If McConnell Thwarts Trump's Plans For A Pandemic Relief Package, Trump Can Thwart McConnell's Reelection Plans

 

2028 by Chip Proser

In her Sunday NY Times column, Maureen Dowd decided it was time to dunk McConnell into the Potomac, pointing out that he appears to have ditched Donald. It's not too late for Trump to cut a spot for Kentucky television endorsing Amy McGrath. She seems to be saying more nice things about Trump these days than McConnell is. And all Trump would have to do is give a signal to voters in backward bastions of Trumpism, hellholes like Jackson, Casey, Monroe, Leslie, Carlisle, Green, Whitley, Bell, Rockcastle, Harlan, Pike, Adair, Knox, Lewis, Allen, Laurel, Butler, Russell, Owsley, Martin, Clinton, McCreary, Crittenden, Lee, Cumberland, Johnson, Pulaski, Clay... all counties where Trump got more than 80% of the vote and is far more popular than McConnell. That would shake up the zeitgeist!





Maybe Trump is angry that McConnell implied he had cooties, but, as Dowd wrote, "McConnell did more than physically distance himself from Trump. He politically distanced himself as well, throwing cold water on the president’s whiplash-inducing reversal on a stimulus bill. After torpedoing negotiations in a tweet on Tuesday because he thought the Democrats wanted too much, the steroid-pumped president did a triple axel and tweeted to Congress to 'Go Big! I would like to see a bigger stimulus package, frankly, than either Democrats or Republicans are offering,' he told Rush Limbaugh in a manic two-hour call on Friday (during which he dropped the F bomb about Iran). I’m going the exact opposite now.' Clearly, McConnell does not want to invest whatever capital he has left in reviving Trump when the guy seems doomed. Why bring up an issue that really divides his Republican members weeks before an election that might be a wipeout-- with the Senate in the balance?"

McConnell is all about winning. He knows a loser when he sees one.

As Alex Conant, a Republican strategist, told The Times Trumpworld is at a dangerous pass: “The knives come out, the donors flee and the candidate throws embarrassing Hail Marys.”

Proving once more that there’s no bottom to how low he’ll go, McConnell explained to reporters in Kentucky that he wasn’t ready to push a stimulus deal because “the situation is kind of murky, and I think the murkiness is a result of the proximity to the election and everybody kind of trying to elbow for political advantage.”

So it’s fine to elbow for political advantage and push to replace R.B.G. with an arch conservative who would threaten health care and abortion rights in proximity to the election. But a bill that would help millions of suffering Americans as the economy goes down the tubes? Nah. That’s too murky.

As for helping the public-- and the economy-- through this phase of the pandemic... McConnell feels he's politically bullet-proof and doesn't care what Trump, the Democrats or anyone else has to say about it. He actually appears to be behaving more irrationally than Trump for a change.

Politico reporters Jake Sherman and Burgess Everett wrote that "a significant and important chunk of Senate Republicans hate everything about the package that Mnuchin is negotiating with Pelosi... Republicans aren’t taking issue with a policy or two, they’re taking issue with the entire package, the number, the scope and the policies. There doesn’t appear to be a middle ground here." The two reporters were blunt in their assessment: If Pelosi and Mnuchin come up with something, McConnell will give it-- and Trump-- the same treatment he's been giving everything that comes out of the House: "at this juncture, it has absolutely no chance of even getting brought up" in the Senate!

On CNN’s State of the Union, drug-addled Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow said he doesn't "think it’s dead at all. I spoke to Secretary Mnuchin last evening. Look, don’t forget-- Republicans in the Senate put up their own bill a few weeks ago and got 53 votes, I think it was… I think if an agreement can be reached they will go along with it."

Earth To Larry!: That bill was $300 billion and was a very heavy lift for GOP leadership. This bill is six times that. That was also a very different time in the life of this virus, Republicans say.

Ya Can't Make It Up! As Republicans freak out about the high price tag, Kudlow says Republicans are willing to go higher than their current offer!!! “He may. He may. Secretary Mnuchin is up to $1.8 trillion. So, the bid and the offer is narrowing somewhat between the two sides. President Trump actually has always said-- I mean, I have heard him say it in the Oval-- as far as the key elements are concerned, the checks, the unemployment assistance, the small business assistance-- we have got to help airlines out-- he would go further. He’s always said that. He knows that we need as much power for economic recovery as possible. It’s not just recovery in three weeks. It’s recovery to the end of the year and beyond in a possible second term. So, I think Secretary Mnuchin, who is a very good negotiator, will be carrying the president’s message.”

By the end of the day, Mnuchin and Meadows (basically, Trump) were calling on Congress to pass a relief bill using leftover funds from the paycheck protection program as negotiations on a more comprehensive package continue. They sent a letter to Pelosi and McConnell demanding that Congress "immediately vote on a bill" that would enable the use of unused Paycheck Protection Program funds while working toward a bigger package. "The all or nothing approach is an unacceptable response to the American people," they wrote.

We Know Exactly Who The Democrats Want To Bail Out-- They Passed A Bill Months Ago... What About Trump And The Republicans?

Lambchop by Nancy Ohanian

Doesn't it seem like the GOP actually wants to inflict misery on the working class? It seems that way because it is that way. McConnell purposely let the eviction moratorium and enhanced unemployment benefits expire before allowing even a discussion in the Senate about what to do to alleviate Trump's COVID-economy. While flaming asshole and coke freak Larry Kudlow was on the elitist Fox Business channel promising GOP donors "increased business deductions for meals and entertainment"-- long a self-serving priority for Trump-- as part of the relief package being thrashed out in Congress, Mnuchin told reporters that McConnell's and his proposal would reduce the expanded $600 weekly unemployment benefit to $200 a week. Asked about Mnuchin's announcement, Kudlow called it just a "technical adjustment." Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) called it something else:

Erica Werner, Jeff Stein and Seung Min Kim, reporting for the Washington Post, wrote that "Senate Republicans want to reduce the $600 payment to $200 until states can implement a new approach that would pay the unemployed 70 percent of the income they collected before they lost their jobs. The states are supposed to phase in the new formula within two months under the new GOP plan, though it’s unclear how cumbersome that process could prove to be. Many state unemployment systems are expected to have difficulty implementing the more targeted program, so the $200 weekly payment would be designed to serve as a bridge until the other changes are made. The $200 would come on top of whatever unemployment benefits states already pay, which vary but generally replace 45 percent of a worker’s wages before they lost their job." Reducing that $600 payment has been a key GOP focus of both Trump's, the Senate Republicans' and Republicans in the House.

