Dear Commons Community,

The Vice Presidential Debate last night (see video above for highlights courtesy of CNBC) was a much more civilized affair than the Presidential Debate of two weeks ago.  Kamala Harris and Mike Pence showed much more decorum and respect for the event than President Trump did which allowed for less interfering and hearing more about what the two parties had to say.  Susan Page, the debate moderator, controlled the exchanges much better than did Chris Wallace, the Presidential Debate Moderator.  However, Page never followed up any of her questions when the speakers decided to avoid answering them which was often. This was also more of a debate about policy and less about personalities.

I thought Harris landed a couple of blows especially when asked about taking a vaccine for coronavirus and what the Trump Administration knew back in January about its dangers as per Bob Woodward’s book, Rage.   Later on when asked if she would take a vaccine, she said that “..if Anthony Fauci recommended it, I would be the first on line for it.  If only Donald Trump recommended it, I wouldn’t take it.”  She also was strong in criticizing Trump’s comments about our men and women in the military as well as those about white supremacy.  Pence was strong in discussing the economy and in hammering away at Biden’s plan to pack the US Supreme Court.   Harris did not reply to the latter.

Below is a recap of key takeaways courtesy of the New York Times and other media.

I rated the debate a tie.

Tony

—————————————————————-

Kamala kept the focus on the pandemic

As the most important topic in the country, COVID-19 was, predictably, the first question of the night: What would a Biden-Harris administration do to combat the pandemic that a Trump-Pence administration wouldn’t? Just as predictably, Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, answered the way she’s always said she would: by prosecuting the case against Trump.

“The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” Harris said. “Here are the facts: 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months. Over 7 million people who have contracted this disease. One in five businesses closed.”

Citing the revelatory recordings from the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, Harris went on to accuse Trump and Pence of knowing “on Jan. 28” that the virus is “lethal in consequence, that it is airborne, that it will affect young people,” but “cover[ing] it up” because they wanted Americans to remain “calm.”

“Can you imagine if you knew on Jan. 28 what they knew … what you would have done to prepare?” Harris asked the audience. “How calm were you when you were panicked about where you were going to get your next roll of toilet paper? How calm were you when your kids were sent home from school, and you didn’t know when they would go back? How calm were you when your children couldn’t see your parents because you were afraid they could kill them?”

During the Democratic primary, Harris was more focused on manufacturing memorable moments than hammering home a message. Remember, she initially captured the national spotlight when her barbed interrogations of Trump’s Cabinet appointees were cut into viral videos highlighting her prosecutorial prowess — and that’s largely how she’s conducted herself on the trail (just as when she launched into Biden on busing).

But Wednesday night was different. Again and again, Harris skillfully dodged questions that it wasn’t in Joe Biden’s best interest to answer: on China, on presidential disability, on expanding the size of the Supreme Court. (Pence did the same when asked if he’d want Indiana to outlaw all abortions.) Instead, whenever the moderator, Susan Page of USA Today, tried to ask about other topics, Harris always pivoted back to the pandemic — and the possible fallout of Trump’s efforts to axe the Affordable Care Act, including the end of protections for pre-existing conditions.

Her mission was clear: Remind voters (as she repeated at least a half dozen times) that “over 210,000” Americans have died from COVID-19. Her message was even clearer: Trump and Pence had their chance to keep you safe — and they failed.

Pence tried to smooth Trump’s rough edges

Pence probably had the more challenging goal on Wednesday: To try to make his divisive boss, who is disapproved of by a majority of Americans and trailing by double digits in the latest election polls, palatable to the remaining persuadable voters who could still tip the election to the Republican ticket.

As usual, the mild-mannered Hoosier devoted himself to the task at hand with all the aw-shucks moxie he could muster, and his smooth affect came in handy as he methodically attempted to sand the rough edges off every controversial aspect of Trump’s record.

The New York Times report that Trump only paid $750 in federal income taxes during his first year as president? Pence countered that it was simply a sign that, as a businessman, Trump had dedicated his life to creating “tens of thousands of American jobs.”

That maskless Rose Garden announcement ceremony for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, which has since been tied to a growing cluster of COVID-19 cases in and around the White House? Just another example of how “President Trump and I trust the American people to make choices in the best interest of their health.”

Trump’s reluctance to condemn white supremacists during the first presidential debate? Nothing but more evidence of how “the media” chooses to “selectively edit” a president who “respects and cherishes all of the American people.”

