Fraud and Frauds

 

Swan Songs:  HBO released the full video of Jonathan Swan’s Axios interview with Trump last night. It’s not clear why anyone in the White House thought that allowing Trump to be interviewed by the smooth talking Australian was a good idea for anyone other than Joe Biden and the Lincoln Project anti-Trumper attack machine.  Among other things Trump asserted that virus related death counts in the US were way down and that the US is doing much better than countries like Spain, Germany, France, Australia and Japan who Trump said were all experiencing uncontrollable “flare ups.”  Sunday the US posted around 1200 COVID deaths, the death count in the countries Trump cited were 0, 0, 11, 7 and 1 respectively and while over 48,800 new cases were diagnosed in the US on Sunday, 0 were diagnosed in Spain and France with 285 diagnosed in Canada. Wouldn’t it be nice to be in a flare up resulting in 11 deaths rather than Trumpland where  1000 deaths is considered an achievement? Trump again blamed the high US infection rate on too much testing saying that “everyone” knows we test too much.  When Swan pressed him who “everyone” was, he responded that all the “manuals” say that too much testing is bad.  When Swan asked him what “manuals” he was talking about, Trump insisted that it was in the “books” and so on.  Trump pulled out brightly colored bar charts to show that since the percentage of COVID positive people who die in the US is lower than elsewhere we are doing better than any other country.  When Swan responded that the relevant comparison should be between the percentage of each country’s population that has died, a bigly failure for the US, Trump responded by furiously shuffling his charts and telling Swan “you can’t do that.” Swan calmly repeated “can’t?” Then when Swan noted that in Korea only 300 people had died of COVID, Trump said that though he likes those Koreans, he’s sure they’re lying.  Moving on from the virus, Trump had nothing nice to say about John Lewis and instead reminded Swan that the civil rights icon had refused to attend his inauguration; by the way Lewis didn’t attend George W Bush’s either but that didn’t stop Bush from delivering a heart felt eulogy.  Trump once again sent his best wishes to Ghislaine Maxwell, ignoring Swan’s repeated reminders that she’s an accused pedophile and all that was in addition to his refusal to even admit being told about the Russian bounties on US soldiers and his bashing of voting by mail.  The tone and content of yesterday’s afternoon virus press conference was fairly similar, Trump again attacked mail in voting, especially odd because he likes voting by absentee ballots which is the same as mail in voting and a tape by his daughter in law Lara is currently being used on a robocall to Republican voters telling them to make sure to get their absentee ballot applications in on time.  Trump also attacked the Post Office’s capabilities, those are the capabilities that his handpicked Postmaster General/donor Louis DeJoy who has cut back on mail delivery and overtime is doing his best to erode.  He attacked Dr Debby, accusing her of going over to the dark side  because she’s gone off his message by warning that the country has entered a troubling, dire virus phase.  Trump, of course, blamed the good doctor’s shift on nasty Nancy Pelosi, saying that Dr D is now making the virus situation sound worse than it is to placate the Speaker.  

 

Fraud: In other news early yesterday we learned that the Manhattan district attorney’s office isn’t just looking into Trump’s payments to his porn star and playmate girlfriends, that they have also been investigating him and his company for the bank and insurance fraud that one time lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen mentioned during his Congressional testimony.  The DA’s office made that disclosure in a new federal court filing arguing that Trump’s Mazars accounting firm should have to comply with the much fought over grand jury subpoena for eight year of Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, that’s the subpoena that Trump’s lawyers are still trying to have declared invalid despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump should be treated pretty much the same way as any other person credibly accused of fraud.  When asked about that Trump launched into a rant against the Democrats, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok and their witch hunt, an indication that he’s just a bit rattled about the NY investigation and the fast tracking of the court’s review of the subpoena.  Trump the astute businessman that he is, is also now trying to extort money from either Tik Tok or Microsoft or both for “brokering” the sale of the app, claiming that they should be paying the US Treasury “key” money, for all their work. Could that be Trump’s way of telling Microsoft to cough up a donation to the Trump campaign coffers if they really want to buy Tik Tok?  More of that “do me a favor” thing that worked out so well for him with Ukraine.

 

Et Cetera: Negotiations on the next stimulus package are still ongoing, a bigly problem for those trying to pay rent and for the economy as a whole. Trump is threatening to do something without Congress, but he has little power to do much.  After it became increasingly clear that a few Senate Republicans were balking at confirming Anthony Tata, Trump’s controversial Islamophobic tweeting pick for the Pentagon’s top policy position, Trump sidestepped the confirmation process by instead appointing Tata to a substantially similar position that doesn’t require confirmation.  Those Republican Senators who planned to vote against Tata’s confirmation seem just fine with that.  Yesterday, after seeing a TV ad placed by workers at the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority who were upset about TVA’s outsourcing of technology functions to foreign workers, Trump impetuously fired TVA’s Chairperson, that’s the chairperson that he appointed, as well as another board member.  Trump also called for the remaining board members to fire TVA’s “overpaid” CEO.  That action woke up Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander who responded that on most counts, TVA “does a very good job of producing large amounts of low-cost, reliable electricity. Residential electric rates are among the 25 percent lowest in the country, and industrial rates are among the lowest 10 percent. TVA’s debt is the lowest in 30 years, its pension fund is stronger and TVA leads the country in new nuclear power plants” and oh, by the way, TVA’s CEO is already paid less than other industry CEOs.  Funny thing about ignoring all of Trump’s insanity is that eventually the consequences of his stupidity hits home.