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.
In many ways, a vice president’s most important constitutional duty is simply to stay alive. Beyond breaking ties in the US Senate, the vice president essentially has no real constitutional duties beyond replacing a deceased or incapacitated president.
Such matters of life or death could not weigh heavier in the upcoming presidential election, which features the oldest candidates of all time — President Donald Trump is 74 and his opponent, Joe Biden, is 77.
And Trump, as we all know, was hospitalised in recent days after contracting COVID-19 — and, according to his doctor, is still not “out of the woods” when it comes to making a full recovery.
With the health of Trump (and Biden, who has so far tested negative for COVID) at the forefront, it’s even more vital for Americans and the world to learn more about Vice President Mike Pence and his fellow vice presidential candidate, Senator Kamala Harris, as they meet in their only debate this week (Thursday AEDT).
How vice presidents differ from their presidents
A vice president becoming president outside of an election is by no means a remote possibility. It has happened nine times in US history and includes some of America’s most well-known presidents – Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt.
One of the chief reasons these former vice presidents are so well-known is that, on taking office, they diverged in key areas from the presidents they served under, from Johnson’s doubling down on the US presence in Vietnam to Truman’s more confrontational approach to the Soviet Union.
In the case of Andrew Johnson, who became president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, the divergence was essentially a reversal: the Southern-born Johnson largely sought to obstruct Reconstruction efforts following the end of the Civil War.
Most vice presidents, however, serve their presidents faithfully until it’s their turn to run for the higher office. In modern times, they are often given considerable responsibilities, too.
Dick Cheney came to the office with much more experience in Washington than his running mate, George W. Bush, and assumed more duties than most — if not all — vice presidents in modern history, particularly with the administration’s “War on Terror” after the September 11 attacks.
This week’s debate will be a rare opportunity for Pence and Harris to show the nation who they are without Trump and Biden in the room — and, potentially, how they differ from their running mates.
Harris is already familiar to some Democrats, having participated in nearly half a dozen debates as a presidential candidate herself last year in the lead-up to the Democratic primaries.
Many will be watching to see just how much daylight she allows between herself and Biden. Though Harris and Biden are allies now, she fiercely criticised him in the Democratic debates for his close relationships with pro-segregationist US senators and his stance on the bussing of Black students to white schools in the 1970s.
Pence, meanwhile, will likely stick closely to the Trump campaign script, despite the fact he has diverged with Trump on many issues in the past.
Before the two were running mates in 2016, for example, Pence called Trump’s pledge to ban Muslim immigration to America “offensive and unconstitutional”. And while Trump railed against illegal immigration, Pence
endorsed pathways to citizenship for undocumented migrants.
These days, however, Pence is very much a Trump loyalist and fully supportive of the administration’s agenda – even when talking off the record with journalists. He will no doubt offer a full-throated defence to any attacks Harris makes against the president or their administration’s policies in the debate.
Pence offers a predictable counterpart to Trump
Pence’s role in the Trump administration has less to do with a specific portfolio and is more tied to his personality.
An evangelical Christian and former governor of Indiana, Pence is conventional, predictable and methodical – a helpful counterweight to Trump’s unconventional, unpredictable and instinctual manner.
The public spat in the White House between the president and Democratic lawmakers in 2018 perhaps most clearly illustrated the differences between Pence and Trump. While Trump and the Democrats tried to score points against one another, Pence sat silent and almost motionless, giving the president the limelight.
But Pence’s differences with Trump go beyond just demeanour.
While Trump has had a troubled history with women that includes at least 18 allegations of sexual misconduct, Pence refuses to meet alone with women other than his wife of 35 years.
And while Trump has mastered the art of insulting political opponents, Pence pledged not to engage in negative campaigning after an election loss in 1990.
Pence is clearly a politician from an earlier era, but it works for the Trump administration.
Pence and Harris will likely be significantly more disciplined and restrained in this week’s debate than Trump and Biden were in theirs — a spectacle that featured countless interruptions and personal attacks.
