President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office Wednesday, less than a week after he tested positive for coronavirus. Still presumably infectious, still shedding the deadly pathogen, he simply did not care that he’s exposing more White House staffers. A top economic adviser would not say whether the president has been wearing a mask; this after nearly two dozen staffers have tested positive. Also currently in quarantine: almost the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff.In arguing why Donald Trump must not be reelected, we’ve previously noted why it’s impossible for this administration to either hire...
Throughout the anti-racism protests that have rocked the United States since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, President Donald Trump and his obedient sycophants at Fox News have engaged in nonstop fear-mongering over the Antifa movement. But it isn't Antifa that is imperiling the United States from a national security standpoint in 2020 — it is far-right white nationalist and white supremacist groups and extremist militias. And on Thursday, October 8, the danger that white nationalists and militia groups pose was evident when the FBI announced that six men had been arrested in connection with an alleged terrorist plot to kidnap and possibly murder Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Six men are facing federal charges, while seven of their allies are facing weapons charges at the state level in Michigan.
The men arrested include members of the Wolverine Watchmen, an anti-government militia group, as well as allies of the Boogaloo movement. As these groups see it, Democrats like Whitmer do not hold power legitimately: the alleged would-be kidnappers, according to the FBI, planned to take Whitmer to Wisconsin after kidnapping her, put her on "trial" and execute her for treason if found guilty. And there is no reason to believe that far-right white extremists will not engage in violence in the weeks ahead if they do not like the way the presidential election is going.
Here are five extremist groups or movements to be worried about in the months to come.
1. The Boogaloo Bois
According to NBC News, some of the Wolverine Watchmen arrested in connection with the alleged terrorist plot against Whitmer are also supporters of the Boogaloo movement — which has been calling for a civil war as well as a race war and seeks the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Boogaloo members also openly advocate killing police officers. In Northern California, Boogaloo supporter Steven Carrillo was arrested in connection with an armed attack on a federal courthouse in Oakland on May 29. That attack left a security officer from the Federal Protective Service dead.
Trump's claim that Antifa is a terrorist movement is laughable. For all their militant rhetoric, Antifa do not engage in terrorist activities like the alleged plot against Whitmer or the drive-by attack in Oakland. But far-right white nationalist groups do.
2. QAnon
The QAnon movement has been identified by the FBI as a possible source of domestic terrorism, and its sympathizers are making their way to the U.S. House of Representatives. In Georgia, QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene won a congressional primary on August 11, and given how deeply Republican her district is, it is entirely possible that she will win the general election in November and be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021 — which is incredibly disturbing when one considers what QAnon believes. According to the QAnon conspiracy theory, the U.S. government has been infiltrated by an international ring of pedophiles and Satanists, and Trump was put in power to combat the ring. According to QAnon, an anonymous figure named Q is giving them updates on Trump's battle.
As ludicrous as QAnon's beliefs are, supporters take them quite seriously. And if Trump loses to former Vice President Joe Biden in November and QAnon members feel a sense of desperation, that could make them even more dangerous and unhinged.
3. The Proud Boys
During Trump's debate with Biden on September 29, moderator Chris Wallace (one of the more reasonable conservatives at Fox News) gave Trump every chance to condemn white nationalism and white supremacy. Instead, Trump expressed his solidarity with the far-right Proud Boys — a group of self-described "western chauvinists" who openly advocate violence and have been carrying out violent attacks against members of Black Lives Matter at anti-racism demonstrations. After Trump's endorsement, members of the Proud Boys expressed their feelings of empowerment and declared that they were ready to carry out acts of violence on the president's behalf.
Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs, following that debate, posted, "Trump basically said to go fuck them up! This makes me so happy." By "them," Biggs was referring to Antifa. And Biggs also posted, "President Trump told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA...well sir! we're ready!!"
4. The Three Percenters movement
The Three Percenters aren't one specific group, but rather, a movement of far-right militias. Three Percenters are well-armed and engage in military-like training, and they have made it clear that they are fully prepared for armed struggle. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Percenterism is one of three core components within the anti-government militia movement, along with the Oath Keepers and traditional militia groups. The reference to '3 Percent' stems from the dubious historical claim that only 3% of American colonists fought against the British during the War of Independence.
