Trump Daily 10/9/2020

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow it to immediately end census collection efforts despite a large number of non-respondents.

The president went to Walter Reed in November of last year. They said it was for part of his routine physical which makes no sense at all as the entire physical can be completed at the White House. We’ve now learned that the doctors working on Trump had to first sign an NDA. Two doctors refused and were not allowed to interact with him. Unusual does not cover this. NDAs against government employees are not actually legal, but Trump frequently uses them anyway. The doctors who signed them could be released from them, but it would likely require a legal battle.

Despite dozens of people contracting Covid-19 in the White House, the president continues to mock people for wearing masks. Immediately after the vice-presidential debate, Mike Pence was photographed with his prep team, none of whom wore a mask.

Elliott Broidy was previously one of the GOP’s finance officers alongside convicted felon Michael Cohen and Steve Wynn, accused of sexual harassment and assault. Broidy was previously caught paying off a Playboy model to keep quiet about an affair via money transferred by Michael Cohen. Sound familiar? Broidy is now set to plead guilty to using his political ties to Trump to aid Malaysian and Chinese interests.

The president multiple times this week said that the treatment he received from Regeneron is a “cure” for Covid-19 and that he’ll be making it readily available for free to every American with help from the military. Every word of this is bullshit. Regeneron isn’t even the name of the treatment. It’s the name of the manufacturer. The treatment is still in clinical trials. Less than 10 people nationwide have received it outside of those trials. If the treatment did cure Covid-19 and there was a way to pay for it for everyone, the company is not capable of manufacturing anywhere near the needed doses.

After the Rose Garden event which likely spread Covid-19 to dozens of people, the president met with several gold star families – those who have lost someone to wartime military service. The president said he couldn’t cancel the event because so many of the families insist on hugging and kissing him, implying they may have been the source of his infection.

Several men were arrested in a plot to kidnap and assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer over the state’s Covid-19 restrictions. The White House response to the arrests was that Whitmer was sowing discord. President Trump attacked her for not being sufficiently grateful for the arrests then said she was doing a terrible job and needed to fully reopen the state – the exact same claims made by the terrorists. Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham said several times today the men looked like antifa members, not Trump supporters. This is a lie. Several of them posted frequently about Trump on social media and several attended the anti-lockdown protests including the one where armed men overtook the Michigan capitol. These men are Trump supporting terrorists.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is saying he may release more of Hillary Clinton’s emails which is sure to damage her chances of being elected president next month. Every unclassified email the State Department possesses is already freely available on the State Department website. Pompeo is aware of this but said that maybe they’ll find some more. Pompeo’s job is to represent the country in all of our foreign relations. Threatening to release Clinton’s emails in an effort to sway the election obviously has nothing to do with this.

Following the huge expose of Trump’s taxes, the New York Times has revealed a large loan Trump gave his 2016 campaign likely violated the law. One of Trump’s businesses deducted the cost of the loan which isn’t legal. It was also personally backed by one of his business partners which would legally count as a contribution which was never disclosed.

Adding to warnings from HHS and DHS officials, we’ve learned officials at the Department of Justice warned their superiors about the physical and psychological damage from a family separation policy. They were warned and went forward with them regardless.

The CDC wanted to issue a recommendation for everyone on public transportation to wear masks. Like so many other issues, their safety recommendations were overruled by the White House.

Despite having recently hosted an event responsible for spreading Covid-19 to dozens of people, the White House has invited TWO THOUSAND people to an event tomorrow.

Trump Daily 6/26/2020

New studies from Harvard Kennedy and the University of Chicago correlate right-wing news consumption with believe in misinformation about the coronavirus.

With millions losing their health insurance during the pandemic, the Trump administration has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court requesting that the entire ACA be struck down. Donald Trump for years now has maintained he will protect health care access to those with pre-existing conditions while never offering a mechanism for doing so.

In an NPR interview, AG Barr attacked voting by mail as an insecure system, vulnerable to fraud. Barr himself, along with multiple senior members of the Trump administration, votes by mail. Mail voting systems have multiple barriers to fraud that would be effectively impossible for a foreign power to exploit as Barr and Trump have warned of.

