DON JONES INDEX… |
GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED |
|
10/14/20… 13,508.68 9/30/20… 13,464.31 6/27/13…
15,000.00 |
(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 10/7/20…27, 776.26;
9/30/20…27,452.66;
6/27/13…15,000.00) LESSON for October 7, 2020 – “SICK ELEPHANTS
on PARADE!” |
Just
when Republicans thought things couldn’t get any worse… well…
It’s not fair to beat up on the sick, the elderly or
the sick elderly… it’s like, well, pulling healthcare from persons with
pre-existing conditions unfair. Still
and all, there is something about the past week that speaks to the ancient
Greek theatrical tradition of hybris (in English, “hubris”) which. Roughly translated and
updated, consists of: “Pride goeth before the fall.”
Aristotle mentions hubris in his book Rhetoric:
“Hubris consists
in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim … simply
for the pleasure of it. Retaliation is not hubris, but revenge. … Young
men and the rich are hubristic because they think they are better than other
people.”
Aristotle
believed that people indulge in crimes like sexual misconduct and maltreating
others only to fulfill their basic desire to make themselves feel superior to
others.
In the Greek mythology, hybris was punished by Nemesis,
the goddess of retribution. Her
handmaidens include @, noi
And now that fall has fallen… at least in most of
the Eastern two-thirds of America… Republicans of the religious persuasion
might well be wondering if God is just testing them, or has truly abandoned
them. Or, perhaps, the Gods, as in the
forgotten, disrespected Classical deities (as used to hold both human affairs
and theatrical convention under their almighty thumbs by imposing rules of
drama that were… well… classical). A
person of substance (not a common Jack or Job but a King… or, at least, wily
merchant or, you know, some person of wealth, esteem and importance), becomes
so enamoured of his own powers and qualities that
those around him know he’s just itching for that fall and scramble to get out
of the way. And then…
Our American President marched confidently onstage
on the 29th, outwardly ready to take on the world – let alone an
ancient piece of dried up gristle in the person of former VP Biden. Inwardly, however, he seethed. He’d already come under hostile fire from the
liberal loonies who’d somehow filched his own, private, personal tax records as
were kept by his own, private, personal Internal Revenue Service and broadcast
to the world that he’d paid less in taxes than a WalMart
cashier or hospital janitor in the years of his election and inauguration, and
nothing at all most of the rest of the time.
(See last week’s Index for more.) And that damnable Biden kept spitting out the
most outrageous sputum… facts, and things… that a real man couldn’t help but
drown out with his own ripostes.
The debate drew worse reviews than the movie version
of “Cats”.
Some short takes on the debates between the calamity
and Trump’s catching the plague… these from a Tuesday night and Wednesday
morning survey of important media and political people…
George Stephanopolis – “That
was the worst Presidential debate I have ever seen.”
George Karl – “The debate was a total mess. It looked like both men lost… which means
that Trump lost.”
Mary Bruce – “There were times when they were talking
over each other…”
Chris Christie – “Joe (Biden)
looked shaky; he would wander off in mid-sentence and use lots of insults. Trump was too hot. Biden was not consistently coherent.”
Rahm Emanuel – “Biden
did a rope-a-dope…”
David Muir – “The backdrop is that people at home are
exhausted.”
Sarah Fagan – This was a total food fight. Trump did not command the stage.”
Yvette Simpson
– “The fact (is) that
we’ve survived this administration… but I wish that Biden had taken a deep
breath.”
Matthew Dowd – “If you were in a foreign country, it would
be an embarrassment. Joe Biden won
because Trump would put us through four more years of this.”
Mary Raddatz – “It (would have taken) a lion tamer to
(moderate) all this mud wrestling in the middle of a pandemic. Voters knew Trump was like that but were
disappointed with Biden.”
Sen.
Cory Booker – “It was just ugly…”
The media, too, were unimpressed. Of course, the President could and did blow
off their criticisms as simply further extensions of liberal bias… still, undecided voters who had actually seen and heard the
debates were apt to give the scribes more credibility.
To wit:
Jonathan
Martin of The New York Times wrote: “The president’s bulldozer-style tactics
represented an extraordinary risk for an incumbent who’s trailing Mr. Biden in
large part because voters, including some who supported him in 2016, are so
fatigued by his near-daily attacks and outbursts.”
Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic wrote: “The point of Trump’s performance in that debate
was to undermine confidence in the election and in democracy itself.”
iden conveyed his ideas clearly. “Biden made the debate
about the country and the American people, not about Trump,” the
historian Heather
Cox Richardson wrote in her newsletter. “While Trump listed his own
grievances, Biden spoke to the camera, asking Americans what they needed, what
they think.”
the Proud
Boys, a far-right group, and Trump replied: “Proud Boys? Stand back and stand
by … Somebody’s got to do something about antifa and
the left.” The group celebrated
his response online and began using the phrase, “Stand
back and stand by.”
Doug
Rivers of the polling firm YouGov wrote: “Trump did badly with his base. 15% of his
supporters thought it was a tie, compared to only 4% of Biden supporters. Only
49% of Trump supporters thought it made them think better of Trump.”
Rich
Lowry of the
conservative National Review lamented: “The key takeaway is that Trump set out
to make Biden crack, and it didn’t happen.”
The New York Times polled sixteen of its editorial
writers… (See Attachment Two)… fifteen thought Biden won the debate (although
several denounced the performance of both candidates). Only Michael Buskirk…
who in his day job is the editor and publisher of “American Greatness (not to
infer that he is on The Donald’s payroll)… felt that the President prevailed,
and that was primarily on the energy issue.
Trump was somewhat hopped up, but his subsequent collapse only
heightened the contradictions.
Vox
(See Attachments 3 A & B) surveyed a basket of opinionaters,
reaping a harvest of epithets (A) like “debacle”. “disaster”
and “dark thing”. Even the President’s
ostensible supporters muzzled their usual adoration with one notable exception,
the Proud Boys (B), those jaunty opponents of onanism
who quickly converted their notoriety into merchandise now on sale at their
website.
The Huffington Post unearthed a (Republican!) pollster
(Attachment Four) who asked random men and women on the street (or in other
places) to give a one word review of the debate, eliciting remarks which ranged
from “bully” to “crackhead” to “unhinged”.
Time found defects in the post-debate polling (Attachment
Five) while the BBC excoriated what they called a “car-crash debate”
(Attachment Six) “Six Takeaways”
(Attachment Seven) from the debates were offered up by CNN; the glaring
omission being whether or not to take them away entirely.
Time Magazine recommended
this course… just before Trump’s illness… in perhaps the ultimate dis-tribute to the debators…
appealing: “Just
Cancel the Last Two Debates. America Has Suffered Enough” (Attachment Eight).
“I never dreamed that it would go off the tracks
the way it did, moderator Chris Wallace apologized.
And then the breaking news broke again.
Fittingly it came at 12:54 AM, October 2nd… the President’s prime twittitching hour…
Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery
process immediately. We will get through
this TOGETHER!
Friday morning, America was treated to the spectacle of seeing the
President medivaced from the White House to Walter
Reed Hospital on the Marine One chopper, and immediately tricked by the doctors
and retainers who insisted… as gentlemen of the same persuasion had done
immediately after Ronald Reagan was shot back in 1981… that everything was rosy
and perky and that Trump was being examined solely out of the boilerplate
“abundance of caution”. Ever skeptical,
ever cynical, the skeptics and the cynics pounced. They spun scenarios of doom and gloom (for
some, Democrats wouldn’t say so but they were actually feeling good about the
possibility of any of the following happening)…
1. That Donald Trump would die in office, in which case the
Presidency would pass to Mike Pence, a religious zealot, but somewhat more sane
than Trump (good), but also somewhat more competent (sometimes good, sometimes
not)…
2. That the plague would also strike Pence, his being in the
presence of his Lord and Master on numerous occasions over the past week –
particularly during a celebration of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination in
the Rose Garden, thereafter migrating indoors (said occasion already being
referred to as a “super spreader”)…
3. That, according to the rules of succession and, to a more
litigiously challengeable 25th Amendment, Pence might die or be
disabled – in which circumstance the highest office in the land would pass to…
Nancy Pelosi and her writing right hand which would immediately begin writing
Executive Orders…
4. That, despite the pronouncements and the parties, Judge
Barrett’s elevation would be delayed or destroyed by either a Pelosi executive
order or… as seems to be underway now, despite the reported recovery of the
President and continued good health of Pence… an outbreak of plague among the
Republican members of the Senate, particularly those on the Judiciary Committee
assigned the task of fast-tracking the approval by Election Day or, at worst, before
the inauguration of President Biden. See
below. And, perhaps
worse than death…
5. That the President, like the fallen heroes of the Greek
tragedy, would be undone by his own hybris in mocking the masking of his enemy, Biden, and
Americans in general and be driven out of power by voters hurling their shards
of ostraka.
Assorted polls found that between two
thirds and three fourths of the electorate considered Trump stupid for tempting
fate as he did. Even a healthy Djonald Unhorsed would have no recourse but to slink back
to Bedminster or Mar-a-Lago without his power, his
legal protection from civil and criminal wolves and, perhaps, without even the
fifty year far-right Supreme Court as his legacy.
One might well wonder whether, at the darkest moment of his
breathlessness (as his oxygen levels teetered on the brink of sustainability)
that he pondered whether dying what he believed would be a hero’s death might
not be preferable to an afterlife of humiliation in the dark, cold Hades of the
dispossessed,
Of course, there were the consolations, if he wanted them. As Friday rolled on, all manner of
creepy-crawlies crawled out from between cracks in the floor and the walls of
the world to offer up their support and prayers… many of whom would spit at the
mention of his name and envisioned, for the dumb, cruel American, a toasty
afterlife in the company of companions like Hitler and Stalin and Idi Amin. And politicos pronounced the October debates
in Jeopardy.
There was once a ”Wheel of Fortune” episode in
which an excited contestant, certain that she had decoded the cryptic inscription
on the magic board as: “A Group of Pill Pushers”. (She was wrong, the correct answer was: “A
Group of Well Wishers”.) And now,
whether pushing narcotic assurances of solidarity or genuine appeals for the
restoration of the President’s health, the well-wishers wished and tweeted and
tributes poured in from all corners of the cubed Earth some of Trump’s most
fanatical supporters believed in.
Boris Johnson, himself a plague survivor, checked in. So did China’s Xi and NoKo’s
Kim. Angela Merkel sent her
condolences. Trump foes turned temporary
BFFs Pelosi, Obama and Hillary sent their well wishes. The Peanut Gallery offered their
prayers. So did, presumably (if in
private) Vladimir Putin.
A new week rolls round, and…
Chris Christie gets it, muses on maskless
meetings with Trumpstaff, talking Trumpstuff. Republicans recoil at prospect of Pence getting
it, devolving the Presidency to… Nancy Pelosi!
Two key confirmation Senators (Mike Lee, R-Ut,
Thom Tillis, R-NC) get it. So does RNC queen Ronna
McDaniel, Trump advisor Hope Hicks, Press Secretary Kellyanne
Coway and Trump campaign manager Bill Stepian. Also the President of Notre
Dame and seven more Rose Garden Party guests. TV Doctor Jen Ashton predicts: “…there will
be a lot of testing in the next couple of days.”
Plague having destroyed the entertainment biz – dead until at least
April is “No Time to Die”, the umpteenth James Bond movie without Sean Connery –
America is introduced to Sean Conley,
Trump’s doctor at Walter Reed, who, caught lying about the President’s oxygen,
claims it was to “prevent panic”. Really? While the
pandemic decimates the top ranks of the military, Major Garrett (CBS) says that
this is a time for more transparency. TV Doctor Ashish Jah calls the Barrett party a Super Spreader, then
speculates that Trump’s hybris
is leading him to ignore doctors, treat himself.
George Stephanopolous, citing a cascade of
chaotic crises complicated by Covid cover-ups and
contradictions., cites polls saying that three of four Americans say Trump was
wrong on Covid.
“I learned it by really going to school,” the President responds. “I get it.
It’s the real school, not the read-the-book school.” Replies Uncle Joe: “Masks are not about
freedom, they’re about patriotism.”
On Monday, a bored and restless President orders up the armored,
airtight Secret Service SUV to drive past the well-ishers
and wave (which action earns him a chorus of abuse by the compassionate
community showing off their concern for the trapped Secret Servicemen. Dr. James Phillips of Walter Reed called it
“risking lives (of the Secret Service) for political theater.”
And yesterday, POTUS returned to the White House, ripped off his mask
and declared: “Maybe I’m immune.” Humility – whazzat? While the guy holding the “football” (the
briefcase containing codes to launch a nuclear strike against China, or Rissia… Iran, whomever?... gets the plague and underlings
fumble the football, America prepares for Round Two – not only Stage Two of the
pandemic (or, possibly coupled with this year’s flu, “twindemic”)
but tonight’s scrap between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence.... perhaps of more
than the usual interest being that both would be poised to replace two sick old
men.
More, now, on the week’s developments… and how can this already surprising
month (forty-some months, to be accurate) be introduced. Not by DeFoe… 17th
century Englishmen didn’t have elections, they had kings (who might depose and
even kill one another from time to time, but didn’t have to churn out political
commercials). Not Camus… there was
plenty of dissension in France and its colonies after the war, but he largely
passed them by. Not Lasch…
narcissism is still in fashion, although muted for the time being. So maybe a little of old Edgar Poe’s “Masque
of the Red Death”… as was brought to life by President Trump’s plague party to
celebrate his nomination of poor, doomed Amy Coney Barrett (with so many sick
Republicans, confirmation is going to be pushed back past the election and
quite possibly past the seating of a new Senate). And, to ground the present passions in the
swamp of dead white male posturing, a few more examples of Greek tragedy as
particularly referenced the concept of hybris – that instance of them as mocked and defied the Old
Gods (particularly the Nosoi – Lords of Distempers)
being undone by their own arrogance and insolence. A few Romans too… they plagiarized more than
Joe Biden. And the Shelleys… Mary (Victor
Frankenstein) and Percy (Ozymandias).
This – from theoi.com:
“THE NOSOI (Nosos, singular, Morbus/Morbi in Latin) were the personified spirits (daimones) of plague, sickness and disease. They were
numbered amongst the evil spirits which escaped from Pandora's
jar.
“The Keres were also sometimes
portrayed as personifications of deadly disease. In most Homeric literature,
however, the arrows of Apollon and Artemis were the
bringers of plague and sickness rather than bands of daimones.