5. The Wolverine Watchmen
The Wolverine Watchmen are among the many militia groups that believe that liberals and progressives and anti-Trump conservatives do not hold power legitimately and that it is their duty to wage armed struggle against their enemies. According to the FBI, the Wolverine Watchmen believed that Whitmer had violated the U.S. Constitution by promoting social distancing restrictions in Michigan in response to the coronavirus pandemic — and after kidnapping her and putting her on "trial" for treason, they would execute her if found guilty. But the group's activities, the FBI said, went way beyond their alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer: they also hoped to kidnap other officials in Michigan, overthrow the state government and ignite a civil war.
If you didn't know that President Trump was ill with COVID-19 and on some very strong drugs, or that even on a good day he tends to be impulsive and scatterbrained, you might think that he is trying to sabotage his re-election campaign. Some of his behavior the last few days has been downright self-destructive, so much so that it's likely whatever staffers are still ambulatory after the virus swept through the White House wish his doctors had gone a little easier on the steroids and left him in bed, worn out and achy. Trump's "proof of life" videos, the manic tweeting (even by his standards) and now the call-ins to his favorite Fox shows are downright surreal. But it's the decisions he's making that surely have them in despair.
The polling is brutal for Trump right now and he's beginning to look like an albatross around the necks of Republicans in tough down-ticket races. The averages have Trump losing nationally by nearly 10 points and the battleground states are all going the wrong way. He is naturally "downplaying" these numbers, insisting to his voters that the polls are all fake and he's actually leading across the board, but you could see the flop-sweat glistening under his makeup even before he developed a COVID fever.
Before Trump got sick, it seemed possible that he could keep the race close enough in certain swing states that Republican lawyers could challenge the vote count and find a way to squeak through with another Electoral College victory. It would be foolish to say that's impossible, but the way Trump has been behaving ever since his first debate with Joe Biden in Cleveland has made it less likely to succeed. That flamboyantly vulgar performance was just one of a flood of poor decisions by Trump and his campaign.
Most important of those, of course, was the decision to treat the global pandemic like a political problem — or simply an image problem — that could be solved with spin and PR, rather than a serious public health crisis. But however grotesque and mercenary those decisions may have been, you could see a twisted logic at work, indecent as it was. Trump's behavior in the last few days, on the other hand, has been politically suicidal.
First of all, there's the fact that Trump caught the coronavirus and saw it spread like wildfire through the White House and the Republican Party. That was a stunning rebuke to the administration's pandemic response that no amount of bravado can fix. Nothing could better illustrate the folly of his reckless disregard for the public health guidelines that most Americans are living with.
There is a price to pay for that. According to an ABC/Ipsos poll taken last weekend, 72 percent of adults agreed that the president did not take "the appropriate precautions when it came to his personal health" and "did not take the "risk of contracting the virus seriously enough." As a result, his diagnosis not only didn't bring him any sympathy, he actually lost support.
Still, one might have expected that he would see contracting the virus as an opportunity to shake up the race and try to woo back some voters who have rejected him. He might have done as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did: Express some remorse for his previous attitude and exhort people to wear masks and practice social distancing.
It's absurd to think Trump would ever do such a thing, of course. He's incapable of anything like that. But I didn't actually expect him to sally forth with ridiculous pageantry, as in his Mussolini-esque triumphant return to the White House where he mounted the steps, ostentatiously ripped off his mask and saluted.
He could have used the moment to empathize with other victims and their families, and to try to turn the page on that odious debate performance. Instead he has repeatedly filmed bizarre videos in which he once again downplays the virus, plays up his pseudo-miraculous recovery and touts the experimental drug he took, implying that not only did he personally usher it into production but prescribed it for himself. These delirious messages, along with his exhortation that people not allow the virus to "dominate" their lives, have widely been received as unsympathetic to all those who have suffered and died — and also as obtuse about the state of America's medical care, which is nothing like the VIP treatment he received, and which he is trying to now trying to make dramatically worse.
He didn't stop there. Indeed, he seems unable to control himself. Apparently realizing that he's hemorrhaging support among older voters — who now seem to favor Biden by a wide margin — Trump put out another surreal video in which he said this:
Then he promised that all senior citizens would be getting his miracle cure. Now Trump is reportedly working on a "legally dubious" $8 billion plan to give seniors a $200 "gift certificate" for drugs, which is such a harebrained scheme it sounds like something he came up with when his fever was spiking. (He first tried to get drug companies to do it and they balked. Now he's literally trying to steal money from the Medicare trust fund to benefit his re-election.)
