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How you can help save the Trump campaign from financial ruin

Opinion by
Dana Milbank
Columnist
September 8, 2020 at 2:23 p.m. MDT

Well, this is embarrassing.

Seems President Trump has run his reelection campaign into financial distress, a status that will not surprise those familiar with the Trump Taj Mahal, the Trump Castle, the Trump Plaza Atlantic City, the Trump Plaza New York, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, Trump Entertainment Resorts, the Trump Tower Tampa, the Trump Shuttle, Trump: The Game, Trump magazine, Trump Mortgage, Trump Steaks, Trump mattresses, Trump pillows, Trump perfume, Trump shirts, Trump underwear, Trump shoes, Trump eyeglasses, Trump University, Trump Vodka, the Trump Foundation and the U.S. Treasury.

The New York Times’s Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman report that Trump and the Republican National Committee squandered their $200 million cash advantage, spent $800 million of the $1.1 billion raised and now face the possibility of a “cash crunch.” The culprit: “profligate habits” such as a car and driver for the now-former campaign manager, payments to Trump businesses, and a “vanity splurge” on Super Bowl ads.

Now, the cash-strapped campaign has had to abandon a $3 million plan to put the Trump name on a NASCAR race car. Sad!

Bloomberg News reports that Trump might pump $100 million of his own money into his campaign. But this raises another disturbing matter: Does he have any money? The president is still fighting to keep his tax returns hidden, and he has been using his official powers to direct commerce and tax breaks to his struggling properties.

Happily, there is a solution at hand to save the billionaire’s campaign from financial ruin! TMZ reports that a Bible signed by Trump is being sold through a memorabilia company, Moments In Time, for $37,500. In the photo on the merchant’s website, Trump’s Sharpie signature is scrawled generously across the title page, where the author’s name might go, right below “HOLY BIBLE/KING JAMES VERSION.”

TMZ reports that the Bible was signed at the White House during the first week of June, “just a couple of days after he’d ordered federal law enforcement to fire pepper spray and rubber bullets at peaceful George Floyd protesters” for his Bible photo op at St. John’s Episcopal Church. The photo-op Bible is not the one for sale.

But what if it were?

If an ordinary Trump-signed Bible can fetch $40k, surely the photo-op Bible would bring in a cool six figures for Trump’s struggling campaign from a wealthy Trump sucker supporter. (I’m looking at you, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and MyPillow guy Mike Lindell.)

Heck, Scott Pruitt, then-head of the Environmental Protection Agency, once sent an aide to buy a used Trump Hotel mattress to curry favor with the boss.

And if Trump is good at anything, it is getting people to pay money for his name — whether it’s on their condos or, in one failed-to-launch scheme, Trump-branded urine tests. In 2016, people paid $49 each just to be listed on a wall in Trump Tower.

There was also that time Trump got a “fake bidder” to pay $60,000 in a 2013 auction for a life-size portrait of Trump. According to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump’s charitable foundation then reimbursed the fake bidder, a pharmaceutical billionaire.

Imagine the millions Trump could raise for his campaign by selling articles from historic moments of his presidency. It wouldn’t be legal, strictly speaking, but when has that mattered?

Trump could autograph rolls of the “beautiful, soft” paper towels he tossed at Puerto Ricans struggling to recover from a hurricane.

He could inscribe chunks of the border wall, built by a group affiliated with Steve Bannon (who is now under indictment for improperly profiting from the scheme). The shoddily built wall is at risk of crumbling into the Rio Grande.

He could sign the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration weather map he doctored with a Sharpie to show a hurricane heading toward Alabama.

He could auction off autographed pill bottles with the 63 million surplus doses of hydroxychloroquine the federal government ordered.

He could even sell, with autographed plaques affixed, the cages he used to detain migrant children after separating them from their parents.

The potential auction items are limitless: the Helsinki 2018 lectern from which Trump sided with Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence; the Air Force One model redesigned to look like Trump’s private jet; a pepper-spray canister from Lafayette Square; Confederate flags and monuments he has protected for the very fine people who like them; the Ukraine documents never sent to Congress; the too-tight tuxedo he wore to Buckingham Palace; the golf cart he rode at the Group of Seven while other world leaders walked; and the unnecessary bombs and planes ordered by the “top people in the Pentagon” who “want to do nothing but fight wars.”

In an instant, Trump’s campaign coffers would be great again. Chauffeurs would be rehired, cash would resume flowing to Trump businesses, and all would be right with the world.

The Soup Nazi

09.09.2020 12:13 PM

From The Washington Post (for the dotards here: click on the link below to actually listen to Trump saying this shit on the fucking record):

Quote:

Trump says he deliberately played down threat of pandemic in recorded interview with Bob Woodward

In Woodward’s new book “Rage,” Trump says he knew the coronavirus was “deadly” and worse than the flu, and says he feels no responsibility to better understand the anger and pain of Black Americans.

President Trump’s head popped up during his top-secret intelligence briefing in the Oval Office on Jan. 28 when the discussion turned to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China.

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, agreed. He told the president that after reaching contacts in China, it was evident that the world faced a health emergency on par with the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

Ten days later, Trump called Woodward and revealed that he thought the situation was far more dire than what he had been saying publicly.

