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Trump claims that his $421 million debt is “tiny.” He apparently owes more than twice that amount

President Donald Trump did not deny a New York Times report that he owes $421 million at a Thursday town hall event. Instead, he insisted that the amount was “tiny” in comparison to his overall wealth.

The Times revealed that Trump has to pay back $421 million in the coming years in a bombshell exposé detailing his personal and business tax returns. The documents obtained by the outlet showed that Trump had paid $0 in federal income taxes for a decade before paying $750 in 2016 and 2017. Moreover, they showed that the president had reported losing hundreds of millions of dollars on the properties he operates.

Though Trump previously called the report “fake news,” he did not deny that he owed more than $400 million at Thursday’s NBC News town hall. Rather, he falsely insisted that the outlet had illegally obtained his tax information. The president declined to say to whom he owes money.

“I have a very, very small percentage of debt compared” to my wealth, Trump claimed.

The president alleged that he took on the debt as “favors to institutions that wanted to loan me money.”

“It sounds like you’re saying $400 million isn’t that much,” moderator Savannah Guthrie responded. “But are you confirming that, yes, you do owe some $400 million?”

“What I’m saying is that it’s a tiny percentage of my net worth,” Trump replied. “. . . I don’t owe Russia money. I owe a very, very small . . . It’s called mortgages. People have a house, they put a mortgage.”

“I don’t owe money to any of these sinister people,” he continued. “This has been going on for years now.”

Asked if he owed money to any foreign entity, Trump replied: “Not that I know of.”

“I will probably . . . I will let you know who I owe whatever small amount of money,” he added.

In fact, Trump’s company reportedly owes about $340 million to German financial giant Deutsche Bank, the embattled institution which was one of the few banks willing to lend him money after a series of bankruptcies and defaults. While Trump appeared to acknowledge the $421 million in personally guaranteed loans that were reported by The Times, a Forbes analysis found that Trump’s total debt was actually closer to $1 billion.

Trump has earned more than $200 million in income from his interests in foreign countries since 2016, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Guthrie told Trump that he could “clear this up tonight” by releasing his tax returns.

Trump then invoked his dubious claim that he cannot release the returns “under audit.”

“No person in their right mind would release prior to working out the deal with the IRS,” Trump said. “And, I’ll go a step further — I’m treated very badly by the IRS. They treat me very, very badly.”

“Just to be clear, there is no law or rule that prohibits you from releasing your tax returns,” Guthrie pointed out.

“No, except common sense and intelligence — and having lawyers,” Trump responded. “Because I would love to release them.”

Guthrie pressed Trump on whether he had paid only $750 in federal income taxes.

“It’s a statutory number,” he replied. “I think it’s a filing number. You pay $750.”

“Is that on the page?” Guthrie questioned. “Then most people here probably pay for it.”

“I don’t know. I can tell you this: If they have my tax returns, as you know, they have to go to jail. It’s illegal,” the president claimed before changing the subject back to his debt. “But their numbers were wrong . . .”

“So I would not mind at all saying who it is, but it’s very small,” he added. “When you look at vast properties like I have — and they’re big, and they’re beautiful and they’re well located. When you look at that, the amount of money — $400 million is a peanut.”

Trump claimed that what he owed was not a “big deal,” but former intelligence officials worry that his outstanding debts may pose a national security threat.

“For a person with access to U.S. classified information to be in massive financial debt is a counterintelligence risk, because the debt-holder tends to have leverage over the person, and the leverage may be used to encourage actions, such as disclosure of information or influencing policy, that compromise U.S. national security,” David Kris, the former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, told Time.

Robert Cardillo, the former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, added that “a second term for President Trump would result in increased vulnerability — and thus, potentially, risk.”

Trump’s encouragement of QAnon is dangerous — it makes protecting kids from real abuse harder

Last night, during the shameful town hall NBC gave Donald Trump so he could avoid another humiliating debate defeat at Joe Biden’s hands, Trump played the same game with QAnon that he does with white supremacists and right wing terrorists: Played dumb while giving winking encouragement to his more unhinged followers. 

After repeatedly pretending not to know what this “QAnon” thing might be, when asked about it by journalist Savannah Guthrie, Trump then exposed himself as a liar by proving he does, in fact, know what QAnon purports to be about. 

“I do know they are very much against pedophilia,” he said. “They fight it very hard.”

Read more: What is QAnon? A not-so-brief introduction to the conspiracy theory that’s eating America

As most people not caught up in the cult of QAnon understand, the loosely organized online movement does not actually fight pedophilia. Its adherents promote a conspiracy theory that claims Trump is some kind of secret warrior in a fight against a worldwide liberal cabal of pedophiles, which leads to accusing innocent people of being sexual predators. That is very different from fighting child sexual abuse in the real world. But by framing QAnon as a sincere movement promoting well-meaning convictions, Trump is establishing a poisonous narrative that threatens to help mainstream it.

This is, after all, how the anti-abortion movement mainstreamed their fringe views, by portraying themselves as good-hearted people who just love the children. That gave pundits and other political gatekeepers permission to look away from their true purpose, which is stripping women of the basic human rights. By claiming to be fighting against child abuse, QAnon appears to be trying to pull off the same trick. And they got a big assist from Trump Thursday night. 

So let’s be quite clear here: QAnon is not about helping, protecting or saving children from actual sexual predators. They are people who promote lurid and made-up accusations of pedophilia as cover for their true purpose, which is to spin out ever-wilder rationalizations for continuing to support Trump in the face of economic collapse, racist oppression and an out-of-control pandemic. 

If anything, the rapidly growing cult is making it much harder for people who are doing the work to fight sexual violence. 

“It is not helpful to present child sexual abuse as a shadowy conspiracy, when we know that most perpetrators are actually known to the child,” Debra Hauser, the president of Advocates for Youth, told Salon. 

“People who commit child sexual abuse are not strangers or monsters they read about online,” Laura Palumbo, the communications director of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, added in an email. “The hard reality is that parents, family members, neighbors, mentors and coaches are most often the ones who commit sexual abuse.”

This idea that “the danger lurks outside” can make it harder for victims who are seeking help, Hauser noted, because if they tell their story to an adult “it becomes harder for that person to believe” if that adult has bought into QAnon-style images of what child sexual abuse looks like.

In the real world, sexual abuse — both of children and adults — rarely fits the QAnon-style dramatic fantasies of Satanic rituals and kidnapping rings. Instead it looks a lot like, well, the kind of thing Trump was on tape bragging to Billy Bush about — people, mostly men, who exploit their power over another person they know personally in order to sexually violate them. 

We can already see evidence of the poisonous way that QAnon directs attention away from serious efforts to combat sexual abuse, especially of minors, and towards their ridiculous conspiracy theories by putting a strain on non-profit organizations that do the real life work of helping children and fighting human trafficking. 

QAnon has been using the hashtag #SaveTheChildren on social media as a way to launder their radical views and recruit unwitting new followers. This has presented a problem for the very real child welfare charity Save The Children, who finally responded with a press release in August complaining that the use of their “name in hashtag form” is “causing confusion among our supporters and the general public.” They also pointed people to a FAQ sheet debunking the kinds of myths about human trafficking that QAnon promotes. 

When QAnon adherents spread an urban legend falsely accusing the furniture company Wayfair of enabling child sex trafficking, the Polaris Project — an organization that fights real human trafficking — was forced to issue a press statement after getting slammed with an “extreme volume” of contacts from people reporting the fake story, which “made it more difficult for the Trafficking Hotline to provide support and attention to others who are in need of help.”

Similarly, officials in Oregon reported that 911 and other emergency hotlines were overwhelmed with false reports during the wildfires that swept the state recently, when QAnon accounts started spreading urban legends accusing “antifa” of starting the fires. These calls made it harder for people in distress to get help from first responders, which is alarming considering how dangerous and deadly the fires were. While that example doesn’t directly involve sexual abuse, it does illustrate how QAnon whips credulous adherents into a frenzy over fake threats, which then creates a burden and drain on resources needed to fight real dangers in the world. 

Zooming out a little more, it’s also important to understand that, by supporting Trump, QAnon actually enables many real threats to the welfare of children. Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, has undermined regulations meant to protect K-12 students from sexual harassment, a critical tool in fighting child sex abuse. Trump has also cut funding to sexual health care clinics, such as Planned Parenthood, that have long served as safe spaces for young people to report sexual abuse.

We know what’s actually needed to fight child sexual abuse, Hauser explained. 

“It is helpful to be honest, and to provide young people with honest education about what child sexual abuse actually is,” she said. “It’s really, really important for young people to understand, and for children to understand that their body is theirs and that they have the right to say no.”

And it’s important for “young people to be able to be trusted when they say this happened to them.”

This kind of advice isn’t as exciting as going on a QAnon message board and swapping wild tales of kidnapping rings, but it is the sort of thing that actually stops child abuse. Unfortunately, by spreading misleading tales about what child abuse looks like, QAnon isn’t just concocting a silly cover story to justify unjustifiable support for Trump. This movement is flooding the discourse with noise, and making it harder for those who have useful information and advice to be heard. 

“McConnell expects Trump to lose”: Mitch shoots down stimulus compromise between Trump and Democrats

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., torpedoed a possible compromise deal on the stimulus between House Democrats and the White House on Thursday.

Millions of people have fallen into poverty since aid dried up months ago, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has pleaded for Congress to provide more relief, because there is little risk of “overdoing” it. But McConnell on Wednesday said a deal worth between $1.8 trillion and $2.2 trillion was about four times more than Republicans would agree to — even though it is a far cry from the $3.4 trillion bill passed by House Democrats in May.

“I don’t think so,” McConnell told reporters when asked if he would agree to a deal in that range. “That’s where the administration is willing to go. My members think half a trillion dollars, highly targeted, is the best way to go.”

McConnell acknowledged that Trump had been eager to increase the price tag, but the bill being negotiated between Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was “not what I’m going to put on the floor.”

McConnell previously announced that he would force a vote on a $500 billion bill next week after House Democrats approved a $2.2 trillion compromise last month.

The majority leader’s reluctance comes as studies show that roughly 8 million people have fallen into poverty after their stimulus payments ran out and enhanced federal unemployment benefits expired in July. One study found that 6 million people have fallen into poverty in just the last three months, with Black and Latinx people and children disproportionately impacted. 

Powell warned Congress earlier this month that failing to pass another large stimulus package would “lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses.”

“A long period of unnecessarily slow progress could continue to exacerbate existing disparities in our economy,” he said. “That would be tragic, especially in light of our country’s progress on these issues in the years leading up to the pandemic.”

Trump, who faces a steep climb in the polls with less than three weeks before the election, has signaled that he would also like to see a larger bill after failing to gain leverage by claiming to end all talks and urging the House to pass piecemeal bills, which have been blocked by his own party.

“Absolutely, I would. I would pay more. I would go higher,” Trump told Fox Business on Thursday. “Go big, or go home. I said it yesterday, ‘Go big, or go home.'”

But Republicans forcefully pushed back on the White House negotiations, even as the GOP heads into a perilous election season where the party has a strong chance of losing its Senate majority.

Republicans on a call with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows last week called the White House’s $1.8 trillion proposal a “betrayal” and “the death knell for our majority” as senators took turns blasting the bill, according to Politico.

Mnuchin, who is still negotiating a possible deal with Pelosi, acknowledged earlier this week that “getting something done before the election and executing on that would be difficult just given where we are.” Further, Democrats doubt that Trump will still have much appetite for a large deal after the election if he loses.

“My fear is that if Trump loses the election, we’re done until February because he’s not going to be in any mood to help or cooperate with anybody,” Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., told The Washington Post.

The biggest sticking points in the deal have been Democrats’ demands to include much-needed aid for hard-hit cities and states and child tax credits for working parents, as well as the Republican demand to include lawsuit protections for companies in the bill.

Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, predicted that McConnell had been so reluctant to go up on the price of the bill because he expects the president to lose the election.

“I think McConnell expects Trump to lose, and therefore for him to spend political capital to support Trump by forcing through a bill which would put his leadership position at risk after the election, to me, doesn’t make any sense,” he told Business Insider. “It’s always wise to do things from McConnell’s personal perspective, because that’s how things operate in the Senate. He has enormous personal power, and he wants to be leader again — even if he has to be a leader in the minority.”

Trump should face manslaughter charges for his “reckless” handling of COVID-19: former prosecutor

A former homicide prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office believes that there’s a case to be made for charging President Donald Trump for second-degree manslaughter over his handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Writing in the New York Daily News, attorney Robert Gottlieb makes the case that Trump has behaved so recklessly throughout the pandemic that he should be held legally responsible for at least some of the people who have died on his watch.

“In New York, a person is guilty of second-degree manslaughter when he ‘recklessly causes the death of another person,'” Gottlieb notes. “And ‘a person acts recklessly with respect to a result or to a circumstance . . . when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk.”

He then proceeds to lay out the evidence against the president.

“Trump admitted to Bob Woodward knowing as early as January that COVID-19 was a deadly virus that spreads through the air via asymptomatic people,” he argues. “Since then, Trump has consciously disregarded the risk of from exposure and instead has undertaken a systematic COVID disinformation campaign.”

