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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Running *Into* the Burning Dumpster Fire

Late Night Open Thread: Running *Into* the Burning Dumpster Fire

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It’s even simpler than that, IMO: Hicks is Trump’s emotional support human, an ambulatory security blanket in a world where nobody gives him the respect — nay, love! — that he deserves. (Also, as one twitter wit observed, a way of forgetting that for the first time in his life, DJT is married to a 50-year-old woman, as of yesterday.)

Politico frenetically sweetens its beats — “Trump looks to Hope Hicks as coronavirus crisis spills over”:

The adviser faces the difficult task of formulating a new path for a mercurial president out of an emergency that shows no sign of abating…

Returning to the West Wing just a month after impeachment, one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers found a presidency in crisis: a deadly disease outbreak, a tumbling stock market and a White House struggling to form a clear message about how it was confronting a quickly escalating threat.

For Hope Hicks, it marked a challenge unlike any other — trying to develop a communications strategy for the president to carry with a wartime footing in an election year. As one of the few aides Trump implicitly trusts, the former White House communications director urged the president to act as a frontman for the coronavirus crisis — a leader who could offer calming messages, critical health information and important updates on the progress of the White House’s response efforts, instead of delegating those responsibilities to health officials or the vice president.

It’s an approach in perpetual flux, thanks largely to a mercurial president who acts on his own instincts, prefers the spotlight in the crisis and offers up rhetoric often designed more for his base than the masses in the midst of an unprecedented situation.

Now Hicks, 31, faces the difficult task of formulating a new path for Trump out of an emergency that shows no sign of abating, even as the economy starts to reopen in a handful of states. She must position the president in a way he wants to be viewed as the man in charge, while guarding against the threat of overexposure that many aides and allies say poses a substantial political risk to Trump and his party just six months before a general election.

The daily briefings are no longer seen inside the White House as the most effective format for Trump, so she and others must develop other venues and weigh when he can again start to travel to events that so energize him. Internally, aides believe his outsize platform can break through the clutter of news — even if the briefings do not end up being his preferred medium in the coming weeks…

Hicks’ return, current and former senior administration officials say, gave the president a loyal and trusted aide. With her quick-witted sense of humor, she tends to get along with the majority of staffers inside the backbiting White House, and she can deliver advice to the president in an unfiltered way without angering him because Trump trusts her and views her like another daughter or member of his family…

She’s a marketing assistant who got transferred when Ivanka needed a non-threatening surrogate to travel with Daddy during the campaign. I actually felt sorry for her back then, but now she knows exactly what kind of viper pit she’s giving up a safe (if somewhat boring) Fox News sinecure to reenter.

Hicks remains close to the president’s family, including his daughter Ivanka and Kushner, for whom she now works. Her new office sits across from Kushner’s in the West Wing. She is also tight with Dan Scavino, who was recently promoted to deputy chief of staff for communications; Gidley, the principal deputy press secretary; and Stephen Miller, senior adviser for policy. Both Miller and Scavino worked with her on the 2016 campaign…

Barring a beloved family member being held hostage, I can’t imagine why anyone would choose such a position… unless she actually agrees with those people.

But messaging alone may not be enough to boost Trump’s political future if the U.S. fails to produce enough tests, or the unemployment rate continues to spike or the reopening of the economy in different states backfires.

“This gets repeated in every White House, but when there is some intractable problem, everyone decides it is a communications problem, but 99 percent of the time, it is not,” said Joe Lockhart, White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton. “Even the best communications people in the world cannot fix an underlying policy problem forever.”…

In Trumpworld, ‘forever’ doesn’t extend beyond the present news cycle. Let’s hope enough voters have a more grown-up appreciation of the way the world works.

Reader Interactions

116Comments

  2. 2.

    Krope, the Formerly Dope

    Returning to the West Wing just a month after impeachment

    Jesus Fucking Christ, that was only a month ago?!?!?!?!?

  4. 4.

    James E Powell

    Hope Hicks was Maggie Haberman’s source, so they’re just putting the band back together. Maybe Trump fears he is losing the NYT.

  7. 7.

    Krope, the Formerly Dope

    @James E Powell: Hope Hicks was Maggie Haberman’s source, so they’re just putting the band back together. Maybe Trump fears he is losing the NYT.