In addition to the reduced unemployment benefits the legislation is expected to include a new round of $1,200 checks to individual Americans, billions of dollars for schools with some of the money aimed at helping classrooms reopen, and a five-year liability shield for businesses, health-care providers and others.

The legislation also includes at least $100 billion more for the small-business Paycheck Protection Program. It does not contain any new money for state and local governments-- a key Democratic demand-- but instead gives state and local leaders additional flexibility in spending the $150 billion approved in the Cares Act in March.

...“We have unemployment running out, we have renter protection running out, we have state and local governments going into a new month and won’t have the money and will lay off thousands and thousands of people,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said Monday morning on MSNBC. “We’re at all these cliffs and we still at this very moment don’t have a plan from the Republicans. We want to sit down and negotiate. But you can’t negotiate with a ghost.”

...Congressional Democrats oppose both GOP plans to curb the benefit amount and to transition the payment system to the new model. Critics point out state unemployment offices have already been overwhelmed. The National Association of State Workforce Agencies has warned in a memo circulated on Capitol Hill that targeted wage replacement could take most states “8 to 20 weeks or more” to implement from the date of the Labor Department’s guidance.

“We are skeptical that state UI infrastructure has improved dramatically since the CARES Act given how overloaded the system has been,” Evercore ISI, which conducts market research, said in a Monday note.

Julie Oliver (TX) and Kara Eastman (NE) are both running against Trump enablers who the came close to dislodging in 2018. Each has a great chance to do so in November. I asked them to give me their takes on the way the relief package is moving. "Pay and benefits for tens of millions of American workers," said Julie, "was too low before the pandemic. Millions of people have lost their jobs. Now, instead of getting Texans the relief necessary to stay afloat, Roger Williams wants to end the $600 UI extension and let your boss allow you to get coronavirus. And that's after he funneled millions in undisclosed taxpayer bailout funds to his own personal business in Weatherford. We need real relief, and we need it now. Direct cash payments, moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, and a suspension of consumer debt collection, rent and mortgage payments. We're facing an unemployment crisis, eviction crisis, a health crisis, a child care crisis, and a business failure crisis, all feeding each other at once. We need someone fighting for the people in this district in Congress, not someone only in it to help himself.

Kara Eastman's incumbent is a lot like Julie's-- a big waste of a seat. She told that "Unfortunately, Rep. Bacon is aligned with the Republican approach. He voted 'no' on the HEROES Act, and has repeatedly stated that the government is spending too much on COVID relief. That's funny, because he seemed to be fine with the $1.5 trillion giveaway to corporations and wealthy interested in the 2017 tax bill. He voted 'yes' then and still brags about it. My approach is different: we need to listen to the people who are struggling because they can't pay rent, are losing their unemployment, and are juggling between putting food on the table and paying bills."

Cathy Kunkel is running for office for the first time. Republicans in West Virginia would be smart to hear what she's saying: "Thousands of West Virginians are still struggling in this ongoing economic depression-- and as WV utilities start processing shutoffs over the next month, this pain will intensify. Now is not the time to cut pandemic unemployment compensation. Clearly Senate leadership is more interested in pursuing their ongoing war on working class and poor Americans than in getting us out of this economic depression-- which requires getting money into the hands of people who will actually spend it, not Wall St billionaires."

We're America-- This Virus Cannot Beat Us... Right?

Reopening by Nancy Ohanian

On Friday, America's most consistent Prophet of Wrong, coke-freak Larry Kudlow, told the Fox & Friends crew that "There is no emergency. There is no second wave. I don’t know where that got started on Wall Street."

Although Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, acknowledged he is “not the health expert," he said he had spoken with the administration’s top public health officials “at some length” Thursday evening. “They are saying there is no second spike. Let me repeat that. There is no second spike,” he said.

Second Spike by Nancy Ohanian

“What you do have is certain spots are seeing a little bit of a jump up. Some small metropolitan areas are seeing it. The CDC and the health people are all over it. They’ve sent some task forces out to deal with it,” Kudlow added, partly attributing increases in Covid-19 cases to more widespread testing availability.

Kevin Hassett, another top economic adviser to the White House, told Fox News he had spoken to Dr. Deborah Birx, the administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, earlier Wednesday morning, and conceded “there are some embers flaring up in a few places.”

Hassett specifically cited incoming data from Arizona and South Carolina as showing “some cause for concern,” but remained largely dismissive of the notion of a second wave of the coronavirus.

“For sure, the battle is not over,” he said. “But the trends that have been so positive in recent weeks, we’ve not deviated sharply from them-- although there are some hotspots around the country.”

The remarks from the two top aides come as new coronavirus hotspots continue to emerge across the United States, with 18 states reporting an increase in Covid-19 case counts, including spikes in Arizona, Florida and Texas. Additionally, hospitalizations have been rising rapidly in at least nine states since Memorial Day.

