JFK: Trump, Russians, Cuban Missile Crisis

[Rick Plant]

The Lincoln Project issued a new ad lamenting the lives and memories lost to the coronavirus pandemic — and laid the blame squarely at President Donald Trump’s feet.

The anti-Trump conservative group mourned the “moments that make life worth living” that have been wiped away by extended shutdowns and fear of the virus, which the administration failed to stop — unlike most other countries around the world.

“COVID has robbed America of so much,” the ad says. “None of this had to happen. We have suffered needlessly because Trump is a fool, a liar and a failure. Most countries stopped it, Trump refused. It’s Trump’s virus now.”
#TrumpVirus #AmericaorTrump

Memories

[Rick Plant]

Trump's latest COVID tweets are 'on the verge of putting people in danger’: CNN’s Abby Phillip




Donald Trump on Monday night promoted multiple tweets that both attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci and recommended using hydroxychloroquine to “cure” COVID-19, despite the fact that medical professionals have found it is not an effective treatment.

CNN reporter Abby Phillip on Tuesday excoriated the president for spreading blatant misinformation about the disease, which so far has killed more than 148,000 Americans in just five months.

“I think we really do have to say, what’s going on in terms of the president’s Twitter feed last night is irresponsible,” she said. “He is tweeting out disinformation videos about the coronavirus, disseminating information that is contrary to the advice of the doctors and the medical and public health experts in his own administration.”

Phillip then went so far as to say that the president was a threat to public health.

“At this point, it’s on the verge of putting people in danger,” she explained. “Because this kind of talk is what you usually see in sort of the dark web, where people are throwing around all kinds of so-called cures, bleach cures for all kinds of ailments. That’s what’s happening on the president’s twitter feed, and it’s really beyond the pale.”

Watch the video below:

Lawrence O'Donnell goes off on White House press corps for letting Trump off the hook on Russian bounty scandal




MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell continued to publicly call out the White House press corps for their coverage of the reports that President Donald Trump was briefed that Russia was paying bounties for the killing of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, yet did nothing.

“It took 31 days! It took 31 days and today a reporter finally asked Donald Trump about what the reporter called, quote, ‘reports of Russia having bounties on our soldiers in Afghanistan,’ and Donald Trump did exactly what we expected him to do: he lied and he quickly turned to the next question,” O’Donnell explained.

“It took 31 days to get to that question because Donald Trump refused to take any reporters questions for weeks after The New York Times investigative reporters broke the story — 31 days ago — that intelligence reports were presented to the president saying that Vladimir Putin was paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan,” O’Donnell noted.

“They were simply counting on reporters to forget about it,” he explained. “And many of them did.”

“And Donald Trump helped them forget about it by constantly saying distracting things that became the news of the day for those reporters who forgot about it,” he noted.

Watch video in link below:

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/lawrence-odonnell-goes-off-on-white-house-press-corps-for-letting-trump-off-the-hook-on-russian-bounty-scandal/



Texas stopped undercounting coronavirus deaths — and fatalities jumped by 600 on Monday: report




After months of undercounting coronavirus deaths, Texas’ formal tally of COVID-19 fatalities grew by more than 600 on Monday after state health officials changed their method of reporting.

The revised count indicates that more than 12% of the state’s death tally was unreported by state health officials before Monday.

The Texas Department of State Health Services is now counting deaths marked on death certificates as caused by COVID-19. Previously, the state relied on local and regional public health departments to verify and report deaths.

Public health experts have said for months that the state’s official death toll is an undercount. State health officials said Monday that the policy change would improve the accuracy and timeliness of their data.

Texas law requires death certificates to be filed within 10 days.

“This method does not include deaths of people who had COVID-19 but died of an unrelated cause,” the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a news release.

Hispanic Texans are overrepresented in the state’s updated fatality count, making up 47% of deaths, according to health officials, while they make up about 40% of the state’s population. White Texans account for 35% of deaths while Black Texans make up 14% of deaths. Before Monday, the state’s racial and ethnic breakdown of deaths had large gaps, with up to 18% of deaths last month recorded as “unknown.”

