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The former president and his allies have explained their plans quite clearly. ………………..
“The U.S. is an older and better-established democracy than Hungary. How, then, could MAGA acolytes emulate Orbán in the American context? To simplify matters, set aside the possibility of a stolen or contested 2024 election and suppose that Trump wins a fair Electoral College victory. In this scenario, beginning on January 20, 2025, he and his supporters set about bringing Budapest to the Potomac by increments. Their playbook:”
“ First, install toadies in key positions.
Second, intimidate the career bureaucracy.
Third, co-opt the armed forces.
Fourth, bring law enforcement to heel.
Fifth, weaponize the pardon.
Sixth, the final blow: defy court orders.” …………………..
“Meanwhile, MAGA forces are busy installing loyalists as governors, election officials, district attorneys, and other crucial state and local positions. They do not succeed in every attempt, but over the course of four years, they gather enough corrupt officials to cast doubt on the legitimacy of any election they lose. They invent creative ways to obstruct anyone who challenges them politically. And they are not shy about encouraging thuggish supporters to harass and menace ‘traitors.’
And so, after four years? America has crossed Freedom House’s line from ‘free’ to ‘partly free.’ The president’s powers are determined by what he can get away with. His opponents are harried, chilled, demoralized. He is term-limited, but the MAGA movement has entrenched itself. And Trump has demonstrated in the United States what Orbán proved in Hungary: The public will accept authoritarianism, provided it is of the creeping variety.
‘We should not be afraid to go against the spirit of the age and build an illiberal political and state system,’ Orbán declared in 2014. Trump and his followers openly plan to emulate Orbán. We can’t say we weren’t warned.“
To read the complete article, go here https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/trump-2024-reelection-viktor-orban-hungary/671264/
"The House made history Wednesday by impeaching a president for a second time, indicting President Trump a week before he leaves office for inciting a riot with false claims of a stolen election that led to the storming of the Capitol and five deaths.
Unlike Trump’s first impeachment, which proceeded with almost no GOP support, Wednesday’s effort attracted 10 Republicans, including Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 party leader in the House. The Senate now appears likely to hold a trial after Trump’s departure, an unprecedented scenario that could end with lawmakers barring him from holding the presidency again.
The final vote was 232 to 197.
One of the final dramas of a tumultuous presidency, the impeachment unfolded against the backdrop of near-chaos in the House and uncertainty about where Trump’s exit leaves the GOP. Democrats and Republicans exchanged accusations and name-calling throughout the day, while Trump loyalists were livid at fellow Republicans who broke ranks — especially Cheney — leaving the party’s leadership shaken.
But despite the emotions stirred by the Capitol assault, the great majority of Republicans stood by the president, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). He argued on the House floor that while Trump bears responsibility for the attack on the Capitol, the snap impeachment would only 'further fan the flames of partisan division.'
McCarthy for the first time publicly endorsed a censure for Trump, but the call came too late to serve as an effective alternative to impeachment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats made it clear Wednesday that censure would not suffice given the circumstances, with Trump riling up his supporters with false claims of election fraud, then urging them to march on Congress as it was certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory."
"'It’s a straight-up bait and switch,' Paul S. Ryan, the vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, tells me. Such email solicitations target small donors, so for the 'overwhelming majority of people contributing … none of their money will end up in recount accounts' or be used for otherwise challenging the election.
"Another central characteristic of nationalism and fascism is their need to define themselves against an enemy. Trump has chosen his: China, designated as the culprit for the coronavirus debacle (and the scapegoat behind which the president can hide his own equal responsibility); and the “angry mobs” he alluded to at Mount Rushmore who constitute, Trump said, a new “far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance.”
It is Trump who demands “absolute allegiance” — look at his trembling cabinet — and whose nationalism is fascist-tinged. He has turned an uprising against racial injustice after the killing of George Floyd into a pretext to lash out against “criminal” mobs.
There have been excesses among the protests. It is always better to try to contextualize history than excise it. Cancel culture is inimical to free speech. But the overarching threat the United States faces in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election is from Trump. The fascism in the air is on the far right of the political spectrum. If Trump could identify national humiliation as his ace in the hole in 2016, he can also seize the potential of the coronavirus pandemic to muddy the waters and stir pervasive fear.
