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Trump’s coronavirus “cure” video lifts stocks of drug company run by a member of his gold club

After President Donald Trump appeared in a Wednesday video claiming, without evidence, that he had discovered a “cure” for the coronavirus in the form of an antibody cocktail produced by a company run by one of his golf club members, its stock soared.

Trump filmed the five-minute video after he was treated for symptoms of COVID-19 at Walter Reed Medical Center with a mix of Remdesivir, steroids and the antibody cocktail produced by the firm Regeneron.

Despite receiving multiple different treatments, Trump claimed that the cocktail, which he repeatedly and incorrectly called “Regeneron,” made him feel “good immediately.”

“I call that a cure,” Trump said, while complaining that the Food and Drug Administration’s new guidelines would delay the authorization for a coronavirus vaccine until after the election.

Trump claimed that he had an “emergency use authorization all set” for the drug that he wanted “signed now,” even though The New York Times reported that Regeneron did not submit an application for an emergency approval until hours after the president’s video had been published.

Trump claimed in his video that “hundreds of thousands” of doses would be available in hospitals for free. But Regeneron said it only had enough doses for 50,000 patients in its application, according to The Times.

It is unclear how Trump would pay for the drug, which is expected to cost “thousands of dollars.” The company said it would release its initial supply under an emergency use authorization free of charge, The Times reported.

Clinical trials remain ongoing, and Regeneron has yet to release any detailed data to back up its claim that the cocktail lowers virus levels. But it has already received more than $500 million from the federal government to develop the treatment.

The company said it would be able to produce doses for up to 300,000 patients “in the next few months” and could produce about 250,000 doses a month come next year, according to The Times.

Despite Trump’s dubious claims about the treatment, the video sent Regeneron stock rising by 4.7% in premarket trading on Thursday after it had already jumped nearly 10% following reports that Trump had been given its cocktail. Regeneron’s share value has increased by more than 50% this year.

Trump’s endorsement, which many critics have called an “infomercial,” raised ethical concerns. Trump previously owned stock in Regeneron, and he is friendly with billionaire CEO Leonard Schleifer, a member of Trump’s golf club in Westchester, N.Y., who the president calls “Lenny,” according to CNN.

“Len and President Trump are acquaintances from both living in the Westchester area for many years but didn’t have any regular contact until this year, when they’ve discussed matters around COVID on occasion,” Regeneron said in a statement to CNN.

Schleifer met with Trump in May to discuss the treatments being developed by his company. 

Trump was given a single dose of Regeneron under a compassionate use clause. A spokeswoman for the company said fewer than 10 of these had been granted, according to the Associated Press. The company also contacted Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “to make them aware of the compassionate use mechanism, should they need to apply” if he becomes infected.

“Only a small number of these requests have been approved for rare and exceptional circumstances, and that will continue to be the case,” a Regeneron spokesperson told Salon’s Roger Sollenberger earlier this week in an email.

Alison Bateman-House, an ethicist at New York University’s Langone Health, told the outlet that the outreach raised ethical issues.

“That crosses lines of appearing to promote a potentially unapproved product” in violation of FDA rules,” she said.

Dr. Steven Joffe, the medical ethics chief at the Unviersity of Pennsylvania, told the AP that “it’s not clear” if Trump’s case was an “emergency situation.”

“I think there is something wrong with the privileged — the president — getting special treatment that’s not available to the rest of us,” he said. “There’s so much injustice in our health care system, with so many people not even having access to the basics.”

“The View” hosts mock Trump for being too “scared” to debate: “Wheel him in with a straitjacket”

Co-hosts of “The View” couldn’t help but laugh at President Donald Trump for being too afraid to debate former Vice President Joe Biden for a second time. 

“I beat him in the first debate,” Trump told Fox Business. “At the second debate, we have a never Trumper as a host, but that’s okay because I beat him in the second debate also. So, I’m not going to do a virtual debate. I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate. That’s not what debating is all about. Sit behind a computer and do a debate. that’s ridiculous, and then they catch you off whenever they want.”

Host Whoopi Goldberg was confused and had to fact-check that there wasn’t a second debate and she wasn’t sure what Trump was talking about.

“He is scared, Whoopi, he’s scared,” said co-host Joy Behar. “He’s scared to do another one because he lost so badly in the last one, and he knows it. He may not be able to read, but he can count, and the numbers plummeted after that debate because there were people out there who don’t follow the news the way we do constantly, but they were watching that debate, and they saw how crazy he is. Why don’t they just wheel him in with a straitjacket and zap him every time he lies? That would be a debate to watch.”

“I mean, it really would be helpful to him because he is losing nationally across the board in the swing states and just nationally,” said Sunny Hostin. “He’s behind between 10 and 12 points, but I think Joy is right. I think he is scared to debate Joe Biden. Trump lost the first debate. Listen to that phone call. He sounds congested. He sounds sick, and we don’t know what the timeline is because the White House won’t confirm when he last tested negative for COVID, but we all know that he is currently carrying a contagious — a very contagious virus. He has COVID-19, and I don’t think he should get anywhere near Joe Biden, you know, with those contagious droplets that we know very well travel by air. It’s airborne with — by aerosol, and so it just seems to me the reason that he is willing — the fact that he is willing rather, to actually go into a debate hall face to face just shows how he continues to be so reckless with his diagnosis, and I think he also said that rather than debate, Whoopi, he was going to hold a rally? Again, showing how reckless and deranged he is behaving.”

Goldberg noted that the steroids are likely the cause. She suffered from a severe case of pneumonia a few years ago, though she didn’t say whether she was on that same drug. She did explain that the “bravado” is the roid-rage talking. 

You can watch the video below via YouTube: 

Kushner’s COVID-19 “task force” consisted of untrained volunteers using personal email: documentary

A new documentary shining a light on White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner’s handling of the COVID-19 is raising questions about the credibility of his Supply Chain Task Force’s pandemic response over the last several months. 

In the forthcoming documentary titled, “Totally Under Control,” Max Kennedy, Jr., also the 27-year-old grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, reflected on his time as a volunteer working for President Donald Trump’s administration in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“My old boss called me and said he heard Kushner’s task force needed younger volunteers who had general skills and were willing to work seven days a week for no money,” Kennedy said.

Although Kennedy admitted that he was apprehensive about working for the Trump administration, he took the position. When he arrived at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington, D.C., he and others were led to an underground conference room with no windows. TVs blaring news reports from Fox News covered the walls as representatives of FEMA and the military entered to brief the new staff about their positions. 

According to Kennedy, volunteers were told that they needed to acquire “stuff” for the government. He soon learned the “stuff” they were referring to was actually personal protective equipment (PPE). After government officials left, Kennedy and other volunteers slowly began to better understand what was transpiring.

“We thought we’d be auxiliary support for an existing procurement team,” Kennedy said in the documentary. “Instead, we were the team.”

Due to the severe shortage of PPE at the beginning of the pandemic, it was up to Kennedy and the volunteer team to find and purchase what the United States needed. Although the Trump and his officials have often blamed Former President Barack Obama’s administration for the PPE shortage and even the initial lack of COVID tests, the documentary reveals the Strategic National Stockpile’s shortage was due to a number of reasons including approximately 12 million of the N95 masks in the stockpile were expired. 

The shortage put a strain on many different healthcare systems forcing them to resort to having masks imported which, subsequently costed up to 10 times the amount they would have paid American vendors. 

As the pandemic accelerated during the months of March and April, Kennedy and other volunteers, who had little to no experience in the medical field or supply chain management, worked around the clock to procure PPE. From their personal laptops and email addresses, their days consisted of cold calling and emailing to purchase PPE. 

“We started cold emailing people we knew who had business relationships in China, looking for factories online and emailing them from our personal Gmail accounts,” Kennedy said in the film.

Despite their efforts, the procurement process proved to be quite difficult for Kennedy and other volunteers simply because they had no clue how procurement works and, apparently, no one explained the process to them. 

In the documentary, Kennedy explained the process he and other volunteers had developed on their own in an effort to simply get the job done. 

“We would call factories and say, ‘We think the federal government can send you a check in 60 days,’ and they would say, ‘There’s someone with a briefcase of cash, and they’re offering to pay me right now,'” Kennedy said in the film. “And we would run around the FEMA building looking for someone who could tell us what payment terms the government was allowed to offer, and no one ever told us.”

After about a week on the job, Kennedy revealed he and other volunteers were confronted by government officials and given an ultimatum: sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) or leave the premises immediately.

“We all had built our own relationships with manufacturers, and it felt like if we walked away, it would negatively affect our ability to buy this critical, life-saving equipment. And so we all begrudgingly signed the NDA,” he said in the film.

In April, Kennedy opted to quit the task force and broke his NDA by submitting a complaint to Congress regarding Kushner’s task force’s handling of the pandemic.

Democrats likely to retain House majority in November — and possibly expand it: election forecaster

President Donald Trump, during one of his MAGA events in September, predicted that Republicans will retake the U.S. House of Representatives this year. But according to a new analysis by polling expert Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, that possibility is most unlikely. Released on October 7, “FiveThirtyEight’s 2020 House of Representatives Election Forecast” says that Democrats have a 92-97% chance of maintaining their House majority in November — and it is possible that they will even expand it slightly.

FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich explains, “While Democrats are slight favorites to flip the Senate and Joe Biden is a solid-but-not-overwhelming frontrunner for the presidency, Democrats have between a 92 and 97% chance of keeping control of the House.”

Rakich goes on to say that there are “three versions” of FiveThirtyEight’s House model: a “lite version,” a “classic version” and a “deluxe version.” The “lite version,” according to Rakich, “relies primarily on polling” and “gives Democrats a 97 in 100 chance of” keeping their House majority — while the “classic version . . . blends polls with fundamentals like partisanship, incumbency advantages and candidates’ fundraising” and “gives Democrats a 93 in 100 chance” of doing that. And the “deluxe version,” Rakich adds, “incorporates polls, fundamentals and expert ratings from the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball” and “gives Democrats a 93 in 100 chance of” maintaining control of the House.

“All three versions more or less agree, though, that Democrats will essentially stand pat in the House or pick up a few extra seats,” Rakich explains. “That’s an impressive achievement considering the heights they reached in the 2018 midterms, when they scored a 235-199 majority despite a congressional map that favored the GOP.”

Rakich doesn’t use the word “gerrymandering” in his FiveThirtyEight article, but it’s a word that is certainly applicable when it comes to the House. Democrats enjoyed a major blue wave when they retook the House in 2018 and enjoyed a net gain of 40 seats, but many pundits have argued that the blue wave would have been even bigger had the GOP not gerrymandered so many House districts.

Regardless, Trump was most likely engaging in wishful thinking when he predicted that Republicans will have a House majority come January 2021.

According to Rakich, “Now, Democrats must defend 30 seats in districts won by President Trump in 2016, as opposed to only six Republicans who sit in districts that Hillary Clinton carried. Yet Democrats are on offense once again this year: 28 of the 50 House districts that the deluxe version of our model considers most likely to change parties are held by Republicans.”

Trump demanded doctors at Walter Reed medical center sign nondisclosure agreements in 2019: report

An explosive new report from NBC News claims that President Donald Trump demanded that doctors at Walter Reed Memorial Hospital sign nondisclosure agreements as a precondition of treating him.

According to NBC News’ sources, the president made his demands to Walter Reed doctors when he was taken to the hospital for an undisclosed treatment in November 2019.

It appears that many members of the hospital staff, most of whom are active-duty military service members, did sign the agreements.

However, NBC News’ sources say that “at least two doctors at Walter Reed who refused to sign NDAs were subsequently not permitted to have any involvement in the president’s care.”

It is not known at this point whether the president made similar demands for NDAs during his most recent trip to Walter Reed last week when he went in to be treated for the novel coronavirus.

The report raises questions about why Trump was so insistent about doctors signing NDAs given that they are already prohibited from publicly disclosing his medical condition.

“Anyone providing medical services to the president — or any other American — is automatically prohibited by federal law from disclosing the patient’s personal health information without consent,” NBC News writes.

COVID-infected Trump tells Fox Business he won’t take part in virtual debate: “Not acceptable!”

President Donald Trump announced in a video this week that people shouldn’t let the coronavirus “dominate” them and that they shouldn’t be afraid of the virus. But when it came to having a virtual debate, he refused.