Gottlieb then notes that some ordinary citizens have been prosecuted for endangering others by breaking rules against holding mass gatherings during the pandemic — and the size of those gatherings is dwarfed by the indoor campaign rally the president held in Nevada last month.

“Trump chose from the start to preserve his own power over protecting the people whom he swore to protect,” he concludes. “He is responsible for their deaths. That is manslaughter.”

Ernst was once a rising star in the GOP. Her support for Trump may get her voted out after one term

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) seems headed toward a re-election loss after just one term in the U.S. Senate.

The Iowa Republican became a rising star after her nine-point election win in 2014, but Ernst is now trailing Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield by about five points in recent polls, reported Vox.

“She’s had six years, and she’s forgotten Iowans,” said Greenfield. “She has sold out Iowans for her big corporate donors.”

Iowa voters seem to agree, saying that Ernst hasn’t done enough for her home state in Congress, and her support for President Donald Trump’s agenda has turned off voters in the state’s growing suburbs.

“Suburban women have said, ‘To hell with this’ and voted up and down the ticket for us,” said one Democratic strategist. “We’ve also picked up some men outside of suburbia who wanted to see a federal check on Trump. I think that’s part of the trend we’re seeing in the Senate race.”

Ernst had been in Washington, D.C., for just two years before Trump was elected, and she has been a reliable vote for his agenda — including a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and in favor of the Republican tax bill.

“You’re a young new U.S. senator,” said one GOP operative of Ernst’s first term. “You have a majority in the Senate, you have the House. Then the president comes in, and the ability to stand out and be unique is pretty hard. It’s difficult to find your voice.”

Trump won 51 percent of Iowa’s vote in the 2016 election, but recent polls show a 46 approval rating in the state and 52 percent disapproval, and his average support against Joe Biden is just 46 percent.

“If the pandemic hadn’t hit, the economy would have been a real selling point,” said Timothy Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa. “Then, boom, the economy tanked. Not everybody has been helped. A lot of businesses are hurting.”

Don’t let Trump’s GOP enablers off the hook: Denouncing him now is taking the easy way out

It was inevitable that many Republican officials would abandon Donald Trump once it became obvious that he might lose. Rats can always be expected to desert a sinking ship, of course, but establishment Republicans have a longstanding habit of unswerving loyalty to their leaders when they are in power and then rejecting them the minute they lose popularity, often while complaining that they failed because they weren’t conservative enough.

Recall that at the end of the George W. Bush administration, as the Iraq war wore on and the economy faltered, the president’s approval rating dropped to the high 20s. It was quite a comedown for a president who had once ridden high at 90% in the wake of 9/11 and was heralded as the reincarnation of Winston Churchill by many in the news media. Today he is something of a GOP cipher and his father, a one-termer, even more so.

Ronald Reagan, of course, was a revered conservative figure for many years, but that was mostly the result of a group of so-called “Reagan Revolutionaries” led by anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist who were disturbed by Reagan’s low ratings after his term was up and made a concerted effort to turn it around with initiatives such as the “Reagan Legacy Project” which set out to put a Ronald Reagan memorial in every county in the United States.

But for the most part, the reason Republicans are quick to abandon their presidents is because they most often leave office in ignominy and failure. Think about it: Hoover, Nixon, Ford, Bush and Bush. Really, in the last century all they have as political heroes are Eisenhower and Reagan, and the latter took a full-blown campaign to turn him into an icon. And needless to say, despite his belief that he belongs on Mt. Rushmore, I think we know which group President Trump will be joining. In fact, he is in a class all of his own.

Nonetheless, while a president is in office, Republicans are almost always in lockstep. The level of fealty GOP officials have given to Trump goes beyond even the usual conservative team loyalty, however. There’s been a lot of ink spilled trying to analyze why that is with most observers concluding that elected Republicans are afraid of their own voters who have a cult-like devotion to Trump. And there’s truth to that. Trump’s hold on his base is very strong.

So, while it’s not surprising to see some Republicans start to break from Trump as his re-election chances appear iffy at best, it’s more difficult than usual. There are always a few races in which the candidate will need to assert their “independence” in order to win and the party generally gives them the go-ahead to do what they need to do. But Trump supporters see the slightest criticism as an act of betrayal. 

Watching some of the more desperate among them like Arizona Senator Martha McSally try to walk that fine line is almost painful to watch.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1313700609531543553?s=20

Up until now, McSally has been a very eager Trump acolyte. There is little reason for anyone to doubt her loyalty to the president. And that’s her problem.

But there is another dynamic that’s starting to emerge among certain ambitious Republicans and I suspect it will be a stampede before too long. The first one out of the gate is Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who “accidentally” had a conversation with constituents leak on Thursday to The Washington Examiner in which he had nothing good to say about the president he’s supported in every material way for the past four years. Sasse said Trump treated the pandemic like “a public relations crisis instead of a public health challenge” and complained about his foreign policy and other issues:

“The way he kisses dictators’ butts. I mean, the way he ignores the Uighurs, our literal concentration camps in Xinjiang. Right now, he hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong-Kongers,” he said. “The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor. The ways I criticize President Obama for that kind of spending; I’ve criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with white supremacists.”

He’s not wrong about any of it. But keep in mind that on the same day he was trashing Trump on a call he almost certainly planned to leak to the press, Sasse was also extolling the virtues of Judge Amy Coney Barrett in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, which are only taking place because the Republican Party has become a radical faction that will do anything to maintain its power.

Sasse is very likely running for president in 2024 and he’s going to try to sell the idea that he was never on the Trump train so there’s no reason to blame him for anything that went wrong during Trump’s term. And it would appear that some in the media will help him do that. The New York Times calls Sasse’s enthusiastic embrace of radical power plays in contrast with his stated distaste of Trump a “trade-off.” It is not. It’s called rank opportunism and he is not going to be the only Republican running from his own corrupt bargain.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer played the audio of that conversation on his show on Thursday and the venerable journalist Bob Woodward opined, “He got caught telling the truth. I know there are other Republican senators who feel exactly the same way. and they have not yet been caught. And more catastrophically, they won’t share with the public the private conclusion.”

Oh, I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot of them sharing that “private conclusion” with the public if Trump loses. Sasse is just getting out in front. And it is much too late.

Throughout his term Republicans have backed him for their own purposes, fed his paranoia and obsessive revenge fantasies, and allowed the destruction of the rule of law and our democratic processes to go unchecked. Less than one year ago they had the opportunity to remove this unfit president and they refused. They knew what he was and they protected him anyway.

It’s not about the tweets or the nasty insults; it’s about the assault on democracy, the horrific abuse of power and the monumental corruption. They had the power to stop it and they didn’t. In fact, they enthusiastically used it to their advantage to stack the courts with right wing extremists, deregulate everything in sight and lower taxes on the wealthy.

They must never be allowed to forget that they were eager collaborators in the most corrupt, incompetent and dangerous administration in American history. This was a momentous crucible in our democracy and they all failed, every last one of them. 

Trump’s town hall stunt backfires: NBC’s Savannah Guthrie gives him the grilling voters wouldn’t

Donald Trump made the wrong choice when he refused to appear for a virtual face-off against Joe Biden. 

NBC News was nothing short of reckless in its pursuit to offer the president a platform to continue to promote his dangerous lies even after contracting COVID-19. As Salon’s Melanie McFarland wrote, NBC executives’ decision to fall back on their long history of providing Trump a national audience “is terrible for democracy.” So given the grim state of American media, it’s notable that Trump’s panicked play to refuse a second debate against the former vice president may have backfired. 

A sweaty and often out of breath Trump floundered on his stool under the bright studio lights and accompanying Miami weather Thursday night. While he looked almost suspiciously triumphant over his recent COVID diagnosis, a relentless grilling from moderator Savannah Guthrie certainly didn’t do him any favors — at least outside of his already secured base whose Pavlovian disgust for the media was undoubtedly reinvigorated. 

Guthrie’s past experience working with disgraced “Today” show host Matt Lauer may have prepared her well for managing a most unruly Trump. More than merely moderating questions from would-be voters in the audience, Guthrie was quick to offer relevant follow-ups and fact checks. She was often able to pin down the president’s familiar pattern of interrupting the preamble to a question, talking about whatever he wants, pretending the interviewer is interrupting him when she tries to finish, then moving on to the next question. She was prepared and pointed, delivering the grilling I suspect many anti-Trump voters found reassuring. 

There was a missed opportunity for Guthrie to work with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, the moderator of Biden’s debate which aired at the same time, to have coordinated questions and give voters the debate they were deprived of in a roundabout way — but, alas, television is a business. 

With no other reporter to go to, Trump struggled to dodge Guthrie’s follow-up questions. In twenty minutes of questioning before turning to the first town hall attendee, Guthrie got Trump to admit that he wasn’t tested for COVID before the debate, that he has more than $400 million in foreign debt and that he doesn’t read his own retweets. The best part was when she backed him into simultaneously failing to disavow a dangerous and growing conspiracy theory while also disappointing its rabid believers whom he counts as his most fervent supporters. 

“Let me ask you about QAnon,” Guthrie, a trained lawyer, opened. “It is this theory that Democrats are a satanic pedophile ring, and that you are the savior of that. Now can you just once and for all state that that is completely not true and that –”

Trump interjected: “I know nothing about QAnon … I do know they are very much against pedophilia. They fight it very hard. But I know nothing about it.”

If you’ve seen even one video testimony from a QAnon devotee, you understand how incredibly deflating Trump’s non-denial must feel. This comes the same week that Attorney General Bill Barr admits that he can’t deliver John Durham’s report on the origins of the Russia investigation before the election. Trump offering his base such dejection this close to Election Day can’t be mobilizing. 

Clicking away to Biden on ABC offered quite the contrast.

Biden did his best to appear rational and bipartisan, even if he was a bit rambling and evasive in his answers. If you answer questions honestly, however, the opportunity for the Guthrie-sort of grilling vanishes. For that reason, the boring feel of the Biden town hall helped sell him as presidential. That he stuck around and conducted an impromptu, unscripted Q&A further undermines the right-wing push to paint Biden as having dementia. 

Ultimately, however, we all lose.

Trump showed himself to be a glib, shameless liar. And that’s nothing new. Guthrie’s grilling certainly played right into his “liberal” media complaints. But he again spread the lie that masks do not help stop the spread of the coronavirus and with more than 200,000 dead Americans, we’re in danger every time he’s able to talk to an audience.

 

Making money off masks, COVID-spawned chain store aims to become obsolete

LONE TREE, Colo. — Darcy Velasquez, 42, and her mother, Roberta Truax, were walking recently in the Park Meadows mall about 15 miles south of downtown Denver, looking for Christmas gifts for Velasquez’s two children, when they spotted a store with a display of rhinestone-studded masks.

It’s an immutable truth of fashion: Sparkles can go a long way with a 9-year-old.

The store is called COVID-19 Essentials. And it may well be the country’s first retail chain dedicated solely to an infectious disease.

With many U.S. stores closing during the coronavirus pandemic, especially inside malls, the owners of this chain have seized on the empty space, as well as the world’s growing acceptance that wearing masks is a reality that may last well into 2021, if not longer. Masks have evolved from a utilitarian, anything-you-can-find-that-works product into another way to express one’s personality, political leanings or sports fandom.

And the owners of COVID-19 Essentials are betting that Americans are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Prices range from $19.99 for a simple children’s mask to $130 for the top-of-the-line face covering, with an N95 filter and a battery-powered fan.

Almost all shops and many pop-up kiosks in the Park Meadows mall now sell masks. But COVID-19 Essentials also carries other accessories for the pandemic, in a space that has a more established feel than a holiday pop-up store; permanent signage above its glass doors includes a stylized image of a coronavirus particle. Nestled beside the UNTUCKit shirt store and across from a Tesla showroom, it has neither the brand recognition nor the track record of a J.C. Penney. But longevity doesn’t seem to have helped that clothing chain or many others escape industry upheaval during the pandemic. According to analysts at S&P Global Market Intelligence, retail bankruptcies from January to mid-August reached a 10-year-high.

Not that the COVID-19 Essentials owners want their products to be in demand forever.

“I can’t wait to go out of business eventually,” said Nadav Benimetzky, a Miami retailer who founded COVID-19 Essentials, which now has eight locations around the country.

That seemed to be the attitude of most of the customers who walked into the store on a recent Friday afternoon. Most understood the need for masks — face coverings are required to even enter the mall — and thus they recognized the business case for a COVID-19 store. Still, they hoped masks would soon go the way of bell-bottoms or leg warmers. For the time being, they’re making the best of the situation.

Nathan Chen, who owns the Lone Tree store with Benimetzky, previously ran a different store at the Denver airport, but as air travel declined, a COVID-focused business seemed a much better venture. The pandemic giveth and the pandemic taketh away.

Benimetzky opened the first COVID-19 Essentials store in the Aventura Mall in suburban Miami after seeing the demand for N95 masks early in the pandemic. “They’re ugly and uncomfortable, and everybody hates them,” he said. “I piggybacked off of that. If you’re going to wear a mask, you might as well make it fashionable and pretty.”

That could mean a sequin or satin mask for more formal occasions, or the toothy grin of a skull mask for casual affairs. Some masks have zippers to make eating easier, or a hole for a straw, with a Velcro closure for when the cup is sucked dry.