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”

“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis.

At that time, Trump was telling the nation that the virus was no worse than a seasonal flu, predicting it would soon disappear, and insisting that the U.S. government had it totally under control. It would be several weeks before he would publicly acknowledge that the virus was no ordinary flu and that it could be transmitted through the air.

Trump admitted to Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimized the danger. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said.

Aside from exploring Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” covers race relations, diplomacy with North Korea and a range of other issues that have arisen during the past two years.

The book also includes brutal assessments of Trump’s conduct from former defense secretary Jim Mattis, former director of national intelligence Daniel Coats and others.

The book is based in part on 18 on-the-record interviews Woodward conducted with the president between December and July. Woodward writes that other quotes in the book were acquired through “deep background” conversations with sources in which information is divulged and exchanges recounted without sources being named.

“Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states,” Woodward writes. “There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced.”

Woodward questioned Trump repeatedly about the national reckoning on racial injustice. On June 3, two days after federal agents forcibly removed peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square to make way for Trump to stage a photo opportunity outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, Trump called Woodward to boast about his “law and order” stance.

“We’re going to get ready to send in the military slash National Guard to some of these poor bastards that don’t know what they’re doing, these poor radical lefts,” Trump said.

In a second conversation, on June 19, Woodward asked the president about White privilege, noting that they were both White men of the same generation who had privileged upbringings. Woodward suggested that they had a responsibility to better “understand the anger and pain” felt by Black Americans.

“No,” Trump replied, his voice described by Woodward as mocking and incredulous. “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”

As Woodward pressed Trump to understand the plight of Black Americans after generations of discrimination, inequality and other atrocities, the president kept answering by pointing to economic numbers such as the pre-pandemic unemployment rate for Blacks and claiming, as he often has publicly, that he has done more for Blacks than any president except perhaps Abraham Lincoln.

In another conversation about race, on July 8, Trump complained about his lack of support among Black voters. “I’ve done a tremendous amount for the Black community,” he told Woodward. “And, honestly, I’m not feeling any love.”

They spoke again about race relations on June 22, when Woodward asked Trump whether he thinks there is “systemic or institutional racism in this country.”

“Well, I think there is everywhere,” Trump said. “I think probably less here than most places. Or less here than many places.”

Asked by Woodward whether racism “is here” in the United States in a way that affects people’s lives, Trump replied, “I think it is. And it’s unfortunate. But I think it is.”

Trump shared with Woodward visceral reactions to several prominent Democrats of color. Upon seeing a shot of Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California, now the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, calmly and silently watching him deliver his State of the Union address, Trump remarked, “Hate! See the hate! See the hate!” Trump used the same phrase after an expressionless Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) appeared in the frame.

Trump was dismissive about former president Barack Obama and told Woodward he was inclined to refer to him by his first and middle names, “Barack Hussein,” but wouldn’t in his company to be “very nice.”

“I don’t think Obama’s smart,” Trump told Woodward. “I think he’s highly overrated. And I don’t think he’s a great speaker.” Trump added that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un thought Obama was “an asshole.”

“Rage” includes the first-reported excerpts of letters Trump exchanged with Kim, and quotes Trump in his interviews with Woodward using expletives to defend their pen-pal relationship. Even as U.S. intelligence chiefs warn that North Korea is unlikely to ever surrender its nuclear weapons and that Trump’s approach is ineffective, the president told Woodward he is determined to stay the course and dismissively says the CIA has “no idea” how to handle North Korea.

“I met. Big fucking deal,” Trump told Woodward, waving off criticism of his three face-to-face meetings with Kim. “It takes me two days. I met. I gave up nothing.”

Foreign affairs experts say Trump gave up much — including by postponing and then scaling back the U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea that had long angered North Korea, as well as by granting Kim the international stature and legitimacy the North Korean regime has long craved.

Trump told Woodward he evaluates Kim and his nuclear arsenal like a real estate target: “It’s really like, you know, somebody that’s in love with a house and they just can’t sell it.”

Kim welcomed Trump’s overtures with over-the-top prose in letters. Kim wrote that he wanted “another historic meeting between myself and Your Excellency reminiscent of a scene from a fantasy film.” And he said his meetings with Trump were a “precious memory” that underscored how the “deep and special friendship between us will work as a magical force.”

(continues below)

The Soup Nazi

09.09.2020 12:14 PM

(cont'd)

Quote:

In another letter, Kim wrote to Trump, “I feel pleased to have formed good ties with such a powerful and preeminent statesman as Your Excellency.” And in yet another, Kim reflected on “that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honor of that day.”

Trump was taken with Kim’s flattery, Woodward writes, telling the author pridefully that Kim had addressed him as “Excellency.” Trump remarked that he was awestruck meeting Kim for the first time in 2018 in Singapore, thinking to himself, “Holy shit,” and finding Kim to be “far beyond smart.” Trump also boasted to Woodward that Kim “tells me everything,” including a graphic account of Kim having his uncle killed.

Trump did not share his letters to Kim — “those are so top secret,” the president said — though Woodward writes that Trump sent Kim a copy of the New York Times featuring a picture of the two men on the front page. “Chairman, great picture of you, big time,” Trump wrote on the paper in marker. (Trump falsely boasted to Woodward, “He never smiled before. I’m the only one he smiles with.”)

