Russian To Judgment, Con't

The plan to October Surprise the Trump regime to a win with "new bombshell revelations!!11!" about Hillary Clinton and the 2016 FBI investigation into the Trump campaign has failed miserably thanks to Trump's COVID collapse, and we're getting into a dangerous point now in American history.

 

With coronavirus running through his body in competition with a heavy steroidal dose, President Trump is frustrated that a country where over 210,000 people have died from the virus seems disinterested in the “hoax” of Russiagate.

Trump spent part of his week demanding the latest version of his Russia counter-narrative—that the intelligence officials teamed up with Democrats to invent Russian collusion in 2016—be used to prosecute his political enemies. “I say, ‘Bill [Barr], we have plenty [of evidence], we don’t need any more,” Trump told Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. On Friday, he fumed to Rush Limbaugh that Republicans are “afraid they’re going to influence the election… they don’t play the tough game.”

Providing that “evidence” to Attorney General William Barr’s special prosecutor is loyalist Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Intelligence veterans are seething as Ratcliffe helps Trump concoct a narrative to aid him in an election. “Everyone knows the deal here,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer. “They know Ratcliffe is irresponsible. It’s just everything goes.”

Yet Trump and his aides, in recent weeks, have recognized that the public isn’t captivated by the Breitbart-friendly accounts of uncovered notes from former CIA officials four years ago, according to two sources familiar with the private complaints.

“Mainstream media isn’t covering it. So most voters aren’t aware of the facts,” John McLaughlin, a top Trump pollster, told The Daily Beast. “You’re [the] first reporter who’s ever asked me and it has yet to be a question in the debates.”

Other political advisers don’t even think it’s worth the bother at this point. Some senior Trump aides have privately insisted that amplifying the inquiry from special prosecutor John Durham is a waste of time, at least electorally. “It is not going to move any votes that aren’t already in our column,” one said. 

 

And this all goes back to Trump's toxic narcissism. He sees the Russia investigation as a personal attack against him, and he's utterly baffled as to why the country that obviously loves him as its new messiah doesn't rise up in armed rage to throw down the Democrats. Trump, constantly surrounded by enablers and sycophants, believes the entire country is like his White House full of yes men and toadies.

 

“The media has worked hard to keep voters in the dark about Joe Biden colluding with Hillary Clinton to spread the Russia collusion hoax and undermining the peaceful transition of power in 2017,” Matt Wolking, the Trump campaign’s deputy communications director, said in response to a request for comment Friday.

One person who has repeatedly talked to Trump about Durham’s probe and the president’s desire to imprison many of his political enemies recounted how Trump has lamented how more people aren’t defecting from the Democratic Party for what is supposedly the “biggest scandal” in recent U.S. political history. The president also blames media outlets—including Fox—for not covering Durham-related developments as aggressively as he’d like. They’re “cover[ing] it up” for the voters and American public, Trump has said.

Another source with knowledge of the president’s griping on the matter said that there was at least one instance in the past two months when President Trump had flipped through cable-news channels looking for coverage of the probe one day, only to voice his irritation when he couldn’t find any. 

 

So this is where the danger comes in, as I've warned. When it finally penetrates Trump's shell that he's really in danger of losing this election, he's going to panic, and panicky, scared people with power do stupid, stupid things. I don't honestly know how far Trump will go, but given his documented, decades-long history of looting the place and leaving his enablers holding the bag, and his documented, decades-long history of petty retribution against everyone in a position of strength against him, the potential for a catastrophic miscalculation on Trump's part is very high.

What happens if Trump orders Barr to arrest Clinton, Biden, and Obama?

We could find out really soon.

Trump Goes Viral, Con't

At this point the Trump regime has to be considered an active proponent of infecting as many Americans as possible with COVID-19, because it has ignored the recommendations of medical scientists, doctors, and public health experts at the CDC for close to seven months now. The CDC made it clear that a mask mandate was required on all US public transportation as we head into the flu season, and the White House wouldn't even consider it.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drafted a sweeping order last month requiring all passengers and employees to wear masks on all forms of public and commercial transportation in the United States, but it was blocked by the White House, according to two federal health officials.

The order would have been the toughest federal mandate to date aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus, which continues to infect more than 40,000 Americans a day. The officials said that it was drafted under the agency’s “quarantine powers” and that it had the support of the secretary of health and human services, Alex M. Azar II, but the White House Coronavirus Task Force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, declined to even discuss it.

The two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment, said the order would have required face coverings on airplanes, trains, buses and subways, and in transit hubs such as airports, train stations and bus depots.

A task force official said the decision to require masks should be left up to states and localities. The administration requires the task force to sign off on coronavirus-related policies.

“The approach the task force has taken with any mask mandate is, the response in New York City is different than Montana, or Tuscaloosa, Alabama,” said the official who asked not to be identified because he did not have permission to discuss the matter. “Local and state authorities need to determine the best approach for their responsive effort depending on how the coronavirus is impacting their area.”

Most public health officials believe that wearing masks is one of the most effective ways to protect against the spread of the virus, particularly in crowded, poorly ventilated public places that attract people from all over, like transportation venues. Many feel that the Trump administration has turned the wearing — or not wearing — of masks into a political expression, as seen most dramatically on Monday evening when President Trump whipped off his surgical mask at the White House door after returning from the hospital where he was treated for Covid-19.

“I think masks are the most powerful weapon we have to confront Covid and we all need to embrace masks and set the example for each other,” Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C. director, who oversaw the drafting of the order, said in a recent interview.

Dr. Redfield has been publicly at odds with President Trump for promoting mask wearing along with social distancing, and for warning that a vaccine for the virus won’t be widely available until next year.

The thwarting of the mask rule is the latest in a number of C.D.C. actions stalled or changed by the White House. Late last month, the coronavirus task force overruled the C.D.C. director’s order to keep cruise ships docked until mid-February. That plan was opposed by the tourism industry in Florida, an important swing state in the presidential election. Political appointees at the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services have also been involved in rewriting the agency’s guidelines on reopening schools and testing for the virus, bypassing the agency’s scientists.

Some other members of the White House Task Force support a mask mandate. But others do not, among them Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a radiologist who has become Mr. Trump’s closest adviser on the coronavirus, and Mr. Pence, who runs the panel and sets the agenda.

 

Under this logic, there's no reason to even have a United States of America, because New York is not Montana, so national laws cannot be applied to any damn thing.

