The last couple of weeks have obviously been very hard for President Trump. His public mood has been even more volatile than usual. What with being humiliated for showing his monumental ignorance on national television when he tasked his government scientists with studying the possibility of injecting disinfectant into the human body to “clean the lungs” and then finding out that his fantastic miracle cure, hydroxychloroquine, appears to make people worse rather than better, it’s been a rough time.
His White House coronavirus rallies have been canceled for the time being, cooler heads having evidently persuaded Trump that they were doing him more harm than good. Now he’s gone back to his usual short pool sprays and semi-formal events with visitors, where he takes a few questions until some staffer screams at the top of her lungs for the press to get out of the room immediately. The hope, obviously, is that he will get in less trouble the less he’s exposed to hard questions.
It doesn’t really help. He’s definitely brittle and out of sorts, resorting to the kind of magical thinking he was using back in January and February when he was living in denial about the approaching catastrophe.
Trump is also having a hard time dealing with “the numbers.” You’ll recall that just a month ago, out of the blue, Trump started talking about lifting the federal COVID-19 guidelines by Easter and “filling the pews” because someone had whispered to him that the “cure is worse than the disease.” Health experts rushed to show him models that showed millions of possible deaths if everyone just went back to “normal,” as he seemed to be suggesting. So he backed off and agreed to extend lockdown guidelines until the end of April. At the time he made it pretty clear that if we were below the then-proposed estimate of 120,000 deaths, he planned to take a victory lap. Since then, he’s gotten more specific — and a bit overconfident — and predicted that the total death toll would likely be between 50,000 and 60,000. We passed that number this week, with no particular indication that the end is near.
From the beginning, Trump’s primary goal was to “keep his numbers down,” but the virus just refuses to cooperate. With the willy-nilly reduction or abandonment of mitigation strategies all over the country, we can be pretty sure those numbers aren’t going down anytime soon. Most experts agree that there will be a spike in new cases in the fall.
But there’s another reason for Trump’s funk, and it also has to do with his numbers. I’m speaking, of course, about his poll numbers. Numerous reports in the press this week have suggested that Trump has been going ballistic over internal polls showing that he’s losing to Joe Biden, both nationwide and in key swing states.
CNN first reported that Trump had blown up at campaign manager Brad Parscale over the phone, screaming, “I’m not losing to Joe Biden.” This prompted Parscale to jump on a plane to D.C. to give the president some personal hand-holding. Having been soothed with some good old-fashioned magical thinking, Trump has now calmed down a little, and told Reuters on Wednesday that he just doesn’t believe the polls, not even his own:
I don’t believe the polls. I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think that they will put a man in who’s incompetent.
I’m afraid that ship has sailed. And it’s not working out too well.
The strange thing is that the polls really aren’t much different than they have been all along. I think the real reason he was so upset is that he’s always counted on his rallies to serve as a check on the numbers, and to feed his ego. This is a person who believes his “gut” is infallible, and when he stands before his ecstatic, shrieking MAGA crowds, his gut tells him that he is beloved by the American people. With no rallies, he doesn’t get that affirmation and it’s bringing him down.
Meanwhile, the campaign is trying to get him to back off the day-to-day focus on task force matters and refocus the campaign on China-bashing. The New York Times reported a few days ago that Republicans are convinced “that elevating China as an archenemy culpable for the spread of the virus, and harnessing America’s growing animosity toward Beijing, may be the best way to salvage a difficult election.”
It’s a natural go-to for a man whose calling cards are racism and xenophobia. The problem here is that the administration is using the power of the federal government to help his campaign. Again. (You may recall he had a little impeachment issue a few months back about that very issue. No harm, no foul, apparently!)
Just a few days after the media reported on this big GOP plan, the White House decided to dust off the Dick Cheney playbook and instruct the intelligence community to find evidence to support the theory that the virus outbreak began in a government biodefense lab in the city of Wuhan.
On Thursday, they reported back and it wasn’t good news for Trump. They found no evidence that the virus was anything but naturally occurring. Of course. Trump wasn’t impressed:
Trump answered the follow-up question, about whether he had seen any evidence that the virus came from a lab by saying, “Yes, I have” but claiming he wasn’t “allowed” to say where he got the information. Since he didn’t get it from actual intelligence sources, it likely came from his team of medical and China experts — meaning Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Apparently, Trump wants people to believe the Chinese may have created or released a deadly virus in order to destroy his chances of re-election. He told Reuters, “China will do anything they can to have me lose this race.” As always, it’s all about him.
But that’s not all. Regardless of the truth of the matter, Trump is forging ahead with this plan to attack and punish China, as Dan Froomkin of Salon and Press Watch reported on Thursday evening. The New York Times reports that the Trump administration is discussing stripping China of “sovereign immunity,” which would hypothetically allow the U.S. or its citizens to sue the Chinese government, Trump’s favorite retaliatory gambit. According to the Times, “legal experts say an attempt to limit China’s sovereign immunity would be extremely difficult to accomplish and may require congressional legislation.” Unidentified White House officials have also reportedly discussed having the U.S. cancel its debt obligations to China.
