Jeff Kowalsky’s photograph of the “American Patriot Rally” at the Michigan statehouse on April 30 shows a large, bearded man, leaning forward, mouth open, screaming. Positioned between two police officers who are staring blankly ahead above their masks, he is focused on something they are preventing him from reaching: the legislature. His fury is palpable.
The idea that such a man is an “American Patriot” is the perverted outcome of a generations of political rhetoric that has celebrated a cartoon version of “individualism.” That rhetoric has served a purpose: to convince voters that an active government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, and promotes infrastructure—things most Americans actually like—is socialism.
Americans embraced an active government in the 1930s and 1940s to combat the Depression and fight World War Two, and by 1945, that government was hugely popular among members of both parties, but not with the businessmen who resented government interference in their industries. To get voters to turn against a system they liked, in the 1950s, leaders eager to destroy business regulation linked their mission to racism.
After the Supreme Court, headed by former Republican Governor of California Earl Warren, unanimously ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional, reactionaries determined to undercut the New Deal government told voters that this is what they had warned about all along: an activist state would redistribute white people’s money to black people through taxes, levied to do things like provide schools, or the troops necessary to protect the black youngsters trying to enroll in them.
That rhetoric resonated with certain white Americans because it echoed that of Reconstruction, when Democrats opposed to black rights insisted that Republican policies to level the playing field between formerly enslaved people and their white former owners were simply a redistribution of wealth. Money for roads and schools and hospitals that would now be accessible to black Americans would have to be paid for by tax levies. Since most property owners in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War were white, this meant a transfer of wealth from hardworking white taxpayers to lazy African Americans. As one reporter put it: socialism had come to South Carolina.
In contrast to the East, with this crushing system, stood the postwar West, where Democrats admired the cowboy. The actual work of a western cowboy in the short period of the heyday of cattle ranging from 1866 to 1886 was dangerous, low-paid, and dirty; the industry depended heavily on government supported-railroads and military support; and a third of the cowboys were men of color. But people eager to criticize the Republicans’ social welfare policies insisted that the cowboy was the true American individualist. Almost always white in this myth, he wanted nothing from government but to work hard as he tamed the land and the “savages” on it, provide for the wife and children he someday hoped to have, and be left alone. The image of the cowboy became such a dominant myth during Reconstruction that it turned Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show into the nation’s first mass entertainment spectacle.
It was no wonder then, that in the 1950s and 1960s, those eager to destroy an active government tapped into the image of the American cowboy as their symbol. Gunsmoke debuted on the new-fangled television in 1955, and by 1959, there were 30 prime time Westerns on TV. These westerns portrayed the mythical cowboy much as he had been after the Civil War: an independent white man fighting the “savages” of the plains to provide for his eventual family. A man who wanted nothing of government but to be left alone.
Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, with his square jaw and white Stetson, tapped into this mythology as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964. He assured white southerners that the adjustment of race relations was an unlawful assumption of power by the federal government. So, too, was business regulation. Goldwater lost the election, but turned five deep South states from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, a pattern Ronald Reagan capitalized on in 1980. Swapping his usual English riding outfit for jeans and a western saddle, Reagan personified the mythological American cowboy. He assured Americans that “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” then began the process of dismantling the New Deal state, slashing taxes and programs to restore to glory the American individualist.
Reagan’s election saw the first gender gap in American voting, as women hesitated to sign on to a program that was working against their ability to provide for their families. Lots of men weren’t so sure they wanted to slash workers’ protections and government regulation of business, either. So those eager to reinforce the image of the American individualist against a socialist government upped their game. In 1984, we got Red Dawn, the bloodiest movie made up to that point, featuring high school boys in the West standing against an invasion of communists after the town government sells everyone out.
In 1992, the idea of a western individualist standing against an intrusive government got a real demonstration when government forces tried to arrest a former factory worker, Randy Weaver, who had failed to show up for a trial on a firearms charge, at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. An 11-day siege killed Weaver’s wife, fourteen-year-old son, and a deputy marshal. Far-right activists and neo-Nazis swarmed to Ruby Ridge to stop what they saw as the overreach of government as it attacked a man protecting his family.
The next year, government officers stormed the compound of a religious cult whose former members reported that their leader, David Koresh, was stockpiling weapons. A 51-day siege ended on April 19, 1993, in a gun battle and a fire that killed 76 people. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners that the government had invaded Waco to “murder” a citizen. The modern militia movement to protect individuals from government tyranny took off.
Now, having sown the wind, we are reaping the whirlwind. Anti-government cowboys are protesting the tyranny of government measures designed to protect citizens from dying. The right of governors and legislatures to protect health is well-established, of course, but that doesn’t matter to men steeped in the rhetoric of the past generation.
This now-famous image of the screaming “American Patriot” is a portrait of the failure of the individualist image. This is a man who punches down, not up, and who wants to have the power to decide whether his neighbors live or die. He is a bully and a coward.
You know who's brave? The doctors and nurses who get up every morning and go to their jobs. The bus drivers who have continued to work without either hazard pay or sufficient protection, at least 94 of whom we have lost to Covid-19. The janitors and housekeeping staff who combat the virus all day, every day. The meat cutters and fishermen, shippers, drivers and store clerks who are keeping us alive, some only because it is the only way they can feed their children, which makes it all the braver. The Navy sailors trying to contain the virus so they can complete their mission. The teachers who stay upbeat for the students they terribly miss. The parents who are so very tired as they try to work and teach and parent and shop, but who get up every morning and do it again. And, yes, the political leaders trying to legislate to protect us as a handful of screaming anti-government activists terrorize them... and the photographers who record it.
