Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Admits on CNN: “We are not going to control the pandemic.”

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows: 'We are not going to control the pandemic' - CNNPolitics

Mark Meadows

Dear Commons Community,

Finally, someone in Donald Trump’s inner circle has told the truth about the coronavirus pandemic.  White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said yesterday:  “We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas.” Meadows’ remarks came during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.

The comments from President Donald Trump’s chief of staff come as coronavirus cases surge across the US and the administration continues to consistently disregard advice from government health experts to wear masks, social distance and avoid large gatherings as a way to curb the spread of the virus. The White House is also facing a potential second outbreak of the virus after at least five people on Vice President Mike Pence’s staff  have tested positive in recent days, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Pressed by Tapper on why the US isn’t going to get the pandemic under control, Meadows said: “Because it is a contagious virus just like the flu.” He added that the Trump administration is “making efforts to contain it.”

“What we need to do is make sure that we have the proper mitigation factors, whether it’s therapies or vaccines or treatments to make sure that people don’t die from this,” Meadows said.

The US reported its second-highest day of new cases on Saturday, with nearly 84,000 Americans contracting the deadly virus. As of Sunday, there were at least 8,575,000 total cases of coronavirus in the US, and at least 224,800 Americans have died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The concession from President Donald Trump’s top aide was quickly criticized by congressional Democrats and some Republicans, as well as Biden’s campaign.

“This wasn’t a slip by Meadows,” Biden said in a statement on Sunday. “It was a candid acknowledgment of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.”

Meadows insisted today that the “full context” of his remarks referred to the “need to make sure that we have therapeutics and vaccines” to treat Covid-19. He also said that administration officials were “very hopeful, based on a number of conversations, that vaccines are just a few weeks away, and we’re in preparation for that.”

But public health experts have warned that a coronavirus vaccine likely will not be widely accessible until the second half of 2021. And even if a vaccine is authorized on a narrow basis for a subset of health care workers and vulnerable Americans, several leading candidates require two doses that would be administered weeks apart.

Thank you, Mr. Meadows for your honesty.  Please discuss this approach with your boss!

Tony  

“60 Minutes” Interview with Donald Trump – Lightweight News!

Trump posts unedited '60 Minutes' interview on Facebook - Los Angeles Times

Dear Commons Community,

Last night I watched Leslie Stahl’s interview with Donald Trump on CBS’s 60 Minutes. I rarely watch this program because I find it a bit ponderous.  I decided to watch it to see what all the fuss was about Trump abruptly cutting off the interview and leaving the room.

Even though Stahl started the interview stating that she would be asking “tough questions” I did not find her questions at all “tough.”  She asked basic questions about the pandemic, health care, and Trump’s use of social media that Trump should have been able to answer or at least skirt around.  I thought that there were several moments when Stahl could have asked “tough” follow-up questions to Trump’s answers and did not do it especially with regard to the pandemic.

The segment ends with Trump leaving and his press secretary Kayleigh McEnany giving Stahl a large book that was described as Trump’s healthcare plan. It held “executive orders and congressional initiatives,” but no details about a healthcare plan.  Here is review of the segment courtesy of The Huffington Post.

““60 Minutes” aired footage on Sunday of President Donald Trump abruptly ending an interview with the network after host Lesley Stahl asked a series of questions about his response to the COVID-19 pandemic and his use of social media to govern by tweet and attack his political opponents.

The release of the interview concluded an ongoing spat between CBS and the White House that grew last week after Trump said he had left a sit-down with Stahl he called “fake” and “biased.” He later threatened to release the footage himself, turning the interview into a headline-grabbing event before it even aired.

Stahl opened the segment asking the president if he was ready for “some tough questions,” going on to ask about rising rates of coronavirus infections in the United States, the loss of millions of jobs and his ongoing criticism of mask-wearing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The final question, however, prompted Trump to end the interview early.

Stahl: Do you think that your tweets and your name-calling are turning people off?

Trump: No, I think I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have social media. The media is fake. And frankly, if I didn’t have social media, I’d have no way of getting out my voice.

A few moments later, a producer interjects to note how much time remained in the interview. The president then said he was done.

“I think we have enough of an interview here, Hope,” Trump said, appearing to speak to aide Hope Hicks. “Okay? That’s enough. Let’s go.”