Trump reflected on his relationships with authoritarian leaders generally, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them,” he told Woodward. “You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?”

In the midst of reflecting upon how close the United States had come in 2017 to war with North Korea, Trump revealed, “I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody — what we have is incredible.”

Woodward writes that anonymous sources later confirmed that the U.S. military had a secret new weapons system, but they would not provide details, and that the sources were surprised Trump had disclosed it.

The book documents private grumblings, periods of exasperation and wrestling about whether to quit among the so-called adults of the Trump orbit: Mattis, Coats and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson.

Mattis quietly went to Washington National Cathedral to pray about his concern for the nation’s fate under Trump’s command and, according to Woodward, told Coats, “There may come a time when we have to take collective action” since Trump is “dangerous. He’s unfit.”

In a separate conversation recounted by Woodward, Mattis told Coats, “The president has no moral compass,” to which the director of national intelligence replied, “True. To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”

Woodward describes Coats’s experience as especially tortured. Coats, a former senator from Indiana, was recruited into the administration by Vice President Pence, and his wife is quoted as recalling a dinner at the White House when she interacted with Pence.

“I just looked at him, like, how are you stomaching this?” Marsha Coats said, according to Woodward. “I just looked at him like, this is horrible. I mean, we made eye contact. I think he understood. And he just whispered in my ear, ‘Stay the course.’ ”

Pence was the president’s one constant booster publicly and privately in Woodward’s book. When Coats considered resigning because of Trump’s handling of Russia, Pence urged him to “look on the positive side of things that he’s done. More attention on that. You can’t go.”

The loathing was mutual. “Not to mention my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals,” Trump told White House trade adviser Peter Navarro at one point, according to Woodward.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is quoted by Woodward as saying, “The most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots,” which Woodward interprets as a reference to Mattis, Tillerson and former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn.

Kushner was a frequent target of ire among Trump’s Cabinet members, who saw him as untrustworthy and weak in dealing with heads of states. Tillerson found Kushner’s warm dealings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “nauseating to watch. It was stomach churning,” according to Woodward.

Kushner is quoted extensively in the book ruminating about his father-in-law and presidential power. Woodward writes that Kushner advised people that one of the most important guiding texts to understand the Trump presidency was “Alice in Wonderland,” a novel about a young girl who falls through a rabbit hole. He singled out the Cheshire cat, whose strategy was endurance and persistence, not direction.

The book charts the Trump administration’s failings and missteps on the pandemic, including the decisions and actions of Pottinger, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci and others.

Fauci at one point tells others that the president “is on a separate channel” and unfocused in meetings, with “rudderless” leadership, according to Woodward. “His attention span is like a minus number,” Fauci said, according to Woodward. “His sole purpose is to get reelected.”

In one Oval Office meeting recounted by Woodward, after Trump had made false statements in a news briefing, Fauci said in front of him: “We can’t let the president be out there being vulnerable, saying something that’s going to come back and bite him.” Pence, Kushner, chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior policy adviser Stephen Miller tensed up at once, Woodward writes, surprised Fauci would talk to Trump that way.

Woodward describes Fauci as particularly disappointed in Kushner for talking like a cheerleader as if everything was great. In June, as the virus was spreading wildly coast to coast and case numbers soared in Arizona, Florida, Texas and other states, Kushner said of Trump, “The goal is to get his head from governing to campaigning.”

Woodward writes that Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) suggested former president George W. Bush speak personally with Trump about global vaccine efforts, but that Bush demurred.

“No. No,” Bush told Graham, according to Woodward. “He’d misconstrue anything I said.”

In their final interview, on July 21, Trump vented to Woodward, “The virus has nothing to do with me. It’s not my fault.”

!@#$%!

09.09.2020 12:35 PM

oh goddamn

now watch our local maga chuds contort themselves into fecal pretzels to justify or deny this one, or simply try to deflect/distract with some utter gibberish about some irrelevant bullshit that only makes sense to the stupid and addled. disgusting!

but please don’t visibly quote them if you see them. my eyes can’t take much more of their spectacular monstrosity.

LifeDistortion

09.09.2020 12:51 PM

So what do you call it when a President allows 194,500 Americans die on purpose?

Screaming Skull

09.09.2020 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeDistortion

So what do you call it when a President allows 194,500 Americans die on purpose?

Yup. All Trump. You got us there. Great point. I’ll go vote for Sleepy Joe now. Thanks for opening my eyes!

The Soup Nazi

09.09.2020 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeDistortion

So what do you call it when a President allows 194,500 Americans die on purpose?

Genocide.

h8kurdt

09.09.2020 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

Not sure there's anything they can say to defend him. Just when you think the bar can't get any lower he successfully does it. You'd almost call it a talent.

The Soup Nazi

09.09.2020 06:57 PM

Unfortunate that this was disclosed now instead of being an "October surprise", though. (Woodward himself most likely didn't want it to be seen as such, hence the timing.) I know the Access Hollywood tape didn't do jack shit, but still - we could use all we can get.

Screaming Skull

09.09.2020 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Unfortunate that this was disclosed now instead of being an "October surprise", though. (Woodward himself most likely didn't want it to be seen as such, hence the timing.)