The Roman counterparts of the Nosoi
were Morbus, Lues, Pestis, Tabes and Macies. Classical
theocracy being as heavily familiar as the Trumps… think Don Junior as Morbus, Ivanka as Macies, Erik as Pestis… their
parents were probably NYX or ERIS,
like the other malevolent daimones, although nowhere
stated.
(See an anthology of hubrisistic
quotes, ancient to modern, as Attachment Nine)
|
SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 6 |
|
Wednesday, September 30, 2020 Infected: 7,219,635 Dead: 206,693 Dow: 27.787.70 |
Chaos in Cleveland – Trump and Biden rassle in their first debate, roundly excoriated as
disastrous. (See above) One word comes to mind, says George Stephanopolos, “disgrace”, and Google reports spike in
searches: “Move to Canada.” Chris Christie
dissents, saying Biden “drifted off” and Reince Priebus predicts the ugly debates will discourage a third
of the voters from voting – good news for Trump. But its not all
bad for Uncle Joe – fundraising during the last hour reaches record heights.
Moderna pulls ahead of rivals in vaccine
race. CDC says 18-22 yr. olds spiking
and blames college reopening.
Jon Karl warns America about the “Lost Boys”. The Proud Boys revel in publicity – a spokesboy declares: “We are Western chauvinists who refuse
to condemn
the modern world.” Party boys continue
dancing, imbibing drugs and alcohol, debauching party girls and coughing,
coughing, coughing. “The
Red Death had long devastated the country… but the Prince Prospero was happy,
dauntless and sagacious. When his
dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale
and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court… and
while the pestilence ranged most furiously abroad, (the) Prince Prospero
entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual
magnificence… “There were delirious fancies such as the
madman fashions… much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the
bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have
excited disgust…” E. A. Poe, “Masque of the Red Death” |
|
Thursday, October 1, 2020 Infected: 7,242,033 Dead: 207,605 Dow: 27.816.90 |
The nonpartisan debate commission
ponders rule changes, including cutting off microphones of bloviators. Cooler
temperatures spike plague in New England and Wisconsin – Green Bay hospitals
overrun and Trump has to keep moving his rally sites around. Fred Perry says it will no longer sell its
black and yellow shirts to the Proud Boys, whose membership and merchandise
soaring.
CDC extends ban on cruise ships through Halloween. And they suspend their plague website,
citing accuracy… others cry intimidation.
Safety of Astra Zenica vax
questioned. 20,000 Amazon workers get it. “And on the pedestal these words
appear:
|
|
Friday, October 2, 2020 Infected: 7,274,065 Dow:
27,682.81 |
Trump getting it called the “ultimate
game changer” as well as 2020’s October (barely) surprise. Going to Walter Reed, ingesting a cocktail
of experimental drugs and receiving oxygen (or not) he says” I have learned
that life is very fragile.” Matthew
Dowd plague ‘puts a really big dent’ in what the President wanted to do. Mail-in ballot wars rage in Wisconsin and
Philadelphia – millions (say ‘Pubs, dozens say Dems)
float away in a river. Biden suspends
his negative ads (but not his campaigning) while Trump spots toute his “boundless optimism and certainty.”
Hospitalizations spike after two months of decline. CDC recommends colleges test all incoming
students. “It’s mysterious,” says TV
Dr. Jen about the plague, “it’s insidious and it comes in waves.” "Truly blooming health (hygeia) does not rest
content within its due bounds; for disease (nosos) ever presses close
against it, its neighbor with a common wall. So human fortune, when
holding onward in straight course strikes upon a hidden reef." - Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1001 ff (trans. Weir Smyth)
(Greek tragedy C5th B.C. |
|
Saturday, October 3, 2020 Infected: 7.334,054 Dead:
209,162 Sunday, October 4, 2020
Infected: 7,383,244 Dead: 209,709 |
Hope Hicks gets it. Doctors put President Trump on Remdesivir, say he’ll be tired for weeks, and it will be
bad for his campaign. Senators protest
McConnell’s fast-tracking... “Covid is swirling
through the Senate, yet they expect Senators to sit next to each other in
committees.”
Politicians and celebrities not fighting plague are writing books…
John Dickerson’s “The Hardest Job in the World”, Lynne Cheney’s “Virginia
Dynasty”, Corey Lewandowski’s “Trump – America First!”. “In the epic poem Paradise Lost (by John Milton), the character
of Satan displays hubris when he attempts to rebel against God’s rule in
heaven, and when he eventually declares that it’s “Better to reign in Hell
than serve in Heaven.” ”In the novel Frankenstein (by Mary Shelley), scientist Victor Frankenstein
displays hubris when creating life in the form of his monster.” - Effectiviology Trump’s doctors… led by Sean Conley
(not Connery)… say he’s improving but not yet “out of the woods”. (Most journalists, politicos and many Amercans no longer trust the doctors.) Plague causes busy hospitals to defer other
necessities like cancer screening.
TV’s Dr. Ashton among those calling Barrett’s nomination party a
“super spreader”. Other docs
confident there will be a vaccine… but not until 2021, around the same time
that Trump’s experimental antibody cocktail will be made available to the
masses. NYC to shut down schools as
the plague attacks party-boy and girl students.
The polls are not rosy for the President. 72% of Americans say the bungled the plague
response. "[Aeneas is guided by the Sibyl through the
Underworld :] On they went dimly, beneath the lonely night amid the gloom,
through the empty halls of Dis [Haides]
and his phantom realm . . . Just before the entrance, even within the very
jaws of Orcus [Haides], Luctus
(Grief) [Penthos] and avenging Curae
(Cares) have set their bed; there pale Morbi
(Diseases) [Nosoi] dwell, sad Senectus
(Old Age) [Geras], and Metus
(Fear) [Deimos], and Fames (Hunger) [Limos],
temptress to sin, and loathly Egestas (Want) [Aporia], shapes terrible to view; and Letum
(Death) [Thanatos] and Labor (Toil) [Ponos]; next, Letum's (Death's)
own brother Sopor (Sleep) [Hypnos], and Gaudia (the Soul's Guilty Joys), and, on the threshold
opposite, the death-dealing Bellum (War) [Polemos],
and the Eumenides' [the Furies'] iron cells, and
maddening Discordia (Strife) [Eris], her snaky locks entwined with bloody
ribbons. In the midst an elm, shadowy and vast, spreads her boughs and aged
arms, the whome which, men say, false Somnia (Dreams) [Oneiroi] hold,
clinging under every leaf." - From Virgil, Aeneid 6. 268 ff (trans. Fairclough)
(Roman epic C1st B.C.) : |
|
Monday, October 5, 2020 Infected: 7,423,328 Dead: 210,955 Dow: 27,584.06 |
Caught in his spiderweb
of lies, Dr. Conley admits that the President received oxygen on two
occasions when his blood oxygen level dipped to 93 (94 is the measure of
concern) and maybe into the 80s.. This as Trump toured the premises in a
contagious drive-by rally; by the end of the day, Djonald
Unmasked fled Reed for his own medical bubble in the White House and,
striking a heroic profile, ripped the mask from his face, saying: “Don’t be
afraid of COVID.” Plenty of critics –
degreed and not – castigated the Presidential hybris… ABC’s Dr. Ashish Jah said that Trump was
self-medicating while Mr. Jonathan Karl opined that he wanted to project an
image of strength “and being in the hospital is not strength.” The WashPost
speculated that steroid injections amidst a “itchen sink of drugs” had made the President manic.
Trump had his defenders, too.
Adviser Jason Miller denied that his love of mass, unmasked rallies
was “cavalier”… Rudy G. said the President’s job was to keep America’s
spirits up”. Mitchy
decrees that the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett will go forth, and damn
any costs. But another ally, Press
Secretary Kayley McEneny
gets it, as does, the Trump aide tasked with carrying the “nuclear football”,
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wi) joins the ensickened two Barrett friendly inquisitors, and nine out
of ten of the Joint Chiefs of Staff go into quarantine The men in Hazmat suits start spraying the
White House. “Here
is dilemma. Whether I let them stay or
drive them off, it is a hard course and will hurt. Then, since the burden of the case is here
and rests on me, I shall select judges (of Barrett), and swear them in,
establish a court into all time to come.
(Or, Zeus willing, for half a century – DJI) “Litigants, call your witnesses!” Athena in Aeschylus’ “The Eumenides” |
|
Tuesday, October 6, 2020 Infected: 7,482,442 Dead: 210,667 Dow: 27,776.21 |
President Trump channels Paul
McCartney when asked if the debates are back on, saying “Maybe I’m
immune.” Michelle O. releases a video denouncing Trump’s
“negligence” on the Plague… (it’s not negligence,
it’s perversity.) When the CDC admits
that droplets can remain airborne long after the plague leaves a room, critics
ask: “For how long?” The answer:
hours. A peanut in the Trump gallery
says “I think we have to trust the President. He doesn’t want Americans to die.” (Just some of them.)
And where’s that football? "For ere
this [the opening of Pandora's jar] the tribes of men lived on earth remote
and free from ills (kakoi)
and hard toil (ponoi)
and heavy sickness (nosoi)
which bring the Keres (Fates) upon men; for in
misery men grow old quickly. But the woman took off the great lid of the jar
(pithos)
with her hands and scattered all these and her thought caused sorrow and
mischief to men. Only Elpis (Hope) remained there
in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly
out at the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of
Aigis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds. But the
rest, countless plagues (lugra), wander amongst men; for earth is full of evils
and the sea is full. Of themselves diseases (nosoi) come upon men
continually by day and by night, bringing mischief to mortals silently; for
wise Zeus took away speech from them. So is there no way to escape the will
of Zeus." Hesiod, “Works and Days”
90 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) |
|
And now?
Even before President Trump returned from
Walter Reed, tore off his mask and denounced the Coronavirus
cowards of America, telling them that their fear was unfounded, critics were
already tut-tutting at the Presidential hybris when so many were dead, or suffering,
and so many survivors and family members were grieving. (See Attachment Ten, A and B) The President, scolded the lying New York
Times, was an “immoralist”… a villain of such villainy that the debates should
even be cancelled. (Attachment Ten, C
and D)
Actually, a new round of unemployment stats
are out and, while those who lost their jobs to the plague and can’t find
others might disagree, the Don took a healthy jump while the Dow bounced here
and there, depending on the Presidents health (could there be contrarians
hoping for a relapse?)…
But not, it would seem, suffice to carry
the day for Djonald Unhoused. Most polls had him trailing by ten points,
more or less, including deficits in the key swing states. (See Attachment Eleven)
On to Utah then, and… tonight… it’s
Pence-Harris.
THE DON JONES INDEX
CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000
(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)
See a further explanation of categories here…
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ECONOMIC INDICES (60%) |
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DON JONES’
PERSONAL ECONOMIC INDEX (45% of TOTAL INDEX POINTS) |
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BACK
See further indicators at The Economist – HERE!
ATTACHMENT ONE – from CBS News
(All debates subject to
Trump’s plague, Biden’s health and America’s moral and
medical panic.)
Vice
presidential debate: October 7
The sole vice presidential debate will take place on
Wednesday, October 7, between Democratic Senator Kamala Harris and
Vice President Mike Pence.
Location: The University of Utah, Salt Lake City
Moderator: Susan Page of USA Today
Format: Also 90 minutes in length, Harris and Pence will
tackle nine segments of approximately 10 minutes each. "The moderator will
ask an opening question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to
respond," according to CPD. "The moderator will use the balance of
the time in the segment for a deeper discussion of the topic."
Harris' long career as a prosecutor has brought her
criticism, but also prepared her well for the debate stage. She made headlines
during the Democratic presidential debates for giving as good as she got,
even blasting the man who is now at the top of the ticket, Joe Biden.
Vice President Pence said on Fox News' "Hannity"
in August that he was excited about debating Harris. "I think she is a
skilled debater, but I can't wait to get to Salt Lake City and be on the stage
— whether to compare Joe Biden's nearly 50 years in public life, the agenda of
the radical left, the agenda that she's embraced throughout her political
career — with the results of this president and this administration,"
Pence told host Sean Hannity.
Second
presidential debate: October 15
The second presidential debate will take place a
week later on Thursday October 15.
Location: Adrienne Arsht Center
for the Performing Arts, Miami
Moderator: Steve Scully of C-SPAN
Format: This debate will be a town-hall style event.
"The second presidential debate will take the
form of a town meeting, in which the questions will be posed by citizens from
the South Florida area," according to CPD. "The candidates will have
two minutes to respond to each question and there will be an additional minute
for the moderator to facilitate further discussion. The town meeting
participants will be uncommitted voters selected under the supervision of Dr.
Frank Newport, Senior Scientist, Gallup."
Third
presidential debate: October 22
The third and final debate will take place on
October 22, less than two weeks before Election Day.
Location: Belmont University, Nashville
Moderator: Kristen Welker, the debate series' only woman
journalist, is a White House Correspondent for NBC News, as well as co-anchor
of "Weekend TODAY."
Format: The format will be identical to the first
presidential debate
"As always, the moderators alone will select
the questions to be asked, which are not known to the CPD or to the
candidates," according to CPD. "The moderators will have the ability
both to extend the segments and to ensure that the candidates have equal
speaking time. While the focus will properly be on the candidates, the
moderator will regulate the conversation so that thoughtful and substantive
exchanges occur."
ATTACHMENT TWO – from the New York Times
Biden and Trump’s First
Debate: Best and Worst Moments
How Round 1 looked to Times Opinion writers.
·
Sept. 30, 2020
Biden’s campaign
won.
— Jamelle Bouie
That kind of
belligerence takes energy.
— Elizabeth Bruenig
Trump’s strategy
is “Just win, baby.”
— Chris Buskirk
A debacle of a debate.
— Linda Chavez
Biden handled
the yelling-over-everything craziness.
— Gail Collins
It was a freak
show.
— Michelle Cottle
Jerkish
interruptions won't help Trump.
— Ross Douthat
A shouty disaster.
— Michelle Goldberg
One word: Covid
— Matt Labash
Who won? Nonviewers.
— Liz Mair
Trump overplayed
his hand.
— Dan McCarthy
Trump beclowned himself.
— Bret Stephens
Loved Biden's
“Keep yapping, man.”
— Hector Tobar
We all lost.
— Charlie Warzel
A bonfire of hate and grievance.
— Peter Wehner
Trump’s
indecency projected contempt for voters.
