Five Hundred Forty Five

Zero Tolerance:  Of all the many horrible things that the Trump administration has done over the past four years the separation of children from their parents has got to be the worst so, this being the Trump era, the situation with the children continues to fester.  Yesterday, NBC reported that lawyers assigned to reunite families that were separated at the Mexico border have been unable to locate the parents of 545 migrant children.  Those children are largely the ones who were taken from their families during the test pilot program that preceded the formal implementation of the larger “zero tolerance” separation policy.  That’s the separation policy that was gifted to us by Trump’s squirmy immigrant haters aide Stephen Miller and first Attorney General Jeff Sessions,  that officials like one time Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen denied was ever implemented and that former Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said needed to be enforced no matter how young the children being torn from their mothers’ arms were. As to tolerance, Trump appears to be running out of any for his current Attorney General, the far more intelligent and therefore far more dangerous, William Barr. Having failed, or at least failed so far, in getting Barr to indict Joe Biden and Hunter Biden for imaginary crimes and in Hunter’s case, bad judgement, Trump used some quality time with his cronies on Fox & Friends to re-up his request, telling Barr to “take action” against Joe Biden before Election Day because “this,” whatever this is, is “major corruption and it has to be known before the election.” And of course, Trump’s Congressional fave, Jim “Gym” Jordan is totally onboard.  He and a crew of similarly minded House fanboys, want Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate all those Biden crimes.  So far silence from Barr, who though he has surfaced from his quarantine has not taken any public action maybe because he wants to retain his membership in the bar or maybe because we just don’t know what he’s doing.

China, China, China: Though we haven’t heard much from Barr, those financial writers at the NY Times have been busy.  Last night they reported that Trump has a Chinese bank account and has collected a substantial amount of earnings from China while in office.  The referenced bank account belongs to Trump’s subsidiary firm, Trump International Hotels Management. In previous years that entity reported small amounts of revenue but during Trump’s first year in office it reported $17.5 million in revenue, a large unexplained “spike.” Of course, since Trump is all about projection he’s spent months telling us that Joe Biden who unlike Trump has shared years upon years of his tax filings, is in cahoots with China. Moreover,  he has accused China of being “on a massive disinformation campaign because they are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race,” has said that “Beijing Biden is so weak on China that the intelligence community recently assessed that the Chinese Communist Party favors Biden,” and is now insisting that those “hacked emails” that he wants Barr to investigate “prove” financial links between the Bidens and China.  If we’ve learned anything about Trump over the past few years it’s that he’s done whatever crimes he accuses others of doing.  One more point, the NY Times reports that between 2013 and 2015, Trump’s account paid $188,561 in taxes to China in connection to potential licensing deals a lot more than the $750 that Trump paid the IRS in 2016 and 2017.  Enough said.

Tick, Tick, Tick: As of now tomorrow’s debate between Biden and Trump is still on so, of course, Trump continues to hammer away at NBC moderator Kristen Welker but since attacking one media woman isn’t enough he’s now also going after 60 Minutes host Leslie Stahl. He, Mike Pence, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have all been sitting for interviews that are scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes’ pre-election segment.  Trump and Pence’s interviews were conducted by Stahl while Biden and Harris’s interviews were with Norah O’Donnell.  Apparently Stahl asked some tough questions and/or failed to appropriately bow to the orange god.  Whatever the reason, Trump is reported to have cut the interview short and stormed out.  He then followed up by tweeting out a picture of himself with an unmasked “irresponsible” Stahl, threatening to release the WH “tape” of the entirety of the interview before the CBS broadcast to prove how unfairly he was treated.  CBS, grateful for the free advertising, reports that Stahl, who had COVID early in the pandemic, wore a mask to the White House but removed it during the interview and had not yet put it back on at the time the picture was taken.  While Trump, whose cash strapped campaign appears to be running on tax payer funded fumes while Biden has money to spare, continues to insist that all is well with him and that he’s on the way to a bigly victory, he does seems a bit on edge.  And because I am all against jinxing election results, maybe he really is on his way to victory. Who knows, that Post Office tampering, those mail in ballot scare tactics, canoodling with Putin and all those voter suppression lawsuits could pay off bigly.   

Viral Musings:  The virus remains totally out of control.  Thanksgiving is likely to involve you, a drumstick and a chocolate turkey  Radiologist Scott Atlas, Trump’s favorite virus non-expert expert who is all in on achieving herd immunity by cutting back on all that “useless” testing and killing the herd appears to be running the virus task force.  The Washington Post reports that Dr Debbie Birx who we don’t see anymore, is so upset about Atlas that she’s asked VP Pence to have him removed.  Pence, concerned that he’ll be replaced by Trump with the reincarnation of JFK Jr, hasn’t acted upon that request but has asked Atlas and Birx to present their “cases” to him so that he can evaluate the merits of crazy science against the views of the real experts.  For his part, virus guru Fauci who appears to be trying to hold on until the Biden calvary arrives, assuming it does arrive, is doing his best to ignore attacks against him by quoting lines from The Godfather, saying he’s taking “Nothing personal” because he knows it’s “Strictly business,” or insanity but out of his control.

Et Cetera:  Melania has cancelled plans to join Trump on the stump either because she’s still dealing with a persistent COVID cough, because she’s renegotiating her post-nup or because she’s busy packing.  Retired Admiral McRaven who was in charge of the mission that nailed Osama bin Laden endorsed Joe Biden saying “Truth be told, I am a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative…But, I also believe that black lives matter, that the Dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is the great equalizer, that climate change is real and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy. Most important, I believe that America must lead in the world with courage, conviction and a sense of honor and humility."  USA Today agrees, though they’ve never endorsed before they are this time, saying Elect Joe Biden, Reject Donald Trump.

Thirteen Days.