The Donald Trump Score Card

William Barr Is Echoing Trump on Stay-at-Home Orders
The attorney general seems to want to ramp up pressure on governors to end public-health measures.
By Noah Feldman
April 29, 2020, 6:29 AM EDT

William Barr Is Echoing Trump on Stay-at-Home Orders

excerpt:

"It’s pretty striking that an administration that has taken almost no leadership role in guiding states to address the Covid 19 pandemic through shutdowns is now gesturing towards taking a leadership role in forcing them to reopen.

Why is the Department of Justice getting involved here? The answer partly lies in the emptiness of Trump’s past (incorrect) suggestion that he has the authority to reopen the economy. The president doesn’t have that constitutional authority, as Barr knows. But the Justice Department can sue states for stay-at-home rules that violate the Constitution; in fact, that’s just about the only thing the executive branch could lawfully do to push states to reopen.

To be sure, it seems pretty unlikely that such lawsuits would be successful in court. It’s hard to picture federal judges second-guessing public health experts advising governors to maintain stay-in-place orders.

So far, the only exception has come in connection with religious services. A federal district court ordered Kansas to allow socially distanced Easter activities after finding that the state had singled out churches for stricter restrictions than other gathering places. (Barr’s memo referred to religious services, but it wasn’t geared to litigation around that issue, which the Department of Justice had already addressed in a separate set of guidelines for states.)"

 

Coronavirus: Trump says China wants him to lose re-election
BBC News
April 30, 2020

Trump says China wants him to lose re-election

excerpts:

"US President Donald Trump has said China "will do anything they can" to make him lose his re-election bid, stepping up his criticism of Beijing amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In a White House interview with Reuters news agency, he said Beijing faced a "lot" of possible consequence from the US for the outbreak.

He said China should have let the world know about the contagion much sooner.

Mr Trump himself is often accused of not doing enough to tackle the crisis.

The coronavirus has ravaged a formerly humming US economy that had been the president's main selling point for his re-election campaign in November.

Mr Trump, who has waged a trade war with China, offered no specifics about how he might act against Beijing."


"Mr Trump also said he is sceptical of data indicating Mr Biden would win.

"I don't believe the polls," the president said. "I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don't think that they will put a man in who's incompetent.""

 

The U.S. already elected someone who is incompetent. Trump wants them to do it again.

 

Trump's handlers are sending him on a trip to Arizona before he can do any more damage at the White House.

A trip overseas to his missing lover in North Korea could be a better option. Polls in the past have shown that Trump's approval rating increases slightly when he's away from the U.S.



Trump says China wants him to lose re-election

excerpt:

"After more than a month being stuck mainly at the White House, Mr Trump said he plans to resume travel, starting with a trip to Arizona next week.

He told reporters he hopes to hold mass campaign rallies in the coming months with thousands of supporters.

The US currently accounts for around a third of all coronavirus cases worldwide. Its death toll - at more than 60,000 - has in six weeks surpassed the number of Americans killed in the two decades of the Vietnam War.

Unemployment, which just a few weeks ago was at a near-record low, now stands at more than 26 million.

Newly released figures on Wednesday showed the US economy had shrunk by nearly 5% - its sharpest contraction since the Depression."

 

Former fighter pilot McSally is up against former astronaut Kelly for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona. It's a race that could tilt the U.S. Senate back toward the Democrats in 2020.

The electoral votes of AZ are up for grabs in what is expected to be a close election 2020, a state Trump won in 2016.

McSally was appointed by the governor of AZ to fill the seat held by the late Sen. John McCain.

Mark Kelly is the husband of Gabrielle Giffords who was shot in the head in Arizona during a public political event which caused her to leave her U.S. House seat in AZ in 2012.



The fighter pilot takes on the astronaut: McSally’s 2020 Arizona mission
McSally is trying to tie her opponent, former space shuttle commander Mark Kelly, to the Democratic Party's ascendant left wing.
By JAMES ARKIN
03/01/2020 07:00 AM EST

The fighter pilot takes on the astronaut: McSally’s 2020 Arizona mission

excerpt:

"This race, in a state Democrats think could be on the cusp of turning blue, is an expensive clash of heavyweight political biographies: McSally is a retired Air Force colonel. Kelly is a Navy veteran who flew four missions to space, commanded the space shuttle — then quit to return to Arizona to care for Giffords, who was seriously wounded in a 2011 assassination attempt.

McSally raised more money than every other Republican senator last year, topping Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and well-known stalwarts like John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). But Kelly raised more than any senator or candidate of either party — $20.2 million — and had the biggest war chest entering 2020 of anyone on the ballot this year across the country."