— Will Wilkinson
In
this special feature, Times Opinion writers pick the winner and then rank the
victory on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means it was a very narrow win; 10 means it was
a blowout. Here’s what our columnists and contributors thought of the debate.
Who won and why.
Jamelle Bouie I’m not going to say Joe Biden won, because he was
far from as good as he should have been. But his campaign won, because the only
thing anyone will talk about from this debate is the unhinged president who
refused to condemn white supremacists before endorsing a right-wing street gang
and attacking the integrity of the election.
Elizabeth
Bruenig Joe
Biden. Trump is excellent at dominating a conversation and has a gift for wry
insults Biden can’t match. But that kind of belligerence takes energy, and
these are two old men; by mid-debate, Trump seemed to wane, his answers
weakening, response time lengthening. Biden, on the other hand, steadily
cultivated his two points: That he has no patience for the red specter of
leftism that Bernie Sanders dared cast over the primaries, and that he believes
in American unity.
Christopher Buskirk Donald Trump. In 1984, Reagan looked tired during
his first debate with Walter Mondale, and many people thought he was showing
his age. Not Donald Trump. He was on the front foot from the outset and though
he never landed a knockout, it was also never close. People will say there was
a lack of substance and a lack of dignity and they’ll mostly be right. But
after five years of watching Donald Trump, Joe Biden and his team don’t
understand that Trump’s strategy is “Just win, baby.” So he dominated Biden,
pre-empting him, taking his time, rebutting him on the fly and changing the
subject. Trump looked vigorous and energetic and that’s enough to win.
Linda Chavez A
draw — Trump was indecent, vindictive and threw red meat to his base. While he
may have commanded the stage, he had no substantive answers on anything from Covid to climate change.
Gail Collins Joe Biden.
He handled Trump’s yelling-over-everything craziness as well as possible, by
just looking at the camera and talking directly to the audience. Also, Biden
smiling and shaking his head at the president’s ranting was a welcome break.
You could envision millions of viewers nodding in response.
Michelle Cottle Joe Biden. The entire event was a freak show. But
Biden held his own against Trump, and that was what he needed to do. Also,
Biden clearly realizes the only appropriate way to respond to the president’s
chronic lying and childish insults: Taking them seriously would only legitimize
them, whereas laughing, smiling and shaking his head in dismay makes Trump seem
like a naughty toddler.
Ross
Douthat Joe Biden won, because Trump’s
strategy was to hector and exhaust him in the hopes of generating a moment of
egregious senility, and no such moment arrived. There were plenty of moments
when Trump was more effective than Biden, some exchanges he won on points, certainly
some moments when he seemed more rhetorically with-it — but the flood of jerkish interruptions is all anyone will remember, and
that’s unlikely to help an incumbent disliked by the majority of the country
and losing by eight points.
Michelle Goldberg Joe Biden. The debate was a shouty
disaster. Chris Wallace was utterly disgraceful as a moderator, constantly
letting Trump interrupt Biden and allowing him to
spout gross and anti-democratic lies about the legitimacy of the election. Biden got tongue tied and let himself be put on the defensive a few
times, especially about riots in Portland, Ore., and his son Hunter. He
missed several opportunities to bring up the generals who have spoken out
against Trump. But I can’t imagine that anyone not already supporting Trump
could be won over by his sneering insults, unhinged ranting and conspiratorial
non-sequiturs. Ultimately, talking about this in terms of who “won” seems like
a category error. Trump used his massive platform to urge his supporters to intimidate
people at the polls. Biden was occasionally ineffectual. One was a bullying
fascist, the other an avatar, however imperfect, of civic responsibility. There
should be no false equivalency here.
Matt Labash Joe Biden. He did a really lousy impression tonight
of a senile person. Which, considering Trump’s multi-month
campaign to deem him as such, means he passed the dribble test with flying
colors. (As in, he didn’t dribble down his shirt.) But beyond that,
Biden appeared more presidential, which is a problem for Trump, considering
he’s already president. Trump couldn’t even manage to act like the thing that
he already is.
Liz Mair Joe Biden. But who really won? Everyone
who didn’t watch. Biden will probably be shown to be the winner in
post-debate polling, but as awful as Trump was, for my money, he prevented
Biden from landing enough punches and looking as tough and capable as Biden
should have and could have.
Daniel McCarthy Joe Biden. President Trump has succeeded by
demolishing the artificiality of American politics and occupying far more space
in his opponents’ minds, as well as his supporters’, than his rivals do. But he
overplayed his hand in this debate, with rougher shock tactics than voters
might tolerate. Biden was not persuasive on his own, but this was one night
when being plain vanilla was probably enough.
Bret Stephens Joe Biden, because when he got to speak, he did so
directly to the American people.
Héctor Tobar Joe Biden won mostly because the president was
so, so awful. And because Biden managed to express a few moments of genuine
humanity and keep his cool during the waterfall of Trumpian
insults. But Biden wasn’t very sharp either; Chris Wallace offered as many
effective retorts to the president’s excesses as Biden did.
Charlie Warzel Nobody really won tonight. We all lost. If letting men in
their 70s talk over each other is the best way to decide presidential politics,
then there’s no good reason to do two more. Ultimately though, Donald Trump’s
job was to try to claw back voters who don’t fall squarely within his base. His
performance offered nothing to voters who don’t already worship him. No minds
changed tonight. So Joe Biden wins by default.
Peter
Wehner Joe
Biden won because he’s leading in the race and acquitted himself pretty well
despite debating a man who is unstable, enraged, highly agitated and vicious: a
bonfire of hate and grievance. Biden is normal and decent; Trump is deeply
abnormal and indecent.
Will Wilkinson Donald
Trump delivered a most grotesque, mendacious, disrespectful
and outright disgusting debate performance. Trump’s flagrant indecency,
intended to project strength, projected only contempt for America’s voters and
democratic traditions. Joe Biden’s forbearance, patience, seriousness and
coherence (when he was allowed to speak) shone like a lighthouse showing the
way to safe harbor through a raging, chaotic storm.
Most pivotal moment
Jamelle Bouie If there was a pivotal moment for Biden, it came whenever
he turned his attention to the pandemic. It’s the most important issue in the
election, and Biden monopolized it.
Elizabeth Bruenig Biden’s musing in exasperation that Trump talks only
about himself and his achievements, never about their impact on the American
people. Whether said people are still entertained by the Trump Show will
determine the election.
Christopher Buskirk Biden delivered a rehearsed, set-piece attack
that was supposed to hit Trump on the accusation that he disrespects the
military in private and then use Beau Biden as a means of making the issue
personal. But Trump just sidestepped what was supposed to be a knockout blow
and pivoted to accusations about money he claimed Hunter Biden had received
from Eastern European connections while his father was vice president.
Linda Chavez Biden was at his best when he looked into the camera
and implored people to vote.
Gail Collins For Trump, it was sort of amazing to hear him explain
that global warming is because of bad forest management. For Biden, his final
“vote, vote” speech was clear and made Trump’s blather about mail fraud look
truly pathetic.
Michelle
Cottle The
president calling for the Proud Boys to “stand by” is unlikely to impress all
those suburban women already worried that the president is playing footsie with white supremacists.
Ross Douthat The worst moment for Trump was his endless ramble at
the end about voter fraud, following one of Biden’s better, simpler answers,
his exhortation to go vote. There are times when Trump’s political abnormality
plays to his advantage, but his inability to project even a facade of
respect-the-process normalcy in a country desperate for a return to normal is
worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.
Michelle Goldberg Trump, called on to disavow white supremacy,
couldn’t do it. He told the far-right gang the Proud Boys to “stand back and
stand by,” which they’ve now adopted as a rallying cry.
Matt Labash One word: Covid. On that
subject, Biden spanked Trump, and sent him to bed without his Quarter-Pounder
dinner. He attacked Trump on deaths (over 200,000). He attacked Trump on masks.
(Trump, who clearly hates masks, conveniently pulled one from his pocket,
turning himself into some bad Carrot Top-style prop comedian.) Then Biden
attacked Trump on attacking his own scientists, which Trump took the occasion
to do yet again, because he can’t help himself. Trump not being able to help himself is exactly why Biden beat Trump tonight like the family
mule.
Liz Mair Trump “condemning” right-wingers inciting violence
by asking the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” He’s going to get
attacked for that a lot, it will anger a lot of his own staff and advisers and
independents view the law and order discussion far more the way Democrats do
than Republicans.
Daniel McCarthy Trump chose to fight not only Biden but also the
debate process and conventional politics itself. The cost of this, besides
turning off wavering voters, is that it blotted out most of the substantial
arguments that could be made for the president’s agenda.
Bret Stephens Biden’s deflecting Trump’s despicable dismissal of
his late son Beau’s military service by telling Americans that the election was
about their families, not Trump’s family or his own.
Héctor Tobar Just a few minutes into the debate, the president
resorted to ad hominem attacks, with his “There’s nothing smart about you”
being his worst moment. (Second worst: his unwillingness to condemn white
supremacy.) Biden’s description of the racially integrated reality of the
suburbs was his best moment.
Charlie Warzel There’s a cyberwarfare
tactic called distributed denial-of-service attacks, which is when hackers
overwhelm a website with more fake traffic than it can process and cause the
website to crash. This was Trump’s tactic at the beginning of the debate. At
first it looked like it would be effective and ultimately stymie Biden from
getting even a few words in. But ultimately it served only to light a fire
under Biden, who seemed subdued early on but was subsequently enlivened by
Trump’s childish behavior.
Peter Wehner There was no pivotal moment. It was 90 minutes of
watching the president of the United States show he is a sociopath. Most people
have never fully internalized what it means to have a sociopath as president.
They should have.
Will Wilkinson Trump was asked to condemn white supremacy and the
Proud Boys, a violent, racist gang, and simply refused. Instead, he said,
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” suggesting, no doubt truthfully, that
they await his orders and that he cannot afford to lose their support.
Something small but revealing …
Jamelle Bouie I don’t know if this counts as small, but again, when
asked directly, Trump refused to condemn white supremacists. On one hand, it
only confirmed what we all knew. On the other, it confirmed what we all knew!
Elizabeth Bruenig “This is not going to end well,” Trump said, near
the end of the debate, a prophecy with the threat of fulfillment.
Christopher
Buskirk Throughout the debate Biden looked to Chris Wallace for
help, almost begging him to enforce the rules as Trump stepped on him. That’s
an indication that he doesn’t know how to handle either Trump or an environment
where the rules aren’t well known and strictly enforced by a third party.
That’s a difference between a senator and a president.
Linda Chavez Tonight we watched Trump try to bully his way back
to the Oval Office.
Gail Collins Trump made more faces than any debater I’ve seen
since fifth grade.
Michelle Cottle Biden’s repeated pleas for people to vote sent an
important signal. Trump, meanwhile, went alllllll the way down the rabbit hole,
attacking the integrity of the election, peddling conspiracy theories about
fraud and generally ranting and raving. “Bad things happen in Philadelphia!”
What? This may resonate with the president’s base, but it made him look more
than a little unbalanced.
Ross Douthat Trump’s very first answer, on the Supreme Court, was
actually quite reasonable: cool, calm, mild, even vaguely presidential. Biden
has a lot of liabilities; a debate in which Trump just maintained a level tone
and played against type would have given the incumbent a lot of openings. But —
as ever — Trump can only be himself.
Michelle Goldberg Biden had a few good lines. The best was when he
said, echoing Trump’s dismissive words about Covid
deaths, “It is what it is because you are who you are.”
Matt Labash There were a few dogs that didn’t
bark in this debate. But chief among them was Trump failing to try to drug-test
Biden on the spot for performance-enhancing drugs, which he’s suggested Biden
is taking. This was a bit of a relief, and one of the few moments of dignity
the night afforded. Rumor has it that Trump scotched the idea when he found out
from his accountants that the urine-specimen cup was not tax deductible.
Liz Mair How bad was this debate? Dana Bash of CNN straight
up called it a “shitshow“ live
on CNN afterward.
Daniel
McCarthy Not a small
thing, but the lack of a live audience made the debate much worse. A normal
live audience would have reacted to the bickering onstage, which would have
drawn President Trump to address attendees, and perhaps do so with humor —
which would have helped him.
Bret Stephens There
was nothing small about the debate. Watching Trump was like being cornered by
some oversize, overbearing drunk at a party who spills his beer on you while
insisting that Lee Harvey Oswald is still alive. It was the single most
despicable political performance by a sitting president in American history.
Trump didn’t debate, because he doesn’t know how to debate: He interrupted,
taunted, hectored, bragged and ultimately beclowned himself. The debate will be remembered for the
contrast between this grotesque parody of a president and his dignified,
well-comported, blessedly coherent challenger. Biden didn’t get to speak as
much as he deserved, but when he did — most effectively by looking straight at
the camera — he hit home.
Héctor Tobar Has Trump ever been this bullying in a debate? He
seemed to insult with the desperation of a man who sees his political future
coming to an end. Biden did best when he dealt with Trump’s excesses with
humor. I loved his early retort, as Trump interrupted, “Keep yapping, man.”
Charlie Warzel Allowing Trump to undermine the electoral process on
live television without adequate pushback on his claims was a dereliction of
duty by Chris Wallace. If these debates are to continue, networks will need to
find a way to fact check them or else they’re largely vectors for Trump’s
disinformation. Also, the president, when asked to disavow white supremacists,
told them to “stand by.” Trump suggested, vaguely, that “this is not going to
end well.” At least we agree on that point.
Peter Wehner Maybe the lowest point in an unbelievable series of
low points was when Biden spoke movingly of his late son Beau, in the context
of his war service, and Trump attacked Biden’s son Hunter as a drug addict.
Trump once again showed he’s a monstrous human being.
Will Wilkinson Trump more than once attempted to characterize Biden
as some sort of socialist radical. In each case, Biden denied it and asserted
his actual, moderate view. And then Trump would yell, “You just lost the left!”
bizarrely undercutting his initial line of attack and underscoring the futile
incoherence of his strategy of flailing bluster.
Jamelle
Bouie, Gail Collins, Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg
and Bret Stephens are Times columnists.
Elizabeth
Bruenig (@ebruenig)
is a Times opinion writer.
Christopher
Buskirk (@thechrisbuskirk)
is the editor and publisher of the journal American Greatness and a
contributing opinion writer.
Linda
Chavez (@chavezlinda), a former
Reagan White House director of public liaison, is a political commentator.
Michelle
Cottle (@mcottle)
is a member of the Times editorial board.