According to the president, the virtual format wouldn’t allow him to dominate the discussion. “They cut you off whenever they want,” he said during a Fox Business interview on Thursday.

The president refused to follow the debate rules in the first debate and instead talked over former Vice President Joe Biden so he couldn’t be heard. The Presidential Debate Commission said that if Trump was incapable of complying with the rules, they would cut his microphone in the next debate.

Bailing out of the debate is a huge mistake, according to former Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele. During an MSNBC panel discussion Thursday, Steele explained that this is “typical Trump.”

“You know, it’s a format that doesn’t allow him to do what he likes doing best,” he explained. “They cut him off and he doesn’t want to be cut off. The idea they’re trying to protect Biden, dude, they’re trying to protect themselves from you. You’re infected with COVID-19 and you’re not cured. Stop it. I mean, it’s just one of these things that is so frustrating for the larger public consumption, because it creates this false impression that somehow this man got COVID-19 on Wednesday and was cured of it by Monday, and you know, I’m back to business as usual. When everyone knows that’s not the narrative.”

He went on to explain that the large public events that Trump likes to hold should have precautions, but Trump continues to disregard the safety of his own voters.

“So, this is not going to go well with the American voters right now,” Steele went on. “They are just tired of watching this opportunity to protect themselves, get turned on its head because the president is self-indulgent.”

Host Hallie Jackson explained that no matter what Trump does, his rallies don’t get the kind of viewership that the debates do. Even a low-ratings debate still gets millions of more viewers than a typical Trump super-spreader rally.

“I think it is a mistake for him to do this,” said Steele. “It’s not just about where the polls are right at this moment. It’s also about how you keep your base engaged, how you keep voters looking and listening at your campaign and what you’re doing. So, there is a method to that particular kind of madness, and we like to push off these debates as no one is really watching, they fall off after the second debate, et cetera, but you’re right, Hallie, there may be a falloff after the first debate but it’s still millions of people that you otherwise would not be able to touch.”

He noted that there are still a small selection of voters who are trying to make up their minds and that these debates continue the discussion for them on the issues.

“So, it does matter, having these debates at this particular time, for his campaign,” Steele continued. “Joe Biden is flexible. Can he afford to be flexible, because the numbers are good for him? If you’re Trump, you want to engage and it’s unfortunate that he doesn’t seem to get that part of it because he’s much more self-consumed with how he’s going to be able to control and dominate the conversation and this medium that they’re suggesting, you know, a virtual debate doesn’t allow him to do that. And voters take away from that too, and so suddenly the narrative becomes, ‘well you’re not really interested in talking to us anymore because you can’t show yourself off instead of telling us why you need a second term.'”

You can watch the video below via Twitter:

Mike Pence couldn’t defend the White House’s coronavirus response, so he made up alternative facts

Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly made false claims about the Trump administration’s coronavirus response as he dodged, interrupted and obfuscated through the vice presidential debate on Wednesday.

Though the lone vice presidential debate was far more civil than the mind-melting presidential debate last week, it was not much different in substance. Moderator Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief for USA Today, asked Pence and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris about a range of important issues but completely failed to press the candidates to actually respond to her questions. That allowed Pence to repeatedly dodge questions he did not want to answer about Trump’s health, racial justice and even abortion.

Pence also refused to say what he would do if Trump rejected a peaceful transition of power, instead echoing the president’s false claims about virtually non-existent voter fraud.

The two candidates were divided by plexiglass barriers after President Donald Trump and numerous top aides tested positive for the coronavirus following a possible “super spreader” White House event where Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was formally announced. Pence’s unusually red eyes prompted speculation about whether he had “COVID pink eye,” and he was instantly turned into a meme when a fly sat on his head for a full two minutes during one of the segments.

Harris also dodged questions throughout the night as she was repeatedly interrupted by Pence. CBS News found that Pence interrupted Harris twice as much as she interrupted him. Despite avoiding questions about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s health and whether the ticket supports expanding the Supreme Court, fact-checkers concluded that Harris was far more honest than her Republican opponent, who repeatedly made false and misleading claims about the Trump administration’s coronavirus response. Pence heads the chair of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

Harris called the response to the pandemic the “greatest failure of any presidential administration,” repeatedly pointing out the mounting death toll in the U.S. Pence responded by bizarrely claiming that the Obama-Biden response to the H1N1 swine flu in 2009 was a bigger “failure,” because that virus infected 60 million people.

But the swine flu was far less dangerous than the coronavirus, which has killed more than 211,000 people in the US. By comparison, fewer than 13,000 Americans died from the swine flu. Because it was less deadly, it did not require a lockdown, which allowed the virus to spread wider than the coronavirus has thus far. The regular flu typically infects more than 35 million people each year and kills far more people than swine flu did in 2009.

Pence also falsely claimed that Trump “suspended all travel from China,” which he did not, and that Biden called the executive order restricting some travel from China “xenophobic,” which he did not. And he falsely claimed that Trump did not dismantle an Obama-era National Security Council pandemic preparedness team.

Pence also exaggerated the speed at which a vaccine would become available and made misleading claims about the economic recovery while praising Trump for the $4 trillion in coronavirus relief approved by Congress. One day earlier, Trump announced that he would end negotiations to provide additional relief for Americans despite dire warnings from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Pence also falsely claimed that the apparent White House suprerspreader event was an “outdoor event,” even though some parts took place inside the White House.

Pence later falsely claimed that “President Trump and I have a plan to improve health care and to protect pre-existing conditions for all Americans,” even though the administration has sought to strike down pre-existing condition protections under Obamacare in the courts and has released no details about a potential alternative plan.

Pence claimed that Trump would “continue listen to the science” on climate change, even though the president has called climate change a Chinese hoax and has worked to undo regulations aimed at cutting greenhouse gases. He falsely claimed that the U.S. has reduced CO2 emissions more than the countries in the Paris Accord, even though most European countries have seen declines twice as large. He additionally falsely claimed that Biden wants to “ban fracking,” which Biden and Harris have repeatedly denied.

Pence also echoed Trump’s baseless claims that mail voting would “create massive opportunity for voter fraud.”

Harris made a few false and misleading claims as well, claiming that Biden would repeal Trump’s tax cuts on “day one.” His plan calls for preserving some of the tax cuts and any repeal would require an act of Congress. She also claimed that the manufacturing sector was still in a recession, even though it appears to have ebbed.

With a far calmer demeanor than his running mate, Pence “took a number of flimsy claims out of the Trump playbook, although he often delivered them more deftly,” Washington Post’s fact-checkers noted.

“I think the whopper of the night was Vice President Pence’s claim that they always tell the truth,” CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale said. “I mean, it’s vague, but this was on the subject of the pandemic . . . It’s not a specific policy claim or something, but that, to me, was egregious.”

Harris used her time to push back on Pence’s claims and argue that Biden did not support fracking nor the Green New Deal.

“Harris used the debate to pursue two goals: to reassure voters that she and Mr. Biden are not as liberal as Republicans claim, including by disavowing policies she embraced during the Democratic primaries, and to carry out a persistent set of attacks against the Trump administration,” The New York Times reported.

A poll by CNN found that 59% of voters believed Harris won the debate, while 38% thought Pence was the victor. There was a stark gender divide: About 69% of women said Harris won the debate compared to 48% of men.

During a CNN panel following the debate, political analyst Gloria Borger pointed out that Pence repeatedly interrupted Harris. She kept saying, “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.”

“And then he would sort of plow ahead,” Borger said. “And I think that women watching that . . . are going to say, ‘Wait a minute, he’s —'”

Before Borger could finish her thought, former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum interrupted her.

“Don’t make the claim he interrupted her repeatedly, because he didn’t interrupt her repeatedly,” he said.

“Mr. Santorum,” Borger replied. “I’m speaking.”

Just cancel the remaining debates: Pence and Harris were polite, but utterly useless

Wednesday night’s debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris — the first and only vice presidential debate of this campaign — actually changed my mind about the 2020 election. 

After last week’s disastrous joke of a debate between former vice president Joe Biden and President Trump, I somehow remained onboard with holding the remaining debates as scheduled, if for no other reason than to allow Americans a sense of normalcy and order in what has otherwise been a chaotic and upending year. 

Yeah, no. “Normal” is what landed us here. Trump’s announcement on Thursday morning that he would not participate in next week’s town-hall debate with Biden, after the debate commission announced plans to hold it remotely, may actually be a blessing. (If the president can be counted on not to change his mind, which of course he cannot.)

In the event, both “debates” to this point have been pathetic. No one actually answers questions, and the moderators have shown no will to actually moderate. More specifically, the matchup between Harris and Pence will be remembered for its historical first — with the first Black woman and first Asian-American on such a debate stage, embodied in the same person — but perhaps even more so because it should never have occurred. 

As PressWatch and Salon columnist Dan Froomkin wrote ahead of Wednesday’s debate, Pence’s “very presence [was] an affront to public health guidance the rest of the country is supposed to be following.” The vice president’s reddened left eye didn’t help buttress CDC Director Robert Redfeld’s absurd claim that Pence couldn’t be considered a “close contact” of President Trump, who confirmed he had tested positive for COVID-19 after his debate with Biden last week, giving Pence the all-clear to appear on the debate stage in Salt Lake City. 

Top brass at the Pentagon are quarantining after at least two high-ranking military officers tested positive for the coronavirus in the past week. More people in Trump’s orbit have tested positive in that time period than in all of Taiwan. Still, second lady Karen Pence insisted on appearing inside the debate hall maskless, and the vice president posed for pictures in definitively close contact with former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker — of course, without a mask. 

Even though debate moderator Susan Page, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, opened on the topic of the coronavirus, the question was pointed first at Harris. When the question of whether the White House was being remotely honest about Trump’s medical condition was posed to Pence, Page allowed him to filibuster and what-about his way out of an answer. Like the trained politician he is, Pence was able to adeptly weave most of his non-answers back to his push to confirm right-wing jurist Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. As a recent poll showed a 15-point margin in favor of confirming Barrett, the hard push seems to be working with voters, perhaps the only real bright spot for Republicans in recent political news.

Of course Pence lied — profusely. As with his boss, the vice president’s penchant for untruths is a given. But Page, a frequent panelist on Fox News’ “Special Report With Bret Baier,” somehow did an even worse job at attempting to hold the candidates to account than Fox News’ Chris Wallace did last week. She brought up foreign policy, only to ignore Afghanistan days after a sobering new report about children of U.S. service members replacing their parents on the battlefield.

Page brought up the possible or likely reversal of Roe v. Wade in a manner that allowed Pence to evade the answer, on the same day it was reported that the specialty drug cocktail Trump received as part of his COVID-19 regimen includes an antibody treatment first tested using cells derived from an abortion procedure, exactly the sort of stem-cell science Pence has attempted to shut down on the federal level. The issue of immigration was ignored and LGBTQ rights were never mentioned — the second time for a vice presidential debate featuring Pence, who as governor of Indiana signed anti-trans legislation into law. 

For her part, Harris evaded the question of whether a potential Biden administration would “pack” the Supreme Court (that is, expand it) — and that provided the most promising moment for progressives of the whole night. 

Even as she was obviously trying to walk a Biden-esque middle road on issues like tax hikes and fracking — Pence correctly observed that she opposed the latter during her own presidential campaign — Harris avoided the trap of unequivocally backing away from expanding the high court in response to Republicans’ likely confirmation of Barrett. That question is a purely political ploy, staged by people who all gave straightforward answers on filling an election-year opening, and then unanimously broke their promises. After all, Republicans still haven’t explained how they plan to provide Americans with health insurance if they succeed in repealing the Affordable Care Act. (How many times, exactly, as Trump promised a “great plan”?) The pseudo-issue of “court-packing” is simply a demand that Democrats give up their leverage. Harris correctly turned the question around to Mitch McConnell’s brutal remaking of the federal courts by stuffing them with underqualified right-wing white men. 

Otherwise this debate was worse than useless. 

Harris was supposed to prosecute the case against Trump, but couldn’t get a straight answer out of Pence. It was noteworthy that Pence was the only one who brought up impeachment.

The pair of running mates agreed on too much for my comfort, perhaps fueled by Pence’s unctuous politeness. It reminded me how inhibited by their donors Democrats remain. Too often, Harris sold an upcoming Biden administration as Republican-lite. 