The chain has locations in New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Las Vegas, and is looking to open stores in California, where wildfires have only added to the demand for masks.

Initially, the owners really weren’t sure the idea would fly. They opened the first store just as malls were reopening following the lockdowns.

“We really didn’t grasp how big it would get,” Benimetzky said. “We didn’t go into it with the idea of opening many stores. But we got busy from the second we opened.”

Nancy Caeti, 76, stopped in the Lone Tree store to buy masks for her grandchildren. She bought one with a clear panel for her granddaughter, whose sign language instructor needs to see her lips moving. She bought her daughter, a music teacher and Denver Broncos fan, a mask with the football team’s logo.

“I lived through the polio epidemic,” Caeti said, as her latex-gloved hand inserted her credit card into the card reader. “It reminds me of that, but that I don’t think was as bad.” She recalled how her mother had lined her and her siblings up to get the polio vaccine, and said she’d be first in line for a COVID shot.

That perhaps is the one essential the store does not carry. It hawks keylike devices for opening doors and pressing elevator buttons without touching them. Some have a built-in bottle opener. There are ultraviolet-light devices for disinfecting phones and upscale hand sanitizer that employees spray on customers as if it were a department store perfume sample.

But the masks are the biggest draw. The store can personalize them with rhinestone letters or the kind of iron-on patches that teens once wore on their jeans.

Upon entry, customers can check their temperature with a digital forehead scanner with audible directions: “Step closer. Step closer. Temperature normal. Temperature normal.”

The store also has added a sink near the entrance so customers can wash their hands before handling the merchandise.

Some mallgoers walk by the store in bewilderment, stopping to take photos to post to social media with a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding message. One older white couple in matching masks noticed a mask emblazoned with the slogan “Black Lives Matter” in the storefront display, and walked away in disgust.

The store takes no political sides; there are three designs of President Donald Trump campaign masks, two for Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden. One woman, who declined to give her name, came in wearing a mask below her nose and wondered whether a Trump mask would fit her smallish face. The Trump masks are among the more popular sellers, Chen said, so he keeps them in a bigger cabinet to accommodate the extra stock. It’s not clear if that will forecast the election results, as some have posited with Halloween mask sales.

Daniel Gurule, 31, stopped by the mall on his lunch hour to pick up an Apple Watch but ventured into the store for a new mask. He said that he normally wore a vented mask but that not all places allowed those. (They protect users but not the people around them.) He bought a $24.99 mask with the logo of the Denver Nuggets basketball team.

“It takes away a little bit of our personalities when everybody is walking around in disposable masks,” Chen said. “It kind of looks like a hospital, like everybody is sick.”

Most of the masks are sewn specifically for the chain, including many by hand. One of their suppliers is a family of Vietnamese immigrants who sew masks at their Los Angeles home, Benimetzky said. Chen said that it was hard to keep masks in stock, and that every day it seemed some other design became their best seller.

Dorothy Lovett, 80, paused outside the store, leaning on a cane with an animal print design.

“I had to back up and say, ‘What the heck is this?'” she said. “I’ve never seen a mask store before.”

She perused the display case, noting she needed to find a better option than the cloth version she was wearing.

“I can’t breathe in this one,” said Lovett, who is white, before deciding on her favorite. “I like the Black Lives Matter mask.”

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Michigan Republican linked to organizer of rally where militia allegedly plotted to kidnap Whitmer

Michigan Republican Senate candidate John James received campaign contributions and was photographed with the organizer of the rally where conspirators accused of planning to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer allegedly plotted with a militia to recruit more members.

James, along with Vice President Mike Pence, was photographed with Ryan D. Kelley, a Grand Rapids real estate agent who heads the American Patriot Council, in since-deleted social media images reviewed by Salon. President Donald Trump was also pictured with Kelley in a photo posted to his Facebook profile.

Kelley was the organizer of the “Well-Regulated Militia” rally at the Michigan capitol in June. The FBI alleged in court documents that the leader of the group who plotted the attack on Whitmer met with militia leader Ty Garbin and a confidential source at the rally to discuss a plan and recruit more members.

Federal Election Commission records also show that Kelley has donated thousands to James’ campaign. James, who lost his 2018 Senate bid, is virtually tied with incumbent Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.

Kelley’s pro-gun rally drew “dozens of armed members from various militias, most of them white,” to the state capitol where they met with “other fringe groups like Boogaloo Bois and Proud Boys,” according to Bridge Michigan.

The FBI alleged that the rally was among the locations where members plotted to kidnap Whitmer, try her in a remote location in Wisconsin and execute her for “treason” after complaining that the state’s coronavirus lockdown had shuttered gyms. The FBI charged 13 men, including members of the Wolverine Watchmen militia, in the alleged plot last week.

Kelley disputed a link between the rally and the plot, noting that one of the suspects was a Black Lives Matter supporter and another suspect posted an anti-Trump video.

“The June APC Rally was pro-law enforcement,” he said in a statement to Salon. “We coordinated the entire rally with Michigan State Police [and] thanked them publicly for their service. To suggest our rally was a meeting place to discuss a plot against the [governor] is grossly inaccurate.”

James’ campaign did not respond to questions from Salon, but it sent over a statement the Republican previously made to reporters.

“That was insane. That’s like the most 2020 headline I’ve seen this week,” he told reporters after the news broke. “Under no circumstances should we have this at all. I condemn any domestic terrorism, and I hate it in all its forms. I swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and the individuals implicated in this should be prosecuted to the fullest extent.”

“I took an oath to defend the Constitution and this nation against enemies foreign and DOMESTIC,” the Army veteran added on Twitter. “Those who threatened our State must be prosecuted to the fullest.”

Trump, who called to “liberate Michigan” in April and has been accused of emboldening militias, came under fire last month after he refused to denounce the Proud Boys and white supremacists in the first presidential debate. He also tweeted in support of protesters who stormed the Michigan capitol, some of whom were armed with guns, to condemn the state’s coronavirus restrictions.

Trump’s son Eric scrapped a campaign appearance on Monday at a Michigan gun shop where one of the plot suspects previously worked.

James, who has billed himself as a unity candidate, has also echoed the rhetoric from far-right Michigan groups who have criticized Whitmer’s coronavirus restrictions, railing against “socialism” and suggesting that Whitmer was dictator at recent campaign stops. His campaign stops have drawn members of the Proud Boys, which the FBI has classified as an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism.” James has also campaigned with NRA board member Ted Nugent, who has repeatedly espoused support for the militia movement.

Whitmer linked Republican rhetoric to the alleged plot against her over the weekend.

“I do believe that there are still serious threats that groups like this group — these domestic terrorists — are finding comfort and support in the rhetoric coming out of Republican leadership from the White House to our state House,” she told CBS News. “And so I remain concerned about safety and integrity going up to this election.”

The American Patriot Council denounced the alleged plot after the FBI announced the arrests.

“The American Patriot Council in no way condones violence as a form of political action. As the public is well aware, any actions taken by the American Patriot Council have been legal and lawful,” the group said in a statement. “While we hold the view that many public officials are guilty of a litany of crimes, and it has been our goal to hold these officials criminally responsible, we must do so lawfully.”

“The American Patriot Council believes in law and order across the board and that no American citizen should be deprived of their right to due process of law,” the statement added. “We have no affiliation with any other groups, nor will we aid or abet anyone using threats or acts of violence. Please take note that we are on the side of law enforcement. To this point, we have not been made aware of any plans of violence, and we believe our members and followers to be patriots.”

Trump, meanwhile, attacked Whitmer over the coronavirus restrictions after the arrests were announced. He also demanded that she thank him.

“Rather than say thank you,” Trump tweeted, “she calls me a White Supremacist.”

Trump’s wildly exaggerated help for Black voters

As part of every campaign speech – and in that single, awful debate – Donald Trump refers to helping black voters. Specifically, he cites lower unemployment numbers than in the years before his presidency and the introduction of opportunity zones for investment in specified urban neighborhoods.

Actually, when you look at these opportunity zones, the investments are spotty, the job gains are negligible and they serve primarily as write-off opportunities for wealthy investors to avoid federal capital gains taxes.

A Politico examination of the program found there is less in these vaunted programs than promoted by Trump looking for ways to show he has been the most beneficial sponsor of programs for the black community since Abraham Lincoln. That’s his urban mantra.

Trump claims this  anti-poverty program has attracted “$100 billion of new investment . . . into 9,000 of our most distressed neighborhoods” and created “countless jobs.”

Now even the White House Council of Economic Advisers says the number is closer to $75 billion in private investment since December 2017. Yet independent sources told Politico it is between 2½ and seven times too high. They said there have been investments between $10 million and $30 million. Since the program was set up with no reporting rules, there is no way to know.

The 60 Minutes television program talked with owners of benefitting businesses, who said the claims of added jobs are figments of presidential imagination. They said existing businesses have been helped, but to the tune of adding say 10s of jobs each.

In other words, the Trump claims are not wrong – just way overstated.

Attracting investors

Opportunity zones were created in December 2017 to attract investors, giving them the chance for tax avoidance if they re-invested in funds concentrating on businesses in or abutting Census tracts designated as high- or low-poverty areas.

Politico found that to date, these opportunity zones mostly benefited neighborhoods already on the upswing and middle-class renters. The opportunity zone program has no job guarantees and no mechanism requiring projects to benefit any poor person. Indeed, much of the money has gone toward building luxury apartments, hotels and office towers – showing that the main beneficiaries are, well, wealthy rather than poor.

A recent study suggests the opportunity zones have actually attracted slightly fewer new jobs than areas that were eligible for the zone program, but not selected for it. The Economic Innovation Group looked at Cleveland, which is home to half of the publicly announced opportunity zone projects in Ohio. Interviews with the developers show that opportunity zone funding was not essential to making the projects happen, since they were already active.  

One example cited was Kevin Wojton, who bought an abandoned building to convert it into a rock-climbing gym, yoga studio and tech nonprofit with a bank loan and now his own investment of $100,000 for which he gets a tax write-off. Total job impact: 50 to 75 temporary construction jobs and 15 to 25 permanent jobs in an area now starting to boom. It has two public housing projects nearby, qualifying it.

In other words, who’s benefiting most? Real estate developers like Donald Trump win.

Election fodder

Joe Biden has criticized opportunity zones for subsidizing too many “high-return projects, like luxury apartments.” He’s proposed including incentives for investors and developers to work with community organizations to build projects with social benefits.

More affordable housing would be one such focus, and there are examples of investors using the program to build apartments with variable rents, but mostly housing for middle-class tenants rather than the poor.

Would these have come about without the opportunity zones? Experts say philanthropic funds and participation by important neighbors like hospitals or a good-sized employer may have done so as well. The issue seems to be to get the attention of investors – which is where the tax incentives come in.

Ned Hill, an economic development professor at Ohio State University told Politico that neither the climbing gym apartments for medical residents will “affect the lives of low-income people in any major way.” Yet city halls and chambers of commerce praise the zones, Hill says, because they can add to old industrial cities’ tax bases by helping some projects “become bankable.”

Tax credits don’t assure that poor areas will become economically viable, but they may extend the boundaries of adjoining built-up areas.

Housing and real development in economically deprived areas will require more direct government intervention – you know, just the kind of thing that Trump calls socialism.

Until then, take the claims of success with opportunity zones with a huge grain of salt.

Election 2020 sees record $11 billion in campaign spending — mostly from a handful of the super-rich

Total spending in the 2020 federal elections is projected to set a new record of almost US$11 billion by November.

When adjusted for inflation, that’s over 50% higher than 2016 election spending. This year’s federal election spending — for the presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives — is on track to be double what it was in 2008.

The surge in campaign spending is striking. But my research on campaign finance regulation suggests the volume of election spending is not the main problem with the U.S. campaign finance system.

The real challenge for American democracy is where this money comes from.

No public campaign funding

American federal election campaigns are entirely funded by private money; most of it is provided by wealthy individual donors, political action committees and other interested organizations. Wealthy candidates also fund their own campaigns.

The U.S. has a public funding program for presidential elections, established in 1974. For two decades it played an important role in campaigns.

But it provided candidates with limited funds and imposed very low spending limits. As the needs and costs of contemporary campaigns grew, the system collapsed. While still available, no major candidate has taken public funds in the last three presidential elections.

When Joe Biden ran for the Democratic nomination in 1988, and again in 2008, he qualified for and accepted public funds, which accounted for 22% and 14%, respectively, of his campaign funds.

This year, as of Aug. 31, 2020, all of the $531 million funding Joe Biden’s campaign so far came from private funds, according to Open Secrets, a publicly available database that tracks campaign finance data. So did the $476 million funding President Donald Trump’s reelection bid so far.

The one-thousandth of the 1%

The private dollars that fuel U.S. elections come mostly from a tiny fraction of society. Critics of American inequality often talk about “the 1%” — but in campaign finance it is the 0.0001% who matter.

Federal law requires political campaigns, parties, PACs and outside groups to report the identities of donors who give at least $200.

The September campaign finance filings — which cover contributions through the end of August — indicate that just 2.8 million people, or 0.86% of the U.S. population, had contributed $200 or more to this year’s federal elections. Yet collectively, these relatively high spenders had supplied almost 74% of all campaign funds.

