Before Varsity Blues

Life is Good?  Yesterday, Trump proclaimed that everything was good on the virus front saying “you know, our mortality rate is, right now, at a level that people don’t talk about, but it’s down tenfold.  Tenfold.  So if you look at — deaths are way down from this horrible China virus, and it’s a disgrace that it happened.  It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.” Trump then looked to VP Pence to ask him how many people had died so far, because he couldn’t recall. Upon learning that the number was around 133,000 he said well that’s good, it could have been a few million. As usual he went on to brag about his great economy and stock market before moving on to the theme of the day: the importance of opening up the schools. While most parents want their children back in school, they also want to keep them alive and safe but it’s not clear that Trump is all that concerned about that part, he just wants kids back to school so that he can get his economy, the one that he insists is humming along but isn’t, back on track in time for the election.  That politics reign supreme with Trump was made even clearer when he attacked Democrats for wanting to keep schools closed to hurt his reelection chances and then went on to compliment a governor that most wouldn’t want to be associated with right now, his flailing mini-me Florida’s Governor DeSantis, because who but Trump would cite the “great job” that a governor who opened his state criminally early, has dramatically increasing infection rates, refuses to release damning hospitalization data, asserts that his state is in much better shape than it was in March and  insists that all the state’s schools will open up or face the consequences?  That part about Florida doing much better is a surprise to people like Dr Debbie Birx who yesterday told the Atlanta Council that those places that opened too early refused to understand that doing so would lead a surge of cases coming their way.  Similarly virus guru Fauci, who we don’t see very often largely because the White House now refuses to allow him to appear on TV, said we are knee deep in the first wave, that the recent virus surges are because many places never got their levels down to baseline.  Fauci also discounted the assertion widely pushed by Texas’ Governor Abbott, Florida’s DeSantis, and Trump that death rates are down, calling that a “false narrative.”  Trump’s response to Fauci’s comments were as expected, he criticized him for failing to appreciate how important it was to close down travel from China, one of his frequent go to retorts.  During her presentation to the Atlanta Council, Dr Birx also talked about the benefits and importance of working jointly with international agencies and counterparts, a view that Trump clearly doesn’t share.  Yesterday he formally initiated the six month process of withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization. Cooperation on COVID vaccines, fighting future pandemics, and battling AIDs and other diseases, forget about it.  

Travel Plans:  Though Trump is all in on Governor DeSantis, in one respect he appears to be finally coming to terms with reality.  He kind of acknowledged that moving the Republican convention to virus infused Jacksonville, Florida might not work out as planned.  During an interview with Greta Van Susteren he said that with numbers spiking there he might have to be flexible. That message hasn’t gotten to Republican Minority Whip Steve Scalise who as of now still plans to host a four day fundraiser/party with lobbyists at Disney World’s Polynesian village at the end of the month but it has landed with a few more Republican Senators.  Both Lamar Alexander and Mitt Romney have announced that they won’t be attending the Republican convention and a few more notables are expected to follow their lead.  Likely the embattled Susan Collins will opt out too.  Yesterday she revealed that she has no plans to campaign against Joe Biden because she “doesn’t campaign against current or former Senate colleagues.”    

Supremes:  When thinking about the health of the nine Justices most attention focuses on the fragile but notoriously hardworking liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg so it was surprising to learn last night that Chief Justice Roberts took a fall and was briefly hospitalized for a head injury in June.  The fall that took place at his and Justice Kavanaugh’s country club was attributed to dehydration rather than another seizure. Count me among those who didn’t know that Roberts is prone to seizures. Anyway, it was surprising that it took a month for Roberts' accident to be revealed but of course Michael Caputo, the Trump toady/spokesman for HHS had something snide to say, clearly referring to Roberts recent swing votes on abortion and DACA, he weighed in saying “A month? That’s nothing. Justice Roberts’ didn’t reveal who he really is for 15 years.”  We’ll know more about who Roberts is soon as we are still waiting for the Court’s decisions on Trump’s taxes.  

Something About Mary:  Mary Trump’s 240 page book won’t be out until next week but since almost everyone in media has already received a copy, we continue to learn more about her Uncle Don, nothing flattering or all that surprising. He didn’t earn his way into college, first Fordham and then Wharton on his own.  She reports that he paid someone named Joe Shapiro to take his SATs. Didn’t Felicity Huffman go to jail for that, snared in the Varsity Blues case?  If anyone knows that Joe and he’s still among the living, now would be a good time to get him to come clean. Mary, who is a clinical psychologist, says that Trump “fits the nine criteria of clinical narcissism” and believes that he also may suffer from “antisocial personality disorder, dependent personality disorder” and a “long undiagnosed learning disability that for decades has interfered with his ability to process information.” Among other things she also reports that when her father Fred was rushed to the hospital with what turned out to be a fatal heart attack, his unconcerned baby brother Don didn’t accompany him but did go to the movies, that Donny made sexually inappropriate comments to her, that many of his obvious dysfunctions are due to his cold, manipulative, bigoted father and that his sister former Judge Maryanne Trump Barry called him a clown.  That’s the same sister who retired early from her position over fears that an ethics investigation into her involvement with her brother in the likely fraudulent scheme to minimize their inheritance taxes could land her in bigly trouble.  Mary, who in addition to writing this book shared reams of pages of the family’s financial files with the NY Times, the information that served as the basis for their Pulitzer Prize winning article on Trump’s inheritance,  is still being sued for violating her non-disclosure agreement with her family.  One of her defenses is that since they deceived her about her inheritance, the NDA is invalid.  In any case the book will be widely available next week.