 

Except that public transportation is interstate travel. 

We could have stopped the spread of this stupid pandemic months ago, but we refuse because of politics and racism. Rural white folk are still hoping the pandemic will kill as many of those urban people as possible so they get more political power, I guess.

At this point, I actively consider every Trump voter to be okay with racism and okay with mass carnage of non-Trump voters because they're a dangerous death cult. Trump himself is a walking public health hazard who should be in quarantine.

They're trying to kill everyone. If they can't do it with a pandemic, they'll do it with violence.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

 The Republican rats are headed for the lifeboats off the sinking USS Trumptanic.

For Republicans, fearful of a possible electoral disaster just weeks away, it has become safe at last to diss Donald Trump — or at least to distance themselves from him in unmistakably purposeful ways.

A barrage of barbed comments in recent days shows how markedly the calculus of fear has shifted in the GOP. For much of the past four years, Republican politicians were scared above all about incurring the wrath of the president and his supporters with any stray gesture or remark that he might regard as not sufficiently deferential. Now, several of them are evidently more scared of not being viewed by voters as sufficiently independent.

This is far from an insurrection. Republicans in the main aren’t outright repudiating Trump. But they are effectively rolling their eyes in exasperation with him, and especially his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Among the most vivid recent examples:

* Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas acknowledging in a Friday interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he’s “worried” about the election, which he warned could be a “bloodbath of Watergate proportions” for his party, depending on how voters view the pandemic and economy on Election Day.

* Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell telling reporters Thursday he has not been to the White House in more than two months, since Aug. 6, because he doesn’t have confidence that Trump and his team are practicing good coronavirus hygiene. McConnell said, “my impression was their approach to how to handle this was different than mine and what I insisted that we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing.”

* Sen. Thom Tillis, in a perilous fight for reelection in North Carolina, telling POLITICO in an interview that one reason to vote for him is to help Republicans keep their Senate majority as “the best check on a Biden presidency.”

* Sen. Martha McSally, running behind in her bid to keep her Arizona seat, refusing to say at a debate with challenger Mark Kelly — despite being pressed repeatedly by the moderator — whether she is proud of being a backer of Trump. “Well, I’m proud that I’m fighting for Arizonans on things like cutting your taxes … ” she filibustered.

* Sen. John Cornyn, still ahead in polls but facing a tougher-than-usual race in Texas, told the Houston Chronicle that Trump did not practice “self-discipline” in combating the coronavirus, and that his efforts to signal prematurely that the pandemic is receding are creating “confusion” with the public. Trump got “out over his skis,” Cornyn said.

* Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican in a historically Democratic-leaning state, said this week that Trump has been “incredibly irresponsible” through words and actions “to ignore the advice of so many of the folks in the public health, epidemiol infectious disease community.”

* After Trump abruptly called off talks on a new economic recovery plan this week, a number of Republicans publicly broke with Trump’s strategy. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for reelection, went so far as to call Trump’s move a “huge mistake.” Rep. John Katko of New York, who represents a district Hillary Clinton carried, made clear he “disagrees” with the president. And Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a top Trump ally who is locked in the toughest race of his political career, urged Trump to come back to the negotiating table. In the face of the uproar, Trump did reverse course, though a deal remains highly uncertain.

What’s going on with all this GOP static? In the past, Trump has been able to effectively end the careers of people who drew his ire. Former South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, an occasional Trump critic, was in a tough primary challenge in 2018 when Trump weighed in decisively against him in the closing hours. The New York Times said Sanford’s loss proved that, “having a conservative voting record is less important than demonstrating total loyalty to Mr. Trump.” Later, Jeff Sessions, trying to return to the Senate from Alabama after losing Trump’s confidence as attorney general, learned the same lesson.

One thing that’s changed, operatives in both parties say, is that there is now strength in numbers. A growing roster of Republicans are stepping sideways or ducking from the camera to make sure they are not captured in the same frame as Trump. In addition, Trump is simply too consumed by the resident chaos all around his West Wing in the closing weeks of his own reelection campaign to carry out punitive measures against GOP disloyalists.

 

It's all starting to come apart for the regime. Once you show weakness like this, things only get worse for strongmen and authoritarians like Trump. Trump's either going to need to crack down on his party, or it's game over for him. Without the support of his enablers in Congress, he's as good as toast.

Last Call For Graham, Crackers

 If I were a betting man, I'd say South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham just lost his Senate seat.

Republican incumbent Lindsey Graham and Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison will no longer debate Friday night after Harrison declined to participate unless Graham took a coronavirus test in advance and Graham denied the request.

Instead of an hour-long debate, the two candidates will each participate in separate 30-minute interviews hosted by television station WSPA in Spartanburg.

The forum will air live on channels in all the major media markets of South Carolina: WCBD in Charleston, WBTW in Myrtle Beach, WLTX in Columbia, WJBF in Aiken and WSAV in Hilton Head and Beaufort. It will also be streamed live online.

The decision put an end to tumultuous back-and-forth in the final 24 hours before the debate after Harrison issued a public demand Thursday night that Graham take a coronavirus test before they debated.

Graham cast the move as a last-ditch attempt to escape the debate by adding a new requirement after the two candidates had already agreed to the debate rules weeks ago. The senator refused to take the test, citing a note from the attending physician of Congress saying that he did not need one.

Harrison continued to press for it Friday, saying in an appearance on ABC’s The View that he considered it to be a matter of safety.

“We’re disappointed that Lindsey has failed to take a simple coronavirus test, but we appreciate our hosts were able to change the event format to make it safer for everyone,” said Harrison campaign spokesman Guy King. “Jaime will be there in Spartanburg to talk to voters.”

In a series of tweets, Graham said Harrison was just trying to avoid scrutiny.

“Mr. Harrison is ducking the debate because the more we know about his radical policies, the less likely he is to win,” Graham said. “It’s not about medicine, its politics.”

I mean all Graham had to do was take the test, because Graham's FUCKING BEEN IN CONTACT WITH DONALD TRUMP WHO HAS COVID-19. 

Ahem. 

Sorry. That was probably uncalled for, and it yes, Graham is correct that Harrison's public request for Graham to be tested was obviously (at least in part) bait for Graham to take. 

Look, clearly Harrison was goading Graham into blowing his cool and trying to throw Graham off his game before a debate performance in by what all accounts is neck-and-neck contest. For all his ludicrous faults and stupid hypocrisy, Lindsey Graham is a seasoned career politician and should have expected this and dealt with it appropriately. 