Matt
Labash, a former national correspondent at The Weekly Standard, is the author of “Fly Fishing With Darth Vader.”
Liz
Mair (@LizMair),
a strategist for campaigns by Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, is
the founder and president of Mair Strategies.
Daniel
McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) is the editor
of Modern Age: A Conservative Quarterly.
Héctor Tobar (@TobarWriter),
an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, is the author
of “Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and
the Miracle That Set Them Free” and a contributing opinion writer.
Charlie Warzel, a New York Times Opinion writer at large, covers technology,
media, politics and online extremism.
Peter
Wehner (@Peter_Wehner),
a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the
previous three Republican administrations, is a contributing opinion writer and
the author of “The Death of Politics:
How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”
Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson), the vice
president for research at the Niskanen Center, is a
contributing opinion writer.
ATTACHMENTS THREE (A) & (B) – from Vox…
THE REVIEWS ARE IN: THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE WAS A DISASTER
“What a dark
event we have just witnessed.”
By German Lopez Sep 30, 2020, 9:10am EDT
The
reviews are in for the first presidential debate of the 2020 general election, and there seems to be
a consensus: It was a complete disaster.
From ABC News to
CNN to Fox News, TV hosts and other commentators agreed that the first debate
devolved into an incoherent mess — largely because President Donald Trump
wouldn’t allow former Vice President Joe Biden to speak, repeatedly flouting
the rules on time limits by interrupting his Democratic opponent.
Immediately
after the debate, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos called out what he
described as the worst debate he had seen in his life.
“I have to speak
personally here,” he said. “As somebody who’s watched presidential debates for
40 years, as somebody who’s moderated presidential debates, as somebody who’s
prepared candidates for presidential debates, as somebody who’s covered
presidential debates, that was the worst presidential debate I have ever seen
in my life.”
CNN anchor Jake
Tapper echoed the sentiment.
“That was a hot
mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck,” Tapper said. “That was the
worst debate I have ever seen. In fact, it wasn’t even in a debate. It was a
disgrace. And it’s primarily because of President Trump. … We’ll talk about who
won the debate, who lost the debate, but I can tell
you one thing for sure: The American people lost tonight, because that was
horrific.”
CNN
correspondent Dana Bash agreed with Tapper. “That was a shitshow,”
she said. “We’re on cable, we can say that. Apologies for being maybe a little
bit crude, but that was really the phrase that I’m getting from people on both
sides of the aisle on text, and it’s the only phrase that I can think of to
really describe it.”
On NBC News,
Savannah Guthrie kicked off the discussion this way: “We need to just pause for
a moment, and say, ‘That was crazy.’ What was that?”
“It was a train
wreck,” NBC News anchor Chuck Todd responded. “But it was a train wreck of the
making of one person. I mean, we know who did it. President Trump did this.”
MSNBC anchor
Brian Williams agreed: “What a dark event we have just witnessed.”
CBS News
political analyst John Dickerson said, “When the stakes were that high, the
debate couldn’t have been lower. It was not an equal opportunity experience.
The president of the United States … was by far responsible for a greater share
of the jaggedness at a time when America does not need jagged.”
Even Fox News
anchor Sean Hannity, a consistent ally of the
president, conceded the debate didn’t go how a lot of people
would have liked, although he spun his criticism so as not to solely impugn
Trump: “I grew up. I played hockey. We dropped the gloves every day. Some
people probably think it’s too hot, but it was both sides.”
Later, on Fox
& Friends First in the morning, political analyst Ron Meyer echoed the sentiment that
emerged elsewhere: “Honestly, there wasn’t much great about this debate. In my
opinion, it could be one of the worst debates in televised American history.”
Flipping through
news channels last night and this morning, it’s the overwhelming takeaway from
the debate: Regardless of which candidate you prefer, it was a debacle.
AND…
THE PROUD BOYS, EXPLAINED
The far-right
street fighting group has embraced violence — and Donald Trump.
Updated Oct
1, 2020, 10:12am EDT
During Tuesday night’s
debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Trump
was asked by moderator Chris Wallace of
Fox News whether he would be “willing to condemn white supremacists and militia
groups and say they need to stand down and not to add to the violence” taking
place in cities like Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Trump asked whom
he should condemn; Biden suggested the Proud Boys, a far-right street fighting
organization that has gained a following both online and in major cities across
the country.
“Proud Boys,
stand back and stand by,” Trump said. “But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got
to do something about antifa and the left, because
this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing [problem].”
On Wednesday, Trump
said he meant the group should “stand down” and let law enforcement do their
jobs, then denied knowing who they were at all. But, as Vox’s
Fabiola Cineas detailed Tuesday
night, the Proud Boys took this moment as a sign of Trump’s support for their
group, even producing merchandise bearing the phrase “stand back and stand by”:
One Proud Boys leader, Joe Biggs, wrote on the
social media platform Parler, “Trump basically said
to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy,” according to the Daily Beast.
Proud Boys national chair Enrique Tarrio, who
organized the recent Portland event, wrote “I will stand down sir!!! Standing by sir. So Proud of my
guys right now.”
So who are the
Proud Boys? Created by Gavin McInnes, a “provocateur” and one
of the original co-founders of Vice Media, who has described himself as “an old punk from Canada” and
turned right in 2008 (the same year he left Vice over “creative differences”),
the Proud Boys are a strange amalgamation of a men’s rights organization, a
fight club, and what some may see as a hate group — one that loves Donald Trump,
hates Muslims (and Jews and trans people), but permits nonwhite membership.
They’ve provided “security” for
former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who allegedly joined the group.
The group has a
magazine where members who win fights are celebrated with the slogan “They
fucked around. They found out.” And in the age of concerns about “civility” and
growing worries about political violence, the Proud Boys — and McInnes,
who believes violence is “a
really effective way to solve problems” — are more interested in fighting antifa.
As Jared Holt at
Right Wing Watch told me back in 2018, “The Proud Boys have been the right
wing’s enforcers in the streets against those who dissent against them.” And in
2020, not much has changed.
In 1994, McInnes, alongside Shane Smith and Suroosh
Alvi, launched Voice of Montreal, which later became
Vice Media. McInnes was already the voice of a
particular strain of right-wingerdom within the company,
telling the New York Times,
“I love being white and I think it’s something to be very proud of.”
In what would
become a standard McInnes move, he later attempted to
couch his remarks as ironic humor in a letter to Gawker,
telling the website that his words were a joke and adding, “It’s unfortunate
that people in the know like Gawker are taking it all so seriously. I thought
we were on the same page: baby boomer media like The
Times is a laughingstock and we should do whatever we can to ridicule it.”
McInnes left Vice Media in 2008. He then moved to what he
calls the “New Right,” which he seemed to define as a combination of “Western
chauvinism” and social and political libertarianism or perhaps libertinism (for
example, he has written extensively on how women
want to be “downright abused” and that he had to stop “playing nice” and begin
“totally defiling the women I slept with” to get more women to have sex with
him).
His shift to the
far right also included espousing anti-Muslim sentiments (“the Muslim world is
filled with shoeless, toothless, inbred, hill-dwelling, rifle-toting,
sodomy-prone men”) and an embrace of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments, including a video he made for
the far-right Canadian outlet Rebel
Media initially called “10
Things I Hate about Jews” (or as he would later tweet, “10 THINGS I
HATE ABOUT THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING JEWS!”). He’s also argued that
historically, perhaps Jews “were ostracized for a good reason.”
These videos,
and some of his others,
earned him a host of new fans, including David Duke. And though McInnes has attempted to push aside accusations of racism
(which he argues doesn’t exist), he has written
for both VDare and
American Renaissance, the latter the publication of
the “race-realist, white advocacy organization” New Century Foundation.
Much
of McInnes’s work, and that of a large swath of
what he would call the New Right, is focused on what he views as the
“feminization” of culture and politics, from commercials or
“cuckmercials” that show “emasculated men”
(or too many interracial couples)
to politics. In an interview last year with Metro,
he said, “There is a real war on masculinity.” And
it’s that search for the renewal of a very specific kind of masculinity — and
McInnes’s belief that Western culture is in trouble
because of “social justice warriors” and the mainstream media “belittling” white men —
that resulted in the Proud Boys. “Proud
of Your Boy” The
Proud Boys were officially launched in September 2016, on the website of Taki’s Magazine, a
far-right publication for which white nationalist Richard Spencer once served
as executive editor. It started out as a joke, using
the song “Proud of Your Boy”
from Disney’s Aladdin musical as the basis for the name of
the group and the hashtag #POYB, which appears
alongside Proud Boys content on Twitter. Women are not permitted to be Proud
Boys, as McInnes explained: The
basic tenet of the group is that they are “Western chauvinists who refuse to
apologize for creating the modern world.” Like Archie Bunker, they long for
the days when “girls were girls and men were men.” This wasn’t controversial
even twenty years ago, but being proud of Western culture today is like being
a crippled, black, lesbian communist in 1953. According
to the Proud Boys, “We do not discriminate based upon race or sexual
orientation/preference. We are not an ‘ism,’ ‘ist,’
or ‘phobic’ that fits the Left’s narrative.” However,
McInnes himself decided he no longer supported
marriage equality because he believed it’s part of a secret plan to
destroy Christianity, and Facebook pages
for Proud Boy chapters in Florida feature Holocaust denial (like a meme
implying the number of those who died during the Holocaust was simply
invented) and virulently racist rhetoric. There
are four levels of Proud Boy membership. First is to declare yourself to be a
Proud Boy (“This means you make your Western chauvinism public and you don’t
care who knows it.”) The second level is the swearing-off of masturbation
(known online as “nofap” or #NoWanks)
combined with a “cereal beat-in” — if you want into the group, you have to
get beaten up while successfully reciting the names of five breakfast
cereals, because “defending the West against the people who want to shut it
down is like remembering cereals as you’re being bombarded with ten fists.” (As
the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer wrote in
February 2017, the Proud Boys’ rules are a “mindbender.” But this is real.)
The third level is to get a specific Proud Boys tattoo. But
it’s the fourth and newest level that is getting the most attention in the
wake of Friday’s events: get into a physical altercation for the “cause.”
“You get beat up, kick the crap out of an antifa,” McInnes explained in
2017. He added, “People say
if someone’s fighting, go get a teacher. No, if someone’s f---ing up your sister, put them in the hospital.” It’s
that violence that the Proud Boys have become best known for, with the group
even boasting of a
“tactical defensive arm” known as the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (or
“FOAK”) reportedly with McInnes’s backing. McInnes made a video praising the use of violence this
June, saying, “What’s the matter with fighting? Fighting solves everything.
The war on fighting is the same as the war on masculinity.” In
parades and rallies across the country, from Berkeley, California, to New
York City, members of the Proud Boys have fought with counterprotesters,
antifa, and anyone who gets in their way. Jared
Holt, of Right Wing Watch, told me that the group “acts as a violent pack of
enforcers for the far right.” And
at events for
conservative commentator Ann Coulter and right-leaning speaker Milo Yiannopoulos, members of the Proud Boys have even
attempted to act as “security,” but those efforts have descended into chaotic
violence (although they spun it as a victory): For
his part, McInnes believes the violence of the
Proud Boys (in his view, a response to left-leaning violence) is a logical
response to how the “left” has responded to right-wing speaking events, writing in
June 2017: The
right isn’t violent. The left is. By allowing these sociopaths to shut down
free speech with violence you are all but demanding a war. Okay, fine, you
got it. It’s official. This is a war. But
McInnes left the Proud Boys in 2018 after the group
was involved in a violent clash with anarchists on the streets of Manhattan,
following an event in which McInnes portrayed Otoya Yamaguchi, a young far-right extremist who
assassinated the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party. McInnes
even had a fake katana (a type of Japanese sword), which he was filmed
swinging at counterprotesters. Ten members of the
group were eventually charged following the violent melee, with two ultimately sentenced to
serve four-year terms in prison in October 2019. In
a since-deleted video, McInnes said, “I am
officially disassociating myself from the Proud Boys. In all capacities,
forever, I quit,” adding, “I’m told by my legal team and law enforcement that
this gesture could help alleviate their sentencing,” referring to the Proud
Boys who were facing legal problems. The
group also faced allegations that the FBI had classified the
organization as “an extremist group with ties to white
nationalism,” but in a statement to me made on background by a law
enforcement official, I was told that “the FBI doesn’t designate groups.” The
Proud Boys’ embrace of violence — and Trump While
McInnes no longer technically leads the group, his
inspiration remains visible, particularly in the violence embraced by the
organization. At rallies in Portland and Seattle, the group
— alongside right-wing militia organizations like Patriot Prayer — have
taken part in events that have frequently turned
violent. Like Patriot Prayer,
another multiracial far-right group that has embraced street fighting as a
political tactic, the Proud Boys often rely on the
actions of their opposition to draw attention to themselves and their
cause. In an interview with Oregon
Public Broadcasting in November 2019, Oren Segal, director of the
Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said the Proud Boys hold events
purely to attract counterprotesters, with the
understanding that provoking any counterprotesters
can feed a “victimization narrative.” “So when antifa
throw stuff at them ... Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer are
able to say, ‘See, they are trying to silence us and stop our freedom of
speech,’” he said. The
group has also effectively parlayed its anti-liberalism into MAGA-centric
politics, intersecting with
right-leaning politicians like Rep. Matt Gaetz.
And Trump’s mention of the group and the resulting media attention might
provide the group with its largest narrative boost of all. Enrique Tarrio, who serves as chair of the Proud Boys, shared in
a since-deleted tweet that he was “extremely PROUD” of Trump, and that “stand
back and stand by” is what the Proud Boys have “ALWAYS” done. Tarrio, who briefly ran for Congress
against Rep. Donna Shalala earlier this year, attended the
2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (but allegedly left
before the murder of Heather Heyer). He got
involved with the Proud Boys after volunteering at an event for the far-right
commentator Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017, and became a fourth-degree Proud
Boy after punching a purported member of antifa
in the face in June 2018. He
is also the Florida state director for a
“Latinos for Trump” organization. In an email on Thursday,
the Trump campaign told me that Tarrio and his
“Latinos for Trump” group is not associated with the campaign or the family.
The campaign also provided cease and desist orders sent to the group in 2019
demanding the group “immediately cease and desist all activities suggesting
that it is affiliated, authorized, endorsed, and/or sponsored by the
Campaign.” |
Him telling the ProudBoys to stand back and standby is what we have ALWAYS
done.