Throughout the segment, Trump told Stahl she was being “so negative” and accused “60 Minutes” of throwing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden “softball after softball.” 

When asked later in the program about Trump’s exit, Vice President Mike Pence said the president was “a man who speaks his mind.”

“I think it’s one of the great strengths that he’s had as president of the United States,” Pence said. “The American people always know where they stand.”

The president followed through on threats to release unaired footage from the interview on Thursday after complaining of “bias, hatred and rudeness on behalf of 60 Minutes and CBS.” Shortly after the interview concluded, Trump took to Twitter to mock Stahl and attempt to smear her for not wearing a mask in the White House. People familiar with the interview told The New York Times she had, in fact, worn a mask up until taping began and only took it off as the cameras rolled.

CBS told HuffPost later that evening Trump’s decision would not deter the network from “providing its full, fair and contextual reporting which presidents have participated in for decades.”

The full interview also added more context about a binder the White House provided to Stahl at the end of the interview.

The show noted White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany gave Stahl a large book that was described as Trump’s healthcare plan. It held “executive orders and congressional initiatives,” but no details about the proposal.

“It was heavy. Filled with executive orders, congressional initiatives, but no comprehensive health plan,” Stahl said. In the footage, she can be heard saying “I can’t lift it.”

Tony

 

Rupert Murdoch’s Own Paper (The Wall Street Journal) Doesn’t Buy the Hunter Biden Email Story!

China’s foreign ministry questioned if the Wall Street Journal was an agent for the US state department. Photo: Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Although the “Hunter Biden – laptop – email” story has not gained much traction other than on Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, has done its due diligence in trying to confirm the story and has decided that there is nothing there.  Here is a review of the events and analysis courtesy of The New York Times.

“By early October, even people inside the White House believed President Trump’s re-election campaign needed a desperate rescue mission. So three men allied with the president gathered at a house in McLean, Va., to launch one.

The host was Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations man close to President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. The guests were a White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, and a former deputy White House counsel, Stefan Passantino, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Herschmann knew the subject matter they were there to discuss. He had represented Mr. Trump during the impeachment trial early this year, and he tried to deflect allegations against the president in part by pointing to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. More recently, he has been working on the White House payroll with a hazy portfolio, listed as “a senior adviser to the president,” and remains close to Jared Kushner.

The three had pinned their hopes for re-electing the president on a fourth guest, a straight-shooting Wall Street Journal White House reporter named Michael Bender. They delivered the goods to him there: a cache of emails detailing Hunter Biden’s business activities, and, on speaker phone, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s named Tony Bobulinski. Mr. Bobulinski was willing to go on the record in The Journal with an explosive claim: that Joe Biden, the former vice president, had been aware of, and profited from, his son’s activities. The Trump team left believing that The Journal would blow the thing open and their excitement was conveyed to the president.

The Journal had seemed to be the perfect outlet for a story the Trump advisers believed could sink Mr. Biden’s candidacy. Its small-c conservatism in reporting means the work of its news pages carries credibility across the industry. And its readership leans further right than other big news outlets. Its Washington bureau chief, Paul Beckett, recently remarked at a virtual gathering of Journal reporters and editors that while he knows that the paper often delivers unwelcome news to the many Trump supporters who read it, The Journal should protect its unique position of being trusted across the political spectrum, two people familiar with the remarks said.

As the Trump team waited with excited anticipation for a Journal exposé, the newspaper did its due diligence: Mr. Bender and Mr. Beckett handed the story off to a well-regarded China correspondent, James Areddy, and a Capitol Hill reporter who had followed the Hunter Biden story, Andrew Duehren. Mr. Areddy interviewed Mr. Bobulinski. They began drafting an article.

Then things got messy. Without warning his allies, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now a lawyer for President Trump, burst onto the scene with the tabloid version of the McLean crew’s carefully laid plot. Mr. Giuliani delivered a cache of documents of questionable provenance — but containing some of the same emails — to The New York Post, a sister publication to The Journal in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Mr. Giuliani had been working with the former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who also began leaking some of the emails to favored right-wing outlets. Mr. Giuliani’s complicated claim that the emails came from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned, and his refusal to let some reporters examine the laptop, cast a pall over the story — as did The Post’s reporting, which alleged but could not prove that Joe Biden had been involved in his son’s activities.