    He’s in trouble if they stop putting their thumb on the scale for him.  It has always amazed me how they get away with asserting that coverage clearly slanted to protect them is biased against them.

    The truth, of course, is that Republicans are unfailingly wonderful.

  10. 10.

    oclib

    It was a nice surprise going into 538 this evening.  This morning they were showing his approval at 43.3 and this evening at 42.6, down 7 pts…..welcome back to the dumpster fire Hope….

  11. 11.

    Poe Larity

    Poe wants to know when the Trump musical is done, who will do the music?

    Is there a orchestra with tiny violins?

  12. 12.

    joel hanes

    Any woman who, having quit, voluntarily goes back to work for a boss who described her to her own face as “the best piece of tail”  …

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    president to act as a frontman for the coronavirus crisis — a leader who could offer calming messages, critical health information

    Does ‘drink bleach’ fall under ‘calming message’ or ‘critical health information’?

  14. 14.

    Anne Laurie

    @Poe Larity: Poe wants to know when the Trump musical is done, who will do the music?

    Is there a orchestra with tiny violins?

    I’m thinking kazoos, bassoons, ukuleles, and accordions.  All played by amateurs, for verisimilitude.

    With a bagpipe for the final crescendo, as the Occupant flees for his dacha…

  16. 16.

    James E Powell

    @oclib:

    That’s pretty much where his approval ratings have been sitting forever. Does this mean whatever bump he got from being The President in a Crisis on TV is gone?

  18. 18.

    rikyrah

    Bill Kristol🤨🤨🤔

    So the Republican position is employers should get a waiver of liability if their workplace turns out to be unhealthy, but employees should lose unemployment benefits if they won't return to that unhealthy workplace. Will American capitalism survive the current Republican Party? https://t.co/IJvwMKmxBp— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 28, 2020

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    @rikyrah: It’s kind of frightening, isn’t it?

    Another one: Megan McArdle has developed a desire to see the government actually work. In her case, it took having a close family member contract the virus.

  22. 22.

    Krope, the Formerly Dope

    @rikyrah:

    Bill Kristol🤨🤨🤔

    So the Republican position is employers should get a waiver of liability if their workplace turns out to be unhealthy, but employees should lose unemployment benefits if they won’t return to that unhealthy workplace. Will American capitalism survive the current Republican Party?

    So what Republican party was it that he was supporting all these years? Sounds pretty standard operating procedure for them within my entire lifetime.

  23. 23.

    Achrachno

    @rikyrah: Come on!  If that’s Bill Kristol I want to know what’s gotten into him.  Has he changed sides?  Did he get tired of always being wrong?

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    @rikyrah:

    I’ll let Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg hang out with us until the election, but they get the boot as soon as Biden is safely inaugurated.

    @Krope, the Formerly Dope:

    I think that he and a few other Republicans (like Jonah Goldberg and Jennifer Rubin) saw the Nazis marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us”’ and wisely realized that they were next on the list once those pesky Mexican immigrants were taken care of. I don’t trust their flip to be permanent, but I will cautiously accept their help for now.

  27. 27.

    Brachiator

    The message:

    Now Hicks, 31, faces the difficult task of formulating a new path for Trump out of an emergency that shows no sign of abating, even as the economy starts to reopen in a handful of states. She must position the president in a way he wants to be viewed as the man in charge, while guarding against the threat of overexposure that many aides and allies say poses a substantial political risk to Trump and his party just six months before a general election.

    The daily briefings are no longer seen inside the White House as the most effective format for Trump, so she and others must develop other venues and weigh when he can again start to travel to events that so energize him. Internally, aides believe his outsize platform can break through the clutter of news — even if the briefings do not end up being his preferred medium in the coming weeks……

    The reality:

    Now [Hicks] must position the president in a way he wants to be viewed as the man in charge, while Trump himself strives to avoid doing anything that might actually deal with the pandemic, guarding against the threat of exposure to his core supporters that he is an incompetent fraud. 

    The daily briefings are no longer seen inside the White House as the most effective format for Trump, so she and others must develop other venues where Trump can bask in the empty praise proffered by toadies and sycophants, even though this may be a poor substitute for the ego-stroke political rallies he is no longer able to flee to and that usually so energize him. Internally, aides believe his ability to lie, deny and shift blame onto others can counter the clutter of accurate news reporting about his failures, errors, and missteps.

