Vaccinations, polio and COVID-19: a personal reflection

He was the cutest little boy. Like too many little children at the time and in the decades before, he was stricken by polio. He was three years old and I was eight. That was the first major shock of my life.

I remember hearing him cry through the window as I stood outside the hospital, waiting for my mother, who had gone to visit him. The anguish on her face was also not to be forgotten. I learned the big words “quarantine” and “isolation” (I thought my little brother had been put on ice).

Dr. Jonas Salk and the live polio vaccine

My brother had the bad luck of being in the very last group of children to be stricken prior to the mass distribution of the Salk vaccine.

Now in his sixties, he wrote recently to ask what I remembered about the timing of the vaccinations, why he did not get one and when his other siblings got them.

So I checked my memory and did some research to offer some answers.

This task of the heart — all of his siblings have a special place in their hearts for him, not only because of his fulsome humor and uproarious laughter, but also because he had this tough start in life — taught me some things about those times in our early lives and made me think about current vaccination controversies.

A national parental concern

My brother was born in that “cruelest month” of April — on April 26, 1952, just as the number of polio cases was growing. The United States reported 57,628 cases in 1952, more than 21,000 of which were cases leading to some degree of paralysis.

As case numbers grew, parents grew more concerned and called for a vaccine.

My brother’s initial question about why he had not been vaccinated as an infant was easily answered. In 1952, Dr. Jonas Salk and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine were only beginning initial trials of their killed-virus polio vaccine.

There are several uncomfortable moments for the contemporary reader in this history. One is that Dr. Salk and his team tried out the vaccine first on physically and intellectually disabled children.

Good thing that controls on clinical trials are so much tighter now. In 1953, however, Salk did publicly inject himself, his wife and children with the vaccine.

The March of Dimes

The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis was a private effort founded by President Roosevelt in 1938 and later renamed “The March of Dimes.” That label is emblazoned in the minds of all Americans who were children at the time.

On April 25, 1954, the Vaccine Advisory Committee approved a field test of the Salk vaccine. That field test started the next day, April 26, 1954, my brother’s second birthday.

A calculated risk

However, the time leading up to the decision to launch a field test and then to immunize the population is fraught with tales of scientific assertions, dissents and controversies that can all be subsumed under the rubric of “a calculated risk.”

Suffice it to say that the contemporary reader has to admire the plain old everyday courage combined with deft scientific thinking exhibited by the many players in the design of the trials and in the decisions to carry out the vaccination program. Thomas Francis, Jr., MD, of the University of Michigan was a major leader.

Another admirable factor is the strong participation of state health departments in those halcyon days when public health was, well, healthy, respected and reasonably funded. That has not been the case in today’s United States for some time.

Ample numbers make good data

More than 1.3 million children participated in the trial and it took a year to analyze the results, which Dr. Francis announced on April 12, 1955. There seems often to be same or next day happenings in this story: The United States government licensed the distribution of the vaccine on April 13, 1955.

My brother fell ill with polio that summer. The vaccinations had not reached South Carolina in time for him.

The Cutter incident

Progress was not easy, however. Merely weeks after the trial results had been made public, the so-called Cutter incident traumatized the country. Cutter Labs in California had produced batches of vaccine but had not heeded the instructions of Dr. Salk.

These faulty vaccines caused 11 deaths and paralysis among hundreds to thousands of people. The U.S. Surgeon General suspended use of the vaccine pending review.

Government/academia acting in the public interest

Again, researchers and public health officials investigated and addressed the problems. They required manufacturers to make changes to safely produce the vaccine. Vaccinations were resumed.

In 1959, Albert Sabin, an American-Polish researcher, started trials in the Soviet Union of his live polio virus vaccine. Both the killed virus vaccine (Salk) and the live virus vaccine (Sabin) would be used over the next decades.

The worldwide effort to eliminate polio resulted in a 90% reduction of the disease by 2000. The battle toward complete elimination continues to this day.

Today’s vaccine battles

This history is telling with regard to the vaccination battles raging among the Trump Administration, scientists and government regulators, as well as in the press and social media these days.

I have been struck by the lack of any level of scientific understanding by many people, including the well-educated. This is definitely not the time to say that everyone should be encouraged to “do their own thing.”

Teaching the basics of epidemiology and public health in every country of the world is clearly in order.

There must be no rush

The history of the polio vaccine shows science and government working at deliberate, but not “warp,” speed.

It is important to note, as responsible scientists and regulators in U.S., European and other institutions are insisting, that the production, clinical trials, data analysis and distribution of vaccines require time and expertise.

In the public interest (what a concept), calculated risk in the hands of expert decision-makers working cooperatively makes sense, but there must be no rush.

A southern boy in no rush

My brother had a relatively light case of polio, but some vestiges remained. Once he told me that one of his college professors joked about seeing him walking across campus, remarking that “Langston was loping along, like a southern boy in no rush.”

I asked him if he had ever told the professor that he had had polio. He said, “No, I wouldn’t want to embarrass him.”

This article is republished from The Globalist: On a daily basis, we rethink globalization and how the world really hangs together. Thought-provoking cross-country comparisons and insights from contributors from all continents. Exploring what unites and what divides us in politics and culture. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And sign up for our highlights email here.

America’s dark side in the age of Trump

What pops into your head when you hear the number 1,000 in a political-military context? Having studied German military history, I immediately think of Adolf Hitler’s confident boast that his Third Reich would last a thousand years. In reality, of course, a devastating world war brought that Reich down in a mere 12 years. Only recently, however, such boasts popped up again in the dark dreams of Donald Trump. If Iran dared to attack the United States, Trump tweeted and then repeated on Fox & Friends, the U.S. would strike back with “1,000 times greater force.”

Think about that for a moment. If such typical Trumpian red-meat rhetoric were to become reality, you would be talking about a monumental war crime in its disproportionality. If, say, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard shot a missile at an American base in the region and killed 10 U.S. military personnel, Trump is saying that, in response, he’d then seek to kill 10,000 Iranians — an act that would recall Nazi reprisals in World War II when entire villages like Lidice were destroyed because one prominent Nazi official had been killed. Back then, Americans knew that such murderous behavior was evil. So why do so many of us no longer flinch at such madness?

If references to “evil” seem inappropriate to you, keep in mind that I was raised Catholic and one idea the priests and nuns firmly implanted in me then was the presence of evil in our world — and in me as a microcosm of that world. It’s a moral imperative — so they taught me — to fight evil by denying it, as much as humanly possible, a place in our lives, even turning the other cheek to avoid giving offense to our brothers and sisters. Christ, after all, didn’t teach us to whip someone 1,000 times if they struck you once.

