Herd Mentality

Campaigning: It’s not clear what group of stable geniuses at the White House thought that having Trump participate in last night’s ABC town hall was a good idea but whoever they are, and my guess is that it was some combination of Jared Kushner and the still unidentified Anonymous, Joe Biden should send them a thank you note, chocolates and two dozen long stem roses.  Trump’s performance was so bad that the event is being referred to on Twitter as a dumpster fire and Fox pundit Laura Ingraham is calling it an ambush.  Among other things, Trump blamed Biden for failing to implement a national face mask mandate, went off on a tangent about how waiters don’t like masks, claimed Biden was for endorsing socialized medicine while promising for the zillionth time that his health plan was ready to launch, blamed those Democratic cities for everything bad, said that he had upplayed rather than downplayed the virus and that anyway it would be going away soon either on its own, via that vaccine that will be available in weeks or through that well known phenomenon of “herd mentality,”  Of course he also denied that racial inequality was a thing.  Neither host George Stephanopoulos nor the event’s participants bought into his delusional thinking or his lies.  Stephanopoulos noted that Biden was against socialized medicine and wasn’t even a supporter of Medicare for All, pointed out that Trump is supposed to be the president of all cities regardless of their political stripes and one member of the audience got so annoyed when Trump tried to cut her off that she sternly told him to please stop and let her finish her question. Had she been a member of the press Trump would have told her she was despicable and fake but given the venue even he knew that such retort wouldn’t fly.  Biden got a word in too, last night he, or more likely a member of his fast response team, responded to Trump’s assertion about his failure to implement a national facemask policy by tweeting “To be clear I’m not the current president.”  Keeping with the dumpster fire theme, Ivanka is off to Florida tomorrow to participate in a fireside chat, fundraiser in Tampa because who doesn’t toast marshmallows in 90 degree, 100 percent humidity weather while skirting the Hatch Act.  Maybe she can follow up by throwing paper towels at Hurricane Sally victims in the Panhandle.   

 

Human Resources:  Depending on who you ask Michael Caputo, the HHS spokesperson who accused anti-Trump forces within HHS of sedition and who suggested that it will soon be time for Trump loyalists to take up arms against the Democratic hordes is on the verge of taking a leave to deal with his “mental health” problems or staying put.  Caputo discussed his frail state and talked about taking time off during a rambling speech that he delivered to staffers, one where he apologized for the whole sedition thing and suggested that they go home and listen to some Grateful Dead, Casey Jones maybe. So far the White House has said nothing about him leaving but reports are that HHS Secretary Azar wants him to exit ASAP, however that could mean little because a lot of people want Azar out too.   Attorney General Barr is following through on Trump’s threats against former national security advisor John Bolton. The Justice Department has convened a grand jury and opened a criminal investigation into whether Bolton unlawfully disclosed classified information in his recently published The Room Where it Happened, that’s the book that was initially cleared after a thorough security review but then was re-reviewed and held up once Trump realized that it was chock full of scathing criticism.  The Bolton book shouldn’t be confused with Bob Woodward’s Rage, that’s the book that he cooperated with but also hates. As to Bolton, Andrew Weissman, former Special Counsel Mueller’s leading prosecutor, points out that the Justice Department will have a hard time proving that the former security advisor revealed classified information since Trump is on the public record saying that everything in his book is not true but this is Trump’s America and if he wants Bolton prosecuted, his toady Barr, who believes in absolute presidential power, is all in.

 

Et Cetera:  Trump who has now received a second nomination for his much coveted Nobel Peace Prize, or Noble Peace Prize, the preferred spelling in his campaign literature, hosted the foreign ministers of Bahrain and the UAE together with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday morning to celebrate the signing of their normalization agreements yesterday.  That’s a good thing, well for everyone but the Palestinians who continue to find themselves sidelined, but the relationships aren’t new and the public recognition was inevitable. On the international front, Trump also has trusty, not so ethical Secretary of State Pompeo off trying to broker a deal between Afghanistan and the Taliban because with the virus still raging, he needs some more good things to announce.  One more thing, last night during his town hall Trump once again tried to dig himself out from the mess he created by calling soldiers suckers and losers.  He responded to a question on the subject by insisting that the reports of his comments were just more fake news but then doubled down on his McCain insults and insisting that all those generals who criticized him were nothing more than disgruntled fired employees.  Fortunately no one asked him about his Make America Great campaign committee’s recent ad, the one that called for donors to support the troops but that mistakenly featured Russian MIG 29s in the background. By the way the Russian who photographed those planes was amused, he cited the inclusion of his “stock” photo as funny and the result of bad fact checking.  If he knew Trump better, he’d know that fact checking isn’t one of his things.