I’m am extremely PROUD of my President’s performance
tonight.
ATTACHMENT FOUR – from Huffington Post
GOP POLLSTER ASKS FOR 1-WORD REVIEWS OF TRUMP’S
DEBATING. THE ANSWERS ARE WILD. A
Republican pollster asked a focus group of undecided voters to weigh in on the
two presidential candidates after their first debate Tuesday. Many said they
were still unsure who they would vote for, but there was one general
consensus: President Donald Trump’s performance was not good. Conservative
public opinion pundit Frank Luntz
asked 16 voters from assorted states for their takeaways
after watching Trump and Democratic nominee Joe
Biden go head to head Tuesday night. The 90-minute roller coaster
was characterized by incessant crosstalk and interruptions from the
president. Fox News moderator Chris Wallace was forced to scold Trump on
multiple occasions for talking over both Biden and himself. Luntz
asked his participants to each provide one word to describe Trump’s
performance. The responses were: “Horrid,”
“chaotic,” “unpolished,” “crackhead,” “eh,”
“puzzling,” “Un-American,” “unhinged” (twice), “an ass, but a confident ass,”
“classic Trump,” “forceful,” “bully,” “arrogant” (twice) and “typical.” Asked
about how Trump could improve, Michelle from Florida said he needed to stop
talking over people. “It’s very rude and just gives a bad impression,” she
said. The
voters were overall more positive about Biden’s performance. The short
descriptions were: “Surprised
at how well he did,” “better than expected,” “more professional,”
“confident,” “politician” (twice), “restraint and compassion,” “predictable”
(three times), “nice guy but lacking vision,” “coherent,” “leader,”
“attentive and rehearsed,” “evasive” and “humanity and integrity.” Voters
in past versions of this panel voiced similar objections to Trump ahead of
the 2016 election. After
one GOP primary debate, the majority of Republican voters in one
of Luntz’s groups said they’d changed
their opinion of Trump from positive to negative after his performance. And
ahead of the 2016 GOP convention, where Trump was awarded the Republican
nomination, a focus group described Trump with terms like “fascist” and
“dumpster fire.” |
Though,
the reviews of his then-opponent Hillary Clinton, whom they described as
“corrupt” and “dishonest,” were not much better.
ATTACHMENT FIVE – from Time
RELIABLE POLLS SHOW THAT BIDEN WON THE DEBATE — SO THOSE AREN’T
WHAT TRUMP’S ALLIES ARE HIGHLIGHTING
September
30, 2020
Shortly after the first presidential debate ended on
Tuesday night, Fox News’s Sean Hannity seized upon
two online surveys to declare victory for his friend President
Trump.
One, from Telemundo, had
Trump winning by a 2-to-1 margin, he said. Another, from WGN, had a similarly
lopsided result.“Early reviews, instant response,
instant polls,” Hannity said. “I’m sure the, you
know, the mainstream media will have corrupt polls, as they always do, but
those are the two flash polls that we have already.”
The press secretary Trump formally employs made a
similar argument on Twitter.
The thing about those surveys is that they are
garbage. This isn’t meant as disparagement; it’s meant as an accurate
reflection of the utility of a survey that consists of a media outlet such as
C-SPAN asking people on Twitter whom they think won. A good rule of thumb for a
poll is that if anyone can weigh in on it and can encourage other people to
participate as well, it’s not going to yield a useful result. When Telemundo announced the results of its informal Twitter survey,
it deliberately pointed out that the
results weren’t scientific, slightly moderating the uselessness of
sharing such information in the first place.
Hannity,
of course, offered no such qualifier — instead disparaging mainstream media
polls that he certainly knew would be less generous in their assessments of the
results. (If you enjoy watching Hannity amplify
uninformative results to make a political point while we wait for more accurate
results to come in, you’re going to want to watch Fox News on election night.)
In short order, scientific polls from reputable
outlets were released. While White House press secretary Kayleigh
McEnany decided to share the results of a CNN
reporter asking an on-air focus group whom they planned to support, the network’s actual poll,
conducted with SSRS, offered a much bleaker review of Trump’s performance.
Sixty percent of respondents in CNN’s real poll
thought that former vice president Joe Biden won the debate. Only 28 percent
thought that Trump did.
CNN had asked its respondents before the debate whom
they expected to win. Biden had the advantage there, too, by
13 points. Tellingly, Trump was far less likely to have been declared the
winner than respondents expected, across party groups. Nearly 9 in 10
Republicans expected Trump to win, for example, but only about two-thirds
actually did. Fully a quarter of Republicans thought Biden won, as did 1 in 8
Trump supporters.
It’s worth noting that this was a particularly
friendly group of respondents. The network’s David Chalian
noted in CNN’s broadcast that the pool of those interviewed skewed more heavily
Democratic. That’s probably one reason, coming into the debate, 6 in 10 had favorable views of Biden compared to 4 in 10 who
said the same of Trump. After the debate, there wasn’t much change — some
slight shifts that aren’t statistically significant.
A poll released by CBS News and
conducted by YouGov had a narrower margin of victory
for Biden, with 48 percent viewing him as the winner and 41 percent saying that
Trump prevailed.
The pollsters also asked respondents, both before
and after the debate, how they viewed the candidates on three qualities:
physical and mental stamina, honesty or trustworthiness, and the extent to
which the candidates seemed to care about voters like them. The debate did
little to change people’s views of Trump or Biden on these measures, with Trump
maintaining an advantage on stamina and Biden being viewed as more honest and
caring.
This is obviously a less clear-cut result than the
one CNN offers, but the implication is the same: In a moment in which Trump
very much needed a victory to redirect the course of a race that he’s losing,
it seems unlikely that he did. His allies can lift up random Twitter polls to
argue that he won, but that will probably serve only to bolster the confidence
of his existing base of support, not to actually convince undecided voters that
he triumphed.
Particularly because, in that CBS-YouGov poll, respondents were more likely to say that their
view of Biden improved than worsened — and to say the opposite of Trump.
Over time, as more polls come out evaluating the
debate and the race, we’ll have a better sense for what Tuesday night meant. We
nonetheless focus on this “who won” question because it seems concrete, a tick
forward in the long contest between the candidates. But a debate in which Trump
didn’t clearly advance relative to Biden is a loss for the president.
No matter what Hannity
says Telemundo said.
ATTACHMENT SIX – from BBC
HOW TO AVOID ANOTHER
TRUMP-BIDEN 'CAR-CRASH' DEBATE
·
1 October 2020
·
Among those who
tuned in for the first US presidential debate, there is a clear and growing
consensus that the first on-air face-off between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was
a mess.
For some 90 minutes, the candidates shouted,
bickered and largely ignored the topics at hand, despite repeated pleas from
moderator Chris Wallace.
And it looks like the Commission on Presidential
Debates - the nonpartisan charity that sponsors the events - agrees. On
Wednesday, the group said the first debate had "made clear" that
additional structure must be added for the remaining two match-ups. One possible
change being considered is cutting candidates' microphones if they try to
interrupt each other, according to CBS News.
President Trump has since responded, in a tweet,
implying that he would not be willing to accept changes to the format.
With two weeks until Mr Trump and Mr Biden are back
in the ring, what could these next debates look like?
Mute the candidates?
Typically, presidential debates give voters a chance
to hear what the candidates have to say before casting their ballots. During's Tuesday event, however, there was a prevailing
wish among those watching for the two men on stage to be quiet.
As the debate wore on, social media was flooded with
requests - from voters, pundits and journalists - for moderators to be given
the power to selectively mute the candidates and prevent them from jumping in
out of turn. Though both nominees were guilty of interruptions, President Trump
was by most accounts the more egregious offender, cutting in some 73 times,
according to CBS news.
This change is now said to be at the top of the list
of those proposed by the debate commission, according to US media.
The calls for muting seem to be a product of the
Zoom-era brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
When working from home and using video-chat apps, such as Zoom, we're now able
to mute ourselves and turn the volume down on colleagues - a tool that could
conceivably lend a hand to a moderator desperate to maintain calm.
A better moderator?
Many who were unhappy with Tuesday's performances
expressed dissatisfaction with moderator Chris Wallace.
From the outset, the Fox News anchor struggled to
maintain control of the candidates, resorting to desperate appeals to Mr Trump
to stop talking and allow his opponent to finish, at one point shouting for the
president to "Let him [Mr Biden] answer!"
But many defended him, saying that dealing with this
set of candidates - namely Mr Trump - was a tough order for anyone.
"I don't blame Chris Wallace at all. He's a
stellar, stand-up journalist," presidential historian Laura Ellyn Smith
told the BBC. "He did well with the Clinton-Trump debate in 2016, he was a good choice to moderate. He was given an
almost impossible task, straight out of the gate."
Speaking to the New York Times the morning after, Mr
Wallace said he was saddened by the way the evening had unfolded.
"I never dreamt that it would go off the tracks
the way it did," he said.
For the next two debates, Mr Wallace will pass the
torch. First, to Steve Scully, a political editor with the
C-SPAN television network and then to Kristen Welker, White House Correspondent
for NBC News.
Will they have a better chance of keeping the
candidates in check? That is a great unknown. As a conservative veteran from Mr
Trump's favourite network, praised for his work as
moderator in the last presidential election, Mr Wallace was thought to have as
good a chance as any. But even he proved no match for the chaotic collision
this year.
A new format?
This change is already certain. The next debate, on
15 October in Miami, Florida, will be in a town-hall format, where candidates
take questions from voters instead of journalists. Here, the environment is
generally more casual. In pre-coronavirus elections
past, candidates have been seated within arms' reach of voters, instead of protected
behind a podium on stage.
The town-hall style may serve to benefit these
particular candidates, Ms Smith said, adding that it might bring some civility.
"In the first debate, they were just looking at Chris Wallace, the room
otherwise is pretty dark," she says.
This time, neither Mr Biden nor Mr Trump will get to
steamroll the moderator - they'll have to answer directly to voters.
"It might inspire a bit more confidence and
might bring a bit more pride back into the format of debate," Ms Smith
said.
Call them off?
Some voters and pundits alike who tuned into the
first debate think the events aren't worth saving. As Tuesday's contest was
unfolding, Twitter was alighting with pleas to cancel the remaining match-ups
entirely.
"I wouldn't be surprised if this is the last
presidential debate between the president of the United States and the former
vice-president of the United States," CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer said minutes
after the face-off concluded.
"For the sake of democracy, cancel the
Trump-Biden debates", read the headline of a New York Times column by
Frank Bruni. The call was echoed by the Washington
Post, Slate and the Atlantic magazine.
But the debates still have their defenders,
including Ms Smith.
"I think that would be a step in the wrong
direction [to cancel]. It would be admitting defeat at this point," she
said. "The debate has been a helpful way in the past to demonstrate
candidates' skills. To see policy, even, in a bit more
detail."
She added: "I don't think you should ever cut
back on dialogue in democracy, even if it's loud."
The remaining debates will proceed as scheduled on
15 October and 22 October, with new rules from the debate commission to be
announced this week.
But the running mates - Vice-President Mike Pence
and California Senator Kamala Harris - will be squaring off first in their
debate on 7 October. It is expected to be less raucous than the one between the
two men at the top of the ticket.
ATTACHMENT SEVEN – from CNN
SIX TAKEAWAYS FROM THE OFF-THE-RAILS FIRST DEBATE BETWEEN BIDEN AND
TRUMP
Trump bullied, bulldozed and obfuscated his way
through the 90-minute showdown, interrupting Biden and moderator Chris Wallace
of Fox News at every turn. He ignored substantive questions and Biden's policy
arguments, and instead swung at a straw-man version of Biden, taking aim at
both Biden's son and a distorted description of his record that exists
primarily in far-right media.
Over Trump's interruptions,
Biden responded by mocking the President, calling him a "clown," a
"racist" and "the worst president America has ever had." He
criticized Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his failure to
produce a health care plan and his response to protests over racial injustice.
Over and over,
Wallace tried to regain control of the debate, without success.C
When Trump
complained that only he was being chastised for talking over questions and
Biden's answers, Wallace shot back: "Frankly, you have been doing more
interrupting."
Trump, who has
trailed Biden in national and swing-state polls, made little effort to reach
out to voters who do not currently support him. He could have further damaged
his standing by refusing to condemn White supremacists after being asked to do
so multiple times.
Trump doesn't
condemn White supremacists
Repeatedly and
directly, Biden called Trump racist.
"This is a President
who has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred,
racist division," the former vice president said.
During a portion
of the debate that focused on race relations, protests, violence and policing,
Trump tried to latch Biden to the violent and destructive elements of this
summer's protests over the police killings of George Floyd in Minnesota, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and others, even as Biden
condemned violence. Trump also claimed that America's suburbs -- which have
tilted in Democrats' favor during his tenure -- would be "gone" if
Biden is elected.
"He
wouldn't know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn," Biden shot back,
adding that "this is not 1950" and Trump's dog whistles "don't
work anymore." He said Trump's handling of the pandemic and the climate have damaged the suburbs.
The section
ended with Trump flatly refusing to condemn White supremacy when asked to do so
by Wallace and Biden. "Stand back and stand by," he said to the white
supremacist militia group Proud Boys, in a moment reminiscent of his response
to White supremacists' march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
"The
commander in chief refused to condemn White supremacy on the global stage in
front of my children, in front of everybody's families, and he was given the
opportunity multiple times to condemn White supremacy and he gave a wink and a
nod to a racist, Nazi, murderous organization," said Van Jones, the CNN
political commentator.
"That's the
only thing that happened tonight," he said. "That's what happened
tonight."
Disputing the
election
Amid unleashing
a barrage of misinformation and falsehoods about mail-in voting, Trump failed
to affirm the one thing he was asked about it: whether he would encourage his
supporters to be peaceful if election results are unclear.
"I'm
encouraging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully,"
Trump said when asked what he would tell his followers in a post-November 3
world.
After issuing
his usual falsehoods about widespread fraudulent voting -- albeit in front of a
newly massive audience and without an ounce of fact-checking from the moderator
-- Trump declared he wouldn't support a result under certain circumstances.
"If I see
tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can't go along with
that," Trump said.
It was an answer
that will do little to calm fears of post-election chaos.
For his part,
Biden insisted that if Americans vote in large numbers -- presumably for him --
a contested election could be prevented.
Anything but coronavirus
If Trump has an
overriding strategy in the final days of the campaign, it is to divert
attention from the coronavirus pandemic, which voters
say in polls that he has badly mismanaged. It has been evident for months Trump
is eager to move on.
