The first presidential debate was widely regarded as a shit show, but that wasn’t entirely how I felt about it. Calling it a shit show implies that everyone involved detracted from what the event could’ve been, and that isn’t what happened. Rather than type ad nauseam about the many aspects of this debate that could be analyzed, I’m just going to give my thoughts on some key moments and how I perceived each candidate and their debate strategies.

BIDEN

Biden’s strategy seemed to be to ignore Trump’s petty insults, fact check his most egregious lies, call out his hypocrisy and his ineffectiveness, and to communicate his own plans when possible. It was a tall order given Trump’s behavior, but he faired well enough, and I think people recognize that most of the incivility and interruptions were coming almost exclusively from the other side of the stage.

He did a great job of not lingering on Trump’s baseless attacks and moving back to the issues he wanted to talk about, at times looking at the camera and speaking directly to the viewers about what he intended to do if elected, ignoring Trump’s antics and interruptions in the background.

You could tell he was trying to remain calm, and while he never lost his cool, it was evident that he got annoyed a few times, but that annoyance led to several good lines:

• Early on in the debate where it became clear that Trump had no intention of allowing anyone else to talk, Biden said to a flailing Chris Wallace: “You’re not gonna be able to shut him up.

• At one point, fed up with Trump’s aimless interruptions, Biden exclaimed “Will you shut up, man?” 

• In response to Trump’s cavalier attitude toward the number of COVID-19 deaths: “It is what it is because you are who you are.”

• He flatly called Trump a clown and a racist.

• "You're the worst president America's ever had."

TRUMP

Donald Trump had roughly two coherent responses, and spent the rest of his time making blunt interjections, tactless interruptions, and talking over not only Joe Biden, but over moderator Chris Wallace as well. His conduct was so bad that Wallace had to remind him during the debate that he was breaking the rules he agreed to. He behaved like a playground bully. 

Trump is behind in the polls, and this was a good chance to make up some ground. His debate performance against Hillary Clinton was a huge boon for his 2016 campaign, so I’m sure his 2020 campaign was hoping the debate would boost their poll numbers this time, too.

Despite the significance of this event for Trump’s campaign, there isn’t very much to analyze in the way of his debate strategy: his only goal seemed to be to talk over Biden and the moderator as much as possible, and the “points” he made were nearly all ad hominem attempts to destroy Biden’s character. It was a similar approach to the one he took in 2016, but with one key distinction: this time, it didn’t work.

Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. Biden wasn’t in the center of the national spotlight for decades before ending up on the debate stage, and while he’s less well known, he’s generally more likable and people find him honest and sincere. Blaming the muck of the D.C. swamp on Hillary Clinton was easy for Trump to do as a political newcomer. It was nearly impossible for him to do this time, now that he’s been in charge for the past four years and virtually nobody (except the top 1%, perhaps) is better off than they were in 2016. The only argument Trump can make is “yeah things suck right now, but they would be worse with Joe Biden”, which isn’t exactly a home run message. I doubt anyone who wasn’t already in Trump’s base watched this debate and came away from it thinking he was the more reasonable candidate.

KEY MOMENTS

As expected, Wallace raised the issue of Trump paying just $750 in federal income tax. Trump’s response was that he paid “millions of dollars” in federal income tax, and that “you’ll get to see it” as soon as he’s able to release his tax returns. He claims that he can’t release his tax returns  right now because he’s under audit, but it’s worth noting that he used the same excuse in 2016. Also worth noting, being under audit does not prevent you from releasing your tax returns. Every president is required to be audited by the IRS, and they all managed to release their tax returns. 

At one point, Joe Biden was talking about his late son Beau Biden’s military achievements. Trump interrupted Biden, saying “I don’t know Beau, I know Hunter” and proceeded to antagonize him over Hunter Biden’s prior struggle with cocaine. Joe acknowledged this, saying that like a lot of people, his son did have a drug problem but that he overcame it, and that he was proud of him. In the midst of the opioid crisis, it was an extremely tone deaf and downright cruel interjection from Trump, and it teed Biden up for a heartfelt moment that would resonate with millions of Americans who’ve been affected by substance abuse and addiction.

