‘Unhinged conspiracy-monger’ Trump and the GOP are mired in a ‘cesspool’ of paranoia: conservative

Published on May 23, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


On Saturday, writing for The Washington Post, conservative columnist Max Boot outlined key reasons why the spread of conspiracy theories has become more dangerous than ever in modern America.

One of the most important reasons: They are being amplified and promoted by the man in the Oval Office.

“Every great disaster of the past century has brought forth conspiracy-mongers. They claimed that World War I was started by arms manufacturers, a.k.a. ‘merchants of death’; that Franklin D. Roosevelt goaded Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor and knew all about it in advance; that homegrown traitors ‘lost’ Eastern Europe and China to communism; that the military industrial complex assassinated John F. Kennedy; that the crack cocaine epidemic was started by the CIA; that 9/11 was an ‘inside job’; and that George W. Bush invaded Iraq to help Halliburton,” wrote Boot.

“The impulse to ‘conspiracize’ is as old as the human race. Often that means blaming despised minorities for larger ills,” wrote Boot. “Plagues have been a particularly rich breeding ground for conspiracy theories. In 14th century Europe, Jews were massacred after being accused of spreading the bubonic plague by poisoning wells. So it is no surprise that there is now an epidemic of coronavirus conspiracy theories.”

“The virus was said to have been started by a Chinese biological warfare laboratory, the U.S. Army, Bill Gates or a ‘globalist conspiracy to establish sweeping population control’ — and it is said to be spread by 5G towers,” wrote Boot. “A movie called ‘Plandemic’ alleges that masks make you sick, that bleach can heal you and that a vaccine may kill you; it has been viewed at least 8 million times online. Naturally, the novel coronavirus has been subsumed into the all-encompassing QAnon conspiracy theory that has become a quasi-religion among some Trump supporters. They think that the virus was created by the ‘deep state’ to bring down their hero.”

All of this is worse, Boot wrote, because “we now have an unhinged conspiracy-monger in the White House.”

“When he is not ranting about a vast, nebulous plot perpetrated by the prior administration (‘Obamagate’) or about how Joe Scarborough supposedly murdered an aide, Trump is opining that the virus started in a Chinese lab, that hydroxychloroquine is an effective prophylactic, and that injections of bleach can treat the disease,” wrote Boot. “His son, Eric, recently said that the coronavirus has been hyped by Democrats eager to stop his dad from holding rallies, and that ‘after Nov. 3, coronavirus, will magically all of a sudden go away.'”

“This is nuts, but it gains credence by being promulgated by authority figures,” wrote Boot. “In fact, the entire GOP — which just nominated a QAnon believer as its Senate candidate in Oregon — is becoming a modern-day Know Nothing Party, a cesspool of prejudice and irrationality. What was once the fringe has now moved into the mainstream — and will become even more prominent as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Let’s hope that people can find saner and safer ways to make sense of this terrible time, because if they give in to irrationality, our current predicament will only get worse.”

You can read more here.

Evangelical leader who believes COVID-19 is a ‘gift from god’ unveils strategy to keep Trump in office


May 23, 2020 By Matthew Chapman 

THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT BIBLE BASED CHRISTIANS
THEY ARE AMERICAN PROTESTANT EVANGELICALS
A FORM OF SPIRITUALISM WHERE THEY BECOME
POSSESSED BY THEIR LORD THOUGH SINCE THEY HAVE
NO MAGICKAL PROTECTION THEIR LORD COULD BE
ANYTHING INCLUDING CTHULHU

On Saturday, The Intercept detailed a recent gathering of United in Purpose, a far-right evangelical group that plans to get President Donald Trump re-elected in 2020.

One of the group’s donors, Ken Eldred, espoused his beliefs on a call in mid-April.

“’The COVID virus has been a gift from God,’ began Ken Eldred. ‘The kingdom of God advances through a series of glorious victories, cleverly disguised as disasters.’ In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Eldred noted, millions of Americans are turning to Christ, Walmart is selling out of Bibles, and online church broadcasts have hit record numbers,” reported Lee Fang. “But while religiosity was growing, there have been setbacks from the disease outbreak. ‘Satan has been busy too,’ Eldred, a major donor to evangelical and Republican causes, explained. ‘The virus has messed up many of our plans involving our in-person meetings with voters.'”

He then led the group in a prayer to God to end the deaths — and the group discussed strategy to keep the president in office.

