Opinion

Donald Trump and the massive propaganda apparatus around him — call them "TrumpLand" — cannot decide what lie to tell about the new coronavirus, COVID-19, that is now exploding into a global pandemic. Simply not lying is of course not an acceptable option. The unofficial motto of the Trump administration is quite clearly "Lie about everything, all the time, even for no apparent reason." In this case, Trump is facing a very real PR crisis, and the first instinct of this president and his advocates is always to find some way to lie themselves out of their latest pickle.

Back in 1992, while running for re-election, President George H.W. Bush was speaking at a New Hampshire town hall and accidentally read aloud some stage directions handed to him by his staff: “Message: I care.”

Using the coronavirus as his excuse, Donald Trump is working to give the highest-paid American workers a valuable tax break, while tossing crumbs to the middle class and the working poor.

The 2020 Democratic presidential primary season slogs onward, toward what now seems an inevitable conclusion.

While Coronavirus Czar Mike Pence prays away the plague and the CDC offers its lackluster pandemic response, there’s a missing link in the COVID-19 conversation: there’s ultimately no if in dying.

President Donald Trump has spent the entire coronavirus crisis trying to lie, downplay the threat, and shift blame, as public events are shut down across the country and the stock market plunges.

Donald Trump’s proposal to cut the payroll contribution rate is a stealth attack on Social Security. Even if the proposal were to replace Social Security’s dedicated revenue with deficit-funded general revenue, the proposal would undermine this vital program.

I think it's been pretty clear from the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak that President Trump's top concern has been American business, rather than public health. He has pinned his re-election hopes on an argument that his leadership has produced the greatest economy in world history, and 2,000-point plunges in the stock market are very off-brand.

CEOs of the major Wall Street banks have been summoned to the White House to discuss the coronavirus its economic fallout. I'm told Trump administration is considering more corporate tax cuts, tax cuts targeted to the airlines and hospitality industries, and a temporary payroll tax cut. 

But they would be useless. They'd be too slow to stimulate the economy, and wouldn't reach households and consumers who should be the real targets. And they'd reward the rich, who don't spend much of their additional dollars, without getting money into the hands of the poor and middle-class, who do.

Mainstream pundits and politicians continue to obsess over the stereotype of the "Bernie Bro," a perfervid horde of Bernie Sanders supporters who supposedly stop at nothing to harass his opponents online. Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens have all helped perpetuate the idea that Sanders' supporters are somehow uniquely cruel, despite Sanders' platform and policy proposal being the most humane of all the candidates.

After the Trump administration on Tuesday touted that executives from some of the nation's major private insurance companies are now waiving copays for their customers who need testing for the coronavirus, advocates of Medicare for All took the opportunity to note that under a universal, single-payer system like Medicare for All copays for any medically necessary service or care would be a thing of the past entirely.

The Trudeau government introduced legislation this week to amend the Criminal Code to ban conversion therapy, a controversial practice that aims to change the sexual orientation, gender identity or expression of LGBTQ+ people.

If we’re lucky, the White House press corps will make a fetish of the president’s physical health. If it doesn’t, we’re likely going to see a shift in its coverage, away from the administration’s bungling of a federal response to the coronavirus epidemic and toward a scorched-earth campaign to identify someone—anyone!—to blame for it.