That’s entirely absurd. Jonathan Chait at New York magazine points out “the blowback would be enormous” as “other potential buyers of Treasury bills would be demanding higher interest rates forever.” Talk about the cure being worse than the disease.
But none of this will actually happen. As Chait astutely observes, this is modeled on Trump’s famous promise that Mexico would pay for the wall — this time, China will pay for the coronavirus. It’s a campaign strategy, not a policy. With Trump, that’s all there is.
It’s just one more sign that an empire in decline goes slowly at first, and then all at once. And when a declining empire takes on a rising superpower, history suggests it won’t go well for the former.
A tweet by the U.S. President Donald Trump on April 22 said, “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.” Trump seems to be talking the language of war while indulging in politics by other means. Like his ban on immigration, Trump is resorting to distractions to turn attention away from his incompetence in tackling the COVID-19 crisis in the United States.
The Time report while referring to the tweet said, “The White House had no immediate comment. The U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet referred questions about the tweet to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon referred questions to the White House.”
Meanwhile, Tehran is plainly dismissive. The spokesman for the Iranian armed forces Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said disdainfully, “Instead of bullying others today, Americans should put their efforts into saving their forces, who have contracted coronavirus.”
Trump was ostensibly reacting to an allegation by the U.S. Navy on April 15 that 11 Iranian vessels had “repeatedly conducted dangerous and harassing approaches against multiple U.S. naval ships operating in international waters.” Speedboats belonging to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) apparently came too close to a squadron of U.S. warships sailing close to Iranian waters.
These warships included the expeditionary mobile base vessel Lewis B. Puller—a ship designed to serve as a platform for a U.S. invasion—the Paul Hamilton, a guided-missile destroyer, two coastal patrol boats and two Coast Guard ships.
The U.S. Navy statement said, “The IRGCN’s dangerous and provocative actions increased the risk of miscalculation and collision… and were not in accordance with the obligation under international law to act with due regard for the safety of other vessels in the area.”
The Iranians have since released a video on April 19 that showed the IRGCN warning off a flotilla of U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf as they tried to approach the Iranian territorial waters. Following the Iranian warning, the U.S. ships apparently moved away.
Such incidents are not uncommon and the two sides know how to de-escalate. Trump had no reason to meddle. He must be really out of his mind to kickstart a military conflict in the Middle East over such incidents at this point when the U.S.’s Gulf allies are preoccupied with COVID-19.
In fact, the specter of an ever-widening spread of the coronavirus among American sailors haunts the U.S. Navy too. The U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is detained in the Pacific Island of Guam, its crew was quarantined after hundreds of its sailors tested positive.
Three other aircraft carriers, the Nimitz, the Ronald Reagan, and the Carl Vinson, are also being docked in ports because of sailors testing positive, while a fourth, the Truman, is being kept at sea for fear that its crew will become infected if it comes into port.
A former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who held the post from 2009 to 2017, said, “I think what they need to do is bring every ship in… Offload most of the crew… leave a very skeletal force on board, sanitize the ship, quarantine people for two weeks, make sure nobody’s got COVID.” After that, he added, crews would have to be kept on the ships indefinitely until the pandemic is mitigated.
Arguably, Iran is not spoiling for a fight, either, as it emerges out of the pandemic. The struggle took a heavy toll; over 6,000 people died. In reality, what unnerves Washington is that Iran weathered the storm despite the U.S.’s “maximum pressure” approach.
The Trump administration even obstructed an Iranian request for a $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fight COVID-19, although Iran was the regional epicenter of the pandemic and dozens of frontline health workers and health care professionals died due to non-availability of personal protective equipment, and shortages of medicines and medical devices, including respirators.
The UN, the European Union, Russia, and China have called on the U.S. to ease sanctions. Even within the U.S., Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden joined members of Congress in urging the Trump administration to suspend sanctions on Iran. But all that fell on a stony heart. The Secretary of State Mike Pompeo kept advancing the ridiculous argument that Iran will divert IMF funds away from coronavirus relief and toward weapons of mass destruction programs.
Thus, the Trump administration watched with shock and awe when on April 22, a three-stage Qased rocket lifted off from the Markazi Desert in central Iran and successfully delivered a military reconnaissance satellite to orbit 425 km above earth’s surface. By doing so, Iran joined an elite club of superpowers with the capability to launch a military satellite using combined fuel in satellite carriers.
The Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Hossein Salami said, “Today, we can visualize the world from space, and this means extending the strategic intelligence of the powerful defense force, the IRGC.” All parts of the satellite, including the carrier and satellite, have been produced by the Iranian scientists and the message behind this important achievement is that sanctions are not an obstacle in the way of Iran’s progress.
Clearly, Trump has run out of options. Looking back, he made a ghastly mistake to order the murder of the Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani in January. The months since the incident took place go to show that Trump’s decision turned out to be a strategic blunder.