Neither Pence nor Harris will likely diverge too far from their running mates on key issues, either, regardless of their personal views.
It’s not hard to understand why they would be so supportive of candidates they have explicitly criticised in the past — both are likely favourites to be their respective party’s nominees for president in 2024. This week’s debate offers a short preview of what might be to come.
It's a civics lesson young students and academia won't have to read about in history books - because they are living it firsthand right now. Voter suppression. It seems to be the only way Republicans can ensure their unethical, sharp-tongued, bully-based candidate stays in the White House - but at what cost to our democracy?
Voter suppression is not a new strategy in campaigning, but the way in which it's being manipulated currently is indeed something unique to this GOP variety. Voter suppression is normally used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. Political campaigning attempts to alter likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters through persuasion and organization, activating otherwise inactive voters, or registering new supporters.
The current Republican regime doesn't care about changing hearts and minds...they care about suppressing the vote. It may actually be the only way they will stand a chance at winning the 2020 election - and they know it.
Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) shamelessly just removed all but one ballot drop-off box location in the state's largest counties. Under his new order, counties like Harris, with 12 drop-off locations, and Travis, with four, can each have only one location. The stunt has resulted in people driving up to 50 miles to literally wait in their cars as the line stretches around the parking lot...to put their ballot in a drop-box so they don't have to mail it in case it doesn't make it in time - or at all.
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“This haphazard decision by Gov. Abbott, to change the rules of the game at the last moment, is confusing to voters, and will serve to depress Texas votes, plain and simple,” Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins said Friday at a news conference. “This decision should not stand. To force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities here in Harris County, and millions of voters across the state of Texas to use a single drop-off facility in these massive counties is not only prejudicial, but it’s dangerous."
Republicans in Pennsylvania are conducting their own shenanigans by introducing a resolution to create a state legislative committee “to investigate, review and make recommendations concerning the regulation and conduct of the 2020 general election... before and after the Nov. 3, 2020, General Election.”
It's worth noting that Texas and Pennsylvania are states where Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has had a consistent upward trend versus President Donald J. Trump in the 2020 election cycle.
Voter ID laws have been estimated by the U.S. Government Accountability Office to reduce voter turnout by 2-3 percentage points, translating to tens of thousands of votes lost in a single state. That's because over 21 million U.S. citizens do not have government-issued photo identification.
According to the ACLU, 70 percent of Georgia voters purged in 2018 were Black; one in 13 Black Americans cannot vote due to disenfranchisement laws; one-third of voters who have a disability report difficulty voting; only 40 percent of polling places fully accommodate people with disabilities; across the country, counties with larger minority populations have fewer polling sites and poll workers per voter; six in ten college students come from out of state in New Hampshire, the state trying to block residents with out of state drivers’ licenses.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Trump's disinformation campaign aims to discredit the voting process from every angle, be it mail-in voter fraud or ballots being found in a a Wisconsin ditch - both of which have proven unfounded. In September, Donald Trump Jr. issued a call for “every able-bodied man and woman to join Army for Trump’s election security operation because the “radical left” was going “to add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election.”
There's also the 250 court battles currently being waged across the country in relation to voter suppression efforts.
The message from Democrats to voters is to make a plan to vote and show up early. The one thing Republicans can't fight is high voter turnout from Democrats - and democracy is counting on it.
No one knows why the president all of a sudden Tuesday put the kibosh on stimulus talks. Maybe it’s the meds Donald Trump is on. Maybe he’s crazy. Maybe he’s stupid. Maybe he’s bad at politics. Maybe he’s going to take the country down with him. Maybe, as the wags on Twitter often say, it’s a combination of all the above.
One thing’s for sure, everyone’s puzzled. The Washington press corps is expressing bemusement openly. Axios’ Jonathan Swan said that, “I truly don’t understand this, and nor do a number of people who advise the president. It’s like he’s trying to lose.”
NBC News’ Capitol Hill correspondent Kasie Hunt said that, “I will never understand how a president who has time and time again demonstrated that he acts first in his own self interest is refusing to accept an offer to spend $2.2 trillion boosting the economy weeks before facing voters in his reelection bid. It makes no sense.”