“The group, whose supporters include major donors to conservative causes, pastors, and political operatives with decades of winning elections, is serious about serving as the tip of the spear to maintain control of the White House,” wrote Fang. “UIP’s 2020 election plan — which it calls ‘Ziklag,’ a town referenced in the Bible — is a multipronged effort to connect Trump with evangelical leaders and increase support among minority voters through appeals to faith-based messages and church outreach.”

“And, perhaps most importantly, it plans to use data mining to identify millions of new voters and target them with cheap ads on Facebook,” wrote Fang. “The pandemic, speakers noted on the call, means that they must work overtime to compensate for the effects of mail-in voting.”

Eldred expressed this sentiment clearly when he told his fellows on the call, “The children of the darkness put early voting into this CARES package.”

With Covid-19, the Alex Jonesification of the GOP is now complete

May 23, 2020 By Joshua Holland- Commentary


Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.

A poll released on Friday found that 44 percent of Republicans–and half of those who say their primary source of information is Fox News–believe that Bill Gates “wants to use a mass vaccination campaign against Covid-19 to implant microchips in people” so the globalists or the lizard-people or whomever can track our movements. More disturbingly, perhaps, was that only one-in-four of both Republicans and Fox News viewers said that claim was false.

Digitally tracking Americans’ every move has been a dream of the globalists for years. This health crisis is the perfect vehicle for them to push this. https://t.co/nkc0mSrM9u
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) April 7, 2020
Crowds at these goofy anti-lockdown rallies have called for Bill Gates, who is investing billions in tackling the pandemic, to be locked up for unspecified crimes. If the anti-Semitic and conspiratorial John Birch Society had dominated the GOP in 1953, Jonas Salk, who developed the first effective vaccine against polio, probably would have faced similar nonsense.

There’s a popular myth that the Birch Society was excommunicated from the GOP by serious members of the Republican establishment, but as Jeet Heer wrote during the 2016 campaign, that is “almost completely false.”

The Birch Society didn’t disappear after Buckley’s “excommunication,” but continued to be a major force on the right, peaking in influence in the 1970s and still existing to this day. More to the point, Bircher paranoia never went out of fashion on the right: It’s there in everything from Birtherism—Trump’s first excursion into the world of Obama conspiracies—to the antics of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones.

In this sense, Trump is more symptom than cause. But the emergence of Covid-19, shortly after Trump’s acquittal by the GOP, has pushed the mainstream right entirely over the edge. Broad swaths of the coalition believe that the virus was man-made–only 37 percent of Republicans told Pew that it was a natural occurrence back in April. The idea that the media are hyping the danger to hurt Trump–outlandish on its face given that the disease has spread across the entire planet–is almost universally embraced by the right.

The Republican nominee for Oregon Senate is a QAnon devotee. Presumably, she believes that prominent Democrats are in league with the Deep State to molest and eat babies. The party is also “backing away” from a House candidate in California who spread, among other things, conspiracy theories about Seth Rich, a former Clinton staffer who was murdered during a robbery in DC. The most outrageous claims are mainstream in today’s GOP.

Absolutely bizarre. The Bexar County GOP chair concludes this rally by stating that the coronavirus is a hoax perpetrated by Democrats, tells people to take off their masks, and then everyone hugs each other. pic.twitter.com/1XOFeswMiO
 Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) May 22, 2020


Conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism, a way of seeing some sort of order in a chaotic world. The pandemic has made it more so, and this kind of nonsense is proliferating across the coalition, sometimes with deadly effects.
*****

Relatedly, from The Daily Beast:
A shocking report suggesting that the coronavirus was “release[d from] the Wuhan Institute of Virology” in China is now circulating in U.S. military and intelligence circles and on Capitol Hill. But there’s a critical flaw in the report, a Daily Beast analysis reveals: Some of its most seemingly persuasive evidence is false—provably false.
*****
Donald Trump has no power to order states to lift lockdown measures on houses of worship, but he blustered to that effect anyway on Friday. But we should understand the game: Most states are moving to reopen anyway, and would have eased restrictions on in-person services in the next week or two anyway. According to Politico, Trump is ginning up a stupid new front in the culture war for the simple reason that his support among the religious right appears to be slipping.