In response to testimony and a whistleblower complaint that the Department of Justice’s investigation into marijuana companies was predicated solely on Barr’s personal animus, the DoJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility responded that such investigations would be perfectly fine.

A GRU unit (Russian military intelligence) was paying bounties to terrorists in Afghanistan for killing Allied forces, including Americans. The president was briefed about this in March. The US has not responded in any way. After learning of these assassinations funded by Russia, the president pitched the idea of Russia rejoining the G7.

In the first Covid-19 task force press conference in 68 days, Pence casually estimated 240,000 Americans will die from Covid-19. The estimate coming from Trump and Pence has steadily increased since the beginning of the pandemic, when Trump said there were only 15 cases which would soon be near zero. Pence mentioned daily cases in OK declining while failing to mention it was a slight decline after a massive spike. Pence was twice asked about holding large rallies while the task force advises against large gatherings. And twice Pence responded by saying they had a first amendment right to free speech and assembly. The second time Pence took this question, he promptly ended the press conference, after having answered only six questions.

A 3 panel judge on the 9th circuit ruled that Trump diverting funds appropriated to military infrastructure projects to build the border wall was unconstitutional. (The Supreme Court decision regarding this subject dealt with a stay, not the merits of the case itself.) This will undoubtedly head to the Supreme Court, but likely won’t be resolved this year.

Ron Johnson is reviving his Senate investigation of Joe Biden’s son Hunter ahead of the November election. Hunter Biden has never been credibly accused of any specific wrongdoing.

Trump Daily 6/15/2020

• Mike Pence, who heads the Covid-19 response for the entire country, privately told governors to downplay increasing statistics as intermittent and the fault of things like increased testing. This isn’t true. In response to the Trump rally in Tulsa this week, Pence said the state was seeing declining numbers. This is a lie. Oklahoma’s worst two days for infections came this weekend. Tulsa’s largest increase in cases was yesterday.

• The president today told the press (and tweeted out) that if we were not testing so many people there would not be so many infections. Nearly every take on this has been wrong. Literally his words said that but what he meant is that if we weren’t testing so many people, we wouldn’t have so many confirmed infections which would not look as bad. He does not actually care how many people are sick and dying. He cares about the optics of how many people are sick and dying. Early on in the crisis, Trump openly said he did not want a cruise ship full of infected people to dock as it would increase the number of reported cases in the US. Those people were still sick regardless of where they were located. He simply didn’t want the imagery of an extra 21 cases. We now have had 2.16 MILLION confirmed cases in the US.

• A Trump nominee to a high ranking Pentagon position has a history of conspiracy theories he’s advanced in public. Anthony Tata said President Obama was a Manchurian candidate attempting to help out The Muslim Brotherhood. He said Obama was taking military actions aimed to allow ISIS to expand their foothold in the Middle-East and North Africa, going so far as to accuse the former president of treason. Numerous Trump appointees have had to withdraw or resign after it was discovered they had posted sexist and/or racist statements as well as pushing conspiracy theories. (Notably, the president himself is a conspiracy theorist).

• Florida in April purchased 1 million doses of hydroxychloroquine. They have 980,000 doses remaining as there still has been no evidence the drug treats Covid-19. The president asked today why HHS isn’t reporting that the drug works because he’s had “so many people” who were “so thrilled” from the results from taking the drug. HHS is not reporting studies showing the drug works because there are none.

• Echoing an earlier attack by Sarah Sanders, the Republican Party sent out a press release mocking Joe Biden’s stutter.

• The Trump administration rolled back protections against discriminations against LGBTQ people regarding access to healthcare. After their decision, it became legal for doctors or even emergency rooms to simply refuse to treat gay or transgender people. (Yes, this has happened). In a monumental Supreme Court decision this morning, the justices ruled that gender identity and sexual orientation are covered under Title VII’s anti-discrimination protections. This will not immediately undo the Trump rollback or his transgender military ban, but both are now far more difficult to support from a legal standpoint. President Biden, if elected, could immediately undo Trump’s damage in both areas.