That’s almost $5 billion given by a small fraction of Americans. An even smaller number — 44,000 people, or about one-hundredth of 1% of the United States’ 328 million people — have so far given $10,000 or more each to this election, adding up to nearly $2.3 billion. And 2,635 people or couples — less than one-thousandth of the U.S. population — together provided $1.4 billion, roughly one-fifth of total campaign contributions reported as of late summer.

These numbers reflect only publicly reported contributions. The rise of “dark money groups” — which spend to influence election outcomes but do not have to disclose their donors because they claim to be primarily nonelectoral — suggests even more campaign money is provided by a few elite donors.

The donor class

America’s donor class is not representative of the broader community whose interests are at stake in an election.

Donors are older, whiter and wealthier than America as a whole, my analysis shows, and they hail disproportionately from certain places. So far this year, more money has come from Washington, D.C., than from 20 states combined, and Joe Biden raised 10% of his money from just six zip codes – areas in Washington, D.C., New York City, a New York suburb and a suburb of Indianapolis.

Certain industries, like finance, real estate, communications, law, health care, natural resources, oil and gas, are also particularly big election spenders via both personal and PAC donations related to the industries. There is no formal tracking of these donors.

According to media reports and websites like Open Secrets, recent years have seen a striking increase in the number and importance of small donors. This year, small donors account for about 22% of campaign fundraising, up from 14% in 2016.

That’s a step in a more democratic direction. But big donors are still pivotal to America’s campaign finance system.

Impact on democracy

Whoever wins in 2020 will be tasked with addressing the pandemic’s devastating economic and public health harms. A host of other enormously consequential issues — from racial justice and immigration to trade, the environment and the courts — also hinge on the election outcome.

Having a small number of very wealthy individuals financing political candidates distorts the political process. This is less a classical quid pro quo — the exchange of campaign dollars for votes — than it is politicians’ reluctance to take positions that are at odds with the interests of their large donors. What gets on — or stays off — the legislative agenda can be driven by donor concerns.

Donor influence tends to be more significant for issues that get little media attention — who gets a specific tax break, for example, or qualifies for coronavirus relief — than for hot-button concerns like reproductive rights. But campaign money inevitably shapes government action and who benefits from it, who is harmed and who is ignored.

As the Supreme Court explained in sustaining the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act’s ban on “soft money” — donations that can affect an election without being expressly focused on the election — “The evidence connects soft money to manipulations of the legislative calendar, leading to Congress’s failure to enact, among other things, generic drug legislation, tort reform and tobacco legislation.”

In 2018, then-federal budget director and former congressman Mick Mulvaney admitted as much with disarming candor: “We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

As the saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Richard Briffault, Joseph P. Chamberlain Professor of Legislation, Columbia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Progressives warn against applauding Twitter ban of “garbage” NY Post story about Hunter Biden

Press freedom advocates and progressive journalists continued to sound the alarm Thursday following moves by both Twitter and Facebook to ban or restrict sharing of controversial New York Post reporting published earlier this week that claimed to uncover new details about the past work of Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, based on emails and documents supposedly found by a computer repairman on an abandoned laptop and then given to Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.

As the Guardian reports:

In an unprecedented step against a major news publication, Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report. Users attempting to share the story were shown a notice saying: “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Users clicking or retweeting a link already posted to Twitter are shown a warning the “link may be unsafe.”

Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Intercept, was among those critics Wednesday who said that while the reporting may itself have little or no merit, the decision by Twitter to block users’ ability to share the Post‘s article—and to shut down the right-wing newspaper’s main Twitter account—was a counterproductive and troubling move with long-term implications that should not be overlooked.

“This whole thing is an absolute gift to the right wing. It was a garbage story that wasn’t going anyway, just showed Hunter doing the corruption we know about,” Grim argued in a tweet. “Now the right will use this censorship to further delegitimize the election.”

Right on cue late Thurdsay morning, Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas were among those charging that Twitter and Facebook, by their actions against the Post‘s story, were guilty of rigging the election in favor of the Democrats.

Grim’s colleague at The Intercept, co-founder Glenn Greenwald, also let loose with his criticisms in a series of tweets Wednesday and again Thursday morning. For his part, in addition to other implications, Greenwald warned that all kinds of crucial reporting based on “unauthorized materials” would be in future jeopardy if such a policy by powerful media platforms was to remain unchallenged.

As one user said in response to Grim’s tweet, the policy is not likely to maintain its aim only at reported pieces by right-wing outfits like the NY Post. “Today it was New York Post,” the user said, “tomorrow it’ll be Jacobin.”

Greenwald also condemned self-identified liberals who were applauding Twitter’s moves seemingly based on the sole fact that the actions were taken against a right-wing paper that published a story potentially damaging to Democrats. Such applause, he warned, misses the bigger implications of powerful tech corporations in the era of social media having such outsized impact on the public’s ability to access information.

“Amazing how liberals are now full-on free market libertarians—let large corporations do whatever they want!—and have no understanding of or interest in monopoly power,” Greenwald said.

While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Wednesday came forth to say that the company’s handling of the story was “unacceptable,” the fault he articulated was not the blocking of content itself but that the “communications around our actions… was not great.”

Weighing in on the debate Thursday morning, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who serves the district representing Silicon Valley, said he believed critics like Grim and Greenwald are making valid points but added that he still has questions about where the line should be drawn by platforms like Twitter or Facebook on so-called illegally obtained materials.

In direct response to Khanna’s posted concerns and questions, Greenwald wrote: “That one can imagine a case where Facebook or Twitter validly block content—publication of the address or nude photos of a private citizen taken without consent—doesn’t justify the broad rule Twitter invoked or repression of this story about the Bidens.”

Meanwhile, Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, argued that the problem with Twitter’s actions has nothing to do with how the company has communicated its reasoning. Similar to Greenwald, Timm warned such a policy—taken to its logical conclusion—would have woeful impacts on free speech and investigative journalism efforts like the Panama Papers project in 2016 which used internal documents—leaked or hacked or otherwise obtained—that exposed a global network of offshore banking operations and money laundering.

“No one really knows for sure, but there was a lot of speculation that the Panama Papers were hacked and then given to journalists,” tweeted Timm. “Should Twitter wipe out all those old links too?”

Timm lamented that Twitter’s decision will only serve to increase interest in the story—a dynamic that could be considered a backfire, especially if the nature or content of the reporting is, in fact, dubious.

“Now everyone will be talking about the NY Post story for a week instead of a day,” Timm tweeted Wednesday night.

Fox News’ “Election Integrity Project” is a ploy to boost Trump’s conspiracy theories, insider says

According to The Daily Beast, insiders at Fox News are warning that a new project by the network’s “straight news” reporting room is a ploy to lend credence to President Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about election fraud.

“In recent weeks, Fox News’ Brain Room — the channel’s longtime research resource for its dwindling population of fact-based journalists, which suffered disproportionately in the latest round of layoffs — launched a behind-the-scenes operation that current and former staffers say is designed to reinforce and amplify Trump’s erroneous accusations,” reported Lloyd Grove, Diana Falzone, and Justin Baragona. “‘Starting this Monday, October 5th, the Brainroom Research Team will launch the Election Integrity Project,’ Fox News Vice President and Managing Editor Tom Lowell wrote in a Sept. 30 memo. ‘Included will be a one-stop document broken up by state that showcases different stories where election integrity is potentially compromised.'”

Sources within Fox News warn that this is motivated to lend Trump’s attacks on the election legitimacy.

“Officially, it looks like an attempt to report on election irregularities,” said a source familiar with the Election Integrity Project. “What it feels like is an attempt to push more baseless conspiracy theories and scare the viewers into thinking the election is being ‘stolen.’ It isn’t. It’s alarming that the Brain Room is a part of this, like it’s an attempt to give it an air of legitimacy. I don’t recall ever seeing anything like this before.”

Trump has repeatedly and baselessly claimed that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, will be stolen or duplicated in large numbers, and will corrupt the election. He has also increasingly attacked Fox News itself, accusing the right-leaning network of disloyalty to him.

“A West Wing Special” review: HBO Max reunion plays handsomely to a hidden audience

Most nights, once the emails have been answered and the television has been reviewed, I pick up a pen and start writing postcards. Sometimes the messages are in support of Supreme Court Justices in Ohio, sometimes they’re for congressional candidates in South Carolina. The addresses pour in from a nonprofit trying to help get out the vote, and the postcards stack up on the bar cart next to my door. As the ink runs low and my hand starts to ache — it turns out typing all day and writing all night is not the path to healthy wrists — I often wonder: Is this helping? Like so many citizens desperate for change this November, I want to do something to help facilitate change, and I need to do something to ease my mounting anxiety.

Read more from IndieWire: “Peter Pan,” “Aristocats” among Disney+ titles getting new disclaimer for “negative depictions” of race

I only bring this up because I sensed a similar yearning throughout “A West Wing Special,” the HBO Max reunion of Aaron Sorkin‘s early aughts NBC drama. There’s an overt desire to make a difference, and not only because the staged recreation of “Hartsfield’s Landing” (Season 3, Episode 14) is put on as a benefit for When We All Vote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing participation in elections; nor is it just that the hourlong special replaces its 17 minutes of commercials with direct-to-camera addresses from the likes of former president Bill Clinton and former first lady Michelle Obama. It’s not even that Bradley Whitford explicitly states their goal at the top of the episode: to turn at least one non-voter into a voter.

It’s “The West Wing” itself that’s striving to feel vital again, in an age when its fantasy version of D.C. politics is dead and gone.

As a reimagining of a strong television episode, the new version of “Hartsfield’s Landing” plays out beautifully. The cast slips back into their roles like aging rock stars breathing new life into old hits. Sure, the Josh (Bradley Whitford) and Donna (Janel Maloney) dynamic feels a bit more inappropriate, but the episode is all work, zero flirting. Emily Procter (who played Ainsley Hayes) reading stage directions is an odd choice, though she did play a Republican and this is supposed to be a nonpartisan benefit.

And Sterling K. Brown stepping in as Leo McGarry (originally played by the late John Spencer) was always going to be a noticeable departure; Spencer’s lined face and sagacious wit expressed the history inherit to the President’s Chief of Staff and longtime friend, and he was nearly 10 years older than Brown when he first took on the role. But Leo isn’t a huge part of “Hartsfield’s Landing” and Brown conveys the necessary authority without inflating the part beyond its relevance to this episode. (Plus, the behind-the-scenes footage of him dancing with Martin Sheen is priceless.)

Read more from IndieWire: “Honest Thief” review: Liam Neeson’s action stardom finds its limits in bland action-thriller

Even with greats like Allison Janney playing pranks and Martin Sheen whipping off his tortoiseshell glasses (fresh frames for his signature move), the star of “A West Wing Special” is its director, Thomas Schlamme. The Emmy-winning legend who helped make the original series a TV touchstone embraces a new, if similar, challenge here: recreate his signature walk-and-talk energy without the space to walk very far. Sorkin’s language was always theater-ready; lots of dialogue, lots of speeches, lots of exposition. But just like “The West Wing” couldn’t feel like a dueling lecture series, “A West Wing Special” couldn’t feel like a staged reading. (Originally, this was going to be a table read, but, likely when HBO Max got involved, they decided to make it something “more.”)

Schlamme, yet again, rises to the challenge. Not only does he come up with visually engaging ways to introduce scenes — like Donna’s shadow cast over the outside gates — but he’s so smart how he fills the frame. Looming columns and interior sections of the White House linger in the background of certain shots to remind viewers where they are, but that doesn’t restrict Schlamme from incorporating the L.A. Orpheum’s empty theater seats into other framings, or even from pulling all the way back to show the house lights above two actors playing chess. He’ll even use carefully placed coffee mugs or popcorn bowls to accentuate movement, and it all adds up to a masterclass on maximizing a minimal space; directors doing the opposite — adapting stage plays for the screen, rather than TV shows for the stage — should look to this special for tips.

Read more from IndieWire: Seth Rogen, J.J. Abrams, and over 100 Hollywood stars protest NBC’s Trump town hall

Once the handsome production wraps, though, comes the question of what it’s accomplished. Over the years since the drama left NBC, “The West Wing” has remained a prolific force in how progressives view politics, thanks in no small part to its accessibility on Netflix. New viewers embrace its charming patter and aspirational messaging, while veteran fans find its unique combination of comfort and prestige TV extremely re-watchable.

But, as Samuel L. Jackson plainly states in his part of the special, “Our politics today are a far cry from the romantic vision in ‘The West Wing.'” Anyone using the series as a benchmark for how D.C. operates now is living in a dreamworld, and the special seems to be winking at the audience in between takes, acknowledging the more recent criticism against its fantasy-like version of American politics — before plowing ahead with the fantasy anyway.

Whitford, with his humbling speech about what little use actors are in fighting for the vote, says as much in the intro. (Q: “What can we, the People’s Choice Award nominated cast of ‘The West Wing’ do to help?” A: “Nothing. […] So why don’t you go put on one of your little shows where everything works out in the end?”). Then Jackson speaks directly to the show’s “fantasy” label halfway through. “An unattainable TV fantasy?” he asks. “Why? Vote.”