The biggest takeaway from this debate was when the moderator asked Trump if he would condemn white supremacy. Trump initially said that he was prepared to do so, but he immediately tried to change the subject. When pressed by Biden and Wallace to actually denounce white supremacy, Trump’s response was to tell the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”. It was less a denunciation than a call to arms. The Proud Boys like his message to them so much that they put it on t-shirts. It goes without saying, but whether Trump is truly a white supremacist or whether he feels he can’t afford to alienate even a single, fringe member of his shrinking base is not the point.

WHAT’S NEXT?

In the wake of Trump’s COVID diagnosis, it seems hugely unlikely that the second and third presidential debates will go forward as planned, if at all.

Reports indicate that Trump knew he had been exposed prior to the first debate, yet refused to warn the Biden campaign or give anyone a heads up that he could’ve been contagious; it’s criminal negligence. It’s also disrespectful and irresponsible that the Trump family didn’t wear masks for the duration of the debate: if they take them off next time, kick them out. Better yet, just don’t allow them inside the venue in the first place.

If I were running the Biden campaign, I would insist on much stronger health precautions if more in-person debates are to occur.

Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2020

I wouldn’t wish sickness on anyone, but Donald Trump isn’t just anyone. He’s the man trying the hardest to unravel our democracy for personal gain. He’s spent countless hours denying the gravity of and spreading misinformation about the pandemic which now ails him because he thought it made him look bad, and the optics were more important to him than the 200,000+ lives lost as a result of his negligence. Karma is a bitch, and Donald Trump deserves this.

---

This news raises a few practical questions and concerns for the next few weeks. Will Trump get a boost out of pity? Will his base see this news as a national tragedy and rally around him, potentially pulling in some undecided voters? I doubt it. I don’t see how news of Donald Trump getting infected with the virus he played down for months will do anything other than make him appear weak to his base, or force them to believe he was lying the whole time. If anything, I think this will raise concerns about Trump’s longevity and help Biden. After all, Trump’s beloved stock market doesn’t seem to have a ton of confidence in him.

Some people have suggested that the president may not have COVID-19 at all, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think any “look how strong he is for beating COVID” bump he may receive would be extremely small, and the people who would say that are almost certainly in his base already. It could drive turnout a little bit, but I doubt it. A campaign’s most valuable resource is the candidate’s time, and even if Trump wanted a get out of jail free card for the last two debates, having to spend half the time between now and the election quarantined is an astronomically high price to pay.

If his case is asymptomatic or very mild, he could actually take this as a chance to say “look, I had it and it wasn’t bad, so it was smart of me to downplay it”, which could be more influential for undecided voters.

However, reports indicate that Trump is already experiencing mild symptoms, which raises the question, if his sickness progresses and becomes more debilitating or even life threatening, what happens? Surely, Trump won’t participate in the next presidential debate in person. Could the rest of the debates be cancelled altogether? If Trump’s sickness progresses the point of requiring ventilation, what happens on Election Day? Mike Pence will be in charge of the country while Trump is incapacitated, and presumably, votes for Trump will be counted as usual and he will resume power after he comes off the ventilator. What if he were to die before the election; do votes for Trump then count as votes for Pence? Can the Republican Party nominate someone else in the days before the election? Can votes already cast for a Trump/Pence ticket then be converted to support the new nominee? I don’t think so.

Another important question: what if Joe Biden gets sick? He spent nearly two hours on stage with the man yelling like a maniac. Fortunately, Joe Biden and his wife Jill have just tested negative, so we won’t wander too far down the path of hypotheticals, but man, there’s a lot to ponder.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

UPDATED: 10/02/20, 16:44

New reporting from the Channel 4 News Investigations Team:

Channel 4 News has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters.

It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trump’s campaign as ‘Deterrence’ – voters they wanted to stay home on election day.

[…]

Vast in scale, it contains details on almost 200 million Americans, among more than 5,000 files, which together amass almost 5 terabytes of data – making it one of the biggest leaks in history.

It reveals not only the huge amounts of data held on every individual voter, but how that data was used and manipulated by models and algorithms.

[…]

In Georgia, despite Black people constituting 32% of the population, they made up 61% of the ‘Deterrence’ category. In North Carolina, Black people are 22% of the population but were 46% of ‘Deterrence’. In Wisconsin, Black people constitute just 5.4% of the population but made up 17% of ‘Deterrence’.

This is a modern example of voter suppression.