While the Trump team was clearly jumpy, editors in The Journal’s Washington bureau were wrestling with a central question: Could the documents, or Mr. Bobulinski, prove that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s lobbying? Or was this yet another story of the younger Mr. Biden trading on his family’s name — a perfectly good theme, but not a new one or one that needed urgently to be revealed before the election.

Mr. Trump and his allies expected the Journal story to appear Monday, Oct. 19, according to Mr. Bannon. That would be late in the campaign, but not too late — and could shape that week’s news cycle heading into the crucial final debate last Thursday. An “important piece” in The Journal would be coming soon, Mr. Trump told aides on a conference call that day.

His comment was not appreciated inside The Journal.

“The editors didn’t like Trump’s insinuation that we were being teed up to do this hit job,” a Journal reporter who wasn’t directly involved in the story told me. But the reporters continued to work on the draft as the Thursday debate approached, indifferent to the White House’s frantic timeline.

Finally, Mr. Bobulinski got tired of waiting.

“He got spooked about whether they were going to do it or not,” Mr. Bannon said.

At 7:35 Wednesday evening, Mr. Bobulinski emailed an on-the-record, 684-word statement making his case to a range of news outlets. Breitbart News published it in full. He appeared the next day in Nashville to attend the debate as Mr. Trump’s surprise guest, and less than two hours before the debate was to begin, he read a six-minute statement to the press, detailing his allegations that the former vice president had involvement in his son’s business dealings.

When Mr. Trump stepped on stage, the president acted as though the details of the emails and the allegations were common knowledge. “You’re the big man, I think. I don’t know, maybe you’re not,” he told Mr. Biden at some point, a reference to an ambiguous sentence from the documents.

As the debate ended, The Wall Street Journal published a brief item, just the stub of Mr. Areddy and Mr. Duehren’s reporting. The core of it was that Mr. Bobulinski had failed to prove the central claim. “Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden,” The Journal reported.

Asked about The Journal’s handling of the story, the editor in chief, Matt Murray, said the paper did not discuss its newsgathering. “Our rigorous and trusted journalism speaks for itself,” Mr. Murray said in an emailed statement.”

Tony

Coronavirus Pandemic Hitting Rural Areas Very Hard!

Dear Commons Community,

Most of the worst outbreaks in the United States right now are in rural places in the Midwest and Western Mountain regions. Where earlier peaks saw virus cases concentrated mainly in cities and suburbs, the current surge is the most geographically dispersed yet, and it is hitting hard remote counties that often lack a hospital or other critical health care resources. Since late summer, per capita case and death rates in rural areas have outpaced those in metropolitan areas.  As reported in the New York Times.

“The total number of coronavirus cases and deaths in rural places remains smaller than those in cities because of the comparatively low population in rural areas. But the rural share of the virus burden has grown over time.

Now, about one in four deaths from the virus is recorded in a rural county. That stands in contrast to March and April, when almost every death was in a metropolitan area, as the virus tore through the Northeast, after early clusters in the Seattle area and populous parts of California.

These maps show the case rates in rural areas at different points of the national outbreak:

During the summer surge, rural outbreaks occurred more often than they had in the spring, but reported cases per million remained higher in cities and their suburbs than in rural counties.

It was not until August, when the outbreak was receding from Sun Belt cities like Houston, Miami and Phoenix that per capita rates of cases and deaths in rural areas surpassed those in metropolitan areas.

Now, with the national case count and hospitalization rates approaching a third peak, none of the country’s biggest hotspots are in a large city. Almost all the counties with the largest outbreaks have populations under 50,000, and most have populations under 10,000. Nearly all are in the Midwest or the Mountain West.

Though the outbreak’s geographic spread is expanding, many of the same kinds of places remain at risk for clusters of infections. In Norton County, Kan., the hardest-hit county in the country relative to its population, all 62 residents of one nursing home have been infected with the virus, and 10 have died. A state prison in the county also has an outbreak.”

We hope the virus passes through these areas swiftly.

Tony

Maureen Dowd: Trump is a Sociopath Who Has Turned Himself into a Public Health Menace!

Is Donald Trump a Sociopath? | The Tyee

Trump the Sociopath

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column today takes aim at Donald Trump and reviews his fumblings this week including the presidential debate and his CBS 60 Minutes interview.  She also labels him a “public health menace” for spreading misinformation and denigrating medical experts.   This past week saw surges in the number of coronavirus cases and the death toll surpassing 220,000.