Last month, Trump tweeted: “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” Of course, that foreign country would be China.
Trump is preparing the ground to contest any loss to Joe Biden and remain president, aided, no doubt, by Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department.
I know, it’s unthinkable. So was the Reichstag fire. Europeans, like Americans, should focus on just how unfunny Trump is."
More on "Reichstag fire" here: https://www.history.com/topics/germany/reichstag-fire
"'Carried a burden'
Mary eventually attended Tufts University, where she studied the Southern novelist William Faulkner. In a seminar with English professor Alan Lebowitz, Mary and her 15 or so fellow students analyzed the Compson family portrayed in novels such as “The Sound and the Fury.”
The Compsons bore some similarities to her own family: Like Donald Trump’s mother, the Compsons immigrated to the United States from Scotland, and the family was riven by dysfunction. At the time, Donald Trump was running his Atlantic City casinos, which went into bankruptcy, and preparing to divorce his first wife, Ivana, and marry Marla Maples.
Lebowitz said in a telephone interview that he has rarely had a student as exceptional as Mary Trump, who was featured in the Tufts commencement program as having won the award for top English student.
'She was just as smart and accomplished as any I’ve taught in 40 years,' Lebowitz said. 'She took a seminar on William Faulkner with me and she wrote two absolutely stunning papers, long, deep and elegant. We studied an enormously complex, interesting writer and she got deeply into it because she is a deep thinker.'
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'Worst night of my life'
Mary Trump continued her studies at Adelphi University, where she earned a master’s degree in psychology in 2001, a master’s in clinical psychology in 2003, and a doctoral degree in clinical psychology in 2010, a school official said.
In her 205-page dissertation, 'A Characterological Evaluation of the Victims of Stalking,' she examined whether there were certain personality characteristics that made some people 'more vulnerable to being victims of stalking by an intimate partner.'
...............
As Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, Mary Trump does not appear to have said anything publicly about him.
But when it became clear that her uncle had won the presidency, she took to Twitter. 'Worst night of my life, 'she wrote at least 12 times in tweets that have been deleted recently. She wrote that 'We should be judged harshly. . . . I grieve for our country.'
Mary Trump’s publicist, asked to verify that Mary wrote the tweets, declined to comment.
...............
Now Mary Trump appears to hope that, with an assist from the publication of her book, the next presidential election will turn out differently from the last. She foreshadowed it at 4:07 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2016, shortly after her uncle was declared the president-elect, when she tweeted simply: '2020.'"
"Presidential campaigns are often characterized as an extended job interview, an imperfect analogy at best. But imagine you were interviewing a candidate for a job, you asked him what he wanted to accomplish in the position, and he answered you the way President Trump did when Sean Hannity asked him on Thursday, 'What are your top priority items for a second term?':
'Well one of the things that will be really great: You know, the word “experience” is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience, I’ve always said that. But the word “experience” is a very important word. It’s a very important meaning. I never did this before, I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think, 17 times, all of a sudden I’m president of the United States, you know the story, I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say, 'This is great.'
But I didn’t know very many people in Washington, it wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now I know everybody. And I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes, like you know an idiot like Bolton, all he wanted to do is drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people.'
'Thanks for coming,' you’d say to this job applicant. 'Don’t call us, we’ll call you.'
Through this inarticulate stream of consciousness, there isn’t even the slightest attempt to answer the question: What does Trump want to do with a second term? Does anyone have any idea?"
"Attorney General William P. Barr on Friday night abruptly tried to fire the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, who has investigated several of President Trump’s closest associates, but Mr. Berman said he would not leave.
The clash focused new attention on the efforts by Mr. Trump and his closest aides to rid the administration of officials whom the president views as insufficiently loyal. It also touched off a crisis within the Justice Department over one of its most prestigious jobs, at a time when the agency has already been roiled by questions over whether Mr. Barr has undercut its tradition of independence from political interference.
Mr. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his team have been at the forefront of corruption inquiries in Mr. Trump’s inner circle. They successfully prosecuted the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who went to prison, and have been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
'I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,' Mr. Berman said in a statement, adding that he had learned that he was 'stepping down' from a Justice Department news release.