Speaking of large numbers, I still recall Christ’s teaching on forgiveness. How many times, he asked, should we forgive those who offend us? Seven times, perhaps? No, seventy times seven. He didn’t, of course, mean 490 acts of forgiveness. Through that hyperbolic number, Christ was saying that forgiveness must be large and generous, as boundless as we imperfect humans can make it.

Trump loves hyperbolic numbers, but his are plainly in the service of boundless revenge, not forgiveness. His catechism is one of intimidation and, if that fails, retribution. It doesn’t matter if it takes the form of mass destruction and death (including, in the case of Americans, death bycoronavirus). By announcing such goals so openly, of course, he turns the rest of us into his accomplices. Passively or actively, if we do nothing, we accept the possibility of mass murder in the service of Trump’s dark dreams of smiting those who would dare strike at his version of America.

It’s easy to dismiss his threats as nothing more than red meat to his base, but they are also distinctly anti-Christian. The saddest thing, however, is that they are, unfortunately, not at all un-American, as any quick survey of this country’s record of wanton destructiveness in war would show.

So while I do reject all Trump’s murderous words and empty promises, I find them strangely unexceptional and unnervingly all-American. Indeed, my own guess is that he’s won such a boisterous following in this country precisely because he does so visibly, so thunderously, so bigly embody its darkest dreams of destruction, which have all too often become reality when visited upon recalcitrant peoples who refused to bend to our will.

Destruction as salvation

Americans today are sold an image of war as almost antiseptic — hardly surprising given our distance and detachment from this country’s “forever wars.” But as history reminds us, real war isn’t like that. It never was, not when colonists were killing Native Americans in vast numbers; nor when we were busy killing our fellow Americans in our Civil War; nor when U.S. troops were ruthlessly putting down the Filipino insurrection in the early twentieth century; nor when our air force firebombed Dresden, Tokyo, and so many other cities in World War II and later nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki; nor when North Korea was flattened by bombing in the early 1950s; nor when Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were bludgeoned by bombs, napalm, and Agent Orange in the 1960s and early 1970s; nor when Iraqis were killed by the tens of thousands during the first Gulf war of 1990-1991.

And that, of course, is only a partial and selective accounting of the wanton carnage overseen by past presidents. In reality, Americans have never been shy about killing on a mass scale in the alleged cause of righteousness and democracy.

In that sense, Trump’s rhetoric of mass destruction is truly nothing new under the sun (except perhaps in its pure blustering bravado); Trump, that is, just salivates more openly at the prospect of inflicting pain on a mass scale on peoples he doesn’t like. And even that isn’t as new as you might imagine.

In this century, Republicans have been especially keen to share their dreams of massively bombing others. On the campaign trail in 2007, to the tune of the Beach Boys’ cover “Barbara Ann,” Senator (and former bomber pilot and Vietnam POW) John McCain smirkingly sang of bombing Iran. (“Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran!”) Similarly, during the Republican presidential debates of 2016, Senator Ted Cruz boasted of wanting to “utterly destroy” the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by carpet-bombing its territory and, in doing so, making the desert sand “glow in the dark.” The implication was, of course, that as president he’d happily use nuclear weapons in the Middle East. (Talk about all options being on the table!)

Alarming? Yes! Very American? USA #1!

Consider two examples from the nuclear era, then and now. In the depth of the Cold War years, in response to a possible Soviet nuclear attack, this country’s war plans envisioned a simultaneous assault on the Soviet Union and China that military planners estimated would, in the end, kill 600 millionpeople. That would have been the equivalent of 100 Holocausts, notes Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who was privy to those plans.

Whether China had joined or even known about the Soviet attack didn’t matter. As communists, they were guilty by association and so to be obliterated anyway. Ellsberg notes that only one man present at the briefing where this “plan” was presented objected to such a mindless act of mass murder, David Shoup, a Marine general and Medal of Honor winner who would later similarly object to the Vietnam War.

Fast forward to today and our even more potentially planet-ending nuclear forces are still being “modernized” to the tune of $1.7 trillion over the coming decades. Any Ohio-class SSBN nuclear submarine in the Navy’s inventory, for example, could potentially kill millions of people with its 24 Trident II ballistic missiles (each carrying as many as eight nuclear warheads, each warhead with roughly six times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb). While such vessels are officially meant to “deter” nuclear war, they are, of course, ultimately built to fight one. Each is a submerged holocaust waiting to be unleashed.

Rarely, if ever, do we think about what those subs truly represent, historically speaking. Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to “invest” (as the military likes to say) in ever-newer generations of nuclear-capable bombers and land-based missiles, promising a holocaust of planetary proportions if ever used. To grasp what an actual nuclear war would mean, you would have to update an old saying: one death is a tragedy; several billion is a statistic.

Aggravating such essential collective madness in this moment (and the president’s fiery and furious fascination with such weaponry) is Trump’s recent cynical call for what might be thought of as the nuking of our history: the installation of a truly “patriotic” education in our schools (in other words, a history that would obliterate everything but his version of American greatness). That would, of course, include not just the legacy of slavery and other dark chapters in our past, but our continued willingness to build weaponry that has the instant capacity to end it all in a matter of hours.

As a history professor, I can tell you that such a version of our past would be totally antithetical to sound learning in this or any world. History must, by definition, be critical of the world we’ve created. It must be tough-minded and grapple with our actions (and inactions), crimes and all, if we are ever to grow morally stronger as a country or a people.

History that only focuses on the supposedly good bits, however defined, is like your annoying friend’s Facebook page — the one that shows photo after photo of smiling faces, gourmet meals, exclusive parties, puppies, ice cream, and rainbows, that features a flurry of status updates reducible to “I’m having the time of my life.” We know perfectly well, of course, that no one’s life is really like that — and neither is any country’s history.

History should, of course, be about understanding ourselves as we really are, our strengths and weaknesses, triumphs, tragedies, and transgressions. It would even have to include an honest accounting of how this country got one Donald J. Trump, a failed casino owner and celebrity pitchman, as president at a moment when most of its leaders were still claiming that it was the most exceptional country in the history of the universe. I’ll give you a hint: we got him because he represented a side of America that was indeed exceptional, just not in any way that was ever morally just or democratically sound.

Jingoistic history says, “My country, right or wrong, but my country.” Trump wants to push this a goosestep further to “My country and my leader, always right.” That’s fascism, not “patriotic” history, and we need to recognize that and reject it.

Learning without flinching from history

The United States has been the imperial power of record on this planet since World War II. Lately, the economic and moral aspects of that power have waned, even as our military power remains supreme (though without being able to win anything whatsoever). That should tell you something about America. We’re still a “SmackDown” country, to borrow a term from professional wrestling, in a world that’s increasingly being smacked down anyway.