Men are more likely to have died from the coronavirus, according to the updated state figures, making up 60% of deaths. And about 180 deaths, or 3% of the total, occurred among Texans younger than 40. About 2,000 people who died were 80 or older, making up the largest age bracket of COVID-19 deaths.

The first death linked to the coronavirus in Texas occurred March 16 in Matagorda County. As of Sunday, state officials said about 5,030 people who tested positive for the virus had died. With Monday’s update, the new figure is roughly 5,700.

After the number of infections in Texas soared to new highs in June and early July, the rate of deaths in Texas has been accelerating. It took 53 days to get from the first death to 1,000 deaths and 39 days to get from 1,000 to 2,000 deaths. On July 10, the state surpassed 3,000 deaths — 24 days after 2,000 deaths were reported. And it took only 10 more days for Texas to reach 4,000 deaths.

While Texas continues to report daily deaths in the triple digits, the number of new daily cases seem to be stabilizing. In the past week alone, state data appears to show new daily infections leveling off, albeit at nearly record highs.

The state recorded its largest number of daily new cases July 15, at 10,791. On Sunday, that number was 5,810

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/texas-stopped-undercounting-s-and-fatalities-jumped-by-600-on-monday-report/

[Rick Plant]

Trump is 'completely unraveling': Former top White House aide says ‘you can see it on his eyes’




Donald Trump is breaking under intense pressure as his policy choices continue to result in devastating outcomes, a former top White House official said on Thurday.

“One American dying a minute now,” former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci posted on Twitter.

“The worst quarter in our modern economic history,” he continued. “A threat of delay against a Presidential election.”

“The guy is finished,” Scaramucci continued.

“Completely unraveling. You can see it on his eyes,” he suggested.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/trump-is-completely-unraveling-former-top-white-house-aide-says-you-can-see-it-on-his-eyes/




Donald Trump just lost the last talking point he had for the election: conservative columnist




Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin cited the new economic numbers as the last tool that President Donald Trump had to salvage what little was left of his chances to win.

Rubin posted her column just after the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve released a statement schooling Trump and his economic adviser Larry Kudlow about the impact Trump’s actions around the coronavirus has had on the economy.

“The coronavirus outbreak is causing tremendous human and economic hardship across the United States and around the world,” the statement said. “The ongoing public health crisis will weigh heavily on economic activity, employment, and inflation in the near term, and poses considerable risks to the economic outlook over the medium term.”

Then Thursday morning the world learned that the United States GDP dropped by 9.5 percent, in a record worst for the country.

“The path of the economy is going to depend, to a very high extent, on the course of the virus and on the measures we take to keep it in check,” said Fed Chair Jerome Powell. “The two things are not in conflict. Social distancing measures and a fast reopening of the economy actually go together. They’re not in competition with each other.”

Rubin explained that Powell basically said Trump’s futile efforts to try and do one without the other won’t do anything.

At the same time, “recent labor market indicators point to a slowing in job growth, particularly among smaller businesses,” he said. For the third month in a row, on July 1, more than 30 percent of Americans couldn’t pay their rent or mortgage. The final unemployment supplement will be sent out this month, so there’s a concern that Aug. 1 numbers will be worse. While Americans continue to file for unemployment at over 1 million people weekly and mass evictions are looking more likely, Trump spent Wednesday evening meeting with oil executives in Texas and telling them everything was great.

“There is no mystery as to why Trump has lost his advantage over former vice president Joe Biden on the economy,” wrote Rubin, citing Trump’s net approval rating on the economy dropping from +16 points since January to +1 in July. Those numbers aren’t likely to stay positive for long.

“Biden actually does 2 points better than Trump when matched up on the economy in an average of the ABC News/Washington Post, Fox News and Quinnipiac polls,” cited CNN’s Harry Enten.

“Trump foolishly thought he could ignore the virus and goad governors and businesses to reopen the economy,” Rubin closed. “That was a deadly and costly failure that voters plainly recognize. It should be obvious by now: Trump’s reckless and willful disregard of the pandemic is what is responsible for the awful economic shape we are in.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/donald-trump-just-lost-the-last-talking-point-he-had-for-the-election-conservative-columnist/



Trump is 'sending a message' to GOP senators that he’s ‘throwing in the towel’ on election: MSNBC’s Morning Joe




Responding to Donald Trump’s comments on Thursday hinting that he’s not sure the November election will happen on time, MSNBC”s “Morning Joe” co-host claimed the president knows he’s going to lose and is sending a message to Republicans in the Senate that he ‘is throwing in the towel.