Mr. Barr’s announcement that Mr. Trump was seeking to replace Mr. Berman was made with no notice. Mr. Barr said the president intended to nominate as Mr. Berman’s successor Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has never served as a prosecutor.
Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign, but he refused, so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said. Mr. Trump has been upset with Mr. Berman ever since the Manhattan prosecutor’s office pursued a case against Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Trump’s purge of officials has intensified in the months since the Republican-led Senate acquitted him in the impeachment trial. He has fired or forced out inspectors general with independent oversight over executive branch agencies and other key figures from the trial.
Several dismissals have come late on Friday nights, a time that many White Houses have used to disclose news that they would prefer receive little attention."
"Mr. Trump began his walk to the church at 7:01 p.m. for a photo session that lasted about 17 minutes. On his way over, after protesters had been driven from the park, he was trailed by a group of aides, including Attorney General William P. Barr. Mr. Barr had strolled to the edge of the police line to observe the crowd in the minutes before the tear-gassing began.
As police sirens blared in the background, Mr. Trump, his lips set in a thin line, stood with his back to the boarded-up, graffiti-laden facade of the buttermilk yellow church. He cradled a Bible, bouncing it in his hands as if testing its weight. 'Is that your Bible?' a reporter yelled. 'It’s a Bible,' Mr. Trump responded, and hoisted up the book so reporters could see. The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, who watched the scene unfold while away from the church visiting with her mother, said church officials were not told of the plan and expressed outrage at the White House’s use of riot-control tactics on a generally peaceful crowd to clear a path for the president.
'He did not pray,' the bishop, Mariann E. Budde, said in an interview. Referring to the death of the black man in police custody that set off the protests, she added: 'He did not mention George Floyd, he did not mention the agony of people who have been subjected to this kind of horrific expression of racism and white supremacy for hundreds of years. We need a president who can unify and heal. He has done the opposite of that, and we are left to pick up the pieces.'"
"Why are those at the helm of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continuing to roll back key environmental and public-health regulations? Why are they making it harder for themselves — and future administrations — to craft new regulations based on all of the available research? And why, in their actions, do they continue to challenge the place of rigorous evidence in policymaking?
We need to keep asking these questions, because, although the world’s attention is rightly focused on the coronavirus pandemic, in the past six weeks alone, the agency’s leaders have accelerated moves to weaken research-based regulations.
They are walking a road that the EPA’s founders — who launched the agency 50 years ago — could not have imagined the organization would take. In spite of reasoned opposition from researchers and many businesses, too, the EPA’s leadership — with the tacit support of many Republicans in the US Congress — is undermining the very reasons for its own existence. This is a travesty.
The latest target is the well-established body of evidence that demonstrates how tiny airborne particles embed themselves deep in the lungs and increase the risk of premature death from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases."
"-- What would your message be for young people around the world?
This is one of the most serious diseases you will face in your lifetime, and recognize that and respect it. It is dangerous to you as an individual. It is dangerous to your parents, to your grandparents and the elderly in particular and it is dangerous to your society in general. You are not an island in this, you are part of a broader community, you are part of transmission chains. If you get infected you are making this much more complicated and you are putting people in danger, not just yourself.
Never, never underestimate a new disease, there’s just too much unknown. What we do know is it will kill young people, it will make young people sick in large numbers. You’ve gotta respect this.
-- What should a country’s first priority after locking down be?
Test, test, test, test, test. Not test, test, test, test, test everyone, but test the suspects, test the suspects, test the suspects.
Then, effectively isolate the confirmed cases. The third piece is the quarantine piece.
-- How do you think this will end?
This will end with humanity victorious over yet another virus, there’s no question about that. The question is how much and how fast we will take the measures necessary to minimize the damage that this thing can do. In time, we will have therapeutics, we will have vaccines, we’re in a race against that.
And it’s going to take great cooperation and patience from the general population to play their part because at the end of the day it’s going to be the general population that stops this thing and slows it down enough to get it under control."
"In an escalating war of words Sunday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker compared President Donald Trump to 'the carnival barkers that are tweeting from the cheap seats.'
Pritzker was responding to a critical tweet from Trump, who said the governor “and a very small group of certain other governors … shouldn’t be blaming the federal government for their own shortcomings. We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!'