     

  28. 28.

    oclib

    @James E Powell:

    they’ve taken down the graph (they’ve been doing that lately), but my guess is that he’s back to pre-crisis levels now and it doesn’t look good going forward…..still, we keep saying that….

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    @dmsilev:

    I’m assuming it’s all emotional fluffing like Anna Nicole Smith did for her octogenarian husband. Still, 🤢🤮

    IIRC, even Hicks’ family is puzzled by the whole thing and don’t understand what her deal is. I kind of assume that she’s been hand-picked by the kids to be Wife #4 once he leaves the White House.

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne: The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend, but ‘ally of convenience’ will do in a pinch. Or, if you prefer historical references, “If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”

  31. 31.

    Brachiator

    @Krope, the Formerly Dope:

    So the Republican position is employers should get a waiver of liability if their workplace turns out to be unhealthy, but employees should lose unemployment benefits if they won’t return to that unhealthy workplace.

    But of course. Because the plutocrats are worker killers, uh, I mean, Job creators.

  32. 32.

    TS (the original)

    The Australian PM is learning from trump. Most states have home schooling currently in operation for term 2 (April to end June). The PM wants schools to return to in school teaching. He has no control over state run schools but is promising private schools (majority run by religious groups) advance funding if they get children back into the classrooms by June.

    back to school  It’s always money for these people.

  33. 33.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Hey, it boggles my mind how any these fucks can willingly work for this POS when he treats them like garbage

    They tell themselves, “this time it will be different, because he really cares about me.”

    And some people just want to be close to someone who they think is powerful.

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    One of my questions about Hicks has always been: why does a lacrosse playing girl from Greenwich go to SMU?

  39. 39.

    different-church-lady

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Through my career I’ve had this weird phenomenon happen: when a client gets on my nerves enough that I just stop giving an ‘eff and start to get rude with them because I no longer care, they end up hiring me more than ever. I’ve never been able to get rid of a client by abusing them.

  40. 40.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mnemosyne: IIRC, even Hicks’ family is puzzled by the whole thing and don’t understand what her deal is. I kind of assume that she’s been hand-picked by the kids to be Wife #4 once he leaves the White House.

    Nah, the kids don’t want to split the ‘inheritance’ any finer.  Ivanka, IIRC, more or less said during the campaign that she promoted Hicks from her marketing office because she wouldn’t (be desperate enough to) marry the old man.

    He married an immigrant looking for a green card, a silly young woman with Princess Di fantasies, and then another calculating immigrant.  But getting rid of Melania is going to require some serious lawyering, and the old man probably doesn’t have the ready cash, much less the horndog ambitions, to accomplish it.

    Jarvanka and the two older boys are doing their best to prop up Daddy for as long as they can continue the grift.  Melania, I suspect, wants to keep him alive until Barron turns 18 and/or finishes his education.   Neither party really cares what the old man actually wants, and their hopes of his reelection are quite possibly orthogonal.  (He’ll probably live longer outside the WH, even if he’s living in a government prison.)

  41. 41.

    different-church-lady

    @Brachiator: Naw, I think it’s more like, “I’ll take the abuse because I’ll eventually figure out how to leverage my proximity to power.” Suckers.

  42. 42.

    danielx

    She must position the president in a way he wants to be viewed as the man in charge, while guarding against the threat of overexposure that many aides and allies say poses a substantial political risk to Trump and his party just six months before a general election.

    …

    Among political consultants, when the candidate is a dog the preferred euphemism is “We don’t want to overexpose the candidate”.

    – Molly Ivins

    I truly miss her.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    Has the stinging Irish Times rebuke of Trump been mentioned? Again, Trump has tossed away any pretense that he was leader of the free world, or that America is “respected” by other nations.

    Now, we are pathetic. Via snopes:

    The Irish Times column is real and was published on April 25, 2020. Written by columnist Fintan O’Toole, the full text of the article was obscured from some readers behind a paywall on the newspaper’s site. However, it was pasted either in part or in full onto third-party websites and social media posts, or aggregated by other news media outlets, which prompted readers to ask about its authenticity and origin.

    The piece was a condemnation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s leadership during the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic.

    “Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity,” O’Toole wrote.

    “However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.”

    This is a long way from “Make America Great Again.”

