Nobody Likes Me
Times of Your Life: The biggest story of the day should have been about
Attorney General Barr’s House testimony but then Trump held a news conferences
to announce a deal for NYS based photo company Kodak to domestically produce
much needed ingredients used in the manufacturing of generic drugs.
Funded by the Defense Production Act, the Kodak investment, worked on with NY’s
State Governor Cuomo, is a good thing but Trump couldn’t stop there so he again
stuck his foot in his mouth. Among other things he went off on his
ventilator tangent and claimed that things are looking up as lots of parts of
the country are already rid of COVID, if only that were true. He
complained that people liked his scientists, Dr Debby but mostly virus guru
Fauci, better than him, lamenting that Fauci has a higher approval rating than
he does saying that “Nobody likes me. It could only be my personality. I don’t
know.” A rare moment of self-awareness that was quickly undone when in
response to a question from CNN report Kaitlin Collins who pointed out that
Stella Immanuel the woman he had
said was a “great doctor” in that video that he had retweeted Monday night had
said that masks don't work and that there's a cure for COVID-19 and that she’s
also made videos saying that doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens and
that they're trying to make a vaccine to make you immune from becoming religious.”
Trump responded to Collins by defending Immanuel and hydroxychloroquine, saying
that “I can tell you this she was on air
with many other doctors. They were big fans of hydroxychloroquine. And I
thought she was very impressive in the sense that where she came — I don't know
what country she comes from — but she's said that she's had tremendous success
with hundreds of different patients. And I thought her voice was an important
voice, but I know nothing about her." Dr Immanuel is Black and from Cameroon,
and we know how Trump loves to point out his few Black friends. Then when
Collins tried to ask him a follow up question perhaps about Dr Immanuel’s
belief that the government is run by lizard people and her weird thoughts on
demon sperm, Trump quickly left the room putting an end to his Kodak Moment. So
much for turning the corner towards sanity. By the way, one of Trump’s
other Black friends, one time presidential candidate Herman Cain, is still in a
hospital ICU where his lungs according to his spokespeople are being
“re-strengthened” whatever that means. Cain is suffering from the
coronavirus that he caught in Tulsa during Trump’s last rally, but Trump hasn’t
had much to say about him lately.
Barr Time: The Barr testimony got off to a
late and bad start. First it was delayed because Chairman Nadler was
involved in a car accident on his way in from New York, then it went further
off the rails when Ranking Member Jim “Gym” Jordan ran a video including
reports from various members of the mainstream media, i.e. the liberal press,
mashed together with violent scenes from several cities including Portland and
Atlanta. Of course, Jordan’s mash-up cut off relevant parts of each
reporter’s comments, the parts where they said that though the demonstrations
had been largely peaceful they had in some cases turned violent. The
unjacketed and frequently unmasked Jordan failed to notify the Judiciary
Committee in advance of his plans to show the inflammatory video, but shock, of
course, was the point. For his part Barr came off about as expected. He
defended Trump, asserted that all of his decisions to fire US Attorneys, undo
sentencing recommendations and to discredit the Russia investigation were his
own, hinted that he’ll be releasing that promised Obama/Biden damning Durham
investigation right before the election because rules against doing that don’t
pertain to him and that he never discussed doing any of this stuff with Trump,
an assertion that no one really believes. He tipped his partisan hand by
cribbing a few lines from the Trump playbook, when in response to a question
about Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, he said that Trump was
doing a great job, blaming Obama and Biden for leaving Trump with inadequate
testing capability or supplies of PPE. For their part the Democratic
interrogators got off to a weak start, the more senior members of the committee
are just not all that good at asking questions but as the session wore on, and
the more junior members, those with more prosecutorial backgrounds took over,
the questions were more probing and Barr actually appeared to be ready to jump
out of his skin in frustration. Particular kudos go to Eric Swalwell, Ted
Lieu, and Jamie Raskin who all seemed to have a better grasp of constitutional
law than Barr, Val Demings who clearly knows more about good policing and
Cedric Richmond who pointed out Barr’s obvious failings with regard to
understanding racial disparity. For their part the Republicans all towed
their party line, going with the violence comes to America theme, blaming
everything on those antifa agitators, agreeing that the Russian investigation
was a nasty hoax perpetrated against the heroic Trump and insisting that each
and every police action, no matter how inappropriate was totally fine.
Barr ate that up as it was a whole lot easier than fighting with Democrats over
what constituted tear gas or why Paul Manafort, who didn’t fit any of the
Justice Department’s criteria for release to home confinement was out of jail
while countless Black inmates convicted of lesser crimes had been left to rot
in coronavirus infested penitentiaries. Disturbingly Barr had to be
pressured before finally agreeing that presidents and presidential candidates
shouldn’t accept aid from foreign government and though he said that he would
leave his AG office if Trump clearly lost the election, note the clearly part,
he stuck with his earlier assertion that foreign governments like China, his
and Trump’s enemy du jour could easily tamper with millions of those horrible
absentee ballots, an assertion widely disputed by election officials.
Barr, who apparently suffers from memory loss, or at least selective memory
loss, appears to have forgotten that he’s voted by absentee ballot several
times and somehow or other is also totally unfamiliar with all of Trump’s
tweets, particularly the really inconvenient ones.
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