The Hill’s Krystal Ball is not a serious journalist but instead a terrible pundit. Even so, she got this much right when she said the Democrats “literally wanted to help Trump give out money to millions of Americans just before the election and he said no.”
Jacob T. Levy is a professor of political theory at McGill University in Montreal. He gave voice to Trump’s thinking about how to practice “the art of the deal.” “He’s telling us quite clearly what he’s doing: holding the stimulus hostage to his reelection,” Levy said. “‘Vote for me and you’ll get $1.6 trillion; don’t, and you’ll get nothing for months to come.’ I’m not saying it’s a good strategy, but it’s the kind of thing Trump thinks powerful people do in negotiations: ‘You have more to lose than I do, and I’m ready to walk away.’ The counter-party being, not the Democrats, but the whole electorate.”
I think this is close to being right. The president has demonstrated time and again the extortionist gestalt of his criminal mind. Quid pro quo is his go-to. Give me what I want and I’ll reopen the federal government. Give me what I want and I’ll give Ukraine the money it needs to fight Russia. Give me what I want and I’ll give cities and states the personal protective gear they need to fight the covid pandemic. Give me what I want or the road to a traditional peaceful transfer of power will be paved with bodies.
It doesn’t work. It never, ever works. For whatever reason, Trump has not learned people do not like being forced into deals. Every time he’s tried forcing US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into one, she’s handed his ass to him. Anyway, this gambit doesn’t explain why he’d say no to money right now, just before the election, as Kasie Hunt said, when it would most help him politically. It’s here I think we must turn to something I’ve found quite helpful in this epoch of Trump: political psychology.
First, agreeing with the Democrats would give his enemies something they want. Pelosi wants billions for cities and states facing a double dilemma. They must spend to combat the new coronavirus but they are losing revenues doing so. Trump doesn’t want to help “blue states,” because that would make him look weak. (Bear in mind he probably believes, literally, that only Democrats live in “blue states.”) More important is the president’s need for someone to blame. This is his mess. He must clean it up, or get out of the way. He won’t get out of the way, of course, but to stay in power, he must manufacture at least a cartoon image of a scapegoat. Hence, all the talk about “badly run cities” looking for a government bailout, a talking point in keeping with the GOP’s traditional dog whistling in which “cities” is a byword for “Black.” The president is willing to hurt himself politically if it takes that to hurt the Democrats in kind.
In other words, it’s masochism. This is, after all, the same president who made himself sick trying to prove the covid pandemic is nothing to worry about. His are, after all, the same supporters who deny themselves free money to pay for better health care (the Affordable Care Act, in other words), even as the pandemic rampages through their communities. Masochism is the ego state of suicide bombers, literal and political. It is a phenomenon nearly everyone understands but ignores collectively till it’s too late.
Masochism is also exploitable. Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans have been trying for three months to figure out Trump’s chances of winning reelection, and thus figure out the best use of their time before Election Day. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death answered that question, and the president has all but acquiesced. White House advisor Larry Kudlow this morning told the Post: “We’ve only got four weeks to the election, and we have a justice of the Supreme Court to get passed. It’s too close to the election—not enough time to get stuff done at this stage in the game.”
McConnell would rather not bother with a stimulus, perhaps because he’s protecting his conference from being primaried. Jonathan Bernstein said that, “Most mainstream conservatives, even those who think (along with virtually all economists) that government spending would boost the economy and therefore help Trump and his party in November, are more worried about being dismissed as sell-out RINOs by accepting a deal with” Pelosi. Or perhaps because he’s helping lay the ideological groundwork for a new Democratic administration. If they are going to resist his fiscal demands, and Joe Biden is planning to demand trillions, now’s the time to pretend the Republicans never wanted to explode the national debt. It was all Trump’s fault.
McConnell’s chore is made easier by a president willing to hurt himself if that’s what it takes to “win.” Of course, he isn’t—unless by “winning,” you mean “losing.”