Along with all this, Trump impulsively announced his administration would end negotiations on a new coronavirus relief bill, only to backpedal after someone reminded him that he could once again send out checks to million of people with his name on them. It's possible some new legislative package can be thrown together before the election, but Trump's confused meddling has probably erased any possible political benefit for him.
Flying in the face of his own PR campaign to be seen as a Man of Steel who is afraid of nothing, on Thursday he refused to acquiesce to the debate commission's requirement that next week's scheduled town-hall debate with Biden be held virtually. Pete Buttigieg handily dispatched his whining:
Once again Trump had to reverse course after someone in his campaign, no doubt, gently suggested that he might want to debate since they are behind by 10 points! The Trump campaign suggested rescheduling the event but so far the Biden camp is having none of it. Another opportunity to shift the race, assuming that's even possible, squandered.
And he's been calling into Fox shows and sounding very confused, even for him. On Thursday morning he appeared on Fox Business and produced this gibberish:
Later that night he called in to Sean Hannity's show and it was just as weird:
Trump said in one of his videos this week that getting COVID was a blessing from God. He meant it in some "I am Jesus, here to save the world" sort of way that didn't make sense, but he wasn't entirely wrong. He was offered an opportunity to change the trajectory of a campaign that was rapidly going south for him. He could have tried to milk his illness for sympathy and at least fake some compassion for the millions of other people who have suffered. But that's just not in him. Instead, he's used it to double down on everything the majority of Americans have come to loathe about him. Of course he did. It's all he knows how to do.
White House physician Sean Conley confirmed on Thursday that President Donald Trump is now free to make a "safe return" to public events beginning on Saturday. However, medical experts are now questioning Conley's assessment and swift clearance of the president.
The president's doctor released a memo about the president's health insisting his condition has stabilized as he completed therapy for COVID-19. According to Conley the president is said to have responded the therapy "extremely well."
"Since returning home, his physical exam has remained stable and devoid of any indications to suggest progression of illness. Overall he's responded extremely well to treatment, without evidence on examination of adverse therapeutic effects," Conley wrote.
"Saturday will be day 10 since Thursday's diagnosis, and based on the trajectory of advanced diagnostics the team has been conducting, I fully anticipate the President's safe return to public engagements at that time," he continued.
The latest news came as Trump announced his intent to resume with campaign rallies over the weekend as he insisted on holding a rally in Florida on Saturday and another in Wisconsin on Sunday. Conley is now facing criticism for his overall assessment of Trump's coronavirus case.
Last week, Trump was airlifted to Walter Reed Medical Center where he was hospitalized for COVID. The White House faced scrutiny for its inconsistencies and lack of transparency regarding the president's health. Although Conley often painted a relatively pleasant picture of Trump's health, the medications he was administered suggested that the president may have been battling a severe case of COVID. Despite speculation, Conley defied odds by allowing the president to discharge from the hospital in just three days.
Now, he has given Trump the green light despite the president being COVID-positive for just one week. Conley's continued efforts to trample public health norms undermines the expertise of health experts which further diminishes the severity of the coronavirus. Despite Conley's stance on Trump, there are 7.8 million coronavirus cases and each person's response to the virus is different. More than 217,000 Americans have died from coronavirus.
Although President Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday that the special treatment he had received for COVID-19 had "cure[d]" him, scientists agree that the president has not in fact been cured — and that by claiming so on video, he is spreading dangerous disinformation about how COVID-19 is treated and how the novel coronavirus infects the body.
In his video, Trump claimed that his novel coronavirus infection was "a blessing from God" because his treatment proved "much more important to me than the vaccine." He claimed that the experimental antibody cocktail given to him by Regeneron, REGN-COV2, "wasn't just therapeutic, it made me better. I call that a cure." He also claimed that he was going to arrange it so that people could receive this drug for "free."
Salon spoke with a number of doctors and public health experts, all of whom agreed that the notion of Trump having been "cured" by his medical treatment is outrageous.