Yes, he'd have to say "Look I took the test, I'm negative" but then the two of them would hash it out on the debate stage. Harrison almost certainly would have been gracious enough to thank Graham at the debate for agreeing to the test and the two of them could have played "Well Bless Your Heart" on TV for a while like Southern politicians have been doing for decades. I grew up in NC, I expect at least some genteel behavior in my villains in matters such as this, even if it is the cake scene between Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained.

What I wasn't expecting was that Graham would be so completely unnerved by this enough that he refused the request, handing Harrison the night, the debate, the argument, and most likely the Senate seat to boot, especially after Trump's similarly ridiculous behavior in the last ten days has all but cost him the race against Joe Biden.

But you see, that's worth it for Graham, because if he tests positive?

Graham is chair of the Senate Judiciary with the Amy Coney Barrett nomination. No Graham, because he tests positive, no hearing before the election.  Of course, he could be ill and he's literally risking his life by not knowing if he has COVID-19 or worse, he's hiding a positive test.

Worse still, if Graham is infected, he's risking the lives of everyone he comes in contact with, including his GOP colleagues.

I guess that's my fault. American exceptionalism was always a myth, and that applies to our villains as well as our heroes. Our historic bad guys, like Trump and Graham? 

Just petty little crybabies at heart. Sad, depressingly pathetic mortal fools.

Time to put them and the rest of the GOP in the ol' dustbin of history.

Lowering The Barr, Orange Meltdown Edition

Not even Bill Barr, the worst Attorney General in modern history, is willing to completely sell his soul and go down in history as one of the great American villains by indicting Joe Biden weeks before the election. At least, not yet anyway. Donald Trump is not amused in the least.

President Trump berated his own cabinet officers on Thursday for not prosecuting or implicating his political enemies, lashing out even as he announced that he hoped to return to the campaign trail on Saturday just nine days after he tested positive for the coronavirus.

In his first extended public comments since learning he had the virus last week, Mr. Trump went on the offensive not only against his challenger, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., but the Democratic running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, whom he called “a monster” and a “communist.” He balked at participating in his debate next Thursday with Mr. Biden if held remotely as the organizers decided to do out of health concerns.

But Mr. Trump secured a statement from the White House physician clearing him to return to public activities on Saturday and then promptly said he would try to hold a campaign rally in Florida that day, two days earlier than the doctor had originally said was needed to determine whether he was truly out of danger. The president again dismissed the virus, saying, “when you catch it, you get better,” ignoring the more than 212,000 people in the United States who did not get better and died from it.

In his statement on Thursday night, the physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, reported that Mr. Trump “has responded extremely well to treatment” and that by Saturday, “I fully expect the president’s return to public engagement.” Dr. Conley, who has previously acknowledged providing the public with a rosy view of the president’s condition to satisfy his patient, contradicted his own timeline offered upon Mr. Trump’s release from the hospital, when he said doctors wanted to “get through to Monday.”

The president has not been seen in person since returning to the White House this Monday, but he sought to reassert himself on the public stage with a pair of telephone interviews with Fox News and Fox Business as well as a video and a series of Twitter messages. Even for him, they were scattershot performances, ones that advisers said reflected increasing frustration over his political fortunes only 26 days before an election with surveys that show him trailing Mr. Biden by double digits.

The president castigated his own team, declaring that Attorney General William P. Barr would go down in history “as a very sad, sad situation” if he did not indict Democrats like Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama. He complained that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had not released Hillary Clinton’s emails, saying, “I’m not happy about him for that reason.” And he targeted Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director. “He’s been disappointing,” Mr. Trump said.

 

As Mad King Donald grows increasingly desperate in what looks more and more like the final days of his blighted reign, and the GOP looks to go down with him in a number of downticket disasters, Barr has even more bad news for his master (at least if WIN THE MORNING 2.0 is to be believed.)

 

Attorney General Bill Barr has begun telling top Republicans that the Justice Department’s sweeping review into the origins of the Russia investigation will not be released before the election, a senior White House official and a congressional aide briefed on the conversations tell Axios.

Why it matters: Republicans had long hoped the report, led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, would be a bombshell containing revelations about what they allege were serious abuses by the Obama administration and intelligence community probing for connections between President Trump and Russia. 

“This is the nightmare scenario. Essentially, the year and a half of arguably the number one issue for the Republican base is virtually meaningless if this doesn't happen before the election," a GOP congressional aide told Axios. 

Barr has made clear that they should not expect any further indictments or a comprehensive report before Nov. 3, our sources say. 

The Justice Department declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

 

I mean the whole point of a sham indictment of your political enemies is to indict them before the election, so that you can arrest them and then declare victory, yes? Republicans facing the American voting public want Barr to at least deliver something of an October Surprise that will shift the election in their favor.

Trump's allies have long asserted that Durham's investigation will result in the arrests of top Obama administration officials. So far, Durham's probe has resulted in one criminal case: a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to altering an email used to help obtain a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. 

A former DOJ official told Axios that Durham "has a reputation for being thorough, but also somewhat slow, in part because of the big tasks he's undertaken." The official pointed to Durham's Obama-era investigation into the CIA's use of torture, one that took years for him to complete. "It comes with the territory of a sprawling investigation that every stone you turn over needs to be fully scrutinized," the former official said.

What's next: Top Republicans are planning to pressure Barr to get ahead of Durham and temper expectations for the timing of the report's release, as well declassify whatever remaining documents there are connected to the probe. 

"Bill Barr should follow the instructions of the president to declassify and release all the documents the FBI are sitting on. There's no good reason for him to withhold this information," a senior White House official said. 

Earlier this week, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe approved the release of a large binder full of documents to the DOJ to assist their review of the Durham probe.

 

There's still a very high chance that there will be "leaks" in the days leading up to the election, ask Hillary Clinton how implying an FBI investigation of a Democratic frontrunner two weeks before election day turns out. Barr doesn't need to indict Joe Biden in order to damage his campaign and swing the election in Trump's favor.

But Biden is so far ahead right now (FiveThirtyEight's national polling average has Biden cracking the double-digit ceiling with a 10.1% lead) that anything short of actually perp walking Joe into federal custody won't give Trump a second term. Maybe Barr has decided that it's not worth going down as, you know, an infamous American bastard in history along with the likes of Benedict Arnold, John Wilkes Booth, and, well, Donald Trump.