After sharing clips of the president’s comments in Thursday’s press conference, the former GOP lawmaker expressed disgust that Trump would attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the upcoming election and said he should quit if he is giving up.

“He really knows he’s going to lose this fall.” he began. “I mean, he’s sending the message to Republican senators ‘I’m going to lose.'”

“After this happened yesterday, Republican senators were aghast this was, in effect, Donald Trump throwing in the towel, making excuses already for his loss for an election that’s, what, 97, 98 days away, and he’s already throwing in the towel? So he’s — he’s already talking about doubting the validity of November’s elections because he knows he’s going to lose.”

Watch below:

'It is terrifying to have a president who is psychotic’: Dr. Justin Frank explains why Trump hates anyone who is loved

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/it-is-terrifying-to-have-a-president-who-is-psychotic-dr-justin-frank-explains-why-trump-hates-anyone-who-is-loved/

[Rick Plant]

Storyteller Don Winslow warns of 'Trump's evil plan’ — and the coming ‘October surprise’




Bestselling author Don Winlsow has released his latest ad against President Donald Trump.

The ad, titled “Trump’s Evil Plan” warns of Trump using three strategies to try and win the 2020 election.

“Trump can’t run on the economy, because he’s destroyed it,” the narrator says. “And he cannot run on his response to the coronavirus, because it is a disaster with 150,000 dead.”

“So Donald Trump is going to play three cards in his final days before the election,” the narrator predicts. “Card number one, he’s going to start a civil war.”

“Card number two, he’s going to promise a vaccine that is not remotely ready,” the narrator says. “Card number three, he’s going to try an October surprise on Joe Biden.”

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

'Dangerous' Trump is 'going down in flames' and wants to take the country with him: conservative




In his column for the Daily Beast, conservative commentator Matt Lewis claimed that Donald Trump’s professed desire to delay the November election is a sign he knows he’s “going down in flames” and that should worry Republicans and Democrats alike because that makes the president dangerous.

Under a headline proclaiming “Trump Finally Admits That His Election Is Swirling Down the Golden Toilet,” Lewis — who abandoned the Republican Party due to Trump — said the president likely ramped up his claims of a “rigged election” because of terrible economic news on Thursday as a distraction only to make it obvious to all that he knows he’s going down to defeat.

As Lewis notes, there is little good news on the horizon that will save the president with the coronavirus pandemic still raging across the country, the economy still in collapse, adding that “…changing campaign managers isn’t going to shake things up, and there won’t be a convention ‘bounce’ to help, either.”

After stating Trump is “going down in flames,” Lewis suggested that Trump is at his most dangerous now since he has already shown he cares about nobody but himself.

“If this is Trump conceding to the apparently inevitable, it’s also a dangerous time. People who are forced to finally admit imminent defeat are prone to outbursts and desperate behavior. When those people are the president, and especially this president, things can get dicey,” he wrote before adding, “If the choice is between Trump’s political ambitions and the preservation of this great experiment, there isn’t much of a contest. That’s why Trump thinks it’s safe to send kids back to school amid a pandemic (that helps his re-election chances) but not safe enough to have an election on November 3 (that hurts his re-election chances).”

 Writing, “it’s worth remembering that even if Trump is admitting to the evidently inevitable here, he’s still going to go down swinging,” Lewis wrote now is the time for Republicans to flee the president, oppose him and try and save their themselves.