"It would be VERY unusual for him not to still be infected," Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus and professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon by email. "There is always the possibility that the unlicensed cocktail of monoclonal antibodies he received early in the course of his disease was unusually effective; but that would be very unlikely until real data are seen. More likely, he is being 'Trump,' made more bombastic by the heightened sense that the dexamethasone he received commonly causes."
Sommer's comment about dexamethasone refers to how the steroid, which is prescribed to COVID-19 patients when doctors are concerned about severely lowered oxygen levels and want to prevent a patient's immune system from fatally overreacting, can cause side effects; those include severe mood swings, insomnia and nervousness. Less common psychological side effects include confusion, depression, delirium, hallucinations and paranoia.
Dr. Russell Medford, Chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, told Salon that even if the president misspoke and meant to say he is "immune" to the disease, rather than "cured," even that would not make any sense given what we know about the science of COVID-19.
"What we do know is the president has been infected with COVID-19 and he is currently going through a period in which the disease will run its course," Medford told Salon. "His statement that he is immune is not based on any obvious facts to the case and a full and complete immune response would not be expected to occur until later, if at all, in the course of this disease."
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, echoed these thoughts, writing to Salon that "his claim about being cured is wrong. Nothing currently exists that can cure this disease. Your body has to recover from it. The medications he was given helps his body recover a bit faster and reduces his symptoms. But he has to heal naturally which may take weeks."
Based on known science, the novel coronavirus has an incubation period of roughly 14 days, and the infected who develop symptoms are likely to start doing so within four or five days of contracting the virus. Throughout that two week period, people with COVID-19 remain highly contagious, which is why they are often held under quarantine. While there are ways of treating sufferers, there is no evidence so far that any of them are "cures."
"COVID-19 has some established and emerging treatments for it and has a variety of clinical manifestations even without treatment, including complete resolution," Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, wrote to Salon. "There is not yet evidence that a particular treatment — e.g. the monoclonal antibody that President Trump received — cured him of COVID-19."
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Trump's most prominent adviser in dealing with the pandemic, expressed similar thoughts to The New York Times. As Fauci explained to the publication, "I think it's a reasonably good chance that the antibody that he received, the Regeneron antibody, made a significant difference in a positive way in his course." At the same time, when you have only one case study, "you can't make the determination that that's a cure. You have to do a clinical trial involving a large number of individuals, compared either to a placebo or another intervention."
Science aside, Trump's statements regarding his medical treatments, and their accessibility to the general public, are similarly misinformed. The medical treatments he received are unlikely to be available to the average American. REGN-COV2 has not yet been authorized for production by the Food and Drug Administration, and Trump was only able to access the drug because of a compassionate use permission request made by Trump's staff. Trump's elite status as president seems to have played into the decision to authorize use: "When it's the president of the United States, of course, that gets — obviously — gets our attention," Regeneron's CEO told the New York Times.
In addition to dexamethasone and REGN-COV2, Trump also received an antiviral drug called remdesivir, which is thought to possibly hasten recovery time in patients. Although Trump claims he would make this free for Americans, the medication regimen that he received is extremely costly and would likely only be available to all Americans if they had access to the same military health care system that Trump used — which is, in effect, a single-payer health care system specifically for the military and veterans.
"[It's] way too expensive" for ordinary Americans, as Dr. William Haseltine, the founder and former CEO of Human Genome Sciences, told Salon. "In addition, you have to be in a hospital where they're going to stick a needle in your arm and infuse it over a long period of time. And the same thing is true for that five day course of remdisivir. You've got to infuse that in the hospital over a five day course. So he was getting two drugs that required intrusions, the kind of stuff that makes you feel like a pin cushion."
There are also ethical concerns about Trump's repeated touting of Regeneron. Trump's video caused a 4.7% increase in Regeneron stock. The president used to own stock in the company and he is friendly with its CEO, Leonard Schleifer, who is a member of one of Trump's golf clubs and whom the president calls "Lenny."
Given how brazenly Republicans blocked Barack Obama's judicial nominees on an unprecedented scale and then packed the federal courts with young, conservative judicial activists, it was disappointing to see Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both dodge the question of whether they would expand the Courts if they win and Senate Republicans confirm Amy Coney Barrett in a shambolic process. The question is a layup that they should have been able to convert into a slam dunk. Evading it made them seem defensive when public opinion is clearly on their side.