These true American Patriots-- not a screaming bully whose "rights" require others to die-- are the very good people Abraham Lincoln meant when he called for a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
5/3- Heather Cox Richardson aka beastmode
The idea that such a man is an “American Patriot” is the perverted outcome of a generations of political rhetoric that has celebrated a cartoon version of “individualism.” That rhetoric has served a purpose: to convince voters that an active government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, and promotes infrastructure—things most Americans actually like—is socialism.
Americans embraced an active government in the 1930s and 1940s to combat the Depression and fight World War Two, and by 1945, that government was hugely popular among members of both parties, but not with the businessmen who resented government interference in their industries. To get voters to turn against a system they liked, in the 1950s, leaders eager to destroy business regulation linked their mission to racism.
After the Supreme Court, headed by former Republican Governor of California Earl Warren, unanimously ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional, reactionaries determined to undercut the New Deal government told voters that this is what they had warned about all along: an activist state would redistribute white people’s money to black people through taxes, levied to do things like provide schools, or the troops necessary to protect the black youngsters trying to enroll in them.
That rhetoric resonated with certain white Americans because it echoed that of Reconstruction, when Democrats opposed to black rights insisted that Republican policies to level the playing field between formerly enslaved people and their white former owners were simply a redistribution of wealth. Money for roads and schools and hospitals that would now be accessible to black Americans would have to be paid for by tax levies. Since most property owners in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War were white, this meant a transfer of wealth from hardworking white taxpayers to lazy African Americans. As one reporter put it: socialism had come to South Carolina.
In contrast to the East, with this crushing system, stood the postwar West, where Democrats admired the cowboy. The actual work of a western cowboy in the short period of the heyday of cattle ranging from 1866 to 1886 was dangerous, low-paid, and dirty; the industry depended heavily on government supported-railroads and military support; and a third of the cowboys were men of color. But people eager to criticize the Republicans’ social welfare policies insisted that the cowboy was the true American individualist. Almost always white in this myth, he wanted nothing from government but to work hard as he tamed the land and the “savages” on it, provide for the wife and children he someday hoped to have, and be left alone. The image of the cowboy became such a dominant myth during Reconstruction that it turned Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show into the nation’s first mass entertainment spectacle.
It was no wonder then, that in the 1950s and 1960s, those eager to destroy an active government tapped into the image of the American cowboy as their symbol. Gunsmoke debuted on the new-fangled television in 1955, and by 1959, there were 30 prime time Westerns on TV. These westerns portrayed the mythical cowboy much as he had been after the Civil War: an independent white man fighting the “savages” of the plains to provide for his eventual family. A man who wanted nothing of government but to be left alone.
Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, with his square jaw and white Stetson, tapped into this mythology as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964. He assured white southerners that the adjustment of race relations was an unlawful assumption of power by the federal government. So, too, was business regulation. Goldwater lost the election, but turned five deep South states from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, a pattern Ronald Reagan capitalized on in 1980. Swapping his usual English riding outfit for jeans and a western saddle, Reagan personified the mythological American cowboy. He assured Americans that “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” then began the process of dismantling the New Deal state, slashing taxes and programs to restore to glory the American individualist.
Reagan’s election saw the first gender gap in American voting, as women hesitated to sign on to a program that was working against their ability to provide for their families. Lots of men weren’t so sure they wanted to slash workers’ protections and government regulation of business, either. So those eager to reinforce the image of the American individualist against a socialist government upped their game. In 1984, we got Red Dawn, the bloodiest movie made up to that point, featuring high school boys in the West standing against an invasion of communists after the town government sells everyone out.
In 1992, the idea of a western individualist standing against an intrusive government got a real demonstration when government forces tried to arrest a former factory worker, Randy Weaver, who had failed to show up for a trial on a firearms charge, at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. An 11-day siege killed Weaver’s wife, fourteen-year-old son, and a deputy marshal. Far-right activists and neo-Nazis swarmed to Ruby Ridge to stop what they saw as the overreach of government as it attacked a man protecting his family.
The next year, government officers stormed the compound of a religious cult whose former members reported that their leader, David Koresh, was stockpiling weapons. A 51-day siege ended on April 19, 1993, in a gun battle and a fire that killed 76 people. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners that the government had invaded Waco to “murder” a citizen. The modern militia movement to protect individuals from government tyranny took off.
Now, having sown the wind, we are reaping the whirlwind. Anti-government cowboys are protesting the tyranny of government measures designed to protect citizens from dying. The right of governors and legislatures to protect health is well-established, of course, but that doesn’t matter to men steeped in the rhetoric of the past generation.
This now-famous image of the screaming “American Patriot” is a portrait of the failure of the individualist image. This is a man who punches down, not up, and who wants to have the power to decide whether his neighbors live or die. He is a bully and a coward.