“Trump’s tweet is an open invitation to wavering Republicans to finally jump ship. In recent days, I have noticed commentators like Rich Lowry and Erick Erickson (both originally Trump critics who sidled up to him after the election) create some distance and start to hedge their bets,” he wrote before suggesting, “For the rest of us, it’s important to keep things in perspective. Trump said something truly shocking on Thursday. But it’s mostly shocking because it signals that even he can’t deny that the jig is finally up. It’s now just a matter of time. “

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/dangerous-trump-is-going-down-in-flames-and-wants-to-take-the-country-with-him-conservative/



Trump just gave away the game on his November plan to manipulate the election results




Despite his most inflammatory tweet of the day, President Donald Trump does not plan on moving the date of the November election. As many observers pointed out, his post floating this idea came shortly after news of the devastating economic growth numbers for the second quarter were released, and he was almost certainly trying to change the subject (not that threatening democracy will play well with the electorate). But Trump is likely aware that he lacks the power to move the election, and there’s no sign that he’s seriously lobbying his congressional allies to do so, especially since they’d need House Democrats to agree.

@realDonaldTrump: "With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???"

Yet his threat to democracy is real. Trump gave away the game on his plan to manipulate November’s results in a follow-up tweet on Thursday:

@realDonaldTrump: "Must know Election results on the night of the Election, not days, months, or even years later!"

He has been laying the groundwork for this attack for months now with his aggressive and bogus criticisms of mail-in voting. This campaign has drawn some quizzical responses since it’s clearly discouraging Republicans from using mail-in ballots as they have done — quite effectively — for decades. Given that we’re in a pandemic, one that will surely be ongoing if not resurgent in November, it seems on its face to be a form of self-sabotage for the president to discourage his own supporters from the safest form of voting.

But Trump’s second tweet sets the stage for his strategy. If Democrats dominate mail-in voting, that may mean Trump could lead when the Election Day ballots start to get counted on Nov. 3. If Joe Biden has won, that may only become evident when the mail-in ballots are counted. Because there’s likely to be a surge of mail-in voting, state election operations are likely to be underfunded, and the Trump administration seems to be deliberately slowing down the mail, it may take a while for these votes to be counted. It could potentially take weeks.

And there are bound to be other irregularities, as well, because there always are. What happens if the Post Office slows down delivery of the mail, and it’s not clear if a certain set of ballots were sent at the right time? This kind of dispute — and many others — could lead to tense legal challenges.

The president is already making it clear, however, that he wants to simply accept the results as they’re first reported Tuesday night (he’ll surely do an about-face if Biden is the winner early on). Of course, this is a completely baseless demand. States are obligated to count all votes legitimately cast, and they are allowed time to do so:

Except that federal law gives states *at least* 35 days after the election to certify its results—and for good reason:

https://law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/5

So there’s no legal argument on the president’s side, just as he has no authority to change the election date. But that doesn’t really matter. Many people pointed out in April that, despite Trump’s demands that states reopen their economies prematurely in the face of the pandemic, the president had no power to boss the governors around. But Trump won that argument — and triggered a resurgence of the virus — because the GOP will follow him off any cliff.

Trump’s real power is his control over his voters and his party. He’s coaching them to treat mail-in ballots as illegitimate — even as he hopelessly tries to make a distinction between mail-in and absentee ballots, which he uses (they’re the same). If he wins the Election Day vote, but fears — as seems likely — that a deluge of mail-in ballots will hand the race to Biden, he could push to undercut these votes.

And he’d have multiple allies in that fight. For example, Republicans control the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — three crucial swing states. State legislatures are fundamentally in charge of determining how electors get selected for the electoral college. Of course, right now, in most states, the candidate who wins the most votes in the state gets all the electoral votes. And in theory, the legislatures shouldn’t be able to change the rules after the votes have already been cast. But what if the ballot counting is dragging on, and legal disputes are breaking out. Irregularities will abound, and feed conspiracy theories. A GOP swing state legislature infected by Trump’s propaganda may try to claim that the election is inherently corrupted, and it may decide to take matters into its own hands — and hand victory to Trump.

Could it actually do that? It’s hard to say in advance, but any attempt would inevitably end up in court. There, the legal challenges would meet more Trump allies in the form of conservative judges and justices, who just happen to have a majority on the Supreme Court, where any consequential dispute would inevitably end up.

Chief Justice John Roberts may give the president’s opponents some hope. He has been willing to break with Trump and the entire Republican Party in many high-profile cases in recent decisions, sometimes shocking his liberal critics. So there’s no guarantee that he’d be in the bag to hand the election to Trump.