Soleimani’s murder has not exactly strengthened Trump’s prospects in the presidential election in November; it has not weakened Iran’s resolve in leading the “axis of resistance” in Syria and Iraq; but, it has weakened the U.S.’s standing in Iraq. Most importantly, Iran’s attitude toward the Trump administration has hardened.
Iranian diplomacy, which was low key in the last couple of months, has shifted gear as the country emerges out of the COVID-19 crisis. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif paid a visit to Damascus on April 20; Soleimani’s successor Esmail Ghaani was in Baghdad. During his meeting with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Zarif said that Iran’s “path in support of the resistance” remains unwavering.
Meanwhile, Tehran has switched to a proactive policy toward Afghanistan. Tehran’s key interlocutor and veteran Afghan hand, Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian visited Kabul on April 20. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi on this occasion said in Tehran:
“Iran’s efforts are independent and within the framework of the interests of the Afghan government and nation. We hope that our efforts would yield results, an inclusive government would be formed in Afghanistan, stability and calm would return to Afghanistan, and then intra-Afghan talks would be held.”
Tehran so far allowed a free hand to Washington but is now stepping in to try to consolidate the forces of Afghan nationalism who are incensed over the U.S.’s prescriptive approach. From April 12 to April 15, Zarif held consultations regarding Afghanistan with his counterparts in Kabul, Ankara, Beijing, New Delhi, Moscow, and Doha.
Tehran is determined to challenge Washington’s self-appointed role to navigate an Afghan settlement. The eviction of U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has become top priority in Tehran’s regional strategies.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is the top pick among Democrats to be Joe Biden's vice president, a new poll finds, and on one critical question she's number one by a very large margin.
In every category, in fact, the Massachusetts progressive who last fall was seen as the Democratic party's presidential frontrunner beats out all other possible VP nominees, as Vox reports.
Progressive polling firm Data for Progress asked Democrats which of six women should be Biden's VP. The former Obama vice president has committed to choosing a woman as his running mate, and this week launched a committee to identify and vet candidates.
Warren came in first, the poll shows, at 31%, followed by Sen. Kamala Harris at 18%, Stacey Abrams at 10%, Sen. Amy Klobuchar also at 10%, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer at 3%, and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto at 1%.
Warren was first among women, men, Biden supporters, Sanders supporters, voters over 45, voters under 45, white voters, Black or African American voters, college-educated voters, and voters without a college education.
When Democrats were asked if they would be more likely to vote for Biden if each of the six were his running mate, Warren came out on top as well, with voters saying they would be more likely to vote for the former vice president if she were on the ticket.
And when asked who of the six are most ready to be president – possibly the most critical consideration when choosing a vice presidential running mate, Warren excelled by a huge margin.
Warren was also the number one pick when asked which of the six would be best at handling the coronavirus pandemic, ensuring that policies benefit working class people, and implementing policies effectively.
The poll has one downside: a small sample size. Data for Progress polled only 605 Democratic likely voters.
But the results line up with several polls over the past year, before Warren suspended her campaign.
In one poll voters who did not support Warren as their first choice said they would be least upset if she were the presidential nominee. That same poll found voters said they were most enthusiastic about the Massachusetts Senator. In another poll voters who had not chosen Warren as their first pick overwhelmingly said she was their second choice. And in yet another poll voters said if they could skip the election, wave a "magic wand" and install a president today, they would choose Elizabeth Warren.
"To start with these words is a 100% guarantee that you WILL be lied to on an EPIC scale."
Newly-minted White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday gave reporters their first regular briefing in the press room in over a year and kicked off the event by promising the media and American people, "I'll never lie to you."
"You have my word on that," said McEnany.
But McEnany lied repeatedly over the course of the 32 minute briefing—the first outright falsehood, as Vox reporter Aaron Rupar noted, coming just 15 minutes after her pledge to the truth.
As Rupar explained:
McEnany's first lie from the White House podium came in response to a question about comments President Donald Trump made earlier in the day characterizing Tara Reade's sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden as "far more compelling" than the accusations made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. Asked to flesh out Trump's thinking, McEnany characterized the Kavanaugh allegations as "verifiably false."
The complaints against Kavanaugh, while not proven, were not found to be "verifiably false"—they were found to be credible.
The secretary followed up those lies by lying about newly published FBI documents and notes about the investigation into General Michael Flynn, the disgraced former National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump. Flynn faces up to five years in prison for lying to the FBI during the course of the investigation though federal prosecutors have asked for only a six month sentence after his guilty plea.
At the podium, McEnany implied that FBI notes laid out a plot to trick Flynn into lying to investigators—but the notes only offer it as one option for investigators along with determining if the advisor was telling the truth about his communications with Russia.
On Friday, at White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany's first briefing, reporters asked her why the two dozen allegations of harassment, groping, and sexual assault against President Trump are less credible than former Senate staffer Tara Reade's allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden. McEnany dismissed the question, saying those were "old allegations.
