Wall of Moms

Tune in at 5: There were around 65,000 new Covid cases yesterday and 500 new deaths but that’s not why Trump has decided to start modeling face masking; he’s decided to do so because of White House polling showing mass disapproval for his handling of the virus.  Similarly, in order to convince us that he really is micromanaging the virus fight even though we all know he’s moved on to attacking Democratic cities and forcing kids back into schools, he’ll be bringing back his daily coronavirus press conference series starting this evening. That’s the daily programming he stopped earlier this year after his advisors and polling experts told him it was turning those key suburban moms against him, the ones who spend much of their day keeping their kids from eating Tide pods and the like.  It’s fair to assume that the folks at Lysol and poison control have gone back on alert.  As to that masking modeling Trump tweeted out a picture of himself wearing one yesterday along with the message “We are United in our effort to defeat the Invisible China Virus, and many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can't socially distance, There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!" Four months and 143,000 deaths too late but whatever.  Anyway that act of “patriotism” didn’t even last one Scaramucci, last night Trump was photographed at an event in his Washington DC hotel maskless and failing to maintain social distancing accompanied by his also maskless Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and a number of other similarly unprotected individuals including everyone’s fave Rudy Giuliani, his bestie Lindsey Graham, and Madison Cawthorn, the Republican candidate who’s running for the Congressional seat previously held by Meadows.  Cawthorn is the 24 year old upstart who beat the Trump and Meadows endorsed choice in the primary but having won the primary, he’s now their man.  The ever patriotic Trump is also all in on showing the cities, well at least the Democratic run cities, who’s boss.  Together with the acting heads of his personal army, those unidentified forces sourced from Customs and Border patrol and possibly also from the Bureau of Prisons, Trump continues to defend his efforts to squash those Portland Oregon radicals including the appropriately named Wall of Moms, really a group of local mothers, who’ve started showing up at the demonstrations, linking arms to protect the local protesters from Trump’s thugs, another image that probably won’t build support in the suburbs. Reports are that the Border Patrol thuggery crew is on its way to Chicago with New York City next on their dance card.  Apparently  Law & Order Trump really thinks that this is the way to insure his reelection victory, or at least the way to get close enough that he can declare the election a fraud.  By the way he now has some of his minions out pushing the fraud hypothesis; yesterday RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel and Campaign Communications guy Hogan Gidley both defended Trump’s assertion that the Democrats plan to steal the election with all those “phony absentee ballots,” the ones that virtually every member of the Trump team uses.  Given that the Jacksonville, Florida Sheriff is now on the record expressing concerns about his force’s ability to keep Jacksonville safe during the upcoming Republican convention, in part because convention plans have not been nailed down yet and rally sites are still up in the air, perhaps Romney-McDaniel should be focusing her attention elsewhere.  It turns out that moving most convention events to a virus hotspot wasn’t the smartest thing to do.  Who knew? Anyway, Speaker Pelosi wants us all to know that come January, she’ll make sure that the White House is available for its next occupant, she’ll even supervise it’s fumigation.  And you know she will.

Deja Vu:  Joe Biden reports that as the presumptive Democratic candidate he’s begun receiving intelligence briefings and that he’s been told that once again the Russians as well as the Chinese and other adversaries are trying to undermine the US elections.  The Russians appear to be getting some help from Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, the Chair of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee.  Johnson, who seems to be taking his cues from the White House, continues to insist that he’s going to subpoena a whole crowd of former officials as well as Hunter Biden, his contribution to the Trump reelection campaign.  To that end Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, Senate Ranking Intelligence Member Warner and House Intel Chair Schiff, the Democratic members of the Gang of Eight, are so convinced that unfounded Russian-linked information is being funneled to Johnson to further Russia’s efforts to interfere again in the presidential election that they’ve gone public with the letter that they sent to FBI Director Chris Wray on Friday requesting an all hands briefing on the subject. Additionally, yesterday Biden issued a statement announcing that he is “putting the Kremlin and other foreign governments on notice.” If elected president he will “treat foreign interference in our election as an adversarial act that significantly affects the relationship between the United States and the interfering nation’s government.”  Biden added that he would “direct the U.S. intelligence community to report publicly and in a timely manner on any efforts by foreign governments that have interfered, or attempted to interfere, with U.S. elections” while accusing Trump of ignoring such evidence. To be fair, Trump probably doesn’t ignore any of that evidence, he just supports the interference.

Et Cetera:  On his behalf, both the ACLU and Michael Cohen’s new lawyer are suing Attorney General Barr, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the warden of the Federal Correctional Institution Otisville where Cohen is now being held in solitary confinement.  They argue that Cohen was returned to prison because he refused to sign a “specially” tailored agreement that would prohibit him from writing his planned tell all book about Trump and that also banned him from engaging with the media.  The suit points out that “Cohen began working on the book soon after arriving at the federal prison in Otisville, and he did so fully in compliance with Bureau of Prisons regulations.”  Whether you’re a Cohen fan or not, his “special” treatment reeks of Trump/Barr interference. On the election front, it remains unclear what’s going on with self-described presidential candidate Kanye West, after his really strange performance in South Carolina he failed to file any of the required  papers to appear on the state’s ballot.