You know who's brave? The doctors and nurses who get up every morning and go to their jobs. The bus drivers who have continued to work without either hazard pay or sufficient protection, at least 94 of whom we have lost to Covid-19. The janitors and housekeeping staff who combat the virus all day, every day. The meat cutters and fishermen, shippers, drivers and store clerks who are keeping us alive, some only because it is the only way they can feed their children, which makes it all the braver. The Navy sailors trying to contain the virus so they can complete their mission. The teachers who stay upbeat for the students they terribly miss. The parents who are so very tired as they try to work and teach and parent and shop, but who get up every morning and do it again. And, yes, the political leaders trying to legislate to protect us as a handful of screaming anti-government activists terrorize them... and the photographers who record it.
These true American Patriots-- not a screaming bully whose "rights" require others to die-- are the very good people Abraham Lincoln meant when he called for a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
5/3- Heather Cox Richardson aka beastmode
The public aren’t going to understand the toll this takes on people until years from now. They will look back and understand then how bad this virus can be if you get it.
But it will be years before we know the full effect this virus takes on the human body. Heart damage, lung damage, kidney damage....some of that doesn’t show up for a while.
In contrast to the East, with this crushing system, stood the postwar West, where Democrats admired the cowboy. The actual work of a western cowboy in the short period of the heyday of cattle ranging from 1866 to 1886 was dangerous, low-paid, and dirty; the industry depended heavily on government supported-railroads and military support; and a third of the cowboys were men of color. But people eager to criticize the Republicans’ social welfare policies insisted that the cowboy was the true American individualist. Almost always white in this myth, he wanted nothing from government but to work hard as he tamed the land and the “savages” on it, provide for the wife and children he someday hoped to have, and be left alone. The image of the cowboy became such a dominant myth during Reconstruction that it turned Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show into the nation’s first mass entertainment spectacle.
It was no wonder then, that in the 1950s and 1960s, those eager to destroy an active government tapped into the image of the American cowboy as their symbol. Gunsmoke debuted on the new-fangled television in 1955, and by 1959, there were 30 prime time Westerns on TV. These westerns portrayed the mythical cowboy much as he had been after the Civil War: an independent white man fighting the “savages” of the plains to provide for his eventual family. A man who wanted nothing of government but to be left alone.
Back when the democrats were considered republicans and republicans were considered democrats.... great great stuff here. This lady is hella skilled.
It was no wonder then, that in the 1950s and 1960s, those eager to destroy an active government tapped into the image of the American cowboy as their symbol. Gunsmoke debuted on the new-fangled television in 1955, and by 1959, there were 30 prime time Westerns on TV. These westerns portrayed the mythical cowboy much as he had been after the Civil War: an independent white man fighting the “savages” of the plains to provide for his eventual family. A man who wanted nothing of government but to be left alone.
Back when the democrats were considered republicans and republicans were considered democrats.... great great stuff here. This lady is hella skilled.
The big news today is that there has been another leak from the White House, and this one is colossal. The New York Times obtained a document suggesting that the administration has misrepresented the numbers of American deaths expected from this pandemic by pushing an artificially low estimate for close to a month.
Modeling by the Federal Emergency Management Agency now projects 200,000 new coronavirus cases a day by the end of the month (we currently have about 25,000 new cases a day), and by June 1, about 3000 deaths every day from Covid-19. Trump revised estimates of the dead upward to 100,000 yesterday, but the new document suggests even those are optimistic. The White House pushed back against the leak, saying that the document had not been vetted or presented to the coronavirus task force.
We also learned today that the new White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, must give his express approval for members of the coronavirus task force or their aides to appear before Congress this month, so it certainly looks as though we will not be hearing an explanation of the discrepancy between Trump’s projections and this document anytime soon.
Historians are prophets of the past, not the future, and I am completely unqualified to assess this released model. But I am indeed qualified to note the political importance of the fact that the administration appears to have seriously downplayed its own estimates of the projected death toll from this pandemic. As Andrew Slavitt, acting administrator for Medicare and Medicaid under President Barack Obama, explained, Trump’s team told him to expect 100,000 to 250,000 dead, horrific numbers, numbers from which Americans would recoil. But he revised that number downward based on a model that assumed, for example, that states without social distancing would not have outbreaks. The number he offered was around 60,000, a number that convinced his supporters that Covid-19 was no more serious than a bad flu, and that Democrats were exaggerating the danger for political gain.
That was enough to start a push to reopen states.
While there is a lot of talk about Trump wanting to reopen the states to repair the economy, it’s hard to see how that can happen if the pandemic continues unabated or even gets worse. Others have suggested that the president might simply live so entirely in the moment he cannot adequately assess cause and effect. He wants the economy to get better, so he is trying to will that into reality despite the death toll.
But I wonder—and I’m really only wondering tonight, because it’s already 2:00 and I am too tired to start chasing down the speeches and statistics I would need to make this as an assertion—if what is really driving this mad push, funded as we know it is by right-wing political groups, is a frantic determination to make sure the country does not turn again now, in the midst of this pandemic, to a government that regulates business and provides a basic social safety net, a government like the one we created during the Great Depression.
I mean, if the protesters really wanted to protect workers, wouldn't they be demanding laws that replaced lost wages? Other developed countries have passed exactly those sorts of measures, putting their economies into a holding pattern as the pandemic passes, but the Trump administration has focused largely on protecting those at the top of the economy. Reopening states will also keep us from expanding unemployment programs, since they will keep workers from being able to claim unemployment benefits. They must work or starve, as opponents of welfare legislation used to put it. And, of course, people are waiting too long to get medical care for Covid-19, and thus are spreading it, not simply because we have insufficient tests but also because they have no healthcare insurance for treatment anyway.