Or, if you truly believe this to be [yet another] “bombshell” rather than a president trying to curb mass panic, then perhaps Woodward should have revealed this “truth” the second he knew it in effort to save lives, no? Instead he’s just another political hack who will be forgotten after the next transparently manufactured “bombshell” hits [sometime tomorrow, if not sooner].

!@#$%!

09.09.2020 07:57 PM

this message is hidden because cacahead is on your ignore list

The Soup Nazi

09.09.2020 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

this message is hidden because cacahead is on your ignore list

Caca Skull, indeed...

Savage Clone

09.09.2020 10:17 PM

Yeah, Woodward is a real obscure flash in the pan of journalism all right....

Severe facepalm

The Soup Nazi

09.09.2020 11:54 PM

Yeah, better dead than panicking. Better drinking Lysol and bleach than panicking. Better assembling at Trump rallies without wearing masks and without social distancing than panicking. Better believing that it's all a hoax than panicking. But hey, AOC? Biden? Meryl Streep? PANIC!!!

Here's what a commander-in-chief with the full power of the federal government at his disposal (that's not Bob Woodward, in case you missed that part, you Ari Fleischer-echoing piece-of-shit imbecile) should have done, among several other sensible things: act right after you received the crucial briefing. Talk to your people (don't you love tweeting so much?). Tell them this is serious. Tell them this is not the flu. Tell them we'll all get through this if starting now we modify our daily life in concrete ways: wearing a mask, social distancing, washing our hands more thoroughly and more often. It may not be easy, your routine will be affected, but these are simple measures. We will begin testing and contact-tracing on a massive scale. We are the United States and we have the unparalleled wealth to acquire any weapons needed to fight this pandemic that we may not yet have in every corner of our country. There is much about the virus that we still don't know, but many of the world's leading experts in infectious diseases are right here, in this land, and we'll work tirelessly with them. In addition, knowledge will be shared daily with and by our partners in the international medical community. We are with you. Your president is with you.

Columbia University researchers (gasp! science! the horror!) built a model that depicted the transmission of the virus throughout the United States using epidemiological modeling to gauge transmission rates from March 15 to May 3. The study was published on May 21, when the official number of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. of A. was just below 100,000. It concluded that if the country had started social distancing just A WEEK earlier than it did, 36,000 lives would have been saved. If the States had locked down two weeks earlier than it did, it could have prevented 84% of deaths and 82% of cases. This effectively makes Donald Trump a mass murderer by narcissistic negligence at best.

Now fuck off already. Enough of your horseshit on this board.

Screaming Skull

09.10.2020 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

I know the Access Hollywood tape didn't do jack shit, but still - we could use all we can get.

As Master Yoda would say, “Never been spoken, truer words have.”

Face it, Joe Biden will not be elected the next president of the United States. I know it, you know it, and 90% of this board knows it.

There will be disappointment, another flash of rioting, lawsuits, but the country will eventually move forward under 4 more years of President Trump.

The desperation on display from the left, the media, Hollywood, the corporate elites is very telling. The panic is real.

Joe Biden is simply unelectable. You’d be wise to start admitting it to yourself.

!@#$%!

09.10.2020 01:14 PM

this message is hidden because shitforbrains is on your ignore list

(and it’s not worth your time to change this setting)

h8kurdt

09.10.2020 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Screaming Skull

Not sure what Trump has done to make himself electable either, but hey.

!@#$%!

09.10.2020 01:32 PM

eeeeeeew. ewwww... why show the fecal specimen? close the door!

gross, man. gross.

!@#$%!

09.10.2020 01:35 PM

h8kurdt be like

“hey guys, look what i found on the interwebs:

i’m gonna talk to it!”

:D

h8kurdt

09.10.2020 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

eeeeeeew. ewwww... why show the fecal specimen? close the door!

gross, man. gross.

It's 2 girls 1 cup. Everyone watches it and is grossed out but damn if they can't turn away.

The Soup Nazi

09.10.2020 07:05 PM

Nobody here is saying the Trump shitshow is over. I think it's absolutely possible that he'll get reelected in spite of the mountains on top of mountains of horror he's amassed, especially considering the national popular vote doesn't decide dick. The fact that dipshit here is basically saying that winning beyond right or wrong is everything says, well, everything about him, not us.

Savage Clone

09.10.2020 10:44 PM

The electoral college is a racist anachronism and needs to go. I’m sorry nobody lives in your bum fuck state, North Dakota and Wyoming, but you get two senators just like everybody else and the entire thing was basically engineered to keep slave states full of slaves. The fact that it has proven itself to run against the will of the people more in the past 30 years then in the past 200 years is proof that it is time for it to go. It really only serves red states and Goes against the true will of the population. And if it didn’t benefit Republicans the Republicans would be the first against it. Their attitude about the supreme court now that it is coming around is proof positive of that. This is the last gasp of a dying group of people. They can’t die soon enough.

Antagon

09.10.2020 11:02 PM

^ And beyond that, the argument that the electoral college is some sort of bastion for individual voices in underrepresented states is completely moot. It pretty much being a winner-take-all-system completely erases the importance of individual votes. In any democratically governed country that doesn't have such a system, voters that did not put their cross next to the most popular candidate/party in a specific region still get to have some influence on the nationwide results. Saying "Hey, you live in Wyoming - isn't it great that you get to have x amount of senators representing you too? Oh, you're not in line with the majority of voters in your state? Guess your vote means jack then, haha." is pretty damn cynical if you ask me.