Harold Pinter, the British playwright, caught this country’s imperial spirit well in his Nobel Prize lecture in 2005. America, he said then, has committed crimes that “have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Anyone with a knowledge of our history knows that there was truth indeed in what Pinter said 15 years ago. He noticed how this country’s leaders wielded language “to keep thought at bay.” Like George Orwell before him, Pinter was at pains to use plain language about war, noting how the Americans and British had “brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call[ed] it bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.”

The point here was not simply to bash America. It was to get us to think about our actions in genuine historical terms. A decade and a half ago, Pinter threw down a challenge, and even if you disagreed with him, or maybe especially if you did so, you need the intellectual tools and command of the facts to grapple with that critique. It should never be enough simply to shout “USA! USA!” in an ever-louder fashion and hope it will drown out not only critics and dissenters but reality itself — and perhaps even your own secret doubts.

And we should have such doubts. We should be ready to dissent. We should recognize, as America’s current attorney general most distinctly does not, that dissenters are often the truest patriots of all, even if they are also often the loneliest ones. We should especially have doubts about a leader who threatens to bring violence against another country 1,000 times greater than anything that country could visit upon us.

I don’t need the Catholic Church, or even Christ in the New Testament, to tell me that such thinking is wrong in a Washington that now seems to be offering a carnivorous taste of what a future American autocracy could be like. I just need to recall the wise words of my Polish mother-in-law: “Have a heart, if you’ve got a heart.”

Have a heart, America. Reject American carnage in all its forms.

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Why is Trump not facing impeachment over COVID-19?

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania have both tested positive for the coronavirus in what is perhaps the most shocking “October surprise” in the history of presidential races. If he recovers with only mild symptoms, he will undoubtedly make the case that he was right all along in downplaying the virus. If he suffers, he will gain sympathy from the public at large. Even in contracting the virus himself, he is likely to use it for his political gain. But none of this should obscure the fact that Trump’s negligence on the coronavirus ought to be the greatest stain on his presidency—and that’s saying a lot considering the lengthy list of his cruel deeds, lies, and many potential conflicts of interest and crimes.

If the House of Representatives felt a year ago that Trump’s attempt to use his office for political gain by manipulating Ukraine’s president was worthy of impeachment, then surely abrogating his responsibility to protect people from a predictable and deadly disease is far worse. The evidence of his wrongdoing is all out in the open, and the impact of it is far greater as measured in human lives than anything he has done since 2017. Not impeaching him on this issue in essence lets him off the hook for transgressions too vast to be ignored. Voting him out of office is a good short-term mechanism to stop the crime. But it is neither guaranteed to work nor is it a means by which to hold him accountable for the mass deaths he has overseen.

According to Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers, a president may be impeached for, “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.” If the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate can rush through a Supreme Court justice’s nomination in record speed, surely the Democrat-controlled House can impeach Trump over his deadly misconduct on the coronavirus pandemic now through the November 3 election and beyond.

Just for starters, Trump lied to the American people about the coronavirus. As commander in chief, he would have known that a pandemic was a serious possibility because the U.S. military knew, and officials briefed him specifically about COVID-19 twice in January. A month later, Trump admitted in a taped conversation with journalist Bob Woodward that he was aware of how contagious and deadly it was while at the same time telling the public, “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” He downplayed the disease dozens of times and continues to do so. That is all the evidence investigators need to establish that Trump deliberately lied to the American public about a deadly threat to the nation and he is therefore himself a threat to the people.

Trump didn’t just fail to protect the American people—he has not even tried. Throughout his presidency, he has used scare tactics to warn against imaginary invasions of immigrants, anarchists, criminals, rapists and more. His government has countered these claims with specific policies such as harsh anti-immigrant policies separating children from parents, a violent federal crackdown on cities like Portland, Oregon, and more. But when it came to a slow-moving, deadly and very real threat such as the coronavirus, he did not take serious action beyond self-aggrandizing press briefings. Even those were stopped when reporters rightly questioned him about his lack of action. There has been no plan now for many months to prevent infections and save lives. Plenty of other nations managed to come up with ways to tackle the disease and succeeded to varying degrees.

Trump undermined the single cheapest, easiest, and most effective tool against the disease: masks. He deliberately muddied the water on mask-wearing as protection from the disease, repeatedly claiming that it might not help while alternately saying he didn’t have a problem with wearing one. But researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, whose model the White House Coronavirus Task Force has relied on, made clear that tens of thousands of lives could be saved by December 2020 if most people began wearing masks as late as August of this year. The U.S. Postal Service in April was readying a plan to mail 650 million cotton face masks to Americans, but the White House intervened to stop it. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, strongly emphasized mask-wearing as powerful protection during a congressional hearing, only to have Trump undermine him in public a day later. The whims of a single madman at the helm of the nation weakened the best protection for the public from the coronavirus ahead of a safe and effective vaccine being made available.

Trump had ensured that he personally remained safe (until now) but allowed the public to face risk. Aside from mask-wearing, a policy of aggressive testing and contact tracing would have been an effective tool to reduce the number of infections. But in the president’s mind, exposing the extent of the disease in order to control it is a bad idea. Trump repeatedly claimed that testing was part of the problem of the disease, not the solution, because it made him look bad. He said the quiet part out loud when he told his supporters that he has asked his government to “slow the testing down, please.” In other words, he has wanted to cover up the true spread of the virus. Interestingly, the White House has an aggressive protocol in place to try to ensure Trump didn’t get infected, using an effective rapid-testing and contact-tracing method that is a microcosm of what the entire nation needs (minus Trump’s personal undermining of his own protocol). Yet Trump’s White House opposed government spending on testing and tracing for the American public. When asked why he held dangerous indoor rallies where mask-wearing was not enforced, Trump made clear that his own health was protected, as that was all that matters. Indeed, to him it was. The news that he recently tested positive for the virus despite the White House protocols shows he can’t lie his way out of the dangers of the spread and dangers of COVID-19.

Instead of deploying a systematic approach to the virus based on masks, testing and tracing, Trump has instead placed bets on the ephemeral promise of a vaccine that he is convinced will be unveiled within weeks, contrary to predictions by his own government officials. Trump has poured billions of tax dollars into the coffers of private pharmaceutical companies with abandon and attempted to interfere in the vaccine approval process by the Food and Drug Administration. It is no surprise that there is deep public skepticism of vaccine safety and efficacy.