• Fox News was caught (poorly) photoshopping a gunman into multiple images of BLM protesters in Seattle. After initially defending the images, the network halfway apologized saying they had not made clear they were “splicing” images together. Again, the same gunman appeared in multiple images from the protest on their website.

• CNN ran a poll which shows Biden leading Trump nationally by a large margin. The Trump campaign sent CNN a cease and desist letter because they did not like this. A campaign lawyer went on CNN to explain why CNN needed to legally withdraw their poll. Unhappy with how that segment went, the Trump Campaign is now demanding CNN apologize for it. For evidence the poll was unscientific, the campaign has both lied about its methodology and cited another polling firm with a C/D rating from 538.

• Voice of America is relatively unknown within the United States. The broadcaster carries news, produced by the US government, in foreign countries. The director and deputy director of the organization just resigned in protest over Trump nominating Michael Pack to oversee VOA. Pack is a conservative activist who has collaborated with former Trump official and right-wing troll Steve Bannon. Pack is currently under investigation for funneling revenue from a non-profit he runs to his private production company.

Trump Daily 3/2/2020

• John Ratcliffe has been nominated to be Director of National Intelligence. He was previously nominated then withdrawn when it came out nearly every instance on his resume involving national intelligence was a lie. Nothing has changed since his last nomination. This may be an intentional tactic as if the Senate rejects him, Trump can simply keep acting DNI Grenell in place, who also has zero intelligence experience.

• In another released of documents due to a FOIA request, Secretary of Defense Esper, Secretary of State Pompeo, and National Security Adviser John Bolton were all against the delay in Ukrainian military aid but said the decision was ultimately up to the president. The executive branch withheld these documents from the House. Their release under FOIA again undercuts the argument that the administration had authority to withhold them in the first place.

• In another batch of released emails, officials at NOAA were mortified over their scientific credibility as the agency tried to support Trump’s false assertion that Hurricane Dorian would be striking Alabama. The president infamously altered a weather map with a Sharpie in the oval office to make it agree with his misinformed tweet.

• The United States and the Taliban, a terrorist organization, have announced a peace deal that would involve releasing 5,000 Taliban prisoners from Afghani custody. Republicans were previously furious when President Obama brokered a prisoner swap involving 5 Taliban prisoners. The deal has already been rejected by the Aghani government and the Taliban has resumed military operations.

• A judge had found that Ken Cuccinelli was illegally appointed as acting director of USCIS. The agency has already sent out notifications undoing actions he took this summer. He remains Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. Through Trump’s entire term he has abused the Vacancies Reform Act in order to avoid having to go through Senate confirmation of his nominees.

• An upcoming book from David Enrich details the shady transactions taking place at Deutsche Bank. Despite their own internal processes red flagging Trump, the bank continued to loan him massive amounts of money, going so far as to give him a loan to cover another loan they held he had already defaulted on. Coincidentally, the bank was laundering massive amounts of Russian money.

• Mike Pence’s office issued a press release tonight about the coronavirus. The entire press release is just a collection of Tweets praising Trump’s handling of the outbreak.

• In a press event, doctors had to explain to the president that a coronavirus vaccine will not be ready for a year to a year and a half. At a rally tonight, the president said the vaccine will be ready soon. They also had to explain to the president that the flu vaccine will not work against the coronavirus as that isn’t how vaccines work. During the same press event and at his rally tonight the president said they were close to having a treatment that combined a vaccine and something that will make patients better quicker. This is nonsense. It is difficult to understate how little Donald Trump understands about the science involved here.

• At CPAC, Trump said the Taliban, a terrorist group, were great fighters as evidence by their actions against Russia. The Taliban did not fight Russia at any point. He went on to once again say US troops were in Syria to keep their oil, which is a lie and a war crime. He reiterated a frequent quip that televisions don’t work when the wind isn’t blowing in areas using wind energy. This is not true. Trump has a vendetta against windmills after losing a lawsuit to keep them off the coast of his Scottish golf course. He told another frequent lie that he was just joking when he publicly invited Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, saying the media cuts off the laughter afterwards. There was none. The president stated no one is talking about how there isn’t an estate tax any more. There is.