“It’s not a pandemic,” said a speaker at a rally at the Boston State House today demanding that Republican Governor Charlie Baker reopen the state. “The reason why they’re doing this… to turn the United States of America into the United Socialist States of America.”
This is ridiculous of course, but it sounded very like what Republicans said in the 1930s as they insisted first that there wasn’t a Depression, and then that if there was a Depression it was the job of the destitute states to fix it because federal government intervention in the economy was socialism. Indeed it sounded so much like Republican speeches from the 1930s that it instantly brought to mind Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech when he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in 1932.
“Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose…. I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.”
-5/5 Heather Cox Richardson
Modeling by the Federal Emergency Management Agency now projects 200,000 new coronavirus cases a day by the end of the month (we currently have about 25,000 new cases a day), and by June 1, about 3000 deaths every day from Covid-19. Trump revised estimates of the dead upward to 100,000 yesterday, but the new document suggests even those are optimistic. The White House pushed back against the leak, saying that the document had not been vetted or presented to the coronavirus task force.
We also learned today that the new White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, must give his express approval for members of the coronavirus task force or their aides to appear before Congress this month, so it certainly looks as though we will not be hearing an explanation of the discrepancy between Trump’s projections and this document anytime soon.
Historians are prophets of the past, not the future, and I am completely unqualified to assess this released model. But I am indeed qualified to note the political importance of the fact that the administration appears to have seriously downplayed its own estimates of the projected death toll from this pandemic. As Andrew Slavitt, acting administrator for Medicare and Medicaid under President Barack Obama, explained, Trump’s team told him to expect 100,000 to 250,000 dead, horrific numbers, numbers from which Americans would recoil. But he revised that number downward based on a model that assumed, for example, that states without social distancing would not have outbreaks. The number he offered was around 60,000, a number that convinced his supporters that Covid-19 was no more serious than a bad flu, and that Democrats were exaggerating the danger for political gain.
That was enough to start a push to reopen states.
While there is a lot of talk about Trump wanting to reopen the states to repair the economy, it’s hard to see how that can happen if the pandemic continues unabated or even gets worse. Others have suggested that the president might simply live so entirely in the moment he cannot adequately assess cause and effect. He wants the economy to get better, so he is trying to will that into reality despite the death toll.
But I wonder—and I’m really only wondering tonight, because it’s already 2:00 and I am too tired to start chasing down the speeches and statistics I would need to make this as an assertion—if what is really driving this mad push, funded as we know it is by right-wing political groups, is a frantic determination to make sure the country does not turn again now, in the midst of this pandemic, to a government that regulates business and provides a basic social safety net, a government like the one we created during the Great Depression.
I mean, if the protesters really wanted to protect workers, wouldn't they be demanding laws that replaced lost wages? Other developed countries have passed exactly those sorts of measures, putting their economies into a holding pattern as the pandemic passes, but the Trump administration has focused largely on protecting those at the top of the economy. Reopening states will also keep us from expanding unemployment programs, since they will keep workers from being able to claim unemployment benefits. They must work or starve, as opponents of welfare legislation used to put it. And, of course, people are waiting too long to get medical care for Covid-19, and thus are spreading it, not simply because we have insufficient tests but also because they have no healthcare insurance for treatment anyway.
“It’s not a pandemic,” said a speaker at a rally at the Boston State House today demanding that Republican Governor Charlie Baker reopen the state. “The reason why they’re doing this… to turn the United States of America into the United Socialist States of America.”
This is ridiculous of course, but it sounded very like what Republicans said in the 1930s as they insisted first that there wasn’t a Depression, and then that if there was a Depression it was the job of the destitute states to fix it because federal government intervention in the economy was socialism. Indeed it sounded so much like Republican speeches from the 1930s that it instantly brought to mind Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech when he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in 1932.
“Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose…. I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.”
-5/5 Heather Cox Richardson
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, Trump was talking about disbanding his coronavirus task force because it had outlived its usefulness and the administration was going to go full speed ahead on rebuilding the economy; today, Time magazine issued this week’s cover: an “OPEN” sign with the N ripped off and put in front of the other letters to spell “NOPE.” The administration’s attempt to pivot from a focus on the botched response to the virus toward a triumphant story of the economy has foundered as reality has caught up with Trump’s cheery narrative.
Yesterday we learned that Rick Bright, the scientist who directed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the federal agency charged with developing a vaccine for this coronavirus, has filed a whistleblower complaint. The complaint alleges he was demoted for refusing to spend his agency's money on developing hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug the administration was promoting for use against Covid-19. But the complaint goes on to charge that the administration pressured him “to ignore expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism.”
In a very detailed 63-page report, Bright claims that he warned the leadership at Health and Human Services about the coronavirus on January 10, but was first ignored and then ostracized for his insistence that action to prepare for an epidemic was crucial. He says the everyone in the administration except trade advisor Peter Navarro simply refused to take his warnings seriously. Throughout February, Bright peppered administration officials with memos, begging them to secure medical equipment to prepare for the epidemic. Finally, they lost patience with him in March, when he refused to back hydroxychloroquine when the president was touting it as a possible cure for Covid.