In comparing him to Joe Biden, she says Biden is “an empath” while Trump is a “sociopath.”

She concludes: 

“Trump is clearly stunted. His father encouraged his opportunism and cynicism: Do what you need to do to grab whatever you want. And never do anything that is not in your own self-interest. That’s only for suckers and losers.

“Normal life, that’s all we want,” Trump said at the Florida rally.

But his only normal is chaos.”

Below is her entire column.  Read it and hope for the best on Election Day.

Tony

————————————————————————————-

 

King Kong Trump, Losing His Grip

A steaming mad president is running out of steam.

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist

Oct. 24, 2020

WASHINGTON — During the Barack Obama comet streak in 2008, a lot of Americans were electrified by the idea of leaping into modernity with a brainy, young, Black cool cat.

Now a lot of Americans seem resigned yet relieved to step back in time with a sentimental old-school Irish pol who was born the year Bing Crosby topped the charts with “White Christmas.”

Back to a time when the president did not rubbish people like an insult comic. Back to a time when the president did not peddle his own lethal reality. Back to a time when the president cared about the whole country, not just the part that voted for him. Back to a time when the president didn’t dismiss science, treat the Justice Department like his personal legal defense firm, besmirch the intelligence community, and denigrate the F.B.I. for not doing his bidding. Back to a time when the president behaved like an adult, not a delinquent.

You can only let King Kong, as Don McGahn, Trump’s first White House counsel, dubbed his former boss, smash up the metropolis for so long.

Donald Trump does have a gift for symmetry, though, you must admit.

He began his presidency with an epic tantrum about pictures showing that his Inaugural crowd could not compare with Obama’s.

And now he could be ending his presidency with another epic tantrum about crowd size. After Lesley Stahl trolled him during a “60 Minutes” taping, saying, “You used to have bigger rallies,” you could almost see steam pouring out of the president’s ears. He stormed out of the interview a short while later.

He may be finishing right where he started, focused on himself.

Whatever Joe Biden’s shortcomings, he is genuine when he says he will make his presidency about helping others.

As the former vice president vowed in a speech in Wilmington, Del., on Friday, “I’ll listen to the American people, no matter what their politics.”

Biden’s appeal comes from his own struggles. He was a working-class kid who stuttered. He was an adult who suffered terrible losses. He was not coddled by a rich father who was always there to bail him out of a jam. Biden is an empath, Trump a sociopath.

Somehow Trump grew aggrieved buoyed by family money in a Fifth Avenue penthouse, while Biden remained optimistic despite the fates throwing down one lightning bolt after another.

“Biden feels others’ pain,’’ said the Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio. “Trump doesn’t even feel his own.”

D’Antonio pointed out that Trump’s more modulated debate performance was disturbing, in that it proved “that being horrible has been a choice all along.”

“He had the capacity to be normal,” D’Antonio said. “He just prefers being the bad boy, the out-of-control deviant member of society who says the things that no one else will say. He’s just performing. He needs the adoration of the mob more than he needs the acceptance of normal people.’’

Trump would rather be bitchy than boring. He loves being a gaper’s delight. That’s why that long-yearned-for pivot never came.

Biden’s debate performance wasn’t scintillating. He let some balls get past him. He did not word his comment about transitioning from oil dependence artfully. But he checked the boxes he needed to check and he successfully presented himself as the anti-venom to Trump’s venomous attempts to divide the country for personal gain.

Trump calls Biden gloomy but he’s the one threatening the apocalypse if he loses — low-income hordes overrunning pristine suburbs, scary immigrants streaming north, a stock market crash and a cadaverous New York City.

“Wave bye-bye to your 401(k), cause it’s going down the tubes,’’ he said at a rally Friday in The Villages in Florida, warning that Biden’s climate aims might somehow deprive Floridians of air-conditioning.

Isolated in his shrink-wrap, Fox-speak bubble in the debate, he ignored the fact that he has already turned America into a sort of dystopia by bungling and dissimulating on the virus.

He didn’t even seem to know how he sounded when he bragged that undocumented immigrant children separated from their parents and held in cages are being “so well taken care of.”

When asked about families living under the polluted clouds of oil refineries and chemical plants — made worse by his administration’s incessant rollback of regulations — the president intoned that, actually, all that smog is a small price to pay because the families “are employed heavily and they are making a lot of money.”