So, will they? Will viewers finish the special, spread the good word, and go exercise their civic responsibilities? Or will they click over to Netflix and watch more of “The West Wing”? Will they remember what they’ve seen in a day, a week, or a month?

I’d argue yes, toward all of the above, but whether “A West Wing Special” actually converts any non-voters to register, vote, or otherwise participate in the upcoming election is a question we’ll never be able to answer. Many watching have to be well-aware of the election and their role in it, and it seems more likely this special — only available to those able and willing to pay $15 a month for HBO Max — is preaching to the choir. (That “A West Wing Special” hits a premium streaming service on the same day its original network is giving free advertising to Donald Trump, again, is by far the most frustrating thing about this special. Even Republican Robert Ritchie, Bartlet’s Season 3 presidential opponent from Florida, would recognize that the “West Wing” special has more inherent value to voters than anything that walking superspreader will spew out.)

Still, the reunion’s determination to put its prolonged hold on people to good use is an admirable twist on the series’ continuing legacy. As Jackson implies at the end of his speech, the TV fantasy can be aspirational, so long as no one confuses it for reality. The people who complain about real-life candidates and wish they could vote for Bartlet instead have to be able to identify who Bartlet would vote for himself (you know, if he was real). “A West Wing Special” readily admits as much and urges people to see beyond the fantasy; to listen to a real president, a real first lady, and real people who are willing to inspire and inform.

Donations, text banking, volunteering, social media posts, postcards: Sending anything out into the void with a purpose requires a bit of hope; a bit of trust; a bit of fantasy. Do I think someone is picking my postcard out of their mailbox and thinking, “Huh, I guess I will vote this year”? Probably not. But I have to try. We all do — even “The West Wing.”

Grade: B

“A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote” is streaming now via HBO Max.

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“Star Trek: Discovery” Season 3 boldly goes where canon never dared to imagine life after disaster

Everything falls apart eventually – our bodies, our countries, governments and the systems we create, also empires, vessels, land masses. This is a fascinating concept to witness from the perspectives of history and distance. Living through such transitions, however, can be terrifying.

The third season of "Star Trek: Discovery" gives specialist Michael Burham (Sonequa Martin-Green) a bit of both. In leaping her and the rest of the USS Discovery crew more than 900 years into the future to the 32nd century, she represents history to everyone she encounters.

What's also waiting there is a version of a universe beyond their imagining: one in which Starfleet and the entire United Federation of Planets has ceased to exist. Starfleet was all but wiped out in a flash, gone in a catastrophic event known as The Burn that occurred a little over a century prior to Burnham's crash landing on an unfamiliar planet.

As a new ally named Book (David Ajala) explains, this is name given to the moment that all dilithium in the galaxy suddenly exploded for unknown reason. Dilithium being the main power source of every warp-capable ship's core, that meant the simultaneous destruction of thousands of starships and the loss of potentially millions of lives not only in the Federation but any civilization dependent on it.  

All Federation protection for the planets in the Alpha Quadrant has presumably disappeared, along with its insistence that civilizations respect one another or, barring that, learn to live without conflict. It's a lawless, Darwinian free-for-all, more or less – and Burnham and all of her previously state-of-the-art technology are viewed as obsolete.

Every iteration of "Star Trek" is a reflection of the era in which it is telecast, with elements of its storytelling updated to suit the era-specific sensibilities of its audience. Specific rules and principles carry over from series to series and generation to generation to maintain some standard framework around which fans can engage with what they love about the franchise and what it stands for.

This makes the new season's departure from everything fans take for granted about "Star Trek" a refreshing challenge and one that has the potential to change how we view the Trek universe in general. Fans can argue and gripe over the merits and legitimacy of events in the Prime and Kelvin universes, but removing the Federation from the equation entirely from a future more distant than the show has ever progressed before is inspired.

People imagine our future is based on everything we know in the present, and that includes the assumption that the rules holding together the fabric of our existence may be tested but will usually hold or can be repaired in the event of their breakage.

But if everything we take to be true disappears overnight, this throws the course of our existence into question. In a real sense the world experienced this in 2016 when America elected a despot, and a vast portion of the public soothed itself by reminding their freaked out friends that the Constitution's system of checks and balances would assure he wouldn't do too much damage to the nation and the world.

Little wonder, then, that this new season flips over the table on our assumption that Gene Roddenberry's bright, powerful and fair Federation would survive and flourish beyond a thousand years, a similar assumption to one we're guessing that a devoted citizen of the Roman Empire might have held.

Book characterizes The Burn as the event that irreparably altered galaxy's course, "the day the galaxy took a hard left," he said. In the season premiere, "That Hope Is You, Part 1," we see the immediate effects of that course shift. Book is essentially an outlaw, surviving as best he can and seeking what remaining dilithium he can get to power his equipment, as is everyone else in the universe.

Starfleet's presence is nonexistent, and Book advises Burnham to hide any identifying items for her own safety. However, before we see where Burnham lands, we see a man whose only job appears to be waking up and scanning a digital view of the galaxy for any signs of the Federation's return.

Which is to say, hope remains . . . only now it is in form of pure aspiration, befitting of a group of travelers accustomed to being acknowledged as agents of authority entering a frontier where they are the curiosity and the strangers.

The cinematic modernity of "Star Trek: Discovery" has earned criticism from purists who miss the more cerebral focus of previous series and decry its emphasis on action, explosions and grim themes. This interpretation isn't entirely out of bounds; "Discovery" is part of a franchise that debuted in an era of franchise-dominated blockbuster entertainment.

Importantly it is also a "Trek" chapter that premiered in an era of hopelessness. The first two seasons feel like a reaction to that more than a response, with storylines designed to earn its place in the "Star Trek" universe as opposed to expressly forging its own path. 

Granted, Season 1 does some of that, primarily by introducing a technological innovation in the form of the Discovery's "spore drive," an organic-based system that enables the ship to leap great distances through space almost instantaneously. But it was mainly given to us as a character-driven work about action and reaction, testing what an explorer's role should be in a time of conflict. Season 2 left some of that behind and felt lighter for it while still operating like a franchise film.

And I can't say that the third season diverges from that approach. If anything, the series settles into the chaos of the 32nd century after the second episode, when we see what happened to Discovery and its crew and witness Burnham adapt to the survivalist spirit of this new age. (The ship followed Burnham through a wormhole that propelled them forward in time but didn't land in precisely the same place as she does, physically or chronologically.)

Once everyone is up to speed in terms of The Burn and the disappearance of Starfleet, the season hints at the familiar direction of finding out not only what caused this history-altering disaster but whether and if they can return to their own time.

This development also transforms "Discovery" into something of an environmentalist tale. Never mind the fact that the ship discovers a method of travel that essentially runs on fungi; the dilithium crisis might as well be a parable for how much instability we're experiencing by gobbling up resources and taxing the planet's natural systems into obsolescence.

But while the Discovery crew moves down their uncertain path, the spiritual refrain of the season reminds Burnham, the crew and the viewer what the AWOL organization they represent stands for, and asks whether the dissolution of a body is enough of a reason to abandon its ideals.

The late Gene Roddenberry constructed "Star Trek" around an ideal of unity, curiosity and adventure, with the notion that humanity and its allies could bring a message of hope and understating to hostile places even as it specifically sought to refrain from interfering (while, in truth, frequently doing exactly that). The new "Trek" series – "Discovery" and "Star Trek: Picard" use their storylines to speak to a world caught up in nationalism, exclusion, xenophobia and division.

"Picard," which is set long after the events of "Star Trek" and James T. Kirk's adventures on the Enterprise, introduces a Federation that has been corrupted by politics and lost its way. "Discovery" pre-dates the original "Star Trek" in the franchise timeline, meaning its mistakes and lessons inform Kirk's knowledge of history. These captains and crews have a map, in other words.

 The 32nd century takes us beyond those old edges – past official channels of diplomacy and agreed-upon rules of governance into a future that is very much imperfect. But it does so with the awareness that despite knowing, as Burnham says, that "our numbers are few, our spirit is undiminished." Following the dissolution of a system or an organization, the higher ideals that forged them can remain.

Yet to be seen is whether these new "Discovery" episodes will show viewers a way to evolve towards them.

"Star Trek: Discovery" Season 3 begins streaming Thursday, Oct. 15 on CBS All Access.

“A crime in plain sight”: Lindsey Graham solicits campaign donations in the halls of the Senate

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who finds himself locked in a dead heat with his Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, was accused of illegally soliciting campaign donations in remarks to reporters after Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

“I think people in South Carolina are excited about Judge Barrett,” Graham, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said. “I don’t know how much it affected fundraising today, but if you want to help me close the gap . . . Lindsey Graham dot com — a little bit goes a long way.”

After congratulating his opponent on a record-setting $58 million raised last quarter, Graham added: “I never felt better about my campaign than I do right now.”

Senate ethics rules bar lawmakers from soliciting campaign donations on federal property, and federal statutes make doing so a crime. From18 U.S. Code § 607:

It shall be unlawful for an individual who is an officer or employee of the Federal Government, including the President, Vice President, and Members of Congress, to solicit or receive a donation of money or other thing of value in connection with a Federal, State, or local election, while in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an officer or employee of the United States, from any person.

Violators, the law says, “shall be fined not more than $5,000, imprisoned not more than three years or both.”

The Senate Ethics Office, citing that law, says that “Senate Members and staff may not receive or solicit campaign contributions in any federal building.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., a former deputy district attorney, posted a tweet accusing Graham of committing a crime.

“This is a crime @LindseyGrahamSC committed a crime in plain sight,” Swalwell wrote.

Graham, whose $28 million haul last quarter was more than doubled by Harrison’s record-setting $58 million, has directly asked supporters for contributions in at least eight separate appearances on Fox News since Sept. 21.

“I’m being killed financially,” Graham said in a Sept. 24 Fox News interview. “This money is because they hate my guts.”

Graham, who polls show running neck-and-neck with Harrison, came up just short of another solicitation while addressing Barrett during Monday’s confirmation hearing.

“I don’t know what’s going on out there, but I can tell you there’s a lot of money being raised in this campaign,” he said, looking around the room. “I’d like to know where the hell some of it’s coming from.”

“But that’s not your problem,” he added.

“After 25 years in Washington, Sen. Graham should know better than to spend his time campaigning in the halls of Congress,” Lauren Brown, communications director for the South Carolina Democratic Party, said in a statement provided to Salon. “This profile in desperate and unethical behavior is unbecoming of a U.S. senator — and it is yet another demonstration of why Sen. Graham’s time in Congress is coming to an end.”

Graham expressed concerns about the GOP’s national chances to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., during Thursday’s hearing.

“Y’all have a good chance of winning the White House,” he said.

“Thank you for acknowledging that,” Klobuchar responded.

“Yeah,” Graham said. “I think it’s true.”

 

GOP Sen. Ben Sasse admitted that Trump “ignored” the coronavirus and “flirted” with white supremacy

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., ripped into President Donald Trump on a wide range of issues, telling a group of constituents in a private call earlier this year that the president “sells out our allies,” “kisses dictators’ butts,” “mocks evangelicals” behind their backs and mistreats women.

In the call — a recording of which was released Thursday by the right-leaning Washington Examiner — Sasse also said Trump had “flirted with white supremacists” and “ignored” the coronavirus as his family “treated the presidency like a business opportunity.”

While it was unclear when the call took place, Sasses’s critique of Trump’s pandemic response indicated it likely happened several months into this year.

Sasse — at times among the more vocal of Trump’s Republican critics — is up for re-election in November, but he does not face a serious challenge in deep-red Nebraska. His name has been floated as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, and the thrust of his criticism on the call was aimed at regaining the reins of the GOP before Trump costs Republicans the Senate.

The broadside, which lasted 10 minutes, was triggered when a woman asked the senator to explain his rocky relationship with the president.

“Why do you have to criticize him so much?” she asked.

Sasse began with areas of agreement, one of which was judicial nominations. But he quickly shifted to assail Trump’s politics and values as “deficient not just for a Republican but for an American.”

“The way he kisses dictators’ butts,” Sasse said. “I mean, the way he ignores the Uighurs, our literal concentration camps in Xinjiang. Right now, he hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong-Kongers.”

“The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership,” he added. “The way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor. The ways I criticize President Obama for that kind of spending, I’ve criticized President Trump for, as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with white supremacists.”

Sasse moved on to the coronavirus, which he said Trump had refused to take seriously “for months,” The president treated the situation like “a news cycle by news cycle PR crisis,” he added.

Pointing to what he saw as overly critical media outlets, the senator cut Trump a partial break. But he added that “the reality” was that the president had “careened from curb to curb.”

“First, he ignored COVID, and then he went into full economic shutdown mode. He was the one who said 10 to 14 days of shutdown would fix this, and that was always wrong,” Sasse said. “And so I don’t think the way he’s led through COVID has been reasonable, or responsible or right.”

The senator claimed that these grievances were not out of step with conservative Nebraska voters — “even the Trumpier ones.”

“I think people misunderstood the meaning of 2016. Americans don’t want reality TV and stupid political obsessions,” Sasse said. “I’ve spent lots of the last year on a campaign bus, and when you listen to Nebraskans, they don’t really want more rage tweeting as a new form of entertainment.”