Here's how they should handle such questions:
All options are on the table
One of Trump's favorite responses to questions that he doesn't want to answer is, "we'll see what happens." Sometimes he adds that he doesn't want to reveal his hand prematurely. Democrats should follow suit.
"We will be watching closely to see what happens. If Republicans go against the will of the American people, who clearly think the winner of the election should fill that seat, and rush through a nomination process without properly vetting a nominee for a lifetime position on the Court, then all options are on the table.
Supreme Court to strip health coverage from 20 million Americans, remove protections for people who have pre-existing conditions, take away a woman's right to choose or limit citizens' right to vote. We'll keep all of our options on the table."
"And when I say 'all options,' I mean all options. If they go through with this charade of a confirmation, we'll look at rebalancing the Court, but we'll also look at term limits and perhaps rotating justices from the lower courts to the Supreme Court. Right now, the GOP's reckless disregard for the will of the people makes it clear that the stakes for seating a justice have just become too high. But there are different ways we can go about lowering the temperature a bit and making the process less polarizing. Again, our priority is protecting Americans from a Court stacked with Trump's judicial activists."
Focus on the corrupt process
Keeping their options on the table shifts the focus to what might factor into a decision to rebalance the Court. And that's an opportunity to talk about Republicans desperately rushing through a nominee with limited hearings while two members of the Judiciary Committee are unable to participate in hearings after testing positive for Covid-19.
"Look, according to The Congressional Research Service, the average time to get a nominee through the process is 2.2 months. But those confirmations didn't take place in the middle of an election season with Congress in recess because of the pandemic. There just isn't enough time on the Senate calendar to do this right. There isn't enough time for the American people to learn what they need to about Amy Coney Barrett and her judicial philosophy. There's a reason we hold bipartisan hearings and thoroughly vet nominees before giving them a lifetime appointment on the bench. They're making a mockery of this process and that's why we're going to keep our options open."
Invoke the Ducey Rule
In 1992, then-Senator Joe Biden said in a floor speech that a Supreme Court nomination shouldn't be considered during a presidential election. It was June, and there wasn't a vacancy on the Court at the time. He was essentially arguing against the Senate doing precisely what Mitch McConnell is attempting to do right now. But in 2016, McConnell and Senate Republicans distorted those comments to claim that they applied to blocking Merrick Garland's nomination despite the fact that Barack Obama nominated Garland in mid-March, almost 8 months before that year's election. The "Biden Rule," as they have called it ever since, was (and is) a complete lie.
Shortly after his election in 2015, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey added two seats to his state's Supreme Court and filled them with conservatives whose views aligned with his agenda. It wasn't an exact parallel with Democrats rebalancing the Court if they win next month--Ducey already had a conservative majority on the court and Arizona's Governor has to pick from a list of judges submitted by a commission filled with allies--but the Ducey Rule would be a lot more honest than the Biden Rule was.
Democrats should invent the Ducey Rule and use it to reframe the question more broadly and make it about what response to the GOP's relentless efforts to control the federal judiciary might be appropriate. "Look what you made us do" has long been a common justification for Republican norm-breaking.
"Let's get one thing straight: Democrats don't want to mess with the Court. If we do end up rebalancing the Court or instituting other reforms--if we do apply the Ducey Rule on the federal level--it will only be because Republicans have been packing the Courts for a decade. We've never seen anything like Mitch McConnell's blockade of Obama's nominees. That left so many open seats that the federal judiciary was barely able to function. Cases stacked up. And then Trump, who lost the popular vote by almost 3 million and was never given a mandate by the American people, filled those vacancies with justices that supported his agenda to kill the Affordable Care Act and limit Americans' civil rights. Many of them were rated "unqualified" by the American Bar Association. That's the only reason why anyone's even talking about expanding or rebalancing the Court.
"Again, we will do whatever it takes to protect the American people."
President Donald Trump bailed out on the next presidential debate after testing positive for the coronavirus, and social media users aren't buying his excuse.
The Commission on Presidential Debates said the Oct. 15 face-off between the president and Joe Biden would be virtual, rather than in person, after Trump became infected with the highly contagious and potentially deadly virus.
"I'm not going to do a virtual debate," Trump told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo. "I’m not going to waste my time at a virtual debate."
Trump insisted he had beaten Biden at last week's debate and could do it again, but he wasn't convincing many Twitter users.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) tweeted out attacks on democratic elections from his self-isolation after testing positive for the coronavirus.