Brad Parscale, the campaign’s 2016 digital director told PBS Frontline: “I would say I’m nearly 100 percent sure we did not run any campaigns that targeted even African Americans.”

This racist piece of shit was the campaign manager, how does he not know for sure? Don’t be fooled by this “nearly 100%” bullshit, he knows they targeted black potential voters, he just doesn’t want to admit it. Why anyone would try to prevent Brad Parscale from killing himself is beyond me.

But Channel 4 News has uncovered evidence that the campaign did target Black voters with negative ads designed to crush Hillary Clinton’s turnout.These included videos featuring Hillary Clinton referring to Black youths as “super predators” which aired on television 402 times in October 2016 and received millions of views on Facebook.

This story relates directly to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which was one of the biggest turning points for me in deciding not to vote for Trump again in 2020. It also happened to be one of the most damning revelations to come out about Facebook, and it sent them down the road of one PR disaster after the next, leading to public scrutiny and likely congressional intervention into their toxic, undemocratic business practices.

Whether President Bone Spurs himself was aware of the details or knows how targeted advertising works is irrelevant. He probably couldn’t understand it if he tried, and that doesn’t matter. I’m sure he was absolutely giddy when he found out what the crooks he employed were capable of doing with the wealth of stolen data Facebook supplied them with, even if he only had a slight grasp of how powerful that information would prove to be. Just because Trump is a babbling moron doesn’t mean the people around him are; he has authoritarian instincts, but he’s too dumb and weak to make anything happen for himself — the people around him and in his campaign are a lot more dangerous. Their whole game plan in 2016 was to use that data to target a handful of voters in just a few key counties they needed to win the electoral college, and to the nation’s election-night bewilderment, it worked.

Today, a Facebook spokesperson said: “Since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook – what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn’t happen today.

Sure, let’s take their word for it.

#deletefacebook

Brad Parscale, Trump's former campaign manager AND CURRENT DIGITAL OPERATIONS ADVISOR, just barricaded himself in his house with weapons and threatened to kill himself. https://t.co/MybM6tPGYg

— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) September 28, 2020

Trump demoted Brad Parscale from campaign manager just two and a half months ago, and kept him on as a senior advisor to the campaign. This isn't someone Trump kicked to the curb years ago—he's one of the heaviest guys in both the 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) September 28, 2020

Sounds like that camp is full of Stable Geniuses™.

This isn’t an original musing of mine, but imagine how this would’ve gone down if he was a suicidal black guy who had barricaded himself in his home with an armory and someone called the police. White privilege is real.

Kim Bellware, reporting for The Washington Post:

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed [two weeks ago] against the for-profit jail alleges Barlow-Austin died following 10 weeks of abuse and neglect during which she suffered inhumane conditions and “deliberate indifference” by jail staff that left her emaciated, blind and unable to walk.

When Barlow-Austin was taken into custody on a probation violation April 5, 2019, she had been managing HIV and mental health issues with regular medication and had otherwise healthy vitals, according to the complaint. She was not given her full therapy of medication in the jail, and staff failed to follow up on an outstanding request for her health records for more than a month.

For-profit prisons are tantamount to modern day slavery.

Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig, and Mike McIntire, reporting for The New York Times:

To delve into the records is to see up close the complex structure of the president’s business interests — and the depth of his entanglements. What is popularly known as the Trump Organization is in fact a collection of more than 500 entities, virtually all of them wholly owned by Mr. Trump, many carrying his name.

Having 500 companies hardly passes the sniff test.

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

[…]

He reported paying taxes, in turn, on a number of his overseas ventures. In 2017, the president’s $750 contribution to the operations of the U.S. government was dwarfed by the $15,598 he or his companies paid in Panama, the $145,400 in India and the $156,824 in the Philippines.

Some patriot.

When he took office, Mr. Trump said he would pursue no new foreign deals as president. Even so, in his first two years in the White House, his revenue from abroad totaled $73 million. And while much of that money was from his golf properties in Scotland and Ireland, some came from licensing deals in countries with authoritarian-leaning leaders or thorny geopolitics — for example, $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey.

This certainly seems like a national security concern.

Indeed, his financial condition when he announced his run for president in 2015 lends some credence to the notion that his long-shot campaign was at least in part a gambit to reanimate the marketability of his name.