As we've been saying, early states like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan and Connecticut has cut their new daily case loads down dramatically, states that have followed Trumpian advice to pretend there is no pandemic are paying dearly now. With New York at 893 new cases Saturday and New Jersey at 642, some of the worst spiking situations in the country are in states with Trumpist governors:

• Texas +2,012
• Florida +1,902
• Arizona +1,654
• Georgia +810
• Alabama +865

And most of the states with the big increases in cases per million in their populations are also states with Trumpist governors who ignored scientists' warnings and based pandemic response on Trump Regime happy-talk instead:

• Nebraska- 8,536 cases per million
• Iowa- 7,401
• South Dakota- 6,491
• Mississippi- 6,415
• Georgia- 5,254
• Alabama- 4,836
• Arizona- 4,523
• Tennessee- 4,265
• Utah- 4,235
• North Dakota- 3,958
• New Hampshire- 3,862
• Florida- 3,304
• Texas- 2,948

Relatively speaking, neither blue state Oregon (total cases-- 5,377 (1,275 cases per million) nor red state Utah (total cases-- 13,577 (4,235 cases per million) has had a bad first round pandemic and in the last couple of weeks, both started the process of reopening. Unlike much worse off states, both have now paused the reopening process, despite howls of protest from deranged Trumpists.

"This is essentially a statewide ‘yellow light.’ It is time to press pause for one week before any further reopening,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) said in a statement Thursday evening.

“I will work with doctors and public health experts to determine whether to lift this pause or extend it or make other adjustments,” she added.

...In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert (R) said during a Thursday night press conference most of the state would remain in the “yellow” phase of the reopening plan for the time being, which allows all businesses to open, including for in-door dining services.

While those measures are generally less restrictive than what other states have done to slow the spread of COVID-19, Herbert pointed out, he added Utah needs to pause further reopening efforts as it investigates the rise in new cases.

Most of the state had already moved past the red and orange phases of reopenings, which had more restrictive measures in place. The state has confirmed more than 13,000 cases since the pandemic began, including 131 deaths.

“I don’t want to go forward and then take a step backward,” Herbert said.

Governors in other states seeing increases in COVID-19 cases-- including Florida and Arizona-- have indicated they will continue with their reopening efforts.

North Carolina has a Democratic governor and a lunatic fringe Republican legislature always looking to infringe on his constitutional prerogatives. The legislators have been opposed to all of his efforts to protect the state and have encouraged their followers to disregard safety measures. On Friday, Newsweek reported that the sate might "re-implement a stay-at-home orders if coronaviruses cases continue to increase, according to the head of the state's health department. 'If we need to go back to stay-at-home [orders], we will,' Department of Health Secretary Mandy Cohen told NPR's Morning Edition. "I hope we don't have to. I think there are things we can do before we have to get there, but yes, we are concerned.' Cohen's comments come as the state is in the second phase of its reopening plan, which began on May 22 after the state lifted its stay-at-home order. But data from the health department show coronavirus cases are on the rise. North Carolina saw its largest increase in cases just a day after the order was lifted, 1,107 on May 23, the health department reported. But this number has since been surpassed on five different occasions. There were over 1,100 newly confirmed cases on May 30, June 4, June 5 and June 11, with a new record number for a single day, 1,370, on June 6.

With Trump threatening to come to North Carolina to hold his campaign hate rallies, Cohen said that "the data and science tells us that mass gatherings are one of the most concerning kinds of activities related to viral spread-- right?-- when lots of people close together can spread this virus. And we have seen that happen here in our state where there have been gatherings that have spread the virus. So right now, we are asking our folks in North Carolina: If you've been to a mass gathering like a protest or going back to church, we want you to get tested. We think that that is exposure. We think that that's a risk. And we want folks to get tested. So am worried about mass gatherings. For us in North Carolina, our rules still are that we do not want to have any mass gatherings. [W]e want to make sure that we are particularly focused on getting people to wear face coverings, wait 6 feet apart and wash their hands. There are individual actions that people can take right now, and I think they're so important. We really need to get our testing up. And then we need to trace folks. And folks need to stay isolated and stay home if they're sick."

Yesterday, in an ominously titled essay-- The Virus Will Win-- for The Atlantic Yascha Mounk addressed the lack of political will tragically being demonstrated by America's bankrupt political elites. Contradicting the clueless Kudlow, he wrote that "A second wave of the coronavirus is on the way. When it arrives, we will lack the will to deal with it. Despite all the sacrifices of the past months, the virus is likely to win-- or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it already has. In absolute terms, the United States has been hit harder than any other country. About a quarter of worldwide deaths have been recorded on these shores. And while the virus is no longer growing at an exponential rate, the threat it poses remains significant: According to a forecasting model by Morgan Stanley, the number of American cases will, if current trends hold, roughly double over the next two months."

But neither the impact of mass protests over police brutality nor the effect of the recent reopening of much of the country-- including the casinos in Las Vegas-- is reflected in the latest numbers. It can take at least 10 days for people to develop symptoms and seek out a test, and for the results to be aggregated and disseminated by public-health authorities.

Even so, the disease is slowly starting to recede from the public’s attention. After months of dominating media coverage, COVID-19 has largely disappeared from the front pages of most national newspapers. In recent polls, the number of people who favor “reopening the economy as soon as possible” over “staying home as long as necessary” has increased. And so it is perhaps no surprise that even states where the number of new infections stands at an all-time high are pressing ahead with plans to lift many restrictions on businesses and mass gatherings.

When the first wave of COVID-19 was threatening to overwhelm the medical system, back in March, the public’s fear and uncertainty were far more intense than they are now. So was the reason to hope that some magic bullet might rescue us from the worst ravages of the disease.

At this point, such hopes look unrealistic. After months of intense research, an effective treatment for COVID-19 still does not exist. A vaccine is, even if we get lucky, many months away from deployment. Because the virus is spreading especially rapidly in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, from Latin America to Africa, heat is clearly no impediment to its dissemination.

Perhaps most important, it is now difficult to imagine that anybody could muster the political will to impose a full-scale lockdown for a second time. As one poll in Pennsylvania found, nearly nine out of 10 Republicans trusted “the information you hear about coronavirus from medical experts” back in April. Now just about one in three does. With public opinion more polarized than it was a few months ago, and the presidential election looming, any attempt to deal with a resurgence of the virus is likely to be even more haphazard, contentious, and ineffective than it was the first time around.