  45. 45.

    different-church-lady

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m assuming it’s all emotional fluffing like Anna Nicole Smith did for her octogenarian husband.

    And look at how well she’s doing today!

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Anne Laurie:

    Melania, I suspect, wants to keep him alive until Barron turns 18 and/or finishes his education.

    I’m generally a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy, but two tin-foil hat theories I believe in: Chris Christie knew about the bridge, and Melania was planning to cut and run, and got paid to stick around after he stumbled into the White House

  51. 51.

    danielx

    Be advised: speculation of any sort regarding Donald Trump’s sex life may result in the drinking of bleach.

  55. 55.

    Another Scott

    From the Worldometers.info numbers, the USA will blow past 60,000 dead today. We have nearly 1/3 of the world’s confirmed cases with less than 5% of the world’s population. With no clear signs that the daily numbers are falling yet.

    So much winning, we’ll get sick of it…

    Grrr…

    Donnie and the GOP are doing absolutely nothing to use the power of the federal government to solve the problems and help the people.

    We have to vote the monsters out. Eyes on the prizes.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    AL, sent you an e-mail and neglected to say therein (though it should be obvious) the photo is from a tad over 100 years ago.

  60. 60.

    Ruckus

    @Emma from FL:

    Sorry. Every day feels like a fucking eternity. That’s an eternity of not fucking, just to be clear.

    In case no one has noticed I’ve reached peak don’t give a damn. I’ve never been here before, and it isn’t as much fun as one might imagine.

  61. 61.

    Ruckus

    @Poe Larity:

    Yes there is that orchestra, but the sound system doesn’t work and the tiny violins don’t make that much sound, even with millions of them playing.

  62. 62.

    Redshift

    But messaging alone may not be enough to boost Trump’s political future if the U.S. fails to produce enough tests, or the unemployment rate continues to spike or the reopening of the economy in different states backfires.

    Gee, ya think?

  63. 63.

    oclib

    @Brachiator:

    Even that is a losing proposition now. He can’t brag about taking their oil because the price per barrel  is too low.

     

    Oh, trust me….you drop one bomb in Iran and nobody will care what the inventories are in Crushing, OK…..at least in the short term….

  64. 64.

    Ruckus

    @L85NJGT:

    With any luck it will be a very large fish hook, and instead of around his neck it sticks through his “gentleman’s area,” just so there’s no doubt.

  69. 69.

    Another Scott

    Bitecofer’s models and commentary for the 2020 House and Senate elections – https://www.niskanencenter.org/negative-partisanship-and-the-2020-congressional-elections/

    […]

    Whatever 2020 turnout is, barring something extraordinary that disrupts the election, if more Democrats and left-leaning independents vote than did so in 2016 and pure independents break against Trump and congressional Republicans, Democrats will not only hold their 2018 House gains — they are poised to expand on their House majority and are competitive to take control of the Senate. In fact, at the writing of this article, the COVID-19 death toll exceeds 50,000 Americans. Yet Republican-led states like Florida and Georgia are reopening their states even in the midst of rising infection and death rates. By the time we enter the fall the death rate from the pandemic may well reach the dire predictions of early models.

    In addition, the pandemic has leveled both the American and global economies, and America’s weak social welfare infrastructure and Republican control of the Senate have blunted the types of aid being made available to displaced workers. As they say, voters are likely to forgive Trump the crisis itself, but they will judge him on how he, and by extension, his party, handles the response, a record that is already plagued with allegations of mismanagement.

    We’ve already witnessed something unprecedented in terms of the public’s reaction to the crisis: a near-total lack of what is known as the “rally around the flag effect,” which refers to the public’s tendency to rally around their leader during national crises. To be sure, only two presidents have served during measurable mass polarization, Obama and now Trump, and any president serving under polarized conditions might expect a muted “R.A.T.F.E” as a result. Yet, polarization cannot account for the total lack of any effect for Trump because mass polarization, like its elite polarization cousin, is asymmetrical, tending to be stronger among Republicans than among Democrats. The lack of any “national unity” effect speaks to more than polarization — it suggests that there is something more going on, something specifically lacking in Trump’s handling of the crisis. And that is a bad sign for the president, because when a crisis of this magnitude sweeps in, the public tends to start out forgiving and end it angry. Presidents need that reservoir of goodwill to drain out slowly, over time, as the inevitable inadequacies of crisis response take their toll. Trump will not have a goodwill reservoir to draw from as the extent of the crisis begins to materialize — a scary prospect for his reelection team.