Trump seemed happy with Pence’s performance. “Mike Pence is doing GREAT!” he tweeted at one point. “Mike Pence WON BIG!” he added later. And it’s not hard to see why: The vice president did his level best to reframe the abnormalities of Trump’s presidency in the ho-hum terms and tone of everyday American politics, while also arguing that Biden would be worse.

But the question now is whether Pence’s efforts will make any difference. Nothing this year has discernibly changed the public’s opinion of Trump — not impeachment, not a racial reckoning in the streets, not even a global pandemic. Instead, those events seem to have solidified the president’s high disapproval rating and low standing in the polls.

It’s unlikely that one measured debate performance by his running mate will shift many votes.

Harris didn’t tolerate Pence’s interruptions 

During last week’s presidential debate, Trump was responsible for more than three-quarters of the interruptions: 71, compared with Biden’s 22.

The event was an unintelligible, chaotic mess because of it.

Harris, however, seemed to arrive in Salt Lake City on Wednesday with a plan: to jump down Pence’s throat the second he made so much as a peep during her turn to talk.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” the senator said, when Pence tried to contradict her remarks on COVID-19. “I’m speaking.”

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said when he tried to interject as she was discussing the Supreme Court. “I’m speaking.”

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said when he accused her of lying about the economy.

“It would be important if you said the truth,” Pence snapped.

“If you don’t mind letting me finish,” Harris snapped back, “we can then have a conversation, OK?’

Ultimately, Pence interrupted Harris 10 times — twice as much as she interrupted him, according to CBS News. But the debate never spun out of control, in part because Harris was so swift to call Pence out.

The tactic also had another, subtler effect. One of the most interesting questions heading into the debate was how Harris’s gender and race — she’s the first woman of color on a major-party presidential ticket — would influence the dynamic onstage. Would viewers stereotype her as “an angry black woman” if she was too assertive? According to Axios, Harris’s advisers “studied research about the different ways men and women are judged in public speaking.” They apparently concluded that Harris would look strong if she stuck up for herself — even as she took care to avoid any big rhetorical risks or made-for-TV moments.

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna

Dear Commons Community,

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was jointly awarded this morning to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their 2012 work on the development of Crispr-Cas9, a method for genome editing. The announcement marks the first time a science Nobel has been awarded to two women.

Dr. Charpentier, who is French, is the director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin. Dr. Doudna  is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. They are the third and fourth women to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the 21st century, out of more than 50 recipients.

“This year’s prize is about rewriting the code of life,” Goran K. Hansson, the secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said as he announced the names of the laureates.

Dr. Charpentier and Dr. Doudna, only the sixth and seventh women to receive the chemistry prize, pioneered early work on Crispr-Cas9, a kind of genetic scissors that allows researchers to alter the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision. Since then, it has been used in numerous scientific applications, from genetically modifying crops to developing cures-in-progress for conditions like sickle cell disease and hereditary blindness.

Fast, efficient and economic, Crispr “solves problems in every field of biology,” said Angela Zhou, an information scientist at the CAS at the American Chemical Society.

“This technology has utterly transformed the way we do research in basic science,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “I am thrilled to see Crispr-Cas getting the recognition we have all been waiting for, and seeing two women being recognized as Nobel Laureates.”

Claes Gustafsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said, “There is enormous power in this genetic tool, which affects us all.”

Congratulations to the winners!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, Dr. Anthony Fauci contradicted President Donald Trump’s false claim that the coronavirus was only as deadly as the flu.

People infected with Covid-19 do display “flu-like” symptoms, Fauci said in an interview with NBC News’ Kate Snow. But the damage the coronavirus can do “is very much different from influenza.”

“You don’t get a pandemic that kills a million people and it isn’t even over yet within influenza,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “So it is not correct to say it’s the same as flu. It has some overlapping symptomatology early on. But flu doesn’t do the things to you that Covid-19 can.”

Trump, still infected, was released Monday from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after three days of treatment. He returned to the White House, where he resumed downplaying the dangers of the virus, which has already killed more than 210,000 people in the United States, according to the latest NBC News figures.

“Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu,” Trump tweeted. “Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!”

Trump’s cavalier attitude toward Covid-19 and his boastful tweets about his apparent recovery, coupled with his insistence on taking off his mask for a photo opportunity upon returning, angered coronavirus survivors and those who have lost loved ones.