I like the idea that my individual decision - whether it may align with the majority or the minority of voters in my region - still factors into the bigger picture. The electoral college is the antithesis of individual agency.

Bytor Peltor

09.11.2020 05:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Trump says he deliberately played down threat of pandemic in recorded interview with Bob Woodward

In Woodward’s new book “Rage,” Trump says he knew the coronavirus was “deadly” and worse than the flu

The first case of coronavirus was reported in the U.S. on January 21, 2020. A traveler who had visited China had tested positive on arriving in Washington state.

January 31, 2020, Trump issued an executive order blocking entry to the U.S. from anyone who has been in China in the last 14 days......the order came into effect on February 2. (Super Bowl Sunday)

February 1, 2020 Joe Biden tweeted, 'We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia and fear mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.'

February 1, 2020 NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio tweet “From what we know now, it takes substantial contact with someone who already has coronavirus to contract it. You don’t get it from a surface or very temporary contact.”

February 2, 2020 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo:”There is no reason to panic. There is no reason to have an inordinate amount of fear about this situation.“

February 7, 2020 Trump does his interview with Bob Woodward. "It goes through air, Bob," Trump told Woodward in February. "That's always tougher than the touch. You don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed."

February 24, 2020 Nancy Pelosi Visits San Francisco's Chinatown Amid Coronavirus Concerns: "That’s what we’re trying to do today is to say everything is fine here," Pelosi said. "Come because precautions have been taken. The city is on top of the situation." "But that shouldn’t be carried over to Chinatown in San Francisco," she said. "I hope that it’s not that. But all I can say is, 'I’m here.' We feel safe and sound, so many of us coming here."

February 29, 2020 Dr. Fauci said that at that time and under the circumstances pertaining to that date, Americans didn't need to change their behavior patterns.

March 2, 2020 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: ”We have the best healthcare system in the world here. And excuse our arrogance as New Yorkers, I speak for the Mayor also on this one, we think we have the best healthcare system on the planet right here in New York. So, when you're saying what happened in other countries vs. what happened here, we don't even think it's going to be as bad as it was in other countries. We are fully coordinated, we are fully mobilized, this is all about mobilization of a public health system. Getting the testing done, getting the information out and then having the healthcare resources to treat people who are going to need help. Again, that is going to be primarily senior citizens, people who are debilitated.”

March 9, 2020 Joe Biden Campaign Event in Detroit (no mask)

March 21, 2020 White House Correspondent Anders Hagstrom reports:
“Members of Congress and the Trump administration were receiving the reports even as high-level members of both the Republican and Democratic parties were downplaying the disease.”

March 30, 2020 President Trump “I want to keep the country calm. I don't want panic in the country. I could cause panic much better than even you." — Responding to reporter's suggestion that he offered false assurances to Americans.“

July 2020 World Health Organization declares COVID 19 airborne
” Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can occur through direct, indirect, or close contact with infected people through infected secretions such as saliva and respiratory secretions or their respiratory droplets, which are expelled when an infected person coughs, sneezes, talks or sings.”

September 9, 2020 Sleepy Joe: "He waved a white flag. He walked away. He didn't do a damn thing," Biden said. "Think about it. Think about what he did not do -- it's almost criminal."
......notice how reporters NEVER ASK what Joe would have done differently!

September 9, 2020 Fauci says Trump did not 'distort' impact of the pandemic
"I didn't see any discrepancies between what he told us and what we told him and what he ultimately came out publicly and said," Fauci, the country's top infectious diseases expert and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said.

"He really didn't say anything different than we discussed when we were with him," Fauci said.

September 10, 2020 TRUMP tweet
“ Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months. If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!”

September 10, 2020 Bob Woodward defends keeping revelations about Trump and coronavirus quiet until book release

“The biggest problem I had, which is always a problem with Trump, is I didn’t know if it was true," Woodward told The Post.

“Woodward said that it was not until May that he confirmed Trump's statements were based on reliable information and that at that point the virus was already widespread.”

"If I had done the story at that time about what he knew in February, that’s not telling us anything we didn’t know,”he told AP.

Sooo, what did the Free Minded Freethinkers here at SYG want President Trump to do back in February? Why do you get so caught up in the media hype?? All of your high level Democrats were receiving the same intelligence briefings (January/February) as our President......not one of them then were claiming they could handle the situation better!

THE DEMOCRATS HAD NO PLAN, THEY OFFERED NO PLAN!!!

Sleepy Joe claiming President Trump did this so the stock market wouldn’t crash is NONSENSE!!!

ZERO health officials were claiming airborne back in February, the World Health Organization didn’t declare it so until July 2020

YES - President Trump could have handled it better, things could have been done differently, but ZERO Democrats had the solution.

......it’s going to be a great weekend!!!