“The overwhelming reason that President Trump won in 2016 was simply because Hillary Clinton was literally the most unpopular candidate in the history of polling,” he added.

An unbroken continuation of Trumpian politics, Sasse said, would invite the possibility of “a Republican bloodbath in the Senate,” which was “the one political question that’s most central next month” and all that stood in the way of a “Venezuela-like” future, including “30 or 40 people on the Supreme Court.”

“If young people become permanent Democrats because they’ve just been repulsed by the obsessive nature of our politics, or if women who were willing to still vote with the Republican Party in 2016 decide that they need to turn away from this party permanently in the future, the question won’t be why were you so mean to Trump,” he added.

Sasse spokesman James Wegmann did not try to walk back any of the senator’s comments.

“I don’t know how many more times we can shout this: Even though the Beltway is obsessing exclusively about the presidential race, control of the Senate is 10 times more important,” Wegmann said in a statement to the Examiner. “The fragile Senate seats that will determine whether Democrats nuke the Senate are the races Ben cares about, the races he’s working on and the only races he’s talking about.”

Ahead of Nebraska’s primary, Sasse relaxed his sporadic criticism, in the process earning one of the president’s pro forma Twitter endorsements. After securing the nomination, however, the Nebraska Republican stepped back into the ring, critiquing Trump’s “weak” decision to pull troops out of Germany and blasting his last-minute attempts to deliver coronavirus relief via executive order this August as “unconstitutional slop.”

Trump responded to the latter attack on Twitter.

“RINO Ben Sasse, who needed my support and endorsement in order to get the Republican nomination for Senate from the GREAT State of Nebraska, has, now that he’s got it (Thank you President T), gone rogue, again,” the president wrote. “This foolishness plays right into the hands of the Radical Left Dems!”

In the future, Sasse told his constituents on the call, voters will look back and wonder why Republicans ever thought that “selling a TV-obsessed narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea.”

“It was not a good idea,” he declared. 

A three-way fight between Pelosi, McConnell and Trump is dimming hope for another stimulus check

With less than three weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump faces the increasing likelihood that millions of struggling Americans will languish in needless poverty after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday that he does not plan to bring either the president’s or House Democrats’ stimulus proposals to the Senate floor.

The underlying issue is the proposed size of the stimulus legislation. McConnell, a Republican, is pushing for a $500 billion proposal, claiming that pricier alternatives are too expensive. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, is pushing for a bill that would spend $2.2 trillion in relief, while Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been dispatched to suggest stimulus relief in excess of $1.8 trillion.

The dynamics behind these stimulus negotiations are unusual in at least one key respect: Trump, a Republican, is veering from his party’s traditional support for fiscal austerity and moving closer toward the Democratic proposals for more robust relief measures. The Democratic proposal would include $600 in weekly enhanced unemployment benefits, checks of $1,200 to qualifying adults (or $2,400 for couples) and $500 for their dependents, child care and education assistance, housing assistance, an extension of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, an increase in SNAP benefits and increased funding for the Paycheck Protection Program.

Republicans, by contrast, want to strip relief to all but the barest bones, prompting Democrats to block a $300 billion plan that the GOP proposed last month. While McConnell has subsequently slightly increased the measure to $500 billion, Trump has made it clear that he wants more from Senate Republicans, tweeting earlier this week that they need to “go big or go home!” His underlying political rationale for wanting Republicans to break from their conservative orthodoxy and back more generous legislation was perhaps best summed up in a letter Pelosi sent to her Democratic colleagues on Tuesday.

“A fly on the wall or wherever else it might land in the Oval Office tells me that the President only wants his name on a check to go out before Election Day and for the market to go up,” Pelosi claimed.

This is not to say that McConnell and the Republicans are ideologically motivated. As Bloomberg reported earlier this week, many Senate Republicans believe Trump is going to lose to his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, and want to make sure he will be unable to benefit from a healthy economy:

A GOP strategist who has been consulting with Senate campaigns said Republicans have been carefully laying the groundwork to restrain a Biden administration on federal spending and the budget deficit by talking up concerns about the price tag for another round of virus relief. The thinking, the strategist said, is that it would be very hard politically to agree on spending trillions more now and then in January suddenly embrace fiscal restraint.

Trump himself is not opposed to accusing Democrats of excessive spending, telling Fox Business’ Stuart Varney that Pelosi is “asking for all sorts of goodies. She wants to bail out badly run Democrat states and cities. She wants money for things that you would never, you just couldn’t — just — your pride couldn’t let it happen.” At the same time, it is conventional wisdom at this point that any hope Trump might have of winning the upcoming elections rests on at the very least being able to claim that the American economy is strong.

Instead, now that the stimulus passed earlier this year has worn off, the economy is getting progressively worse. A pair of studies have found that anywhere from 6 million to 8 million Americans have fallen into poverty since May, after the sole federal stimulus check sent to American families had been disbursed. Roughly 898,000 Americans filed initial jobless claims last week, an increase of 53,000 from the previous week and higher than economists had expected. Research indicates that, to the extent that there has been any kind of economic recovery, it has been “K-shaped,” meaning that the wealthy have gotten even richer while ordinary Americans are worse off than before.

“Both sides are gaming the election by calculations about what mix of specifics would, if passed, boost their vote,” Dr. Richard D. Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, told Salon by email. “They may still reach some deal (less likely with each passing day) if they can find a mix that each thinks will advantage it in the election. The delay for months now (and especially since July 31 when the extra $600 for the unemployed was cut to $300-400) has kept the stimulus far below what is needed to offset the current depression.”

He added, “Absent from it most notably is a provision for public jobs for the 26 million now collecting state and federal unemployment benefits: (1) public jobs is what the unemployed want and need, (2) it would cost only a bit more than is now paid out in unemployment benefits, and (3) it would give back to society the product of those public employees. That was done successfully during the 1930s; it is a shameful display than today’s stimulus talks omit public jobs altogether.”

Seinfeld’s bland new book “Is This Anything?” is $35 dollars’ worth of ambivalence and old jokes

On May 14, 1998, I walked onstage in my best clothes, seething. As 76 million people settled in to watch the “Seinfeld” finale, I was required to join my fifth-grade classmates at the spring band concert. The sitcom was going out on top after nine seasons having drawn devoted viewers by creating a contained yet vast universe with hundreds of characters, and each Thursday, their humdrum interactions escalated into comforting ridiculousness. My affection for “Seinfeld” — and its creators — long outlasted the clarinet. 

Since then, I’ve devoured Jerry Seinfeld’s work and “Seinfeld”-adjacent programming (“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Veep,” “Silicon Valley”). Thus I should be the target audience for Seinfeld’s latest book, “Is This Anything?” (Simon & Schuster, Oct. 6), only his second book after “SeinLanguage” (Bantam Books) published way back in 1993. Yet as I read, nothing surprised me. I began itemizing which jokes came from what specials and appearances, just to stay engaged. In the opening pages, Seinfeld acknowledges that this book was largely his agent’s idea; he repurposes enough of his prior bestseller to merit asking whether his ambivalence toward the project ever waned. “Is This Anything?” isn’t just bland; it accentuates the problems with what Seinfeld offers today’s audience, and perhaps who he’s become. 

Released by different publishers in different centuries, Seinfeld’s two books carry contrasting aesthetics, too. The stark, monochromatic cover of “Is This Anything?” would look fresh from an Apple assembly line if not for the title’s implied shrug. Inside, the 470-page book looks like a poetry anthology, with double-spacing, one sentence per line and minimal photos. Meanwhile, “SeinLanguage” was emblazoned with Annie Leibovitz portraits, and that slim volume functioned as a pseudo scavenger hunt, tempting “Seinfeld” viewers to find the observations behind featured storylines (“The problem with the mall garage is that everything looks the same”). 

“Is This Anything?” is sliced into five chronological segments, each housing his favorite bits that originated in the given decade — from “Lobster Tank” to “Parent Ducklings” and “The NY Faux Courtesy Jog.” These chapters are separated by predictable introductory essays, while most of the material in “The Seventies” and “The Eighties” — a full 40% of the book — was previously published in “SeinLanguage.” To those who’ve attended or streamed Seinfeld performances, the layout only exaggerates how long he keeps certain jokes in rotation. 

When promoting the book on “60 Minutes,” Seinfeld said,”What I’m interested in is the craft and technique and approach to doing an art . . . Look[ing] at how these bits are built, you can kind of learn, ‘I see why this word is here.'” But “Is This Anything?” is not overtly instructional. Seinfeld is eyeing his personal legacy, not guiding future comics toward their unique voice. The scribbling, shaping, working out, riffing and polishing happened before the first word was printed. 

If the intended audience is not tomorrow’s stand-ups, then it’s likely yesterday’s Seinfeld fans. Still, all of us — including the folks at Simon & Schuster — live in the present, and “Is This Anything?” arrived on Oct. 6, during the final month of a brutal presidential race. Like Jay Leno during his “Tonight Show” tenures, Seinfeld eschews politics in his act. In his 2017 Netflix special “Jerry Before Seinfeld,” he sidestepped the new reality of Trump’s America: “People say, ‘I think the president might be crazy’ . . . What do you expect? Anybody who thinks they should be president — there’s your test right there.” Then he deconstructed the dueling party mascots. “Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill” never referenced the government. 

No one could expect “Is This Anything?” to change that trajectory, especially considering the success he’s seen while staying the course. When USA Today asked Seinfeld about political humor, he replied, “I’m not good at it. And I don’t like ‘we agree’ applause. As a comedian, I don’t think that’s fun to get.” However, an apolitical stance is also a lucrative business strategy — Seinfeld maintains the broad likability needed to sell out arenas — and, according to Forbes, he was the second-highest earning comedian of 2019 ($41 million), bested only by Kevin Hart ($59 million).  

Now, amid a global pandemic, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter protests and a Supreme Court vacancy, there is so much to say about the historic moment we’re living in — but Seinfeld barely tries. “Is This Anything?” provides a handful of coronavirus mentions among its scant new material (although they are catalogued in “The Teens” chapter, as in 2010-2019); to further reflect the world he now lives in, Seinfeld wisely kept a “SeinLanguage” reference to Bill Cosby from being republished. 

A few holdovers about the police make Seinfeld seem oblivious to the ongoing cycle of racial violence and inherited trauma. A “Seventies” bit called “Cops/Posse” starts, “I think I could enjoy a career in law enforcement. Seems like fun catching people doing stuff.” Seinfeld has good intentions in an “Eighties” entry, “Crooked Head Protect,” where he teases arresting officers who warn a man not to hit his head as he enters a police car — but only after the police “hit him with the nightstick. Get him in a chokehold. Cuff him behind his back.” Post-Eric Garner and George Floyd, the word choice rings callous. The thematic sequence continues with the entries “Crook Life,” “Crook Reputation” and “Chalk Outline Guy.” 

“Is This Anything?” is an evergreen career retrospective that serves as a distraction from the urgency rather than a response to it. If the book had more personality, more candor or more material that hadn’t already been presented in other mediums, a Seinfeld treasury might serve as a joyful escape. Instead, the book invites questions about why he decided to assemble “an impressionistic autobiography told through jokes” instead of a genuine autobiography. 

While younger comedians have turned their gaze inward — bonding with live and social media audiences by disclosing personal f*ck-ups and near misses and dumb luck — Seinfeld, 66, has cultivated an impenetrable public persona. “Is This Anything?” supports a glum realization that’s been nagging at me throughout adulthood: Seinfeld does not want his fans to really know him.

Are temperature checks effective, or just “medical theater”?

Recently, I went to an outdoor beer garden in San Francisco, which, in pre-COVID days, would have a line for ID checks. The bouncer still does that, but they also hold an infrared temperature “gun” to check incoming patrons for a fever. Once the bouncer aimed the white gun at our heads and got a normal reading, we’d be cleared for entry.

But something strange happened. My partner caught a glimpse of his temperature, according to the temperature gun: it was in the mid 80s. “Guess I’m dead,” he mused. But that got us thinking: did this no-touch thermometer actually work? And did it matter if it didn’t?

Thermometer guns are the new gatekeepers for a majority of businesses. You can spot them at the entrance to hospitals, airports, office buildings, manufacturing plants, restaurants, schools, and so on. Yet research into their effectiveness doesn’t make a compelling case for their newfound ubiquity. As the country faces yet another coronavirus wave, it’s worth asking if this mitigation measure is something we should keep doing or a mere waste of resources.

“One of the big challenges to preventing spread in the community is detecting people who are contagious, but don’t realize they’re contagious,” Katelyn Gostic, an epidemiologist at the University of Chicago, told Salon. “Fever screening just can’t detect people who don’t feel sick and people who don’t have fever.”

Indeed, research suggests that the peak of contagiousness for the coronavirus is right around the time when symptoms surface. But those with COVID-19 are also contagious before they start feeling sick. And then what about people who don’t have any symptoms at all, who are asymptomatic but still contagious?

“I think that temperature checks are probably not super effective in the big picture,” Gostic added. “I mean, it’s possible that they might detect someone who’s actually sick with COVID-19 and who’s infectious …. but if the goal is to dramatically decrease the opportunities for transmission overall, temperature checks are not going to be an effective way to detect the majority of people who have COVID-19.”

