Shocking

COVID Tour:  Trump is off to Arizona today, another state with spiking virus numbers and full intensive care units.  First he’ll be heading to Yuma to celebrate the construction of the 200^th mile of his famed wall.  For the record, only three miles of Trump’s wall have been built, in areas with no previous border barrier, the rest is just the replacement of what was already there, so just more smoke and mirrors. After Yuma, Trump will be heading to Phoenix to deliver remarks at a Students for Trump rally at Dream City Church.  Three thousand students are expected to attend but nothing to worry about as the pastors involved claim that their church has a special air purification system that kills 99.9% of the virus. Tulsa could have used that special “miraculous” purification system, two more members of Trump’s advance team, the team for the rally that was a bust, but that Trump and his press secretary claim was seen by more TV viewers than any other rally ever held, have tested COVID positive, that makes for eight or ten positives, depending on the media source.  Since only Trump’s advance team has been tested and a significant percentage of them are now positive, it’s fair to assume that a lot of the attendees are too, not that they will know until they show symptoms which will likely be after they’ve shared their germs with others. On the testing front, though Trump’s spokespeople insist he was only kidding when he said that he should cut back on testing because it makes our COVID problem look as bad as it is, yesterday Trump pretty much doubled down, telling a Scripps interviewer that "If it (virus testing) did slow down, frankly, I think we're way ahead of ourselves, to tell you the truth." As to that, Senators Chuck Schumer and Patty Murray have sent a letter to HHS Secretary Azar asking him to explain why $14 billion of the money allocated to virus testing and tracking have not been spent, as if they don’t know why.  Also on the virus front, with levels going through the roof in Texas, Governor Abbott acknowledged that recent spikes in cases and hospitalizations were “unacceptable” but didn’t announce any new requirements to halt the spread of the virus. He did however say the virus needs to be “corralled” and if they feel like it people should wear masks. Thoughts and prayers?  Likewise, Florida’s Governor has admitted that his state’s virus levels are heading up but blames that on partying young people and Hispanics and says it’s not a bigly problem because he’s got plenty of hospital beds.  That explanation hasn’t swayed either the Yankees or the Mets, they are moving their training camps back to the relative safety of New York.  Good news for NY, but no time to get cocky.  It also hasn’t impressed Miami’s mayor who has ordered that masks be worn in public and has postponed phase three re-openings. While Trump and his sometime economist Larry Kudlow insist that the virus is under control and that there will be no second wave, trade advisor Peter Navarro, who was one of the few who took the virus seriously says that he’s busy preparing the country for that wave, the one that might prove indistinguishable from the first wave that we might not get out of for a long, long time.  By the way Navarro who is again saying that China intentionally created the virus briefly threw the markets into turmoil by saying that the China trade deal was dead, an assertion that he and others quickly denied.  On the economist front, Trump’s other one, the exceedingly polite and usually overly optimistic Kevin Hassett who once developed a COVID model of his own, one that predicted the virus would be gone by May, is leaving the administration again, saying that he never planned to stick around for more than ninety days.  His parting words “"I think everyone should be worried about how this is going to turn out in the end, because it's a shock unlike anything we've ever seen."

Electioneering: Trump who appears to be growing increasingly concerned about his 2020 election prospects, is already screaming election fraud, targeting mail in ballots again.  He started yesterday with a serious of tweets including one where he said “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES! and another where he said that “Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history - unless this stupidity is ended. We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!” Trump appears to be doing the two step with Attorney General Barr who also dissed mail-in voting, by telling Fox’s Maria Bartiromo that such “ballots open the floodgates of potential fraud….undermining confidence in the outcome of the election.” Their assertions are nonsense but frightening, an indication that Trump plans to question election results if they don’t go his way. By the way, though Republican officials routinely suppress minority voter participation in devious ways there is no indication that facilitating mail-in ballots leads to fraud. Trump, VP Pence, Press Secretary McEnany, RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel all vote by absentee ballot.  On the suppression front, today is primary day in Kentucky and New York.  While New York made it easier than ever for voters to obtain absentee ballots and opened a number of sites early, Kentucky has reduced the number of its voting sites from 2700 to 200, leaving the 767,000 people living in its most populous and minority dominated country with only one polling site because who doesn’t want to wait in a long line during the year of the coronavirus  

The Berman Affair:  Getting back to Attorney General Barr, last night Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler said that he plans to subpoena him about the firing of ousted US Attorney Geoffrey Berman.  While Trump administration spokespeople continue to assert that Berman wasn’t replaced because of his failure to put the kibosh on cases investigating Trump and his friends but only because Trump wanted to accommodate his golfing buddy, SEC head Jay Clayton’s desire to move back to NYC, few rational people believe that. Even NJ US Attorney Craig Carpenito who Barr planned to tap to assume Berman’s responsibilities while Clayton was going through the confirmation process was shocked to learn that Berman was being forced out as Barr told him that Berman had decided to leave on his own.  Curiously the WSJ is now saying that Barr, rather than Trump, wanted Berman gone because he refused to sign a letter criticizing NY  Mayor DeBlasio for allowing protests to go forward while limiting church/synagogue/mosque attendance but while that would inflame the “religious” Barr, it’s a stretch to believe that is the reason that Berman was fired.  Nadler, who knows that getting Barr to abide by a subpoena will be near impossible, is also threatening to cut his funding.  As to Clayton, if he wants to return to NYC he should call his old law firm, it’s unlikely that he will ever be confirmed to the US Attorney position.