We'll see. Still plenty of time to break democracy on the way out.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Two big stories to process story this week on just how crazed Trump supporters have become in 2020, as first in Michigan, multiple armed domestic "militia" members were charged by the FBI on Wednesday in a plot to kidnap Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the state's government.

Federal agents said Thursday they thwarted a plot to violently overthrow the government and kidnap and harm Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — a conspiracy that included visits to her home in northern Michigan and training with firearms and explosive devices.

The alleged plots involved six conspirators unhappy in part about Whitmer's coronavirus restrictions, calling her a "tyrant." They wanted to create a "self-sufficient" society free from unconstitutional state governments and discussed plans to storm the Capitol and take hostages, according to FBI documents filed in court.

Organizers allegedly met starting in June, including at a Second Amendment rally in Lansing and in a Grand Rapids shop basement accessed through a secret door hidden under a rug.

The plot also included at least seven members of a Michigan militia known as the Wolverine Watchmen accused by state officials on Thursday of targeting police, making threats to "instigate civil war" and helping to plan Whitmer's kidnapping, according to state and federal officials.

The federal court filing alleges the conspirators twice conducted surveillance at Whitmer's personal vacation home in northern Michigan and discussed kidnapping her to a "secure location" in Wisconsin to stand "trial" for treason prior to the Nov. 3 election.

"Several members talked about murdering 'tyrants' or 'taking' a sitting governor," an FBI agent wrote in the affidavit. "The group decided they needed to increase their numbers and encouraged each other to talk to their neighbors and spread their message."

After the charges were revealed, Whitmer slammed President Donald Trump for failing to condemn in strong enough terms hate groups, such as the far-right Proud Boys, whom he told to "stand back and stand by" during the debate last week.

"Hate groups heard the president's words not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry, a call to action," the Democratic governor said.

 

Gov. Whitmer is correct.

More than once, Donald Trump tweeted to "LIBERATE MICHIGAN".

The white supremacist domestic terrorists who follow him tried to do exactly that.

But the second story is far worse, frankly. Actual neo-Nazis, a domestic terrorist movement called The Base, have been recruiting law enforcement and military to start a white supremacist "race war". The Guardian's Jason Wilson reveals the monster behind The Base: a former US military contractor named Rinaldo Nazzaro.

 

The Guardian has learned the true identity of the leader and founder of the US-based neo-Nazi terror network the Base, which was recently the target of raids by the FBI after an investigation into domestic terrorism uncovered their plans to start a race war.

Members of the group stand accused of federal hate crimes, murder plots and firearms offenses, and have harbored international fugitives in recent months.

The Base’s leader previously operated under the aliases “Norman Spear” and “Roman Wolf”. Members of the network do not know his true identity due to the group’s culture of internal secrecy.

But the Guardian can reveal that “Norman Spear” is in fact US-born Rinaldo Nazzaro, 46, who has a long history of advertising his services as an intelligence, military and security contractor. He has claimed, under his alias, to have served in Russia and Afghanistan.

The revelation of his identity comes after a months-long investigation by the Guardian into Nazzaro and the activities of the Base.

While Nazzaro’s most recently used address is in New Jersey, there is evidence supporting his claims of being based in Russia, where he lives with his Russian wife.

The Base – which is an approximate English translation of “al-Qaida” – began recruiting in late 2018. The white supremacy group, which has regional and international cells, extols the virtues of an all-out race war while specifically targeting African Americans and Jewish people.

Using encrypted apps, members of the highly organized group planned terror campaigns; vandalized synagogues; established armed training camps and recruited new members.

The US attorney for Maryland, Robert K Hur, speaking after the recent arrest of three members of the Base, said that they “did more than talk – they took steps to act and act violently on their racist views”. 

These guys are bad news and they will be with us for a long time. In a Biden administration, expect these guys to be a real threat. 

 

Last Call For House Afire

 We've talked endlessly about the White House and Senate races, but how is the House shaping up in 2020? There are vulnerable incumbents in both parties, and the general consensus is that the Dems may pick up 5-10 seats overall, but if Trump's collapse down the stretch in the suburbs and with Seniors turns into a downticket disaster, the Dems could end up with a whole lot more House seats. 538's House gurur, Nate Rakich:

Now, Democrats must defend 30 seats in districts won by President Trump in 2016 (as opposed to only six Republicans who sit in districts that Hillary Clinton carried). Yet Democrats are on offense once again this year: 28 of the 50 House districts that the Deluxe version of our model considers most likely to change parties are held by Republicans.

There are a few explanations for why Democrats still have room to grow. The first is that they are virtually guaranteed to flip two seats right off the bat thanks to redistricting. After a court declared in 2019 that North Carolina’s old congressional lines showed signs of “extreme partisan gerrymandering,” the state legislature passed a new map that reconfigured two Republican-held seats as Democratic strongholds: the 2nd District and 6th District. Their current occupants, Reps. George Holding and Mark Walker, announced they would retire from Congress soon after, and now the seats are Democrats’ two best pickup opportunities in the entire nation. Our model gives the party a greater than 99 in 100 chance of winning both races.

Another is that, though Democrats picked most of the low-hanging fruit in 2018, there are still a few easy pickup opportunities left: That is, there are a few Clinton districts still represented by Republicans. In Texas’s 23rd District, Rep. Will Hurd defeated Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones by just 0.4 points in 2018, but this year, Hurd was one of many Texas Republicans who decided to retire. As a result, Ortiz Jones (who is running again) has a 74 in 100 chance to win in 2020 against Republican Tony Gonzales. And Democrats did win California’s 25th District in 2018, but a sex scandal forced Rep. Katie Hill to resign, and Republican Mike Garcia flipped the seat back in a special election. Our model considers the rubber match to be a toss-up, giving Democrats a 56 in 100 shot. Finally, Democrats aren’t in quite as good a position to defeat Rep. John Katko in New York’s 24th District, but Democrat Dana Balter still has a 33 in 100 chance. (The one Republican in a Clinton district who seems pretty safe is Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania’s 1st District; with an 89 in 100 chance to win, he doesn’t even make the table above.)