This explanation didn't sit well with advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, one of the most recent of Trump's alleged victims to come forward:
Carroll has alleged that Trump raped her in a department store in the late 1990s. She furthermore claims to still have the dress she was wearing when she was attacked, and is suing to attempt to obtain a DNA sample from the president that could prove her claim.
The Covid-19 outbreak found China uniquely positioned for a global soft power grab with its “mask diplomacy” supply of medical equipment. But then a drip of anti-Beijing headlines followed by an aggressive diplomatic onslaught unravelled the gains. The race for world power dominance is now up for grabs.
On April 14, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian summoned China’s ambassador, Lu Shaye, over a coronavirus fake news article on the Chinese embassy website. And a few Asia experts in Canada could barely contain their glee.
Canadians had experienced the whiplash of Ambassador Lu’s diplomacy – or lack thereof – while he was Beijing’s envoy in Canada and gained national notoriety for accusing Ottawa of “white supremacy” for calling for the release of two Canadian nationals arrested in China during the Huawei scandal last year.
In his new post as China’s ambassador to France, Lu was at it again. In the controversial embassy “article”, an anonymous Chinese diplomat claimed French care workers had abandoned the elderly to die in nursing homes. It also accused French lawmakers of using a racist slur against Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO). Both the allegations were false.
So when Le Drian summoned Lu, Canadian experts on Twitter were keenly monitoring the developments in Paris.
"As Canadians, we both miss and don’t miss Lu Shaye, China’s rude and highly undiplomatic envoy to Ottawa before he was dispatched to Paris. For us, he epitomized everything that’s wrong with the CCP,” said J. Michale Cole from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
The French dressing down had been weeks in the making. “The embassy in Paris had been putting out these kind of communiqués, articles, quotes which were terrible, the classic propaganda of lies and insults required by [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s diplomats in 'fighting spirit',” said Dorian Malovic, Asia editor of French daily, La Croix, and author of several books on China.
“These were, of course, on Twitter accounts,” he continued. “While Twitter is banned in China, what is forbidden inside China is used outside to counter criticism of Beijing’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak,” said Dorian Malovic, Asia editor of French daily, La Croix, and author of several books on China.
But the French foreign ministry summons did little to halt Beijing’s diplomatic offensive. A week later, the German interior ministry said Chinese diplomats had approached German officials to encourage them to make positive statements on Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
The policy of “encouraging” positive messages on state-controlled social media has worked inside China. But Beijing has been unable to control the international narrative amid mounting demands for an independent international investigation into the origins of the virus and questions over China’s handling of the outbreak.
The tide of opinion changed just as China’s “mask diplomacy” – sending planeloads of medical supplies to hard-hit countries like Italy and France – was taking off.
“China thought it was coming out on top from the crisis by sending planes with face masks and medical equipment. Beijing thought it could reap the benefits from being the only power with the capability for this. It’s a very weird thing that it has instead provoked a backlash,” said Pierre Haski, a veteran French journalist and longtime former Beijing correspondent and editor of the book, “The Diary of Ma Yan”.
The daily drip of bad press for China from across the world is turning into a flood. In the US, the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are battling over who is “weaker on China”, with the Trump campaign running “Beijing Biden” ads as Joe Biden’s team responds with, “Trump rolled over for the Chinese” ripostes. Trump meanwhile has insisted he has seen evidence that Covid-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, but he has offered no details and US intelligence agencies have not backed up his claim.
Outside the Beltway, headlines on substandard Chinese medical goods are pouring in from Japan, Finland, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Canada and India, to name a few.
China’s response to these complaints – particularly from East and South Asian countries – has been harsh, accusing India’s top medical body, for instance, of being “irresponsible” for advising against the use of “faulty” testing kits exported from China. When Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an international investigation into the outbreak, Beijing’s excoriating ripostes included a Communist Party tabloid comparing Australia to “chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes”.
Perhaps the most surprising PR defeats have come from Africa, a continent Beijing has used as a petri dish to test its global soft-power grab. In a rare diplomatic dust-up, the governments of several African countries – including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda – summoned Chinese ambassadors last month to receive formal protests over the racist treatment of their nationals in China. Media reports have also focused on Beijing’s silence on any Africa debt relief, following the Covid-19 rescue measures announced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
As the pandemic shifts the tectonic plates of global power, China is at a pivotal point with its economic might – including market size and manufacturing base – squared off against the power of public opinion.
Cornered by international criticisms on several fronts, Beijing’s “offense is the best form of defence” response has taken aim at the democratic system of government by highlighting the inefficient responses of elected leaders scrambling to cope with the crisis.
Europe – with its internal divisions and precarious go-between position of trying to negotiate US might amid the competition for global markets – has been identified as the soft underbelly for this attack.
