Tag: Trump ego

Under Donald Trump, COVID-19 is accelerating the Republican Party’s descent into authoritarianism

AlterNet logo“When somebody’s the President of the United States, the authority is total.”

– Donald Trump, April 13th.

That Maya Angelou quote about believing people when they show you who they are gets tossed around quite a bit in reference to the 45th President of the United States, but it seems like no matter how many times Donald J. Trump beats us over the head with the message, there are still a lot of people who don’t quite get it.

So allow me to translate: Trump and his allies within the GOP ecosystem are hostile to democracy. Their response to the COVID-19 outbreak clarifies existing authoritarian trends within the regime and the broader Republican coalition and provides a pretext for accelerating them. Most recently, Trump fired both the Inspector General for the intelligence community who complied with the law and passed on a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s attempt to strong arm Ukraine to Congress, and the Inspector General originally responsible for overseeing over $2 trillion in pandemic bailout funds. (We’ll return to these offenses.)

In How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt provide a checklist of authoritarian behavior which weaken and eventually destroy democracies. They include: Undermining the legitimacy of elections; denying the legitimacy of political opponents; tolerating or encouraging violence and attempts to curtail civil liberties, including or especially the freedom of the press. The Trump administration checks every box. Continue reading.

We’ve never backed a Democrat for president. But Trump must be defeated.

Washington Post logoThis November, Americans will cast their most consequential votes since Abraham Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. We confront a constellation of crises: a public health emergency not seen in a century, an economic collapse set to rival the Great Depression, and a world where American leadership is absent and dangers rise in the vacuum.

Today, the United States is beset with a president who was unprepared for the burden of the presidency and who has made plain his deficits in leadership, management, intelligence and morality.

When we founded the Lincoln Project, we did so with a clear mission: to defeat President Trump in November. Publicly supporting a Democratic nominee for president is a first for all of us. We are in extraordinary times, and we have chosen to put country over party — and former vice president Joe Biden is the candidate who we believe will do the same. Continue reading.

Pelosi Warns That Trump’s Lies Are Costing Lives

As Donald Trump spoke during his daily coronavirus briefing Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a stark warning for Americans to “ignore the lies” and “insist on the truth” while the U.S. assesses next steps in the crisis.

Pelosi’s scathing outline of Trump’s monthslong handling of the virus outbreak contrasted with his eagerness to reopen the economy.

“There are important decisions ahead,” Pelosi wrote to House Democrats. “But if we are not working from the truth, more lives will be lost, economic hardship and suffering will be extended unnecessarily.” Continue reading.

Trump denied he wanted his name on stimulus checks. Here’s how it happened.

Washington Post logoWhen President Trump publicly denied on April 3 that he wanted his signature on stimulus checks that would be sent to millions of Americans struggling amid a pandemic, officials in the Treasury Department were already secretly working on a plan to get the president’s name on the payments.

Trump, who was reportedly musing about placing his signature on the checks as early as late March, defended the unprecedented move Wednesday.

“I don’t know too much about it. But I understand my name is there,” Trump said. “I don’t know where they’re going, how they’re going. I do understand it’s not delaying anything, and I’m satisfied with that. I don’t imagine it’s a big deal. I’m sure people will be very happy to get a big, fat, beautiful check and my name is on it.” Continue reading.

Trump threatens to adjourn both chambers of Congress

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Wednesday threatened to use his executive power to force both chambers of Congress to adjourn if the Senate did not confirm his nominees for vacancies across the administration.

The president, during a coronavirus briefing in the Rose Garden, offered a lengthy diatribe against what he described as congressional obstruction and argued confirming his nominees was more urgent than ever amid the pandemic.

“The Senate should either fulfill its duty and vote on my nominees or it should formally adjourn so I can make recess appointments,” Trump said. “We have a tremendous number of people that have to come into government. And now more so than ever before because of the virus and the problem.” Continue reading.

Trump WHO cuts meet with furious blowback

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) is meeting with furious blowback from business groups, Democrats, foreign leaders and health groups, who say he is jeopardizing the global response to the pandemic.

While Republicans, some of who have joined Trump’s criticism of the WHO, have not slammed the decision to halt funding, the White House is coming under attack from many other directions over the issue.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, usually an ally of Republicans, said Trump’s action cut against U.S. interests. Continue reading.

Trump and his allies have made a dark calculation — ‘reopening’ at any price is his only path to re-election

AlterNet logoIt seems like only yesterday that everyone was lamenting the lack of COVID-19 tests and vital medical equipment, and now we are supposedly ready to “reopen the country.” That’s because it was only yesterday — and it will be the same tomorrow. There are still not enough tests and not enough medical equipment. But because the worst hotspots, including New York City are muddling through at or near the apex of the pandemic curve — dealing with the ravages of this virus day after day as the bodies pile up but new cases level off — President Trump is trying to change the subject away from his failures to a premature declaration of victory.