Asked about Trump’s messaging, Fauci opted not to antagonize the president.

“I have a job to do, and my personally contradicting the president of the United States publicly is not a good thing if I want to get my job done,” Fauci said.

Instead, he reiterated the message he has been repeating for months as the country has been logging 40,000 new Covid-19 cases a day and continues to lead the world with more than 7.5 million confirmed cases.

“There are some things that should be universally practiced, and that is the universal wearing of masks, avoiding crowds, keeping a distance, doing things outdoors more than indoors and washing our hands frequently,” Fauci said. “That doesn’t matter who you are. That’s what you should be doing.”

Pressed by Snow about the “mixed messaging” coming out of the White House, Fauci said: “This is not a trivial disease. People in the United States should realize that it is not a trivial disease.”

While the White House has been pushing for rapid approval of a Covid-19 vaccine, Fauci said he is on the side of the Food and Drug Administration, which released new stricter guidelines.

That having been said, Fauci said that at the moment there are “five candidates” in the third phase of advanced trials involving thousands of people. “It is very likely that we will know by November or December of 2020 that we have a safe and effective vaccine,” he said.

Trump has suggested several times, without providing evidence, that a vaccine could be ready by Election Day.

That is highly unlikely, Fauci countered, yet again.

“It is conceivable that we will know earlier, like in October. I think that is unlikely but not impossible,” Fauci said. “I feel cautiously optimistic, Kate, that we will have a safe and effective vaccine that will be able to be distributed by the end of this year or by the beginning of next year.”

I hope that Fauci is not putting his job in jeopardy by contradicting the President.  As I have said several times on this blog – Dr. Anthony Fauci is the only person in Washington we should believe when it comes to coronavirus.

Tony

Reverend John Jenkins Has Tested Positive for COVID-19

Dear Commons Community,

Notre Dame is back in the spotlight after the school’s president, Reverend John Jenkins, tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a high-profile event at the White House.   Jenkins was pictured without a mask during a White House event at the Rose Garden nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on September 26. Some students of the school, which has instituted coronavirus mitigation protocols and briefly suspended in-person classes after an outbreak, started a petition calling for the president to resign.

More than ten attendees — including the President of the United States Donald Trump and Jenkins — have since tested positive for covid-19, the disease caused by coronavirus. As reported by Yahoo News.

Rev. Jenkins apologized for attending the event and “regretting my error in judgment” and “failing to lead as I should have.”

The situation enraged students at the prestigious university.

“Notre Dame is kind of a good example of like a microcosm of the United States in terms of just people are frustrated at the hypocrisy of the lack of leadership,” Makira Walton, a 21-year-old Notre Dame student, told Yahoo Finance. “It’s obviously a very deadly disease and, and we shouldn’t just use statistics to discount what is a loss of life that is very personal to some people — I think that kind of gets lost in translation.”

Walton, who co-authored the petition calling for Jenkins’ resignation, added that while she was “very, very thankful that nobody has seemed to have had very serious symptoms from this White House outbreak, including Father Jenkins,” the situation was frustrating since the school’s leader was “in direct breach of the University’s COVID-19 procedures, as he was recorded shaking hands with several unmasked individuals and photographed sitting without a mask in close proximity to other attendees.” 

“It’s frustrating,” Patrick Kell-Dutile, one of the authors of the petition for Rev. Jenkins to resign, told Yahoo Finance. He noted the stress of “having gone through the entire process in the late spring … of going home early from last school year, and having to finish the year remotely, and then going through the lockdown when the entire summer, having to take these sort of preventative measures.” 

The political science and Spanish double major, a junior, has been living on campus housing since early August and was supposed to be studying abroad in London this semester.

“The president of the university — who has brought forth these guidelines for us to follow — deciding that maybe they don’t apply to him,” Kelly-Dutile added, “that seems kind of hypocritical.” 

Jenkins penned an op-ed in the New York Times back in May stating that “what we most need now, alongside science, is that kind of courage and the practical wisdom it requires” and adding that in reopening, the school is taking a “courageous” stance “as we face the threat of the virus and seek to continue our mission of education and inquiry.”

Walton, a marketing major with a minor in constitutional studies, stressed that “I honestly don’t even know what he could do other than resign. I don’t know, maybe give up his salary to make sure that like Notre Dame helped, like cleaning staff is like actually compensated fairly for all of the overtime and risk that they’re putting themselves into.” 

