Fifteen Days

Politics Unusual: The coronavirus is raging out of control but empowered by his newly acquired immunity Trump spent the weekend frantically hosting super spreader catch-up rallies across the country. He stuck with his usual spiel, a mash-up of 2016 oldies with a few new targets, bizarrely throwing in some Elaine Benes dance moves for good measure.  He went to Michigan and Wisconsin, states he won in 2016 but where he’s currently polling behind Biden; Nevada, a state he lost in 2016 but hopes to pick up; Georgia a state that should be a slam dunk but where polls are tightening and where two Senatorial seats are unexpectedly up for grabs; and California, a state he’ll never win but one with pools of much needed donor money.  In Michigan he slammed Governor Whitmer, basically justifying the plot against her life while egging on “lock her up” chants from his audience. On Sunday, daughter-in-law Lara, explained that away by saying that Trump was just “having fun;” Whitmer, not amused, said he was “inciting domestic terrorism.”  In Georgia, he was introduced by Republican Senator David Perdue who made his own reelection a little more challenging by intentionally mangling that “socialist” Kamala Harris’ “foreign” name calling her Kah-ma-la, or Kah-mah-la, or Kamala-mala-mala.”   That’s the same Perdue who was previously called out for photoshopping a picture of his Democratic opponent Jon Ossoff, making his nose look more stereotypically Jewish. Threatened with a boycott, a Perdue Chicken spokesperson made it clear that the Senator has no connection to their company while Ossoff raked in an extra $2 million in campaign contributions.  Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, back from her bout with COVID, bragged about the thousands of adoring fans who greeted Trump in California, neglecting to mention the majority of California voters who can’t even utter his name without retching. Over the weekend Trump reversed his decision to turn down Governor Newsom’s request for fire disaster relief, not because of any new found love for the largely blue anarchist jurisdiction but because he was reminded that the state has seven Republican Representatives up for reelection, some with burnt out constituents and one, Kevin McCarthy, who is the House Minority leader. As to Nevada, Trump is so desperate to win the state that he actually attended an evangelical service on Sunday. Maybe he got some pointers on how not to hold a Bible? 

But Her Emails:  This cycle’s “but her emails diversion” involves a laptop “discovered” by Rudy Giuliani in a computer repair shop owned by a blind man, the laptop which was supposedly abandoned by Joe’s son Hunter Biden, who if the date on the computer receipt is to be believed, would have traveled from his current home in California to get his computer repaired in Delaware because there are no repair shops out west. Among the “implicating” emails are a few where Biden sends love to his son during the depths of his fight with addiction, that fatherly love thing being totally foreign to Trump or Giuliani.  Yesterday, the NY Times reported that the story is so sketchy that only the NY Post would touch it and that even there staff writers were so put off by its odious unproven accusations about Joe having meetings with random Ukrainians that the reporter assigned to the story refused to allow his name to be included in the byline. Ultimately the story went out, on the front cover, under the byline of a reporter who previously worked for Fox pundit Sean Hannity, who has never before had a byline and another who had little to do with the story and didn’t give permission for her name to be included.  By the way, the other source for the “hit piece” article was the indicted one time Trump strategist Steve Bannon. Giuliani said he brought the information to the NY Post because he knew other papers would have tried to independently verify its contents and he couldn’t risk that. The FBI is now investigating the source material as Russian placed disinformation as well as the possibility that Rudy is either a useful fool or a willing foreign agent.  Voters, at least those not already voting for Trump don’t seem to care about the “leaked” emails so over the weekend Fox Business News’ Maria Bartiromo and Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson whose previous attempts at implicating Biden for crimes that never happened have failed,  implied that there was also child porn on the laptop, a nod no doubt to those QAnon crazies who believe that the Democrats are the party of pedophilia despite Trump’s stated admiration for Jeffrey Epstein’s affinity for young girls, his concerns over Ghislaine Maxwell’s health, those old accusations about his own behavior and his former associate/financier George Nader who was recently sentenced to a ten year prison term for sex trafficking a minor.

Et Cetera:  The number of Republicans trying to distance themselves from Trump ticked up this weekend to include Texas Senator John Cornyn.  Cornyn who is facing a “shouldn’t be close but is” reelection battle against  Democratic challenger/Air Force veteran MJ Hegar,  wants everyone to believe that at times he has disagreed with Trump on issues such as budget deficits and debt, tariffs and trade agreements and border security but that he chose to work out those disagreements in private discussions, rather than by publicly voicing his opposition. Trump hasn’t slammed Cornyn yet, but he did spend part of his rally and twitter time trashing Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, last weeks “distance dancing” Senator calling him “the least effective of our 53 Republican Senators, and a person who truly doesn’t have what it takes to be great…. Little Ben Sasse of Nebraska….. a "liability" to the party.”  He’s also been going after Maine’s damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t pearl clutcher Senator Susan Collins because she is expected to vote against Amy Coney Barret’s nomination, saying that she isn’t worth the work, a sentiment that Senate Leader McConnell who in all likelihood has told Collins to do what she needs to do to hold on to her seat doesn’t agree with.  That’s the same McConnell who refuses to go anywhere near Trump or the White House because of its virus infestation and who is doing a dance of his own over another virus aid package, teasing the electorate into believing he’s all in on providing more aid, even though he’d rather not.  As we inch closer to election day, Republican lawyers continue to challenge anything that facilitates voting, or at least likely Democratic voting.  Amy Coney Barrett’s SCOTUS nomination is expected to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee by the end of the week for a floor vote before election day putting her on the court in time to upend a close election and failing that to weigh in on whether undocumented immigrants have to be included in the census count and whether Obamacare should remain in place.  

 

It's only Monday.