And if his goal
Tuesday was to obscure his coronavirus record, Trump
may have been successful. Despite Biden's attempts to inject it back into the
discussion periodically, the debate devolved into arguments and bickering that
ultimately did not center on the global pandemic, which has now killed 1
million people.
Trump openly
said the vaccine process is political, mocked Biden for wearing a mask and
instead of a robust defense of his record he sought to claim a hypothetical
President Biden would have done worse.
The scaled-down
audience and lack of a handshake also brought the health crisis into the debate
hall atmospherics. And Biden made multiple references to the 200,000 Americans
who have died.
But ultimately
the debate was not about the pandemic. It was about Trump's belligerence, which
in his view can only be considered a positive.
Taking over —
and talking over — the Supreme Court
The dominant
issue on Capitol Hill right now is Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Supreme Court
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
But while the debate
opened with questions about the high court, the details were largely lost amid
the chaos, as Trump interrupted Biden's answers and Wallace struggled to rein
in a debate that was devolving into disarray from its opening moments.
Biden attempted
to turn the discussion into one over health care, pointing to the potential for
a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority to overturn the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for those with
preexisting conditions, and undo Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court decision that
legalized abortion nationally.
Trump tried to
pin Biden down on progressive proposals to end the Senate's filibuster and
expand the Supreme Court. "Why wouldn't you answer that question?"
Trump said.
None of those
substantive differences really broke through, though, as Trump repeatedly
interrupted Biden and the moderator and the two candidates talked over each
other.
'Will you shut
up, man?'
Biden largely
responded to Trump's obfuscations and interruptions with eye rolls, head
shakes, chuckles and "C'mon, man" comments. He never lost his temper -- but he made glaringly
clear how little he thinks of Trump.
The first
example came about 18 minutes into the debate, when Biden responded to a series
of Trump interruptions by saying: "Will you shut up, man?"
"You're the
worst president America has ever had. Come on," Biden said later, as the
two debated taxes and the economy.
"It's hard
to get any word in with this clown," he said later.
And at the end
of a portion focused on race, Biden bluntly said, "He's the racist."
Family matters
It took about 45
minutes for Trump to raise an issue his advisers said he was itching to bring
up: Hunter Biden.
Trump and his
allies have repeatedly made unfounded and false claims to allege that
the former vice president and his son acted corruptly in Ukraine.
It's an issue
Republicans believed at one point would dominate this year's campaign, though
it has failed to catch hold amid a global pandemic, urban violence and an
economic downturn.
Still, some
Democrats had wondered how Biden would respond when the topic arose. Some
feared he would lose his cool, sensitive to matters of family.
Instead, Biden
seem prepared and spoke straight to the camera as he sought to rebut Trump's
claims that his son engaged in wrongdoing when he served on the board of a
Ukrainian energy company.
"This is
not about my family or his family, this is about your family -- the American
people," Biden said. "He doesn't want to talk about what you
need."
Undeterred,
Trump kept returning to the issue. As Biden sought to criticize the President
for reportedly calling US war dead "losers," he brought up his late
son, Beau -- who served in Iraq before succumbing to brain cancer in 2015.
Instead of
rebutting the claims about his views of the military, Trump sought to return
the debate to Hunter Biden. "I don't know Beau Biden," Trump scoffed.
As Trump
launched into an attack on Hunter Biden, including raising his past issues with
drug addiction, Biden again turned to the camera and addressed the issue, even
as Trump was seeking to interrupt.
"My son had
a drug problem, but he's overcome it and I'm proud of him," Biden said.
The personal
moment was powerful, and could forge a link between Biden and millions of
Americans whose families have faced drug and alcohol addiction.
ATTACHMENT EIGHT – from Time
JUST CANCEL THE LAST TWO DEBATES. AMERICA HAS
SUFFERED ENOUGH SEPTEMBER 30,
2020 On
Tuesday evening, millions of Americans hobbled by the coronavirus,
exhausted after a long summer of wildfires and civil rights protests,
suffering through mass unemployment and growing ever more cynical about
government from years of toxic political discourse switched on our
televisions to hear what the two men vying for our nation’s highest office
had to say for themselves. What were their plans for ending the pandemic and
getting people back to work? How about the climate crisis, or filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court
seat, or the recent resurgence of militant white supremacy? Could
our current President explain his already-notorious $750 income tax
bill? The first 2020 presidential debate didn’t
offer much novel information on any of those urgent topics. It did, however,
leave many of us with a new question to ask ourselves: Why did we just put
ourselves through that? Whatever the reason, we shouldn’t make the same
mistake again. It’s
not that the debate—which was scheduled to run 90 commercial-free minutes but
ended up bleeding into the next half-hour as egregiously as any Oscars
telecast—produced any shocking revelations. The candidates performed exactly
as pundits (and probably most laypeople) predicted. President Trump attacked
and interrupted, showing little regard for facts. He shouted over not just
the former Vice President, but also the moderator, Chris Wallace, of Trump’s
beloved Fox News. He turned frequent criticisms of his own administration
around on his opponent, claiming that it wasn’t him but Joe Biden who had a
history of racism, Joe Biden who had a problematic relationship with Russia, Joe Biden whose response to COVID-19 would be
catastrophic. Trump accused his moderate rival of adopting a “radical
leftist” platform, then repeatedly chided him for
taking stances the far left wouldn’t like.
He also dodged inquiries about the biggest controversies that have surrounded
him, from his skepticism regarding the settled science of climate change to
his newly leaked tax returns. He responded to a question about whether he
would disavow his white supremacist groups by,
confusingly, instructing the neofascist Proud Boys
to “stand back and stand by.” The group interpreted the mention as an endorsement.
Biden
started off a bit shaky, as usual. But he recovered quickly enough, relaxing
into his standard persona: the
decent, reasonable, compassionate guy offended by Trump’s lack of decorum and
put off by radicalism of all stripes. Faced with an opponent who has never
showed much interest in meat-and-potatoes debate, the conspicuously prepared
Biden mixed his recitations of facts, figures and policy ideas that once
dominated such events with equally rehearsed responses to the President’s
antics. He chuckled ruefully when Trump made a wild accusation and winced as
if enduring mortal pain when Trump boasted or prevaricated. Amid so much
bluster, even the bluntest comebacks (“You are the worst President America
has ever had,” “Everybody knows he’s a liar“) barely
registered. So Biden also tried speaking directly into the camera, warning
viewers that he didn’t trust Trump to produce a COVID-19 vaccine and
encouraging early, in-person voting. If his insistence on civilized discourse
kept him from, say, mentioning the late Herman Cain when
Trump claimed his corona-era rallies had done no harm or questioning the
“secret police” the President deployed in Portland when
Trump denounced Democrats’ handling of the city’s Black Lives Matter
protests, well, at least he avoided any major gaffes. Judged
against their respective past debate performances, both candidates had a
pretty average night. It was Wallace who turned out to be the weak link.
Alternately timid, mildly annoyed and chummy with one candidate or the other,
he often allowed them to answer the questions they wanted rather than the
ones he posed. He rarely followed up when a response called for more context. Trump was allowed to describe critical race theory as
“sick” and “racist” without demonstrating any knowledge of the principles it
teaches. Biden got to defend his moderate cred by
saying things like “I am the Democratic Party right now,” without elaborating
on where and why he diverged with his colleagues on the left. In more than one
instance, Wallace spoke to Trump as though addressing a preschooler, coaxing
him to move on from arguments he wouldn’t drop by suggesting that, “Mr.
President, you’re gonna be very happy” with the next topic. Rarely did he
bother to correct a misleading statement. And
so we came out of the debate, us weary Americans,
just as informed or ignorant as we were going into it. That frustration was
to be expected. In advance of the showdown, most analysts seemed to agree
that it would be futile for the candidates to try to persuade undecided
voters. “If a global pandemic and recession couldn’t fundamentally change the
numbers in this race, it’s hard to believe 90 minutes of televised debate
will,” Democratic operative Lis Smith pointed out
in an interview with TIME’s Molly Ball.
“It’d be easier to find a Nepalese yeti in Cleveland than a voter who truly
hasn’t decided between the two diametrically opposed candidates and their
political parties,” wrote
Lorraine Ali of the L.A. Times.
So each delivered a familiar spiel to his own base, something
the candidates don’t even need to be in the same conversation—or the same
room—to do It
is traumatic to live in a country where everyone is suffering, some much more
than others, but political polarization has made even the most seemingly
apolitical crises into us-vs.-them conflicts. In the end, all
Tuesday’s tête-à-tête accomplished was to pour fresh salt on festering
wounds. And with that in mind, canceling the final two debates of the 2020 election cycle—debates
that seem more likely to create confusion than to dispel it—sounds like the
only humane option. Networks could fill the time with fact-checked primers on
the issues, or crucial information on how to exercise our voting rights, or
reruns of Scandal. Just about anything would be more helpful in
preserving our democracy than what we just witnessed. |
ATTACHMENT NINE – from Goodreads
Hubris Quotes
“The first lesson every child of
Athena learned: Mom was the best at everything, and you should never, ever suggest
otherwise.”
― Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena
“We can never be gods, after all--but
we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The
Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
“I am sufficiently proud of my knowing
something to be modest about my not knowing all.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken
identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not
God.”
― Thomas Sowell
“Don't you ever feel like, what if the
world really IS messed up? What if we COULD Do it all
over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless.
No more summer reading homework.
'm listening.
Annabeth: I mean, the West represents a lot of the
best things mankind ever did--that's why the fire is still burning. That's why OlympusIs still around. But sometimes you just see the bad
stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: 'If I could tear
this all down, i would do it better.'.
Don't you ever feel that way? Like YOU could do a better job I'd you ran the
world?
Percy:Um...no. Me running the world would be kind of a nightmare.
Annabeth: then you're lucky. Hubris isn't your fatal
flaw.
Percy: what is?
Annabeth: I don't know, Percy, but every hero has
one. If you don't find it and learn to control it...well, they don't call it
'fatal' for nothing.
Percy(thinking to himself): I thought about that. It
didn't exactly cheer me up.”
― Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters
“But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess
that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?”
― Amie Kaufman, These
Broken Stars
“It is the mark of the mind untrained
to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for
absolute truth.”
― Aleister
Crowley, Magical and Philosophical
Commentaries on The Book of the Law
“The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his
living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is
half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate
relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of convention from them,
to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his
deepest creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see
visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women
that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do
it for his. He steals the mother’s milk and blackens it to make printer’s ink
to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the
pangs of child-bearing so that he may have for himself the tenderness and
fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage began, the great
artist has been known as a bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber,
a blood-sucker, a hypocrite, and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand
women if only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a
finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder philosophy!
For mark you, Tavy, the artist’s work is to shew us
ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of
ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely
as any woman creates new men. In the rage of that creation he is as ruthless as
the woman, as dangerous to her as she to him, and as horribly fascinating. Of
all human struggles there is none so treacherous and
remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman. Which
shall use up the other? that is the issue between
them. And it is all the deadlier because, in your romanticist cant, they love
one another.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man
and Superman
“It may be a species of impudence to
think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou
Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
“And on the pedestal these words
appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
“People who worship only themselves get
a slick, polished look -- like monuments. Too bad they had to go so soon.”
― Vanna Bonta, Degrees: Thought Capsules
“Religion grants its adherents malign,
intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is
always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.”
― Philip Pullman
“Dreams of innocence are just that;
they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.”
― Michael Pollan, The
Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“There were long stretches of DNA in between
genes that didn't seem to be doing very much; some even referred to these as
"junk DNA," though a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone
to call any part of the genome "junk," given our level of ignorance.”
― Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist
Presents Evidence for Belief
“Even great men bow before the Sun; it
melts hubris into humility.”
― Dejan Stojanovic
“In the same way that the picturesque
designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in
their gardens -- a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree -- the act of leaving parts
of the garden untended, and calling attention to its margins, seems to
undermine any pretense to perfect power or wisdom on the part of the gardener.
The margins of our gardens can be tropes too, but figures of irony rather than
transcendence -- antidotes, in fact, to our hubris. It may be in the margins of
our gardens that we can discover fresh ways to bring our aesthetics and our
ethics about the land into some meaningful alignment.”
― Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener's
Education
“It is the certainty that they possess
the truth that makes men cruel.”
― Anatole
France
“And there they ring the walls, the
young, the lithe. The handsome hold the graves they
won in Troy; the enemy earth rides over those who conquered.
”
― Aeschylus, Agamemnon
“While the financial crisis destroyed
careers and reputations, and left many more bruised and battered, it also left the
survivors with a genuine sense of invulnerability at having made it back from
the brink. Still missing in the current environment is a genuine sense of
humility.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail: The Inside
Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System
from Crisis — and Themselves
“Can anything be imagined so ridiculous,
that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master
of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself
master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least
part, much less to command the whole?”
― Michel de Montaigne, Apology
for Raymond Sebond
“No egoism is so
insufferable as the Christian with regard to his soul.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
“Carved on the temple [at Delphi] were
the exhortations "Know yourself" and "Nothing too much,"
mottoes with a similar meaning: You are only human, so don't try more than you
are able (or you will pay the price). A recurring theme in Greek myth is the
man or woman who loses sight of human limitations and acts arrogantly and with
violence, as if immortal. And pays a terrible price.”
― Barry B. Powell, Classical
Myth
“People of the Philippines: I have
returned. By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine
soil—soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples. We have come dedicated
and committed to the task of destroying every vestige of enemy control over
your daily lives, and of restoring upon a foundation of indestructible
strength, the liberties of your people.”
― Douglas MacArthur
“Nothing is more beautiful than to know all.”
― Athanasius Kircher
“The Duke has decreed that the Castle
is not cold." The gentleman's lips are almost blue from this lack of cold.
"And the Duke is right and correct in this as in all things."
...some very beautiful tapestries line the walls, but many of them are also
full of holes. Perhaps the Duke has decreed that there are no moths, either.”
― Christopher Peter Grey, Leonardo's
Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as Leonardo Da
Vinci's Servant
“The Duke would not pay for the works.
He says that the Castle can never be taken. That is called hubris, Giacomo, the belief that you are never wrong. Believing you
are never wrong is an error that afflicts great men. I have learned that to be
right you must first be wrong many times. Without making errors--and learning
from them--a man cannot find the truth.”