In the fullness of time, many books will be written about why a country as rich, powerful, and scientifically advanced as the United States failed quite so badly at coping with a public-health emergency that experts had predicted for many years. As is always the case, competing explanations will quickly emerge. Some will focus on the incompetence of the Trump administration, while others will draw attention to the country’s loss of state capacity; some will argue that the United States is an outlier, while others will put its failure in the context of other countries, such as Brazil and Russia, that are also faring poorly.

...If the virus wins, it is because Donald Trump was more interested in hushing up bad news that might hurt the economy than in saving American lives.

If the virus wins, it is because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, created to deal with just this kind of emergency, has proved to be too bureaucratic and incompetent to do its job.

If the virus wins, it is because the White House did not even attempt to put a test-and-trace regime into place at the federal level.

...If the virus does win, then, it is because American elites, experts, and institutions have fallen short-- and continue to fall short-- of the grave responsibility with which they are entrusted in ways too innumerable to list.

...Scientists have desperately searched for a vaccine. Despite the real risks to their health, doctors, nurses, cooks, cleaners, and clerical staff have reported for duty in their hospitals. Suddenly declared “essential,” workers who have long enjoyed little respect and low wages helped to keep society afloat.

For the rest of us, the order of the day was simply to stay at home and slow the spread. It was a modest task, which made it all the more galling that some people fell short. But this nitpick obscures how many people did do what they could to get us all through the crisis: They checked in with their relatives and cooked for the elderly. They took to their balconies to thank health-care workers or sang songs to cheer up the neighbors. By and large, they stayed at home and slowed the spread.

Thanks to the effort of millions of people, we were close to a great success story. But because of the failures of Trump and Chauvin, of the CDC and the WHO, of public-health experts and Fox News hosts, we are, instead, likely to give up—and tolerate that hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens will die needless deaths.

Pandemics reveal the true state of a society. Ours has come up badly wanting.

The Trump Regime Still Doesn't Understand How To Flatten The Curve-- Or Doesn't Want To Understand

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Wisconsin have been ticking up among people who were forced by the Republican Party to take part in an in-person primary election on April 7. The state's cases per million goes up everyday and shot up beyond 1,000 cases per million in the population. As of yesterday, there were 6,520 confirmed cases, up 231 since Tuesday. The rate per million increased from 1,088 to 1,128. On Monday Politico reported that at least 36 Wisconsin voters and poll workers had been infected. Yesterday that number was 52-- in-person voters and poll workers according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. They should join in a class action law suit against the Wisconsin Republican Party.

Like his father-in-law, Jared Kushner is lying his ass off about testing, as he did on Fox and Friends yesterday, where he also claimed that much of the country could be "back to normal" by June. "We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this. The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story... I think what you’ll see in May as the states are reopening now is May will be a transition month, you’ll see a lot of states starting to phase in the different reopening based on the safety guidelines that President Trump outlined on April 19. I think you’ll see by June that a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the country’s really rocking again." Rocking? Like Hootie and the Blowfish? Nickelback? Hanson? That kind of rocking?

In early February, another clueless Trumpist, coke-fiend Larry Kudlow, Trump's top economic advisor, was on Fox mansplaining the pandemic to the viewers: "The impact on the American economy will be very, very, very small, if any… We really haven’t seen any economic impact. There may be some out there. Our own internal numbers say maybe two-tenths of a percent in the first quarter, but that’s not going to end this growth cycle." The growth cycle was Obama's 11 year economic expansion-- which Trump's incompetence, dysfunction and greed, as well as his agenda, have finally killed off, producing the deepest recession in almost a century.

As far as tests per million in their populations, forget Kushner-in-law's blatant, shameless lies-- here are 20 countries doing a better job at this than the dishonest and unscrupulous Trump regime:

• Iceland- 139,411
• UAE- 113,443
• Kuwait- 41,915
• Portugal- 37,223
• Israel- 36,177
• Qatar- 31,730
• Italy- 31,603
• Norway- 31,197
• Ireland- 31,179
• Denmark- 31,087
• Spain- 30,253
• Switzerland- 30,100
• Austria- 27,509
• Germany- 24,738
• Singapore- 24,600
• Russia- 22,630
• Czechia- 21,943
• Australia- 21,350
• Canada- 19,999
• Belgium- 19,563
• Trumpistan- 18,154

Time Magazine noted the response from Admiral Brett Giroir, Trump's own assistant secretary of health who is in charge of the government’s testing response: "There is absolutely no way on Earth, on this planet or any other planet, that we can do 20 million tests a day, or even five million tests a day."

Trump insists on the kind of false happy-talk from clowns like Kushner. And no doubt he was brooding over Giroir yesterday, as well as Anthony Fauci's assessment that a second round is inevitable. "If by that time we have put into place all of the countermeasures that you need to address this, we should do reasonably well. 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 says he predicts 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," adding that the country could see many more deaths than are currently predicted.

So far, more than 1 million Americans have been infected and at least 58,355 60,495 have died. A leading model predicts more than 72,000 people will die in the US by early August.

The sobering numbers come as some states move to reopen despite warnings from federal health officials.

Being able to test for the virus, track cases and isolate every infected American will be key factors in ensuring that second wave isn't as deadly, Fauci says.

The US continues to lag behind in testing, according to a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The nation has performed 16.4 tests per 1,000 people, according to the report. Spain and Italy, with the second and third highest number of cases after the US, have conducted 22.3 and 29.7 tests per 1,000 people respectively.

I've been hearing about how airlines do not require passengers to where masks-- hard to believe but now confirmed in that same CNN report: "Since officials have now recommended Americans wear face masks in public to prevent further spread, some airlines say they'll provide the masks for passengers. American Airlines and United Airlines both said they'll be providing masks for passengers beginning in May. 'We are not mandating that passengers wear a mask however we strongly encourage travelers follow CDC guidance to wear a face covering when social distancing is difficult,' United Airlines spokesperson Nicole Carriere told CNN. 'By providing the masks, we're making it that much easier for them to do so.'" Why not just say, "no mask, no fly," the way airlines in normal countries do?