The Utah Republican says he'll return from isolation to vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Nov. 3 election, which he appeared to question repeatedly on Twitter while watching the vice presidential debate.
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Other social media users were alarmed by Lee's remarks.
About halfway through the debate, a fly appeared to fly into Mike Pence's hair. It's unclear if the fly was stuck to his hair product or simply stayed for a short nap but it rested for several minutes as Pence shook his head from side to side.
It only added to the laundry list of unfortunate humiliations Pence faced on debate night. First, it appeared that he had pink-eye or something that could be coronavirus related, according to the Ophthalmology Times. Then reviews of Pence's debate performance weren't turning out well as his analysts claimed he was being smoked by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).
It prompted many reactions. See them in the tweets and video below:
Still suffering from an infection of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, President Donald Trump unleashed an extended and aggressive tirade on Twitter following a period of relative radio silence while he was hospitalized.
He seemed to have returned from Walter Reed Medical Center with a vengeance. His furious tweeting, often in all caps, targeted his favorite subjects, including the Russiainvestigation, the media, Hillary Clinton, and former Vice President Joe Biden.
He called for "arrests" out of the Justice Department's review of the handling of the Russia investigation, based on dubious reporting of selectively declassified documents from his own administration that showed no evidence of any clear crimes:
Attorney General Bill Barr, who has previously denigrated the administration's predecessors and whipped up hopes that the investigation would punish the president's enemies, appears to be disappointing Trump. Barr has previously said that the president's tweeting about ongoing investigations make it "impossible" for him to do his job, but that hasn't deterred Trump.
Trump also called on California — a state he'll certainly lose — to vote for him, and retweeted a vile smear comparing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to Nazis.
The day before, Trump tweeted that he was ending negotiations with Democrats on a new round of pandemic relief funds, criticizing the high dollar figures House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked for. But then, he baffled observers by echoing Fed Chair Jerome Powell's remarks that Congress should pass more stimulus without worrying about "overdoing it." That alone made people question his mental stability. He then abruptly shifted to new demands for a narrow stimulus bill, seemingly completely reneging on his declaration that negotiations were over.
He also tweeted excessively about declassifying documents in the Russia investigation. However, it was unclear how serious these tweets were; Trump has previously made similar claims on Twitter, only for the Justice Department to reject the idea that his tweets constituted official declassification orders. He ended up reversing himself, saying he had already made the declassifications, though he also continued to tout reports that claimed his declassification was a new event.
One of the president's tweets seized on random user's conspiratorial tweet for more than two and a half years ago, demanding that something must be done about:
Who should do something about it? It's not clear.
It also should be noted that claiming Biden shouldn't be allowed to run, based on completely bogus and frequently debunked allegations, is not exactly a sign of confidence in the president's 2020 campaign.
The day-long run of tweets and retweets marked the most frantic stretch of Trump's public activity since he left the presidential suite at Walter Reed Medical Center and returned to treatment at the White House. They also underscored the degree to which Trump remains fixated on his grievances over the Russia probe, and often on obscure aspects of that investigation that are unintelligible to all but its most careful followers.
There were several possible explanations for Trump's erratic behavior. Many seized on the fact that the president has been prescribed Dexamethasone for his COVID-19 infection, a steroid that can reportedly effect mood and cause agitation and aggression. Some have argued that, given the seriousness of the president's infection and the medications he's on, the 25th Amendment should be invoked, and Vice President Mike Pence should act as president until Trump has recovered.
It's certainly possible that the drugs are affecting the president's behavior. But there are other possible explanations as well.
Trump may just be making up for lost time when he wasn't tweeting much in the hospital. He may be trying to distract from the fact that he's been infected as the result of a pandemic he can't control. He may be terrified about the polls that increasing show Biden with a formidable lead over him in the election. And he could have fewer tasks and people to keep him busy, given that he's likely in some kind of isolation at the White House. (He reportedly went to the Oval Office on Monday, but it's not clear if he actually had any work to do.) He may just be bored.
But the cause of his extreme behavior isn't all that important, nor is the fact that we've seen the president act in disturbing ways before. This level of frenzy and disorder should not be acceptable in a president for any reason or amount of time.