― Christopher Peter Grey, Leonardo's
Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as Leonardo Da
Vinci's Servant
“Don't you know that what you can do, I
can do? Don't you know that I can summon your own winds, move the plates of
this earth, just as you do? This earth is not yours; it's ours. Don't you
fucking know this? Why do you play with us when you know I will do the same,
and worse, to you? I will bring the winds of your world to bear against you. I
will take your winds and twist them and throw them to you. I will mix them with
your oceans, I will wrench them together and send them up to you and watch you
drown in screaming waters of the blood and bones of your favorites. Look at
you. Look at you! You all hairless and white with eyes
burning black and red --- what makes you so sure I won't hurt you the same way?
... What makes you think i won't stalk you to the
corners of the earth to pay for this? What makes you so sure that I won't bring
it all back to you? I shall have waters of blood cast yuo
away! I will sit upon the mount and send judgment down upon you. You shall
cleave to my house! Therefore shall evil come upon thee; and mischief shall
fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off:
and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt
not know! ... To who will ye flee for help? And where
will yet have your glory?--”
― Dave Eggers, You
Shall Know Our Velocity!
“There is no more insidious poison
than hubris”
― C.A.A. Savastano
“The son of Peleus
pressed on in search of glory, bespattering his unconquerable hands with gore.”
― Homer, The
Iliad
ATTACHMENTS TEN (A), (B), (C) and
(D) – from the New
York Times
(A)
(B)
(A) AS TRUMP
SEEKS TO PROJECT STRENGTH, DOCTORS DISCLOSE ALARMING EPISODES
·
Published Oct. 4, 2020, Updated Oct. 5, 2020, 6:33 a.m. ET
·
WASHINGTON — President Trump sought to dispel
any perception of weakness on Sunday with a surprise and seemingly risky outing
from his hospital bed to greet supporters even as his doctors once again
rewrote the official narrative of his illness by acknowledging two alarming
episodes they had previously not disclosed.
The doctors said that Mr. Trump’s blood
oxygen level dropped twice in the two days after he was diagnosed with the coronavirus, requiring medical intervention, and that he
had been put on steroids, suggesting his condition might be more serious
than initially described. But they insisted that his situation had improved
enough since then that he could be released from the hospital as early as
Monday.
The acknowledgment of the episodes raised
new questions about the credibility of the information provided about the
commander in chief of a superpower as he is hospitalized with a
disease that has killed more than 209,000 people in the United States.
With the president determined not to concede weakness and facing an election in
just 30 days, officials acknowledged providing rosy assessments to satisfy
their prickly patient.
Determined to reassert himself on the
political stage on his third day in the hospital, Mr. Trump made an unannounced
exit from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the early evening,
climbing into his armored Chevrolet Suburban to ride past supporters holding
Trump flags gathered outside the building. Wearing a suit jacket and face mask
but no tie, Mr. Trump waved at the crowd through a closed window as his
motorcade slowly cruised by before returning him to the hospital.
“It’s
been a very interesting journey,” Mr. Trump said in a one-minute video posted
on Twitter, looking stronger and sounding more energetic than he had the last
couple of days. “I learned a lot about Covid. I
learned it by really going to school. This is the real school. This isn’t the
let’s-read-the-books school. And I get it. And I understand it. And it’s a very
interesting thing and I’m going to be letting you know about it.”
Mr.
Trump’s camera-friendly, morale-boosting “surprise visit,” however, may have
masked the reality of his condition, and his seeming energy may have reflected
the fact that he was given the steroid dexamethasone,
according to medical experts. Dexamethasone has been
shown to help patients who are severely ill with Covid-19, but it is typically
not used in mild or moderate cases of the disease.
Moreover, some medical experts said Mr.
Trump’s trip out of the hospital was reckless, unnecessarily putting both
hospital staff members and Secret Service agents at risk for a stunt. Others
questioned the president’s statement in his video that he had met soldiers
while at Walter Reed.
“Every
single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential
‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Dr. James P. Phillips,
an attending physician at Walter Reed, wrote on Twitter. “They
might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater.
This is insanity.”
In
a telephone interview on Sunday night, Dr. Phillips also said the trip raised
the alarming question of whether the president was directing his doctors.
“At what point does the physician-patient
relationship end, and does the commander in chief and subordinate relationship
begin, and were those doctors ordered to allow this to happen?” he said, noting
that it violated standards of care and would not be an option open to any other
patient. “When I first saw this, I thought, maybe he was being transported to
another hospital.”
Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said
precautions were taken in organizing the excursion. “The movement was cleared
by the medical team as safe to do,” he said.
But the criticism threatened to reinforce
views of Mr. Trump’s handling of the pandemic as a whole, which has been widely
criticized and remains his biggest political vulnerability.
Even as the White House released new
details about the president’s condition on Sunday, it continued to withhold
others, including when Mr. Trump had his last negative test for the coronavirus and his first positive one. Two administration
officials speaking on the condition of anonymity acknowledged that he had an
undisclosed positive result from a rapid test on Thursday evening after
returning from a fund-raiser at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. But he did
not reveal it when he subsequently called into Sean Hannity’s
Fox News show and, in a raspy voice, said he was still waiting for results.
Only after the television show did the
results of another, more sophisticated PCR test come back confirming the
positive reading, according to the officials, an account previously reported by The Wall
Street Journal. It was that later test result that Mr. Trump
announced on Twitter around 1 a.m. Friday.
Speaking
with reporters on Sunday without wearing a mask, Kayleigh
McEnany, the White House press secretary, would not
specifically confirm the earlier test but said that “the first positive test he
received was after he returned from Bedminster.”
Each passing day brings new information
about those early hours of the illness that contradicts the version of events
originally put out by the White House. Dr. Sean P. Conley, the White House
physician, acknowledged on Sunday that Mr. Trump had a high fever and saw his
oxygen drop on Friday morning, confirming reports by The New York Times and
other news outlets.
That episode helped prompt the decision to
transfer Mr. Trump to the hospital later in the day, a move initially described
by the White House as simply a precautionary measure. Dr. Conley also disclosed
for the first time another episode of falling blood oxygen level on Saturday.
Mr. Trump was put on supplemental oxygen
during the Friday spell over the president’s strenuous objections, Dr. Conley
confirmed. “He was fairly adamant that he didn’t need it,” he said. The doctor
said he was not sure if the president was given oxygen on Saturday, but if so,
it was “very, very limited.” The steroids were administered afterward.
Dr. Conley had refused repeatedly during
his televised briefing on Saturday to say whether the president had received
supplemental oxygen and provided such a relentlessly upbeat assessment that
Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, afterward felt compelled to tell
reporters off camera that the president’s situation had been more serious.
. Trump’s physician,
Dr. Sean P. Conley, acknowledged on Sunday that the president had received
supplemental oxygen, a fact he had repeatedly refused to confirm on Saturday.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
During his briefing
on Sunday, Dr. Conley acknowledged that he had provided a rosy version of
events to please his notoriously sensitive patient. “I didn’t want to give any
information that might steer the course of illness in another direction, and in
doing so, you know, it came off that we were trying to hide something, which
wasn’t necessarily true,” he said.
Alyssa
Farah, a White House communications adviser, conceded that Dr. Conley had been
speaking to an audience of one during his Saturday briefing. “When you’re
treating a patient, you want to project confidence, you want to lift their
spirits, and that was the intent,” she said. She said that Mr. Meadows was
trying “to be as transparent as we can” be by amending the report later.
But Dr. Conley and other doctors were
nonetheless optimistic on Sunday that Mr. Trump was doing better and could be
sent back to convalesce at the White House perhaps on Monday. “If he continues
to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is to plan for a discharge
as early as tomorrow to the White House, where he can continue his treatment
course,” said Dr. Brian Garibaldi, another physician treating the president.
In
addition to the steroids, Mr. Trump has received an experimental antibody
cocktail and is in the midst of a five-day course of remdesivir,
an antiviral drug. The White House has a medical unit capable of responding to
a president’s health troubles but not with the sophisticated equipment
available at Walter Reed.
Mr. Trump, who historically hates hospitals
and anything related to illness, has been hankering to get released, according
to two people close to him, and some aides expressed fear that he would
pressure Dr. Conley into releasing him by claiming to feel better than he
actually does. But advisers were also troubled by the doctors’ prediction that
they might release him on Monday because if they do not, it would signal that
the president is not doing as well as indicated. They also worried that a
premature return could lead to a second trip to the hospital if his condition
worsens.
Mr. Trump was said to be working from his
hospital suite, including receiving a briefing via secure video conference from
Robert C. O’Brien, his national security adviser, as well as Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo and Gen. Mark A. Milley,
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The president has also been watching lots
of television, even more than usual, and has been exasperated by coverage of
Saturday’s calamitous handling of his medical information by Dr. Conley and Mr.
Meadows, as well as speculation about whether he would transfer powers to Vice
President Mike Pence.
He
was also angry that no one was on television defending him, as he often is when
he cannot inject his own views into news media coverage, aides said. As a
result, Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, was expected to appear on
several television shows, as was Corey Lewandowski, who was Mr. Trump’s first
campaign manager in the 2016 race.
The president was not the only one angry
over the weekend. So were many people who work for him at the White House,
frustrated at how little information they had received about the health
concerns in their workplace. In addition to Mr. Trump, a number of others who
work or visit the building regularly have tested positive, including Melania Trump; Hope Hicks, a senior adviser to the
president; Nicholas Luna, the director of Oval Office operations; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; Ronna
McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; and Kellyanne Conway, the president’s former counselor.
Two members of the White House residence staff
tested positive for the virus a few weeks ago, two people briefed on their
cases said, although they were said not to come in close contact with the
president or the first lady. Nonetheless, the presence of the virus in the
first couple’s personal quarters once again raised questions not just about
what they have been exposed to, but whom they have made vulnerable with lax
mask policies around the White House.
Ms. Farah told reporters that the White
House would disclose the number of positive cases among the White House staff,
but Ms. McEnany later seemed to reject that, citing
“privacy concerns,” without explaining how a statistic without names would
violate anyone’s privacy.
The White House has not sought help from
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to trace the contacts of people
who attended a celebration in the Rose Garden and a follow-up reception inside
the White House on Sept. 26 for the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney
Barrett, the event seen as a likely source of the outbreak
A federal official familiar with the matter
said the C.D.C. had a team of experts on standby to help the White House but
had not been approached to do so. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of
the Food and Drug Administration under Mr. Trump, said on Sunday that he had
spoken to several officials who attended the Barrett event but had not been
contacted by contact tracers.
“I think they have an obligation to
understand how the infection was introduced into that environment,” he said of the
White House, speaking on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “There doesn’t seem to be a
very concerted effort underway.”
But after months of eschewing masks in
keeping with the president’s scorn for face coverings, the White House was
moving to finally enforce such practices. Mr. O’Brien said National Security
Council staff members working at the White House complex must now wear face
masks when around others or in common areas.
“Over the past couple days as this spread
through the West Wing, notwithstanding the bubble that was created here in the
testing, we made mask wearing mandatory for National Security Council staff,”
Mr. O’Brien, who had a mild case of the virus himself in July, told reporters
at the White House.
·
Trump did not disclose to the country the
first positive virus test result he received, The Wall Street Journal reported.
That first positive test came Thursday during the day. He appeared on Fox News
that night and said he was awaiting his test result, which was in fact a
follow-up test.
·
Trump’s doctors
are treating him with dexamethasone,
a steroid that has helped severely ill patients, but not typically used in
milder cases. Outside health experts said they could not tell if
Trump was sicker than he appeared in photos — or if doctors were treating him
with unusual aggressiveness.
·
Dexamethasone can cause side effects, including
confusion, sleep loss and changes in mood and cognition, raising concerns about
whether the president’s treatment may affect his ability to
do his job.
·
Trump briefly left the hospital in an
S.U.V. to wave at supporters, potentially putting at risk of
infection the two Secret Service agents who were also in the car. “The
irresponsibility is astounding,” Dr. James Philips, an attending physician at
the hospital where Trump is being treated, tweeted.
·
Joe Biden’s
campaign said he had tested negative for the
virus again, five days after sharing a debate stage with the
president. Biden will campaign today in Florida, despite public health
guidelines calling for a 14-day quarantine after
potential exposure. His campaign said he
did not need to because he did not have “close contact” with Trump.
·
Fearing a second
wave of the virus, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed new restrictions in
20 hot spots in New York City.
(B) THE
SACRIFICES of MANY
October 5th
Millions of Americans have gone months
without seeing some of their closest relatives or their colleagues. They have
canceled weddings and graduations. They have said goodbye to dying loved ones
by phone. |
But when many of the nation’s
political leaders gathered at the White House nine days ago to celebrate the
Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, they decided the pandemic
rules that applied to everybody else didn’t apply to them. |
Some of them assumed, wrongly, that because
they had received a fast-response virus test when arriving at the White
House, they could not be infectious. Others simply chose not to think about
the virus, it seems. Instead, dozens of them sat, unmasked, within inches of one another.
They shook hands, hugged and kissed. After starting outdoors, the event moved
indoors, where the participants continued to celebrate like it was 2019. |
There is now reason to believe that
the gathering was a superspreader event for the coronavirus. The president and the first lady are sick,
as are two senators who attended, a former governor, the president of the
University of Notre Dame and multiple White House staff members, journalists
and others. |
And anyone infected at the White House
that day may have later infected others. |
Andrew Joseph of the health publication
Stat wrote this weekend that
the event at the White House “offers a case study in what experts say has
been the administration’s recklessness.” The Times has compiled photos from the event, with
labels identifying many of the attendees. |
Rebecca Ruiz of Mashable tweeted, in response
to a photo of the indoor reception for Barrett: “I haven’t hugged my parents
since March 8 and they haven’t hugged their grandchildren since then either.
6yo desperately wanted to hold hands w/ her grandpa on her birthday and I
said no, we can’t take that risk.” |
David French of the conservative
website The Dispatch, wrote, “What a
breathtaking contrast to the way so many millions of Americans have lived
their lives.” |
Perhaps the most poignant response
came from, the Notre Dame president, the Rev. John Jenkins. This spring,
Jenkins had made the case that colleges had a moral obligation to reopen,
for the sake of the “body, mind and spirit” of their students. But Notre Dame
would do so carefully, he promised. When some students violated campus rules
by holding parties — without masks or social distancing — and a virus
outbreak followed, Jenkins canceled in-person classes for
two weeks as a punishment and a precaution. |
Early last week, even before it was
clear that the White House helped spread the virus, Jenkins wrote a letter to the Notre Dame
community expressing regret for his behavior there. “I failed
to lead by example, at a time when I’ve asked everyone else in the Notre Dame
community to do so,” he wrote. “I especially regret my mistake in light of
the sacrifices made on a daily basis by many.” |
(C)
At His Core,
Trump Is an Immoralist
Will we let this man and his felons drag us to moral
chaos?