On tax hikes, Harris reminded us that the Biden plan raises the rate to $400,000 from $250,000 under Obama. On fracking, Harris, who formerly supported the Green New Deal legislation authored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., was left to brag about the inadequacies of Biden’s climate plan. While this is a function of Electoral College politics, the notion that you have to defend the environmentally devastating process of fracking to win Pennsylvania isn’t backed by the most recent polling, or even by the general trend line. An August CBS/YouGov poll of Pennsylvanians found that a majority of voters now opposes fracking, and more recent polls in the Keystone State appear to show that opposition is growing.

If Trump’s intransigence means the remaining debates are scrubbed, that will stand as one of his few positive accomplishments. At least that means no more people will be infected by the reckless president and his entourage. 

With his signature guitar style, Eddie Van Halen changed rock music

The legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen has died aged 65. One of the most influential guitarists of the modern age, Van Halen was known for his mastery of the two-handed tapping technique and for bringing the virtuosic rock guitar solo back into the popular music mainstream in the late 70s and 1980s.

One of the great innovators, Van Halen formed a bridge between 1970s rock styles and heavy metal sounds of the 1980s. He delivered his best work with a nonchalance that belied the training and dedication driving him and his band to succeed.

Born in the Netherlands in 1955, Van Halen came from a musical family. His father played saxophone and clarinet professionally and ensured Van Halen and his older brother, Alex, started piano lessons from a young age.

The boys’ training in classical music and theory would influence Van Halen’s guitar playing, particularly the famous two-handed, finger tapping technique, where harmonic ideas derived from the keyboard found new expression on the electric guitar.

Young tour de force

The family immigrated to the US in 1962 and the young Van Halen brothers later discovered rock music, with Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton as early heroes.

In his first Guitar Player magazine interview in 1978, Van Halen mentioned Clapton as a formative influence, having learnt his solos note for note.

In 1972, while still in high school, the brothers formed the band Mammoth, hiring a public address system from David Lee Roth. Van Halen originally sang as well as playing guitar, but he tired of combining duties so Roth (and his PA) joined the band.

This recording, live on the Sunset Strip circa 1976, captures the energy of the band.

Mammoth caught the attention of Kiss’s Gene Simmons, who financed an early demo tape, and then producer Ted Templeman who signed the group to a record deal. Their first album, Van Halen (1978), was recorded quickly, drawing on their live sound and set list.

It was the album’s second track, Eruption, that captured the attention of guitarists.

This tour de force shows Van Halen had already developed his signature style by his early 20s. Opening power chords signal a call to attention while licks based on blues and rock phrases are transformed through sheer speed and intensity. The tone has a power, presence and clarity rarely heard in rock guitar recordings of the time.

The climax of the piece is the famous two-handed tapping section. With a concluding dive bomb – a pitch descent courtesy of subtle manipulation of the whammy bar, Van Halen ushered in a new era in electric guitar playing.

Van Halen demonstrating his two-handed tapping in 2015.

True innovation

The sounds and techniques used in Eruption seemed to be only possible on the electric guitar, exploiting the instrument’s responsiveness and tactile immediacy.

But Van Halen continued to seek new means of musical expression and on Van Halen II (1979), he gave us an example of what was possible when his virtuosic approach was adapted to the acoustic guitar.

Spanish Fly is a great example of his drive to innovate and adapt as a musician.

Van Halen was always modifying his guitars. Early experiments led to him creating his “Frankenstein guitar” in 1974, fusing the neck and humbucker pickup from a Gibson guitar onto a Fender Stratocaster body. He added the stripes that became his signature.

He remained involved in designing new instruments throughout his career, collaborating with makers such as Music Man, Charvel and Fender.

“The brown sound”

Van Halen’s sound was loud and distorted but also clear and focused. Often referred to as the “brown” sound for its feeling of organic warmth, this sound has gone on to inspire generations of guitarists.

The band’s biggest commercial success was the album 1984, where Van Halen turned to keyboards in both writing and recording.

A good example of the ‘brown sound’ can be heard here on Unchained, live at Oakland Coliseum Stadium in 1981.

On the single Jump, keyboard chords ground the song but an improvised, high energy electric guitar solo reminds the listener of Van Halen’s virtuosity as he leads the band into a Bach-inspired, keyboard fantasy.

Jump showed Van Halen’s skills on both keyboard and guitar.

From 1978 to 1998, the band released 11 studio albums, with their 12th and final album, A Different Kind of Truth (2012), appearing 13 years later. But it is the searing lead break on Michael Jackson’s Beat It (1983) that bought Van Halen to global attention.

Jammed into 32 seconds, Van Halen’s solo is a masterpiece of construction, featuring pitch manipulation with the whammy bar, squealing harmonics, rapid-fire two-handed tapping, scurrying scalar licks (or quick scales) and a final ascending tremolo line that soars to the upper reaches of the fretboard and makes you wonder what just happened.

It is one of the most famous rock guitar solos around.

Van Halen’s work on Beat It.

Van Halen was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2000, and declared cancer free in 2002. In 2019, it was first reported he had been battling throat cancer for five years.

In 2015, Rolling Stone named Van Halen as number eight on a list of the world’s greatest guitarists of all time. But as his career shows, his talent wasn’t simply in his musical virtuosity, but in his innovation: creating a brand new sound for rock music, but also in the design of the guitar itself.

Ken Murray, Associate Professor in Guitar, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne

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

Pence vs. Harris: Amid lies and side-eyes, a garbage pile of a debate attracts a fly

Musca domestica, otherwise known as the common housefly, is known to be a mechanical vector of pathogens. That's a fancy way of saying that the bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites flies carry can transmit infections to humans, hence our natural aversion to them.  

Television series and films employ flies to hint at a character's lifelessness, lack of humanity or dedicated evil. Consider that famous shot of Indiana Jones' adversary René Belloq in 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark," condescendingly talking Indy down from a rage with a satin delivery that doesn't break stride even as a fly lands on his lip and appears to crawl into his mouth. Belloq is a disgraced archaeologist who allies himself with the Nazis, the sort of human arachnid one easily envisions consuming human souls. For a man like that inhaling a fly is nothing.

Actor Paul Freeman, who played Belloq, later revealed that he didn't actually eat the insect. The "Raiders" editors removed a frame or two to make it look like he did — a visual trick that happens to underscore his character's rotten nature.

HBO's "Westworld" series premiere opens with a shot of the android host Dolores sitting stock still as a fly crawls across her open eye. She doesn't blink or react in any way and this signals to the viewer that she isn't truly human, merely a facsimile of one.

Furthermore, Dolores allowing the fly to skate across her eyeball indicates that she's programmed to refrain from harming living things. When she mindlessly swats a fly on her neck at the end of that same episode, it's a portent of the terrors in store for humankind. Sure enough, by the second season premiere, Dolores is a killing machine.

During Wednesday night's debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, a fly perched on Vice President Mike Pence's head for more than two minutes, uninterrupted, and the world watched agog. What did that fly want? Why wasn't Pence doing anything about it?

The vice president also appeared to have a rheumy bloodshot eye — not a good look for a man whose boss is recovering from COVID and is believed to be a super-spreader. That injected another layer of dramatic tension into the affair. The Biden/Harris team insisted on plexiglass barriers between the candidates as an infection prevention measure, but the night's unexpected buzzy guest recognizes no such walls or health measures.

For these reasons and the jokes, the fly became a social media star, the evening's debate third contender — and a blessedly silent one at that.

Yet the fly's relaxing break on Pence's snowy dome and the way the world marveled at it roosting there unmolested for such a long time says a lot about what viewers took away from this match-up: not much.

I imagine the audience was relieved to see that Wednesday's debate was an actual debate — what a concept! — although its more important role was to establish the personality contrasts between Pence and his Democratic contender, California Sen. Kamala Harris.

Beyond that, it mainly confirmed that such exercises serve little to no purpose at this point beyond observing traditions that simply don't apply in 2020, especially in the context of an election that is already in progress.

The debate's alleged moderator was USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page, who opened the proceedings by reminding Pence and Harris that while Americans want a lively debate, we prefer civility to last week's episode of Joseph Biden versus a rampaging bonobo.

And a debate we got, albeit not exactly lively and utterly uncivil to Page, who was so ineffectual against Pence's flagrant grandstanding that she made the first presidential debate's moderator Chris Wallace look like a prizefighter. She couldn't get Pence to respect the rules, or either candidate to actually answer the questions she asked. One of Pence's allotted 15-second rebuttals ran 38 seconds after Page tired of saying "thank you, Mr. Vice President" to a man who wouldn't stop droning over her.  Midway through the "Veep" debate I wondered why Page was even bothering to stay in the room. I mean, wasn't she worried about the fly?

Welcome to this year's presidential election debates. In keeping with 2020's wild style, they're all pointless garbage piles; no one can be surprised that this one attracted a flying invader.

Thanks to the first presidential circus sideshow, the substance of the moderator's questions never mattered. Instead this veepstakes was entirely about reading how each candidate operates under pressure. The candidates delivered the answers we'd expect in every case, and that meant no memorable haymakers landed or were even swung. They could say whatever they liked, and Pence took that as license to lie constantly to support Trump's terrible record since he knows his base is already locked in.

Granted, each side could have been sharper. Nominally Pence is the head of the Trump Administration's Coronavirus Task Force, which Harris referenced by repeating the administration's failure to prevent 210,000 Americans from dying in a pandemic that's also infected more than 7 million.

In response, Pence attempted to corner her into giving an answer about packing the Supreme Court and brayed victoriously when she refused to answer. That rang hollow given his rebuttal to that grim pandemic statistic, however, in which he insisted that Trump put the health of Americans first from the start of this mess. Bob Woodward's book and released recordings of his conversations with Trump, not to mention our own upended lives in quarantine, tell a different story.

Given the chance to weigh in on whether justice was served in the case of Breonna Taylor's killing by police officers, Pence pivoted to voice his support for law enforcement and attempted to attack Harris' tenure as California's attorney general, which didn't stick. 

Pence waxed sanctimonious over Page and sometimes over Harris with little stopping him beyond his opponent's will. And that stacked the deck against Harris in ways she struggled to overcome at times in the first half, walking the line between respecting the moderator and mostly remaining within her time limit, while also answering succinctly.

When it became obvious that she had to seize time for herself since Page would not stand in the way of Pence, she did. Unclear in the debate's immediate wake was whether that restraint worked in her favor until we remember, oh yeah — none of this matters.

America already has a solid profile of Pence to draw upon; the religious right loves him and everyone else either sees him as white noise made flesh or the ghost ready to march us into Gilead. 

Harris had a trickier path to navigate. In the way of all women who rise to the highest rungs of the power ladder (see: debate analysis surrounding Hillary Clinton) she had to appear fierce, but not too fierce; tough, but not too tough; and suppress any version of a completely justifiable "ooh, this mendacious bitch" face whenever Pence calmly and brazenly prevaricated. Hence the Daenerys Targaryen-style power smizing, the raised eyebrows and accentuated, "are you kidding me?" side-eye each time Pence misrepresented her record or the Biden/Harris platform.

Harris wielded her affability and her polite but firm refusal to be condescended to by Pence, a man whose debating strength has always been to spew lies and accusations in a warm mild voice wrapped around a "gosh and gee willikers" delivery.  

To that end, Pence's chief accomplishment on Wednesday was to steamroll Page into a thin layer of paste by blowing past the time limits both parties agreed upon over and over again, disregarding her weak flailing to keep him in check.  

Where to begin on the variety of messages Pence's aggression and Page's ineffectuality sent to everyone witnessing the debate? If you're a woman in the workforce, Pence is that male coworker or boss who drives you insane and makes your life hell.  Women of color surely recognized Harris' practiced smile and her constant insistence that Pence not talk over her as evidence of the manure they're obligated to contend with diplomatically if they want to get anywhere in their educational aspirations, careers or lives.

This made the fly an indicator in a debate with no real-time fact-checking. The face-off between Harris and Pence lasted a scant 93 minutes, but for the two minutes that the fly took over the frame it told another version of the story.

Let's refrain from any base jests referring to the substances to which flies are attracted and simply observe the physical implications of the insect's comfortable two-minute rodeo ride in Pence's hair. The fact that it stayed put for so long made Pence look focused and resolute at best and at worst lifeless and — yes, Dolores — inhuman.