While Trump has no plan to curb the disease, he does have a plan to make himself look good ahead of the November 3 election. The CDC, whose credibility Trump has destroyed through political appointments, was supposed to be our best defense against a deadly disease like COVID-19. But according to an explosive report in Politico, the Department of Health and Human Services has drawn money meant for the CDC in order to launch a $300 million public relations campaign to positively spin the government’s response to the virus. A top spokesperson for the HHS, Michael Caputo, who stepped down recently, conceived the plan, saying the ad campaign was “demanded of me by the president of the United States. Personally.” One former Obama-era HHS official was shocked, saying, “CDC hasn’t yet done an awareness campaign about COVID guidelines—but they are going to pay for a campaign about how to get rid of our despair? Run by political appointees in the press shop? Right before an election?”

During the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the president repeatedly claimed that 200,000 Americans dying of COVID-19 was a blessing and claimed fantastically that under a Biden presidency, 2 million would have died. His only defense for why the United States has about 20 percent of global deaths with less than 5 percent of the population was to claim without evidence that China and India’s death tolls are undercounts. Not only is the current death rate in the U.S. higher than in most nations around the world, but fatalities from the coronavirus also exceed even the worst-case projections made by the IHME model that the White House frequently uses. And, as Biden rightly said during the debate, “The president has no plan. He hasn’t laid out anything. He knew all the way back in February how serious this crisis was. He knew it was a deadly disease.”

Laying out Trump’s criminal negligence of the pandemic is an easy exercise. He has numbed the American people so much to his bluster, rapid-fire lies, gaslighting, unethical deeds and corruption, that we are giving him a pass on the mass deaths he has helped to cause by simply relying on an election to oust him. Just because we are fatigued by his endless criminality does not mean that the ever-increasing death toll from the disease ought to be swept under the rug. The staggering crime is not even over—it continues through to today and racks up more victims daily.

President hospitalized at Walter Reed for “the next few days” following COVID-19 diagnosis

President Donald Trump — who the White House said has displayed “mild symptoms” of COVID-19 following his announcement that he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the disease — was taken by helicopter on Friday to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he will be hospitalized for “the next few days.”

“Out of an abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of his physician and medical experts, the president will be working from the presidential offices at Walter Reed for the next few days,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement.

Three people familiar with Trump’s condition told NBC News that the president was experiencing a low-grade fever. McEnany said the president was in “good spirits” and had been working “throughout the day” despite having “mild symptoms.”

Trump released a video recorded at the White House, in which he expressed gratitude for “tremendous support.”

“I think I’m doing very well, but we’re going to make sure that things work out. The first lady is doing very well,” he said.

Trump was photographed crossing the White House lawn to a helicopter, wearing a suit and a mask. The president offered a thumbs-up, but he did not take questions.

Ahead of the announcement, the White House released a letter from Trump’s doctor saying the president had been injected with an experimental antibody cocktail, and has been taking vitamins, aspirin and an antacid recently demonstrated to possibly ameliorate symptoms.

The letter said the president was fatigued, while Melania had a mild cough and headache.

Presidential aides, concerned that Trump was “feeling poorly” on Wednesday, began to “worry he had the coronavirus,” according to Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs. Aides privately told The New York Times that there was concern in the executive mansion that Trump “has comorbidities that could make him more susceptible to a severe bout of the virus.”

CNN’s Jim Acosta later reported on Friday evening that a Trump campaign adviser had called the president’s condition “serious.” The president was “very fatigued” and having “trouble breathing,” according to the White House correspondent.

twitter.com/atrupar/status/1312183105881423873?s=21

A White House spokesperson told Salon that the president had not lapsed in his daily testing routine. Asked when Trump had specifically tested positive, the spokesperson referred Salon to the memo which Dr. Sean Conley, his physician, had released on Friday morning.

The memo reads, “This evening I received confirmation that both President Trump and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.” The White House did not immediately respond when asked what previous test had been confirmed.

The president interacted with “dozens” of people on Thursday after flying to a fundraiser at his Bedminster, N.J., club, even though the White House had been notified that top aide Hope Hicks had tested positive, according to multiple reports.

Last November, Trump made a secretive and unusual visit to Walter Reed, which came under renewed scrutiny after The New York Times’ Michael Schmidt reported in a book that Vice President Mike Pence had been placed on standby in case Trump had to be anesthetized. Trump said the report was false, and he made a seemingly unprompted denial that he had experienced “mini-strokes.”

The president showed up too late to be tested at Tuesday’s debate against Democratic nominee Joe Biden, which was held at the Cleveland Clinic. A spokesperson for the clinic told Salon that Trump was scheduled for an advance walk-through and sound test, during which he was slated be tested. Trump did not arrive early enough.

Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, both tested negative on Friday. The White House said it expects more staff will test positive.

Trump’s age, weight put him at “high risk” among COVID-19 patients

President Donald Trump stunned the world on early Friday morning when he tweeted that he and First Lady Melania Trump had been diagnosed with COVID-19. Later that day, he was hospitalized at Walter Reed to be treated for his condition. One day earlier it was announced that Trump’s senior adviser Hope Hicks, who regularly travels with him, had also tested positive for the deadly disease.

The 74-year-old Trump’s diagnosis is alarming given the health risks that someone of his age and disposition faces. As a recent compilation of COVID-19 studies reported in Nature noted, the statistics are grim for seniors who are diagnosed with COVID-19. Indeed, of those in their mid-seventies and older who test positive for COVID-19, roughly 116 out of 1,000 (meaning 11.6%) will die. Those mortality statistics are based on the cases observed in the United States; so far, over 200,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, and its victims are disproportionately elderly.

Dr. Russell Medford, chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, warned that Trump has compounding health conditions that may make his diagnosis more severe.

“The president has several risk factors that we know factor into a more serious response to a COVID-19 infection compared to a younger person or a person without those risk factors,” Medford told Salon. “These include his age, his weight and other factors involving metabolic syndrome, potentially. All of these we know, from past experience with patients with COVID, confer a higher risk for complications and potential mortality. I cannot comment on the specific case for the president.”

Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California — San Francisco, wrote to Salon that recent data shows people with higher viral loads are more likely to exhibit severe symptoms. She added that “the viral inoculum (dose) that a patient imbibes is decreased from masking and social distancing. The ability of this lower dose to lead to less severe disease is from a more organized adaptive immune response and a less disregulated innate immune response.” Trump has observably been reluctant to wear a mask and observe social distancing, which means that voters should be alarmed if Trump is exhibiting symptoms, since “this indicates that those with symptoms are more likely to have higher viral loads, which is played out in other studies (but not all).”