By David
Brooks
Opinion Columnist
·
Oct. 1, 2020
So
far, the 21st century has been a century of menace and insecurity. The threats
have come in rapid succession: terrorism, financial collapse, plague, climate
change, the quaking of our democracy. For good reasons, a tone of heightened
alarm has become the default setting across the media.
People on the right and the left see threats coming
from different places. In his new
book, “The Securitarian
Personality,” the political scientist John R. Hibbing argues that
people on the right tend to react to threats coming from outside America, while
people on the left see threats coming from the powerful financial and political
spheres inside America.
Hibbing’s
book, based on reporting, focus groups and surveys, is an attempt to understand
what motivates the most enthusiastic Trump supporters. The most ardent ones, he
notes, are not economically marginalized, not submissive, not authoritarian,
not religious or conventionally conservative. They have a strong concept that
there is a core America, a concept which I suppose you could summarize as
white, rural, John Wayne, football and hunting.
They feel that
core America is under existential threat from people they view as outsiders:
immigrants, Chinese communists, cosmopolitan urbanites and people of color.
They see themselves as strong and vigilant protectors, defending the sacred
homeland from alien menace.
People
who feel themselves under threat have a high tolerance for cruelty in their
leaders: A little savagery to defend the homeland might be a good thing. But
the crucial thing about Donald Trump is that he is not a nationalist who uses
immoral means. He is first and foremost an immoralist, whose very being was
defined by dishonesty, cruelty, betrayal and cheating
long before he put on political garb.
In
this presidential campaign, Trump’s nationalist platform — trade, immigration —
has faded into the background while his immoral nature has taken center stage.
Compared to 2016, it’s more pure Trump and less Pat Buchanan.
The
key events of the campaign have been moral events: Trump reportedly calling
military veterans and the war dead suckers and losers; Trump downplaying a
deadly pandemic to the American people; Trump failing to pay fair taxes; Trump
sidling up to white supremacists, resorting to racist and QAnon
dog whistles.
The
debate was an important moment. You and I can give sermons about how cruel,
dishonest behavior shreds the norms of a decent society. But moral degradation
is an invisible process. It happens subtly over time.
During Tuesday
night’s debate, by contrast, people got to see, in real time,
how Trump’s vicious behavior destroyed an American institution, the
presidential debate. They got to see how his savagery made ordinary human
conversation impossible. Debate watchers were confronted with a core truth:
What Trump did to that debate Tuesday night is what he’ll do to America in a
second term.
On Tuesday we got see that immorality isn’t just a
vague thing people talk about in Sunday school. It is a Howitzer that blows
through walls and leaves rubble. It is an attempt to serve yourself
by breaking things and making other people suffer.
Biden
should continue to talk about his economic recovery and pandemic control plans
and all that stuff, but this election has devolved to certain key questions:
Does America still have a moral core, a basic framework that makes this a decent
place to live? Will we let Trump and his felons drag us to moral chaos?
As
a temperament and philosophy, conservatism has one central premise: Humans are
fallen beings, and the crust of civilization is thin. We are able to live
sweetly because over centuries we have constructed a moral and social order,
which is fragile and requires constant tending.
With
his conduct, Trump assaults this core conservative instinct. He is separating
the nationalists from some temperamental conservatives. The nationalists relish
Trump’s disruption, his savagery. Some everyday conservatives — homeowners,
parents, shopkeepers — feel in their bones that some new danger is afoot.
You
can see this separation in the polls. Fourteen percent of Trump’s 2016
battleground state supporters are not sure they will support him again. Only 16
percent of white evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016; 28 percent now
support Joe Biden, according to an August Fox News poll.
In
2016, Trump won noncollege-educated white women in Wisconsin
by 16 percentage points.
Now he is losing them by 9 points. In 2016
Trump tied Clinton
among college educated whites in Pennsylvania. Now they are going for Biden, 61
percent to 38 percent. In 2016 in Ohio, Trump carried union households by
13 points. Now he is losing them by 8 points.
Some Republicans
see Trump’s immorality as a sideshow they will tolerate to secure other goods.
But his immorality is voracious, a widening gyre that threatens the basic
stability of civic life. If he undermines this election, and his Republican
enablers let him, he’ll approach what comes next with appalling ferocity.
My intuition
tells me, as does the polling data, that more people
are paying attention, have recognized what’s before them and will make the
right decision. Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward made the
essential point: “There was always just enough virtue in this republic to save
it; sometimes none to spare.”
(D) For the Sake of Democracy, Cancel the
Trump-Biden Debates
The president is maneuvering to steal the election. Why help him?
By Frank Bruni
Opinion Columnist
·
Oct. 1, 2020
·
Little more than 12
hours after the conclusion of the most chaotic, counterproductive and outright
offensive American presidential debate in my lifetime, the Commission on
Presidential Debates promised
unspecified format changes in the two remaining faceoffs
between Donald Trump and Joe Biden so that the events would be more orderly,
which is to say watchable at all.
Hooray for the
commission, but give me a break. If its members fully absorbed President
Trump’s 90-minute snit on Tuesday night in Cleveland, then they know that they
can show him the way toward decency and give him a few forceful shoves in its
direction, but they can never get him there. That’s the lesson of his entire
presidency. The debate just put a gargantuan exclamation point on it.
A destructive, dangerous exclamation point, too, which is why the
commission isn’t going far enough. It should cancel the coming Trump-Biden debates
altogether.
Let Vice President
Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris have their matchup next Wednesday night,
then let Americans move on. They have all the information they need to decide
whether they want another four years of Trump. Giving him more time in front of
a national television audience isn’t a route to clarity. It’s an expressway to
autocracy, because his performance on Tuesday night proved that he will use
these showcases to subvert democracy.
In what sane
country should that be abetted? By what sound reasoning should that be
endorsed?
On Wednesday
morning I published a column,
written fast on the heels of the debate, that exhorted
Biden to refuse to participate in a second or third one. But the more I thought
about that, the more I realized that he shouldn’t bear that onus and open
himself to baseless charges by Trump and his minions that he’s running scared.
The architects and arbiters of these events should take on that responsibility.
They have ample
cause. In fact they have an open-and-shut case.
Did you tune into
the debate? Then you saw that Trump acted like a spoiled child, a machine gun
of interruptions, a gusher of insults. His misbehavior rendered any
illuminating exchange of ideas or contest of opinions impossible. But that’s
not the commission’s real cause. That’s not its best case.
This is: Trump’s
core strategy in the debate — reflective of his core strategy overall — was to
make voters so disgusted that many would turn away from the election and so
distrustful that many would follow his lead should he reject the official
results. He’s maneuvering himself into position to steal this election. On
Tuesday night he turned the debate commission and every television network and
internet site that aired or streamed the event into his accomplices.
As my Times
colleague David Sanger wrote in an
analysis with the on-the-money headline “Tuesday’s Debate Made Clear
the Gravest Threat to the Election: the President Himself,” every inflated or
baseless charge about voting that Trump made during the debate had already been
“delivered in recent weeks, in tweets and rallies with his faithful. But he had
never before put it all together in front of such a large audience.”
He said the
election was “rigged.” He used the words “fraud” and “fraudulent.” He insisted
that the Democrats would “cheat.” He cast mail-in ballots, a crucial
alternative in the midst of a pandemic, as an enormous scam. He raised the
specter of “tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated.”
He said that he was
“counting on” Supreme Court justices — including, if all goes according to his
and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plans, three whom he appointed —
“to look at the ballots.” He ducked a question from the moderator, Chris
Wallace, about whether he would pledge not to declare victory “until the
election has been independently certified.” He gave every indication that he
would challenge any outcome not to his liking.
He also repeated
previous appeals to his supporters to go to the polls to watch for suspicious conduct.
That scenario smacks of voter intimidation. It’s also a recipe for violence,
especially when you add the ingredient of the Proud Boys, whom he told to
“stand by.”
All of that was on
top of a florid show of flamboyant nastiness that was equally tactical — and
plenty corrosive on its own. Trump figures that if he demoralizes the electorate, that redounds to his benefit, and he’s right.
That has long been his way: to treat Americans to a spectacle so coarse and
dark that its ugliness befogs everything and befouls everyone. He looks
horrible, but nobody else looks much better.
But while his
posture toward Biden was grotesque, it was also an exaggeration of familiar
political feuding. His attack on American democracy, on the other hand, was
inexcusable and impermissible. The commission — a bipartisan nonprofit group
that has run presidential debates since the ’80s — should respond accordingly.
I can hear the
objections: That will seem biased. That will seem partisan.
Best to err on the side of detachment.
But that sort of
hesitancy prevented officials in President Barack Obama’s administration from
publicizing what they knew about Russian interference in the 2016 election
until it was over. That kind of reluctance discouraged journalists from boycotting
White House news briefings when they should have, toward the very start of the
Trump administration.
Trump continues to
take a wrecking ball to vital American institutions and sacred American
traditions. He did it on Tuesday night to the process by which we choose the
person who will shape the country’s future and lead us into it. To give him a
stage that grand again is to commit civic suicide.
ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – from RCP
Wednesday, October 7 |
Race/Topic |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +5 |
|||
Biden +1 |
|||
Biden +5 |
|||
Biden +13 |
|||
Biden +11 |
|||
Biden +5 |
|||
Biden +6 |
|||
Trump +18 |
|||
Biden +9 |
|||
Biden +12 |
|||
Cunningham +4 |
|||
Peters +8 |
|||
Kelly +8 |
|||
Greenfield +5 |
|||
Lujan +10 |
|||
Justice +11 |
|||
Schweikert
+3 |
|||
Disapprove +9 |
|||
Disapprove +10 |
|||
Disapprove +12 |
|||
Recommended X More from Real Clear · Pressure Is on
Pence to Ace the Debate ·
Biden Makes His Florida Pitch as Covid
Sidelines Trump · Trump Returns to
WH: Don't Be Afraid of Covid, Don't Let It Dominate
You |
|||
Disapprove +45 |
|||
Wrong Track +37 |
|||
Wrong Track +30 |
Tuesday, October 6 |
Race/Topic (Click
to Sort) |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +2 |
|||
Tie |
|||
Biden +4 |
|||
Tie |
|||
Biden +4 |
|||
Biden +6 |
|||
Biden +4 |
|||
Biden +11 |
|||
Biden +8 |
|||
Biden +8 |
|||
Biden +9 |
|||
Biden +7 |
|||
Biden +6 |
|||
Biden +11 |
|||
Trump +8 |
|||
Biden +32 |
|||
Biden +14 |
|||
Biden +16 |
|||
Biden +10 |
|||
Biden +10 |
|||
Biden +10 |
|||
Gideon +1 |
|||
Tillis
+1 |
|||
Cunningham +5 |
|||
Peters +7 |
|||
Peters +5 |
|||
Cooper +13 |
|||
Disapprove +8 |
|||
Disapprove +10 |
Monday, October 5 |
Race/Topic (Click
to Sort) |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +8 |
|||
Trump +4 |
|||
Biden +8 |
|||
Biden +4 |
|||
Biden +5 |
|||
Biden +6 |
|||
Trump +10 |
|||
Trump +20 |
|||
Biden +21 |
|||
Kelly +11 |
|||
Cunningham +6 |
|||
Tuberville
+12 |
|||
Coons +30 |
|||
Cooper +12 |
|||
Cox +26 |
|||
Carney +29 |
|||
Bice +4 |
|||
Kennedy +6 |
|||
Blunt Rochester +22 |
|||
Disapprove +17 |
|||
Wrong Track +33 |
Sunday, October 4 |
Race/Topic (Click
to Sort) |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +14 |
|||
Biden +7 |
|||
Tie |
|||
Balter
+2 |
|||
Frankel +28 |
|||
Disapprove +12 |
Saturday, October 3 |
Race/Topic (Click
to Sort) |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +5 |
|||
Biden +7 |
|||
Trump +5 |
|||
Parson +7 |
Friday, October 2 |
Race/Topic (Click
to Sort) |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +3 |
|||
Biden +7 |
|||
Biden +3 |
|||
Biden +4 |
|||
Biden +7 |
|||
Biden +32 |
|||
Kelly +9 |
|||
Shaheen
+15 |
|||
Sununu +15 |
|||
Disapprove +3 |
Thursday, October 1 |
Race/Topic (Click
to Sort) |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +13 |
|||
Biden +2 |
|||
Greenfield +12 |
|||
Shaheen
+13 |
|||
Sununu +18 |
|||
Pappas +18 |
|||
Kuster
+6 |
|||
Disapprove +6 |
|||
Disapprove +6 |
|||
Wrong Track +28 |
Wednesday, September 30 |
Race/Topic (Click
to Sort) |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +8 |
|||
Biden +9 |
|||
Biden +8 |
|||
Biden +9 |
|||
Biden +2 |
|||
Trump +1 |
|||
Biden +27 |
|||
Tie |
|||
Disapprove +11 |
|||
Disapprove +10 |
|||
Democrats +6 |
|||
Disapprove +48 |
|||
Wrong Track +39 |
|||
Wrong Track +41 |
Tuesday, September 29 |
Race/Topic (Click
to Sort) |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +2 |
|||
Biden +6 |
|||
Biden +2 |
|||
Tie |
|||
Trump +4 |
|||
Biden +3 |
|||
Trump +1 |
|||
Biden +9 |
|||
Biden +9 |
|||
Biden +14 |
|||
Ossoff
+1 |
|||
Loeffler 23, Warnock 31, Collins 22, Lieberman 9, Tarver 4, Slowinski |
Warnock +8 |
||
Cornyn
+10 |
|||
Cunningham +6 |
|||
Shaheen
+19 |
|||
Cooper +13 |
|||
Sununu +26 |
Monday, September 28 |
Race/Topic (Click
to Sort) |
Poll |
Results |
Spread |
Biden +5 |
|||
Biden +5 |
|||
Biden +5 |
|||
Biden +3 |
|||
Biden +9 |
|||
Biden +3 |
|||
Biden +7 |
|||
Tie |
|||
Smith +8 |
|||
Bacon +2 |
|||
Democrats +6 |
|||
Wrong Track +37 |