Why Trump Actually Does Want To Make Overt Corporate Bribery Legal

Earlier today, we looked at how Trump is changing housing laws to normalize his own-- and his family's-- endemic racism. But that isn't the only law he's changing to justify his own ugly behavior patterns. Writing Sunday for HuffPo, Mary Papenfuss warned that Trump wants to change the laws that make foreign bribery illegal. Trump literally wants to change the statute making it illegal for American corporations to bribe foreign officials! Larry Kudlow admitted the regime is looking into changing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Kudlow, a notorious coke addict who works for Trump: "I would just say: We are aware of it, we are looking at it, and we’ve heard complaints from some of our companies. I don’t want to say anything definitive policy-wise, but we are looking at it."

The new blockbuster by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, A Very Stable Genius, quotes Señor Trumpanzee whining to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, "It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas. We’re going to change that."

The book is a scathing portrayal of Trump as an ill-informed, reckless, explosive bully. The passage published by The Post involves an attempt by military leaders and Tillerson to provide an extended briefing for the president early in his administration to educate him about such issues as American history, alliances and even the location of nations. Trump, who repeatedly barked during the briefing that other countries have to start paying up for American defense help, suddenly blasted the officials as a “bunch of dopes and babies,” the authors reported. It was after that meeting that Tillerson called the president a “fucking moron,” according to the book, which was reported at the time.

The book comes out tomorrow. I bet it goes to #1 on the New York Times best seller list-- but not the same way Trumpanzee, Jr.'s book wound up on the best seller list.

Cornered by Nancy Ohanian

During the 2016 campaign, I visited Azerbaijan and went to the scandal-ridden Trump Tower in Baku, which was in a strange and inaccessible part of town and which never fully opened and was then completely shut down when the CIA explained-- in no uncertain terms-- to candidate Trump that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibited many things, including the hotel's money-laundering arrangements with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, whose head, Qasem Soleimani, Trump had assassinated a little over 2 weeks ago.

Trump has wanted to repeal the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act-- which he was calling "a horrible law" years before he ran for office-- since the day he wormed his way into the White House. One of Trump's first appointments was a egregiously crooked Wall Street defense attorney and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act opponent, Jay Clayton, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, which, among other things Claytron should be nowhere near, enforces the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Putting Clayton in charge of policing Wall Street was one of the most classic fox-guarding-the-hen-house moves Trump has made. When the Democrats tried filibustering his nomination, every Republican plus 10 conservative and generally pro-corruption Democrats voted to shut it down. The Democraps who guaranteed Clayton's confirmation were:

• Michael Bennet (CO), consistently the single least popular of all the Democratic candidates for president this year
• Tom Carper (DE), the Senate's current version of Status Quo Joe
• Maggie Hassan (NH), a hopelessly out of her depth hack
• Heidi Heitkamp (ND), who was defeated for reelection the following year
• Joe Manchin (WV), who was the most pro-Trump Democrat in the Senate until Kyrsten Sinema was elected in 2018
• Claire McCaskill (MO), who was defeated for reelection the following year and was then immediately hired by Comcast TV to help degrade progressives and progressive ideas
• Bill Nelson (FL), who was defeated for reelection the following year
• Jeanne Shaheen (NH), see Hassan, Maggie
• John Tester (MT), worried about reelection
• John Warner (VA), a natural Republican with an incongruous "D" next to his name

Anyway, do you remember Adam Davidson's powerful exposé in March of 2017, Trump's Worst Deal, all about his crooked deal in Baku? To understand why Trump hates the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as much as he does, just read Davidson's New Yorker piece, which really is wonderful. Trump's partners in the money launderings scheme with Soleimani was Azerbaijan's premier mafia family: "The Azerbaijanis behind the project were close relatives of Ziya Mammadov, the Transportation Minister and one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs. According to the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, Azerbaijan is among the most corrupt nations in the world. Its President, Ilham Aliyev, the son of the former President Heydar Aliyev, recently appointed his wife to be Vice-President. Ziya Mammadov became the Transportation Minister in 2002, around the time that the regime began receiving enormous profits from government-owned oil reserves in the Caspian Sea. At the time of the hotel deal, Mammadov, a career government official, had a salary of about twelve thousand dollars, but he was a billionaire... But the Mammadov family, in addition to its reputation for corruption, has a troubling connection that any proper risk assessment should have unearthed: for years, it has been financially entangled with an Iranian family tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideologically driven military force. In 2008, the year that the tower was announced, Ziya Mammadov, in his role as Transportation Minister, awarded a series of multimillion-dollar contracts to Azarpassillo, an Iranian construction company. Keyumars Darvishi, its chairman, fought in the Iran-Iraq War. After the war, he became the head of Raman, an Iranian construction firm that is controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. government has regularly accused the Guard of criminal activity, including drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad, and money laundering. Reuters recently reported that the Trump Administration was poised to officially condemn the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization."

Can Congressional Republicans Talk Trump Down From Starting A Trade War With Mexico?

McConnell and Child by Nancy Ohanian

With Señor Trumpanzee away making a fool of himself in Europe, Senate Republicans are hissing and snarling in a way they would never do if he were in town. Even the queen of toadies, Mitch McTurtle, warned that Senate Republicans-- he believes he, rather than Trump-- speaks for them oppose his threats to levy a massive tax on the American people via a system of economically unjustifiable tariffs against Mexico. On Tuesday, McTurtle was unimpressed by a couple of random White House left-behinds-- deputy counsel Pat Philbin and Assistant Attorney General Steve Engel-- who laid out the case for tariffs. John Kennedy (R-LA), basically said the two schlemiels were a joke. "Both bright guys, but they don’t have decision-making authority. What I’m hoping we can do is when the president gets back from the U.K. we can all sit down and try to figure out how to move forward together." McTurtle's #2, John Cornyn (R-TX), agreed: "The problem is we didn’t have the decision makers there. The president and half his Cabinet [are] over in Europe, and obviously the clock is ticking. Time’s wasting. What we need to do is get in front of the president and have that conversation."