Indeed, studies have found that mask-wearing limits the dose of virus that a potential patient inhales, and that those who frequently wear masks tend to get far less sick even if they do contract COVID-19. Trump’s recently-documented behavior — he was observed in groups not wearing a mask multiple times in the days preceding his diagnosis — means he is more likely to have a higher viral load. As the New York Times reported, “On the way back from the [presidential] debate, Jared Kushner, the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, could be seen in a staff cabin, speaking animatedly to his colleagues with no mask covering his face. Upon landing at Joint Base Andrews in the middle of a heavy rainstorm, others on Air Force One huddled together to share an umbrella.”

Like Medford, Gandhi argued that Trump “has four risk factors for severe disease in my opinion — being 74 years old, being overweight, the possibility he has been exposed to a higher viral inoculum or dose because he doesn’t mask and the fact that he was exposed to someone who was symptomatic (Hope Hicks).”

Melania Trump is at much lower risk for COVID-19. For those in their 50s, as Melania Trump is, only 5 in 1000 died of COVID-19 or complications, the same Nature report noted.

Trump being infected with the novel coronavirus is perhaps not surprising, given that he himself has eschewed the wisdom of the scientific community that advised him on how to prevent and stave off the virus.

“There is no question that [the administration’s] whole approach to this disease has not been science-based. It remains to be seen who gets sick and and how they got sick,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and former secretary of health in Maryland, told Salon. “The question is whether or not he infected others or others infected him. We don’t know yet, but he certainly did not use all of the public health protections that we have. A mask, as an example, is the obvious one to give himself the best protection that he could have had.”

There is evidence backing up Benjamin’s hypothesis. The director of the Tulsa Health Department claimed in July that Trump’s political rally in that state “more than likely” led to a surge of COVID-19 cases. Likewise, it has been confirmed that Trump had close contact with “dozens” of people after being exposed to the disease. Trump admitted to reporter Bob Woodward back in February that he was downplaying the virus, and he waited more than 10 weeks to declare a national emergency after first being informed that the pandemic had reached the United States.

Trump has repeatedly denigrated Biden for taking precautions like wearing a mask, saying during the presidential debate earlier this week that “I wear a mask, when needed — when needed, I wear masks. I don’t — I don’t wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from me, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.” He also claimed that “so far we have had no problem whatsoever” when it comes to people getting sick at his rallies, and insisted that Biden was not holding large rallies because he was not popular.

Trump has downplayed the need to wear masks on many other occasions as well, prompting Dr. Allan Lichtman, a political scientist at American University, to tell Salon in July that “it’s a horrible message. It shows he doesn’t care about the health of his constituents. He cares more about his own image than he does about keeping the people around him safe.” Lichtman also pointed out that “there is nothing unmasculine about wearing a mask. It is not a show of weakness to wear a mask anymore than it is a show of weakness not to drive drunk.”

“Kingdom of Silence”: A wrenching look at how Jamal Khashoggi’s life is a story as big as his death

Two years ago Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and never came out. Initial reports that he was being held against his will soon gave way to a far grislier truth – that Khashoggi, an exiled Saudi national living, had been murdered and dismembered. CIA intelligence later indicated his assassination was ordered by Saudi Arabia crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Beyond that shocking crime and Donald Trump’s disgraceful refusal to publicly condemn bin Salman, most people know very little about who Khashoggi was.

Rick Rowley’s “Kingdom of Silence” speaks to that insofar as a documentary can flesh out a complicated life within 98 minutes – which is to say, enough to fill in the trace marks barely defined by the stories surrounding his death.

Rowley attained deep access here, journeying to cities across the globe, including into Saudi Arabia itself, to piece together a narrative that connects Khashoggi’s long career and the relationships he developed to policies that impact our lives even now.

In examining Khashoggi’s professional life from its beginning, when he was journalist who traveled with mujahideen in Afghanistan and became close friends with Osama Bin Laden, to its untimely end, Rowley draws a map of how journalistic censorship can extinguish a nation’s democratic ambitions almost overnight.

If Khashoggi’s critiques of the Saudi regime were unsparing, “Kingdom of Silence” shows that his disillusionment was in no small part rooted in heartbreak. He used to be one of the Saudi government’s most ardent boosters and defenders to the Western world . . . that is, until those who supported him were deposed, extinguishing the hope that the quickly quashed Arab Spring in 2011 would inspire a modern openness, at least for the region’s truth tellers.

We exist in a time defined by statistics and symbols – and Khashoggi unfortunately became a bit of both in death. He’s a public example of the mortal danger journalists face from oppressive governments instead of defending those who put their lives on the line to keep us informed.

But this assessment misses the complex nature of Khashoggi’s relationship with the Saudi Royal family, one of such intense trust under prior regimes as to give him a front row seat to decision-making at the highest levels of power.

The plainest evaluation the viewer may glean from “Kingdom of Silence” is that Khashoggi was a man whose heart remained forever loyal to his home nation despite its government’s transformation into the antithesis of what he dreamed for it.

Khashoggi’s written words, read by actor Nasser Faris, alongside the testimonials of the people who knew him best, become a lyrical guide through inflection points in the fraught history of relations between the United States and the Saudis.

His curiosity and enthusiasm about the shifting contours of the Middle East enabled him to grow close to some of the most consequential figures in modern history; New Yorker writer Laurence Wright describes Khashoggi’s relationship with the young bin Laden as a journalist viewing his subject “with stars in his eyes.”

Telling the story of that link is not a warning about journalists getting too close to their subjects but rather a hint at why Khashoggi was marked for death by some of the world’s wealthiest and least forgiving men. That connection explains how he evolved from a reliable loyalist to the man who knew too much.

Rowley gained access to a variety of people who knew Khashoggi by his work or personally – colleagues at the Washington Post, peers in his field including Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara, and government officials who understood the value of his expertise in the region, including former CIA director John Brennan and retired diplomat David Rundell, who spent 30 years serving American interest in the Middle East and is one of the foremost experts on Saudi Arabia.

Owing to the variety of personalities Rowley features here, forming a concise opinion about who Khashoggi was proves challenging. But this is where “Kingdom of Silence” assumes a weight that may otherwise be lacking in rosier remembrances; the film explains that he was not a dissident but an outcast appealing to the better nature of a people and a culture in spite of the rulers devoted to suppressing them.

It is extraordinary to view the trajectory of modern relations between the Middle East and the United States through one man’s career. But Rowley’s assessment of Khashoggi through “Kingdom of Silence” acknowledges the profile’s incompleteness, as any truthful portrait of a man and his contradictions would be. Khashoggi may have openly expressed his opinions but was selective in the details he shared about his own life, even with those who considered themselves close friends.

And that honesty lends a potent horror to the film’s methodically detailed account of how Khashoggi was lured to his death, a remarkable contrast to the touches of soulfulness that precede those segments. In itself, this walkthrough is wrenching. Rowley turns up the chilliness by following the sequence with Rundell, the diplomat, offering only his assessment that the importance of maintaining America’s strategic alliance with the Saudis “outweighs the death of one person.”