Beijing’s diplomatic campaign has been particularly brazen in France and it has continued despite Le Drian’s summoning of the Chinese ambassador. Another article (in French) posted on the Chinese embassy website on April 26, for instance, offers explanations for “Why the Covid-19 outbreak is so politicised”. They include an ineffective European response to the crisis, which it claims has led “some Westerners ... to distrust liberal democracy. In the response to the epidemic, socialism with Chinese characteristics has demonstrated its ability to concentrate resources in the service of great achievements.”
In the US, where the stakes are high and the Trump administration’s erratic policies are a diplomatic minefield, China’s ambassador in Washington, Cui Tiankai, an old-school Beijing diplomat, has adopted a careful, measured line. The onus has therefore fallen on Europe’s leaders to respond to the Chinese PR and disinformation campaign. The question now is whether they are willing to rise up to the challenge and balance popular demands for transparency on the Covid-19 outbreak, on the one hand, and domestic business interests eyeing China’s resources during an economic recession.
‘Wolf warrior’ envoys answer President Xi’s call
Aware of these stakes in the post-coronavirus era, Beijing is relying on its new breed of ferocious diplomats, dubbed “wolf warriors” after a 3-D blockbuster starring a muscle-bound Chinese commando who saves his people by killing American baddies in Africa and Southeast Asia with his bare hands. China’s “wolf warrior” diplomats emerged last year after President Xi issued a memo calling on envoys to show more “fighting spirit” in the war for global influence.
Video screen showing scenes from the movie " Wolf Warrior 2" in Beijing in August 2017.AFP - GREG BAKER
The alpha male of the pack, Zhao Lijian, cut his teeth in Pakistan as deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Islamabad, when he engaged in a war of words with former US national security adviser Susan Rice over China’s mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims.
Upon his return to Beijing, Zhao was rewarded with a promotion to foreign ministry spokesman, in which post he has kept up the offensive, including a suggestion that the Covid-19 epidemic was a US army biological war strike against China.
The 55-year-old Chinese ambassador to France is another celebrated pack member. Lu’s aggressive track record during his Canadian posting was so well established that in June 2019, when his appointment as ambassador to France was announced, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders issued a statement warning the incoming envoy not to “try to intimidate the media of the country where he is posted”.
Businesses rethinking supply dependence
The anti-China backlash following the Covid-19 outbreak has renewed the pressure on China’s envoy in France – the EU’s only permanent member of the UN Security Council – to bare his diplomatic claws.
But the strategy, according to some experts, appears to be backfiring.
“This propaganda narrative is totally counterproductive for Western nations, especially now that the world knows China lied on the virus,” explained Malovic.
China’s myriad problems, from its crackdowns on free speech to the difficulties of doing business in the one-party state, are well known. But the fallout from the pandemic crisis is sparking a re-examination of the pros and cons of engaging with China on Beijing’s unyielding terms.
“People already knew about China’s quality problem. French businessmen in China privately complain all the time about how difficult it is to do business there. Now with the faulty, substandard tests, masks and ventilators, it’s going downhill for China and it’s a big challenge to get back credibility,” said Malovic.
The pandemic’s disruption of supply chains has also forced countries and companies to reexamine China’s competitive advantage as a manufacturing hub.
Japan, for instance, has earmarked $2.2 billion of its economic stimulus package to help its manufacturers shift production out of China. The decision is a major blow for Beijing as China is Japan’s biggest trading partner while Japan ranks third on the list of China’s top export destinations.
Trump’s trade war with Beijing had already led some international businesses to re-evaluate their dependence on China, with “companies actively rethinking their supply chain, either convincing their Chinese partners to relocate to southeast Asia to avoid tariffs, or by opting out of sourcing from China altogether”, noted a recent article in Forbes.
In Europe, the coronavirus crisis may give a boost to voices calling for less dependency on China for security reasons, noted Erik Brattberg, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Philippe Le Corre, of the Harvard Kennedy School. “The European Commission has already issued new guidelines for the implementation of a common EU investment screening framework specifically mentioning the protection of critical European medical assets. The EU is also wary of a repeat of the post 2008 financial crisis, which led to opportunistic Chinese investments in key European infrastructures,” noted Brattberg and Le Corre writing in The Diplomat.
Wuhan lab, a ‘Chinese tool’
The pandemic has also cast a spotlight on Chinese breaches of bilateral agreements, which partnering countries have been reluctant to disclose fearing a backlash from Beijing against their investments and nationals in China.
Franco-Chinese cooperation on a maximum security biological laboratory in Wuhan has come under particular scrutiny following US media reports of Washington’s concerns, dating back to 2018, of inadequate security measures at the facility.
While there is no evidence the Covid-19 outbreak emerged from the Wuhan Class 4 pathogens (P4) laboratory, media reports have exposed China’s cooperation breaches on the project. In a recent investigative report, public radio station France Culture detailed how a team of 50 French scientists who were supposed to provide training and expertise at the P4 laboratory for a five-year period starting in 2017 never made it to Wuhan.