[…]

In fact, those public filings offer a distorted picture of his financial state, since they simply report revenue, not profit. In 2018, for example, Mr. Trump announced in his disclosure that he had made at least $434.9 million. The tax records deliver a very different portrait of his bottom line: $47.4 million in losses.

Some people who voted for Donald Trump — myself included, to a large degree — did so thinking that his public demeanor and the actions he was taking were a part of a facade designed to cloak a more serious, organized plan for what he would do with the presidency. It was just a gut feeling that you were voting for something more than met the eye.

I think it’s safe to say that’s exactly what happened. Unfortunately, the master plan was not to fix any of America’s systemic problems. Rather it was a last ditch, Hail Mary attempt to rescue Trump from his own personal finances as he dangled by a shortening thread over an alligator infested swamp.

When Mr. Trump glided down a gilded Trump Tower escalator to kick off his presidential campaign in June 2015, his finances needed a jolt.

His core businesses were reporting mounting losses — more than $100 million over the previous two years. The river of celebrity-driven income that had long buoyed them was running dry.

If Mr. Trump hoped his unlikely candidacy might, at least, revitalize his brand, his barrage of derogatory remarks about immigrants quickly cost him two of his biggest and easiest sources of cash — licensing deals with clothing and mattress manufacturers that had netted him more than $30 million. NBC, his partner in Miss Universe — source of nearly $20 million in profits — announced that it would no longer broadcast the pageant; he sold it soon after.

He’s just… dumb.

His entire presidency has focused on one thing: himself. There have been countless stories of Trump’s blatant corruption and very public abuse of his office for personal gain, yet they never stuck because his supporters would say “oh that’s a drop in the bucket for him, he’s so rich he doesn’t need that money”. Now, we know he needs it more than ever: the financial conflicts of interest have been one of the most central themes of his tenure. They weren’t a byproduct of installing a “businessman” as president, they were the whole point. He doesn’t care if he makes America “great” again or not, he’s happy to betray the ignoramuses, bigots, and fools who voted for him if it results in an ounce of personal gain. He only cares that the powers of the president remain available to him while he scrambles to rescue himself from impending financial ruin.

For a fairly succinct roundup of Trump’s many personal debts, check out this thread. 👇🏼

1/ The New York Times #TrumpTaxReturns story is terrific. I had about a million thoughts as I was reading though. I'll be annotating those here, in this thread, for the next few hours. https://t.co/LeVjIwATpl

— Dan Alexander (@DanAlexander21) September 27, 2020

Worth noting: I suppose $1M might seem like a small loan to someone who is in debt by $1.1B.

UPDATED: 09/28/20, 19:23

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, writing for The New York Times:

A grand jury in Kentucky has indicted a former Louisville police detective, Brett Hankison, on three counts of “wanton endangerment in the first degree” for his actions during the raid of Breonna Taylor’s apartment. What does that mean?

Under Kentucky law, a person commits that crime when he or she “wantonly engages in conduct which creates a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury to another person,” and does so “under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.” Other states may use terms like “reckless endangerment” for an equivalent offense.

But the charges against Mr. Hankison are not for killing Ms. Taylor. None of the 10 shots he fired are known to have struck her. Instead, the Kentucky attorney general, Daniel Cameron, who is overseeing the prosecution, said the former detective was charged by the grand jury because the shots he fired had passed through Ms. Taylor’s apartment walls into a neighboring apartment […]

Not to sound too crass, but this pussy fired ten shots and still missed; why was he on the police force anyway? I don’t exactly consider myself a marksman, but if given ten shots at a sleeping target, I’m pretty sure I could course correct enough to land at least one of them.

We need to be asking if he was indicted because he maybe could’ve hit people through the wall, or if he was indicted because he failed to shoot Breonna Taylor. Why the hell weren’t the two officers who murdered her charged with anything? This is a disgusting example of systemic racism and police brutality. It should make you uncomfortable. Don’t look away, lean in. This is a conversation we must have.

For anyone trying to visualize privilege as a ladder, make sure you include a rung for “drywall” somewhere above the rung for “black women”.

They’re all so eager to go back on their word. Aaron Blake, reporting for The Washington Post:

Now that three key GOP senators — Mitt Romney (Utah), Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and Cory Gardner (Colo.) — have said they will not object to their leaders pressing forward with a Supreme Court nominee, despite their party’s 2016 stance against doing so in a presidential election year, the direction this fight is headed seems pretty clear.