When McTurtle left, he told reporters "there is not much support in my conference for tariffs, that's for sure." One of his cronies from Oklahoma add that Trumpanzee "is trying to use tariffs to solve every problem but HIV and climate change." (I would love to hear Pelosi or Chuck recycle that one some time.) Ron Johnson (R-WI) warned that this time the Senate will override his veto, boasting that Trump "ought to be concerned about another vote of disapproval on another national emergency act, this time trying to implement tariffs. Tariffs are not real popular in the Republican Conference. This would be a different vote… This would certainly give me great pause."

Romney went even further: "When it comes to applying a tariff to Mexico, I for one would not support that. I do not favor tariffs being applied to friends like Mexico. If there’s a vote I think it’s a very difficult vote for those of us who oppose tariffs. I would not be inclined to vote [for] a tariff against a friend."

Over in London, Trumpanzee, claimed the tariffs will go into effect on Monday and that he has "tremendous Republican support." Ted Cruz told the two Trump messenger boys that the tariffs have virtually no support. This was also when he was claiming massive crowds turned out to cheer his arrival in London:

Bloomberg News' two Jennies reported that McTurtle told the two goof balls at the White House that Trump must hold off on the tariffs until Senate Republicans can sit him down face to face and educate him on what they would mean politically and economically. Trump claims this is a quote from poor Kevin McCarthy, who never said any such thing. But now McCarthy doesn't have the cajones to stand up for himself and publicly say what he's already saying privately-- that Trump made up the quote out of the blue and didn't even run it by him!

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is a far worse toadie than even McTurtle and he urged his conference to stop criticizing the Trumpanzee trade wars in a blur of convoluted reasoning: "At the end of the day we should support the president so we can get an agreement so we don't have tariffs. Them talking about not supporting him undercuts his ability to do that." In other words: just let join do whatever he wants; he's much smarter than we are. Ironically, McCarthy's own state would be hurt far worse than most states in the trade war with Mexico gets rolling-- hundreds of dollars annually in extra costs to families and at least 50,000 lost jobs.

At one time-- way back in 2015/16-- it might have been Larry Kudlow who could talk Trump down. At the time, he was taped saying Trump's trade policies would lead to a depression and cause "incalculable damage" to the economy. "Donald Trump, he is a protectionist. He will jack up tariffs and those are higher tax rates and they will pose incalculable damage on our economy. He will destroy the dollar. That's basically been his message, if anybody cares to look at it... "You slap a 25%, 35% tariff on our leading trading partners like Mexico and China. We may not like them, sir, but tariffs and protectionism is not the answer... It will do incalculable damage to the American economy. Okay? We will cut off our nose to spite our face and that is not the right policy... We don't need this. This will backfire on America and the rest of the world... "He wants to stop trading with China. He wants to stop trading with Mexico. Lord knows who else he wants to stop trading with. These are huge trading partners of ours. There are political issues that need to be resolved, but you never cut off your nose to spite your face, do you? That's what Trump is doing. Too many Republicans are flirting with protectionism. Protectionism is anti-growth, protectionism, protectionism led to the depression of the 1930s. Lower tariffs equals lower taxes equals growth. In the 1930s high tariffs, Smoot-Hawley tariffs, equals high taxes, equals depression. It's that simple. Too many Republicans on the campaign trail are flirting with protectionism. Trump is the worst, but he's not the only one... This anti-immigration thing has gone way too far. For example, Donald Trump is blaming the government of Mexico several times for sending us these terrible people. First of all, the government of Mexico has nothing to do with sending us anybody. It's not the government of Mexico, let's remember this before we get so protectionist, the United States and Mexico have very close relations. They're an important partner. They are our second biggest export market, right? Our third biggest trading market after Canada and Japan and China rather. And literally, literally millions of Americans go to Mexico for tourism and vacation and millions of American retirees live in Mexico because it's cheaper and rather pleasant. How's this guy going to negotiate with anybody, whether it's China, whether it's Vladimir Putin, whether it's the mullahs. He can't even get the story right on Mexico. He can't even distinguish between the good and bads on Mexico." 

Kudlow, now Trumpanzee's chief economic advisor, is singing from a very different hymnal these days.

How Many More Seats In Congress Will The Democrats Win Because Of Trump's Trade War?

The big Politico headline early yesterday morning, Trump disputes impact of tariffs on American consumers, but warns China not to retaliate, was instantly controversial on two levels. First... well, just watch the chief Trumpanzee economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, admitting that his boss, Señor Trumpanzee, doesn't know shit from shinola about the impact of the trade war he's waging against China and American consumers and producers.

The second part of the Politico headline-- his absurd warning to China about not retaliating-- went down in flames as well. Washington Post: China said it will raise tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods effective June 1. That's what happens in a trade war-- tit for tatted everyone suffers as it inevitably escalates. The announcement of the retaliation by China sent world stock markets plummeting. The Dow was almost instantly down 600 points.

China is targeting U.S. agriculture, which has already been bearing the brunt of Trump's trade war. China knows that if Trump's support in rural areas starts to dissipate, his reelection bid is over. It's not just farmers in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa who can swing the 2020 election; peanut farmers in Georgia, wheat farmers in Kansas and Nebraska, poultry farmers in North Carolina and Arkansas are getting fed up-- and not seeing any of the financial relief Trump promised months ago.