The Soup Nazi

09.12.2020 09:07 PM

May Vishnu help us all:

Quote:

One Man Could Save America From Electoral Chaos

Prepare for election month, not election night

Opinion by Fareed Zakaria
Columnist

All of us need to start preparing for a deeply worrying scenario on Nov. 3. It is not some outlandish fantasy, but rather the most likely course of events based on what we know today. On election night, President Trump will be ahead significantly in a majority of states, including in the swing states that will decide the outcome. Over the next few days, mail-in ballots will be counted, and the numbers could shift in Joe Biden’s favor. But will Trump accept that outcome? Will the United States?

First, an explanation of why this is the most likely situation. Several surveys have found that, because of the pandemic, in-person and mail-in ballots will show a huge partisan divide. In one poll, 87 percent of Trump voters said they preferred to vote in person, compared with 47 percent of Biden voters. In another, by the Democratic data firm Hawkfish, 69 percent of Biden voters said they planned to vote by mail, while only 19 percent of Trump voters said the same. The firm modeled various scenarios and found that, based on recent polling, if just 15 percent of mail-in ballots are counted on election night, Trump would appear to have 408 electoral votes compared with Biden’s 130. But four days later, assuming 75 percent of the mail-in ballots are counted, the lead could flip to Biden, and after all ballots are counted, Biden would have 334 electoral votes to Trump’s 204.

You don’t have to believe in models to understand that this is a likely scenario. As David Graham writes in an Atlantic essay, on the night of the 2018 midterm elections, the results seemed very disappointing for Democrats. They appeared to have gained far fewer seats in the House and Senate than the polls predicted, a replay of 2016.

Except that as provisional ballots and mail-in ballots were counted, the results changed. “California just defies logic to me,” said Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who was then speaker of the House. “We were only down 26 seats the night of the election, and three weeks later we lost basically every contested California race.” In fact, there are perfectly logical explanations for this “blue shift,” as scholars Edward Foley and Charles Stewart call it. But it’s easy to make it look suspicious.

After the 2018 midterms, Trump declared that a conspiracy was at work. In Florida, when Democrats started narrowing the gaps in two key races, he tweeted that “large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible — ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!” Imagine what Trump is likely to do this November, when his own fate hangs in the balance.

Dan Baer of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace outlines a frightening and utterly plausible scenario in an excellent article, “How Trump could refuse to go.” Baer imagines close contests in Arizona and Florida, where Republican-controlled governments could argue that the election was marred by irregularities and change the law to allow themselves to appoint the Republican slate of electors.

In Wisconsin, where state government is divided, Baer imagines the following sequence of events: “The Republican-controlled legislature also moves to change the manner of designating electors, and to approve those pledged to Trump. However, the Democratic Governor, invoking Wisconsin state law, signs and affixes the state seal to the slate of electors for Joe Biden as certified by the state elections commission.” In Baer’s vision, Trump mobilizes his base to go out and protest, tweeting, “thank you Wisconsin! don’t let your governor rob YOUR PRESIDENT!”

Is there a way out of this national nightmare? Two powerful forces could ensure that the United States, already tarnished by its handling of covid-19, does not also end up as the poster child for dysfunctional democracy. The first is the media. We have to abandon the notion of election night and prepare the public for election month. In fact, states have never certified winners on election night. News organizations do that on the basis of statistical projections. It is time to educate the public to wait for the ballots to be counted.

The second and decisive force will be Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. If this type of scenario unfolds, it will end up in court. Ordinarily, this would not get to the Supreme Court. The Constitution is crystal clear that it is the states, and the states alone, that get to determine their electors. But the Supreme Court abandoned its restraint in 2000 with Bush v. Gore. That means a disputed election could quickly move up to the Supreme Court, where Roberts would be pivotal as both chief justice and the swing vote. So it might come down to this: One man will have the power to end a looming catastrophe and save American democracy.

tw2113

09.12.2020 09:19 PM

So many shitburgers with mayo on them.

The Soup Nazi

09.13.2020 01:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tw2113

So many shitburgers with mayo on them.

Fucker wants not only four more years but a third term.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/13/p...den/index.html

tw2113

09.13.2020 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Fucker wants not only four more years but a third term.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/13/p...den/index.html

I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to get rid of the election cycle as a whole and just have him stay till his death.

h8kurdt

09.13.2020 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

yada-yada-yah!

So many facts ignored in this long, long rambling message. Main point being what followed after all those he derides followed on with lockdown. Meanwhile the holy Cheeto doubled down saying the coronavirus was nothing to worry about and that it'll go away. He followed it with the idea that injecting bleach and light will help get rid of the virus.

You want someone who will follow the science and follow that. Not a moron who ignores it and does whatever he wants at the expense of a couple hundred thousand lives.

It's no good for Bytor to say "THESE GUYS WERE SHIT SO IT'S OK FOR TRUMP TO BE SHIT".

_tunic_

09.13.2020 02:07 PM

Haven't followed the news very actively lately so I was curious what the President's actions were regarding the currently active fires in three US states. Well, he's done absolutely nothing!!!

Trump isn’t talking about the wildfires in Oregon, California and Washington

Bytor Peltor

09.13.2020 05:22 PM

Ummm, while I have no rhyme or reason to why/why not the President tweets, according to the Sacramento Bee (Saturday, September 12,2020), the President will be in Sacramento tomorrow.