But the biggest factor may be the continued leftward march of American suburbs. After Democrats cleaned house in the suburbs in 2018 — three-quarters of their 2018 gains came in predominantly suburban congressional districts — they are back this year for the many suburban districts they left on the table. Their best such pickup opportunity is New York’s 2nd, a dense suburban district on Long Island where Republican Rep. Peter King is retiring after surviving his closest electoral call since 1992. Our forecast gives Democrat Jackie Gordon a 59 in 100 chance of victory there. Republican Rep. Susan Brooks is also retiring from Indiana’s 5th District, which covers the northern Indianapolis suburbs and went from voting for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by 17 points in 2012 to narrowly voting for Democrat Joe Donnelly in the state’s 2018 Senate election. The race to replace her is almost a pure toss-up.

Similarly, Georgia’s 7th District, a suburban Atlanta district that Romney carried by 22 points, hosted the closest House race in the country in 2018. Republican Rep. Rob Woodall opted to retire (sensing a pattern?), and now Democrats have a 45 in 100 chance to win it in 2020. I could go on — Democrats have between a 30 and 40 percent shot in Nebraska’s 2nd District in metro Omaha, Texas’s 24th District in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth and Ohio’s 1st District around Cincinnati — but my editor does put word counts on these things.

Of course, Republicans have pickup opportunities too. They’re favorites to flip just three House seats vs. Democrats’ five. And their likeliest win would represent the end of an era in the House: Republican Michelle Fischbach has a 74 in 100 chance to defeat Rep. Collin Peterson, the powerful chair of the House Agriculture Committee. Peterson represents by far the Trumpiest district currently held by a Democrat — the Minnesota 7th voted for Trump by 31 percentage points in 2016. While Peterson’s conservative views have helped him survive in recent election cycles, the district is getting redder and split-ticket voting is becoming rarer.

Another likely Republican pickup is a seat the party held until July 4, 2019, when Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan’s 3rd District announced he was leaving the GOP. Facing a difficult reelection bid as a third-party candidate, Amash has since decided to retire, and Republican Peter Meijer now has a 68 in 100 chance of taking the seat back for the GOP. (That said, Democrats also have a 32 in 100 chance to flip the seat into their column.)

Republicans have also set their sights on winning back several House seats they lost in 2018, although our model thinks they’re favored in only one — and even then, just barely. Oklahoma’s 5th District produced the biggest upset of 2018 (according to the Deluxe version of our 2018 model), as Democrat Kendra Horn prevailed in a district that voted for Trump by 13 points in 2016. Here in 2020, Horn (49 in 100) and Republican Stephanie Bice (51 in 100) have almost the exact same chance of winning the seat. Also too close to call is California’s 21st District, where Republican former Rep. David Valadao is seeking a comeback in a district he lost by just 862 votes in 2018. Although Clinton won this district by 16 points, it is more Republican in down-ballot races, and Valadao has a 48 in 100 chance of winning. Finally, Republicans are almost even money to defeat Rep. Joe Cunningham in South Carolina’s 1st District, which also voted for Trump by 13 points in 2016. Republican Nancy Mace has a 46 in 100 chance of victory here.

Beyond those seats, Republicans have a fighting chance in several other Democrat-held districts whose names you might recall from 2018: the Georgia 6th, New York 22nd, Iowa 2nd, California 48th, New Mexico 2nd, Utah 4th, New York 11th, Texas 7th, New Jersey 7th, California 39th, Florida 26th and Nevada 4th, to name (more than) a few. But they are clearer underdogs in these races. And they would need to win all of the races I have mentioned in the last four paragraphs — without surrendering a single other seat to Democrats — in order to flip the 17 seats5 they need to attain a House majority. 

 

In other words, Republicans would somehow have to have the perfect night to win back the House.

 

It won't happen.

 

Locally, pay attention to Cincinnati Republican Steve Chabot. He's run OH-1 for all but two years since 1988, but this time it looks like he's in real trouble against Democratic challenger Kate Schroder, and she doesn't look like she's going to blow it like Aftab Pureval did two years ago.

Kamala Versus The Lie Fly Guy

Basically there's three things about last night's vice-presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence last night: first, men thought the debate was a forgettable, inconsequential tie, and women thought Harris won by an historic landslide

 

 

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More Americans said Sen. Kamala Harris did the best job in the vice presidential debate Wednesday night, according to a CNN Instant Poll of registered voters who watched. About 6 in 10 (59%) said Harris won, while 38% said Vice President Mike Pence had the better night. 

Those results roughly matched voters' expectations heading into the debate. In interviews conducted before the debate, 61% of those same voters said they expected Harris to win, 36% thought Pence would.

Read the full poll results here 

There was a stark gender gap in the results, with women saying Harris did the best job in the debate by a 69% to 30% margin. Men, meanwhile, split about evenly between Harris (48%) and Pence (46%). 

Harris did improve her favorability rating among those who watched, according to the poll, while for Pence, the debate was a wash. In pre-debate interviews, 56% said they had a positive view of Harris -- that rose to 63% after the debate. For Pence, his favorability stood at 41% in both pre- and post-debate interviews. 

Harris' numbers went up among men (from 49% favorable before to 56% afterward) and women (from 63% favorable before to 70% post-debate), and she even boosted her favorability rating among Trump supporters (from 4% favorable pre-debate to 12% after). Pence's numbers held steady among men and women (50% of men had a favorable view in both pre- and post-debate interviews, among women it was 33% pre-debate and 32% after). 

As after the first presidential debate, though, most voters who watched said Wednesday's event hasn't changed their minds about whom to support. Overall, 55% say it had no effect on how they are likely to vote, while those who did choose a side tilted narrowly toward Joe Biden. 

Both vice presidential candidates are broadly seen as qualified to be president: 65% said Pence is qualified to serve as commander in chief should that become necessary, 63% said the same of Harris. 

Most debate watchers said Harris did the better job defending her running mate (64% Harris to 34% Pence), that she seemed more focused on uniting the country (62% to 34%), was more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you (61% to 38%) and that she expressed her views more clearly (57% to 39%). Most said Pence spent more time attacking his opponent (56%) than thought the same of Harris (36%).

  

Second, Pence, like Trump before him last week, refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power, stating that he and Trump were "fighting every day" to stop Biden and Harris from a "massive opportunity for voter fraud".

At the tail end of Wednesday night’s vice-presidential debate—one that was noticeably less fiery and chaotic than last week’s presidential clash—Vice President Mike Pence completely avoided answering what he would do if President Donald Trump refuses to step down if he loses the election.

Late last month, the president explicitly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. At last week’s debate, Trump again declined to commit to accepting the outcome of the election should he end up losing, instead undermining public trust in the voting process by declaring that because of mail-in balloting the 2020 election is “going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen.”