Bright told a reporter about the dangers of the drug, and days later was removed from the directorship of BARDA to a post at the National Institutes of Health, because political appointees Alex Azar, the head of HHS, and Dr. Robert Kadlec, Bright’s immediate boss, suspected him of being a source for the article. Bright claims to have been retaliated against for his role as a whistleblower, and is demanding his old job back.
Bright’s whistleblower report was only one of two that offered a window into the administration’s fumbling of the epidemic. We learned that on April 8, a volunteer on Jared Kushner’s coronavirus task force, filed a whistleblower complaint with the House Oversight Committee. Kushner's group took the place of established channels staffed by experts in order to coordinate a private sector effort to find the medical supplies America needed. The complaint, supported by anonymous individuals in the government, says that the people working with Kushner were young volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with no significant experience in health care, procurement, or supply-chain operations, and had no knowledge of relevant laws or regulations. They were ill equipped to do their jobs, and were also ordered to pay particular attention to tips from “VIPs,” including conservative journalists like Brian Kilmeade and Jeanine Pirro, as they searched for medical equipment.
Today, Politico published a story based on audio tapes leaked from three conference calls between HHS and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials and federal officials around the country fielding calls from governors trying to find medical equipment. The calls highlight that as Trump was saying the nation had plenty of equipment, his officials were scrambling to try to provide it. The leaked tapes also show officials privately acknowledging that reopening the states would lead to a higher rate of coronavirus infections.
In an interview with ABC News yesterday, Trump himself admitted the reopening of states for business could cause people to die. At a briefing, when reporter Jim Acosta asked why it was important to end social distancing right now, Trump told reporters "I'm viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. They're warriors. We can't keep our country closed. We have to open our country ... Will some people be badly affected? Yes."
But Trump didn’t offer much to provide confidence that the government was on top of the ongoing coronavirus response. In the ABC News interview, when Trump blamed President Barack Obama for leaving the “cupboard” of the Strategic National Stockpile “bare” of medical supplies when he left office, anchor David Muir asked him what he had done to restock it in the three years he’s been in office. The question appeared to catch the president, who is accustomed to a friendly audience on the Fox News Channel, off guard. “Well, I'll be honest,” he said. “I have a lot of things going on. We had a lot of people that refused to allow the country to be successful. They wasted a lot of time on Russia, Russia, Russia. That turned out to be a total hoax. Then they did Ukraine, Ukraine and that was a total hoax, then they impeached the president of the United States for absolutely no reason.”
A Washington Post article by Dr. Zack Cooper, associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale’s Economics Department, says that we do, in fact, have the ability to test at the rate of 20 million tests a day, which is what experts say we need in order to reopen the economy safely. But the rub is that it would cost about $250 billion, and there has not, so far, been sufficient political will to spend that kind of money on testing, especially when those most affected by the reopening of states have been poor Americans and workers who are disproportionately people of color. A Rockefeller Foundation committee on reopening the economy has published a report on how to do so safely; Cooper was a member of the committee.
But for all these events undercutting Trump’s push to reopen the economy, what got under his skin most dramatically was an advertisement released Monday by the Lincoln Group entitled “Mourning in America.” This one-minute spot plays on President Ronald Reagan’s famous “Morning In America” reelection campaign ad, showing Trump’s term as the opposite of the rosy vision people associated with Reagan. “There’s mourning in America,” the voice in the ad intones over shots of Covid-stricken patients and folks in unemployment lines in masks, “and under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is weaker, and sicker, and poorer. And now, Americans are asking, ‘If we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?”
It took Trump four tweets to express his fury adequately, calling Lincoln Project founder George Conway a “deranged loser.” Ten hours later, he was still fuming, and ranted about the Lincoln Project to reporters for two minutes on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. This gave Conway the opening to hit him again in an op-ed in the Washington Post today. The article used Trump’s behavior to illustrate Conway’s usual concerns about Trump’s fitness for office, but it began with a new focus on the coronavirus: “Americans died from Covid-19 at the rate of about one every 42 seconds during the past month. That ought to keep any president awake at night.”
-5/6- Heather Cox Richardson
Yesterday we learned that Rick Bright, the scientist who directed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the federal agency charged with developing a vaccine for this coronavirus, has filed a whistleblower complaint. The complaint alleges he was demoted for refusing to spend his agency's money on developing hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug the administration was promoting for use against Covid-19. But the complaint goes on to charge that the administration pressured him “to ignore expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism.”
In a very detailed 63-page report, Bright claims that he warned the leadership at Health and Human Services about the coronavirus on January 10, but was first ignored and then ostracized for his insistence that action to prepare for an epidemic was crucial. He says the everyone in the administration except trade advisor Peter Navarro simply refused to take his warnings seriously. Throughout February, Bright peppered administration officials with memos, begging them to secure medical equipment to prepare for the epidemic. Finally, they lost patience with him in March, when he refused to back hydroxychloroquine when the president was touting it as a possible cure for Covid.
Bright told a reporter about the dangers of the drug, and days later was removed from the directorship of BARDA to a post at the National Institutes of Health, because political appointees Alex Azar, the head of HHS, and Dr. Robert Kadlec, Bright’s immediate boss, suspected him of being a source for the article. Bright claims to have been retaliated against for his role as a whistleblower, and is demanding his old job back.