The anxiety over Trump’s standing with the Christian right surfaced after a pair of surveys by reputable outfits earlier this month found waning confidence in the administration’s coronavirus response among key religious groups, with a staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics. Both are crucial constituencies that supported Trump by wide margins in 2016 and could sink his reelection prospects if their turnout shrinks this fall.

*****
Trump’s COVID-19 vaccine czar, Moncef Slaoui, has a “huge conflict of interest,” according to The Huffington Post, which reports that “federal filings revealed he holds $10 million in stock options in one of the companies working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.”

*****

Easiest grift in the world
The Trump administration has reportedly inked a $1.3bn deal with a North Dakota construction firm aiming to build 42 miles of border wall after its CEO praised the president in multiple interviews with conservative media. [The Independent]

***
Trump’s move to fire Steve Linick, the State Department Inspector General who had been investigating Mike Pompeo, got a lot of attention but Trump also fired the U.S. Department of Transportation’s watchdog, Mitch Behm, who had been investigating Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, according to CREW.

At DOT, the acting IG was overseeing a high profile investigation of Secretary Chao’s alleged favoritism benefiting her husband Senator Mitch McConnell’s political prospects, but has now been replaced with a political appointee from within the agency. The acting IG’s ouster calls into question the future of the Chao-McConnell investigation, other critical oversight, and whether the watchdog was dismissed for unearthing damaging information.

This move is the latest salvo of Trump’s assault on oversight. And it looks like the President made sure to cover all his bases to block accountability, not only nominating an IG to succeed the experienced watchdog who held the post, but also demoting the acting IG who was investigating Chao, and installing a political appointee to serve in his place while the Senate considers a permanent replacement. To make matters worse, Trump’s pick to be the new acting IG, Howard “Skip” Elliott, already has a job overseeing the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), an office he will now also be in charge of policing.

Related:

I REPEAT:
IT IS ILLEGAL FOR TRUMP’S ACTING IG TO HAVE STARTED WORKING AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT THIS WEEK. THE LAW FORBIDS REMOVAL OF AN IG DURING THE 30-DAY NOTICE PERIOD. IF EVEN FOUR SENATE REPUBLICANS CARED ABOUT LAWS, THEY WOULD STOP THIS BY BLOCKING TRUMP’S NOMINEES. GOT IT?
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) May 21, 2020

*****

Also related…
“It’s a political coup, there really can be no question about it.” — Republican former Barr aide Stuart M. Gerson https://t.co/5RsPc9VaNL
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) May 18, 2020

*****
A lot has happened during the Trump years that would have been difficult to predict in 2015 or 2016. This, via The Washington Post, is not one of them:

The Trump administration has discussed whether to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test explosion since 1992 in a move that would have far-reaching consequences for relations with other nuclear powers and reverse a decades-long moratorium on such actions.

The United States has not conducted a nuclear test explosion since September 1992, and nuclear nonproliferation advocates warned that doing so now could have destabilizing consequences.

*****
A normal political party would probably be distancing itself from Georgia Sen Kelly Loeffler. She’s taken fire for apparently engaging in insider trading, and is trailing behind both fellow Republican Doug Collins and Democrat Raphael Warnock in the polls.

But Loeffler holds an advantage because of her party’s corruption, according to The New York Times.

Trump personally pushed the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, last fall to select Mr. Collins to fill the vacant Senate seat Ms. Loeffler now occupies. But the governor wanted to appoint someone who he felt could expand the party’s appeal in the suburbs of Atlanta, where Republicans have been shedding support in recent years. Ms. Loeffler’s vast wealth was an added appeal; she has pledged to pump $20 million or more of her own fortune into the race.

Ms. Loeffler’s supporters in Washington want Mr. Trump to understand what he would be risking by abandoning the wealthy Ms. Loeffler: her husband, one top Senate Republican official noted on Friday, just donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s “super PAC” last month, and the couple have directed tens of thousands of dollars more to key Senate races.

*****
We’ll leave you this week with three stories which highlight that the cruelty is indeed the point–along with some greed.
Trump Judge Elizabeth Branch cast the deciding vote in this 2–1 decision denying soap and disinfectant to people incarcerated in a Miami JAIL. Now more than 300 of them have tested positive for COVID-19. https://t.co/P5VzkRnK8x https://t.co/W4iNO4yfDH
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 18, 2020

Politico reported that “more than 40,000 National Guard members currently helping states test residents for the coronavirus and trace the spread of infections will face a ‘hard stop’ on their deployments on June 24 — just one day shy of many members becoming eligible for key federal benefits.”