Everyone knows Cory Gardner is a pussy, but Mitt Romney is a little more interesting. He’s been trying to act like he’s not a rank and file Republican, and he can get away with distancing himself from Trump and the rest of the republicans because he’s largely insulated from the voters by their short memories and the fact that his next election isn’t until 2024, but now we see where his priorities lie. Sure, he voted to remove Trump from office during the impeachment debacle, but he did so knowing it wouldn’t make a difference. Here, his vote could have a real impact, and his decision not to stand up for what’s right (as well as the precedent set by his own party four years ago) is unforgivable.

But some Republicans are going quite a bit further than that. They’re effectively signing off on whomever the nominee is, despite there not actually being a nominee yet. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said as much this weekend in announcing his support.

“There is a clear choice on the future of the Supreme Court between the well-qualified and conservative jurist President Trump will nominate and I will support, and the liberal activist Joe Biden will nominate and Cal Cunningham will support, who will legislate radical, left-wing policies from the bench,” Tillis said.

Thom Tillis is a spineless, bootlicking cunt. In his recent, televised debate with Cal Cunningham, he spent the entire hour misconstruing Cal’s responses and setting up straw man arguments because he knows he can’t defend the positions he’s taken on their own merit.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), meanwhile, declared Monday night that his committee would sign off on the as yet unnominated nominee.

“The nominee’s going to be supported by every Republican in the Judiciary Committee,” Graham said on Fox News.

I bet Lindsey Graham doesn’t want his words to be used against him now. The flip flopping is out of control. In 2016, he said the following:

"If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination," Graham said March 10, 2016.  "And you could use my words against me, and you'd be absolutely right.”

Chris Cillizza, writing about Graham for CNN:

No one who has followed politics for the last five-ish years -- basically since the rise of Trump -- should be surprised AT ALL that Graham is the Republican senator with the most outrageous flip-flop on, ahem, principle.

You'll remember that when Graham was running against Trump for president in 2016, he described the billionaire businessman as a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot." And said this: "You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell."

Fast forward a few years -- and suddenly Graham is one of Trump's biggest defenders (and regular golf buddies.)

What happened? Well, The New York Times' Mark Leibovich put that question directly to Graham back in 2019. And here's how Graham answered: "Well, OK, from my point of view, if you know anything about me, it'd be odd not to do this." Pressed by Leibovich on what "this" was, Graham said: "'This' is to try to be relevant."

And, scene.

---

Americans who are paying attention realize that even if Joe Biden wins the election, it won’t be good enough unless Mitch McConnell gets booted from his current role as Senate Majority Leader, and enough of these morally bankrupt (but certainly not financially bankrupt) Republican senators get voted out.

The right’s obsession with Supreme Court seats ultimately boils down to a deep-seated hope to eventually overturn Roe v. Wade, but they’ve proposed no alternative to how abortion should be handled under the law. Would they prefer to ram a SCOTUS nominee through amidst the election, possibly exciting conservatives (exciting or placating? Hmmm.), but certainly enraging liberals? That seems like a surefire way to lose their majority in the senate, at which point, the Democrats would have all the power to legislate new (possibly even more liberal) laws governing abortion. Is that what they want? Republicans are only focusing on the short game, here.

Well calculated or not, this is perhaps the most brazen display of their partisanship and hypocrisy. As Majority Leader, McConnell led the Republican effort to stall on President Obama’s SCOTUS nominee, Merrick Garland, after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016. Their reasoning was that because 2016 was an election year, the Senate shouldn’t confirm a nominee from a president in the final year of his term, and should instead wait until after the inauguration to let the newly elected president nominate the next justice. Of course, that meant that the court would have a vacancy for nearly 11 months at the least. Now, when the same thing has happened in the last year of Trump’s term, yet they now claim to believe that time is of the essence and that it would be irresponsible to wait just four months to allow the newly elected president to make the nomination. It’s shameless partisanship that has real consequences.

Crooked Media is running a fundraising campaign called the “Get Mitch of Die Trying Fund”, which aims to funnel resources to the most competitive senate races of this cycle with the aim of stripping the Republicans of their Senate majority. Throughout the months long campaign, they had raised $40M as of last Friday. In the following three days, as news of RBG’s death circulated, their fund brought in an additional $17M. Click here to check out the fund and make a donation.