    […]

    Much, much more at the link.

    (via BlueVirginia.US)

    tl;dr – we have to work for the wave we want.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  70. 70.

    Ruckus

    @Redshift:

    Exactly.

    Just remember whatever is the worst answer, trump can always make it worse. He’s never not disappointed anyone with his ability to do that.

  71. 71.

    Krope, the Formerly Dope

    @danielx: I should have specified: lovely, lovely, semi-competently-waged wars.

    You give the Bush administration far too much credit.

  72. 72.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Another Scott:

    GOP are doing absolutely nothing to use the power of the federal government to solve the problems and help the people. 

    Story of at least the past 40 years.

  73. 73.

    Redshift

    Another thing all this talk of “messaging” reminds me of. As I said to a friend the other day, they will do absolutely anything to convince people Trump is doing a competent job other than Trump doing a competent job.

  76. 76.

    Redshift

    @JaySinWA: True, of course. The really spectacular thing is that he’s so obsessed with being the center of attention that they can’t even get him to get out of the way and let competent people do the work for his own good. (Of course, his inability to get competent people to work for him would hamper that, but it would probably still be better.)

  77. 77.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I was noticing on the Twitters the latest brilliant plan from the Hard Right to deal with the death toll how now passed Vietnam is to claim it’s all a government hoax.

  78. 78.

    danielx

    @mrmoshpotato:

    But they have gotten extremely good at messaging. You know, pissing down people’s backs and telling them it’s raining nectar.

    But seriously, the last time the Republican Party as an institution fucked up this badly the result was wandering in the wilderness for sixteen years. Even the next Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, would be considered a raving liberal these days. I believe it will take decades to fix the damage, but provided the election isn’t outright stolen (which is by no means impossible), the road goes upward from November. Or so I want to believe.

  80. 80.

    James E Powell

    @oclib:

    they’ve taken down the graph (they’ve been doing that lately), but my guess is that he’s back to pre-crisis levels now and it doesn’t look good going forward…..still, we keep saying that….

    No matter what he does, we have a tough job ahead of us. He’ll be propped up by the press/media. And right wing voters hate us. They might grow to be disgusted with Trump, but that will never be a greater force than their hatred for the rest of us.

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    @Anne Laurie:

    Many adult children of rich elderly parents are caught by surprise when the maid or nurse suddenly shows up as the new bride.

    I’m one of those people who suspects that winning the election interrupted Melania’s plans for a divorce, so that makes me think she still wants out.

    But I don’t have a great track record when it comes to predicting the actions of rich sociopaths, so … 🤷‍♀️

  84. 84.

    Shalimar

    @Redshift: Good example of that: CDC expanding zymptoms from 3 to 9 more than a week ago, but posting it on their website where no one noticed it.  So the criteria for getting tested changed, but CDC didn’t bother to tell anyone becaise it angers Trump when they issue press releases.

  85. 85.

    danielx

    @Mnemosyne:

    But I don’t have a great track record when it comes to predicting the actions of rich sociopaths, so …

    It’s not that hard. In any given situation, the first thing they think is – how does this affect me, personally? How can I benefit from it?

    It’s that second question that’s tricky –

    • can I make money? if not?
    • can I make points politically? by either:
    • claiming credit, or
    • blaming problems on somebody else, or
    • aiding some people while hurting others, which in turn
    • makes the people who are aided even more fervent, plus
    • helping to kill off the other people, which
    • gets my rocks off as well, and….
    • and so forth and so on, so it goes…

    Granted I’m interpreting this through a Trumpian kaleidoscope, it all comes back to the basic sociopathic narcissist playbook, which starts like this: 1) me, 2) me, 3) me, 4) me, 5) selected members of family and entourage…wait, no, fuck them.

  86. 86.

    Amir Khalid

    I’ve noticed that the Trump administration and the Trumpista government have been calling for an investigation of China’s actions re Covid-19. Why is this fingerpointing exercise important now? There’ll be time for it when we eventually do the post-mortem. Right now, there is a pandemic to be fought.

  89. 89.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mnemosyne: Think of Melania as the medieval baron’s last, late-in-life wife.  (I’m pretty sure Melania does.)