The looming loss of crucial frontline workers, along with questions about whether the administration is shortchanging first responders, would require a delicate messaging strategy, the official — representing FEMA’s New England region — told dozens of colleagues on [an] interagency call.

“We would greatly benefit from unified messaging regarding the conclusion of their services prior to hitting the 90-day mark and the retirement benefit implications associated with it,” the official said.

The U.S. has rejected WHO language that would allow poorer countries to copy its coronavirus vaccines or drugs once developed, arguing it will stifle innovation.

In doing so, they seem to be arguing that innovation is more important than human lives. https://t.co/unVieRdyV1

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) May 22, 2020

GOP betting 2020 election success on selling ‘crazy talk’ and conspiracy theories to voters: columnist

 May 22, 2020 By Tom Boggioni

Surveying the expanding 2020 election campaigns that are managing to cut through the wall-to-wall coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that has brought the U.S. — and the world at large — to a standstill, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson claimed that Republicans appear to be going all-in on pushing conspiracy theories to retain the White House and their Senate majority status.

According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, “Senate Republicans have made their choice: They’re putting on their tinfoil hats and staking their political future on transparent lies and wild conspiracy theories. The onetime ‘Party of Lincoln’ threatens to become the ‘Party of Q.'”

Of note, Robinson points out, is the GOP’s Senate nominee in Oregon, Jo Rae Perkins, who is an adherent of QAnon conspiracy theories as Republican leaders st

Perkins “….avidly promotes the absurd and wholly fictitious QAnon story line. Adherents see President Trump as a heroic warrior fighting to save America and the world from an evil cabal of ‘globalist,’ sex-trafficking ‘elites’ who include moles within the government known as the ‘deep state.’ The supposed proof? Enigmatic posts on anonymous message boards from a ‘Q Clearance Patriot’ who claims to have the inside dope on a coming ‘Storm’ that will wash away this faction and purify the country.”

“Reality check: No, it’s not,” Robinson wrote. “It’s crazy talk, on the level of the paranoid speculation in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr. Strangelove’ that Russians were using fluoride to taint Americans’ ‘precious bodily fluids.'”

It would be one thing, the columnist notes, if it was just one fringe candidate promoting a conspiracy theories to a gullible public, but some of Perkins’ theories are already being tossed about in Congress.



“Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for example, complained last year that there are ‘Republican senators up here whose allegiance is more to the deep state than it is to the president.’ At the time, Paul was arguing that the Senate should be holding hearings about Trump’s claim that the whole investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was nothing but a conspiracy to destroy Trump’s presidency,” Robinson wrote. “If paranoid rants like this were just electoral performance art, that would be deplorable enough. But Republicans are using the power of their office to grant wishes to fantasists such as Paul, and to bolster conspiracy-minded voters who crave the feeling that they’re always on the brink of a major revelation.”

According to the columnist, the GOP is already on the ropes when it comes to the November election, and lawmakers may be looking for a lifeline — hence appealing to a fringe element of the electorate.

“Polls show Trump trailing badly against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Trump, who fancies himself a marketing genius, has so damaged the Republican brand that the party is in danger of losing Senate seats in Montana, Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina and Maine — for starters. Even in South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham is having to look over his shoulder at Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, who outraised him last quarter. The GOP’s 53-to-47 majority is in real peril of being erased,” Robinson explained.


“Republicans could have decided to cut Trump loose and try to save themselves — and, in the end, perhaps some will take that route. But Trump has so remade the Republican base in his own image, including by providing encouragement to a near-cult, that, as Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the party whip, told Politico: ‘I just think that everybody realizes that our fortunes sort of rise or fall together.'” He wrote before warning, “An actor killed President Abraham Lincoln. A different kind of fiction may kill his party.

You can read more here

Oil companies can set their own royalty rates from drilling on public lands thanks to Trump: report

May 23, 2020 By Common Dreams- Commentary


In a display of loyalty to what Greenpeace called “the most polluting industry in history,” the Trump administration is allowing dozens of oil and gas companies to set their own rates for royalties they’re required to pay on revenue generated from drilling on public lands.

As High Country News reported Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) contacted its state offices the day after global oil prices plunged to below $0 per barrel as the Covid-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented drop in demand.