Notre Dame recently relaxed some of its rules after a drop in testing positivity rate. As of October 4, only 2 cases had been reported, and the 7-day positivity rate for the school was 0.7%.

Changes include: 

• Students are allowed to eat at designated indoor spaces now, rather than to be confined to their dorm room
• The allowable number of people at “informal gatherings” has increased to 20 (but social distancing is advised) 
• The number of people students can have “two additional residents” in their dorm room provided they are masked, they socially distance themselves, and “leave doors open”

Another student, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons, noted that those who “had hearings for breaking COVID rules … were given amnesty as a result of the behavior of our president.”

Notre Dame did not respond to request for comment about the rumored amnesties.

Jenkins should have known better than to be caught up in the White House ceremony without wearing a mask.

Tony

Students Demonstrating at Metropolitan University – “People before profit,” one protest sign reads.

Credit…Mary Turner for The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an article this morning entitled, “It Really Was Abandonment:  Virus Crisis Grips British Universities”, that reports on the rapid and uncontrolled spread of coronavirus in UK universities.  To date, roughly 90 British universities have reported coronavirus cases. Thousands of students are confined to their halls, some in suites with infected classmates, and many are struggling to get tested. The government, fearful of students seeding outbreaks far from campus, has warned that they may need to quarantine before returning home for Christmas.  As reported.

“Britain had ample warning: The reopening of American colleges weeks earlier reportedly swelled the country’s case count by 3,000 a day and left several students dead. But British universities beckoned students to campus anyway, fueling outbreaks that are seeping into surrounding towns. The infection rate in Manchester is ten times as high as it was in August.

The outbreaks have shone a harsh light on Britain’s decade-long campaign to turn higher education into a ruthless market. By cutting state grants and leaving schools dependent on tuition fees and room rents, the government encouraged them to jam more students onto campuses.

The pandemic threatened to dry out that income stream. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government largely withheld the rescue money it gave to other industries, so universities carried on as normal, whatever the risks.

To academics, the government’s policies reflect not only its erratic and fumbling approach to the coronavirus, but also its longstanding suspicions of universities. Echoing American ideas about the supposed coddling of left-wing students, some Conservative lawmakers in Britain have accused universities of stifling politically incorrect speech, and threatened a crackdown.

“There’s a lot of money being splashed around on other parts of the economy, but the government isn’t offering universities any money,” said Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. “The relevant people in government see universities as antagonists, political antagonists, and people like me as the enemy.”

… Supplied with little more than a single mask each, some first-year students watched their food supplies dwindle and trash and laundry accumulate when coronavirus cases forced their suites into isolation. Lucia Dorado, a freshman, recalled leaving meals and tea at a suitemate’s door, and watching students keep partying in the courtyard.

“It really was abandonment,” Ms. Dorado said of the university. “They put in barely anything to battle this, and it’s come at the expense of our mental and physical health, really.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was divided, one half awarded to Roger Penrose (University of Oxford, UK) “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”, the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel (University of California, Berkeley, USA)and Andrea Ghez (UCLA, USA) “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.”

The three Laureates were given their awards for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole. Roger Penrose showed that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez discovered that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy. A supermassive black hole is the only currently known explanation.

Roger Penrose used ingenious mathematical methods in his proof that black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Einstein did not himself believe that black holes really exist, these super-heavyweight monsters that capture everything that enters them. Nothing can escape, not even light.

In January 1965, ten years after Einstein’s death, Roger Penrose proved that black holes really can form and described them in detail; at their heart, black holes hide a singularity in which all the known laws of nature cease. His groundbreaking article is still regarded as the most important contribution to the general theory of relativity since Einstein.

Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez each lead a group of astronomers that, since the early 1990s, has focused on a region called Sagittarius A* at the centre of our galaxy. The orbits of the brightest stars closest to the middle of the Milky Way have been mapped with increasing precision. The measurements of these two groups agree, with both finding an extremely heavy, invisible object that pulls on the jumble of stars, causing them to rush around at dizzying speeds. Around four million solar masses are packed together in a region no larger than our solar system.

Using the world’s largest telescopes, Genzel and Ghez developed methods to see through the huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust to the centre of the Milky Way. Stretching the limits of technology, they refined new techniques to compensate for distortions caused by the Earth’s atmosphere, building unique instruments and committing themselves to long-term research. Their pioneering work has given us the most convincing evidence yet of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.