The veep first said that he thinks his ticket will win re-election before accusing Democrats of not accepting the outcome of the 2016 election, bringing up the Russia investigation and the impeachment of the president. After invoking former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s advice that Joe Biden shouldn’t concede on election night if the results are close, Pence reiterated his belief that Trump would be re-elected.

“President Trump and I are fighting every day to prevent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from changing the rules and creating a massive opportunity for voter fraud,” he concluded. “If we have a free and fair election, we’ll have confidence in it.”

As with Trump, the heavy implication is that only a Trump win will be considered the results of "a free and fair election" and a Biden win will be challenged in every way possible. 

And third, there probably won't be another presidential debate, at least not next week.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will not participate in the second presidential debate with Joe Biden after the Commission on Presidential Debates said the event will be held virtually in the wake of the President's positive coronavirus diagnosis. 

"I am not going to do a virtual debate," Trump said on Fox Business. "I am not going to waste my time on a virtual debate." 

Biden's campaign on Thursday swiftly agreed to the virtual format. But Trump's comment throws the debate into question after the commission took the significant step to wholly remake the event. The move was seen as needed by members of the debate commission given the uncertainty around the President's health. 

Frank Fahrenkopf, head of the debate commission, told CNN that the commission spoke with both campaigns "just before" they announced that the second debate would be held virtually. 

"We did not consult with them," he said, adding that their decision is "supported by the Cleveland Clinic," the commission's health advisers. 

Bill Stepien, Trump's campaign manager, accused the commission on Thursday of "unilaterally canceling an in-person debate" to help Biden and said the President will be holding a rally instead of attending the debate. 

The commission said the debate moderator, Steve Scully, and the attendees who will ask Trump and Biden questions will appear from Miami, the original site of the debate.

 

Remember, the second debate was supposed to be a town hall format. A remote debate in the regular format was a real win for Trump avoiding questions from American voters, but Trump burned it down anyway. 

As I said last night, Biden may have a decisive lead, but all bets are off as to what happens next.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Apparently Senate Republicans have made it clear that Trump killing COVID-19 aid will cost the GOP the Senate and any cover to save Trump's ass, and that's enough to motivate him to come crawling back to the bargaining table with Nancy Pelosi.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday tried to salvage a few priority items lost in the rubble of COVID-19 relief talks that he blew up, pressing for $1,200 stimulus checks and new aid for airlines and other businesses hard hit by the pandemic.

In a series of tweets, Trump pressed for passage of these chunks of assistance, an about-face from his abrupt and puzzling move Tuesday afternoon to abandon talks with a longtime rival, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat has rejected such piecemeal entreaties all along. But Pelosi did talk with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Wednesday evening, her spokesman said, about stand-alone airline rescue legislation as the industry is shedding tens of thousands of jobs.

Trump’s tweets amounted to him demanding his way in negotiations that he himself had ended. Trump, who absorbed much political heat for abandoning the talks, is the steward of an economy whose continued recovery may hinge on significant new steps such as pandemic unemployment benefits. His tweets seemed to move the financial markets into positive territory, though it was far from certain whether they would impress voters demanding more relief.

He called on Congress to send him a “Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200)” — a reference to a preelection batch of direct payments to most Americans that had been a central piece of negotiations between Pelosi and the White House.

“I am ready to sign right now. Are you listening Nancy?” Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday evening. He also urged Congress to immediately approve $25 billion for airlines and $135 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program to help small businesses.

The stock market fell precipitously after Trump pulled the plug on the talks but was recovering Wednesday after he floated the idea of piecemeal aid.

Trump’s decision to scuttle talks between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Pelosi came after the president was briefed on the landscape for the negotiations — and on the blowback that any Pelosi-Mnuchin deal probably would have received from his GOP allies in Congress.

“It became very obvious over the last couple of days that a comprehensive bill was just going to get to a point where it didn’t have really much Republican support at all,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday on Fox News. “It was more of a Democrat-led bill, which would have been problematic, more so in the Senate than in the House.”

Pelosi told reporters that “all the president wants is his name on a check” for direct aid payments.

The unexpected turn could be a blow to Trump’s reelection prospects and comes as his administration and campaign are in turmoil. Trump is quarantining in the White House with a case of the coronavirus, and the latest batch of polls shows him significantly behind Democrat Joe Biden with the election four weeks away.

 

Trump's increasingly erratic and destructive behavior is one of those things where normally you'd say "If your opponent is busy destroying themselves, don't interrupt" but the problem of course is that he's taking tens of millions of Americans to hell with him.

We'll see wha happens here, but Trump's all over the place at this point with his own lunacy and the steroid cocktail he's on and the illness, so who knows at this point.

StupidiNews!

•  A top North Korean diplomat and his wife disappeared from Italy in 2018 but apparently both of them have turned up in South Korea as defectors.
• The number of people infected with COVID-19 at last month's White House "super spreader" event for Amy Coney Barrett has risen to 34, including Donald Trump and Melania Trump.
• Oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are being evacuated ahead of Hurricane Delta approaching New Orleans, the storm is expected to reach Category 3 strength with 120 MPH winds this week.
• The Trump regime is appealing their decision to end Census counting before October 31 to the Supreme Court as a federal appeals court has ordered the Census Bureau to keep counting.
• After 16 months of investigations and hearings, a new House Judiciary report finds Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple all "wield monopoly power" and calls for corporate breakups.
  

Last Call For Lowering The Barr, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr is now openly tipping his hand as to what is coming in the plan to steal the 2020 election for Trump by disenfranchising millions of voters.

The Department of Justice has weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections, according to two department officials.

Avoiding election interference is the overarching principle of DOJ policy on voting-related crimes. In place since at least 1980, the policy generally bars prosecutors not only from making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election but also from taking public steps — such as an arrest or a raid — before a vote is finalized because the publicity could tip the balance of a race.

But according to an email sent Friday by an official in the Public Integrity Section in Washington, now if a U.S. attorney’s office suspects election fraud that involves postal workers or military employees, federal investigators will be allowed to take public investigative steps before the polls close, even if those actions risk affecting the outcome of the election.

The email announced “an exception to the general non-interference with elections policy.” The new exemption, the email stated, applied to instances in which “the integrity of any component of the federal government is implicated by election offenses within the scope of the policy including but not limited to misconduct by federal officials or employees administering an aspect of the voting process through the United States Postal Service, the Department of Defense or any other federal department or agency.”