    In return for keeping the old man mostly content at home, she gets a good living, and the promise of a pension after he keels over.

    Of course it complicates matters for the kids of the earlier wives, especially if she improbably manages to produce a kid herself.  But fertility assistance can perform miracles these days… and I’m pretty sure there’s been more than one fertility test done, not least by DJT himself, to establish that Barron really *is* as legitimate as any Trump can be.

  91. 91.

    cain

    @Mnemosyne:
    I’m generally of the opinion that once you step away and the team rejects you as an apostate you just end up moving left.

    I mean, you can bet our blog master lost all his right wing blog friends when he decided to go left – and pretty much ditched whatever right wing thoughts he had. So I’m hoping that we have some new blood in – folks actually who know the beast and can actually work to destroy it.

  92. 92.

    Ruckus

    @Anne Laurie:

    How do we know that shit for brains is an actual trump?

    OK, he is a complete fucking ass, just like Fred. But Fred had other children, who seemed to be mostly normal humans.

  94. 94.

    Amir Khalid

    @Amir Khalid:

    Ahem, I meant to say:

    I’ve noticed that the Trump administration and the Trumpista Australian government have been calling for an investigation of China’s actions re Covid-19. Why is this fingerpointing exercise important now? There’ll be time for it when we eventually do the post-mortem. Right now, there is a pandemic to be fought.

  95. 95.

    Anne Laurie

    @montanareddog: Melania’s not actually stupid, IMO.  She knew what she wanted — to get out of Slovenia, and into a higher socioeconomic tier, preferably by marriage to someone who could ‘rescue’ her parents as well.

    That she chose to do this by becoming a ‘fashion model’, and eventually negotiating a business contract with Donald Fvcking Trump, seems retrograde to us.  But as a (high-risk, high-reward) strategy, it’s got a proven track record — especially for women!

  96. 96.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ruckus: But Fred had other children, who seemed to be mostly normal humans.

    Oh, I’m sure Fred did his own genetic testing, to the standards of the day.  But Mary Trump seems to have undergone at least one severe depressive episode (while Donnie was at an impressionable age), and the oldest Trump kid died of alcohol abuse.  So, “normal”, as these things go, but hardly perfect.

  97. 97.

    Anne Laurie

    @Amir Khalid: Why is this fingerpointing exercise important now? There’ll be time for it when we eventually do the post-mortem. Right now, there is a pandemic to be fought.

    Right now — and I suspect you know this — there is an election coming up, in just about six months.  Most American news outlets, Politico foremost among them, have published long articles on the ‘savvy’ GOP strategy of using anti-Chinese xenophobia as a distraction from the active plague and a collapsing economy.  Does parading their ‘savvy’ in advance reduce the chance of succeeding?  Who cares, there’s a news hole to fill right this very minute!

  99. 99.

    montanareddog

    @Anne Laurie: I was not comparing the intelligence of Melania Knauss and Catherine Parr. Just that the former has never shown any evidence of any intellectual interests, to my knowledge

  102. 102.

    Bruce K

    @Amir Khalid: The real scary thing is that Trump is probably actually managing the crisis to the best of his ability. The problem is, his ability to manage a crisis is damned close to zero; his past tactics when things have gone wrong seem to basically amount to bailing out and sticking other people with the cleanup bill.

    Unfortunately for Trump, that old sign Harry S Truman put on the Resolute desk, “The Buck Stops Here”, wasn’t personal philosophy on Truman’s part; it was a description of the job. And I suspect there’s a small voice in Trump’s head that knows there’s no escaping this disaster for him.

  105. 105.

    Geminid

    @Amir Khalid: I think Trump saw the virus as a political threat from the beginning, and his motivation has been his own political future. People’s health was secondary. Thus the emphasis by him and his allies to “reopen” the economy. I am not an economist, but I don’t believe that, two years from now, there would be much difference between “reopening” May 1 or July 1. In either event, the economy would still be in a recession that will take many months, hopefully not many years, to recover from.  But Trump’s horizon is November 3. He is desperate to win reelection, and he vainly hopes he can turn his fortunes around. George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter also wanted second terms, but they both had good lives to move on to. Not so Trump.

  106. 106.