 

The mere thought of losing to Biden infuriatesTrump.



Trump Erupts at Campaign Team as His Poll Numbers Slide
By The Associated Press
Published April 29, 2020
Updated April 30, 2020, 12:22 a.m. ET

Trump Erupts at Campaign Team as His Poll Numbers Slide

excerpt:

"Trump reacted with defiance, incredulous that he could be losing to someone he viewed as a weak candidate.

“I am not f—-ing losing to Joe Biden,” he repeated in a series of heated conference calls with his top campaign officials, according to five people with knowledge of the conversations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions.

The message to the president was sobering: Trump was trailing the former Democratic vice president in many key battleground states, he was told, and would have lost the Electoral College if the election had been held earlier this month."

 

The Monmouth poll a few weeks ago turned out to be accurate. It's been substantiated by various other polls.

It's why the Trump team has suspended him from his own briefings and is trying to send him out on the road again to places like Arizona.

 

Trump obviously doesn't do well when forced to stay at the White House, even though his campaign promises said that he would never leave it.



Willie Nelson - On The Road Again

youtube video:

 

Trump would claim that he is a success because it was only 60 bodies and it could have been much more if everyone had done nothing about the virus.



Up to 60 bodies found in four trucks outside Brooklyn funeral home
By Shimon Prokupecz and Mark Morales, CNN
Updated 12:30 AM ET, Thu April 30, 2020

Brooklyn funeral home: Up to 60 bodies found in four trucks outside the home - CNN

excerpt:

"Four trucks containing as many as 60 bodies have been discovered outside a Brooklyn funeral home after someone reported fluids dripping from the trucks, a law enforcement official told CNN.

The Andrew Cleckley Funeral Home home was overwhelmed and ran out of room for bodies, which were awaiting cremation, and used the trucks for storage, a second law enforcement source said Wednesday.

At least one of the trucks was unrefrigerated, according to one law enforcement official. One source said the bodies were put on ice.

CNN reached out to the Andrew Cleckley Funeral Home, and someone who identified himself as the owner would not comment."

 

And how much Coronavirus was contained in the ice droplets drippping from the trucks ???

 

What's the betting they're worth more melted down into ingots than the face value of these medalions ???

 

Coins that praise a self-proclaimed genius who praises himself and world dictators.

Might as well sell coins at the White House that directly praise Kim Jong-un and Putin.

 

First of all, the people of this country, especially your supporters, are rather dumb, and second of all, they elected you.

 

As of April 30, 2020, more than 30 million people in the U.S. have filed first-time jobless claims since the middle of March.

 

PR front man. What else is he going to say?? Sonny-boy on a tight leash.

 

This HAS to be a joke ……… right???

I can picture some toothless, high school grads(?), their trucks plastered with Trump stickers already sending in their $12 / hr. "good-payin' job" money for sets of these idiot-worship memorabilia.

"We seen rat off they-uz the real McCoy. O-fishul Trump 'memertive co-wins. Them even comes with sa-tificates 'o awthayin-ticity. From the bestus Prezdent."

 

Trump's team changes place of the briefings -- if not the substance
By Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins, CNN
Updated 9:59 AM ET, Thu April 30, 2020

Trump's team changes place of the briefings -- if not the substance - CNNPolitics

excerpt:

"Instead of the blue-hued James S. Brady Briefing Room -- where the last time he took questions he found himself veering into bleach and sunlight peril -- Trump has convened with reporters each day this week in other venues: the Oval Office, the East Room, the State Dining Room and the Rose Garden.

With a more limited crowd and -- with the help of visiting governors and executives -- a narrower focus, Trump and his aides hope to avoid the devolving spectacle they saw the previous briefings becoming."

 

That was January 2019.

As expected, Trump plans to retaliate against China, the country that he said he trusted during the coronavirus pandemic before it had struck the U.S. in earnest



U.S. officials crafting retaliatory actions against China over coronavirus as President Trump fumes
By Jeff Stein, Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey and Gerry Shih
April 30, 2020 at 1:23 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/30/trump-china-coronavirus-retaliation/

excerpt:

"Senior U.S. officials are beginning to explore proposals for punishing or demanding financial compensation from China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to four senior administration officials with knowledge of internal planning.

The move could splinter already strained relations between the two superpowers at a perilous moment for the global economy.

Senior officials across multiple government agencies are expected to meet on Thursday to begin mapping out a strategy for seeking retaliatory measures against China, two people with knowledge of the meeting said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose the planning. Officials in American intelligence agencies are also involved in the effort."

 

If I am borrowing money from someone, I try not to piss them off.