If a winged critter relaxes on your skull for a full 123 seconds — enough time really stretch out those segmented legs and get comfortable — that speaks of a soporific lack of animation that does not come across well on television. And if the point of this debate is to reassure viewers that they're up to the task of serving as seconds-in-command to men who will be the oldest to ever hold office, including one current recovering from COVID, you probably don't want to be the guy upon whom an insect featured frequently in memento mori artwork decides to spend an extended amount of time.

Does that mean Pence lost? Who can even say in an era where such determinations hold no actual value. The CNN instant poll assigned Harris the win, but Fox News viewers predisposed to dislike Harris probably viewed her smiles and SMDH expressiveness negatively. Fox commentator Karl Rove opined that Pence looked strong while Harris stumbled.

MSNBC contributor and former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill said Harris showed off a "joyfulness in her spirit" alongside evidence of her being strong and in command.

"What she needed was for the United States of America to be comfortable with Kamala Harris," McCaskill remarked, "and I think she accomplished that tonight."

Also, and this is important, she made it through the debate without being saddled by a housefly.

It's the little winged things that make all the difference.

Would a President Biden respond to this federal housing emergency?

Ashley Canady hoped for a better 2020. The North Carolina tenant leader dreamed of living in a complex “where the roof isn’t leaking,” one staffed to address the crises that troubled her Durham public housing complex.

“I just want to see my community happy, healthy and safe,” she wrote in a letter published by the local paper, the Herald-Sun, in early January.

By the time the letter was published, the community was in a state of emergency. Canady learned on New Year’s Eve that the complex’s faulty stoves, water heaters and furnaces made it unsafe for the 325 families who lived there. They leaked carbon monoxide, and tenants would need to evacuate their homes in a matter of days.

For a moment, the plight of the McDougald Terrace tenants – and the dilapidated state of the nation’s public housing stock – caught the attention of candidates for president. The tenants received visits from Tom Steyer, then still a Democratic presidential candidate, and former Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner, who served as Bernie Sanders’ campaign chair. Canady appeared in an ad endorsing Sanders.

“[The Sanders campaign] seemed to be the only people who were really passionate about the work,” Canady said. “Nina Turner pushed, really encouraged me to keep going.”

At that point in late January, progressive candidates were still advancing ambitious plans to shore up public and affordable housing. Sanders proposed an investment of $2.5 trillion, with $70 billion going to repair public housing and build new units. 

That was before COVID-19 hit, before Joe Biden secured the North Carolina primary and protests against racism and police brutality rocked the nation. But the issues of public health, racism and public investment continue to play out at McDougald Terrace, and Canady sees this election as important to the fate of the housing complex.

“If Trump wins, we might as well move out of ‘the Mac,'” Canady says. If Biden is elected, “I really feel a change will come, but I don’t know,” she said.

Biden’s $640 billion proposal to address the housing crisis is a fraction of the size of Sanders’, but includes far more money, with far more details, than Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign plan, which included no funding commitments and focused largely on supporting home ownership. Unlike the Republican platform, the Democrats include a commitment to increase public housing availability and upgrade existing housing. 

The Biden campaign has not pinpointed how much of its proposed policy would go toward public housing. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a solution to the housing crisis should include funding for existing federal policies, block grants to states and fair access to housing – all proposals that appear in Biden’s plan.

The Republican party readopted the 2016 platform for 2020, and while Trump’s campaign has also announced a list of priorities, none mention housing. They have invoked the Democrats’ support for expanding “low income housing” as a racist dog whistle, warning voters that an Obama-era policy, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, will lead to the construction of “low-income housing” in their communities. 

Ben Carson, the head of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has attempted to eliminate antidiscrimination protections for public housing residents and repeatedly tried to slash funding.  

For the fiscal year 2020, HUD requested that Congress eliminate the Public Housing Capital Fund, which is used by local authorities for maintenance, and a 38 percent cut to operating funds. Congressman David E. Price (D-N.C.), who represents part of Durham and chairs the House committee that oversees HUD, said Trump’s proposed national budget “betrays American values and mortgages our future.” Congress restored many of the proposed cuts, and the Durham Housing Authority even received a slight uptick in federal funding in recent years, with about $35 million received in 2019.

The underfunding of public housing did not start with Carson, however, and has been a bipartisan effort.

“We have starved public institutions for decades,” said Jillian Johnson, Durham’s mayor pro tempore. “We haven’t invested significantly in public housing since the ’80s.”

According to the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, between 2000 and 2018 funding for public housing maintenance fell 35 percent, while operations were only fully funded in three of those years. 

“I think it’s pretty clearly documented – Congress has underfunded public housing,” said Dan Hudgins, chair of the board of the Durham Housing Authority.

*  *  *

Like many policies highlighted during this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, public housing is inextricably linked with the country’s history of racial discrimination. The first public housing in Durham was for white residents, and a couple years later in 1954, McDougald Terrace was built as the “local Negro project.” Now Durham’s public housing overall is 94 percent Black, more than twice the national rate. 

“I feel personally, if it was a bunch of white people living out here, they’d make sure that this was up to code,” Canady said. “And pretty much they don’t care because this is already labeled a bad community, when it’s really not.”

Despite the many challenges, the community at McDougald has been a source of stability. Public housing typically charges 30 percent of income or a minimum monthly payment of $50, which is all some residents can afford. This is no guarantee against evictions – in 2019 Durham Housing Authority had almost 850 filings, although actual evictions fell significantly – but it does allow flexibility for low-income residents.

Laura Betye, who is on the resident council along with Canady, moved to Durham from Florida in 2006 after Hurricane Wilma displaced her and her five children.

“FEMA actually offered me a relocation or going into a trailer, and we had no electricity for three weeks in Florida and every other week there was a hurricane, so I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going,'” she said. 

Betye’s youngest is now 21, but McDougald Terrace met their needs as they grew up.

“The most important thing for a child, I think, is development. And Durham Housing has provided that,” she said. “Look, they’re not luxurious apartments, but they do their job. There’s running water, there’s electricity … it’s a tremendously creative community.”

Durham Housing Authority relocated almost all of the residents to hotels while it made repairs to the buildings. At its peak, 500 people were displaced. The last of them did not return until May 1.

During the evacuations, resident organizing focused on their temporary living conditions. Many hotel accommodations lacked kitchens or even microwaves. Instant macaroni and cheese cups became a symbol of the residents’ displeasure with the high-sodium, low-quality food they were eating. During some city council meetings, they rattled the cups to indicate their displeasure. 

Residents crowded into the council chambers to describe roaches falling on their heads and asked the city council to step up, according to Sabrina Davis, a Duke graduate student who organized support for the tenants. Canady led protests of the council and Durham Housing Authority.

Some of the responsibility for the neglect of McDougald Terrace belongs to the Durham Housing Authority, according to former and current officials. Wib Gulley is a former mayor of Durham who still does volunteer work around housing. He is very complimentary of Anthony Scott, the current CEO of Durham Housing Authority, but says the authority’s previous leadership has not been strong.

Hudgins, of the Authority board, agreed, adding that there wasn’t strong property management before Scott arrived.

“We just haven’t had the resources to maintain it and we probably have not prioritized the things that should have been done,” Hudgins said.

Speaking in September, Canady thinks the pressure she put on the city council was appropriate. 

“When you have a mayor or someone come out and acknowledge for 40 years these problems have been going on at McDougald Terrace, that doesn’t make you look any better, because you just openly acknowledge that there’s problems and you didn’t fix them,” she explained.

But McDougald Terrace is also a story of a city with limited options to avoid a crisis. Johnson said she understood residents’ frustration, but for any city to contribute to the federally funded public housing is an “extraordinary act.” Johnson said Durham provided $7 million to $8 million in funding to the Durham Housing Authority over the past few years.

Durham voters also approved a $95 million housing bond in a 2019 referendum, raising property taxes to provide more affordable housing. According to Hudgins, it was the largest public housing bond in the state, and $60 million was supposed to go to Durham Housing for renovations.

Federal policy is moving away from publicly run housing. The only option to rebuild dilapidated projects is often the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD). Begun in 2012, it provides federal support for public-private redevelopment of public housing, replacing housing units at a one-to-one rate with private, voucher-subsidized apartments and, in Durham, additional mixed-income units.

“The RAD program is a privatization effort for public housing,” said Johnson. “It is very much in line with the tendency of the U.S. government to find the most pro-capitalist way to do social policy possible.”

Eventually Durham Housing Authority wants to rebuild all its units under RAD, but because it requires private investment, the program has focused on sites in Durham’s booming downtown for the first round. McDougald, according to Gulley, was too far outside town to attract financing.

This left Durham Housing Authority scrambling to pay for the McDougald crisis, which cost at least $9 million. They managed with emergency money from HUD, which was only available because of the crisis, $1.4 million in funding from the city and pulling from Durham Housing Authority’s capital budget — limiting its ability to make repairs in future. 

In the meantime, residents have tried to take care of their community. Canady barely slept during the initial evacuation. Betye would wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get the kids at her hotel on the bus, and got permission to leave work early and help them with homework. The rest of the city showed up as well; Leonardo Williams, a local restaurant co-owner, estimates he coordinated about 45,000 meals to residents. 

Betye is very positive about the reaction from Durham – unlike some other residents, she does think the city council and the Housing Authority responded well.

“The whole community came,” she said. “I am not sure if it was another city in North Carolina if the outcome would have been the same.”

*  *  *

McDougald Terrace has not quite returned to normal. It has escaped the worst of the pandemic – there have only been three self-reported COVID-19 cases at McDougald, according to the Housing Authority. New appliances have been installed in most of the units. There will be no evictions for people who cannot pay rent – on average, $237 a month – through the end of the year, per CDC guidance. But the issues that troubled the apartments prior to the evacuation remain.

McDougald Terrace is large – 360 apartments spread over multiple blocks, more like a suburban development than a centralized project. In early September, Ella Toomer sat on the front stoop of her apartment, one in a collection of the two-story brick row houses spaced around wide grassy common. Toomer doesn’t trust that the carbon monoxide is gone.

“That’s why I sit outside from morning to night,” she said.

She also thinks the water tastes funny now, and says she can’t cook with it. “I can’t even use my ice,” she added.

Toomer said she was evacuated in the spring after firemen came to inspect her apartment for carbon monoxide and thought she looked ill. She lost weight, was sick for a while, and requested to move to Liberty Street, another public housing unit. 

Toomer moved back to McDougald in the meantime, despite her mistrust. Durham Housing Authority said in an email that while they have tried to move residents who requested transfers, Liberty Street is not an option for her – it is slated for redevelopment under the RAD program. She says she will move elsewhere.

McDougald is still receiving food distributions from local businesses. On September 8, Canady and Betye worked together distributing boxes of produce for residents to use on their new stoves, Betye in a pink “Black Lives Matter” shirt. Residents kept coming over to ask Canady questions, exchanging a quick greeting or a joke. Canady said she has not been asked about any “get out the vote” efforts for residents, but she is still looking to run for a seat on city council at some point.

There are just a handful of states that will likely decide November’s election, and polls are showing North Carolina could still go either way, although it is leaning slightly toward Biden. 

The nation’s housing crisis has gained more attention from presidential candidates in this presidential election than in past elections. So has the federal government’s role in addressing it  – from Carson and Trump’s incendiary promise to “defend the suburbs” to Biden’s proposal to make Section 8 rental assistance voucher an entitlement.

Public housing residents are only half a percent of North Carolina’s residents, but the effects of the McDougald evacuations have rippled across Durham – in city council meetings, in the increased property taxes of the housing bond, in the lives of local business owners who helped during the evacuation, in the uprooting of residents. Even as the city tries to expand affordable housing in the face of rising gentrification, it has spent much of 2020 fixing things in public housing that should never have been allowed to break.

People at McDougald know what is at stake. Betye said there are often large voter turnout events at McDougald, and she will be involved this year.

“It’s pivotal, it’s really a pivotal election in the whole country, so I am sure that I will be working on that, absolutely, to ensure that people go and vote,” she said.

Copyright 2020 Capital & Main.

Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett: Another step toward Christian fascism

The Christian right is content to have the focus on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett revolve around her opposition to abortion and membership in People of Praise, a far-right Catholic cult that practices “speaking in tongues.” What it does not want examined is her abject subservience to corporate power, her hostility to workers, civil liberties, unions and environmental regulations. And since the Democratic Party is beholden to the same donor class as the Republican Party, and since the media long ago substituted the culture wars for politics, the most ominous threat Barrett’s appointment to the court represents is going unmentioned.