There’s a big caveat here, though. One consistent feature of Roberts’ jurisprudence, including in recent rulings, is a clear hostility to voting rights. The only consistency in his judgments on this front seems to be favoritism for moves that suppress the vote and help Republicans. So it wouldn’t be surprising if Roberts led the court in a repeat of Bush v. Gore in some heated legal battle, handing the election to Trump.

It wouldn’t even need to be this blatant, because the key to Trump’s strategy is chaos. If, after some set of legal disputes and quarrels over which ballots are legitimate, there’s no clear winner in the Electoral College, the decision gets sent to the House of Representatives. But because of a quirk in the Constitution, each member doesn’t get their own vote — there’s only one vote per state. This system would seem to favor Trump.

It’s not clear the president has thought all this through and gamed out a complete strategy. He’s not much of a planner. But he clearly knows the polls are not looking good for him, and it’s undeniable that — as he did in 2016 — he’s laying the groundwork for challenging the legitimacy of the election. The terrifying thing is that it could work.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/trump-just-gave-away-the-game-on-his-november-plan-to-manipulate-the-election-results/



'I'ts time for him to go': MSNBC's Morning Joe called on GOP senators to force Trump off the ticket




MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called on the Republican Party to force President Donald Trump off the ticket or face political ruin.

Trump suggested delaying the election as his approval ratings continue to plunge, and he’s acting as an anchor around GOP lawmakers across the country — and the “Morning Joe” host urged them to pull the plug on this presidency.

“This guy is leading you to ruin,” Scarborough said.

GOP incumbents are trailing or narrowly leading polls in traditionally conservative states like Arizona, North Carolina and Texas, and Scarborough blamed Trump’s growing unpopularity.

“I know you’re not surprised, so what are you going to do?” Scarborough said. “You really want this guy at the top of your ticket in November? I know you don’t, so what are you going to do?”

“[Sen.] Barry Goldwater in 1974 got off his ass, went to the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and told Richard Nixon it was time to go,” he added. “Do you have the courage to do that? The last four years suggest that you don’t, but I will just say, at the end of July, 2020, the same thing I warned you about in February of 2016, before Super Tuesday, that Donald Trump will lead to the end of the party of Abraham Lincoln. Maybe not this week, maybe not this month, maybe not even this election, but it’s coming, and your window is closing.”

Trump’s continued failures on the coronavirus pandemic will doom his re-election chances, and likely cost Republicans their Senate majority — possibly for the foreseeable future, Scarborough said.

“Maybe you didn’t care about a pandemic sweeping across America, but you care about your own political career, your own political party,” Scarborough said. “Understand the window is closing. The time is drawing near when you go past the point of no return. Are you going to walk down to the White House? Are you going to get in your car, go to the White House, and tell Donald Trump that it’s time for him to go? It’s your choice.”

“If you don’t, let me tell you what’s going to happen,” he continued. “You’re going to lose the election, lose the Senate, lose the House and you’re going to have to complain about Democrats running this country the rest of your life. But it’s your call.”

“Maybe it’s worth blindly following a [former] Democrat who contributed to Hillary Clinton, seven, eight times, who contributed to Anthony Weiner, to Elliott Spitzer, who contributed to Kamala Harris,” Scarborough added. “Isn’t this exciting if Joe Biden picks Kamala Harris. You will have Donald Trump running against a vice president that he contributed to in 2014 — 2014 — not like 1998, 1999 when he was hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein, with a bunch of women — I’m sorry, yeah, young girls.”

[Rick Plant]

Kushner's axed coronavirus team shied away from a national strategy, believing that the virus was hitting Democratic states hardest and that they could blame governors, report says

https://www.businessinsider.com/kushner-covid-19-plan-maybe-axed-for-political-reasons-report-2020-7


How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”

This spring, a team working under the president's son-in-law produced a plan for an aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response that could have brought the pandemic under control. So why did the White House spike it in favor of a shambolic 50-state response?

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air

[Rick Plant]

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/pretender-in-chief-trump-is-awol-with-over-155000-americans-in-his-failed-war-on-19-columnist/