Trump was, in turn, responding to criticism from Pritzker about states having to compete often against each other for medical supplies and even overpaying as a result of a federal shortage.
'We’re competing against each other, we’re competing against other countries,' Pritzker said on CNN's 'State of the Union.'
“It‘s a wide Wild West … out there. And, indeed, we’re overpaying, I would say, for [personal protective equipment] because of that competition,” Pritzker said on CNN.
In his daily afternoon press briefing, in which Illinois announced three more deaths and 296 more confirmed cases, including of an infant, Pritzker opened his presser saying he’d address Trump’s tweet before he knew he’d take questions about it:
'I’m finding it hard to control my anger with Donald Trump's response to this crisis. I have doctors and nurses and first responders begging for masks, equipment and more tests … Donald Trump promised to deliver for all the states weeks ago and so far has done very little,' he said. 'This is the time for serious people, not the carnival barkers that are tweeting from the cheap seats. All I can say is get to work or get out of the way.'"
"U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.
The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.
Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month, as officials scrambled to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals braced for a surge in patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus."
Huffington Post: "Trump Shrugged Off Repeated Intelligence Warnings About Coronavirus Pandemic: Report 'The system was blinking red,' an intelligence official told The Washington Post, but no one could get Trump to 'do anything about it.'"
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coronavirus-trump-intelligence-threat-ignored_n_5e7573ebc5b6eab779488315
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There is a warning light flashing for Democrats from this election: They can’t rely on demographics. They need to make sure that every voter believes that the Democratic Party is a “both/and” party, not an “either/or” party. And they need to do it before a smarter, less crude Trump comes along to advance Trumpism.
They need every American to believe that Democrats are for BOTH redividing the pie AND growing the pie, for both reforming police departments and strengthening law and order, for both saving lives in a pandemic and saving jobs, for both demanding equity in education and demanding excellence, for both strengthening safety nets and strengthening capitalism, for both celebrating diversity and celebrating patriotism, for both making college cheaper and making the work of noncollege-educated Americans more respected, for both building a high border wall and incorporating a big gate, for both high-fiving the people who start companies and supporting the people who regulate them.
And they need to demand less political correctness and offer more tolerance for those who want to change with the times but need to get there their own ways — without feeling shamed into it.
We need our next presidential election to be fought between a principled center-right Republican Party and a “both/and” Democratic Party. Great countries are led from a healthy center. Weak countries don’t have one.
"Donald J. Trump on Wednesday became the first American president to be impeached twice, as 10 members of his party joined with Democrats in the House to charge him with 'incitement of insurrection' for his role in egging on a violent mob that stormed the Capitol last week.
Reconvening in a building now heavily militarized against threats from pro-Trump activists and adorned with bunting for the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., lawmakers voted 232 to 197 to approve a single impeachment article. It accused Mr. Trump of 'inciting violence against the government of the United States' in his quest to overturn the election results, and called for him to be removed and disqualified from ever holding public office again.
The vote left another indelible stain on Mr. Trump’s presidency just a week before he is slated to leave office and laid bare the cracks running through the Republican Party. More members of his party voted to charge the president than in any other impeachment.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, declaring the past week one of the darkest chapters in American history, implored colleagues to embrace 'a constitutional remedy that will ensure that the republic will be safe from this man who is so resolutely determined to tear down the things that we hold dear and that hold us together.'"
"The media should focus on what is critical, namely the decapitations of the top leadership of the Pentagon and installation of unserious, politically extreme conspiratorialists who should not be trusted with national security matters (including the power to declassify material, make troop reductions, etc.).
It does not do justice to the president’s recklessness to call these replacements 'loyalists.' As Foreign Policy magazine points out, 'Anthony Tata, a Trump loyalist, conspiracy theorist, and former Fox News contributor was appointed to serve in an interim role as the No. 2 official in the Pentagon’s powerful policy shop after his nomination to the undersecretary role was withdrawn over conspiratorial and Islamophobic comments.' Just how nutty is he? 'Tata’s nomination for the job foundered over the summer after he faced criticism from lawmakers for offensive and conspiratorial social media posts, including falsely claiming that former CIA Director John Brennan ordered the assassination of Trump via a coded message on social media.'"