All fascist and totalitarian movements paper over their squalid belief systems with the veneer of morality. They mouth pieties about restoring law and order, right and wrong, the sanctity of life, civic and family virtues, patriotism and tradition to mask their dismantling of the open society and silencing and persecution of those who oppose them. This is the real game being played by Christian fascists, who since the early 1970s have been building institutions with tens of millions in corporate donations to take power. Donald Trump, who has no ideology, has allowed the Christian right to fill his ideological void. He is the useful idiot. And the Christian right, awash in money from corporations that know their real political intent, will mobilize in this election to use any tool, no matter how devious, from right-wing armed militias to the invalidation of ballots, to block Joe Biden and Democratic candidates from assuming office. The road to despotism is always paved with righteousness. This was as true for Soviet communism as it was for German fascism. And it is true in the United States.

Capitalism, driven by the twin obsessions of maximizing profit and reducing the cost of production by slashing workers’ rights and wages, is antithetical to the Christian Gospel, as well as the Enlightenment ethic defined by Immanuel Kant. But capitalism, in the hands of the Christian fascists, has become sacralized in the form of the Prosperity Gospel, the belief that Jesus came to minister to our material needs, blessing believers with wealth and power. The Prosperity Gospel delights the corporations that have carried out the slow-motion corporate coup. This is why large corporations such as Tyson Foods, which places Christian right chaplains in its plants, Purdue, Walmart, and Sam’s Warehouse, along with many other corporations, pour money into the movement and its institutions such as Liberty University and Patrick Henry Law School. This is why corporations have given millions to groups such as the Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to campaign for Barrett’s appointment to the court. Barrett has ruled consistently in favor of corporations to cheat gig workers out of overtime, greenlight fossil fuel extraction and pollution and strip consumers of protection from corporate fraud. The watchdog group Accountable.US found that as a circuit court judge, Barrett “faced at least 55 cases in which citizens took on corporate entities in front of her court and 76% of the time she sided with the corporations.”

Her version of Catholicism is at odds with most of the positions championed by Pope Francis and traditional Catholic teaching on women’s rights, voting rights, immigrants’ rights, health care and environmental protections. The pope calls on the downtrodden to change the world economic order and denounces what he terms a “new colonialism” imposed by “the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain ‘free trade’ treaties, and the imposition of measures of ‘austerity’ which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor.” He speaks of the “sacred rights” of labor, lodging and land. He says the unfettered pursuit of money is “the dung of the devil” and castigates industrial nations for exploiting the raw materials and labor of the developing world.

Pope Francis has repeatedly warned that time is running out to save the planet from perhaps irreversible harm to the ecosystem. “Let us not be afraid to say it: We want change, real change, structural change,” the pope has stated, decrying a system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.”

“This system is by now intolerable: Farm workers find it intolerable; laborers find it intolerable; communities find it intolerable; peoples find it intolerable. The earth itself — our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say — also finds it intolerable,” he said.

Barrett’s religiosity, like that of other Christian fascists, is in the service of almost everything the pope condemns.

These corporations don’t give a damn about abortion, gun rights or the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. But like the German industrialists who backed the Nazi Party, they know that the Christian right will give an ideological veneer to ruthless corporate tyranny. These corporations view the Christian fascists the same way the German industrialists viewed the Nazis, as buffoons. They are aware that the Christian fascists will trash what is left of our anemic democracy and the natural ecosystem. But they also know they will make huge profits in the process and the rights of workers and citizens will be ruthlessly suppressed.

If you are poor, if you lack proper medical care, if you are paid substandard wages, if you are trapped in the lower class, if you are a victim of police violence, this is because, according to this ideology, you are not a good Christian and not blessed by God. In this belief system you deserve what you get. There is nothing wrong, these homegrown fascists preach, with the structures or systems of power. It is the mantra of self-help that made gurus like Oprah and Tony Robbins rich dressed up as the voice of God.

The Christian fascists, allied with organization such as the Federalist Society, have appointed two Supreme Court justices — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — as well as nearly 200 other judges with lifetime appointments to lower federal courts during the Trump administration. They claim to be strict “originalists.” Originalists argue that the meaning of the constitutional text is fixed and immune to interpretation. Originalists denounce jurists who argue that constitutional law should respond to changing circumstances and values. The Originalists already have five Federalist Society Supreme Court justices. Barrett would be the sixth. (Two of them, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia, were supported in the nomination process by Joe Biden.)

The legal calculus for the Christian right no longer revolves around the concept of universal human rights but around the tenets of “Bible-believing Christians” who supposedly authored the Constitution. Huge segments of the population are stripped of moral worth and legal protection. This process is incremental and often unseen. As the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels understood: “The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative.”

Victor Klemperer, who was dismissed from his post as a professor of Romance languages at the University of Dresden in 1935 because of his Jewish ancestry, astutely noted how at first the Nazis “changed the values, the frequency of words, [and] made them into common property, words that had previously been used by individuals or tiny troupes. They confiscated words for the party, saturated words and phrases and sentence forms with their poison. They made language serve their terrible system. They conquered words and made them into their strongest advertising tools [Werebemittle], at once the most public and most secret.” And, Klemperer noted, as the redefinition of old concepts took place the public was oblivious.

These Christian fascists understand the deep sickness that infects American society. They know how to exploit the moral and physical decay, as well as the despair it causes, to lure its followers towards their brand of tyranny. They are not wrong when they lambast the cruelty, corruption, emptiness and hypocrisy of the ruling elites, especially the liberal elites. They are not wrong when they mock cultural relativism, the idea that good and evil, right and wrong, truth and untruth, do not exist. It is part of the sad irony that the Christian right effectively exploits this cultural relativism to seize power. The failure of the liberal Christian church to denounce the Christian right as heretics, in the name of tolerance and cultural relativism, has given the Christian fascists religious legitimacy. At the same time, the Christian right seeks to delegitimize the liberal church as apostates. History has shown that it is unwise to tolerate the intolerant.

The Christian fascists, like all fascist movements, seek to create their own truth. It discredits verifiable fact, science, law and rationality. It promises a new, glorious world of moral renewal and prosperity. It promises a creator who will carry out miracles for believers and for America. It calls on followers to abandon the world of cause and effect and replace it with a world of magic. The reality-based world, as in all totalitarian movements, is snuffed out.

The Trump administration has implanted Christian fascists in senior positions of government, including Mike Pence to the vice presidency, Mike Pompeo to secretary of state, Betsy DeVos to secretary of education, Ben Carson to secretary of housing and urban development, William Barr to attorney general, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and televangelist Paula White to Trump’s Faith and Opportunities Initiative. Trump gave the Christian right veto and appointment power over key positions in government, especially in the federal courts. Almost all the judges he has appointed were selected by the Federalist Society and the Christian right. Many of the extremists among his judicial appointees have been rated as unqualified by the American Bar Association, the country’s largest nonpartisan coalition of lawyers.

Trump has embraced the Islamophobia of the Christian right to ban Muslim immigrants and roll back civil rights legislation. He has made war on reproductive rights by restricting abortion and defunding Planned Parenthood. He has degraded LGBTQ rights. He has allocated federal money to Christian charter schools. He has ripped down the firewall between church and state by revoking the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches, which are tax-exempt, from endorsing political candidates. His Christian right appointees, including Pence, DeVos and Pompeo, regularly use biblical strictures to justify an array of policy decisions including environmental deregulation, war, tax cuts and the replacement of public schools with charter schools, an action that permits the transfer of federal education funds to private “Christian” schools.

The Christian fascists are not finished. Brick by brick they are building a Christian fascist state. Barrett fills one more hole in the wall. They will do this with or without Trump.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines backed policies that benefited him and GOP pal Rep. Greg Gianforte

Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, one of the richest members of the U.S. Senate, has repeatedly backed policies that benefited both him and his longtime business partner Rep. Greg Gianforte, who is Montana’s lone congressman and the richest member of the House of Representatives. The two Republicans are both involved in tight political campaigns this year: Daines is running for re-election against Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat and former presidential candidate, in a race that could well decide control of the Senate. Gianforte is running for governor against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney.

Daines and Gianforte have done business together for decades and co-own a real estate company that appears to have benefited from the 2017 Republican tax bill, which they both supported. Daines made his vote for the bill contingent on increasing a tax deduction for “pass-through” entities, which allow business income to be treated as personal income, a deduction that appears to have saved him thousands in taxes. Daines has also sponsored several more obscure bills that benefited Gianforte, who has an estimated net worth of $189 million.

Daines and Gianforte own 75% of Genesis Partners, a commercial real estate firm, with Daines holding about 25%, according to the Helena Independent Record. Daines and Gianforte were listed as “active” managers on the company’s 2019 annual financial report filed with the Montana Secretary of State’s office. Daines valued his assets in Genesis between $4 million and $17 million and reported between $430,006 and $4.1 million in rent or royalties and capital gains income from the firm in 2019, according to his most recent personal financial disclosure.

Both Daines and Gianforte voted to back the 2017 Republican tax bill, which was a “boon to commercial real estate owners.” The bill doubled the depreciation deductions for commercial real estate investors for heating, ventilation, air conditioning and fire protection systems. After the tax law went into effect in 2018, Genesis Partners received a building permit valued at $300,000 that included work on the HVAC and fire suppression systems at its property at 110 Enterprise Boulevard in Bozeman, Montana, its first such permit since 2004. The company later sold the property in December 2019, according to Daines’ financial disclosure, after its value jumped from $1.75 million in 2018 to $2.08 million in 2019, according to the Montana Department of Revenue.

Genesis also received a building permit valued at $80,000 that included work on the fire sprinkler at a nearby property at 136 Enterprise Boulevard that same year, its first such permit since 2009. The value of the property increased from $4.94 million in 2018 to $6.44 million in 2019, according to the Montana Department of Revenue, while the Republican tax law allowed for additional savings on the company’s tax bill.

Daines had threatened to oppose the tax bill because it did not “cut taxes deeply enough” for pass-through entities, Politico reported ahead of the vote. The GOP secured Daines’ vote by expanding the increasing the deduction for pass-through entity owners from 17% to 20%. The deduction would have shaved about $37,946 from Daines’ taxable income in 2017, according to an analysis by the Billings Gazette.

Daines has also supported legislation that benefited Gianforte, who has been his close friend since the late 1990s. Daines worked at the Bozeman tech firm RightNow Technologies before Gianforte sold the company to Oracle for $1.8 billion, as Salon’s Roger Sollenberger has previously reported. Both lawmakers have backed policies that Oracle lobbied for since coming to Congress. Daines left the firm before the sale but retained his stock, which resulted in a big windfall. He is now one of the richest members of Congress, with an estimated net worth of $6.9 million.

Daines’ and Gianforte’s campaigns did not respond to questions from Salon.

In 2017, Daines sponsored a bill that could benefit the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), the credit monitoring agency. Gianforte is a member of FICO’s board of directors and owns nearly $7 million in the company’s stock.

The Support for Rapid Innovation Act was intended to encourage the Department of Homeland Security to support private sector cybersecurity research. Daines did not refer to FICO by name but touted the company’s technology during a hearing on the bill and called for similar technology to be adopted by DHS for cybersecurity purposes.

That same year, Daines co-sponsored the Modernizing Government Technology Act, which was passed as an amendment to a defense funding bill. The bill established “IT working capital funds at 24 federal government agencies and allow[ed] them to use savings obtained through streamlining IT systems, replacing legacy products and transitioning to cloud computing for up to three years for further modernization efforts.”

That bill created a new pool of federal money to dole out to big tech firms, and was a big boost to multiple companies in which Gianforte owns stock. Red Hat and ServiceNow — Gianforte’s biggest tech holdings — along with Cisco and IBM all lobbied for the bill.

Red Hat also lobbied for “procurement reform” in 2017 and later lobbied on issues related to the implementation of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Act (FITARA). In 2017, Daines sponsored Senate version of the FITARA Enhancement Act, which expanded the original law.

Gianforte reported that his stock in Red Hat was worth about $1.8 million in 2016. A year after Daines’ bills passed, that value increased to $3.64 million. His stock in ServiceNow was worth $782,280 in 2016 but increased to $1.6 million by 2018.

Gianforte also reported owning $2.4 million in stock in financial institutions in 2018. Daines sponsored numerous bills aimed at deregulating the financial sector. He sponsored the CLEAR Relief Act of 2017, “which provides a [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] qualified mortgage safe harbor for small financial institutions with $10 billion or less.” Numerous banking groups lobbied for the bill, portions of which were later passed as part of a larger legislative package.