Bright’s whistleblower report was only one of two that offered a window into the administration’s fumbling of the epidemic. We learned that on April 8, a volunteer on Jared Kushner’s coronavirus task force, filed a whistleblower complaint with the House Oversight Committee. Kushner's group took the place of established channels staffed by experts in order to coordinate a private sector effort to find the medical supplies America needed. The complaint, supported by anonymous individuals in the government, says that the people working with Kushner were young volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with no significant experience in health care, procurement, or supply-chain operations, and had no knowledge of relevant laws or regulations. They were ill equipped to do their jobs, and were also ordered to pay particular attention to tips from “VIPs,” including conservative journalists like Brian Kilmeade and Jeanine Pirro, as they searched for medical equipment.
Today, Politico published a story based on audio tapes leaked from three conference calls between HHS and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials and federal officials around the country fielding calls from governors trying to find medical equipment. The calls highlight that as Trump was saying the nation had plenty of equipment, his officials were scrambling to try to provide it. The leaked tapes also show officials privately acknowledging that reopening the states would lead to a higher rate of coronavirus infections.
In an interview with ABC News yesterday, Trump himself admitted the reopening of states for business could cause people to die. At a briefing, when reporter Jim Acosta asked why it was important to end social distancing right now, Trump told reporters "I'm viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. They're warriors. We can't keep our country closed. We have to open our country ... Will some people be badly affected? Yes."
But Trump didn’t offer much to provide confidence that the government was on top of the ongoing coronavirus response. In the ABC News interview, when Trump blamed President Barack Obama for leaving the “cupboard” of the Strategic National Stockpile “bare” of medical supplies when he left office, anchor David Muir asked him what he had done to restock it in the three years he’s been in office. The question appeared to catch the president, who is accustomed to a friendly audience on the Fox News Channel, off guard. “Well, I'll be honest,” he said. “I have a lot of things going on. We had a lot of people that refused to allow the country to be successful. They wasted a lot of time on Russia, Russia, Russia. That turned out to be a total hoax. Then they did Ukraine, Ukraine and that was a total hoax, then they impeached the president of the United States for absolutely no reason.”
A Washington Post article by Dr. Zack Cooper, associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale’s Economics Department, says that we do, in fact, have the ability to test at the rate of 20 million tests a day, which is what experts say we need in order to reopen the economy safely. But the rub is that it would cost about $250 billion, and there has not, so far, been sufficient political will to spend that kind of money on testing, especially when those most affected by the reopening of states have been poor Americans and workers who are disproportionately people of color. A Rockefeller Foundation committee on reopening the economy has published a report on how to do so safely; Cooper was a member of the committee.
But for all these events undercutting Trump’s push to reopen the economy, what got under his skin most dramatically was an advertisement released Monday by the Lincoln Group entitled “Mourning in America.” This one-minute spot plays on President Ronald Reagan’s famous “Morning In America” reelection campaign ad, showing Trump’s term as the opposite of the rosy vision people associated with Reagan. “There’s mourning in America,” the voice in the ad intones over shots of Covid-stricken patients and folks in unemployment lines in masks, “and under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is weaker, and sicker, and poorer. And now, Americans are asking, ‘If we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?”
It took Trump four tweets to express his fury adequately, calling Lincoln Project founder George Conway a “deranged loser.” Ten hours later, he was still fuming, and ranted about the Lincoln Project to reporters for two minutes on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. This gave Conway the opening to hit him again in an op-ed in the Washington Post today. The article used Trump’s behavior to illustrate Conway’s usual concerns about Trump’s fitness for office, but it began with a new focus on the coronavirus: “Americans died from Covid-19 at the rate of about one every 42 seconds during the past month. That ought to keep any president awake at night.”
-5/6- Heather Cox Richardson
WF MobDsters will never stop spreading their Snake Venum always coming back like a bad poison ivy rash offering nothing constructive and trying to tear everyone down with their Negativity & Hate it starts at home with what they do to their Grandmothers, Mothers & Daughters taking joy in the pain and agony they cause them a heartless soulless Snake
There were three big stories today, and they added up to a fourth.
First, the Department of Justice, overseen by Attorney General William Barr, filed documents today to drop its case against Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. This reverses years of work on the Flynn case, and has shocked experienced prosecutors, who say it reveals that Barr is now simply working for Trump. The filing was signed by Timothy Shea alone, Barr’s hand-picked US Attorney for the District of Columbia. No career prosecutors signed on.
Flynn was a lobbyist for the Turkish government and had spent time at a state dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin when the FBI opened a case on him on August 16, 2016, out of concern he might be working with Russia even as he was campaigning for Trump (with his famous “Lock Her Up” chants). On November 10, after Trump was elected, President Barack Obama warned Trump not to hire Flynn for a national security post, but on November 18, Trump named Flynn his National Security Advisor. On December 29, the same day the Obama administration announced retaliatory measures for Russian interference in the 2016 election, Flynn caught the attention of the FBI by making five phone calls to the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. FBI officials and Obama officials thought the conversations sounded like he and Moscow had made a secret deal.
The FBI interviewed Flynn on January 24; he lied about those calls, saying they did not talk about lifting Russian sanctions after Trump was elected. After the interview, acting attorney Sally Yates made an urgent visit to White House Counsel Don McGahn warning him that Flynn was “compromised” and vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians. On February 8, Flynn publicly denied he had spoken to Kislyak about sanctions, but when news broke the next day that he had, his spokesman said he could not “be certain that the topic never came up.” He resigned on February 13. (The next day, Trump met with FBI Director James Comey and asked him to let the Flynn case go. When Comey continued to investigate Russian connections to the Trump campaign, Trump fired him, and the outcry led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to take over the investigation.)