The federal agency, which oversees 96,000 oil and gas wells and more than 24,000 leases on public lands, ordered state officials to encourage more drilling despite an excess supply of oil which was forcing companies to pay for oil storage.
Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.

In addition to suspending lease payments, BLM told states to allow companies to apply for relief from royalties, the mandatory taxes on the revenue the fossil fuel industry earns, which are used to support public schools, higher education, and healthcare in Western states.

According to High Country News, BLM instructed state offices to allow oil and gas companies to decide how much they want to pay in royalties for the duration of the pandemic, suggesting that the standard rate of 12.5% be reduced to as low as 0.5%.

“Trump and his fossil fuel cronies continue to use the cover of a deadly pandemic to bail out the fossil fuel industry in every way possible. Public lands should be used for public good—instead they’re being handed over to fossil fuel billionaires at rock-bottom rates,” Collin Rees, senior campaigner at Oil Change International, told Common Dreams. “We need to phase out all drilling on public lands as quickly as possible, but in the meantime, fossil fuel companies must be held accountable for the damage they’re doing.”

Climate action group Greenpeace called the scheme an “ill-fated oil bailout,” the profits of which are likely to go to fossil fuel CEOs, and not rank-and-file workers in the industry.

“Oil and gas corporations already pay pennies compared to what they make in profits from plundering public lands—land that belongs to the American people—and now they’ll pay even less,” said campaigner Charlie Jiang. “The Interior Department’s priorities could not be more wrong. Nurses need masks. Essential workers need paid leave, hazard pay, and childcare. Employees need paychecks. People need help all over this country. But every day the Trump administration ignores their pleas and caters to billionaire donors instead.”

Between April 30 and May 18, BLM offices approved 76 requests by companies for lower royalty rates, with some requesting 0.5% or 0.0%. The royalty relief is being offered as the federal government continues to hold lease sales and auctions across the West, offering drilling leases at bargain prices due to the market’s downturn.

The cheap sales combined with low or non-existent royalty payments “means lower financial return on federal oil for energy-dependent Western states,” wrote Nick Bowlin at High Country News.

“Oil and gas companies are struggling,” added Bowlin. “But so are Western states, and the new BLM policies allow companies to drill for public resources while generating scant public revenue.”

As oil companies are being offered relief—amid calls, bolstered by the struggling market, by progressives to nationalize fossil fuel industries in order to aid in a transition to renewable energy—the Trump administration this week abruptly ended a rent holiday for solar and wind companies operating on federal lands, demanding $50 million in back rent payments.

Renewable energy firms are struggling amid the pandemic, with many projects delayed and access to federal subsidies cut off. Before the coronavirus began spreading around the world, however, the solar and wind power sectors were growing faster than fossil fuel industries.

Scene: global pandemic.
Trump Admin to oil/gas companies: it’s tough out there; let us know if you need royalty relief, and we’ll review the application within 5 days.
Trump Admin to solar/wind companies: here’s a massive, retroactive bill for rent. Pay up by June. https://t.co/U91YNeKBbj
— Kate Kelly (@katepkelly) May 18, 2020

On social media, Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-Calif.) called on Congress to pass the ReWIND Act, which would block the Trump administration from cutting royalty rates.

No surprise the Trump Admin approved EVERY SINGLE royalty rate cut request for oil & gas leases in Utah, costing taxpayers millions of $.

The #ReWINDAct is more relevant now than ever. It would block Trump from cutting royalty rates.
#NoBigOilBailout
https://t.co/01Nac18EHV
— Nanette D. Barragán (@RepBarragan) May 22, 2020

“Congress must step in and stop this ill-fated oil bailout by passing the ReWIND Act before it goes any further,” said Jiang.

On Trump, masks and masculinity: What the president’s bare face really reveals

 Published By- Commentary Michael Kramp, Salon
on May 23, 2020

On Thursday, President Trump visited a Ford manufacturing plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The state’s Attorney General, Dana Nessel, had requested that Trump comply with the plant’s policy that all visitors wear face coverings. The President did not abide. Trump explained that while he briefly wore a special presidential face mask backstage, he “didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”
Thursday’s event was the most recent of a series of public appearances in which the President has tried to promote reopening of the country, including schools, sports, and, of course, businesses, in an attempt to jump-start the stagnant economy. And his deliberate public promotion of the nation’s reopening without wearing a mask, despite federal guidelines, is only his latest and most conspicuous artifice — perhaps his greatest mask to date.