"Geneva, 9 July 2020 – The annual mean global temperature is likely to be at least 1° Celsius above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) in each of the coming five years (2020-2024) and there is a 20% chance that it will exceed 1.5°C in at least one year, according to new climate predictions issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, led by the United Kingdom’s Met Office, provides a climate outlook for the next five years, updated annually. It harnesses the expertise of internationally acclaimed climate scientists and the best computer models from leading climate centres around the world to produce actionable information for decision-makers.
The earth’s average temperature is already over 1.0 C above the pre-industrial period. The last five-year period has been the warmest five years on record.
'This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – the enormous challenge ahead in meeting the Paris Agreement on Climate Change target of keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius,' said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
The predictions take into account natural variations as well as human influences on climate to provide the best possible forecasts of temperature, rainfall, wind patterns and other variables for the coming five years. The forecast models do not take into consideration changes in emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols as a result of the coronavirus lockdown.
'WMO has repeatedly stressed that the industrial and economic slowdown from COVID-19 is not a substitute for sustained and coordinated climate action. Due to the very long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, the impact of the drop in emissions this year is not expected to lead to a reduction of CO2 atmospheric concentrations which are driving global temperature increases,' said Professor Taalas.
'Whilst COVID-19 has caused a severe international health and economic crisis, failure to tackle climate change may threaten human well-being, ecosystems and economies for centuries, Governments should use the opportunity to embrace climate action as part of recovery programmes and ensure that we grow back better,' he said."
"Former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth and Newsweek’s Tom Rogers have an essay in Newsweek* mapping a way for President Trump and the Republican Party effectively to steal the 2020 election. Wirth and Rogers are right that there is a possible crisis brewing. They are confused about its potential source." ...............
"If there is any idea that we should begin to nurture now, it is the idea that it would be outrageous for any member of Congress to vote in a partisan way if [the decision to choose the president after a failed Electoral College process] indeed devolves upon the House. On the contrary, if the House has the choice, every member of the House should vote as the nation has voted. The result should be unanimous, as a clear backup to a failure in the College. Gone should be the idea that a document crafted assuming there would be no parties should now be interpreted to permit a solely partisan process regardless of the public’s will. I am happy to acknowledge openly that if a fair count of the national vote supports a Republican, but that the College fails to achieve a majority, then every Democrat in Congress should vote for that Republican. Republicans should have the courage to make the equivalent pledge as well.
And it might also be good to get McConnel to be clear right now about whether he thinks it is clear that the Electoral Count Act binds this Congress. Not that inconsistency has constrained the Majority Leader before—after all, he swore an oath to be “impartial” in the trial of the President after declaring that he could not be “impartial.” But it is important to assure that lawlessness be well marked if future lawlessness is to be avoided."
*"HOW PRESIDENT TRUMP COULD LOSE THE ELECTION --AND STILL REMAIN PRESIDENT | OPINION" Wirth and Rogers, Newsweek, 7/3/20 https://www.newsweek.com/how-trump-could-lose-election-still-remain-president-opinion-1513975
A New York court on Wednesday lifted a temporary restraining order against the publication of a book by President Trump’s niece, enabling publisher Simon & Schuster to continue printing and distributing the explosive insider account by Mary L. Trump.
President Trump’s brother, Robert, filed a petition last week asking that Mary Trump and the publisher be prevented from publishing the book, citing a confidentiality agreement signed by Mary Trump two decades ago as part of a settlement in an inheritance dispute.
On Tuesday, a state Supreme Court judge agreed to impose the restraining order to allow the parties to present their arguments next week, raising doubts about whether it would be published.
However, the Supreme Court’s appellate division on Wednesday lifted the restraining order that had been imposed on Simon & Schuster, while leaving in place the one regarding Mary Trump. That effectively enables the publisher to continue distributing copies of the book in preparation for the planned July 28 publication, even as the overall merits of the case are argued.
Why replace Berman now, just five months before the election?
The answer lies in the firing earlier this year of Jessie Liu, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. By firing Liu, Barr and his team took control of the Washington, D.C., U.S. attorney’s office. Until they did that, the office was following up on various indictments and charges that had been brought against Trump’s associates. Once they seized control, Barr’s team intervened to short-circuit that process. They interceded in the sentencing of Roger Stone, and more recently, they have made an effort to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn. In both circumstances, career prosecutors were so outraged that they withdrew from the case, and some resigned from the Department of Justice altogether.