“The discoveries of this year’s Laureates have broken new ground in the study of compact and supermassive objects. But these exotic objects still pose many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research. Not only questions about their inner structure, but also questions about how to test our theory of gravity under the extreme conditions in the immediate vicinity of a black hole”, says David Haviland, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

 Congratulations to the winners!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump’s decided to use his return home (see video above) from the hospital to the White House as a photo-op of him removing his mask. His continued illness is putting new focus on the people around him who could be further exposed if he doesn’t abide by strict isolation protocols.

Throughout the pandemic, White House custodians, ushers, kitchen staff and members of the U.S. Secret Service have continued to show up for work in what is now a coronavirus hot spot, with more than a dozen known cases this week alone.

Trump, still contagious, has made clear that he has little intention of abiding by best containment practices.

As he arrived back at the White House on Monday evening, the president defiantly removed his face mask and stopped to pose on a balcony within feet of a White House photographer. He was seen inside moments later, surrounded by numerous people as he taped a video message urging Americans not to fear a virus that has killed more than 210,000 in the U.S. and 1 million worldwide.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“White House spokesman Judd Deere said the White House was “taking every precaution necessary” to protect not just the first family but “every staff member working on the complex” consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and best practices. He added that physical access to the president would be significantly limited and appropriate protective gear worn by those near him.

Nonetheless, the mood within the White House remains somber, with staff fearful they may have been exposed to the virus. As they confront a new reality — a worksite that once seemed like a bubble of safety is anything but — they also have been engaged in finger-pointing over conflicting reports released about the president’s health as well as a lack of information provided internally.

Many have learned about positive tests from media reports and several were exposed, without their knowledge, to people the White House already knew could be contagious.

Indeed, it took until late Sunday night, nearly three full days after Trump’s diagnosis, for the White House to send a staff-wide note in response. Even then, it did not acknowledge the outbreak.

“As a reminder,” read the letter from the White House Management Office, “if you are experiencing any symptoms … please stay home and do not come to work.” Staff who develop symptoms were advised to “go home immediately” and contact their doctors rather than the White House Medical Unit.

Even when Trump was at the hospital, his staff was not immune to risk.

Trump had aides there recording videos and taking photographs of him. On Sunday evening, he took a surprise drive around the hospital to wave to supporters from the window of an SUV. The Secret Service agents in the car with him were dressed in personal protective equipment.

“Appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the president and all those supporting it, including PPE,” Deere said.

Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley dismissed media concern about the agents’ safety as “absolutely stupid and foolish.”

“How do they think he’s going to leave? Is someone gonna toss him the keys to a Buick and let him drive home by himself? They’re always around him because that’s their job,” Gidley said on Fox News.

But agents told a very different story.

Several who spoke with The Associated Press expressed concern over the cavalier attitude the White House has taken when it comes to masks and distancing. Colleagues, they said, are angry, but feel there’s little they can do.

One, speaking after White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tested positive on Monday, said it felt like he and some of his colleagues had been spared only by a measure of good luck.

Others noted the difference between facing outside threats they have trained for — a gun, a bomb or a biohazard — and being put at additional risk because of behavior they characterized as reckless at times. The agents spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their jobs.

The Secret Service has refused to disclose how many of its employees have tested positive or have had to quarantine, citing privacy and security. But in the midst of the election, thousands of agents are on duty and anyone who tests positive can easily be subbed out, officials have said.

Secret Service spokeswoman Julia McMurray said the agency takes “every precaution to keep our protectees, employees and families, and the general public, safe and healthy.”

Trump has joined first lady Melania Trump, who also tested positive, in the residential area of the White House. It is typically served by a staff of roughly 100 people, including housekeepers, cooks, florists, groundskeepers and five or six butlers — who interact most closely with the president, said Kate Andersen Brower, who wrote the “The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House.”

During the pandemic, that staff has been reduced to a skeleton crew, with mask-wearing much more prevalent than in the West Wing, where few have worn them regularly.

Brower said she recently spoke with three former employees who expressed concern about the health of current workers, but were too afraid to speak publicly.