Then there’s the question of whether or not a fever is as common of a symptom as medical professionals initially believed. Dr. Natalie Lambert, an associate research professor at Indiana University School of Medicine, surveyed the results of nearly 4,000 people who had COVID-19. In a non-peer reviewed paper published in conjunction with Survivors Corps, only 7.66 percent of survey respondents reported having a fever within the first ten days of having COVID-19. Instead, the more common symptoms were fatigue, cough, headache, and difficulty breathing.

“The big picture story behind this study, besides the fact that we need to have quick policy changes, is that we can’t use fever checks anymore and be confident that we’re stopping the spread of COVID-19 because we’re not,” Lambert told Salon. “But the bigger picture story here first is that we attracted participants — most of them who were non-hospitalized — so we’re finding that the research about hospitalized patients shows a vast majority of them did have a fever. But most of our participants were not hospitalized, and most of them did not have a fever during the first 10 days, when they’re contagious.”

Lambert added: “We need to do more research on Covid survivors who are the average person, and the average person is someone who is not hospitalized.”

The Centers for Disease and Control states that a fever is one of the most common symptoms for people who do get sick with COVID-19. However, there’s research, in addition to Lambert’s, that brings into questions the prevalence of fever as a common symptom. In June, a study that concluded fever screens may provide “a false sense of security” after finding that a minority of COVID-19 patients in an Australian hospital were admitted with a fever. However, according to an April 2020 study, 55.5 percent of 374 hospitalized patients had a fever. Interestingly, a separate study published in August showed that for non-hospitalized patients, only 16 percent of 208 confirmed SARS-CoV-2-positive patients reported having a fever.

“Our findings suggest that the demographic and clinical characteristics of non-hospitalized adults with COVID-19 illness differ from hospitalized patients with regard to age, gender, race/ethnicity, and prevalence of underlying medical conditions,” the researchers concluded.

So why is the CDC still recommending temperature checks? Gostic told Salon that temperature screens are often adopted during pandemics, during the H1N1 outbreak, and during the Ebola pandemic, in airports as a mitigation strategy in part because it’s a way for people to feel like they are doing something to contain the virus.

“There’s a pretty solid history of scientific consensus that these temperature screens are not very effective when they’re adopted at airports to contain pandemics,” Gostic said.  “Despite the science we need, we see them adopted, time and time again just because they’re often the only thing I think that people can think to do in response to a virus that we don’t know very much about.”

Amesh Adalja, who’s a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Salon he agrees that that fever checks alone won’t be effective in slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

“I think that temperature checks need to be coupled with a full suite of screening activities because not everybody that has that that is infected or symptomatic is going to exhibit a fever,” Adalja said. “I think it can be one part of that system, but it has to be coupled with asking people ‘Do you have chills, muscle aches and pains, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea sore throat, loss of taste, smell, shortness of breath, cough?’ All of that needs to be asked.”

All the experts I spoke with agreed that there is one mitigation strategy that could get us back to some sense of normalcy and be effective in slowing community spread of the coronavirus: rapid testing.

“What I think would be more effective, although also more expensive, would be rapid antigen tests,” Gostic said. “Detecting the presence of the coronavirus in someone’s saliva is a much more direct indicator of whether that person is contagious than trying to take their temperature.”

Lambert agreed.

“Ideally, what we need in order to be confident that people aren’t spreading COVID-19 is rapid and accurate COVID-19 tests,” Lambert said.

Trump’s town hall is just another ratings ploy, which NBC happily obliges

Never forget that when it comes to the phrase “news business” the word that carries the most weight is “business.”

Speaking of which – and not coincidentally – avid fans of “The Apprentice” in its heyday may recall Donald Trump’s second-favorite catchphrase, after “you’re fired”, was some variation of, “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”  

There’s a lot that’s wrong about that phrase, especially when it comes to actually doing business. People who hew to that philosophy have no problem running roughshod over anyone in their path, be they competition, subordinate or peer. It’s a terrible business strategy, which makes it fitting that a notoriously terrible businessman claims it as a mantra. Another fun fact: the phrase is said to have been originated by a renowned New York City mob accountant known as Otto “Abbadabba” Berman, a guy who was eventually gunned down in a hit ordered by Lucky Luciano.

History aside, that crooked axiom also explains why NBC agreed to host a town hall-style event in Miami starring Trump in response to ABC scheduling a town hall featuring his Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Both are set to take place at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, Oct.15. The response from anyone who still naively believes that NBC’s News division should be in the business of serving public interest was disbelief and outrage that NBC would force viewers to choose between watching one candidate’s event or the other when the network could have chosen another time or an entirely different day.

I get it. I really do. Those people aren’t wrong. This is move is terrible for democracy. 

But please understand the operating paradigm when it comes to the people making these decisions. For years now NBC has been vehemently criticized for constructing the illusion of Trump as a successful businessman via “The Apprentice” when the reality captured in reams of documentation proves he’s anything but. 

By now, NBC doesn’t care if the audience is offended by its decision to counterprogram Trump against ABC, its competition. If the content Trump serves the public is bluster, lies and possibly dangerous incitements to violence, so what? NBC is counting on people tuning in to see if he does that. Higher ratings lead to high advertising rates.

Naturally the mechanics of that game are stacked against the Democratic nominee since NBC’s revival of the Trump show will also air on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC, and one presumes its host, “Today” personality Savannah Guthrie, will do what she can to rein him in. (Based on Chris Wallace’s attempts to wrangle Trump in the first and possibly only presidential debate of this cycle, she has our thoughts and prayers.) Sadomasochists will also have access to on demand streams of the broadcast via Peacock, its new streaming service.

In the meantime on ABC, “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos will be doing his part to manage Biden during its 90-minute telecast. That has to be a far less onerous task.

What about the news? What about journalistic obligation to dispense facts and refrain from the harmful business of “both-sidesing” situations such as this? Again, this conflates journalism with the news business. Regardless of the medium in which they ply their craft, journalists are in the business of serving the public’s interests first as opposed to the bottom line of the corporations that own their newsrooms – Comcast’s NBC Universal in the case of NBC, Disney with ABC.

But this year, between the pandemic, widespread civil unrest in the streets and a tumultuous election that this administration is actively undermining, network news has once again become an important part of each network’s business – and ABC’s “World News Tonight” with David Muir has overtaken “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.” In fact, ABC’s evening newscast won the 2019-2020 season in total viewers, adults 25-54 and adults 18-49 for the first time in 24 years. 

In response NBC is opting to continue a poisoned relationship it can’t seem to quit for love or money, but mostly for money. 

This week The Hollywood Reporter published an account that lays out all the ways that the relationship between Trump and NBC was reciprocal for many years; he milked them for extra payouts to his alleged “charity” that has since been discovered to be a fraud, and for a while he gave them a destination series in “The Apprentice” that rivaled CBS’s success with “Survivor,” both of which are produced by Mark Burnett.

And NBC properties bolstered Trump’s political ambitions by promoting him on its series. “Saturday Night Live” invited Trump on to host a few months after he announced his candidacy for president – which is to say, after he publicly declared that that Mexicans were rapists bringing crime and drugs into our country.

On  “The Tonight Show” Jimmy Fallon played with whatever it is that’s resting on top of Trump’s skull. These are two examples of many appearances that were part of the estimated $5 billion in free media the current president received when he was a candidate in 2016. And Trump knows this. On Thursday morning he told a crowd gathered at a North Carolina rally that despite his opinion that NBC is “the worst,” “I figured, what the hell, we get a free hour on television.” He also mocked Guthrie because, why not.

Thursday night’s NBC-ABC face-off is the result of Trump refusing to take part in a “virtual” second event organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates following his hospitalization for COVID-19.

With the state of Trump’s contagiousness as questionable as his relationship with the truth, the Commission scrapped the second in-person debate scheduled for this week despite Trump’s insistence that he was well enough to appear.  Hence Biden’s decision to move forward with an ABC-hosted town hall.

Now, one might argue that NBC is simply doing its part to follow some version of the FCC’s “equal time” rule, except one wouldn’t be considering that NBC isn’t in doing this to inform and assist the public or to assist ABC in said aim. Remember, in this business ABC and NBC and Trump are in it for the same thing, which is ratings.

Time and again throughout his presidency Trump trumpeted his belief in the importance of ratings above all else. He crowed about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lower ratings debut as the new host of “Celebrity Apprentice” at his first National Prayer Breakfast as president, in 2017.

Later that year he pardoned criminally corrupt former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio before he was to sentenced for his conviction for contempt of court, as Hurricane Harvey threated the coast of Texas, because “in the middle of the hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally.” On Wednesday he bragged to his audience in Des Moines, Iowa that his election victory in 2016 was the highest rated event in television history; it was not. It doesn’t even rank among the top 10 most watched programs of the last decade.  (It tied with the viewership for the combined TV coverage of 2008’s election results for the highest election night ratings in broadcast history.)

Ratings are an estimate of audience size and attention, the air this president wheezes. That’s why you can’t get away from him.

And NBC’s agreement serves Trump in another vital way in that it allows him to circumvent the bad news reflected in poll numbers that show him trailing Biden by a double-digit margin.

Now, if the ratings go his way, Trump will tout Thursday’s cumulative viewership tally compared to whatever audience Biden gets as evidence of how America really feels about him and another data point to cite as proof of a rigged election if he loses.

Maybe that publicity will shift the numeric odds in his favor in spite of the fact that little else has so far. Or Trump, NBC and ABC could very well discover that people are tired of seeing and hearing from this president, or his contender, or really anything election-related until Nov. 3 passes.

Either way, don’t waste your energy or mood by taking umbrage at this. To do so is to take things personally – and this is business. It was never about any of us.

The media could still screw up the election. Here’s what they need to do instead

With the signs growing ever clearer that the American people are in the process of rejecting Donald Trump from the body politic, journalists should seize the moment to pivot to a more honest assessment of the urgent need to stop the extraordinary damage he has done to the country.

Step one is to clearly convey in every report about the campaign, or about Trump, how re-electing him would be incredibly dangerous.

It would be literally dangerous: His willful ineptitude in the face of a pandemic has killed more Americans than died in World War I, and counting.

It would be dangerous to core American freedoms like the freedom of the press; to core democratic principles like the apolitical administration of justice; and to core American values like pluralism.

It would also be re-electing someone who is clearly not rational – whose words simply do not comport to reality, in a way vastly more alarming than any other major political figure in American history.

Every report that even vaguely relates to the campaign should be firmly set in the context that this is not just a normal election between two people with opposing views; it’s a referendum on competence and democracy and unity and sanity.

Every half-decent political journalist in America knows this.

So do most Americans. (Many of them are wondering why the press won’t say so, and are sorely disappointed.)

But clearly not all Americans grasp the severity of the danger. And that’s why news organizations need to drop the moral distancing and the euphemisms and make it crystal clear, while it still makes a difference.

Normalizing the election – treating it like a game, framing the campaign coverage as if there were a rational choice each way – enables the ignorant and weak-willed to cast their votes for Trump.

And yeah, I know they don’t read the New York Times and the Washington Post. But maybe they read their local newspaper, which carries Times and Post wire stories, along with the Associated Press. Maybe they listen to the evening news. Maybe they’ll read a news story posted by a friend.

I’m not suggesting that all of Trump’s support is based on ignorance. Some is legitimate. Aggrieved racist white Christian men who long for a return to supremacy have found a kindred spirit. Authoritarian submissives have found their man – and fully 29 percent of Americans, according to the Voter Study Group, believe that a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress and elections” is a good way to govern a country. Far-right ideologues who care more about the Supreme Court than anything else are understandably pleased with Trump, as are plutocrats who care only about not paying taxes. Some Republicans obviously believe that Republican control is worth it no matter the cost.

But the seemingly endless interviews with Trump fans in the heartland have exposed the reality that, for many ordinary people, support for Trump is based on misinformation and vague social pressure. And those could, potentially, be offset by a mainstream media as aggressive about fighting misinformation as Fox News is in spreading it — and by consistent messaging that re-electing Trump would have profound negative consequences well beyond the normal.

Creating an informed electorate is the most noble goal of the Fourth Estate. The challenge, in these next few weeks, couldn’t be clearer.

But instead of educating the ignorant and properly framing the contest, what we still get far too often is irresponsible, breathless sport-style coverage, as if this were just a big game. We get attempts to find symmetry and a suspenseful contest even where none exists.

That was perhaps best illustrated Thursday morning on NBC’s “Today” show, with news staffers shilling for a Trump town hall event that network brass shamelessly and irresponsibly scheduled against a Biden event on ABC.

Host Savannah Guthrie introduced the segment by saying that “With high stakes and just 19 days to go, our newest poll, just out this morning, shows a race that is tightening.” (The actual poll shows Biden maintaining his double-digit lead.)

Then she turned it over to White House correspondent Hallie Jackson, who said that “Tonight really represents one of the last opportunities that he has to try to make his case and turn the tide.”

The inertia of complacency

The calculations major newsroom executives made after Trump was elected aren’t hard to fathom. Despite the obvious state of emergency, they made a conscious decision to give him the benefit of the doubt and treat him like a normal president. The alternative was to have to explain, every day, how irrational and racist and authoritarian he was, and they didn’t want to do that because he was going to be around for a while and that sounded exhausting, plus they really didn’t want to be called partisan or hysterical.