This is how an authoritarian works to subvert justice. He purports to uphold the forms of justice (in this case, the formal rule that the attorney general and the president exercise hierarchical control over the U.S. attorneys) while undermining the substance of justice. In the Flynn case, for example, Barr has asserted an absolute, unreviewable authority to bring and dismiss cases at will—a power that, even if legally well founded, is a subversion of justice when misused.
That may be the game plan for New York as well. Barr may want Berman out so that he can use his newly enhanced control to dismiss or short-circuit all of the pending cases in Manhattan that implicate Trump or his associates.
"The Trump administration announced late Friday that Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who has overseen a number of investigations involving the president and his political campaign, will be leaving that job, though Berman fired back that he had not resigned and intends to stay in the job to ensure the cases continue unimpeded.
The surreal Friday night standoff marks the latest battle over the Trump administration’s management of the Justice Department. Democrats have decried what they charge has been the politicization of the department under President Trump and his attorney general, William P. Barr.
Barr announced the personnel change in a statement, saying the president plans to nominate the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, for the job.
Berman’s office has been conducting a criminal investigation of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in a campaign finance case that has already led to charges against two of Giuliani’s associates."
................
"Berman issued a blistering public statement.
'I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was ‘stepping down’ as United States Attorney. I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,' Berman said."
We don’t know yet how the last few days will reshape Trump or his Presidency. Is this the beginning of a long, hot summer of discord in our cities that will cause a white American backlash of the sort that Trump has long encouraged and embraced? In the past, Trump has shamelessly stoked racial discord and divisiveness for political gain. He is expert at blame-shifting and dog-whistling. In his tweets on Sunday afternoon, he was already conjuring the spirit of Richard Nixon in 1968 to call for “law and order” as another long night of mayhem looms. He may briefly hunker down in his White House bunker, but he has never done so for long. If this crisis is like any of the many others in his life, Trump will talk and tweet and tweet and talk no matter how many Americans wish he would just shut up. Irrefutable events, however, are piling up on the Trump Presidency, and, although it is only May, 2020 has already given us an impeachment trial, a deadly plague, and the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression. We can now add the worst riots in a generation to this election year’s grim bid for the history books. Will that finally be enough to silence Donald Trump?
"When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.
The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message."
"Governors, mayors and front-line health care workers confronting rising numbers of critically ill coronavirus patients said Sunday they have not received meaningful amounts of federal aid, including the shipments of desperately needed masks and other emergency equipment that administration officials say they have already dispatched." ................
"...the pressure on hospitals in hard-hit areas is mounting, and several Democratic governors are demanding a more coordinated national response to get supplies as fast as possible to where they are needed most critically. But President Donald Trump hit back at the governors' televised pleas, tweeting Sunday that they 'shouldn't be blaming the Federal Government for their own shortcomings.' He told the governors the federal government's role is to be there 'to back you up should you fail, and always will be!'
'We are desperate,' New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy told ABC Sunday morning. 'We've had a big ask into the strategic stockpile in the White House. They've given us a fraction of our ask.'
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer echoed that urgency, saying her state’s hospitals are dealing with about 800 confirmed cases of the virus — up from only one just 12 days ago — and are struggling with serious shortages of both test kits and protective equipment for medical workers. The shortages have forced hospitals to adopt risky practices like reusing masks and having staff wear bandanas when no mask is available."
To fight the coronavirus, President Donald Trump is adopting the audacity of false hope.
For the past two days, Trump has said he is dispensing "game changer" breakthroughs on treatments and a wartime-style effort to mass produce medical supplies that appear as rays of light amid America's darkening battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
His eagerness for remedies no doubt reflects a sincere desire to deliver Americans from the nightmare of lockdowns, fear for loved ones and atmosphere of national trauma.
But it is also becoming clear that the President's rhetoric is part of an emerging political strategy. He can't hold the campaign rallies that are his political lifeblood any more -- so he's just moved them into the White House briefing room.
Big footing Vice President Mike Pence's sober, informative task force briefings, Trump exaggerates facts, bashes China, blames the Obama administration, lauds his once soaring economy and baits reporters while shoveling any blame away from himself.
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