In a new video from the Rose Garden at the White House, a very orange President Donald J. Trump appeared out of breath and a bit disoriented. "Perhaps you recognize me, it's your favorite president!" he started. And then it continued to go downhill from there.
A tweet by The New York Times' Maggie Haberman cast doubt on whether the video was actually shot Wednesday at all considering the splicing and strange time-keeping by the president himself.
“I got back a day ago from Walter Reed Medical Center — I spent four days there and didn’t have to, I could’ve stayed at the White House,” Trump said.
Except for the fact that Trump returned to the White House on Monday, which would have been two days ago.
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Referring to COVID-19 once again as the "China Virus," Trump didn't stop there.
"This was China's fault! They are going to pay a big price," he said.
And now, the people have spoken - or tweeted, as the case may be.
People are acting shocked—shocked, I tell you!—that the Trump/GOP strategy on coronavirus is essentially one of promoting herd immunity with the possible downside of as many as 2.5 million dead Americans.
We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s simply the logical extension of conservative policies on pretty much everything for the past 90 years—policies that have killed a hell of a lot more than just 2.5 million people.
Republicans simply don’t believe it’s part of the job of government to provide for the “general welfare” of the American people; instead, government—in their minds—should only run the police and the military, while maintaining a stable currency so business can function. Here are some other beliefs driving Republican policies:
Government shouldn’t help the elderly avoid poverty—Social Security should only go to those who set aside money during their working years, and be run by private insurance companies, as George W. Bush told us in 2005. Republicans have tried to cripple, privatize or destroy Social Security year after year ever since the 1930s when it was created.
Government shouldn’t pay for health care anywhere, anytime because that should come out of people’s own pockets. If they want protection from serious illness or accidents, they can buy private insurance. Republicans have tried to cripple, privatize or destroy Medicare and Medicaid since the 1960s when these programs were created.
Government shouldn’t protect citizens from being poisoned by industrial pollution or protect our rivers, lakes, oceans or air; these are all the jobs of private industry. Since 1920 when Republican Warren Harding successfully ran for president on the platform of “Less government in business and more business in government,” GOP politicians have championed deregulation and privatization as the solution to almost all problems.
Government shouldn’t provide education, according to conservative theology. As the late billionaire David Koch put into his platform when he ran for vice president in 1980 on the Libertarian ticket, “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.” Today, billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos continues Koch’s work.
Reflecting conservative philosophy dating back to the 1920s, Koch even called for “the abolition of the governmental Postal Service,” “the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency,” and “the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”
After the Republican Great Depression struck in 1929 and about a third of Americans lost their jobs, homeless exploded, and hunger stalked the land, Republican President Herbert Hoover’s treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, famously argued that saving the economy and American workers was the duty of the private sector, not government. Instead of helping out working people, Mellon’s advice was just to let everything crash, and the very, very rich (like himself) would eventually pick up the pieces and start over.
“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” Mellon said. “Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down… enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”
Back in 2000, when Mike Pence was running for Congress, he laid out clearly a more modern version of the same philosophy. About 340,000 Americans died that year from smoking-related illness, but, Pence wrote, “Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.”
Instead, much like Trump saying that most people who get COVID-19 don’t die from it and that lots of Americans die from the flu, Pence added, “In fact, 2 out of every three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer.”
Instead, Pence—the man who today is heading up our coronavirus effort—said we should be wary of “Government big enough to protect us from our own stubborn wills.”
After all, Pence pointed out, “[A] government of such plenary power, once conceived will hardly stop at tobacco. Surely the scourge of fatty foods and their attendant cost to the health care economy bears some consideration. How about the role of caffeine in fomenting greater stress in the lives of working Americans? Don’t get me started about the dangers of sports utility vehicles!”
Which should remind us that Republicans even fought against seat belt laws and other car safety regulations, as well as nutrition labeling on children’s cereals and baby food, and country-of-origin labeling on any foods. And they continue to block action on climate change, which is killing Americans from coast to coast via floods, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes and heatstroke.
If Mike Pence was just fine with hundreds of thousands of Americans dying from an entirely preventable tobacco addiction, why would he fret about a mere quarter-million who have died so far from a novel virus?
Republicans simply don’t believe that protecting the people of America is a legitimate function of government. And they’re strengthened and disciplined in that belief by the hundreds of millions of dollars industry and hard-right billionaires shower on them every year at every level of elected politics.