This happened two years after French billionaire businessman Alain Mérieux resigned as co-chairman of a joint commission supervising the project. In a 2015 interview with Radio France, Mérieux said he quit because the P4 project had turned into “a very Chinese tool – it belongs to them, even though it was developed with technical assistance from France”.
Beijing playing EU divisions
The breaches never stopped the project from proceeding, Malovic suggests, due to the lack of unity and competition among Western – particularly European – powers, for investment and partnership projects in China. “Every high-level businessman says yes, there are many problems, but if we don’t do it or sell it, the Germans will or the Americans will,” explained Malovic.
“China is very adept at playing the divisions within the EU,” he noted.
The bloc is nevertheless aware of the need for unity on China’s unfair trade practices. Last year, in a major departure from Brussels’ softly-softly position on Beijing, the European Commission called China “an economic competitor in pursuit of technological leadership and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance” in an EU strategy briefing.
While Rome has traditionally been more open to Beijing, anger over China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak has been mounting in Italy. The latest crisis could provide an opportunity for Europe to re-calibrate its China policies. “The virus is a big blow to China – they won’t easily escape this whatever they do,” Malovic noted.
But few are willing to bet on a complete geopolitical overhaul just yet. “We’ll have the answer after the US presidential election,” said Haski. “If Trump wins, China is in for a tough ride. If it’s Biden, the issues won’t change, but you may have a more consensual attempt to restore bilateral discussions and that could diffuse the more nationalistic aspects of China’s rhetoric.”
The Covid-19 crisis nevertheless has sparked a “global change of attitude” to China, according to Haski, which will be marked by “more suspicion and vigilance to all issues that have been known for years”.
Avoiding anti-Asian racism
But European countries such as France will have to be careful about their messaging, noted Haski. “There is a big Chinese community in France and no one wants to have anti-Asian racism as in the US,” said Haski, referring to the rise of attacks against Asian Americans following Trump’s use of the term “Chinese virus”.
France is home to Europe’s largest Chinese diaspora – estimated at between 600,000 to 700,000 – and witnessed a surge in anti-Asian racism in March, when the extent of the coronavirus crisis and allegations of a Chinese cover-up started to emerge.
A local newspaper, Le Courier Picard, for instance, faced an outcry for its inflammatory headline, "Alerte jaune" (Yellow alert), forcing the paper to quickly apologize. That sparked a campaign by French-Asians (including members of the significant Vietnamese and Cambodian diasporas) on social media sites using the hashtag “JeNeSuisPasVirus” (I’m not a virus).
“Everybody in government will be very careful about the atmosphere in France. Everybody wants to avoid a climate of stigmatization,” said Haski.
The challenge for European governments in the months to come will be to calibrate a targeted, effective response to the “wolf warrior” attacks by Chinese officials while avoiding a backlash against Asian immigrant groups on their soils.
Meltdowns are nothing new for President Donald Trump. But this week in her Vanity Fair column, journalist Bess Levin asserts that his behavior has been especially bad lately. And Trump, Levin argues, only makes things worse for himself when he loses it over reports that he’s losing it.
“Donald Trump has never been the picture of mental stability, but over the last few weeks, he’s appeared to crank up the crazy from about a 45 to a 337,” Levin writes. “From seemingly proposing intravenous Lysol as a coronavirus cure to claiming the United States is close to testing 5 million people a day for COVID-19 — a number so completely absurd that he might as well have said we’ll soon be running 8 billion tests a day — to reportedly threatening to sue his campaign manager over a dimming 2020 outlook, the president has well and truly lost whatever remaining shred of sanity he once had on reserve.”
The Washington Post, this week, reported that Trump was furious with his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, when he warned that recent polls have shown him losing to former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump, according to the Post, was in a shoot-the-messenger mood and resented Parscale for even bringing those polls to his attention. And now, Levin notes, Trump is furious with the Post and other mainstream media outlets for reporting on that meltdown.
“After Trump’s disinfectant comments set off a new political firestorm,” Levin notes, “the president reportedly took his anger over his dimming electoral prospects out on Parscale — whom he shouted at over the phone….. Trump’s outburst was indicative of the president’s apparently foul mood lately as the coronavirus has encroached on the election, with the Post noting that a mix of polling, poor news coverage, and the focus on coronavirus testing — which the Trump Administration continues to fail on — especially lowered Trump’s spirits around the time of the Parscale call.”
Another thing that recently infuriated Trump, Levin observes, is being advised that he shouldn’t speak at so many coronavirus press briefings.
“With his freewheeling political rallies now off the table in the age of social distancing,” Levin explains, “Trump has tried to wrestle back attention and control the coronavirus narrative through rambling daily press briefings, which give him the boffo ratings and attention he so badly desires. The president’s nightly exercises in egotism appear to only be hurting his 2020 chances even more, however — and Trump is lashing out as a result.”
Wealthy Americans are transferring money tax-free to their heirs, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and concerns that President Donald Trump might lose re-election.