Trump began the pandemic blowing off masks and, even as we enter a new fall surge and even after the president and his family contracted the virus, he was still mocking a White House reporter’s mask on Friday. It’s unfathomable that the president of the United States would turn himself into a public health menace. But he has.

Trump’s problem is that he keeps wowing the same people. And that base just isn’t large enough.

“Republicans were relieved that he was eating with a knife and fork,’’ David Axelrod cracked about the debate. “But it was still the same meal.’’

Trump is clearly stunted. His father encouraged his opportunism and cynicism: Do what you need to do to grab whatever you want. And never do anything that is not in your own self-interest. That’s only for suckers and losers.

“Normal life, that’s all we want,” Trump said at the Florida rally.

But his only normal is chaos.

 

Former Democratic Senator  Harry Reid Thinks Biden Should End Senate Filibuster After 3 Weeks!

Harry Reid happy to talk UFOs and science, not 'little green men' - Las  Vegas Sun Newspaper

Harry Reid

Dear Commons Community,

Former US Senate leader Harry Reid said yesterday that if Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, Joe Biden should take “no more than three weeks” to test bipartisanship before ending the filibuster so Democrats can overcome what they call Republican obstruction and pass bills.

The retired Nevada Democrat told The Associated Press in an interview that he understands Biden wants to work with Republicans, as the former vice president and Delaware senator has in the past. But Reid said there is just too much that needs to be done in the country to wait around trying to reach agreements under the decades-old Senate practice of requiring 60 votes to advance legislation.  As reported by the AP.

“Biden — who wants always to get along with people — I understand that,” Reid said by telephone from Nevada.

“We should give the Republicans a little bit of time, to see if they’re going to work with him,” he said. “But the time’s going to come when he’s going to have to move in and get rid of the filibuster.”

Asked how long Biden should wait it out before changing the rules, Reid said: “No more than three weeks.”

The 80-year-old Reid, who retired in 2017, has been among the most high-level political voices in favor of ending the 60-vote threshold for legislation. Critics of the filibuster argue it has outlived its purpose in the partisan era and only serves to grind business to a halt.

From afar, the onetime majority leader has made his views known before but rarely has he suggested a deadline for action. It is both a warning sign and road map for senators contemplating a 2021 agenda with a potentially new power dynamic in Washington after the election.

The 100-member Senate, where Republicans now hold a 53-47 edge, is expected to remain narrowly divided after the Nov. 3 election, regardless of which party wins control, making the 60-vote tally tough to reach.

Reid said if Biden thinks he can cut bipartisan deals with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the GOP leader, as they did in earlier years, “more power to him.”

But Reid warned that he knows McConnell better than any other Democratic and “Joe ought to be very careful.”

This is well-traveled terrain for the long-serving former senator, who helped sparked today’s procedural battles by partially ending the filibuster when Democrats had the majority. The rules change that Reid engineered allowed Democrats to confirm President Barack Obama’s administrative and most federal judicial nominees despite Republicans roadblocks.

When Republicans took control, McConnell pushed it to the next level with President Donald Trump, eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court picks — a daring move that stunned Washington. McConnell’s critics say he is breaking the Senate, but Trump has been able to seat two Supreme Court justices on majority-only votes, and the Senate is poised to confirm a third, Amy Coney Barrett, on Monday.

The filibuster has been in place since the early 20th century, but is absent from the Constitution. Its supporters say it keeps the Senate from becoming just another version of the House, with majority rule. The higher vote threshold forces the parties to slow down and find bipartisan compromise.

But critics say the filibuster has become a recipe for legislative paralysis, empowering a minority of senators to thwart popular public opinion. They note it has been used to stall some of the nation’s most landmark laws, notably civil rights legislation.

Obama has since joined the effort for change. During the funeral this year for Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights leader, Obama announced his support for ending the filibuster, calling it a Jim Crow-era relic that was used to stall voting advances for Black people.

“That’s true,” said Reid, who was majority leader during Obama’s first term and helped pass the Affordable Care Act and other landmark legislation. “Once he did that, of course I let him know I appreciated it.”

Reid’s influence continues to be felt across Democratic political landscape, in ways large and small. He talks often to Biden and regularly keeps in touch with others, including Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York— and even some Republicans.

Reid suggests that Democrats are unwilling to sit by and allow Republicans to potentially block their agenda.