“Although the president often criticizes California’s wildfire response efforts and the forest management tactics, Gov. Gavin Newsom has reiterated Trump’s commitment to helping the state behind the scenes.

“There’s not phone call that I have made to the president where he hasn’t quickly responded,” the Democratic governor said last month.”

The President arrived in Las Vegas 0200 AM this morning and will hold his first entirely indoor rally in three months tonight in neighboring Henderson, Nevada.

Quote:

Originally Posted by _tunic_

Bytor Peltor

09.13.2020 07:44 PM

April 19, 2019

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

Remember when Crooked Hillary replied: “like with a cloth or something?”

Then last week when New Hampshire Democrat Mrs. Shaheen asked, "You're not suggesting that spying occurred?"

The awkward silence from Mrs. Shaheen and the “ah ah ah ah” stuttering from Crooked Hillary just before she makes a wiping gesture with her hand......these will soon be connected.

Members of Mueller’s team ’wiped’ phones during Trump probe: DOJ

“More than two dozen cellphones belonging to members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team were “wiped” clean of their data before the Justice Department’s inspector general could check them, according to a report.“

“Mueller deputy Andrew Weissman “accidentally wiped” his device twice after he entered the wrong passcode too many times in March 2018, according to the documents cited by Fox News.“

You would think federal prosecutors would grow tiresome of being caught destroying evidence and appearing like inept idiots......this is going to get good!

The Soup Nazi

09.14.2020 12:18 PM

From Robert Christgau's And It Don't Stop column:

Quote:

Vote! It Ain't Illegal Yet!

Peace to all Berniacs who’ve begrudged their 2020 votes to the imperfect Joe Biden while hoping these perfectionists realize that in a highly imperfect year mere voting will require not just acquiescence but commitment. This is for the angry subset of Americans who actively long to witness the defeat of fascist fraudster turned impeached president Donald J. Trump—who keep thinking about it in the daytime and lose sleep over it at night. It’s to urge them to get out of their heads and act.

I’ve been a small-scale Democratic activist ever since warmonger-in-waiting George W. Bush stole the 2000 election from the imperfect Al Gore. My biggest year was 2004, when together with my wife, daughter, and other confederates I spent a week canvassing and phonebanking in Ohio, where two women my wife Carola had befriended in 1978 as Susan Devo and Bobbie Devo had become major cogs in John Kerry’s Akron operation. In 2008 I bunked two weekends with friends in Arlington to door-knock for Obama in Alexandria. In 2012 I bussed with my union to Philly nabes scarred by overleveraged ghost houses and then to rust-belt Bethlehem. In 2016 I put in a long union Saturday in Allentown plus a few dozen hours phonebanking in HRC’s UFT HQ. I’ve also phonebanked some in nonpresidential years.

Endowed with a generous heart and phenomenal memory, Carola still fondly remembers encounters we shared door-knocking in Akron and elsewhere—canvassers often work in pairs. Although glimpsing how other people live is always educational and enlightening conversations do definitely arise even in the course of phone work replete with hangups and no answers, I’ve never thought canvassing was much fun: as a person who cares about politics, the canvasser inevitably intrudes on people who care less. But such cavils are fatally hypersensitive in a moment when any American who’s read this far probably agrees that our hopes for even incremental justice will be scotched for decades if not forever should Trump take a wrecking ball to the republic for another four years. I don’t get how any such reader would consider sitting on his or her hands till November 3 in a year when November 4 could be a nightmare. Lives are at stake, starting with our own.

I don’t want to overdo the hand-sitting charges. Most of us still have plenty to do as the pandemic continues—staying healthy, earning a living, overseeing the young and the infirm. I myself write every day as I recover from two surgeries that still limit my mobility as I prepare for an October 1 shoulder replacement. But in a crisis that taught us what “social distancing” means, many also feel we have time to fill if not kill—never before have binge-watching advisories passed as acts of kindness and mutuality. And so I’ve spent several weeks haphazardly trying to figure out what I can do to defeat Trump both before and after I’m laid up. My researches have been unsystematic and except in one case untested. But it’s time to put these preliminary delvings in some kind of order.

I should be clear about two things. First, while it’s essential to be politically knowledgeable, election work is more about informing than persuading. You might well find yourself explaining your Bidenism to an undecided voter. But a lot of the work involves telling registered or intermittent or lapsed Democrats where and when they can exercise their franchise and, this year far more than ever, sparking them to do so at their earliest possible convenience. Second, the pandemic has radically curtailed door-knocking, although not phonebanking and not necessarily literature drops—some hardy souls are still leaving printed info at every statistically propitious door.

Having mentioned statistics, I’ll start with a dismaying one. I began my research by sending out a letter pumping some 40 politically aware friends for electoral tips. Yet though my mailing list sorted two-to-one male-female, every one of my scant five respondees was a woman. These included one corraled from a tai chi acquaintance of Carola, whose women’s group will discuss the options this month. True, one of my repondees is married to union stalwart Tom Smucker, who’s busier at this work than anyone I know, and when I prodded Tom Carson on the phone he got so fired up he posted a Facebook query and got quite a few quick responses, well over half from women as well. Having identified feminist as a writer for half a century, I trust you too are OK with not just Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and AOC but, to cite two less prominent heroines, MJ Hegar and Sara Gideon, not to mention the thousands of female activists who flipped the House in 2018. Nonetheless, judging by the questions I get for Xgau Sez, I assume that most of this newsletter’s readers are male, just like most of the Xgau fans who dubbed themselves the Witnesses back in the good old days. So let me level with ya, fellas. I’m urging you to break a gender stereotype.

