Fog of War

Election Shenanigans: Remember last week when we learned from author Bob Woodward that Trump knew and understood in January that COVID was airborne, deadlier than the flu and likely to become a pandemic but that he downplayed its lethality to keep us calm and, as several of his spokespeople told various news hosts during this weekend’s Sunday tour, because he was in the fog of war?  This weekend he proved again that he’s just a liar and possibly a human fog machine who cares nothing about our health but a lot about being reelected.  He did that by holding two super spreader campaign events in Nevada, including an indoor one, and by threatening to call out his troops to “put down” protesters if there is an “insurrection” on election night and/or  if he loses the “rigged” election.  In keeping with that violence theme, he justified what may have been an extrajudicial killing of the west coast antifa protester who himself was wanted for a protest related killing and by failing to say a word when his long-time friend, dirty trickster Roger Stone said he should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg if he loses to Joe Biden in November.  While Trump was performing his all too usual routine during his first Nevada rally, in front of a crowd of unmasked COVID deniers, one that had to be moved after the management of its original planned location refused to violate Nevada’s coronavirus restrictions, Stone was elsewhere in the state saying that “the ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state,” calling the as yet uncast votes “corrupted” and part of a “provable case” of fraud.  And by provable case you know that convicted felon Stone, whose sentence Trump commuted, means if the state goes for Biden instead of Trump that the votes would obviously be corrupted.  While Trump’s first super spreader Nevada rally was in process, his earlier taped interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro was airing on Fox, that’s the interview where he suggested that Joe Biden has a drug problem because how else can you explain the former VP’s “recent” lucidity.  There’s something very special about snorter Trump, whose namesake son has appeared more and more strung out during his recent shriekfests telling Pirro who almost always seems inebriated on her Saturday night shows that Joe Biden is under the influence.  And by the way, if there is a magical drug that makes those who really do suffer from Alzheimer lucid, why don’t we know about it?  As to those super spreader rallies, after Nevada’s Governor slammed the second one, which was held last night in an indoor warehouse outside of Las Vegas, as “shameful, dangerous and irresponsible,” Trump responded by calling him a political hack. Had he not died from COVID after attending Trump’s last indoor rally, that super spreader Tulsa event, we could ask Herman Cain about fog and hacks but oddly enough he’s not taking any calls. 

Barring Barr:  Something’s up at AG Barr’s Justice Department, nothing good.  Late Thursday, the Hartford Courant reported that Nora Dannehy, a respected long term Connecticut prosecutor who US Attorney John Durham had brought in as his top aide on his Barr commissioned investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation resigned amid concerns that Barr was pushing for Durham to release an interim report even though it doesn’t appear that Durham has finished interviewing witnesses, interim reports aren’t a thing, and going public with anything in the run up to a presidential election is supposed to be against the rules.  Given Barr’s track record, the fear is that if Durham hands him anything, even something benign, he will distort what he gets to make it look like the FBI and all those Obama era folks committed heinous crimes in the pursuit of Trump regardless of what Durham has or has not uncovered.  Apparently by resigning Dannehy is trying to distance herself from all of this.  It’s not clear, yet, whether Durham plans to cooperate with Barr but it’s seems that Dannehy fears that he will succumb to the pressure. In a less covered move, John Choi, a prosecutor working on Trump’s Law Enforcement Commission also resigned late last week saying that he is “worried that the group is intent on providing cover for a predetermined law and order agenda that will only widen the divisions in our nation.”  Rats fleeing a sinking ship?  In other Justice news, John Gleeson, the former judge retained by Judge Emmet Sullivan to analyze Barr’s efforts to force the dropping of the charges that former national security advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to, called Barr’s efforts “a corrupt and politically motivated favor.”  Gleeson went on to say that "In the United States, Presidents do not orchestrate pressure campaigns to get the Justice Department to drop charges against defendants who have pleaded guilty -- twice, before two different judges -- and whose guilt is obvious, yet that is exactly what has unfolded here." Gleeson’s position is that Judge Emmet Sullivan should reject the Justice Department's request to dismiss the case, and should move forward with Flynn's sentencing. This inning goes to the good guys, but give Barr time, its doubtful that he’s ready to throw in the towel yet because doing Trump’s bidding is his oxygen.  

Et Cetera:  The west is burning, Trump blames all those fires on the failure of those Democratic governors to adequately sweep their forests, rather than anything related to climate change and doesn’t seem all that concerned because those states are primarily occupied by Democrats.  Nevertheless he’s planning to visit today maybe because someone reminded him that there are a few Republican districts in California worth saving. Hopefully, he’ll refrain from tossing any flammable paper towel rolls. The COVID death count is up to 194,000 and though the daily appears to have settled for now to somewhere around 40,000 that’s still a very high number, one that virus guru Fauci remains very concerned about.  Despite Trump’s assurance that we’ve “rounded the corner,” Fauci, doesn’t believe that things will return to normal until the end of next year.  Fauci’s tendency to speak the truth is not at all appreciated in Trump land. On Friday Politico reported that the Center for Disease Control’s Trump appointed communications aides have been demanding the right to review and seek changes in the CDC’s weekly scientific reports, to intimidate the reports’ authors and to water down the information that they produce and share with state and local health officials because if you can’t suppress the virus reporting that it’s on the decline is the next best thing?  And because the CDC isn’t the only place where questionable things are happening, the Washington Post reports that ICE flew detainees to the Washington DC area purportedly to transfer them out of virus infested crowded facilities but that it turns out that the facilities the detainees were transferred out of weren’t really all that crowded or COVID infested.  In reality ICE needed them on some planes so they could justify using them to fly some Homeland Security Tactical units into the Washington DC area for Trump’s show of force.  The detainees were needed to allow ICE to circumvent rules that prohibit chartering flights for employee travel.  That a number of those unnecessarily transferred detainees got COVID as a result of their transfer, apparently that’s just one of those “fog of war” things.