Tic Tok

Tick Tock:  While the virus continued to spread like wild fire across the country and the supplemental unemployment insurance payments sustaining the ravaged economy funding things like rent and grocery bills expired, Trump, who cut a fundraising trip to Florida short to avoid tropical storm Isaias, spent the weekend golfing and tweeting, leaving the crafting of the key relief legislation to be hashed out between Secretary Mnuchin, Chief of Staff Meadows, and the Nancy and Chuck team.  During his brief Tampa visit, Trump didn’t focus on the virus or the aid package except to demand the reinstatement of full deductions for three martini lunches but instead entertained the rather small unmasked crowd that greeted him at the airport with his usual spiel, the “elect me or see crime explode and suburbs implode under that socialist sleepy Joe Biden” theme.  Upon arrival back in Washington, he pivoted to bashing Tik Tok, the app favored by teens, tweens and kids everywhere, threatening to shut it down, asserting that the Chinese owned company is a security threat.  Those fears have been around for a while, so Trump isn’t entirely wrong to be concerned, but who really thinks that Tik Tok, the app that gives pandemic bored kids a little joy is really the existential problem facing the nation right now, one so huge that it warrants presidential tweets while people are getting sick and facing eviction.  Instead it’s more believable to believe that Trump needed another shiny object to distract us from the ever increasing death count, 158,000 plus and projected to approach 200,000 by summer’s end,  and that he picked  Tik Tok because he’s bashing all things China, holds Tik Tok users responsible for misleading his campaign about attendance at his Herman Cain killing Tulsa rally, and Sara Cooper, the comedienne whose mocking videos drive him crazy is a big user.  Anyway, it looks more and more likely that Tik Tok will be sold to Microsoft while Trump moves on to some other equally absurd distraction.  By the way, remember exactly two weeks ago when Trump promised Fox’s Chris Wallace that he would be announcing his new health plan, the one that would replace Obamacare, in two weeks.  No, you didn’t miss it, he didn’t announce a new health plan this weekend, nor did he announce the similarly promised new comprehensive immigration plan.  He also didn’t address the strange, large bruise on the top of one of his hands, caught by several cameras despite his attempt to camouflage it with a pile of newspapers. Trump either had a coumadin moment or an infusion of some type.  Who knows, but given reports that both a pastor and a law enforcement official who recently attended White House meetings have tested COVID positive maybe he’s serving himself up as a Guinea pig for experimental convalescent plasma therapy.  After all he’s already tried out hydroxychloroquine.  As to hydroxychloroquine, Admiral Giroir, the guy in charge of COVID testing, responded to a question about its use by repeating what we’ve heard countless times before, that despite the assertions of Trump, that demon sperm doctor and several Fox TV hosts there is no evidence that it either cures or prevents COVID.  Unfortunately the admiral also confirmed another thing that we all know, that the demand for virus tests far exceeds national test processing capacity right now, that’s the capacity that wasn’t ramped up in March and April because then only blue state people were dying.  Similarly Dr Debby who Speaker Pelosi dissed this weekend for her attempts to maintain her Trump most favored status confirmed that we’ve entered a new coronavirus phase as outbreaks have become extraordinarily widespread.  Unfortunately, Representative Raul Grijalva, is well aware of that.  The  Arizona Democrat tested positive, something he attributes to his being exposed to the unmasked also positive Republican Representative Louis Gohmert during last week’s House Judiciary hearing.  Grijalva is now in quarantine.   

 

Et Cetera:   The Democratic VP Sweeps are coming to an end.  We should know soon who Joe Biden selects as his running mate.  Reports are that the finalists include Senator Kamala Harris, Ambassador Susan Rice, Congresswoman Karen Bass and maybe even one of the countless other names that have been vetted including Congresswoman Val Demings and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth.  The press has been hashing up dirt on the so-called top three, which is to be expected because who doesn’t love some good dirt.  Bass is being attacked for loving all things Cuba and for having spoken at a Scientology event, Harris for being too ambitious and Rice for Benghazi because who doesn’t love to bring up Benghazi. Trump’s still bashing mail in voting, trying to distinguish between absentee ballots which he’s okay with and mail-in ballots which he’s not okay with.  He’s doing that while his newly appointed Postmaster General/big campaign donor Louis DeJoy continues to “rationalize” service and by rationalize think cut back on service because what better way to make a fraught election more fraught than to cut back on mail capacity?  Fears about October surprises continue to percolate in the back ground.  The much anticipated Durham report is still out there.  Last week it took Attorney General Barr several attempts to finally admit that it would be inappropriate and even illegal for Trump to accept dirt from a foreign government and yesterday White House Communications strategist Jason Miller refused to say that doing so would be a bad thing.  Wisconsin Senator Johnson admits that he has been getting Biden bashing “intel” from parties in Ukraine and Representative Nunes has also gotten hold of some questionable intel that he’s refusing to share with his Democratic colleagues.  And because  Brazil wouldn’t want to be left out of the circle, the NY Times reports that the House Foreign Affairs Committee is “extremely alarmed” that the American ambassador in Brazil had signaled to Brazilian officials they could help get Trump re-elected by eliminating tariffs on ethanol imported from Iowa.  While remaining Ghislaine Maxwell document dump has been put on hold by the courts it appears that son in law Jared’s Deutsche Bank private banker is now being investigated for a investing in one of his properties while also lending him money, a bad thing but probably the least questionable thing that she’s done for the combined Trump/Kushner enterprise.

 

Welcome to August.