What a terrible day for the news to break that former Illinois congressman, Bobby Schilling (R) is going to run for the open Iowa seat (IA-02) being given up by Democrat Dave Loebsack! "I'm a business man," Schilling said. "I won't make a decision to run unless I'm absolutely sure I can win it. ... I'm 98 percent there." The district, which includes Iowa City, Davenport and Burlington is 60% rural and hurting badly from the Trump trade wars. Obama had won the district twice but Hillary was the completely wrong candidate for the voters there and Trump took it 49.1% to 45.0%. Last year Loebsack was reelected 54.8-42.6% and won the 3 biggest counties in the district-- Scott, Johnson and Clinton-- with margins big enough to overcome big GOP majorities in the small, rural counties-- Wayne, Decatur, Lucas, Keokuk, Mahaska-- counties that are likely to react badly to Republicans next year with Trump on the top of the ticket. These are also exactly the kind of counties that Republican Joni Ernst will be depending on for her Senate race.

Meanwhile, it looks like the ignoramus is stumbling into a two-front war. His trade war now is against the whole world-- not Russia, of course. By the end of the week he's expected to announce a 25% tariff against European-made cars, not just exotic brands like Rolls Royce, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Ferrari, and Bugatti, but also against more commonly U.S.-sold cars by Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Fiat, Volvo, Land Rover, Audi and Jaguar. Our allies--or at least our pre-Trump allies-- in the E.U are putting the finishing touches on a list of American goods to target with retaliatory tariffs, likely designed to hurt Trump politically in red states.

Trump's response to China yesterday was to threaten more tariffs. This kind of thing is inevitable when you elect-- or Putin installs-- a dim-witted, unread school yard bully as "president." ZeroHedge:

Trump must be confused about who pays custom duties (or maybe he can't break the news to the deadbeat consumer ahead of an election year), as the US imposes increased tariff rates on Chinese goods. The tax is levied at the time of import and is paid by the American importer of record, and then passed onto consumers.

A new report from Oxford Economics, revealed that the 25% tariff rate on $200 billion in goods imports from China would cost the economy $62 billion in economic output by next year, which translates to an equivalent loss of $490 per household.

The research firm estimates that a tariff on all imports from China would cost the economy about $100 billion by 2020, which translates to an equivalent loss of $800 per household.

The announced tariffs have come at a somewhat inconvenient time for the economy.

Economic growth is rapidly decelerating besides Kudlow's bullish propaganda remarks, and the US faces continued headwinds from monetary policy tightening and actual fiscal drag in 2020.

Trump has stated that trade wars are "good and easy to win" and believes tariffs are the only solution to force China to make a deal.

The effects of the trade war are being felt by industries across the country, from farmers in the Midwest to auto manufacturers in the Rust Belt.

Senator Rand Paul told host George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that he's "very concerned" that the trade war will depend and end up hurting consumers, farmers, and manufacturers.

"I know of a big company that told me that the tax cuts specifically helped them but that the tariffs are almost equal in punishing them," Paul said, referring to the Republican-led tax overhaul passed in 2017. "The farmers in Kentucky are concerned about the tariffs, and I've talked to the administration about this. . . . The longer we're involved in a tariff battle or a trade war, the better chance there is that we could actually enter into a recession because of it."

Henry M. Paulson Jr., who was treasury secretary under President George W. Bush, spoke with "Face the Nation" on Sunday and said, "we don't have many good tools" to pressure China into a deal but warned tariffs aren't an ideal choice.

"They're a tax on the American consumer," said Paulson. He added: "Will it hurt us? If this persists too long, it will. There'll be a cost to it."

If President Trump ever admitted to his base that they were the ones paying the tariffs, not the Chinese, well, his base would be in an uproar, could jeopardize his 2020 run. So in the meantime, President Trump is keeping the American people content with fake news tweets while slowly pushing out Kudlow to spill the beans.

This is part of the note my financial advisor sent me yesterday evening: "Escalations in trade tensions between the U.S. and China continued to startle the markets. A trade deal was not reached Friday, and as a result, higher tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods went into effect. As expected, China announced that it will retaliate by raising tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods effective June 1... The markets reacted to the continuing uncertainty, and the major indices tumbled Monday on fears that higher tariffs will limit economic and corporate growth. Not only was there disappointment of no deal, but the growing size of potential tariffs appears to have changed the direction of the discussion. The risk that this could be a harbinger of more challenging discussions with Japan and Europe over auto imports increases uncertainty... The next move is likely the official initiation of a 25% tariff on an additional $325 billion of Chinese imports by the U.S., which will likely invite an additional Chinese response and more negative headlines. As a result, the equity markets may see more volatility in the foreseeable future." So... yesterday, the Dow closed down 617 points down. The NASDAQ was down 269.9 points. Watch CNN's take on Trumpanzee's "false economics" and how his trade war is going to hurt Sen. Susan Collins' reelection chances next year:

Will The Economy Keep Trump From Being Impeached? It Shouldn't

Yesterday, the NY Times reported that senior Republican Party leaders are now urging their most imperiled incumbents to speak out about the wrongdoing surrounding Señor Trumpanzee. Tom Cole (R-OK) offered an example of what some sinking GOP congressmembers in swing districts-- like Bruce Poliquin in Maine, Mimi Walters in California, Cathy McMorris Rodgers in Washington or Don Bacon in Nebraska could say: "Where there’s smoke, and there’s a lot of smoke, there may well be fire." The Times noted that "By urging some candidates to speak out or at least stay silent, Republican leaders who gravely fear losing control of the House risked opening the first significant rift between the Trump White House and the Republican-controlled Capitol."

Jared Golden, the progressive Democrat running for the Maine seat currently held by the Poliquin GOP leaders are so worried about told us that he believes "all leaders should be held accountable and no one is above the law. Voters are concerned about the culture of corruption in Washington, from the indictment of members of Congress for insider trading, the misuse of campaign funds for personal vacations, or possible campaign finance violations by the Trump campaign, voters are losing faith in our democracy. Restoring that faith in our government must be a top priority."

Señor T, of course is trying to turn the narrative in his favor. He seems to have asked Fox to have the blankest of their blank slates interview him-- and they found her yesterday.

EARHARDT: What grade do you give yourself so far?

TRUMP: So I give myself an A+.

...I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job. If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor. Because without this thinking [points to head] you would see, you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.