Flynn offered to testify about the campaign’s connections to Russia in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution, but was turned down. In November, after news broke that Mueller had enough evidence for criminal charges against Flynn and his son, he began to cooperate with the investigation.
In December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, but was not sentenced because he had not yet finished cooperating with the special counsel’s office. Then, after the Mueller investigation ended, in June 2019, he fired his lawyers and hired Sidney Powell, who had criticized the Mueller investigation. Soon, Flynn backed away from his guilty plea, his lawyer claiming that he had been “ambush[ed]” by FBI agents trying to “trap… him into making statements they could allege as false.” In January 2020, Powell accused the government of “egregious government misconduct” and moved to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea.
And now the Department of Justice is moving to withdraw the case. It is highly unusual to try to undo a guilty plea, and the switch signals a dramatic shift in the DOJ. The career prosecutor on the case formally withdrew from it just before the Justice Department stopped the prosecution, just as career prosecutors stepped aside when Barr interfered in Trump confidante Roger Stone’s sentencing. The filing claims that FBI agents unlawfully pursued Flynn—that there was no just cause for an intelligence investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and that therefore his confession is immaterial.
Did you get that? The Justice Department is saying that any investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 election was illegitimate, despite the report of the inspector general saying the opposite. And now, with a Trump crony at Director of National Intelligence there is little hope we will hear more about Russian interference. Both acting DNI Richard Grenell and the man Trump has nominated to replace him, Representative John Ratcliffe (R-Tx), neither of whom have experience in the intelligence community, have been vocal in their disbelief that Russia threatens our elections.
Still, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan will decide whether to accept the dismissal of the case. Sullivan ripped into Flynn in his 2018 hearing, telling him “I want to be frank with you, this crime is very serious…. Not only did you lie to the FBI, you lied to senior officials in the incoming administration…. I am not hiding my disgust, my disdain for your criminal offense.”
Trump said today that the Justice Department’s decision just adds more evidence to the idea there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia (which was, remember, not what the Mueller report said). All the Pulitzer Prizes people won for those stories should be given back, he said, because they were fake news. Trump is talking about reinstating Flynn into the administration.
And that, sadly, is not the end of the day’s news.
The next big story is the coronavirus. We are up to 76,000 deaths, and the cases show no sign of slackening. Projections for the summer are grim, with most models estimating we will well surpass 100,000 deaths.
On Tuesday, Trump justified opening businesses because he said “We can’t keep our country closed for the next five years.” But that’s not what’s on the table. What we are trying to do by holding down deaths now is to buy time before a vaccine is available, which experts said about six months ago would take at least 12 to 18 months. Trump, of course, has an interest in trying to reopen the country quickly because he sees the economy as the key to his reelection and wants it recovering by the fall. But he has admitted this will costs lives, a sacrifice he is more ready for others to make than for himself. Today, he got “lava level mad” when he learned one of his personal valets had tested positive for Covid-19, accusing his staff of not taking sufficient precautions to keep the virus away from him (despite frequent testing of everyone in his orbit).
And certainly, the economy is in free fall. Tomorrow, we get the jobs report for April. It is expected to show that the US economy lost about 21.5 million jobs last month. If that is correct, it indicates we have wiped out all of the job gains in the U.S. since mid-1999. It also puts the unemployment rate at 16%, the highest since 1939. There are answers other than sending people back to work without testing or contact tracing, however. We could, for example, provide a wage guarantee until infections recede enough to enable people to go back into the workforce with some sense of security.
The third big story is that the Republican National Committee and the Trump reelection campaign have budgeted $20 million to fight Democratic attempts to make remote voting easier during the pandemic. Although there is no evidence that mail-in voting causes fraud, and although some states already do it with no ill effects, RNC chief of staff Richard Walters fell back on the idea that easing restrictions to make it easier to vote would contaminate elections. “Democrats may be using the coronavirus as an excuse to strip away important election safeguards, but the American people continue to support commonsense protections that defend the integrity of our democratic processes,” he said, and Republicans were willing to sue Democrats “into oblivion and spend whatever is necessary.”
These three stories seem to add up to a fourth. Trump and his people are grasping power, but he knows he must resurrect the economy to win reelection. That will not be enough if the carnage of the pandemic grows, so he is determined to suppress the vote.
At least that’s what it looks like to me.
5/7 - Heather Cox Richardson aka a historian who puts the constitution first
First, the Department of Justice, overseen by Attorney General William Barr, filed documents today to drop its case against Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. This reverses years of work on the Flynn case, and has shocked experienced prosecutors, who say it reveals that Barr is now simply working for Trump. The filing was signed by Timothy Shea alone, Barr’s hand-picked US Attorney for the District of Columbia. No career prosecutors signed on.
Flynn was a lobbyist for the Turkish government and had spent time at a state dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin when the FBI opened a case on him on August 16, 2016, out of concern he might be working with Russia even as he was campaigning for Trump (with his famous “Lock Her Up” chants). On November 10, after Trump was elected, President Barack Obama warned Trump not to hire Flynn for a national security post, but on November 18, Trump named Flynn his National Security Advisor. On December 29, the same day the Obama administration announced retaliatory measures for Russian interference in the 2016 election, Flynn caught the attention of the FBI by making five phone calls to the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. FBI officials and Obama officials thought the conversations sounded like he and Moscow had made a secret deal.