“We want to get something done,” he said, mentioning climate change and renewable energy investment as an example. “There’s so much more to do and we can’t do it if it takes 60 votes to get it done.”

I think this is good advice but Democrats still have the formidable task of winning the presidency and the Senate on Election Day.

Tony

Lincoln Project Billboards in Times Square Skewer Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner!

A new billboard in Times Square by The Lincoln Project depicts Ivanka Trump presenting the number of New Yorkers and American

Dear Commons Community,

The conservative group, The Lincoln Project is paying for billboards erected in Times Square  featuring Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.  

One billboard shows Ivanka smiling and gesturing to numbers showing 33,000 New Yorkers have died from COVID-19 along with 220,000 Americans.  Kushner, who is a senior adviser to the president, is depicted on an adjacent billboard with body bags and is quoted as saying New Yorkers “are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”

Kushner and Trump have threatened to sue if the billboards aren’t taken down.

In response, The Lincoln Project issued a tweet  saying:

“Nuts!”

“Jared and Ivanka have always been entitled, out-of-touch bullies who have never given the slightest indication they have any regard for the American people,” the group tweeted. “We plan on showing them the same level of respect.”

“The level of indignant outrage Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have shown towards The Lincoln Project for exposing their indifference for the more than 223,000 people who have lost their lives due to their reckless mismanagement of COVID-19 is comical.” 

Tony

Kristen Welker:  Clear Winner of 2nd Presidential Debate

Newsers Agree: The Clear Winner of Thursday's Presidential Debate Was Kristen  Welker | TVNewser

Kristen Welker

Dear Commons Community,

NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker who was in charge of moderating Thursday’s second and final presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, did an exceptional job keeping the exchanges between the candidates civil, calm, and professional.  Donald Trump had repeatedly trashed Welker in the week leading up to the debate as “extraordinarily unfair” and “a radical left Democrat, or whatever” but showed restraint throughout the evening even though he grimaced repeatedly at Joe Biden’s responses.

Ms. Welker, the first Black woman since 1992 to moderate a presidential debate on her own, received wide praise.  She began with a plea for civility. “Please,” Kristen Welker instructed the men standing before her, “speak one at a time.” She asked tough, substantive questions while ensuring that the debate moved at a productive pace. Many colleagues applauded her for being respectful, but not backing down from fact-checking both candidates on big issues.

Chris Wallace, the moderator for the first presidential debate that went off the rials,  told The New York Times on Thursday evening, “I’m jealous.” 

Here are further comments on the debate courtesy of the Huffington Post.

“Welker touched on important topics including Trump’s handling of COVID-19, the ensuing economic crisis, immigration policies and the Black Lives Matter movement.

“As of tonight, more than 12 million people are out of work and as of tonight, 8 million more Americans are born into poverty and more families are getting hungry every day. Those hit hardest are women and people of color,” Welker said before asking Trump a question about the coronavirus. “They see Washington fighting over a relief bill. Mr. President, why haven’t you been able to get them help they need?”

When Trump blamed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for not approving it, Welker quickly responded: “But you’re the president.” 

Welker’s showing was in stark contrast to the first and only other presidential debate, which CNN’s Jake Tapper described as “a hot mess inside a dumpster fire” because the two candidates repeatedly yelled and spoke over one another. It was so bad that the Commission on Presidential Debates implemented the ability to mute candidates’ microphones when their speaking time ran out in subsequent debates.

On Thursday, producers used the mute button to cut Trump’s mic twice throughout the 90-minute debate.  

Welker did not let up on Biden either, asking him tough questions about how he plans to revive the economy after supporting shutdowns to fight the spread of COVID-19.  

“You said you would support new shutdowns if scientists recommended it. What do you say to Americans who are fearful that the cost of shutdowns, the impact on the economy, the higher rates of hunger, depression, domestic and substance abuse, outweighs the risk of exposure to the virus?” Welker asked Biden. 

Another highlight came when Welker broached the topic of immigration reform. She asked Trump about his “zero tolerance” border policy, which separated thousands of migrant children from their families. Although Trump has since reversed the policy, hundreds of migrant children are still separated from their parents.

“So how will these families ever be reunited?” Welker asked the president. 

Trump leaned on racist stereotypes ― claiming migrant children are brought to the U.S. by “coyotes” and “cartels” ― and attempted to pivot, but Welker was not having it. “But how will you reunite these kids with their families, Mr. President?” she repeated, only to ask the question one more time in response to Trump’s retort. 