Daines also sponsored the TAILOR ACT of 2017, “which requires financial regulators to tailor their rules to consider the size, risk profile, complexity, and business model of financial institutions impacted.” That bill was approved by the Republican-led House but stalled in the Senate.

Daines was also behind the Home Mortgage Disclosure Adjustment Act of 2017, “which exempts small community banks and credit unions that issue less than 500 mortgages annually from onerous demographic reporting requirements.” Portions of that bill were later rolled into a separate legislative package.

Daines also pushed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Accountability Act of 2017, which aimed to “address regulations passed under Dodd-Frank and make the bureau accountable to the American people by bringing it under the Congressional appropriations process.” The bill never came to a vote.

Daines was also a key player in the Trump administration’s rollback of the Dodd-Frank regulations passed after the Great Recession, and was singled out by President Donald Trump at the bill’s signing ceremony even though he was not a co-sponsor of the bill or a member of the Senate Banking Committee.

The two lawmakers have also enjoyed an unusually close relationship in Washington. Gianforte and his wife Susan were two of Daines’ earliest financial backers when the latter announced his first run for Congress in 2010. They also made maximum donations to Daines’ campaign when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2014 and again the following year after he was elected. Gianforte even hosted a fundraiser for Daines that was headlined by former House Speaker John Boehner, the National Journal reported, noting that Gianforte could “benefit from Washington connections through his friendship with Sen. Steve Daines.”

Daines, likewise, endorsed Gianforte in his failed 2016 gubernatorial bid and campaigned for him in 2017 when Gianforte won his congressional seat in a special election, despite body slamming a reporter during the campaign.

The two lawmakers also launched a joint Gianforte Daines Victory Committee in 2018.

Since Gianforte’s election to the House, Daines has flown on Gianforte’s private plane at least nine times, according to his 2017 and 2018 personal financial disclosures. Daines reported that he reimbursed Gianforte for all the flights, often paying more than $2,000 for air travel that would have cost a fraction of that price on commercial airlines.

5 standout moments from the vice presidential debate

Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence’s Wednesday night in the 2020 vice presidential debate featured far fewer fireworks — though plenty of conflict — than the previous debate featuring the candidates at the top of the ticket.

But while Pence wasn’t as aggressive as President Donald Trump, who shouted and interrupted former Vice President Joe Biden constantly, he similarly abused the rules. He interrupted Harris multiple times, quite rudely, while she was far more deferential to the limitations. He also frequently spoke over his allotted time, leading him to speak over USA Today’s Susan Page, the moderator. Overall, it wasn’t a pretty picture for Pence, as he was consistently talking over women out of turn.

Harris performed reasonably well in standing up to Pence, frequently countering his lies and subverting his attempts to interrupt her. But she also passed by many opportunities to hit the vice president on the failures of the president and the administration that a more skilled debater might have taken advantage of.

Here are five standout moments from the debate:

1. Harris comes out swinging

The senator started out strong, attacking Pence and the administration on their failure of a response to the pandemic. She pointed out that the administration could and did know how bad the outbreak could be back in January but still took insufficient steps to fight it. Despite his attempts to dodge her attacks, Pence was never really able to provide a compelling explanation of why the administration’s efforts should be seen as acceptable or adequate, let alone impressive, given the results.

2. Pence comes out lying

Pence responded to Harris’s attack by echoing many of the president’s false and misleading claims about the pandemic. Most prominently, he falsely said Trump “suspended all travel from China” at the start of the outbreak. While Trump did place restrictions on the travel at the end of January, thousands of people were still able to make the journey to the United States and potentially bring virus. Clearly, the virus still made it to the U.S., and the administration was unprepared for its arrival. The vice president also attacked Biden, falsely, claiming Biden opposed the “ban,” though there’s no evidence he did so. Harris never corrected this misinformation, though.

3. “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.”

Multiple times during the event, Harris effectively silenced Pence’s interruptions with a calm but stern “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.” It was extremely effective and put Pence on the defensive.

4. “They’re coming for you”

Harris was at her strongest when she was talking into the camera and attacking the administration’s policies. Despite Trump and Pence’s false claims to the contrary, she correctly pointed out that they’re trying to strip health care and protections from millions of Americans. Since Democrats are more trusted on health care than Republicans, this was likely an effective line of attack.

5. Pence gets cut off

Page let Pence get away with far too much speaking out of turn, but eventually she clearly got frustrated and cut him off.

Bonus: A fly lands on Pence’s head. And stays there.

The fact that this moment got so much attention might tell us a lot about how much (or more accurately, how little) effect the debate will likely have on the state of the race.

Two years after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, why is America still an accomplice to Saudi crimes?

Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered on Oct. 2, 2018 by agents of Saudi Arabia’s despotic government, and the CIA concluded they killed him on direct orders from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Eight Saudi men have been convicted of Khashoggi’s murder by a Saudi court, in what the Washington Post characterized as sham trials with no transparency. The higher-ups who ordered the murder, including MBS, continue to escape responsibility.

Khashoggi’s assassination and dismemberment was so horrific and cold-blooded that it sparked worldwide public outrage. President Trump, however, stood by MBS, bragging to journalist Bob Woodward that he saved the prince’s “ass” and got “Congress to leave him alone.”

MBS’s ascent to dictatorial power, soon after his elderly father King Salman became king in January 2015, was sold to the world as ushering in a new era of reform, but has in reality been characterized by violent, ruthless repression. The number of executions has doubled, from 423 executions between 2009 and 2014 to more than 800 since January 2015. 

They include the mass execution of 37 people on April 23, 2019, mostly for taking part in peaceful Arab Spring protests in 2011-12. These protests took place in Shiite areas where people face systemic discrimination in the majority Sunni kingdom. At least three of those executed were minors when they were sentenced, and one was a student arrested at the airport on his way to attend Western Michigan University. Many of the victims’ families have said that they were convicted based on forced confessions extracted by torture, and two victims’ beheaded corpses were put on public display.  

Under MBS, all dissent has been crushed. In the last two years, all of Saudi Arabia’s independent human rights defenders have been imprisoned, threatened into silence, or have fled the country. This includes women’s rights activists such as Loujain al-Hathoul, who opposed the ban on women drivers. Despite some openings for women under MBS, including the right to drive, Saudi women remain subject to discrimination in law and practice, with laws that ensure they are subordinate citizens to men, particularly in relation to family matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance. 

The Trump administration has never challenged Saudi Arabia’s internal repression, and worse yet has played a vital role in the brutal Saudi-led war on neighboring Yemen. After Yemeni president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi failed to leave office at the end of his two-year term as the head of a transitional government, or to fulfill his mandate to draw up a new constitution and hold a new election, the Houthi rebel movement invaded the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, placed him under house arrest and demanded that he do his job. 

Hadi instead resigned, fled to Saudi Arabia and conspired with MBS and the Saudis to launch a war to try to restore him to power. The U.S. has provided in-air refueling, intelligence and planning for Saudi and Emirati air strikes and has raked in over $100 billion in arms sales. While U.S. support for the Saudi war began under Barack Obama, Trump has provided unconditional support as the horrors of this war have shocked the entire world. 

According to the Yemen Data Project, at least 30% of U.S.-supported airstrikes on Yemen have hit civilian targets, including hospitals, health clinics, schools, marketplaces, civilian infrastructure, and a particularly horrific airstrike on a school bus that killed 40 children and 11 adults. 

After five years, this brutal war has succeeded only in wreaking mass devastation and chaos, with dozens of children dying every day from starvation, malnutrition and preventable diseases, all now compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Belated congressional efforts to end U.S. support for the war, including the passage of a War Powers bill in March 2019 and a bill to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia in July 2019, have been vetoed when they reached President Trump’s desk.

The U.S. alliance with the Saudis certainly predates Trump, going back to the discovery of oil in the 1930s. While its traditional role as an oil supplier is no longer vital to the U.S. economy, Saudi Arabia has become one of the largest purchasers of U.S. weapons, a major investor in U.S. businesses and an ally against Iran. After the failed U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. began grooming Saudi Arabia to play a leading geopolitical and military role, alongside Israel, in a new U.S.-led alliance to counter the growing influence of Iran, Russia and China in the Middle East. 

The war on Yemen was the first test of Saudi Arabia’s role as a leading U.S. military ally, and it exposed both the practical and moral bankruptcy of this policy, unleashing another endless war and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in one of the poorest countries on Earth. MBS’s assassination of Khashoggi came at a critical moment in the unraveling of this doomed strategy, laying bare the sheer insanity of basing America’s Middle East policy for the 21st century on an alliance with a neo-feudal monarchy sustained by murder and repression.

Obama tried to change tack towards the end of his administration, putting a hold on the sale of munitions to Saudi Arabia and signing a nuclear deal with Iran. Trump reversed both these policies, and continued to treat Saudi Arabia as a critical ally, even as the world recoiled in horror at Khashoggi’s assassination. 

While Saudi abuses have not diminished the Trump administration’s unconditional support, they have ignited global opposition. In an exciting new development, exiled Saudi activists have formed a political party, the National Assembly Party or NAAS, calling for democracy and respect for human rights in the kingdom. In its inaugural statement, the party laid out a vision for Saudi Arabia in which all citizens are equal under the law and a fully elected parliament has legislative and oversight powers over the state’s executive institutions. The founding document was signed by several prominent Saudi activists in exile, including London-based professor Madawi al-Rasheed; Abdullah Alaoudh, a Saudi academic who is also the son of jailed Islamic scholar Salman al-Awda; and Shia activist Ahmed al-Mshikhs.

Another new initiative, timed for the second anniversary of Khashoggi’s murder, is the launch of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an organization conceived by Khashoggi several months before his murder. DAWN will promote democracy and support political exiles across the Middle East, in keeping with the vision of its martyred founder.

Progressive groups in the United States continue to oppose U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s Yemen war and to push USAID to restore direct humanitarian aid that has been slashed to Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. European activists have launched successful campaigns to stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in several countries. 

These past two years have also seen activists organizing boycotts of Saudi events. Pre-COVID, when the kingdom opened up to musical extravaganzas, groups such as CODEPINK and Human Rights Foundation pressured entertainers like Nicki Minaj to cancel appearances. Minaj put out a statement saying, “It is important for me to make clear my support for the rights of women, the LGBTQ community and freedom of expression.” Meghan MacLaren, the U.K.’s top woman golfer, withdrew from a lucrative new tournament in Saudi Arabia, citing reports by Amnesty International and saying she cannot take part in “sportwashing” Saudi human rights abuses.

A new group called Freedom Forward, which seeks to sever the U.S.-Saudi alliance, has focused on the upcoming G20 in Riyadh, which is taking place virtually in November, urging invitees to refuse to participate. The campaign has successfully lobbied the mayors of several major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Paris and London, to boycott the event, along with notables invited to side events for women and global thinkers.

As we mark two years since Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, we may also soon be marking the end of the Trump administration. While it is hard to take Joe Biden on his word that he would not sell more weapons to the Saudis and would make them “pay the price” for killing Khashoggi, it is good to hear a presidential candidate admit that there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia” and call it a “pariah state.” Perhaps with enough pressure from below, a new administration could start the process of disentangling the U.S. from the deadly embrace of the Saudi dictatorship.

But as long as U.S. leaders continue to coddle the Saudis, it’s difficult not to ask who is more evil — the maniacal Saudi crown prince responsible for Khashoggi’s murder and the slaughter of more than 100,000 Yemenis, or the mendacious Western governments and businesspeople who continue to support and profit from his crimes? 

Biden: If Trump “still has COVID, we shouldn’t have a debate”

Out of concern for the health of voters planning to attend the next presidential debate on Oct. 15 as well as his own and that of his campaign staff, Democratic candidate Joe Biden on Tuesday evening said the event should not go forward as planned as long as President Donald Trump still has Covid-19. 

“I think if he still has Covid, we shouldn’t have a debate,” Biden told reporters the day after Trump returned home to the White House after spending three nights at Walter Reed Medical Center.

The president announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus in the early morning hours of last Friday, two days after facing Biden in the first debate in Cleveland, Ohio. At the first debate, the president openly mocked the former vice president for following public health guidance by wearing a face mask at public events, and members of his family and campaign team in the audience did not use face coverings. 