His coronavirus rallies (aka “press briefings”) this week have been hostile affairs, with the president on the defensive trying to push back against the devastating cascade of reporting that has laid bare the fiasco of his response to the pandemic. But by once again attempting to downplay the current state of the crisis, he seems intent upon making exactly the same mistakes he made before.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes astutely observed on his Tuesday night show that Trump made three essential errors at the beginning of the crisis.

  1. He failed to take it seriously and appreciate the terrible danger of a pandemic.
  2. The administration did not move quickly, with the lead time, it had to prepare adequate testing.
  3. He focused on the problem of the economy, thinking of it as somehow more important than — and separate from — the epidemic.

Continue reading.

Trump’s Own Task Force & Top Health Officials: We Need More Testing To Safely Reopen The Economy

As Trump pushes forward with his May 1 date, his own task force to reopen the economy and his top health officials are warning that we need to dramatically increase testing before we can safely reopen the economy.

Trump’s own task force to reopen the economy warned him that he needed to dramatically increase testing before the economy can safely reopen.

Wall Street Journal: “Business Leaders Urge Trump to Dramatically Increase Coronavirus Testing”

Associated Press: “But in a round of calls with business leaders earlier in the day, Trump was warned that a dramatic increasing in testing and wider availability of protective equipment will be necessary for the safe restoration of their operations.”

Washington Post: “President Trump’s attempt to enlist corporate executives in a push to reopen parts of society amid the coronavirus pandemic got off to a rocky start Wednesday, with some business leaders complaining the effort was haphazard and warning that more testing needs to be in place before restrictions are lifted.”

Trump’s own top health officials agree that we need to ramp up testing before we can safely reopen the economy.

Dr. Anthony Fauci: “We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we’re not there yet.”

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn: “Further ramping up testing, both diagnostic as well as the antibody tests, will really be necessary as we move beyond May into the summer months and then into the fall. … We need to do more. No question about that.”

Surgeon General Jerome Adams: “And as we ramp up testing and can feel more confident that these places actually can do surveillance and can do public health follow-up, some places will be able to think about opening on May 1. Most of the country will not, to be honest with you, but some will.”

Wall Street is frustrated with Trump’s handling of the crisis and says the virus needs to be under control before we reopen the economy.

Politico: “WALL STREET TO TRUMP: KEEP IT SHUT — The White House held a call this morning with top Wall Street titans and other senior bankers and financiers to talk about how to reopen the economy, part of a barrage of phone confabs between President Donald Trump and executives from industries including hospitality, health care, technology, construction, sports and many more. … Beyond the haphazard nature of the call, senior bankers are getting increasingly frustrated with Trump’s approach to the crisis. They say pressure tactics to reopen the economy as fast as possible make no sense if the virus isn’t fully under control and consumers and businesses don’t feel safe to resume anything close to normal activities.”

As Trump continues to push forward to reopen the economy on May 1, testing is still “woefully short” of where it needs to be.

New York Times: “Testing Falls Woefully Short as Trump Seeks an End to Stay-at-Home Orders”

New York Times: “As President Trump pushes to reopen the economy, most of the country is not conducting nearly enough testing to track the path and penetration of the coronavirus in a way that would allow Americans to safely return to work, public health officials and political leaders say.”

George Conway: Trump can’t accept that the presidency doesn’t belong to him

The Hill logoGeorge Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conwayand a frequent critic of President Trump, argued in The Washington Post that Trump can’t accept that he doesn’t own the presidency like a business. 

“When he ran a private company, one he owned, Trump could command all its constituent parts to do his bidding and make the rules himself,” Conway wrote in an op-ed. “You’d think by his fourth year in the White House, he would have learned that the presidency doesn’t work that way. But obviously he hasn’t.”

Trump on Monday sparked controversy when he claimed he has “ultimate authority” to force governors, who have been issuing stay-at-home orders to curtail the spread of the coronavirus, to reopen schools, businesses and other institutions in their states currently shuttered by the pandemic.

 

Bill Gates, in rebuke of Trump, calls WHO funding cut during pandemic ‘as dangerous as it sounds’

Washington Post logoMicrosoft co-founder Bill Gates criticized President Trump’s decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization as “dangerous,” saying the payments should continue particularly during the global coronavirus pandemic.

“Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds,” Gates tweeted early Wednesday. “Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs @WHO now more than ever.”

The United States, the organization’s largest donor, has committed to provide the WHO with $893 million during its current two-year funding period, a State Department spokesperson told The Washington Post. Continue reading.