“Kristen, I will say this. They went down, with reporters and everything, and they are so well taken care of. They are in facilities that were so clean,” Trump said of the migrant children being held in detention centers. (Reports at the time stated that many children were living in “appalling” conditions; some were denied medical care and were not given access to basic necessities like toothbrushes and soap.) 

Before questioning Biden’s decisions related to former President Barack Obama’s murky immigration policies, Welker reminded Trump yet again that some of the migrant children still “have not been reunited with their families.”

Welker also pushed both candidates on the topic of race in America, asking Trump and Biden if they understand the fear that people of color — especially parents of Black and brown children — feel regarding racism and police brutality. She questioned both candidates’ records on policing and ensured that each was able to respond to the other’s accusations without too much crosstalk. 

At one point, Welker asked Trump to explain some of the ways he has responded to the Black Lives Matter movement. “You’ve shared a video of a man chanting ‘white power’ to millions of your supporters, and you have said that Black professional athletes exercising their First Amendment rights should be fired,” Welker said. “What do you say to Americans who say that kind of language from a president is contributing to a climate of hate and racial strife?”

Trump responded that he has “great relationships with all people” and told Welker, a Black and Native American woman, that he is “the least racist person in this room.” Instead of bristling at Trump’s statement, Welker continued to push the president on his divisive rhetoric. 

Many viewers applauded Welker for being level-headed, tough and fair.

“Kristen Welker is putting on a master class in how to moderate a presidential debate,” tweeted Philip Rucker, White House bureau chief for The Washington Post. 

Activist Charlotte Clymer agreed, tweeting: “The clear winner of this debate is Kristen Welker.”

Biden commended Welker on her performance, telling reporters after the debate he “thought the moderator did a great job.” Even Trump complimented the NBC News correspondent, telling Welker at one point that he “very much” respected the way she was handling the debate.”\

Congratulations, Ms. Welker!

Tony 

Andrew Cuomo Blasts Donald Trump: “New York has a lower infection rate than the White House”

Andrew Cuomo Had the Worst Coronavirus Response in the Country. Why Should  Anyone Read His Book? | The Heritage Foundation

Dear Commons Community,

Governor Andrew Cuomo  shot back at Donald Trump’s insult of New York’s response to the coronavirus during the presidential debate.

On The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,  Cuomo blisterd Trump who slammed New York’s handling of the coronavirus.  New York, especially New York City, was hit hard at the outset of the pandemic, but now has one of the lowest infection rates in the country. Cuomo responded to Trump’s attack by comparing this to the recent outbreak at the White House.

“Trump hates New York, feelings are probably mutual. We did the exact opposite that he has done on this COVID situation. He’s lied to the nation about it, and we did the exact opposite,” Cuomo said, later adding, “We acknowledged it, we were smart about it, we are united, we worked together and we brought the rate down now to one of the lowest rates in the United States of America. New York has a lower infection rate than the White House, Stephen.”

While infection rates in New York decrease, rates across much of the country are steadily increasing. Cuomo believes Trump is bothered by the contrast, as Trump has seemingly enjoyed taking shots at Cuomo’s handling of the coronavirus for months.

“This state turned everything around. That’s what bothers him about New York, it shows him what this country could have done. How did we go from the highest rate in the United States to one of the lowest infection rates in the United States after what New York went through, and why isn’t that the story in every state?” Cuomo asked. “It’s an historic government blunder, and New York represents the opposite to him, and that’s why it’s galling.”

And when Colbert asked why Trump chose to continually downplay the threat of the coronavirus, as he admitted to doing on tape, Cuomo had an interesting answer.

“Because a skunk doesn’t stop smelling,” Cuomo said, “and a skunk can’t stop smelling.”

As a life-long residents of New York, my wife and I are extremely happy that we have had Cuomo leading us through this pandemic.  We have followed his every direction.

Tony

Video: Presidential Debate Was a Tie – Here are 3 Takeaways!

Dear Commons Community,

I thought last night’s debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was a tie.  It was a much more subdued evening than the previous debate that featured non-stop interruptions.  NBC News’ Kristen Welker did a good job of moderating the exchanges. You can watch the full debate in the video above. Here are three takeaways from several media sources.