Also, register to vote.

I could spend a long time talking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s past and her impact on women’s rights and American history in general, but I don’t claim to be an RBG expert, and I certainly wouldn’t do her justice. Instead, spend a few minutes reading the other justices’ statements on her passing.

I don’t want to politicize a tragedy, but 2020 has been one politicized tragedy after the next. It’s been a bit like a movie — if political thriller were a popular genre — with about seven hours worth of plot shoved into ninety minutes, and RBG’s death is the plot twist.

When I got the CNN breaking news alert on my watch, I felt my stomach drop; I’m desperately afraid we’re about to see the great American experiment finally collapse on upon itself. Throughout this year, we’ve seen just how dysfunctional and corrupt the majority of our federal government officials truly are. One much needed respite from the bad faith politicking came when a majority of our Supreme Court justices proved that they were, at least for the time being, still managing to hold the judicial branch above the political warfare that has consumed the executive and legislative branches.

Now the high court faces a real chance of receiving a Trumpian makeover that will throw the last remaining branch of our federal government into hyper-partisan disarray. Trump will have yet another opportunity to nominate someone to the court, and the group of people who are capable of standing in his way is hopelessly small and demonstrably spineless. I think we can be sure that Trump’s third nominee to the court will not be as moderate or as qualified his second, or especially his first. After all, in the coming months, the Supreme Court very well may be in a position where they’re making decisions regarding the election results, or hearing cases on any number of Trump’s alleged crimes. It’s all but guaranteed that Trump’s next nominee’s loyalties will lie not with the law, but with the most dangerous demagogue in our nation’s history.

Hopefully, notorious flip flop and shameless Trump simp Lindsey Graham still wants his words used against him.

Erika Edwards and Denise Chow, reporting for NBC News:

In the predawn hours of March 30, Dr. Deborah Birx stepped in front of the camera on the White House lawn and made an alarming prediction about the coronavirus, which had, by then, killed fewer than 3,000 people in the United States.

"If we do things together, well, almost perfectly, we can get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities” […]

On Saturday, Birx's prediction came true, as the number of lives lost to Covid-19 in the U.S. topped 200,000.

Now, many experts are making another ominous prediction: A surge in the number of new infections in the fall and winter, combined with growing fatigue over social distancing and other public health measures, could result in more than 415,000 deaths in the U.S. by January, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, or IHME, at the University of Washington.

Uh oh Republicans, it looks we’re outside of Trump’s defined “very good job” territory. It’s okay, I’m sure he’ll soon move the goalposts again to ease your cognitive dissonance so you’ll carry on with supporting him via willful ignorance.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

Robert Costa and Philip Rucker, writing for The Washington Post:

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

[…]

“Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states,” Woodward writes. “There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced.”

No shit.

Trump knew it was worse than the flu.

Trump knew coronavirus was deadly. #TrumpKnew and he did nothing. pic.twitter.com/rWKzj5Ti1i

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 9, 2020

This is real audio (expertly assembled into a video by our friends at The Lincoln Project), straight from Donald Trump, where he admits to knowing how deadly the coronavirus was, and a subsequent admission that he intentionally downplayed it to the public. Allegedly he wanted to avoid creating a panic.

This is a stunning revelation, but to hear it come directly from Trump’s own mouth is really something else. The pandemic is the biggest issue of this election, and a lot of pundits have been saying the election could boil down to a referendum on the Trump administration’s response to it. If the election really does turn out to be a referendum on the COVID response, then Trump’s already hole-y ship just hit an iceberg. The question now isn’t whether the ship will sink (it’s undeniably going down; history will not look favorably upon his response), but whether they can keep it afloat until November third. They’ll certainly try to patch up the damage as much as they can (probably by releasing an untested vaccine in mid-October), and they’ll try to deflect attention to other issues, but I personally think they’re taking on water too quickly to stay afloat until the election. If it does come down to a COVID referendum — knocking on lots of wood here — I don’t think Trump can win.

From a CTV News interview with American History Professor Allan Litchman, summarized by Graham Slaughter:

[The revelation that] Donald Trump knew COVID-19 was deadly in the early days of the pandemic but publicly downplayed the virus will go down in history as "damning."

“This is the greatest dereliction of duty in the history of the U.S. presidency,” Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University for nearly 50 years, told CTV News Channel on Thursday.

