American Heritage

Viral Musings: The US has reached 2 million confirmed COVID cases and the virus death count is now over 110,000, with some experts now saying we’re on our way to 200,000 plus.   While new cases are down in the former Northeast epicenter a number of states are seeing record hospitalizations so concerning that Arizona’s hospital system is flashing a red alert.  Nevertheless Trump, who has pivoted away from all things coronavirus, has moved on, he’s ready to start having old style rallies. It’s likely that his need for crowd appreciation has been triggered by recent polls that show his popularity sinking, most notably the recent CNN national poll of registered voters that shows him 14 points behind Joe Biden.  That poll so enraged the litigious, thin skinned Trump that he had one of his many lawyers send CNN president Jeff Zucker a letter threatening to sue the company for a “poll that was designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling.”  Zucker is not backing down, instead his general counsel responded with a letter of his own, saying that “To my knowledge, this is the first time in its 40 year history that CNN has been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN’s polling results” adding that the threat was the kind of thing that you’d expect to get “from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media.”  Separately OANN, the network that originated the scurrilous attack on the septuagenarian Buffalo social worker with the bashed head, teased that they’d be releasing a poll of their own, one that they implied would show Trump with a bigly lead. As to Trump’s rallies, the first one is scheduled to take place on June 19^th in Tulsa, that rally will be followed by ones in virus hotspots/increasingly vulnerable states Texas, Arizona, Florida and North Carolina, assuming that NC’s Democratic governor who already put the kibosh on anything but a socially distanced Republican convention taking place in Charlotte, lets him in.  By the way it looks like that RNC convention, a fully viral one, will be moving to Jacksonville, Florida.  Getting back to Tulsa, only Trump’s tone deaf campaign apparatus would think that going to the city where the single worst incidence of racial violence took place on the “Juneteenth” holiday makes any sense.  That violent incident, known as the 1921 Tulsa massacre, destroyed what was then the country’s most affluent African American community.  “Juneteenth,” the date on which the Emancipation Proclamation was read out loud in Texas, the last state to hear the famous pronouncement, is the date celebrated for marking the end of slavery in America. But then again, yesterday Larry Kudlow assured us that there is no systemic racism in the US and Trump met with a few carefully selected Black leaders who oddly enough appear to agree with Kudlow’s assessment so why shouldn’t Trump “celebrate” Juneteenth in Tulsa?  Although Tulsa will be Trump’s first official campaign stop, he’s off to Texas today for a prescheduled multi-million dollar fund raising dinner, one that he now plans to combine with a meeting with another carefully curated group of “faith leaders, law enforcement officials, and small business owners to discuss solutions to historic economic, health, and justice disparities in American communities.” Strangely enough he hasn’t invited Dallas’ Police Chief,  County Sheriff or District Attorney all of whom are Black.

Uncivil Wars:  Following an announcement by Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s very popular Black race car driver, that he supports the Black Lives Matter movement and that he will be driving a #BlackLivesMatter car during his next outing, NASCAR announced that they will be banning the display of the Confederate flag at all their future events and races “because the flag and what it stands for runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and industry.”  Trump, of course, still hasn’t gotten that inclusion message, yesterday he blindsided Pentagon leadership, rejecting their plans to begin the process of changing the names of bases named after Confederate Generals by tweeting “My Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations"….."These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a … history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom.” It’s been suggested that in addition to reflecting Trump’s long standing “good people on both sides” position, his tweet was another slam at out of favor Defense Secretary Esper who is one of the people intent on initiating the name changing process.  That wouldn’t be out of character, former Secretary of State Madelaine Albright believes that Trump announced the withdrawal of those 10,000 troops from Germany, another pronouncement that stunned military leadership and many members of Congress, to “punish” German Chancellor Angela Merkel for saying that she wouldn’t be attending his G 7 meeting given the virus.  That’s the G 7 meeting that Trump wants to invite Vlad to despite objections from Merkel, Justin Trudeau and Boris Johnson.    

Et Cetera: John Gleeson, the highly respected former Judge appointed by Emmet Sullivan, the current judge overseeing the Michael Flynn case, released his brief on the “cancel the charges against the admittedly guilty Flynn” affair yesterday.  He concluded that the AG Barr led Justice Department’s handling of the Flynn case, specifically its decision to drop the charges against Flynn, represents a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power.’ He also said the Justice Department's recent support of Flynn is “so politically advantageous to Trump and atypical for prosecutors, that it's undermined the public's trust in the rule of law.”  So basically, he’s saying what we all know, that the move to drop the charges against Flynn is just a backdoor attempt by the devious Barr to help Trump give his good “lock her up” buddy Flynn a get out of jail free card without having to actually issue a pardon during the run up to the election.  That’s the pardon that we all know Flynn will get if Barr’s move ultimately fails in the higher court. On the Barr front, more than 1250 former Justice Department are calling for the Justice Department’s Inspector General to investigate his role in the controversial not-tear gas, tear gas clearing out of the largely peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square for Trump’s St John’s church photo op.  Also on the IG front, Secretary of State Pompeo, is still waging war against Steve Linick, the IG that Trump fired at his request, doing his best to malign him as more facts come out about the many things that Linick was investigating, the investigation that Linick told Congress Pompeo, despite his assertions to the contrary, knew all about.