Jared Bernstein may have been glad he asked-- because Joe Biden's chief economic advisor and the Obama administration's most progressive economist had just answered that question in a Washington Post piece. Like Trumpanzee, one of the regime's top economic advisors, TV reality show economist (and drug addict) Larry Kudlow, had claimed in a cabinet meeting last Thursday that the economy is "crushing it," thanks to the leadership of the great Señor T (giving him "credit for trends that were largely ongoing before he took office"). Bernstein decided to drill down into the evidence for this “crushing it” claim. "Who’s actually getting ahead in the Trump economy" is what Bernstein wanted to get to. And he did-- much better than a clown like Kudlow, let alone his boss, ever could.

To telegraph our punchline, while the tight labor market is highly welcomed, real hourly pay for most workers remains flat. In contrast, corporate profits and equity markets truly are crushing it, both on a pre- and especially, given the large business tax cuts, a post-tax basis. There’s also no evidence of an investment boom, suggesting the recent, above-trend growth in GDP is Keynes, not Laffer-- meaning the deficit spending is providing a temporary boost but will not have lasting, positive impacts for long-term economic growth.

Starting with wages, since Trump took office, the real hourly wage for the 82 percent of the workforce that’s blue collar in factories and non-managers in services is up half-a-percent, an extra 11 cents per hour. In nominal terms-- before accounting for inflation-- the growth of mid-level pay has picked up a bit, as we’d expect with such low unemployment. But inflation, largely driven by higher energy costs, has also sped up, cancelling out any real gains.

If energy prices come down and unemployment continues to fall, real wage growth for mid-wage workers will improve. But the magnitude of their gains will likely be nothing close to the administration’s claim that the tax cut would add at least $4,000 to annual earnings within a few years of the legislation.

Remember, its promise was for $4,000 above whatever baseline gains in wages would be expected without the tax cut. In President Barack Obama’s second term, real annual wage growth for mid-wage workers was about 1 percent, so call that the baseline. Meeting the administration’s goal requires another 2 percent real growth on top of that, or 3 percent per year. They are not even in the ballpark to achieve that.

Sticking with the tax cut, its proponents main claim was that the big corporate cuts would generate more business investment, which would lead to faster productivity growth, which would position us for higher paying jobs. So far, every link in that chain is broken.

Business investment is growing, as we’d expect in an economy operating close to full capacity. But its growth rate is not faster now than at various points earlier in the expansion. There’s been a modest uptick in investment in structures (such as plants, offices, wells, mine shafts, warehouses) in the first half of 2018, but, as economist Dean Baker has shown, the growth in such investment was due to higher energy prices generating increased investment in mining for oil and natural gas. While mining investment has increased by 36.7 percent over the last year, it rose by 47.3 percent from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, when the Obama administration was still enforcing environmental laws. In both cases ,the key factor was rising world oil prices.

It takes time to plan investments, so it’s too soon to conclude the tax cuts haven’t made a difference. But none of the surveys of companies’ investment plans show any plans to ratchet up capital spending, including the Commerce Department’s monthly data on orders for capital equipment, the National Federation of Independent Businesses’ survey on plans for capital expenditures, and investment surveys by regional Federal Reserve Banks.

What is clear is that firms are using their tax windfalls to boost share prices through buybacks, which, along with strong corporate profits, are fueling a historical bull market for stocks. But equity markets are decidedly not a source of trickle-down: 80 percent of the value of the stock market is held by the wealthiest 10 percent of households. The bottom half own no stock at all, including retirement plans.

In other words, it’s clear who’s crushing it and who isn’t. What is sad is that instead of borrowing $2 trillion to finance the regressive tax cut, Congress could have put more money in the pockets of working Americans and made investments for our economic future. Here is what we should have done-- and should still do-- to crush it for all Americans.

First, we should have expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit to compensate for decades of stagnant wage growth. The Brown-Khanna plan, calling for a $1.4 trillion EITC expansion, would have provided working families making up to $75,000 with up to $8,000 more in take home pay. As we often say, the best way to raise pay for ordinary Americans is to do so directly as opposed to pretending it will come through the largess of executives and shareholders.

Second, we should have put billions to expand the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education program, linking employers to technical schools to develop credentials that respond to the needs of our cutting-edge industries. This is one of the most successful programs in the federal government, and we could have made sure that every American, whether rural or urban, would have access to credentialing for the jobs of the future. This program could be the land grant of the 21st century.

Third, we should have provided hiring incentives for anchor companies to create jobs in places left behind such as Paintsville, Ky. or Flint, Michigan. If a company is willing to hire in places where people don’t have enough access to high-wage jobs, then they should get support for doing so.

Fourth, we should have invested in bringing high speed Internet to every corner of America. Providing fiber broadband to every corner of the United States is the modern equivalent of rural electrification. Ask the mayors of places like Huntington, W.Va., or Akron, Ohio what would help them grow business in their cities. They will undoubtedly ask for investments in broadband instead of tax cuts for the wealthy.

Larry Kudlow’s right: The Trump administration is crushing it for its donor base, which is in turn handsomely rewarding them. But it has done nothing for the forgotten Americans and nothing to make sure America is a winner in the 21st century. We don’t need more sugar highs for those already doing well. We need to give lasting pay raises to those struggling to pay the bills and then focus on the forward-looking investments that will finally reconnect GDP growth to broadly shared prosperity.

Katie Porter is running for the Orange County district currently held by Trump rubber-stamp Mimi Walters. Hillary won this district in 2016 and all the current polls show a neck-and-neck race that is too close too call-- but moving in Katie's direction. Two of Katie's earliest endorsers were Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna, most focussed on making the economy more equitable for working families-- which is Katie's goal as well. "No ad or statement can hide the fact that Mimi Walters votes with Trump 99% of the time," she told us yesterday, "but she will continue to try to distract from her own record. The truth is, Walters, supported Donald Trump's healthcare plan that would have gutted protections for pre-existing conditions and caused premiums to spike, and voted to give the largest corporations a tax break at the expense of her constituents."