[NB: Updates will appear at the bottom of this post. /~Rayne]
Trump’s Thursday morning tweet stirred up people more than his average tweets do — which is saying a lot since his average tweets are pretty annoying.
But this one crossed a line by suggesting a potential violation of the Constitution.
This tweet could be taken in isolation, but it really shouldn’t be. There were other things which Trump wanted us to ignore so he lobbed a massive turd in the punch bowl.
From what was he trying to redirect our attention?
~ 3 ~
You probably already know these two facts about COVID-19:
— The U.S. passed the 150,000 benchmark this week; Americans are 23% of the total COVID-19 deaths globally;
— Herman Cain, business man, Tea Party activist, and 2016 GOP presidential candidate died of COVID-19 today after more than a month in ICU. Cain had attended Trump’s Tulsa rally and did not wear a mask.
All these deaths including Herman Cain’s are due to Donald Trump’s gross negligence and malfeasance.
A Vanity Fair article published today also suggests that Trump did nothing about COVID-19 because it initially impacted blue states most heavily.
In other words, Trump committed and continues to commit political genocide.
Herman Cain was collateral damage.
Is it possible that Trump had been informed of Cain’s death before the public was notified, and wanted to get out in front before the public focused heavily on Cain’s death by COVID-19?
~ 2 ~
Economic data released Thursday showed a dramatic -10% drop in quarterly GDP, equivalent to -32.9% annualized rate. It’s the worst drop ever recorded in U.S. GDP.
The unemployment rate tracks with this plummet, with 47.2% Americans unemployed as of the end of June.
None of this had to happen. It was entirely preventable had Trump dealt effectively with COVID-19 beginning in Jan-Feb but killing off blue state voters and blaming their governors was more important to him for his re-election prospects than protecting the country’s economic well being.
~ 1 ~
After multiple repeated attempts to delay or obstruct their release, the Ghislaine Maxwell papers were released as ordered by Judge Loretta Preska on Thursday evening.
Papers can be found via this link to Courtlistener.
Courthouse News’ Adam Klasfeld made a first pass through the documents and filed a report.
In two separate tweets, Klasfeld noted the documents are not entirely new material.
… Multiple documents in the #MaxwellFiles data dump tonight are either old documents or previously released, making the rounds as though new. …
… Some old documents have nuggets of newly unsealed information contained within them, but the files themselves are being rediscovered as though new. …
Also noted: Maxwell lied to the court.
There will be more analysis and more bullshit thrown in the air by the White House and proxies to obscure details in the papers apart from content further compromising former president Bill Clinton and other Democrats like former governor Bill Richardson. You can bet those points will be boosted to fuzz the links between Trump, Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Some of the obscuring may already have begun with Trump’s fascistic tweet.
~ 0 ~
Trump doesn’t have the power to delay elections. We went all through this back in April when it came up. What should happen now — and we should look for it and insist on it — is that journalists should get every Republican on record about Trump’s election delay tweet.
We as citizens should be asking them as our congressional representatives where they stand on the election delay suggested by Trump, since Congress and not the Executive Branch has the power to delay the election.
We should also check with our state election officials since they can mess with the conduct of the elections. Recall after delaying their primary because of COVID-19, Kentucky shut down all but one voting place for its primary in the most populated portion of Louisville, attributing the change to pandemic safety.
States could do this for the general election which will already have been affected by the U.S. Postal Service’s Trump-crony slow down of first class mail.
Work on this now before the tangerine hellbeast in the White House tweets out something outrageous to throw us off our mission to ensure a safe, secure, and timely general election.
This is an open thread.
UPDATE — 10:00 A.M. ET —
Hearing now underway this morning:
NIAID Director Dr. Fauci along with CDC Director Dr. Redfield & HHS ADM Giroir will appear before Select Committee on COVID Oversight beginning at 9:00am ET to discuss the urgent need for a National Strategy to contain COVID-19.
Live stream at https://youtu.be/YkP1t_2u5B0
Joe Biden must be watching the hearing:
It’s been over six months since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States, and President Trump still doesn’t have an effective plan to contain its spread. It’s an unjustifiable failure of leadership that costs lives every day.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 31, 2020
Republicans are doing their best to whitewash Trump’s failures — nauseating, I must say. I do feel for Rep. Walorski (Republican, IN-02) who is trying to discourage anti-vax propaganda with her line of questioning, might be the only GOP questioning of late which hasn’t been intended to prop up Trump.