 

The President has received consistent media attention over the past two weeks for his maskless public appearances, and most commentators have treated his actions through a familiar lens: a president who wants to convey vigorous strength, manly courage, and bold confidence as he convinces a wary public to go back to business.
I think that perspective misses the point about Trump, his masculinity, and, perhaps most importantly, his artifice. While the rest of us wear masks as we shop for groceries and venture to medical appointments, Trump has chosen to mask reality by opting against a face covering. He continues to obfuscate science, obscure the truth, and attempt to hide behind a veneer of carefully crafted masculinity — and he certainly does not need a protective mask to do so.
As we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, we have donned the artifice of masks, altered our routines, gone without haircuts, missed important milestones with our loved ones. We have learned much about ourselves — our breathing, our imperfect appearances, our priorities.
And as Trump shamelessly promotes the reopening of the economy while refusing to wear a mask, his behavior explicitly shows his artifice, making his insecurity painfully clear. As many have pointed out, he’s determined to put forth confidence in the nation’s reopening. In discussing the President’s refusal to wear a mask, Chris Cillizza of CNN claims that Trump “wants the image that the public gets of him to be that of a strong and fearless leader.” On Thursday, Trump presented this façade as “Built Trump tough.”

Does anyone really believe that a man who endlessly belittles others, eschews responsibility, refuses to cooperate with people who do not remain endlessly loyal, threatens the expansion of democracy, and openly suggests that people may need to sacrifice their lives to jump-start the economy is strong and fearless? Or, to put it another way, is anyone who is not already determined to adore Donald Trump — even if he were to “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone” — really convinced that a man who denigrates from a Twitter app is strong or fearless? A bully, sure, but everyone who survived middle school remembers full well that bullies are scarred with fear and rely upon artifice, often techniques they learned from their parents.
As Trump completed his trip to the Ford plant in Michigan, a battleground state he has targeted with his Twitter attacks—both against the governor’s leadership and distribution of applications for mail-in ballots—we saw Trump’s artifice on full display. He was petty, spiteful, and theatrical; he claims he donned a mask backstage and then removed it for the press.
We need to recognize the artifice of Trump and not reinforce his behavior with the kind of rhetoric that only fuels his performance. Jackson Katz, for example, recently addressing the mask issue, claimed “Donald Trump is simply not man enough to be president of the United States.” For Katz, this claim “defies conventional wisdom” that upholds Trump as “a prototypical alpha man.”
Katz echoes many of Cillizza’s points on Trump’s bravado, but superficially engages with feminist work that has exposed the artifice of men’s behavior, especially powerful men like Trump. And Katz ultimately adopts the demeaning, phallic, even bullying language we might associate . . . well, with Trump, as he ends his piece by concluding that “the most powerful man in the world is such a small man, utterly incapable of rising to the occasion.”
We need to rethink the question of masculinity and the mask. While we may think the absence of the mask exposes truth, we are all dependent on artifice, and men, perhaps more than ever, need to acknowledge our artifice, our dependencies, our insecurities that reveal the truth of who we are, especially in this moment of great vulnerability.
Artifice helps to mask our fear. Cosmetics might cover up our imperfections. Acting as a bully can hide our insecurities. Trump’s refusal to wear a mask obscures the realities of the pandemic, including the missteps of his leadership and the gravity of the nation’s — indeed, the world’s — loss. Trump’s refusal to wear a mask tells us plenty about his masculinity, but it’s not what he wanted to show.

GRIFTERS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Here’s how Jared Kushner’s ‘incompetence and insensitivity’ could bring down the Trump regime

IN CHARGE OF REDIRECTING PPE SUPPLIES TO PRIVATE SECTOR FOR PROFIT TO TRUMP INC.

May 23, 2020  By NJ.com



When I watch Jared Kushner speak on television, I am immediately reminded of Little Lord Fauntleroy – a person who is spoiled, conceited, and characterized by a pompous air of decadence, intellectualism, and moral superiority. Little Lord Fauntleroy was the major character in a novel of the same name by the British author, Frances Hodgson Burnett, published in 1886.

As Washington Post columnist Max Boot points out, Kushner is the type of rich, privileged person who former University of Oklahoma and Dallas Cowboys football coach Barry Switzer described as “born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.” His sense of unwarranted hubris was enhanced by his unmerited admission to Harvard.

