I’ve read these two sentences several times and still can’t decipher what I am supposed to take away about her actual job. pic.twitter.com/9BdzDaOO9o
— Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) April 27, 2020
Hope Hicks is doing the pretend-to-be-serious-but-enable-and-leak-info grift Ivanka Trump was doing in 2017 because Jared Kushner's companies are making too much money off the administration for Ivanka to keep doing that and withstand scrutiny
— Gorilla Warfare (@MenshevikM) April 27, 2020
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.
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
dr. bloor
The occupational title you’re looking for is “fluffer.”
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Jesus Fucking Christ, that was only a month ago?!?!?!?!?
Raoul
Hey Politico, the only thing mercurial about Trump is maybe mad hatter disease.
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.
JoyceH
Sigh – she’s his nanny. Is that so hard to understand?
Captain C
@dr. bloor: i.e. her job is straddling Trump.
(* goes off to order industrial quantities of brain bleach * )
Krope, the Formerly Dope
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.
Emma from FL
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: Every day feels like a year…
Raoul
@James E Powell: Based on the hagiography the NYT did for McEnany, that’s not the problem.
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….
Poe Larity
Poe wants to know when the Trump musical is done, who will do the music?
Is there a orchestra with tiny violins?
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” …
dmsilev
Does ‘drink bleach’ fall under ‘calming message’ or ‘critical health information’?
Anne Laurie
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…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@joel hanes:
Hey, it boggles my mind how any these fucks can willingly work for this POS when he treats them like garbage
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?
L85NJGT
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Some combination of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth.
rikyrah
Bill Kristol🤨🤨🤔
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
Can he even get his 🍄 up anymore?
Wait, don’t answer that. 🤢🤮
L85NJGT
@Anne Laurie:
They’ll just yank him offstage with a curtain hook.
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.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@rikyrah:
Bill Kristol🤨🤨🤔
So what Republican party was it that he was supporting all these years? Sounds pretty standard operating procedure for them within my entire lifetime.
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?
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne:
Donald Trump Stares Forlornly At Tiny, Aged Pen1s In Mirror Before Putting On Clothes, Beginning Day
(from an earlier, more innocent, era, aka 2012)
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.
Keith P.
Can an executive order even be used to absolve companies of worker protection liabilities?
Brachiator
The message:
The reality:
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….
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.
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.”
Brachiator
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
But of course. Because the plutocrats are worker killers, uh, I mean, Job creators.
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.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
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.
danielx
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
Kristol didnt really give a shit about plutocracy as long he got his lovely, lovely wars.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@danielx: So Trump should bomb Iran and he’ll stop bleeding support…
Omnes Omnibus
One of my questions about Hicks has always been: why does a lacrosse playing girl from Greenwich go to SMU?
Uncle Cosmo
@Captain C: Auditioning for the Clara Petacci role?
L85NJGT
Only 1/4 of SNAP recipients are eligible for home delivery of food.
I guess because conspicuous consuming tote-baggers like to finger wag at the working poor?
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.
Anne Laurie
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.)
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.
danielx
…
I truly miss her.
Duane
@Brachiator: That Politico article didn’t use the word bullshit nearly enough.
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:
This is a long way from “Make America Great Again.”
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne:
And look at how well she’s doing today!
Brachiator
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
Even that is a losing proposition now. He can’t brag about taking their oil because the price per barrel is too low.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anne Laurie:
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
different-church-lady
@rikyrah: They’re not so much employees as “expendables” at this point.
danielx
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
I should have specified: lovely, lovely, semi-competently-waged wars.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The first one doesn’t involve any headgear.
danielx
Be advised: speculation of any sort regarding Donald Trump’s sex life may result in the drinking of bleach.
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx: Well, yeah. And then you won’t get the ‘rona. It’s all good.
Captain C
@Uncle Cosmo: Possibly, though I’m guessing she didn’t read the biography to the end.
Omnes Omnibus
@Uncle Cosmo: Today is the 75th anniversary of the end of that story.
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.
Ruckus
@Captain C:
Industrial quantities will not be enough…….
Possibly an oil tanker’s worth might be enough. Might be……
different-church-lady
@danielx: Drinking it won’t get it into your brain where you need it.
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.
danielx
@different-church-lady:
True. But you won’t have to contemplate the images for long.
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.
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.
Redshift
Gee, ya think?
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….
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.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: That’s the odd thing about giving up: there’s no solace in it.
Ruckus
@Redshift:
I wonder how things will work out if all of that happens……
Redshift
@Ruckus: …which seems extremely likely at this point.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
I never understood that peak don’t give a damn was giving up.
To me it just means the kid gloves come off. It’s bare knuckles time…..
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/
Much, much more at the link.
(via BlueVirginia.US)
tl;dr – we have to work for the wave we want.
Cheers,
Scott.
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.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
You give the Bush administration far too much credit.
mrmoshpotato
@Another Scott:
Story of at least the past 40 years.
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.
oclib
@oclib:
that’s cushing, Ok….not crushing, OK
JaySinWA
@Redshift: To be fair, there is no way to get Trump to do a competent job.
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.)
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.
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.
Amir Khalid
After a lot of preliminary fumbling, I have finally mastered the mysterious art of online banking and paid my phone bill.
@Poe Larity:
For Donald Trump, only the Portsmouth Sinfonia will do.
James E Powell
@oclib:
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.
danielx
@James E Powell:
This is true. Their only real problem with covid-19 is that it’s an equal opportunity killer. Now if it could be made more selective…
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 … 🤷♀️
Amir Khalid
Could this guy beWhat if this guy was one of us?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.
danielx
@Mnemosyne:
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 –
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.
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.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: I, for one, would like to call you with congratulations. Hehe
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: Who does he think he is – Nish Kumar?
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.
Ruckus
@danielx:
I always thought that went:
me
me, me me
me, Me, ME
Me, ME, ME, ME!
MEMEMEMEMEMEMEME……..
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.
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.
montanareddog
@Anne Laurie: Trump’s Catherine Parr, then. Except, Catherine has a reputation as being an intellectual woman.
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.
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!
Anne Laurie
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.
Anne Laurie
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!
Steeplejack (phone)
Some late-night music: Les Nubians, “Makeda.”
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
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
Forgive my naiveté. I was expecting Trump to lead when leadership is needed, instead of campaigning.
Ruckus
@Anne Laurie:
I think we both understand tongue in cheek.
Firmly in.
With great pressure.
Misshapen face firmly…….
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.
Mohagan
@Ruckus: Closely related to no fucks left to give, so let’er rip
Mohagan
@Another Scott: Fascinating article – thanks very much for the link
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.
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.
Uncle Cosmo
FTFY. You’re very welcome! :^D
SW
Hope is his fluffer in the classic traditional porn industry meaning of the term. Pure and simple. Nothing mysterious or complicated about it.
pluky
@Omnes Omnibus: She didn’t have the grades/SAT to get into any of the Ivies or Seven Sisters.
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.
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.
J R in WV
J R in WV
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
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.
Amir Khalid
I have The Guardian‘s coronavirus liveblog on another tab. It just put up this Agence France-Presse story:
As I recall, Trump was touting remdesivir. He’s an investor in Gilead, isn’t he?
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 !!
Seanly
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.
So he’s schtupping her, isn’t he?