The FBI interviewed Flynn on January 24; he lied about those calls, saying they did not talk about lifting Russian sanctions after Trump was elected. After the interview, acting attorney Sally Yates made an urgent visit to White House Counsel Don McGahn warning him that Flynn was “compromised” and vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians. On February 8, Flynn publicly denied he had spoken to Kislyak about sanctions, but when news broke the next day that he had, his spokesman said he could not “be certain that the topic never came up.” He resigned on February 13. (The next day, Trump met with FBI Director James Comey and asked him to let the Flynn case go. When Comey continued to investigate Russian connections to the Trump campaign, Trump fired him, and the outcry led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to take over the investigation.)
Flynn offered to testify about the campaign’s connections to Russia in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution, but was turned down. In November, after news broke that Mueller had enough evidence for criminal charges against Flynn and his son, he began to cooperate with the investigation.
In December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, but was not sentenced because he had not yet finished cooperating with the special counsel’s office. Then, after the Mueller investigation ended, in June 2019, he fired his lawyers and hired Sidney Powell, who had criticized the Mueller investigation. Soon, Flynn backed away from his guilty plea, his lawyer claiming that he had been “ambush[ed]” by FBI agents trying to “trap… him into making statements they could allege as false.” In January 2020, Powell accused the government of “egregious government misconduct” and moved to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea.
And now the Department of Justice is moving to withdraw the case. It is highly unusual to try to undo a guilty plea, and the switch signals a dramatic shift in the DOJ. The career prosecutor on the case formally withdrew from it just before the Justice Department stopped the prosecution, just as career prosecutors stepped aside when Barr interfered in Trump confidante Roger Stone’s sentencing. The filing claims that FBI agents unlawfully pursued Flynn—that there was no just cause for an intelligence investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and that therefore his confession is immaterial.
Did you get that? The Justice Department is saying that any investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 election was illegitimate, despite the report of the inspector general saying the opposite. And now, with a Trump crony at Director of National Intelligence there is little hope we will hear more about Russian interference. Both acting DNI Richard Grenell and the man Trump has nominated to replace him, Representative John Ratcliffe (R-Tx), neither of whom have experience in the intelligence community, have been vocal in their disbelief that Russia threatens our elections.
Still, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan will decide whether to accept the dismissal of the case. Sullivan ripped into Flynn in his 2018 hearing, telling him “I want to be frank with you, this crime is very serious…. Not only did you lie to the FBI, you lied to senior officials in the incoming administration…. I am not hiding my disgust, my disdain for your criminal offense.”
Trump said today that the Justice Department’s decision just adds more evidence to the idea there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia (which was, remember, not what the Mueller report said). All the Pulitzer Prizes people won for those stories should be given back, he said, because they were fake news. Trump is talking about reinstating Flynn into the administration.
And that, sadly, is not the end of the day’s news.
The next big story is the coronavirus. We are up to 76,000 deaths, and the cases show no sign of slackening. Projections for the summer are grim, with most models estimating we will well surpass 100,000 deaths.
On Tuesday, Trump justified opening businesses because he said “We can’t keep our country closed for the next five years.” But that’s not what’s on the table. What we are trying to do by holding down deaths now is to buy time before a vaccine is available, which experts said about six months ago would take at least 12 to 18 months. Trump, of course, has an interest in trying to reopen the country quickly because he sees the economy as the key to his reelection and wants it recovering by the fall. But he has admitted this will costs lives, a sacrifice he is more ready for others to make than for himself. Today, he got “lava level mad” when he learned one of his personal valets had tested positive for Covid-19, accusing his staff of not taking sufficient precautions to keep the virus away from him (despite frequent testing of everyone in his orbit).
And certainly, the economy is in free fall. Tomorrow, we get the jobs report for April. It is expected to show that the US economy lost about 21.5 million jobs last month. If that is correct, it indicates we have wiped out all of the job gains in the U.S. since mid-1999. It also puts the unemployment rate at 16%, the highest since 1939. There are answers other than sending people back to work without testing or contact tracing, however. We could, for example, provide a wage guarantee until infections recede enough to enable people to go back into the workforce with some sense of security.
The third big story is that the Republican National Committee and the Trump reelection campaign have budgeted $20 million to fight Democratic attempts to make remote voting easier during the pandemic. Although there is no evidence that mail-in voting causes fraud, and although some states already do it with no ill effects, RNC chief of staff Richard Walters fell back on the idea that easing restrictions to make it easier to vote would contaminate elections. “Democrats may be using the coronavirus as an excuse to strip away important election safeguards, but the American people continue to support commonsense protections that defend the integrity of our democratic processes,” he said, and Republicans were willing to sue Democrats “into oblivion and spend whatever is necessary.”
These three stories seem to add up to a fourth. Trump and his people are grasping power, but he knows he must resurrect the economy to win reelection. That will not be enough if the carnage of the pandemic grows, so he is determined to suppress the vote.
At least that’s what it looks like to me.
5/7 - Heather Cox Richardson aka a historian who puts the constitution first
