Russian Dressing

Dammit: Trump is off to Michigan today, another trip to the swing state that he won in 2016 and needs desperately to win again.  That probably explains why he’s been brutally attacking Michigan’s popular Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer for months now and also why he launched into a tweet attack against the state’s “rogue” Secretary of State yesterday, inaccurately accusing her of abetting voter fraud by “illegally” mailing absentee ballots to everyone in the state. In the same tweet he threatened to hold up funding to Michigan as punishment. Jocelyn Benson, the Secretary of State was quick to point out that she’d done nothing illegal, that she hadn’t sent out absentee ballots to everyone but had sent applications for absentee ballots to registered voters, something that has become an increasingly common practice these days, particularly in Republican led states such as Nebraska, West Virginia and Iowa.  Trump backed off a little, pulling down his initial tweet replacing it with one that attacked absentee voting, something he continued to do later in the day during another one of his press moments. Trump’s opposition to and fear of absentee voting isn’t new, in March he complained that the Democrats had tried to put “things” into legislation that “were crazy,” because they would result in “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”  He’s not the only one who shares that view, which goes far towards explaining why Majority Leader McConnell consistently objects to funding anything that would increase voter turnout.  Getting back to Michigan, while Trump was busy attacking the Secretary of State dam failures in the center of the state forced 10,000 people out of their homes, ironically that part of the state is largely Republican and is now likely to need emergency Federal funding as well as those absentee ballot applications more than ever.  Though polls are notoriously wrong when it comes to Trump, its notable that right now he trails Biden in Michigan by about 5 points depending on the poll, moreover yesterday the newest poll from Quinnipiac shows Biden leading Trump 50 to 39 nationally. We’ve been down this road before, so take these polls with a grain of salt.  Those polls likely reflect wide dissatisfaction with the way Trump’s been handling the virus crisis, that said, yesterday Trump doubled down on his own performance by insisting that he can’t think of anything that he would have done differently.  Why is that not surprising?  By the way, he also said that he only plans to pop  those likely useless but possibly dangerous hydroxychloroquine pills for a few more days. As to foolishly dangerous activities, fresh off his quarantine VP Pence spent some time in Florida yesterday with that state’s Governor Trump mini-me Ron DeSantis.  The two went out for burgers and fries sans masks at a local Florida burger joint.      

Back to the USSR: While Trump was busy slamming Michigan, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted, on a purely partisan basis, to authorize chair, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, one of Trump’s favorite toadies, to subpoena Blue Star Strategies, the public affairs firm that represented Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where Joe Biden’s son Hunter once served as a board member because why focus on passing pandemic legislation when going back to all things Ukraine is so much fun. It’s not clear that anyone cares about that mess anymore, most people are far more focused on surviving the virus onslaught but it’s all the Republicans have so they’re going for it.  Separately, in response to the bruhaha about the unmasking of former security advisor/convicted liar Michael Flynn, Senator Mark Warner, the senior Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee has now asked that the transcripts of those problematic calls between Flynn and former Ambassador Kislyak be declassified so that everyone can see what the two of them were talking about. That would be fair, but don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.  By the way, Florida Senator Marco Rubio has now officially stepped into “inside trader” Senator Richard Burr’s shoes, he’s the new Republican Chair of the intel committee. As to alleged insider traders, Senator Kelly Loeffler’s husband just contributed $1 million to one of Trump’s PACs, because nothing insures continued support from Trump then a “modest” donation to his campaign coffers.  Getting back to Russia, yesterday the Supreme Court “temporarily” blocked the release of the grand jury information from Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation in order to give the Trump Justice Department more time to formally appeal the decision of a lower court that the information should be released to Congress. That puts off the release of any of that likely incriminating information until after the November election. Of course. Separately Trump, the king of ventilators, sent 200 to his friend Vlad to help Russia deal with the virus and to “improve relations.”  

Et Cetera:  While states like Florida and Georgia continue to play fast and loose with their virus statistics, a model used by the Trump Virus Task Force that was put together by PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia,  shows that the risk of virus resurgence in southern counties, particularly in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and Virginia, is high over the next four weeks. Those are the states that moved to reopen before meeting the task force’s very own guidelines that few are following largely because Trump wants everything open ASAP.  On the hurry up front, virus Guru Fauci isn’t all that fond of calling the vaccination push Project Warp Speed.  He fears that concerns about rushing willy nilly towards the approval of a vaccine will raise fears about any vaccine’s safety, further feeding the anti-vax movement which already seems to be gaining support from Trump’s right wing flank.

Stay safe!