The Republican tax overhaul in 2017 already made the estate and gift taxes easier than ever to avoid, but super-low interest rates and volatile equity markets have kept wealth advisers busier than ever, reported Bloomberg.
“Our phone is kind of ringing off the hook,” said Jordan Waxman, managing partner of Nucleus Advisors. “There really hasn’t been a better time to plan.”
Interest rates set by the Internal Revenue Service are at record lows this month for estate-planning purposes, and one rate that applies to many trusts has fallen below 1 percent for the first time ever.
The pandemic crisis has eaten into Trump's approval rating, which has spurred the wealthiest Americans to act now -- especially since Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden has proposed closing some estate tax loopholes.
“If you think Trump is a one-term president," said Megan Burke, an accounting professor at Marist College, "you would be doing even more of these transfers now."
Stay-at-home orders have also given wealthier Americans more time to plan for future generations.
“It’s a little crazy,” said Jim Bertles, managing director at Tiedemann Advisors. "I’m busier now than I was before this pandemic. “It’s because clients and prospective clients reaching out to us have a lot of time on their hands.”
These record-low rates can be locked in for years or even decades, and one wealth manager said many of his clients are taking out longer-term loans to take advantage of those historically low rates.
Those rates also help the wealthy loan money to relatives to stay under the estate and gift tax exemption, which is the amount Americans can transfer without triggering the tax.
This year's exemption was doubled under the 2017 tax bill, allowing Americans to transfer $11.6 million to individual heirs or more than $23 million to married couples.
The easiest strategy for the rich is to loan cash or other assets to relatives, who can borrow millions of dollars to invest -- and then keep the profits.
A grantor retained annuity trust, or GRAT, allows beneficiaries to profit from future investment gains, which no risk of losing money, as long as their returns are higher than the IRS interest rate -- so the lower the rate, the money heirs can make.
Joe Biden denied allegations that he sexually assaulted a former Senate staffer decades ago.
Former staffer Tara Reade claims the former Delaware senator and vice president had assaulted her on the job in 1993, but Biden told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" denied her allegations and said he's not aware of any complaints lodged against him at that time.
"This never happened," he said. "No, it is not true. I’m saying unequivocally it never happened."
He also said he was confident that no complaint would be found in his Senate papers, which remain sealed.
"I am confident there is nothing," he told MSNBC. "There is nothing for me to hide."
Biden insisted that he had never asked Reade or anyone else to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and he called for the National Archives to release any personnel files involving Reade.
"She has a right to say whatever she wants to say," he said. "But I have a right to say, 'Look at the facts,' and it's just not true."
Washington (AFP) - Joe Biden will break his silence Friday about a former aide's allegations that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, according to the broadcaster set to interview the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.Biden's morning appearance on MSNBC comes as he faces mounting pressure, including from President Donald Trump, to address the allegations, and as top Democrats rushed to the party flagbearer's defense."Tomorrow in a @Morning_Joe exclusive, former Vice President @JoeBiden (will) respond for the first time to the recent allegation of sexual assault," the cable televi...
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, is facing pressure from big money donors not to select Sen. Elizabeth Warren as his running mate in the general election—even as polling from YouGov and the Economist shows Democratic voters support the Massachusetts senator over other options.
"I think a lot of the donor base, on board and coming, would prefer almost anyone but Elizabeth," one longtime Biden fundraiser toldCNBC Thursday. "I don't see him choosing her for veep."
The YouGov poll, which was conducted between April 26 and 28, found that voters were most enthusiastic about a Biden/Warren ticket.
Warren was backed by 26% of Democratic respondents, while Biden's other former rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Kamala Harris of California, came in second with support from 18% of the party's voters. Stacey Abrams, who ran unsuccessfully to become Georgia's governor in 2018, came in third with 12, and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who also previously sought the Democratic presidential nomination, came in fourth with 11%.
Concerns and preferences of rank and file voters aside, a number of donors have expressed opposition to Warren, with one unnamed Wall Street executive claiming that Warren would be a "horrible" choice and lead Biden to "lose the election." According to CNBC, a number of wealthy Biden donors have had conversations with the campaign to pressure him to pick more palatable option for Wall Street.
As CNBC reported:
Those conversations have recently included attempts to push the campaign away from picking Warren and encouraging the choice of other candidates purportedly on his list, such as Sens. Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Many Biden contributors spoke on the condition of anonymity as these conversations, both with Biden and among his associates, were in private.
John Morgan, a Florida businessman and Biden supporter, said that he was distressed by the turn Warren took in the primary where she, in Morgan's view, "tried to out-Bernie Bernie." It was a sharp contrast to the Warren for whom Morgan implied he held a fundraiser.
"There are two Elizabeth Warrens," said Morgan. "The one I had in my home when she was a U.S. senator and consumer champion. She was awesome."
But despite the efforts of the donors pushing him to pick a more Wall Street friendly running mate, Biden may not be listening. The campaign has reached out to progressives in recent weeks as the former vice president has prioritized making inroads with supporters of former opponents Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as he works to build a coalition to take the White House.