Another documentary about Khashoggi, this one from “Icarus” director Bryan Fogel, is titled “The Dissident” and will be released at some point in the future. “Kingdom of Silence” leaves the impression that such a term doesn’t easily fit here, that so many aspects of the man are unknowable and a wealth of him left unsaid. Such ambiguity only makes the film that more absorbing and visceral to experience.

“Kingdom of Silence” premieres at 9 p.m. Friday, Oct.2 on Showtime, and is currently streaming for free online at SHO.com, on streaming platforms, on demand and YouTube below.

Bill Murray is back as a lovable rascal in Sofia Coppola’s poignantly charming “On the Rocks”

In Sofia Coppola’s charming “On the Rocks,” Felix (Bill Murray) invokes the old refrain, “Women. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em,” while talking with his daughter, Laura (Rashida Jones). She calls him out for his wandering eye. But the refrain really should be, “Men. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em,” because Laura is the one having the relationship crisis.

Laura’s difficulty starts when husband Dean (Marlon Wayans), who travels frequently for business, comes home and kisses her while she is asleep. He stops abruptly when she speaks. Is the sound of her voice that grating? Is Dean out of it and thinks he’s kissing someone else? Panic sets in. Laura refuses to believe her husband is having an affair. She is unwilling to ask Dean because, “It’s probably nothing.” But she also thinks Dean sees her as, “a buzzkill who wants to schedule things.” And maybe she does not really want to know the truth.

However, the idea plagues Laura enough that she reluctantly mentions it to Felix, the other man she can’t live without. Felix is a retired art dealer who has too much time and too much money on his hands. Felix also loves this daughter so much that he wants to follow Dean to get to the root of the problem. He even sets up a hot watch (surveillance via credit card use) to track Dean’s purchases (without asking his daughter first).

For Laura, this situation is a predicament. For Felix, it’s an opportunity for misadventure.

“On the Rocks” gets mileage out of this simple “Is Dean cheating or not?” plot — which was also the basis for the hilarious comedy, “The Daytrippers,” back in 1996 — because its leads are so fabulous. Murray gives an effortless and effervescent performance as a wily, rascally troublemaker who gleefully delights in antics that he knows his daughter won’t approve of — like giving Laura’s two kids egg creams before dinner. When she reprimands him, he wisecracks, “Who’d want them after?”

Jones plays straight man to the clownish, deadpan Felix well, giving withering looks that express her bemusement, embarrassment, wonder and frustration all at once, as when Felix tries to charm his way out of a ticket, or sings “Mexicali Rose” to a group of adoring women. Laura can’t resist her father either, and her irritation at him flirting with a waitress, or any female for that matter, is as much her disdain for his sexist behavior as it is for her having to share Felix with anyone else.

There is a backstory to the particular dynamics of their relationship but when “On the Rocks” has Laura call Felix on that, he answers his daughter thoughtfully, truthfully, and respectfully. It’s a beautiful moment that explains, but does not excuse, his bad behavior. It is as poignant and as tender as a scene where Felix gives his daughter a birthday gift she cherishes or tells her, “I remember the first moment I recognized you as a person. I saw who you were.”

The father/daughter bond is why the film is so enchanting. Watching Felix and Laura eat caviar in a convertible sportscar while on a stakeout is sweet, especially when the moment segues into a comic chase scene.

Coppola is all about showing the privilege Laura and Felix have, from their expensive lunches at 21 and Felix mocking Soho House and waxing nostalgic for the Knickerbocker Club. It is pointless to fault the film for inviting viewers into the fancy restaurants and luxurious homes that should be featured in lifestyle magazines. This is Coppola’s milieu. Even when the characters take a trip to a resort in Mexico it is best to just go with the fairy tale vibe.

Coppola is not being shallow though; there is a real heart to these characters. The emotions are what ground the film. Despite the madcap adventures, the film has a melancholy streak. (Chet Baker isn’t on the soundtrack by accident). Laura is worried about her marriage and she does not want to face the prospect of a life without Dean. When she sheds a tear that splashes into her martini — a gorgeous image, actually — it illustrates just how affected she is by the possibility of making a discovery that could change everything.

There may be viewers who won’t care, but Jones makes Laura sympathetic in her rut. Yes, she endures the incessant ramblings of Vanessa (Jenny Slate) who talks (and talks and talks) as they drop off and pick their kids up from school. And yes, she suffers the nitpicking of her mother when she attends a family lunch. Laura is put-upon. She has all the domestic responsibilities while Dean is out breadwinning, and she is “creatively stifled” regarding what to write for her book that is under contract. (A feeble metaphor for her marital limbo).

But Coppola understands the dynamics between men and women, fathers and daughters, and husbands and wives, which is why “On the Rocks” resonates.

“On the Rocks” opens in select theatres on Friday, Oct. 2 and will stream on Apple TV+ beginning Oct. 23.

Joe Biden tests negative for COVID-19 after possible exposure during debate against Trump

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has tested negative for the novel coronavirus just days after he was potentially exposed to it during a debate with President Donald Trump.

PBS News’ Yamiche Alcindor reports that both Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, tested negative for the disease, hours after President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump both tested positive. It was also announced on Friday that Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris tested negative for COVID-19.

In a message sent over his Twitter account, Biden acknowledged the test results and said that “I hope this serves as a reminder: wear a mask, keep social distance, and wash your hands.”

There had been concern about Biden potentially catching the virus after he stood just feet away from an infected Trump at Tuesday night’s debate.

During that debate, Trump mocked Biden for wearing a face mask so often, to which Biden responded by calling the president a “fool.”

Since then, several prominent Republicans — including the president, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel — have tested positive for the virus.

Harvey Weinstein charged with three more rapes in Beverly Hills

Harvey Weinstein was hit with six additional criminal charges on Friday, stemming from three alleged rapes in Beverly Hills.

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Weinstein allegedly raped a woman at a hotel sometime between September 2004 and September 2005. Weinstein is also accused of raping a second woman on two occasions in November 2009 and November 2010.

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The Beverly Hills Police Department investigated the cases, which were presented to the D.A.’s office for filing consideration on Sept. 15.

Weinstein, 68, was already awaiting extradition to Los Angeles to face sexual assault and rape charges related to three other victims. He is currently serving a 23-year sentence in state prison near Buffalo, N.Y., after being convicted in New York City in February of rape and sexual assault.

