monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

As he huddled with advisers on Friday evening, President Donald Trump was still fuming over his sliding poll numbers and the onslaught of criticism he was facing for suggesting a day earlier that ingesting disinfectant might prove effective against coronavirus.

Within moments, the President was shouting -- not at the aides in the room, but into the phone -- at his campaign manager Brad Parscale, three people familiar with the matter told CNN. Shifting the blame away from himself, Trump berated Parscale for a recent spate of damaging poll numbers, even at one point threatening to sue Parscale. It's not clear how serious the President's threat of a lawsuit was.

The White House did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment and the Trump campaign declined to comment.

Faced with an increasingly uphill battle for reelection and aides trying to steer him in new, sometimes conflicting directions, Trump has grown increasingly unnerved in the last week about his reelection prospects. Lashing out at Parscale was just the most recent manifestation of that anxiety...

Ezra Klein
@ezraklein
45m
Donald Trump does not want to be in charge of any of this. He wants to play president on TV. He doesn't want responsibility for governance in a time of crisis, and in every way he can, he's refusing to do that job, and lashing out at those who ask him to do it.

Trump erupts at campaign manager as reelection stress overflows

three people familiar with the matter told CNN.

Ezra Klein

Political Polls
@PpollingNumbers
· 5h
Texas @ppppolls / @demtoolbox (D) Poll:

Biden 47%
Trump 46%

(Trump won TX with a 9 point margin in 2016)

Quote:

How Trumpism Succeeded While The Establishment – Left AND Right – Failed in the Pandemic Response

Like Trumpism itself, it was an unforeseen phenomenon where common sense, life experience, and the ability to construct theories of human motivation would identify the truly insightful.

The latter point was especially key in the initial stage of the outbreak.

Vanity Fair has noted that President Trump’s earliest and most ardent supporters were the first to express public alarm over the coronavirus.

In January, Jack Posobiec – a reporter for One American News Network – reported that China was taking extraordinary measures to contain a virus that was causing death in the Wuhan province.

He called for a China travel ban on January 22. The same day, Sen. Tom Cotton sent a letter to Alex Azar, Secretary of HHS, urging immediate action “to prevent the virus from becoming a pandemic.”

On January 24, Posobiec and OANN would broadcast the leaked cell phone footage from inside China showing the crackdown.

Posobiec also appeared that day on the newly launched War Room: Pandemic podcast with my editor at The National Pulse, Raheem Kassam, to sound the alarm, calling the events in China “the biggest story in the world.”

Tucker Carlson also hit the Wuhan-virus early and often from his mega-platform on Fox.

The mainstream media ignored the elephant in the room until Trump himself issued the travel ban on January 31. Then the media interrupted impeachment coverage only to allow the president’s opponents to call him xenophobic.

Rather than occupy the political high ground always ceded to the first to sound an alarm, however, a vocal, powerful, entrenched establishment on the political right refused to admit that the virus was a big deal.

Pandemic was converted into anti-left polemic as soon as enough facts could be cherry picked to say, “Relax, this whole thing is a plot against you.”

The talking point that emerged was the virus was either just the flu, or no different than the Swine Flu outbreak during the Obama administration – and any attempt to cast it as something more was a sinister flanking maneuver against President Trump’s successes.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Im going to get in there and make sure he fails"

If it wasnt for obma, trump wouldnt have had an economy

Recalling what Lmbaugh said about Obama."I want to s him fail in the worst way. Im going to get in there and make sure he fails"

Republican Senate candidate argues that Trump told us to inject disinfectant to “give hope” [/i]

occupydemocrats.com

Washington Post editorial board: Voters deserve to hear from Joe Biden on Reade allegations (and he should open his archives too)

If you need to be reminded who John Barron is, this will help:

Powell: Unsealed FBI Handwritten Notes And Emails Reveal Agents Plotted Perjury Trap On Flynn

“What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill Barr and U.S. Attorney Jensen, we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as Mr. Van Grack and the prosecutors have opposed every request we have made,” said Powell.

It appears, based on the notes and emails that the Department of Justice was determined at the time to prosecute Flynn, regardless of what they found, Powell said.