But now the clock is running down. And it’s not just how close we are to the election. It’s also that Trump has gotten even more erratic and dangerous.

His flame-out in Cleveland and the spectacle of his self-inflicted infection with the coronavirus and ensuing (and continuing) cover-up emboldened many political reporters to take a somewhat less tranquilized tone in their reporting of those events.

(And what happened? Was there an outcry from centrist readers demanding more objectivity? Hardly!)

But meanwhile, Trump has also been ramping up his defiance of legal, precedential and constitutional limits to authoritarianism — challenging the integrity of the election, calling for the indictment of his political opponents — in a way that should be sending reporters into full red-alert mode.

As the legendary newsman Hedrick Smith wrote on his blog on Monday:

We have all become so inured to Donald Trump’s erratic, volcanic, beyond-the-bounds behavior that we may not have absorbed the alarming reality that in the past two weeks, the President of the United States has posed what some would term a “clear and present danger” to our nation’s bedrock institutions,  what could potentially become the most serious danger since the Civil War.

In a powerful news analysis, New York Times senior writer David Sanger wrote on Oct. 10 that Trump’s statements had become “so blatant that one had to look to authoritarian nations to make comparisons.”

But as New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen asked: “If his actions were without precedent should your coverage break with precedent, as well?”

Times executive editor Dean Baquet thinks his newsroom has already made the necessary adjustments. “I think early on we probably tried to attach our traditional rules of coverage, our traditional norms, to Donald Trump—and he defied them,” he told Tom Kludt of Vanity Fair. “The American press covers extensively when the president of the United States briefs and makes comments about issues, but you have to cover it very differently when the president of the United States obfuscates and often misleads people and sometimes lies.”

And I’ll grant him that news analyses – at the Times and elsewhere – have gotten considerably bolder about calling out Trump’s failings.

But that hasn’t translated to the daily news stories that, I suspect, get more readership, especially when picked up in local newspapers.

(Consider, for instance, the stark contrast between this AP analysis by Hope Yen, Calvin Woodward and Ellen Knickmeyer, definitively stating that “Trump demonstrated anew this past week he can’t be relied on to give a straight account of the disease that has afflicted millions, now including him,” with this credulous day-of stenography by Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin and Jonathan Lemire.)

The aversion to “taking sides” in political journalism comes out of a legitimate desire to avoid being partisan. Partisans don’t like facts that don’t support their political positions. Journalists need to acknowledge facts no matter what position they support.

“Taking sides” against Trump, however, isn’t actually partisan. I mean, of course it is, to the extent that the message is anti-Republican, because almost every elected Republican leader has been coopted by Trumpism. But you can also think of it as tough love – an intervention by people who care – for a party that has lost touch with reality.

When it comes to Trump, the aversion to “taking sides” leads to creating false equivalences between two things that are radically unequal – and that’s just bad journalism.

The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial endorsing Biden addressed that lack of equivalence directly:

For decades, Editorial Board endorsements — including presidential endorsements — have followed a time-honored and standard format, carefully laying out the merits and flaws of two candidates, comparing, contrasting, and arguing for the board’s choice of candidate….

But …there is no common ground shared by Trump and Biden. Trump’s lack of respect for the office he holds, his disregard for the country who looks for sound, informed, and unifying leadership, and his contempt for the democratic principles this country was founded on, make such comparisons both futile and absurd. To contrast Trump with a candidate like Biden, who has spent his life in public service, who has gravitas as well as experience in domestic and foreign affairs, and who, frankly, has a healthy relationship with reality, would do a disservice to Biden.

There’s a reason why virtually no newspaper in the country — even those that are highly conservative, and have typically endorsed Republicans — has or will endorse Trump. People who care about news also value the truth, and freedom of the press, and a number of other core values under attack by Trump.

Trump’s former guru, the white nationalist Steve Bannon, famously told Michael Lewis in 2018: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

The way to fight back is to flood the zone with truth.

Giuliani’s latest B.S. Ukraine smear failed. You can thank the Trump impeachment for that

The case of Rudy Giuliani will go down as one of the more perplexing mysteries of our time. Even though the man was a terrible mayor of New York City, he was likely going to be remembered fondly as the guy who actually stepped up and did his job on 9/11. But instead of spending his retirement years sipping martinis and resting on that particular laurel, Giuliani has apparently decided that being a basement-level launderer of Russian disinformation is the best use of his dotage. And all on behalf of Donald Trump, whose guaranteed role in American history will be, at best, as our nation’s greatest embarrassment. 

I’m reminded of the words of wisdom dropped at the the end of every beer commercial: Drink responsibly. 

But Giuliani is failing. Hard. His latest apparent effort to smear former Vice President Joe Biden with false accusations of Ukrainian corruption has imploded, as the narrative has morphed into questions about what kinds of shenanigans Giuliani might be involved with and the legalities thereof rather than anything Biden has done. On the contrary, the story ends up painting Biden in a glowing light, making the current Democratic presidential nominee look incorruptible.

For that, thank the House Democrats for impeaching Trump back in December. If it weren’t for the impeachment trial, there’s a very good chance that Giuliani’s efforts to get the mainstream media to elevate baseless smears against Biden would have worked.

To quickly recap the latest in Giuliani’s impotent machinations: Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist currently indicted on federal money laundering and obstruction charges, tips off the New York Post that the former NYC mayor has had in his possession what they claim are emails from Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Giuliani’s story of how he got these emails is, to put it charitably, implausible. He says they were obtained from a computer supposedly left at a Delaware repair shop which the owner then turned over to him, for some reason. Perhaps a likelier explanation, as New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait suggests, is that the emails may have been sourced from Russian agents that Giuliani knows. 

The emails, which have not been independently verified, purport to show the younger Biden trying to set up a meeting between his father, who was vice president at the time, and executives at a corrupt Ukrainian energy firm, Burisma, where he served on the board of directors. Joe Biden’s schedule shows he did not attend such a meeting, and the campaign says the Post didn’t ask for comment on that allegation. But this is supposed to be evidence that Joe Biden is corrupt. 

There’s every reason to be suspicious of this weak attempt at an October surprise. It’s important to remember that Trump got impeached because he tried to conjure up false evidence for these same bogus accusations by blackmailing the Ukrainian president into announcing a fraudulent “investigation” into Biden.

Moreover, it’s a matter of record that Joe Biden’s only involvement with Burisma was working with international authorities to fire a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor who had failed to investigate Burisma. So even if there was an effort made by Burisma to corrupt Joe Biden, it failed. The emails, even if they’re real, just prove he refused to get involved. 

And so the efforts to pump this up into a big deal are failing. But without impeachment, there’s a very good chance that Giuliani’s gambit would have worked as intended, which is to flood baseless insinuations across the mainstream news media, including the New York Times.

These tactics worked in 2016, when Julian Assange and the Russian intelligence community — working with other Trump associates, many of whom were later convicted of crimes — were able to steer endless media attention toward Hillary Clinton’s emails. Clinton’s emails had nothing of note in them — we did learn she likes “The Good Wife” — but the constant repetition of the words “Clinton” and “emails” by the gullible news media lulled voters into seeing a scandal where none existed. 

Giuliani appears to have been laying similar groundwork to smear Biden, starting in May 2019, when he spoke to the New York Times for a widely-criticized article about Biden and Ukraine. 

We can see how Giuliani and Trump might have seen this playing out. As I wrote yesterday for Salon, these fake scandals Republicans concoct to smear Democrats work by being too complicated for anyone to follow. Instead, there’s a drip-drip-drip of confusing stories filled with buzzwords and noise, all working together to build the illusion of scandal where none exists. The goal is to keep the words “Biden,” “Burisma” and “Ukraine” in the headlines so people start to assume there must be something shady going on, even if there’s nothing there. 

But Trump got outed for his involvement in this conspiracy by a whistleblower who was, rightfully, concerned when he heard Trump blackmailing the Ukranian president into getting involved in the plot, and the impeachment trial followed. Impeachment derailed the scheme by refocusing press attention away from the smears against Biden and towards the real story, which is Trump’s corruption. It was a clarifying moment, one that showed the extent of Trump’s malicious intentions and exposed the workings of the machinery that exists to inject specious right wing narratives into the mainstream press.

Now every journalist knows that trying to make hay out of this latest stunt only makes you look like a stooge of Trump and Russian intelligence, and so they’re staying away. The only outlet that would touch it was the New York Post. Even social media corporations, which have a terrible track record of letting Russian disinformation ops run rampant on their platforms, have gone to great lengths to push back against its spread.

There’s a moral here for Democrats: It’s worth it to fight back hard, even if there’s no immediate payoff.

A lot of folks wonder if impeachment was worth the time and energy because, in the end, the corrupt Republicans who controlled the Senate refused to remove Trump, despite his obvious guilt. But the long-term effects of impeachment have been largely positive for Democrats. Impeachment made it toxic for even the most shameless mainstream journalists to pretend there is any legitimacy to Trump’s lies. It made it so that, in these final weeks before the election, the focus is where it belongs: On Trump’s corruption and failures, not on some made-up nonsense about his opponent. 

There are a lot of difficult fights ahead for Democrats, starting with the fight to keep Amy Coney Barrett off the Supreme Court, but also future ones like the fight to save the economy if Biden is elected and the fight to rebalance the courts after years of Republican court-packing. Some of those fights will be hard, if not impossible, to win. But, as impeachment shows, it’s worth having the fight anyway, because it often pays off in the long run. Just look at the current headlines at the New York Times. 

8 million Americans fall into poverty after Republicans let coronavirus aid expire: study

Millions of people have fallen into poverty since May after aid from the first round of coronavirus relief funding dried up, according to two new studies.

The number of people living below the poverty line has grown by 8 million since May, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University. Another study from the University of Chicago and Notre Dame found that the number of people in poverty has grown by 6 million people in just the last three months.

“These numbers are very concerning,” Bruce Meyer, the author of the Chicago study, told The New York Times, which first reported the analyses. “They tell us people are having a lot more trouble paying their bills, paying their rent, putting food on the table.”

The Cares Act provided Americans hit hard by the pandemic a lifeline. The law provided $600 per week in supplemental federal unemployment benefits, as well as direct payments to most households. But the payments were a one-time deal, and the unemployment boost expired in July.

“The Cares Act was unusually successful, but now it’s gone, and a lot more people are poor,” Zachary Parolin, one of the authors of the Columbia study, told The Times.

House Democrats passed a $3.4 trillion bill in May to extend the unemployment boost and provide another round of stimulus payments, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., refused to even begin negotiating on a second round of relief funding until late July. Democrats have since come down to $2.2 trillion. With Republicans pushing for a $500 billion bill, or less than a quarter of the funding approved by House Democrats, both McConnell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin now admit it is highly unlikely that a comprehensive bill will be passed before the election. Analysts also doubt that President Donald Trump will still have a desire to push for additional funding after the election is over.

The studies differ somewhat on how things have gone recently. The job market has partly recovered, which has reduced the number of people relying on government aid. But while the Columbia study found an improvement in September, the Chicago study found that poverty continued to grow last month. Black and Latinx people and children have been particularly hard-hit.

In May, the Columbia study estimated that the government aid kept more than 18 million people from falling into poverty, but that number fell to about 4 million last month.

Millions of people were also shut out by the Cares Act. About a third of unemployed workers still have not received unemployment checks, according to the Columbia study, because many do not know they are eligible or have run into bureaucratic issues when trying to apply. Undocumented workers were also excluded from the aid, and anyone who lives in a household with at least one undocumented person was barred from getting a stimulus payment.

The study further estimated that about 30% of those eligible for the stimulus payments did not receive them, as many Americans were too poor to automatically qualify and had to submit additional information through a web portal.

Black and Latinx individuals were more than twice as likely as white people to fall into poverty, according to the Chicago study. Many Latinx were disqualified by the rules, while many Black people live in Southern states, where standalone state unemployment benefits are especially low.

“It wasn’t perfect, but hands down it’s the most successful thing we’ve ever done in negating hardship,” H. Luke Shaefer, a poverty researcher at the University of Michigan, told the Times.

“It’s really important that we reinstate some of the lost benefits,” Meyer added.

Some conservatives have argued that the generous unemployment boost was a disincentive to workers to return to their jobs, but study after study has found that not to be the case. Researchers at the Chicago Federal Reserve, the New York Federal Reserve, the University of Massachusetts, Yale and others all found no evidence that the unemployment benefits had an impact on whether workers returned. The studies did find, however, that cutting off the aid would cripple the economic recovery as the number of unemployed workers was still far higher than the number of job openings.

Families have been pushed to the brink without any additional funding in sight. Michigan mother Jenny Santiago told The Times that she now “trims her meals to feed the children” and facing eviction. California mother Kristin Jeffcoat told the outlet that her family had gone without electricity and have run out of propane for cooking and hot showers.

“To feed the children, Ms. Jeffcoat said she sometimes skips meals, especially at the end of the month when the food stamps have run out,” The Times reported. “Her husband sold his tools to buy diapers, and Ms. Jeffcoat tried to sell her eggs to a fertility clinic, but she did not medically qualify.”