get towards the end of May, the beginning of June.”
• 85% of Americans said it was a bad idea to have students return to schools without adequate testing, a vaccine or medications to treat coronavirus. Americans also said it was a bad idea to have people return to work (65%), allow large groups of people to attend sporting events (91%), and reopen restaurants (80%).

MAGA by Chip Proser

Amanda Mull had a smart way of explaining the rush to reopen businesses before health concerns warrant it: an experiment in human sacrifice. Georgia's extreme right-wing Trumpist governor, Brian Kemp, seems to want to be the first to open up, despite the disaster his orders are causing. Yesterday saw 246 new cases in Georgia, bringing the total to 25,897 (2,515 per million) and over 1,100 deaths. "For weeks," wrote Mull, "Americans have watched the coronavirus sweep from city to city, overwhelming hospitals, traumatizing health-care workers, and leaving tens of thousands of bodies in makeshift morgues. Georgia has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, and the state’s testing efforts have provided an incomplete look at how far the virus continues to spread. That testing capacity-- which public-health leaders consider necessary for safely ending lockdowns-- has lagged behind the nation’s for much of the past two months. Kemp’s move to reopen was condemned by scientists, high-ranking Republicans from his own state, and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; it even drew a public rebuke from President Donald Trump, who had reportedly approved the measures before distancing himself from the governor amid the backlash... By acting with particular haste in what he calls a crucial move to restore economic stability, Kemp has positioned Georgia at the center of a national fight over whether to stay the course with social distancing or try to return to some semblance of normalcy... Georgia’s brash reopening puts much of the state’s working class in an impossible bind: risk death at work, or risk ruining yourself financially at home. In the grips of a pandemic, the approach is a morbid experiment in just how far states can push their people. Georgians are now the largely unwilling canaries in an invisible coal mine, sent to find out just how many individuals need to lose their job or their life for a state to work through a plague."