I respect Litchman and his analysis a great deal. You may recognize his name, as he’s the historian who constructed the unbelievably accurate “Thirteen Keys” model of predicting U.S. presidential elections.

Why Trump felt comfortable speaking so candidly with Woodward, one of the most influential journalists in American politics, has everything to do with his “pathological ego” Lichtman said.

“Donald Trump thinks he’s smarter than everyone, he thinks he’s more cunning than everyone,” said Lichtman, who is a Democrat. Only one of the dumbest people in the room would constantly act like they’re the smartest person in the room.

As for Trump’s defence that he didn’t share how deadly the virus was because he didn’t want people to panic, Lichtman said it simply doesn’t pass the sniff test.

“What is Trump’s whole campaign based on? Causing panic. ‘Elect Joe Biden and your streets are going to burn. The criminals will be attacking your houses. The suburbs will be abolished.’ This is a guy who’s worried about causing panic? Come on. How could you possibly believe that?”

Again, rich hypocrisy. He’s effectively saying “look at what’s happening, our cities are on fire, Antifa* is coming, this is what will happen if you elect Joe Biden”, hoping his followers are stupid enough to ignore the fact that Trump is president now and it’s already happening. It’s so self unaware.

But let me guess, Republicans: y’all are totally okay with this. Something about not wanting to create a panic, sometimes you have lie to your kids because you love them, yadda yadda yadda. Republicans should be more offended by this than anyone. It’s an outright admission by Trump that he’s playing them for fools because they take every (self conflicting) thing he says as gospel.

*The “Pod Save America” boys aptly pointed out that Trump’s whole “Antifa” play is basically the 2020 rebrand of his “caravan” play from 2018. Baseless, divisive fear mongering that his most ignorant supporters are all too happy to gobble up without any evidence.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

UPDATED: 10/06/20, 14:58

Jeffery Goldberg, reporting for The Atlantic:

In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit [to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018], Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

[…]

… he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.” […] “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides.

[…]

Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II.

[…]

The president did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his “personal Vietnam.”

[…]

According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”

[…]

Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.

This behavior would be disgraceful from any American, but coming from our Commander in Chief, it’s absolutely abhorrent. You cannot support Donald Trump and call yourself a patriot.

Further reading: Trump Knew The Russians Were Paying The Taliban To Kill U.S. Troops.

Holly Yan and Madeline Holcombe, reporting for CNN:

Just over seven months ago, no one in the US had a confirmed case of Covid-19. On Monday, the US topped 6 million cases of coronavirus, which has killed over 183,000 people and left many young adults with long-term problems.

My god, this is getting old.

The pandemic seems to slowing at this point, but this most recent million can still be attributed to the south. Southerners: see here.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

The COVID-19 pandemic has become an omnipresent aspect of life in 2020 America, and many articles on CopyrightBro reflect that. It’s no secret that the federal government has completely fumbled the response to the pandemic, at times ignoring it entirely while at other times intentionally spreading misinformation. Rather than post dozens of links in each COVID-19 related article to illustrate how they’ve screwed this up, we decided to give you one single link to this page, which compiles all of CopyrightBro’s articles on the subject. If they do anything good or effective, that’ll be included as well, but don’t hold your breath.

Click here to check out our COVID-19 Roundup.

I first heard about Allan Litchman in the weeks before the 2016 election, and at the time, his prediction that Trump would win seemed far fetched. Still, I was enthralled with his “thirteen keys” system, and anxious to see if it would prove accurate for that election cycle. Of course, it did. However, Trump’s win wasn’t the only thing Litchman predicted: he also predicted that Trump would be impeached way back in 2017. Suffice to say he has a strong track record, and I trust his judgment.

Allison Gordon, reporting for CNN:

He has correctly predicted the winner of each presidential race since Ronald Reagan's reelection victory in 1984 using his "13 keys" system. […]

Now, Lichtman and his "13 keys" are ready to call 2020.

In an interview with CNN, Lichtman was definitive in his answer: "The keys predict that Donald Trump will lose the White House this year."

Lichtman bases his prediction on a model of "13 keys" that can be answered as either true or false for any given election. The "13 keys" in his system include factors such as the economy, incumbency, social unrest and scandals, as well as the candidates' personal charisma. […]

When asked if the key model could account for something as cataclysmic as the Covid-19 pandemic, Lichtman remained confident. "Look, retrospectively and prospectively, the keys go all the way back to 1860. They are what we call a robust system. So, I don't fiddle with them. They've lasted through enormous changes in our politics, in our economy, in our democracy. Don't fiddle with the keys," he explained.