Trump’s Attempt To Capitalize On Hunter Biden’s Baggage Backfired

Going into the debate, conservative news outlets reported on emails allegedly belonging to Biden’s son Hunter that show the young man discussing business proposals for shady companies in Ukraine and China. Joe Biden’s critics have seized on some of the language in those communications to argue that Hunter cut his father in on the money he was making from his work for companies that had a stake in Obama administration policies while Biden was serving as vice president.

But Trump, perhaps recognizing that there is no evidence that Biden profited from his son’s business ventures, stepped carefully when broaching the matter.

“They even have a statement that ‘we have to give 10% to the big man,’” Trump said, referring to words in unverified emails that conservatives claim refer to Biden. “You’re the ‘big man,’ I think. I don’t know ― maybe not ― but you’re the ‘big man.’”

Biden delivered an impassioned denial of any suggestion that he had profited from ties to foreign companies or governments. “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life,” he said.

Biden then pivoted to attacking Trump for having a bank account in China, where tax records obtained by The New York Times show he has paid more in taxes than in the United States. The move shifted the conversation to uncomfortable terrain for Trump as Biden pressed him to prove that he has no compromising financial ties in foreign nations by releasing his tax returns.

“I’m going to release them as soon as we can,” Trump said, once again claiming, as he did in the 2016 campaign, that an audit of the returns prevented him from disclosing the records.

“He’s been saying this for four years,” Biden responded. “Show us. Just show us. Stop playing around.”

Trump Still Has No Answers On Health Care

When Welker asked Trump to explain his contingency plan for insuring Americans who could lose their health care coverage if the Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration in its effort to overturn the Affordable Care Act, Trump had no real answers.

Instead, Trump once again played up his success in undoing one of the law’s less popular features: the individual mandate requiring all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. 

“It no longer is Obamacare because, without the individual mandate, it’s much different,” Trump said.

The rules protecting people with “preexisting conditions will always stay,” he added.

In fact, the individual mandate was not that central a feature of the law.

Despite Trump’s best efforts, more fundamental components of the law persist, including new rules requiring insurance companies to cover people with preexisting medical conditions and charge them the same rates as everyone else; a vastly expanded Medicaid program for Americans living at or near the federal poverty level; and the creation of an insurance marketplace where low- and moderate-income individuals can buy insurance at subsidized rates.

In 2017, Trump tried to repeal the ACA legislatively and replace it with a bill that deregulated insurance rules and eliminated federal funding for the ACA’s expanded coverage. Those provisions are likewise endangered by the Trump administration’s lawsuit before the Supreme Court.

To replace these broadly popular elements of Obamacare, Trump again promised something vague that he has had four years to elaborate on but has never done: “a brand new, beautiful health care.”

Trump Had A Point About Biden’s Record On Immigration And Criminal Justice Reform

Biden has promised that passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants would be a priority during his first 100 days in office. He is also planning to reform the criminal justice system to lessen incarceration, particularly in the Black and Latino communities for whom it is disproportionately onerous. 

Both Welker and Trump pressed Biden on why, if immigration reform is so important to him, he and then-President Barack Obama had not succeeded in passing it.  

“It took too long to get it right,” Biden conceded. “I’ll be president of the United States ― not vice president of the United States.”

Later, Trump boasted about his passage of the First Step Act, a bipartisan bill that expands job training in prisons and gives judges greater discretion in sentencing. He attacked Biden for his passage of the 1994 crime bill, which progressive critics blame for an explosion in prison and jail populations. 

“He’s been in government 47 years,” Trump said. “He never did a thing ― except in 1994, when he did such harm to the Black community.”

Biden noted that Obama signed a law reducing the disparity in punishments for possession of powder cocaine and crack, which had resulted in Black Americans facing harsher penalties for possession and trafficking of a similar drug in a different form. 

He also reminded viewers of how Trump has used his platform to foment racist bloodlust against people of color, including the wrongfully accused Central Park Five.

But when Trump pressed Biden on why he and Obama had not passed some of the additional reforms he was now seeking to implement as president, Biden had a sheepish response.

“We had a Republican Congress,” he said. (In fact, in Obama’s first two years, when criminal justice reform was not a national priority on the level that it is now, Democrats controlled Congress.)

“You’ve got to talk them into it, Joe,” Trump said. “Like I did with criminal justice reform ― I had to talk Democrats into it.”

Onto the election!

Tony