Journalist Erick Fernandez was unimpressed with the efforts by big money to keep Warren off the ticket.
"Maybe a presumptive nominee shouldn't be picking a Vice President according to what some Wall Street executives think!" tweeted Fernandez.
If anything, IfNotNow co-founder and former Warren staffer Max Berger said on Twitter, the opposition to Warren means she should be the pick.
"Wall Street donors are pressuring Joe Biden not to pick Elizabeth Warren for VP," said Berger. "That's as good a reason as any to do it."
On Thursday, TIME Magazine reported on how the coronavirus pandemic has done something that for years has seemed impossible: disillusioning President Donald Trump's supporters.
"Over the past four years, Trump has developed a Teflon mystique: no matter what he says or does, nothing seems to stick to him," wrote Charlotte Alter and Tessa Berenson. "Predicting that the latest outrage will finally sever his bond with supporters has been a mug’s game. And even as the coronavirus crisis escalated in March and April, there have been few signs that this is changing: 93% of self-described Republicans said during the first half of April that they approved of Trump’s performance, according to Gallup—up two points from a month prior."
"Yet there is also little question that the pandemic has transformed the election," continued the report. "Two months ago, Trump was an incumbent president riding a strong economy and a massive cash advantage; today, he looks like an underdog in November. The RealClearPolitics polling average has former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, leading Trump 48.3% to 42% nationally. Trump’s prospects aren’t any brighter right now when broken down by states that were key to his 2016 victory. According to Real Clear Politics polling averages, Biden leads Trump by 6.7 points in Pennsylvania, 5.5 in Michigan, and 2.7 points in Wisconsin. Biden is also leading Trump narrowly in Florida and Arizona."
Among the Trump voters whose vote he has lost are Heidi and Dennis Hodges of Erie, Pennsylvania. “I liked his tough stance. I liked that he wasn’t a politician,” Dennis told TIME. But after seeing the pandemic ravage the nation, and his wife's father spend weeks on a ventilator in a medically induced coma, while Trump spent weeks downplaying its severity, Dennis had enough. “Before the pandemic, Trump would have gotten my vote again,” he said. But not now.
Jessica Lavine Freeman of Georgia agreed, saying “If we had sat down and had this conversation in August of last year, I probably would have voted for Trump again,” but that Trump's incompetence managing coronavirus was the "final straw" and she would instead vote for former Vice President Joe Biden.
“It’s a pandemic where over 50,000 people have died, and he shows no empathy, no remorse, no compassion—it’s all about ratings and opening up the economy as quickly as possible,” said Brandon Hughes, a hospital official in Kentucky who backed Trump in 2016 and now regrets it. “I don’t think he’s capable of compassion and empathy. If he can’t show it during this, in what instance would he?”
The majority of Trump's voters are still with him, according to polls. But Trump can't afford to lose that many of them — he won thanks to 80,000 people in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
President Donald Trump's scheme to try to delay military funding to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly announce an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden led to a national scandal, and to his own impeachment.
On Thursday, writing for The Washington Post, Catherine Rampell warned that as the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded, Trump has taken that same playbook and applied it to the American people themselves.
"Do us a favor though: Before we provide lifesaving equipment, praise the president," wrote Rampell. "Do us a favor though: Before we rescue the U.S. Postal Service, raise postage prices on the president’s perceived political enemies. Do us a favor though: Before we assist states in fiscal crisis, reopen your economies when we say so. Oh, and hand over your immigrants."
This is remarkably similar, she wrote, to Trump's threat against Zelensky.
"To many voters, this exchange, involving a faraway country, may have seemed no different from the usual horse-trading that U.S. officials conduct with counterparts abroad. Trump calls himself a brilliant dealmaker, after all; maybe this episode was just another boring political negotiation," wrote Rampell. "It wasn’t, of course. It was about extracting a favor designed to help the president’s personal interest, rather than his country’s."
"In December, during the impeachment hearings, Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan offered an analogy explaining why Trump’s extortion attempt should be troubling," wrote Rampell. "'Imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that’s prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding,' Karlan testified. 'What would you think if, when your governor asked the federal government for the disaster assistance that Congress has provided, the president responded, 'I would like you to do us a favor. I’ll meet with you and send the disaster relief once you brand my opponent a criminal'?'"
"That hypothetical might once have seemed ludicrous. Now, like the Onion’s March joke about Trump someday recommending bleach ingestion, it looks prophetic," wrote Rampell. "In late March, for instance, he suggested that provision of medical supplies to states would be conditional on praise from governors. 'It’s a two-way street,' he said on Fox News. 'They have to treat us well, also. They can’t say, ‘Oh, gee, we should get this, we should get that.''"
"Once upon a time, Americans might have dismissed Ukraine’s troubles as irrelevant to their lives," concluded Rampell. "Well, we’re all Zelensky now."