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An extradition hearing is set for Dec. 11.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah reveals positive test for COVID-19 following Trumps

Another well-known Republican has announced that he has tested positive for COVID-19: Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. Lee’s announcement follows the news that President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and White House adviser Hope Hicks have all tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

On Friday, the Utah Republican tweeted, “Yesterday morning, I was experiencing symptoms consistent with long-time allergies. Out of an abundance of caution, I sought medical advice and was tested for COVID-19. Unlike the test I took just a few days back while visiting the White House, yesterday’s test came back positive. On advice from the Senate attending physician, I will remain isolated for the next ten days.”

Lee, however, stressed in his e-mail that he is still hoping a Senate vote on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court will be held sooner rather than later. Senate Judiciary confirmation hearings for Trump’s high court nominee are schedule to begin on Monday, Oct. 12.

Lee tweeted, “I have spoken with (Senate Majority) Leader (Mitch) McConnell and (Senate Judiciary Committee) Chairman (Lindsey) Graham and assured them I will back to work in time to join my Judiciary Committee colleagues in advancing the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett in the Committee and then to the full Senate.”

Hope Hicks “frustrated with Trump” over “cavalier approach to the virus” after positive test: report

In the wake of President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump testing positive for coronavirus, Gabriel Sherman reports for Vanity Fair that “Trumpworld is gripped by fear and panic” as the news settles in.

Sherman cites a New York Times report that says Trump is exhibiting “coldlike symptoms,” adding that he’s spoken to two sources inside the White House who say Trump is experiencing a cough and a fever. Melania is reportedly asymptomatic.

“‘They are worried about the president because of his age,’ one of the sources said. Sources said Trump will likely want to be seen in public as soon as possible to blunt the narrative that he is sidelined by the virus he’s spent the last six months downplaying. ‘He’s going to want to get out there a lot sooner than people think,’ the former official said. ‘But it will be hard to hide if he’s sick. Also, who will want to be in a room with him?'” Sherman writes, adding that the White House didn’t respond to his request for comment.

Sherman adds that sources tell him that aides are worried about how Trump’s diagnosis will affect the remainder of the campaign.

“There really can be nothing for 14 days. It’s as if the campaign ended yesterday,” a former West Wing official told Sherman.

Trump confidant Hope Hicks tested positive before Trump and the first lady and is reportedly experiencing symptoms. Two sources speaking to Sherman said she has had a high fever and a cough and has lost her sense of smell.

“Hicks is said to be frustrated with Trump for taking such a cavalier approach to the virus. She was one of the few West Wing staffers to wear a mask in meetings, which her colleagues chided her for,” Sherman writes, adding that she was “made fun of because she wore a mask,” according to a friend.

“Sources told me Hicks is also upset that news coverage has made it appear that she gave Trump the virus, when in fact no one knows where he got it,” Sherman reports.

Read the full report over at Vanity Fair.

“Who gives a f*ck”: Melania Trump puts migrant children and Christmas on blast in profane tirade

First lady Melania Trump downplayed her husband’s family separation policy in a secret phone recording released by a former adviser on Thursday.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former close friend and adviser to the first lady who drew scrutiny over her role in President Donald Trump’s pricey inauguration before writing a tell-all book defending herself, handed over a recording from summer of 2018 to CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“They say I’m complicit. I’m the same like him. I support him. I don’t say enough. I don’t do enough where I am,” Melania Trump complained to Wolkoff in the recording while discussing her trip to a child detention facility. (The first lady infamously wore a coat saying “I really don’t care, do u?” on the trip.)

“I’m working . . . my ass off on the Christmas stuff — that you know. Who gives a f*ck about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right? OK,” she said. “And then I do it, and I say that I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas. And they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a f*cking break. Where they were saying anything when Obama did that? I cannot go, ‘I was trying get the kid reunited with the mom. I didn’t have a chance — needs to go through the process and through the law.'”

In secretly recorded audio, Melania Trump says about reporters asking her about kids separated at border: "Give me a fucking break." She assails the "liberal media," says she doesn't want to do a story on Fox, and adds, "Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decorations?" pic.twitter.com/Ia2U2WmzN5

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 2, 2020

However, her husband’s policy was not the same as former President Barack Obama’s policy. Under Obama, children were separated only when authorities had concerns about their well-being or could not confirm if an adult was their legal guardian. Trump’s policy separated all children from their families at the border until a judge forced the administration to stop.

Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, criticized Wolkoff over the tape’s release.

“Secretly taping the first lady and willfully breaking an NDA to publish a salacious book is a clear attempt at relevance,” she said in a statement to CNN. “The timing of this continues to be suspect — as does this never-ending exercise in self-pity and narcissism.”

Earlier in the recording, Melania Trump argued that the child detention centers had better conditions than the areas from which the migrant children had fled.

“The kids, they say, ‘Wow I will have my own bed? I will sleep on the bed? I will have a cabinet for my clothes?’ It’s so sad to hear it, but they didn’t have that in their own countries. They sleep on the floor,” she said. “They are taken care of nicely there. But you know, yeah, they are not with parents. It’s sad. But when they come here alone, or with coyotes or illegally — you know, you need to do something.”

She also echoed her husband’s claim that families are “teached” to say that they would be in danger if they return to their home countries.

“It’s not true that they would. You know what I mean,” she said. “They’re not professional, but they are teached by other people what to say to come over and to, you know, let them go to stay here. Because they could easily stay in Mexico, but they don’t want to stay in Mexico because Mexico doesn’t take care of them the same as America does.”

Elsewhere in the recording, the first lady echoed her husband’s criticism of the “liberal media.”

“I’m driving liberals crazy. That’s for sure,” she said. “And that, you know . . . And they deserve it. You understand. And everybody’s like, ‘Oh, my God. This is the worst. This is the worst.’ After — I mean, come on. They are crazy, OK?”

Wolkoff, who had been friends with Melania for more than a decade, went on to become the first lady’s senior adviser at the White House. But Wolkoff’s relationship with the Trump family soured after documents showed that her firm had been paid more than $26 million to organize events around the inauguration.

Wolkoff said she believed she would be scapegoated in the investigation into Trump’s inauguration. Documents show her firm got $1.6 million, while the rest went to contractors. She personally earned about $500,000 from the inauguration, according to The New York Times.

Wolkoff recorded about a year’s worth of conversations with Melania after she was fired from her unpaid position as adviser in 2018 amid scrutiny into the inaugural spending.

Wolkoff told Cooper on Thursday that the family separation policy had “set off” the first lady’s “maternal instincts,” but she fell in line with the administration’s agenda in the end.

“Regardless of that, she steps in line, and she just decides that what she has heard and what she’s been told is what the rule of law is in our country,” Wolkoff said of Trump. “On the flip side, Melania — the traditions of first lady and president have gone out the window with this couple. And I feel that if there were — there is so much that could be done, but again, no support. No understanding.”