“The butlers always feel protective of the first family, but there’s just a concern about whether or not the staff would get sick,” Brower said. Most are older, she said, “because they work from one generation to the next. They are people who have been on the job for 20 to 30 years. They want to work to get their full pensions.”

For months now, cleaning staff have also privately voiced concerns about their safety, including lack of access to testing and inadequate protective gear.

Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswoman, said that “all precautions are being taken to ensure the health and safety of the residence staff,” but she declined to be specific.

While the White House has refused to implement new safety procedures — such as making masks mandatory — the building was noticeably emptier Monday, with more staffers now staying home on days when they are not needed on site.

Yesterday morning, there was just a single staff member in the ground floor press office, where two medical staff members administered COVID-19 tests, surrounded by empty desks.”

Trump could have used his coronavirus experience as a wake-up call to the American people to take precautions to avoid contracting this deadly disease. But not our president, he does the exact opposite and provides an example of what not to do.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past two months, I have read three books about Donald Trump:  Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough; Bob Woodward’s Rage; and now Michael Cohen’s Disloyal:  The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump.  This may sound like a bit too much Trump, but I found them amazingly consistent in their depictions of Trump’s personality – the deviousness, lying, and brutal treatment of people are in each book.  However, the authors present  three different phases of Trump’s life.  Mary Trump’s book is the President’s early years and family.  Cohen covers his business affairs and election.  And Woodward’s is Trump’s presidency.  I have already given my opinion on the Mary Trump and Bob Woodward books on this blog, here are quick comments about Cohen.

Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer and “fixer” who got himself entangled in numerous Trump messes including business dealings, sexual escapades, and personal financial maneuvers. Cohen  is adept at manipulating people and the legal system for Trump’s benefit but he really comes across as pathetic driven by power and greed. His would not be such a sad tale except for the fact that his wife and children plead with him to get out of the sliminess of Trump’s orbit.  Unfortunately, Cohen cannot and finds himself dumped by “the Boss” shortly after the election and ends up in prison for his Trump shenanigans.

I read Cohen’s book and feel sorry for him and hope he can get his life back together.

As concluded in a book review in the New York Times (see below):

“Mr. Cohen presents himself as a repentant “bad guy” and says that while readers might conclude that they dislike him, they must be acquainted with seedy, venal characters like himself if they want to understand the world occupied by Mr. Trump.”

Tony

New York Times

In Tell-All Foreword, Cohen Promises Sordid Tales Trump ‘Does Not Want You to Read’

In his memoir, “Disloyal,” Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s onetime lawyer and fixer, claims that he had unique access to Mr. Trump, a man with “no true friends.”

By Annie Karni

Aug. 13, 2020

WASHINGTON — Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s onetime lawyer and fixer, released the foreword of his upcoming jailhouse tell-all on Thursday, posting to his website an introduction in which he promised stories involving the president and everything from “golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union.”

In the foreword to his memoir, “Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” Mr. Cohen claims that he had unique access to Mr. Trump, a man with “no true friends,” who trusted Mr. Cohen so much that his cellphone contacts were synced with his own.

“I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man,” Mr. Cohen writes, claiming he has gained from those experiences a singular understanding of the president.

Mr. Cohen does not explain more in the foreword about his experience with Mr. Trump in Las Vegas, but the book will most likely revive questions about the veracity of an infamous claim in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy, about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.

In it, Mr. Steele wrote that Mr. Trump had prostitutes urinate on a bed where President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, once slept, and that the Kremlin had recordings. Mr. Trump has denied the story, and it remains unsubstantiated. James B. Comey, who as F.B.I. director briefed the president about the dossier, has said that “it’s possible, but I don’t know.”

On Twitter, Mr. Cohen said he had “waited a long time to share my truth” as he posted a link to order a signed or an unsigned copy. In the foreword, he promises that “this is a book the president of the United States does not want you to read.”

Indeed, the government tried to stop the publication of Mr. Cohen’s book, according to a federal judge. Much of it was written on yellow legal pads by hand from Otisville Federal Prison.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that the decision to return Mr. Cohen to custody from home confinement amounted to retaliation by the government for his plans to publish the unflattering portrait of Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen had been sent home because of the coronavirus pandemic. The judge ordered him to be released back into home confinement.

The book does not yet have a publication date. Mr. Cohen wrote online that it was “coming soon.” He has not said who his publisher is.

A White House spokesman, Brian Morgentern, dismissed the book as “fan fiction,” and said that Mr. Cohen “readily admits to lying routinely but expects people to believe him now so that he can make money from book sales.”