    Mohagan

    @Bruce K: THe only silver lining in this terrible pandemic is indeed Trump has finally run into something which cannot be lied about successfully until attention has moved on.  Attention is not moving on, and unless he resigns, he can’t cut and run.  He’s stuck in the most pitiless glare he has ever dealt with.

  108. 108.

    SW

    Hope is his fluffer in the classic traditional porn industry meaning of the term.  Pure and simple.  Nothing mysterious or complicated about it.

  110. 110.

    Gvg

    @Amir Khalid: I think Trump lives a TV life. He lost track of real quite a while back and doesn’t know life is not like TV or stories. He tries to manage everything by spin or ads. He doesn’t actually take that many actions even when he could and clearly wants something.

    I don’t think he understands death, either for himself nor for us. He keeps trying to manipulate things as if everyone else was still focused on money and the stock markets like they normally are. He doesn’t get that even many of his most fervent supporters do understand death as a threat and calculate things differently than before when they wanted tax cuts or immigration bans.

  111. 111.

    Mike in NC

    Fat Bastard assumed he was living in North Korea or Putin’s Russia, where every time he took a shit the media would check it for gold nuggets. Maybe when the orange ape declared himself to be a “wartime president”, he really meant “whoretime president” since he’s spent so much time in the paid company of strippers and porn stars.

  112. 112.

    J R in WV

    I’d forgotten this wildly revealing interview from three years ago. Trump believed that winning the presidency won him an adulation/love entitlement. https://t.co/oBQu2DbnoQ pic.twitter.com/oRf1eO7Fbj
    — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 28, 2020

    Of course, Trump saw that Obama was beloved by many, and assumed he too would be beloved by many. Sorry, Obama was beloved because he was lovable, and was doing a good job at both the formal and official duties of the Presidency AND the less formal unofficial duties, like enjoying visits from little kids to the Oval Office.

    Trump, on the other hand, is a lazy, destructive, bully with despicable personal habits and hateful beliefs right out of the Rise of the Third Reich.

  113. 113.

    J R in WV

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I was noticing on the Twitters the latest brilliant plan from the Hard Right to deal with the death toll how [sic] now passed Vietnam is to claim it’s all a government hoax.

    OK, let’s parse this out just a little bit.

    First, the government is being run by the Hard Right at this time.

    So if there is a deep state hoax. it’s being pushed by the Hard Right.

    Or was the hoax the Vietnam war? Long time for a hoax to run undetected!!

    Plus, the death toll is vastly under-counted, made obvious by the excess death count above the normal running death toll over the past 5 years.

  114. 114.

    Amir Khalid

    I have The Guardian‘s coronavirus liveblog on another tab. It just put up this Agence France-Presse story:

    Treating coronavirus patients with the antiviral drug remdesivir showed no “significant clinical benefits” in the first randomised trial of its kind, according to research released on Wednesday, AFP reports.

    In a study among more than 200 COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, China, published in The Lancet, doctors found no positive effects of administering the drug compared with a control group of adults.

    The findings were released after US pharmaceutical giant Gilead, which makes remdesivir, said a separate large-scale trial with the drug had showed positive results.

    “Unfortunately, our trial found that while safe and adequately tolerated, remdesivir did not provide significant benefits over placebo,” said Bin Cao from China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Capital Medical University in China, who led the research.

    “This is not the outcome we hoped for.”

    As I recall, Trump was touting remdesivir. He’s an investor in Gilead, isn’t he?

  115. 115.

    J R in WV

    OK,, here’s some good news:

    An old oak tree fell on the front door area of the house as a wind front blew through.

    The good news is that no one was hurt. The roof over the porch is bent down, but no broken glass. Hard to tell if the membrane is torn up too bad, have a friend on his way over with tarps, tree guy who may cut some of the wood away.

    I’m past being able to chain saw up on my roof. Hell, I’m past fetching the extension ladder to get up there!

    Have photos, will submit to Back Yard photo series. Supposed to rain nearly 2 inches tonight!!

    Holyee crap he said !!

  116. 116.

    Seanly

    a leader who could offer calming messages, critical health information and important updates

    Well, there’s the problem. Trump is incapable of acting like a leader period, much less offer calming messages. It’s not just something he’s bad at, he actively seeks to do the exact opposite at every turn.

    views her like another daughter or member of his family…

    So he’s schtupping her, isn’t he?

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