I’ve been feeling pretty good about Biden’s chances the past few months, and this really cemented my belief that he will win the election (I’m knocking on wood read hard, though, believe me). Things can certainly change, and this doesn’t mean we should let off the gas in our attempts to get people excited about the Biden Harris ticket, but for the past 12-18 months, you could just feel Trump’s public support eroding. He still has his inalienable base, of course, but I think he’s losing ground among fair-minded people. I believe America has enough non-racists, non-xenophobes, non-white supremacists, non-homophobes, and non-bigots to outvote Trump’s base. The the issue now is whether we can get enough of those people to turn out to be able to counteract the damage that will be done by his blatant efforts to cheat.

If you’re interested in learning more about the thirteen keys, here’s a good place to start.

Turns out that Steve Bannon and the other We Build the Wall con artists actually TORE DOWN two miles of the wall and resold the rebar on Craigslist.

— Al Franken (@alfranken) August 21, 2020

You hate to see it.

Note, the poorly tuned Trumpets who donated to this are apparently stupid enough to think this is still a win for them, saying they don’t feel ripped off.

*Photograph of Steve Bannon by Gage Skidmore.

From the Biden campaign’s website:

Kamala Harris Will Be The Next Vice President of The United States.

My first response to this news wasn’t outright disappointment, just the kind of let down you feel when you’re expecting something incredible and receive us something acceptable but bland. I just don’t feel like this pick really energizes the ticket or adds to it in a way that other options couldn’t have.

My first pick for Joe Biden’s VP was Stacy Abrams, followed by Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. There was a lot of speculation about Kamala Harris in recent weeks, but in her last few debates, she just didn’t seem very genuine to me, so I was hoping it wouldn’t be her. Plus, there was the issue of her record which didn’t sit well with me, but I suppose the Biden campaign has decided that, while unsavory, her record isn’t likely to be a disqualifying issue for many of the undecided voters they’re gunning for. Kamala checks a few demographic boxes while keeping the ticket moderate enough not to scare away undecided independent voters. I liked Abrams most because I thought it would be a good move for the campaign to announce a fresh, young running mate with more progressive ideas, but I suppose the DNC wasn’t going to pick Biden’s running mate based what I or anyone else would’ve liked.

All in all, Kamala is more exciting than Mike Pence, but I feel like the Biden campaign has fumbled an opportunity to get people excited.

From The New York Times:

President Trump is considering new immigration regulations that would allow border officials to temporarily block American citizens and legal permanent residents from returning to the United States from abroad if authorities believe they may be infected with the coronavirus. In recent months, Mr. Trump has imposed sweeping rules that ban entry by foreigners into the United States, citing the risk of allowing the virus to spread from hot spots abroad. But those rules have exempted two categories of people attempting to return: American citizens and non-citizens who have already established legal residence.

This is outrageous and treasonous.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 26

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Shan Li and Jennifer Calfas, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. has surpassed five million confirmed cases of the coronavirus as some states saw sharp upticks while others showed signs that the spread of the virus was easing.

The U.S. continues to lead the world in number of confirmed cases, followed by Brazil with about three million cases and India with more than two million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Brazil and India. Great company we’re keeping these days.

It’s been a little over two weeks since we hit 4,000,000. Still, it seems to be the south’s fault.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 25

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

Russel Brandom, reporting for The Verge:

 President Trump has signed a new executive order which will block all transactions with Bytedance, TikTok’s parent corporation, in an effort to “address the national emergency with respect to the information and communication technology supply chain.” It isn’t effectively immediately, but has a 45 day deadline.

“The spread [of apps controlled by the Chinese government] continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” the order reads. “The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security.”

Did Trump make this decision because his understands that TikTok is a national security threat? No. He made this decision because he’s a small person: he’d probably never even heard of TikTok before a bunch of teenagers hurt his feelings by using it to screw up his rally by bloating the number of expected attendees by requesting tickets despite not intending to attend.

But, would the U.S. better off without TikTok? Yes, we would. And 45 days isn’t a ton of time to arrange an international business acquisition.