Mr. Cohen writes in his foreword that “Trump had colluded with the Russians, but not in the sophisticated ways imagined by his detractors.” He claims that “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life.”

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Mr. Cohen presents himself as a repentant “bad guy” and says that while readers might conclude that they dislike him, they must be acquainted with seedy, venal characters like himself if they want to understand the world occupied by Mr. Trump.

“I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania to hide his sexual infidelities, and bullied and screamed at anyone who threatened Trump’s path to power,” he writes.

Mr. Cohen says that as a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump “attempted to insinuate himself into the world of President Vladimir Putin and his coterie of corrupt billionaire oligarchs.”

“I know because I personally ran that deal and kept Trump and his children closely informed of all updates,” he adds.

Mr. Cohen claims authority on his subject, noting that “for more than a decade, I was Trump’s first call every morning and his last call every night.”

“I was in and out of Trump’s office on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower as many as 50 times a day, tending to his every demand,” he writes. Mr. Cohen claims that for many people trying to reach the former real estate developer, “when I spoke to them, it was as good as if they were talking directly to Trump.”

Mr. Cohen, 53, pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and other crimes stemming from a scheme to pay hush money to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump before he was president. Mr. Trump has denied the accusations.

Mr. Cohen had been serving a three-year sentence at a minimum-security prison camp in Otisville, N.Y., about 75 miles northwest of New York City.

From prison, he writes, he has watched men like Rudolph W. Giuliani, William P. Barr, Jared Kushner and Mike Pompeo act as “Trump’s new wannabe fixers, sycophants willing to distort the truth and break the law in the service of the boss.” But he says none of them have been able to fill the void left where he once stood. “Trump doesn’t want to hear this, and he will certainly deny it, but he’s lost without his original bulldog lawyer Roy Cohn, or his other former pit bull and personal attorney, Michael Cohen.”

Mr. Cohen’s book is one of several tell-alls from former Trump insiders that are being released before Election Day. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and adviser to the first lady, Melania Trump, is set to publish “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady” on Sept. 1.

Rick Gates, a former high-level aide on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and a star witness in the Russia investigation, is expected to release a memoir, “Wicked Game,” in October.

Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is releasing a self-published book that is sure to paint a more flattering image of the president. He says he wrote the book, “Liberal Privilege,” in quarantine.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Dear Commons Community,

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, says it’s “very hard to trust or believe” Trump’s medical team right now. In an interview with Jake Tapper yesterday,  Gupta said the rosy picture of President Donald Trump’s health painted by his medical team “doesn’t make sense” in light of what’s known about his battle so far with the COVID-19 coronavirus infection. 

Trump was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday as his condition worsened, including a high fever and a drop in oxygen levels that required supplementation. 

Since then, Gupta said, there’s been “a lot of inconsistencies” coming from Trump and his team, including White House physician Dr. Sean Conley. 

Conley on Sunday admitted Trump’s blood oxygen has dropped below normal twice, and that he needed supplemental oxygen at least once. He is also on at two experimental treatments, but his doctors say he could be released back to the White House on Monday.

Gupta, who is CNN’s chief medical correspondent, questioned that timeline, and pointed to “worrisome” signs about the president’s health.

“I’d have to say that they’re hiding things,” he said, pointing to a long history of Trump and his doctors not being transparent about his health. 

Conley, he said, is “clearly… being told what to say and what not to say and how to present things.” That, Gupta said, makes it “very hard to trust or believe” the info coming from Trump’s medical team. 

Then, Gupta went through a list of questions they should answer. 

“We need to know that status of his lungs,” he said. ”It’s unbelievable to me that we’ve asked that question so many times.” 

He said doctors should release the results of chest x-rays and CT scans, if the president has pneumonia, how much inflammation he has, oxygen levels and what the plan is going forward.

“Interestingly, they said his cardiac, liver and kidney function are normal or improving,” he said. “Well, improving from what? Because you said they were normal yesterday as well, so were they not normal at some point?”

He also questioned the whole timeline of Trump’s diagnosis and treatment.

“This whole story still doesn’t make sense,” he said. “He was diagnosed on Thursday night and had such a quick decline? Not likely.”  

Regardless of whether you are for him or against him, the American people deserve to get the facts about the President’s condition.

Tony