Jared attended high school at The Frisch School in Paramus where he was a less than stellar student. A former official at the Frisch School told renowned journalist and author Daniel Goldman, “There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it; his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

Goldman’s research revealed the most plausible explanation for Jared’s unanticipated admission. He found that in 1998, not long before Jared was admitted, his father, Charles, a billionaire real estate developer pledged $2.5 million to Harvard.

Five years after Jared’s admission into Harvard, in 2004, Charlie Kushner pleaded guilty to tax violations, illegal campaign donations, and retaliating against a witness. It appeared that any political aspirations that Charlie and Jared Kushner, father and son may have had were hopeless.

But through marriage to Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald Trump, Jared was able to effectuate one of the most meteoric personal rises in the history of American politics. Boot, a conservative intellectual, says as a real estate developer Kushner “was primarily known for overpaying for an office building located at 666 Fifth Avenue and for buying and destroying the spunky New York Observer. He arrived at the White House with no obvious qualifications and so many conflicts of interest that he did not qualify for a security clearance until Trump overrode the concerns of career professionals.”

The Trumps are America’s Romanovs, and regarding political matters, Kushner is the Rasputin of the Trump White House. Little Lord Fauntleroy Kushner has morphed into Rasputin Kushner – and Rasputin Kushner is much more dangerous.

Jared’s incompetence and insensitivity on political and governmental matters should not have surprised anybody, given his total lack of any political or governmental experience prior to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency. The American electorate is well aware of the appalling degree of influence the politically inept Kushner has gained as special assistant to the president.

During just the past month, America experienced three episodes of Kushner’s incompetence. The first was the total failure of his task force in procuring testing equipment. The second was his description of the Trump response to the pandemic and economic meltdown as an administration “success story.” The third was his refusal to rule out the possibility of the Trump administration changing the election date after being asked about it twice.
“Kushner’s statement reveals amazing ignorance of the Constitution and law,” tweeted Bill Kristol, the neoconservative political commentator and editor at large of the Bulwark. “It reveals startling arrogance in taking for granted he gets to have some say about when the election is held. It also reveals an utter lack of understanding of his very subordinate role in our democracy.”

This statement by Kristol, in a nutshell, explains why Howell Raines, the former executive editor of the New York Times stated that Kushner was incompetent and that he would not have had even a junior position in the Reagan administration.

Recently, the renowned Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty wrote a column about Jared Kushner’s incompetence, entitled “Save us all from Jared Kushner.”

I would suggest that this becomes a national prayer.

Alan Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.

Spain’s far right hold car protest against Covid-19 lockdown




Published on May 23, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


Thousands of cars and motor-bikes honking horns and waving Spanish flags drove in procession through Madrid on Saturday as part of a nationwide protest called by the far-right Vox party against the country’s coronavirus lockdown.

Spain, which imposed one of Europe’s toughest lockdowns on March 14, has started to ease restrictions, but Madrid and Barcelona have remained in lockdown for longer because of more severe coronavirus outbreaks.

\
The protesters called for Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias, of the centre-left Socialists and left-wing Podemos coalition, to resign over their handling of the coronavirus crisis, and, in particular, the lockdowns and the damage done to the economy and jobs.

“It is time to end the #stateofabuse that Pedro Sanchez and Pablo Iglesias are using to gag Spaniards,” Vox said in a statement, referring to a Twitter hash tag.

“It is time to make a big noise against the government of unemployment and misery that has abandoned our self-employed and workers.”

Vox leader Santiago Abascal, who was leading the procession in Madrid, made a speech that was broadcast on EsRadio so people could listen in their cars. He said the government was “directly responsible for the worst management of this crisis on the entire planet.”

Sanchez is due to make a speech later on Saturday that will be broadcast on television.

Protests against the lockdown started in Madrid’s wealthy Salamanca neighborhood last week, where people started banging pots and pans. But Saturday’s procession marked the first organized protest against the government since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Vox urged people to protest in every regional capital, and similar car processions took place in Seville and Barcelona, among others.

Madrid and Barcelona are preparing to ease their lockdowns from Monday as infections have slowed. This will allow outdoor dining and gatherings of up to 10 people.


Spain has registered 28,628 deaths from COVID-19 and 234,824 cases.

(REUTERS)