We’re literally the only developed country in the world where this bizarre belief is held by about half of the nation’s politicians, and much of that can be traced to the influence of Libertarian billionaires like the Kochs and their network, but it is what it is.
So let’s stop being “amazed” that Trump, Pence and their GOP allies refuse to mandate or even federally facilitate widespread testing and contact tracing, or have the Postal Service deliver five masks to every American, or pick up the medical or burial costs of people infected because of this administration’s lack of action.
This is nothing new; it’s what Republicans always do.
As someone who studies the U.S.‘s image, I am curious about the geopolitical implications of the leader of the free world falling victim to the pandemic, and how America’s allies, adversaries and others might use this moment, or ones in the weeks and months ahead, to their advantage.
I am also reminded of a famous quote from the Austrian diplomat Klemens Wenzel Furst von Metternich, who in 1848 said, “When France sneezes, the whole of Europe catches a cold.” He probably didn’t think his warning about the global implications of a respiratory disease would ever literally come true.
American adversaries like Russia, allies like the United Kingdom and regions with mixed relations like the Korean peninsula are all watching carefully to see what this illness at the top might mean for them, even as the president returns to the White House.
Given the overall decline in America’s standing in the world in recent years, it may be that Trump’s illness isn’t at important as the U.S. national security community would think. Or, the world may continue to wait cautiously until Trump’s health is out of the woods.
A cautious eye from Russia
Russia is a formidable adversary with a curious relationship to Trump. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989, Russia sought to expand its influence in world affairs, seeking to regain power and prestige lost since the heyday of the Cold War.
In 2016, Russia covertly influenced the U.S. presidential election. Through a coordinated social media campaign, hacking operations and exploiting contacts within the Trump campaign, Russia violated and destabilized America’s election process. There is evidence that Russia is at it again.
It is clear, though, that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to exert dominance over the United States and would lose substantial leverage were Trump to succumb to COVID-19. According to author Angela Stent, Putin is someone who looks for the weaknesses, vulnerabilities and distractions in an opponent – even a larger one – and then moves in.
Perhaps Putin’s past as the 1976 judo champion of Leningrad has informed his approach to politics. Although Russia is no longer the superpower it once was, Putin has sought to leverage America’s indecision against itself, whether it was Obama’s hesitancy to intervene in Syria in 2015, or infighting between the president and the Senate over the existence of Russian interference in the U.S. electoral process.
The United Kingdom, by contrast, would likely retain a close, strong relationship with the United States, with deep economic ties and similar interests of promoting freedom and democracy around the world. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Trump also share a personal bond, having won populist support campaigning against their nations’ political establishments.
But that is only the latest in a long tradition of connections between American presidents and British leaders dating back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill during World War II. Those political connections, with more recent chapters involving Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, as well as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, are supported by historic and cultural ties as well.
Those bonds, both personal and policy, would likely endure, regardless of what may happen to Trump – and despite the fact that many British people dislike the president.
The Korean situation
The Korean peninsula has a long and complex history, particularly since the division of the two Koreas at the 38th parallel at the close of World War II. Both Koreas are highly nationalistic, but would likely react in different ways if faced with a weakened Trump.
The isolated nation of North Korea has had at times a tempestuous relationship with the United States, detonating nuclear weapons to capture the world’s attention and extract economic concessions from the international community.
Critics have said Kim simply played Trump as a novice on the world’s stage, using these meetings to bolster North Korea’s standing in the world. That may have helped further consolidate Kim’s personal power in a failed state where military generals may be waiting for their opportunity to seize control.
Others have said Trump bungled the relationship by failing to prevent Kim from developing more nuclear weapons. But Trump has managed to achieve key face-to-face meetings with Kim. Trump’s demise might destabilize U.S.-North Korean relations, prompting North Korea once again to threaten to use nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, in South Korea, whose national security depends on U.S. military power and assurances of mutual defense against North Korean and Chinese aggression, confidence in the American president to do the right thing in world affairs has faltered. South Koreans have largely disapproved of Trump’s policies on climate change, the Iran nuclear deal and the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Trump’s relatively quick return to the White House may slow these international reevaluations, but the unpredictable nature of COVID-19 means they’ll all be keeping a close eye on what happens next.