Specifically citing postal workers and military employees is noteworthy, former DOJ officials said. But the exception is written so broadly that it could cover other types of investigations as well, they said.

Both groups have been falsely singled out, in different ways, by President Donald Trump and his campaign for being involved in voter fraud. Trump has repeatedly attempted to delegitimize ballots sent through the postal service, just as the country experiences increased voting by mail spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. He has also raised the specter that the ballots of military members, among whom he enjoys broad support, might be suppressed.

The DOJ and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Experts who reviewed the revision said they were concerned it could be exploited to help the DOJ bolster Trump’s campaign.

“It’s unusual that they’re carving out this exception,” said Vanita Gupta, the former head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama. “It may be creating a predicate for the Justice Department to make inflated announcements about mail-in vote fraud and the like in the run-up to the election.”

I don't know what people were obviously expecting here other than Barr rescinding the non-interference policy just weeks before the election. Of course Barr will announce a "major probe into election mail fraud" that calls the results into question, and it will be in Trump states that Biden picks up from 2016. The probe will be as widespread as it needs to be in order from Trump to declare the election void and to simply assume power.

He's counting on it as an excuse to justify authoritarian violence. People still think Trump is going to simply give up and get indicted in January. As it becomes clear Trump is going to lose catastrophically, he'll become even more dangerous day after day.

The next three months and change are going to test America like it hasn't been tested in decades.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The news last month that acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf (The Bad Wolf™) was sitting on a DHS report outlining just how much of a domestic terrorism threat white supremacists militia groups were in the US in the Trump era turned out to be completely true, not that any ZVTS readers doubted the whole white supremacist domestic terrorism militia thing, or the whole Trump regime being less than truthful about the existence of the report thing.

In response to criticism that Donald Trump was quite literally asking white supremacist terrorist groups like the Proud Boys to "stand by" at the first presidential debate last week to be ready to commit election-related violence in his name, the DHS has released their full yearly domestic terrorism threat assessment, and it's gruesome, chilling stuff.

The threat assessment highlighted white supremacists as the most deadly among domestic terrorists in recent years and Russia as the primary threat to spreading disinformation.

“I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years,” Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, wrote in the foreward to the assessment. The threat report also stated that “Russia is the likely primary covert influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation within the homeland.”

The agency also highlighted Iran and China’s cyberwarfare abilities and warned of a potential surge in migration to the southwest border.

The delayed release of the report has been a point of scrutiny for a department that has faced consistent accusations of morphing into a tool for Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign. After the department singled out domestic terrorists and specifically white supremacists in a terrorism framework in September 2019, the agency’s leadership committed to releasing a follow-up assessment to the threat as well as a blueprint to confront it within months. It took far longer.

Brian Murphy, who was demoted from his post as the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence chief in August, said last month in a whistle-blower complaint that Mr. Wolf and his deputy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, blocked the release of the assessment because of how it would “reflect upon President Trump.”

The Homeland Security blueprint did finally emerge, shortly after Mr. Murphy’s complaint. It included $10 million for nonprofits and other organizations to prevent extremist violence.

The administration’s treatment of white supremacy re-emerged as an issue last week, when Mr. Trump failed to condemn white racist violence during the presidential debate, even after Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, affirmed to Congress the lethal threat of the racist extremists.

Now, the Homeland Security Department has done so in the assessment.

“This threat assessment confirms two things: that white supremacist extremists are the top domestic threat to the homeland, and they are often inspired by President Trump’s rhetoric,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

But this is the Trump regime, and every aspect, every facet of American government exists in part to serve Dear Leader, and the DHS and this report are no different.

The threat assessment for the most part mirrored drafts that were leaked to the public, refuting concerns that the department would dilute any warnings. The department did add a section absent from previous versions of the report, titled “exploitation of lawful and protected speech and protests.”

The section echoed Mr. Trump’s description of city governments led by Democrats as fostering chaos.

“We have seen over 100 days of violence and destruction in our cities,” according to the report. “The co-opting of lawful protests led to destruction of government property and have turned deadly.” 

While a majority of the protests against police violence and racism this summer were peaceful, some did include individuals who committed violent acts, including in Portland, Ore., where the Homeland Security Department sent teams of tactical agents. The aggressive methods of those agents, including forcing demonstrators into unmarked cars and using tear gas, is under investigation by the inspectors general for the Homeland Security and Justice Departments.

In other words, VIOLENT DEADLY EXTREMISTS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM or something and the Democrats are just as guilty of encouraging their people to be violent too in the name of political expediency.

Which is horseshit in the same way that civil rights leaders were "terrorists" sixty years ago during the Jim Crow era of literally constructing separate neighborhoods, restaurants, hotels, schools, and goddamn drinking fountains for Black America because government policies mandated our second-class citizenship.

Only that's a bigger threat than ever. In the last four years this regime has paved the way to overturn the entire voting rights, civil rights, women's rights, and LGBTQ+ rights era and take us back to Jim Crow. They remain one Supreme Court justice appointment away from enough votes to overturn as much of it as they want to as "unnecessary relics of an era that no longer needs legislation to protect".

Thomas Jefferson said all men are created equal, and the guy owned slaves the day he wrote those words, because slaves weren't people (and women and anyone who wasn't a land-owning white male didn't count either.)

I'm tired of this. In the space of five years we went from real hope in this country to fighting for basic rights in the middle of a pandemic that government is trying to pretend doesn't exist and a lifetime trying to fix everything that's been broken.

We have to win.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

An increasingly desperate, out-of-control Donald Trump is now declassifying Russian disinformation on the 2016 investigation into Trump's Russia ties and passing it off as "bombshell" accusations that Hillary Clinton "masterminded the plot" to spy on the Trump campaign. 

Even as he recovers from a coronavirus case that left him hospitalized for days, President Donald Trump has intensified a late-campaign effort to undermine widely accepted evidence about Russia’s election interference efforts in 2016.

Trump authorized the declassification and release of documents this week based on intelligence that even his own advisers warn could be Russian disinformation, in what his allies have signaled is aimed at sowing doubt about the intelligence community’s conclusion that the meddling in the 2016 campaign came at the Kremlin’s direction — and was intended to boost Trump’s candidacy.

As Trump was still recuperating in the presidential suite at Walter Reed on Monday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said the president had “already tasked me with getting some declassification rolling” on sensitive Russia probe documents.