“I’m not sure what President Trump is all about now, I don’t know what his status is,” Biden said Tuesday. “I’m looking forward to being able to debate him. But I just hope all the protocols are followed, what’s necessary at the time.”

The vice presidential debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is set to go forward in Utah Wednesday evening. Both candidates tested negative for Covid-19 on Wednesday.

The safety protocols for the event appeared to consist mainly of two small plexiglass shields positioned between Harris and Pence, who will be seated 12 feet away from each other.

Professor Linsey Marr, an expert in aerosol transmission of viruses, called the safety measures “absurd.”

“These are even smaller and less adequate than I imagined,” Marr told the New York Times. 

After Trump’s diagnosis last week, Biden campaign officials indicated it was “hard to see” the second debate going forward and that the Commission on Presidential Debates must enforce protocols including mask-wearing.

Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, pointed out Wednesday that members of the public could be put at risk in the town hall format planned for the second debate, if Trump is still contagious. 

“There will be citizens there in attendance asking questions,” Bedingfield told “Good Morning America” on ABC. “So, the obligation is on Donald Trump to prove that he is not contagious. The obligation is on him to meet the standards laid out by the Cleveland Clinic, laid out by the presidential commission on debates.”

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted that Biden and Trump should simply take part in a virtual debate as former Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon did in 1960. 

White House staffers on Wednesday stocked an “isolation cart” with medical gowns, goggles, and respirators and positioned the supplies outside the Oval Office as the president returned after a short-lived quarantine period in his residence following his hospital stay. Despite the possibility of still being contagious, advisers are reportedlyconsidering a return to Trump’s campaigning schedule next week, including travel other than his planned trip to Miami for the debate.

“I think we’re gonna have to follow very strict guidelines,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. “Too many people have been infected. And it’s a very serious problem.”

Rick Santorum interrupts only woman on CNN panel to defend Mike Pence talking over Kamala Harris

Conservative pundit Rick Santorum on Wednesday interrupted CNN’s Gloria Borger in an effort to defend Vice President Mike Pence, who was also accused of interrupting women.

Following the 2020 vice presidential debate, Borger reflected on Pence’s habit of interrupting both Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and moderator Susan Page.

But before Borger could make her point, Santorum interrupted.

“Don’t make the claim that he interrupted repeatedly!” Santorum shouted.

“I’m speaking,” Borger pointed out. “He did.”

“He interrupted the moderator and her,” CNN host Anderson Cooper agreed.

“He went on really long,” Borger asserted.

“Not any more than you would see in any other debate!” Santorum complained.

Watch the video below from CNN.

“Jump ball”: Cook Political Report shifts Lindsey Graham’s Senate race to a “toss-up”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has lost the slim edge he once held in his re-election bid in the wake of his first debate against Democratic rival Jaime Harrison, according to the analysts at Cook Political Report. On Wednesday, the election monitor shifted the race’s outlook from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.”

Cook calls the race the contest the most “surprising race” of the year, and it characterizes Harrison, a quiet political veteran who put his chops on national display for the first time in last Saturday’s heated debate, as “perhaps Democrats’ best recruit and a fundraising behemoth.”

“It’s a jump ball at this point,” one South Carolina Republican strategist told Cook. “Jaime is peaking at exactly the right time, and he’s got a deluge of money. [Harrison] is blocking every pass there is from Republicans.”

“Less than a month from Election Day, this movement is in a prime position to defeat Lindsey Graham and bring hope back to all 46 counties of South Carolina,” Harrison campaign spokesperson Guy King told Salon.

King attributes Harrison’s steady climb to a “values-driven campaign,” which appeals to an inclusive range of South Carolinians by “addressing issues that Lindsey Graham forgot about long ago.”

Harrison has zeroed in on healthcare, coronavirus relief for small businesses and broadband internet access as central issues, which he addressed in a ranging two–part interview with Salon in July.

Republicans, according to Cook, have privately expressed frustration that Graham did not take Harrison seriously from the start, pointing out that his narrative — “a charismatic 44-year-old African-American former state party chairman who tells a compelling story of growing up with a teen mother and being raised by his grandparents in impoverished Orangeburg” — is obvious political gold.

The Harrison campaign has famously raised record amounts of cash, but less well-publicized is how the funds have been allocated. Here, Cook points to the campaign’s advertising game: Harrison has so far either spent or reserved $60.3 million worth of TV and digital ads through Election Day, an amount which will increase as Nov. 3 approaches. Graham, by contrast, has spent or reserved just $20.6 million.

The success of those ads is not merely in the volume, Cook notes. Harrison appeals to what could be “Graham’s Achilles Heel — white women.” His ads often feature middle-age or senior women with a record of supporting Graham, who now feel more closely aligned with Harrison’s “values” on issues like health care.

“Harrison has made this race about character, and in other Democratic ads, they turn the tables and paint Graham as part of the ‘swamp,'” Cook says. “And that seems to be working.”

A Quinnipiac survey last week found the two locked in a 48-48 tie, a showing which the underdog has sustained for two months. Those results matched a Sept. 16 Quinnipiac poll, which also showed each candidate at 48%. Another Quinnipiac poll in early August found the two at 44%, and the Harrison campaign’s internal numbers over the summer consistently showed a similar tight gap.

“There hasn’t been a Democrat elected to the Senate from South Carolina since 1998,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said in a news release. “Outspent and labeled by critics as an apologist for President Trump, Lindsey Graham is facing the fight of his political life.”

Graham has used multiple recent media appearances about upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings to complain that he was “getting killed financially.” The pain is real: Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund has recently boosted Graham with $10 million in ad buys through Election Day.

Cook attributes the problem to no one but Graham, who has “put himself in far more of a national lightning rod role than he ever was when he was the late Sen. John McCain’s sidekick.” Graham has publicly aligned himself with Trump, all but begging national Democratic backers to ship their checks to South Carolina.

Graham has recently turned for in-state support to his junior Senate colleague, Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the upper chamber and the most popular statewide elected official in the Palmetto State by far, according to Cook. Scott has spoken up for Graham in two ads, which have just recently entered rotation.

But should Harrison win in November, South Carolina — the state whose secession from the Union in 1860 kicked off the Civil War — would become the first in U.S. history to send two Black senators to Capitol Hill at the same time.

Cook also points to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett scheduled for next week as Graham’s “one remaining Hail Mary.” Graham, as chair of Senate Judiciary Committee, will play a marquee role in the hearings, which are expected to be explosive.

Graham will want to use the primetime facetime to remind South Carolina conservatives of his unique influence over the country’s federal benches, as he did during last week’s debate. Harrison sought to highlight a split in Graham’s personal interests from those of South Carolina, and he brought a metaphor onstage with him — a plexiglass divider to separate himself from the incumbent, who had the week before participated in Barrett’s Rose Garden nomination ceremony, now thought to be a superspreader event.

Graham self-quarantined in March after he was exposed to the infection during a visit to Trump’s Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago. He did not take similar steps this time.

Trump was one of the first 10 patients to get an experimental COVID-19 treatment under special use

Ahead of President Donald Trump‘s Monday discharge from the care of Walter Reed Medical Center, where he had been treated for three days for symptoms of COVID-19, came a tweet. 

“Don’t be afraid of Covid,” the president claimed, in part because the country had developed “some really great drugs.”

However, the president himself — who once suggested injecting household disinfectants to treat the deadly disease — had just become one of the first 10 patients granted an extraordinarily rare level of access to an experimental antibody infusion to combat his COVID-19 infection, Salon has confirmed.

The treatment, a cocktail of human antibodies and anti-bodies cloned from stem cells, was manufactured by Regeneron. The pharmaceutical company only announced the results of a phase 1/2/3 trial on Sept. 29, or two days before the president tested positive. The treatment, which is still pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration, proved most effective for patients with weak immune systems.

Hours after receiving the treatment on Friday, Trump was flown from the White House to Walter Reed Medical Center. The White House said at the time that the president had “mild symptoms.” Trump’s personal physician, Dr. Sean Conley, later acknowledged that he exhibited low oxygen levels and a fever.

But Conley would not disclose the results of Trump’s lung scans, only saying they showed “expected findings.” Experts noted that Conley did not say the president’s lungs appeared healthy, leaving open the possibility of inflammation or pneumonia.

Trump returned to the executive mansion three days later. After a balcony photo-op appearance, during which time his breathing appeared labored, the president remains at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Conley says Trump reports no symptoms — medically different from “showing signs,” which are noticed and reported by an attending physician.

After his experience at Walter Reed, Trump declared that Americans should not let the coronavirus, which has killed more than 210,000 people in the U.S. over the last seven months, “dominate your life.”

Outside of clinical trials, almost no American has access to the treatments which were available to the president. The Food and Drug Administration limits compassionate use (“expanded access”) to patients with “an immediately life-threatening condition or serious disease or condition” when “no comparable or satisfactory” alternatives are available.

Patients often wait for approval, which can include an involved review and regulatory process between the patient, the physician, the pharmaceutical company and the government. Typically, companies grant compassionate use free of charge, but other monoclonal antibodies currently on the market cost thousands of dollars.

“All we can say is that they asked to be able to use it, and we were happy to oblige,” Regeneron CEO Dr. Leonard Schleifer told The New York Times. Though Trump was not the first patient granted expanded access to the drug, Schleifer said, “When it’s the president of the United States, of course, that gets — obviously — gets our attention.”

“Presidential medicine is and has been unique,” Arthur L. Caplan, professor of medical ethics at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine, told The Times. “If his doctors think an intervention might be helpful, and if that judgment is confirmed by outside experts they talk to and if things look dire or serious, then the president will get access to any and all agents.”

Schleifer has been a member at Trump’s Westchester, N.Y., golf club, and his company took $450 million in federal funding this summer from Operation Warp Speed, which is the administration’s moonshot project to fast-track COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, according to CNN Business.

“Len and President Trump are acquaintances from both living in the Westchester area for many years but didn’t have any regular contact until this year, when they’ve discussed matters around COVID on occasion,” a Regeneron spokesperson told CNN Business.

Schleifer is an active political donor, who predominantly gives to Democratic candidates. In 2016, Schleifer gave more than $55,000 to committees supporting Hillary Clinton, but he has not yet donated to Democratic nominee Joe Biden, per FEC records. His son, Adam, lost a Democratic primary bid this summer for New York’s 17th Congressional District.

“We don’t share details on who has/hasn’t submitted a compassionate use request, but as we’ve stated, only a small number of these requests have been approved for rare and exceptional circumstances, and that will continue to be the case,” a Regeneron spokesperson told Salon in an email.

The spokesperson said the company was not aware of any side effects occurring in compassionate use cases and referred Salon to the FDA. The FDA did not reply to Salon’s requests for comment.

In order to qualify for compassionate use, the FDA says, patients must meet a number of requirements: the disease or condition must be serious or “immediately” life-threatening; there can be “no comparable or satisfactory alternative therapy to diagnose, monitor or treat the disease or condition”; clinical trials must be out of the question; potential benefits must justify potential risks; and the treatment must not interfere with clinical trials that could support product development “or marketing approval for the treatment indication.”

Given its extremely limited supply, Schleifer told CNBC that the international headlines put his company in a “very tough situation.”

“Giving it to [Trump] or to others who might not be able or don’t qualify for clinical trials is the right use of compassionate use. That’s for small numbers of people, for these exceptions,” he said. “We want everybody to be potentially able to benefit. We understand we don’t make that decision. This is a decision the FDA has to make.”

Through no fault of Regeneron’s own, however, the company may have harnessed one of the most powerful marketing platforms on the planet — Trump’s Twitter feed.

“They gave me Regeneron. It’s called Regeneron,” the president said in a Wednesday video published to his feed, erroneously naming the drug company instead of its treatment. “And other things, too. But I think this was the key. But they gave me Regeneron. And it was, like, unbelievable. I felt good immediately.”

Trump claimed that he had “authorized” the treatment. However, it was unclear what steps, if any, had been taken to expand its availability to more Americans.

George R.R. Martin: “Thrones” pilot “made worse” by changing Daenerys love scene to assault

The publication of the new behind-the-scenes “Game of Thrones” oral history “Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon” (now available for purchase) has brought a renewed focus on the show’s handling of sexual assault. “Thrones” was criticized throughout its eight-season run for the way it portrayed violence against its female characters, including frequent depictions of rape. Author George R.R. Martin reveals in the book he was not supportive of the decision to change Daenerys’s consensual wedding night love scene with Khal Drogo into an assault for the TV pilot.