What follows is a brief, inexpert breakdown—rough second or third-hand descriptions attached to what tips I can gather about how to proceed. Publication will probably generate other possibilities—there are a lot of concerned citizens with their own angles on how to confront a world-historical political crisis, and health permitting I’ll try to keep up with them. But for clarity’s sake I’ll begin with the only one I’ve put a hand to as of yet, which has shown up a lot in my research: Reclaim Our Vote, which aims to boost turnout by counteracting the voter-suppression tactic in which Republican Secretaries of State peremptorily expunge “inactive” voters from the rolls.

For that personal touch, Reclaim Our Vote generates hand-written postcards that reproduce an election board-approved text to focus on the South—Carola and I wrote voters in the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina—to which are affixed labels clearly providing crucial additional info. I admired the subtlety and economy of this stratagem. If my 40 cards in a few hours helped spark half a dozen Biden voters I’ll take it. You never really know, of course—could be more, or less. All you can be sure of is that you tried.

Reclaim the Vote’s postcard phase will soon be replaced by a phonebanking effort, so get on it soon—meaning right now—if it appeals. You might also ask your friends as I did mine to find out if there’s any electoral work they’d recommend. Or you can pick among these.

To me the most useful looked to be an outfit called Swing Left , which serves as a hub for GOTV (crucial acronym that translates Get Out the Vote) drives in 12 swing states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin. Its website is considerably more focused and navigable than those of other progressive powerhouses I’ve looked at: Daily Kos, MoveOn, even Indivisible.

I was also impressed, however, by another conglomerate of sorts called simply Mobilize where you can find so many links to practical electoral activism that you’d feel like a cad if you didn’t try at least one, and you’d be right.

And then there are more specialized operations, beginning with two more letter-writing efforts, which may wind down as October nears but remain of use now.

1) Vote Forward provides form letters encouraging already registered voters to cast their ballotASAP. You add a hand-written personal note as well as envelopes and stamps. Vote Forward also urges volunteers to “send heartfelt handwritten letters to unregistered and low-propensity voters encouraging them to participate in our democracy.”

2) Postcards to Voters also targets registered Dems with scripted, hand-written post cards urging/reminding them to vote.

3) Finally, I believe Trump is such a priority that long-term considerations must be put aside—which does not mean senatorial races, where many deserve support and my personal favorites are longshot Lindsey Graham foe Jaime Harrison and sitting Democrat Gary Peters fighting off a DeVos-financed flunky in crucial swing Michigan. Nonetheless, if you’re a hardcore progressive Dem concerned about the party’s weakness in state legislatures where penny-ante reactionaries do their bit for “Christian” education, male supremacist sexuality, the-end-is-near environmental devastation, and that old favorite the rich getting richer, you might glance at SisterDistrict.com. Lots of focused action there.

(continues below)

The Soup Nazi

09.14.2020 12:18 PM

(cont'd)

Quote:

And no, I’m not quite done.

First there is the little matter of money, like the bucks I’ve sent Harrison and Peters. I’ve donated very modestly since 2006 (I liked Jon Tester, as I still do, but not all the subsequent emails from Montana). But I’ve never given this much before—I’m over a grand including Warren seed money, and some of those bucks I got from you, so thanks and maybe you can chip in to a personal fave or your own.

Second, whether you’d ever feel comfortable about door-knocking or not, there’s another site where your physical presence can make a difference: polling places on Election Day. As progressives argue the relative utility of mail-in ballots and in-person voting, it seems incontrovertible to me that we don’t win without both. And as everyone already knows, November 3 is going to be an enormous mess at best, replete with long lines, mislaid records, voting machine failure, arbitrary challenges to people of color, cops of greatly varying ethical standards, and muscleheads enthralled by open carry. Moreover, many veteran poll workers are aged Social Security recipients with every reason to be more nervous about Covid than most of you. At 78, I’m in that category myself, but I swear that if it wasn’t for my three surgeries I’d consider it. This election is going to be hard, and it’s going to need all the smart, stubborn, fair-minded help it can get. Maybe for some reason you just don’t want to electioneer. But chances are you could do this. Here’s a link to a federal guide to get you started.

LifeDistortion

09.14.2020 03:53 PM

So apparently the polls in Florida are tied at 48% to 48%. Every 4 years we have to deal with this mess with Florida, and it almost never ends in the Democrats' favor.

The Soup Nazi

09.14.2020 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeDistortion

So apparently the polls in Florida are tied at 48% to 48%. Every 4 years we have to deal with this mess with Florida, and it almost never ends in the Democrats' favor.

Let Florida secede and replace it with D.C.

Savage Clone

09.14.2020 08:09 PM

Let Florida sink.

tw2113

09.14.2020 08:16 PM

Sell Florida to Puerto Rico?

The Soup Nazi

09.14.2020 08:29 PM

Let the alligators eat the people.

The Soup Nazi

09.14.2020 08:59 PM