Some of those documents were released on Tuesday afternoon, including heavily redacted notes from former CIA Director John Brennan after a briefing with then-President Barack Obama. The notes describe intelligence reports that were drawn from Russian operatives, summaries of which Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified last week.

In the legible, unredacted portion of Brennan’s notes, first published by Fox News, he wrote: “We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED].”

In another section, the notes describe an alleged plan “approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

A second, also heavily redacted document released on Tuesday, a summary of the intelligence the CIA prepared for the FBI, describes “an exchange” between unknown individuals regarding “Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential Candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from the use of her private email server.”

Some Trump allies have framed this latest declassification push not as an effort to question Russia's interference at all but simply to question the "Trump-Russia collusion" narrative that loomed over the White House for much of Trump's presidency. But Ratcliffe's release suggested that the Russian intelligence indicated that attributing 2016 interference to Russia was part of a Clinton plot to stir up a scandal against Trump. And many Trump allies have deployed the new evidence to broadly declare that the entire scandal was cooked up by Democrats.

Republicans and Democrats had previously rejected this Russian chatter as likely disinformation intended to deflect from Moscow’s own hacking operation targeting the Democratic National Committee. And Clinton herself was publicly making the case at the time that Trump was inviting Russian interference. Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton, said last week that the documents were “baseless bullshit.”

Four people familiar with the matter said the Russians’ assessment of Clinton was only one part of a larger intelligence report that was billed as an initial examination of Russian cyberattacks targeting the 2016 election, and was not the reason that it was referred to the bureau.

The people all described Ratcliffe as “cherry-picking” portions of the intelligence to try to tarnish Trump’s political enemies.

 

Ratliffe here is certainly doing what Trump ordered him to do, and Trump now knows he's losing badly. The next several weeks are going to be full of distractions and garbage like this heading into the election, and if Trump loses by the margin I believe he will, then he will spend his lame duck months in a scorched earth campaign to destroy the Democrats.

COVID-19 has knocked out all his campaign major players, save Mike Pence. Barr himself is in isolation for possible exposure, Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller, and Hope Hicks are all ill, and oh yeah, he's hopped up on drugs and is staring down COVID-19 himself.

It's going to be bad, folks.  I predict he will order Joe Biden's arrest before long.

StupidiNews!

• The White House says it has completed all contact tracing needed after Donald Trump and several WH staff contracted COVID-19; the Trump regime turned down CDC help with contact tracing.
• A GOP county chairman in Arkansas has died from COVID-19, Steven Farmer's Reagan Day event in Craighead County hosted several GOP members of Congress who did not wear masks last month.
• Joe Biden says that next week's scheduled Presidential debate in Miami should be postponed if Donald Trump still has COVID-19.
• Donald Trump is accusing the FDA of a "political hit job" with the agency's rules on approving any COVID-19 vaccine and is ordering a review of vaccine policy.
• The Nobel Prize in Physics has gone to three scientists, German Reinhard Genzel, Briton Roger Penrose, and America Andrea Ghez for their discovery of a "supermassive" black hole.
  

Last Call For Trump Literally Goes Viral, Con't

Donald Trump, facing a barrage of devastating polls with 4 weeks to go until the election, has now decided to burn it all down around him and take the GOP with him (and tens of millions of Americans as well) by completely changing his mind on COVID-19 relief legislation talks and now decreeing that nothing will happen on COVID-19 bills until after the election.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday called an abrupt end to negotiations with Democrats over additional COVID-19 relief, delaying action until after the election despite ominous warnings from his own Federal Reserve chairman about the deteriorating conditions in the economy.

Trump tweeted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “not negotiating in good faith” and said he’s asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to direct all his focus before the election into confirming his U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.

“I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business,” Trump tweeted.

The unexpected turn could be a blow to Trump’s reelection prospects and comes as his administration and campaign are in turmoil. Trump is quarantining in the White House with a case of COVID, and the latest batch of opinion polls shows him significantly behind former Vice President Joe Biden with the election four weeks away.

The collapse means that Trump and down-ballot Republicans will face reelection without delivering aid to voters — such as a pre-election batch of $1,200 direct payments, or “Trump checks,” to most individuals — even as the national jobless rate is about 8% with millions facing the threat of eviction. One endangered Republican, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, said “waiting until after the election to reach an agreement on the next Covid-19 relief package is a huge mistake.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden slammed Trump’s move.

“Make no mistake: if you are out of work, if your business is closed, if your child’s school is shut down, if you are seeing layoffs in your community, Donald Trump decided today that none of that — none of it — matters to him,” Biden said in a statement released by his campaign.

Trump’s move came immediately after he spoke with the top GOP leaders in Congress, who had been warily watching talks between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Pelosi. Many Senate Republicans had signaled they would not be willing to go along with any stimulus legislation that topped $1 trillion, and GOP aides had been privately dismissive of the prospects for a deal.

Just on Saturday, tweeting from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Trump said, “OUR GREAT USA WANTS & NEEDS STIMULUS. WORK TOGETHER AND GET IT DONE.” But any Pelosi-sponsored agreement of close to $2 trillion raised the potential of a GOP revolt if it came to a vote.

Last week, the White House said it was backing a $400 per week pandemic jobless benefit and dangled the possibility of a COVID-19 relief bill of $1.6 trillion. But that offer was rejected by Pelosi, who continued to take a hard line in the talks, including insisting on repeal of a $254 billion GOP business tax break passed in the March package as a way to finance additional relief.

Pelosi had spoken with Mnuchin earlier Tuesday. After Trump’s tweets spiking the negotiations, Pelosi said Trump was “unwilling to crush the virus” and “refuses to give real help to poor children, the unemployed, and America’s hard working families.”

 

The threat from Trump could not be more clear: America surrenders and we re-elect Dear Leader or we suffer into 2021, and four months from now is going to be too late for millions of us.

It's possible that Trump gets talked out of this, but I doubt it. It seems to me that Senate Republicans came to Trump and said they needed this package to stay in power in the Senate and the White House, and Trump saw them as weak cowards who are trying to betray him.

So he just butchered them out of spite.

Again, if you think Trump's leaving without a literal fight, well, history says that the lame duck period is more than enough time to make sure he inflicts maximum damage before January 20, and really all he has to do is nothing for three months and he gets to hand Joe Biden a collapsed economy.

All bets are off now.