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“Why did the wedding scene change from the consensual seduction scene to the brutal rape of Emilia Clarke?” Martin asks author James Hibberd (via Insider). “We never discussed it. It made it worse, not better.”

In Martin’s “Game of Thrones” novel, Drogo attempts to ease Daenerys’s nerves before they have sex by wiping away her nervous tears and teaching her how to untie his braids. When Drogo tries to seduce Daenerys more explicitly, she gives him permission by saying “yes” when he asks if it’s ok to touch her. In the HBO series, the wedding night scene is an assault where Drogo strips Daenerys’ clothes off and bends her over onto her knees while she cries. The scene then cuts away, but the assault is clear.

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While Martin says he was not aware the change was going to be made, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss defend the switch. As Benioff says in the book, “Here’s a girl who is absolutely terrified of this barbarian warlord she’s being married off to, it’s the last thing in the world she wants, yet somehow by the end of this wedding night she seems to be in a completely joyful sexual relationship with him. It didn’t entirely work for us.”

Weiss notes that while the first love scene between Daenerys and Drogo might be consensual in Martin’s books, later sex scenes in the novel between the characters are assaults. In a television show, that kind of storytelling whiplash just didn’t make sense for the showrunners. According to Weiss, Daenerys actress Emilia Clarke was on the same page as them and “mentioned the wedding night and issues she was having with it.”

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“In the second episode she has to go back to the less consensual, rougher relationship,” Weiss added. “In the book that works, but we just didn’t have that amount of time and access to the character’s mind. It turns too quickly. It was something the actors themselves felt wasn’t gelling.”

“Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon” is now available for purchase.

“Saturday Night Live” found a COVID loophole for Its live audience by paying them as employees

The cast of “Saturday Night Live” weren’t the only people live from the show’s New York Studio during its Season 46 premiere over the weekend.

The New York Times reports on Tuesday that members of the “Saturday Night Live” studio audience who attended the show’s taping last weekend were paid, effectively making them cast members. Though New York state guidelines prohibit the public from attending live television shows, the “Saturday Night Live” team’s loophole allowed the show to be filmed in accordance with the state’s reopening guidelines, which were enacted to slow the spread of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

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One attendee told the New York Times that he and seven friends each received checks for $150 once the show had ended and added that they were not informed they would be paid. The attendee also noted that they were asked to take a “rapid virus test” and sign health forms indicating they did not have the coronavirus or symptoms of the virus, both of which were required to attend the “Saturday Night Live” taping.

The New York Times received a statement from a state health department spokesperson that the show followed guidelines by selecting its audience through a third party and compensating them for their time. A NBCUniversal spokesperson told the publication that “Saturday Night Live” closely followed state department guidelines, but did not specify how many audience members were paid.

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IndieWire has reached out to NBCUniversal for comment.

“Saturday Night Live” made its much-anticipated return to studio production for its Season 46 premiere, several months after the coronavirus pandemic forced the show to go virtual. Though the show’s team produced several virtual episodes via teleconferencing technology to a mixed reception over the summer, Saturday’s show was filmed in NBC’s Manhattan studios. At least four more live episodes are expected to be taped throughout the rest of October.

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The Saturday show also served as a parody of the much-derided first presidential debate last week and an introduction to Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden impersonation and the return of Maya Rudolph as Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), who is serving as Biden’s vice presidential running mate.

Right-wing QAnon conspiracy theorists see their pages banned across all Facebook platforms

Facebook announced on Tuesday that it is banning QAnon content across its platforms, an action that it characterizes as part of a larger effort to stop “Militarized Social Movements” from recruiting people through their social media sites.

“Starting today, we will remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contain no violent content,” Facebook explained in a statement. “This is an update from the initial policy in August that removed Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with QAnon when they discussed potential violence while imposing a series of restrictions to limit the reach of other Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with the movement.”

They added, “Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts that represent an identified Militarized Social Movement are already prohibited. And we will continue to disable the profiles of admins who manage Pages and Groups removed for violating this policy, as we began doing in August.”

QAnon is a conspiracy theory “based upon the idea that there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything,” Travis View, the host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, told Salon last year. Adherents claim that this cabal has managed to control politicians, Hollywood, and the media, and that “they would have continued ruling the world, were it not for the election of President Donald Trump.”

He noted that QAnon views Trump as a hero fighting these malevolent sex criminals — even though the president has his own shared of sexual misconduct and assault allegations, and been accused of unwanted sexual contact by more than two dozen women) — and that soon, a great event will unearth the conspiracy. Adherents also believe that they are privy to these “truths” about the world due to the online posts of an anonymous individual known as “Q,” who they perceive as an insider and freedom fighter. QAnon followers have been linked to acts of violence, including a shooting at a  D.C. pizza place which Q followers believed ran a child sex ring out of its basement. (It didn’t.) 

The movement is considered a domestic terrorism threat, according to an FBI document leaked last year. QAnon’s haplessness has actually impeded legitimate efforts to stop child sex trafficking, as Colorado’s Human Trafficking Hotline reported last month that it was having trouble doing its job after being flooded with spurious calls by QAnon supporters.

Anti-Defamation League spokesperson Jake Hyman told Salon that QAnon “contains a number of deeply convoluted and all-encompassing conspiracy theories,” noting that “several aspects of QAnon lore mirror longstanding anti-Semitic tropes. The belief that a global ‘cabal’ is involved in rituals of child sacrifice has its roots in the anti-Semitic trope of blood libel, the theory that Jews murder Christian children for ritualistic purposes.”

He added, “In addition, QAnon has a deep-seated hatred for George Soros, a name that has become synonymous with perceived Jewish meddling in global affairs. And QAnon’s ongoing obsession with a global elite of bankers also has deeply anti-Semitic undertones.”

A number of prominent Republicans have been linked to QAnon conspiracy theories. Trump himself has praised the movement, saying that “I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much. Which I appreciate.”

Republicans have been hesitant to disavow QAnon, lest they lose one fringe wing of their support base. Notorious GOP political strategist Karl Rove called QAnon “lunatics peddling theories that discredit conservatives,” while the rest of his party has been more gracious. Eighteen Republican legislators voted against a bipartisan bill earlier this week condemning QAnon, including four from Texas — Reps. Jodey Arrington, Brian Babin, Michael Burgess and Bill Flores. Likewise, A number of Republican congressional candidates have either openly embraced QAnon conspiracy theories or expressed indirect sympathy for the movement’s ideas. These include Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Jo Rae Perkins of Oregon, Theresa Raborn of Illinois, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Erin Cruz of California, Mike Cargile of California and Lauren Witzke of Delaware.

While many conservatives have taken to social media platforms like Twitter to accuse Facebook of violating QAnon’s free speech rights, legal experts agree that the First Amendment only prohibits the government and its leaders from censoring individuals who disagree with them, not private companies. As Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California–Irvine, told Salon in May when Trump threatened to retaliate against Twitter for fact-checking two of his tweets, a private company like Facebook and Twitter is “entitled to include or exclude people as it sees fit.” (Ironically, any actions undertaken by Trump to punish social media platforms he regards as hostile, legal experts like Hasen and Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe agreed, would actually violate the First Amendment.)

“Courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects the ability of private companies, including Facebook, to remove content that users post on the company’s platform,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Frank Stanton Fellow Naomi Gilens wrote to Salon. “Facebook’s most recent removal decision targets QAnon’s dangerous disinformation, and it’s easy to see why many people are fine with this decision. But Facebook and other platforms have a long history of removing innocuous or socially beneficial content as well, often without as much public notice and with more harm.”

She added, “For that reason, it’s essential that Facebook and other platforms voluntarily adopt and abide by transparent content moderation practices found in the Santa Clara Principles, including by establishing clear takedown rules and mechanisms for users to appeal takedown decisions.”

While QAnon’s beliefs are patently absurd, there are real-life examples of pedophilia enablers in elite circles of American life.

“The interesting thing about QAnon is that there’s always at least this tiny hint of truth to it,” View told Salon last year, citing pedophile rings led by Catholic clergy and billionaire Jeffrey Epstein as examples. “I’ve talked about sometimes they’re sort of right, maybe in a very broad general sense, but their specific particular claims are always insane and far, far detached from reality. In the case of secret pedophile rings, I mean, you don’t have to look very far to see that kind of thing actually happens.”

That said, there is no factual basis for any of the claims made by QAnon about Satanic pedophile conspiracies among Democrats, Hollywood, the media, Jews or other groups.

President Trump calls his case of COVID-19 a “blessing from God” in baffling new video

In a new video of Twitter, President Donald Trump claimed that getting COVID-19 was a “blessing from God” and seemed to pivot away from his focus on getting a vaccine approved before the election. Instead, he tried to encourage viewers to think a therapeutic treatment for the disease is actually a cure.

At a base level, the video served one fundamental purpose: To show that Trump, who is still at risk of a resurgence of symptoms, currently appears relatively healthy and to be functioning normally. It was essentially a success on that front, though it’s not clear how representative the video was of his condition throughout the day.

But the content itself was baffling. Aside from his comment that contracting the virus was a divine gift, Trump largely focused on the antibody treatment he received from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. He was able to receive the drug on a compassionate use basis, not through the FDA’s typical approval process or even through an Emergency Use Authorization. And he claimed these antibodies in particular were the cause of his improvement, and he wants everyone to have access to them.

“I went in, I wasn’t feeling so hot,” he said. “And within a very short period of time, they gave me Regeneron, it’s called Regeneron [it’s actually not called that — that’s the name of the drug company]. And other things too, but I think this was the key. But they gave me Regeneron. And it was like, unbelievable. I felt good immediately.”

He said “we’ve authorized it, I’ve authorized it,” though it’s not clear what actual steps have actually been taken in the treatment’s approval process. He seemed to be suggesting that because he deemed the drug successful in his case, it should be approved for everybody. Of course, this isn’t how drug approval should work. And he has also taken remdesivir and the steroid dexamethasone, the latter of which may be causing his current decline of symptoms. And despite his claim that he felt immediately better after taking the antibody cocktail, his doctor’s reports have made clear that his condition had worsened and improved several times since he first took the treatment.

Overall, the most natural reading of the video and the claims he made is that Trump is trying to spin his hospitalization, which some data suggests have hurt his standing in the polls, as a positive. He wants voters to think he has now found the magic bullet for the pandemic so they can stop worrying about it. But the truth is that the best treatments for the infection remain unclear, and the course of Trump’s own illness remains unpredictable.

You can watch the video below via Twitter:

Netflix stands by “Cuties” after streamer indictment in Texas over film’s “prurient interest in sex”

A Lone Star State grand jury has indicted Netflix over the controversial “Cuties” film.

According to the Sept. 23 indictment out of Tyler County, Texas, the streamer led by Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time the visual material was created, which appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Facing some serious charges, Netflix weren’t backing down Tuesday as the one-page indictment became public via a local congressman’s Twitter feed. “‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children,” a spokesperson for the streamer said in a statement. “This charge is without merit and we stand by the film.”

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Netflix was served with a summons by Texas Rangers on Oct. 1, claimed Tyler County D.A. Lucas Babin today. Naming co-CEOs Hastings and Sarandos, the charge is a state jail felony.

An award winner when it debuted at Sundance earlier this year, the Maïmouna Doucouré-directed “Cuties” focuses on the tale of an 11-year-old Senegalese-French girl who is battling with her traditional Muslim family and her dance troupe friends. The coming-of-age drama launched Sept. 9 on Netflix.

Even before that premiere, “Cuties” was caught in the spotlight thanks to a self-admittedly “inappropriate artwork” that was used by the streamer on the promotion poster and other material for the film. Under online and cultural siege, on August 20, Netflix said: “It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which premiered at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.”

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Still, that did little to dampen the outrage as the likes of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, who came out against the film. On Sept. 3, Turkey told Netflix to block local access to Cuties.

And it became very personal, in the worst way.

“I received numerous attacks on my character from people who had not seen the film, who thought I was actually making a film that was apologetic about hypersexualiation of children,” Doucouré told Deadline’s Tom Grater on Sept. 3. “I also received numerous death threats.”

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Netflix did see some subscription cancellations in the wake of “Cuties” hitting the streamer, it was reported. However, the rate of people voting with their wallets tapered off pretty quickly, and views were on par with the previous year within a week.