“They want to kiss”: Trump appears to blame troops and cops for spreading virus to his inner circle

President Donald Trump appeared to blame members of the military and law enforcement units for spreading COVID-19 to his inner circle in a Thursday interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity when he claimed that uniformed officials often want to “hug” and “kiss” members of his team out of gratitude for the “good job” the administration has done.

“You know, it’s very hard, when you’re with soldiers, when you’re with airmen, when you’re with Marines. And I’m with — and the police officers,” the president said, not long after reports surfaced that top adviser Hope Hicks had contracted the virus. “I’m with them so much. And when they come over here, it’s very hard to say, ‘Stay back. Stay back.’ It’s a tough kind of a situation.”

Trump, who the White House at one point claimed was being checked “multiple” times a day for COVID-19, told Hannity that he would undergo testing following Hicks’ positive diagnosis. The president later disclosed in an early-morning tweet on Friday that he and the first lady had both tested positive and would quarantine for 14 days. (The diagnosis revelation became Trump’s most “liked” and shared tweet, according to the Agence France-Press, accruing more than 1.2 million likes within an eight-hour span.)

“I just went for a test, and we’ll see what happens. I mean, who knows?” Trump said to Hannity. “But you know her very well. She’s fantastic, and she’s done a great job.”

The president then returned to the topic of troops and police.

“But it’s very, very hard when you are with people from the military or law enforcement, and they come over to you, and they want to hug you. And they want to kiss you, because we really have done a good job for them,” Trump added. “And you get close, and things happen. I was surprised to hear, with Hope. But she’s a very warm person with them, and she — she knows there’s a risk, but she is young.”

The Atlantic published a bombshell exposé in early September detailing disparaging comments Trump had allegedly made in private about members of the military who were killed in the line of duty. While Trump had made similar remarks publicly, he ridiculed the anonymously-source report as “disgrace” and “a fake story.”

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post pointed out that Trump appeared to be blaming soldiers and police for spreading the disease to his team. The Post’s Aaron Blake observed that Trump’s remarks to Hannity were “an odd way” to account for Hicks’ diagnosis.

“However much military members and law enforcement appreciate what the Trump White House has done for them, are they really going up to Trump’s low-profile senior counselor, who rarely speaks publicly, to hug her and try to kiss her?” he wrote.

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale has noted that Trump often relates unverified “tales about macho men breaking into tears of gratitude in his presence” who suspiciously call him “sir.”

Earlier this week, Trump told a rally crowd that he had just met a construction worker who was teary with appreciation. He has, as Dale observed on Wednesday, told similar stories about a coal miner, a farmer, a steelworker and a man who looked “as big as a ‘football player.'”

“The common feature of the character in these stories is that they are male, tough and large, and that, before crying upon meeting Trump in a setting with no independent witnesses, they have never cried before, can’t remember crying before or only cried when they were a baby,” Dale said.

Dale pointed out that Trump once gave a 2019 speech in which he said a number of “strong, tough” farmers, ranchers and construction workers had allegedly wept when they joined him at a 2017 executive order signing ceremony.

“Half of them were crying,” he told the American Farm Bureau Federation, including one man who Trump said appeared so tough that he might not have cried even “when he was a baby.”

“He was crying,” Trump insisted. “He said, ‘Sir, you gave me back my life. You gave me back my property.'”

The signing ceremony happened on camera. No one wept.

Trump has COVID-19: More evidence that he’s always put his ego ahead of public health

Did you know that Donald Trump needs to wear reading glasses?

It’s reasonable that you might not know that. The president, who may have both the biggest and most fragile ego on the planet, goes to great pains to hide the fact that, like most people over 70, he can’t read printed text without a little magnification. But there’s proof, in the form of a video deposition in the Trump University fraud case that the folks at Mother Jones got their hands on recently.

To be clear, Mother Jones reporter David Corn takes the high road in his story, focusing on the facts of the case without even mentioning that Trump must put on his glasses to read the legal documents. I am not so noble. It’s just more proof that Trump, who loves to rant in disconcertingly fascistic fashion about his “good genes,” is obsessed with presenting himself as some kind of Übermensch who is untouched by the biological realities of aging, even those that people can see with their own two eyes. He has made his doctor deny that he’s fat. He has denied having “mini-strokes” — which was very strange, because no one had said he did. He spends an ungodly amount of time and money on that elaborate combover to make it look like he’s not balding.

Now the phony Übermensch has COVID-19. While we can expect Trump will do his level best to hide any symptoms, he can no longer pretend that he’s somehow above ordinary human weaknesses, such as catching a highly contagious disease.

Trump’s ego, coupled with his disgust for any kind of physical fragility — this is the man who sneered about wounded war veterans that “nobody wants to see that” — has been a major reason that the coronavirus pandemic spiraled out of control in this country.

From the very first hints that the virus was going to be a problem, Trump treated the situation the way he treats his faltering eyesight: as an embarrassing weakness to be hidden away, instead of a problem to be dealt with openly and honestly.

In fact, Trump clearly thinks the existence of the coronavirus is a personal insult directed at him, and has turned it into a personal loyalty test for his staff, his supporters and other Republican politicians to act like the pandemic is no big deal.

The results, of course, have been devastating. Because so many Republican governors gave into Trump’s wishes to “reopen” their states too quickly, the pandemic exploded across the country. Trump’s signaling that he found mask-wearing and social distancing personally offensive has made it worse, by encouraging Republican voters nationwide to shun basic public health measures to slow the virus. The results never fail to be stunning: Nearly 7.3 million infected as of Friday morning, and more than 208,000 dead.

As recently as during Tuesday night’s debate in Cleveland, Trump mocked his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, for wearing a mask, sarcastically noting, “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

Now we can count not just the president and his wife but a spiraling number of White House aides and Republican politicians among the infected — and yes, Trump himself is to blame for this. A surge of reporting overnight and into Friday morning only underscores how reckless Trump, who always puts his fragile ego ahead of the well-being of everyone else, has been with the health of the people closest to him.

He has held rallies and campaign events that are largely mask-free, and often indoors. He has discouraged his staff from wearing masks around him. Trump knew he had potentially been exposed to the virus through his aide, Hope Hicks, who traveled with him twice aboard Air Force One on Tuesday and reportedly began showing symptoms before testing positive on Wednesday. But Trump went ahead and attended a fundraiser in New Jersey on Thursday, even though he may already have been showing symptoms. His staff failed to contact Biden’s staff, even though they had likely been exposed on Tuesday evening. Some reports now suggest that the White House actively tried to conceal Hicks’ diagnosis, no doubt because Trump’s staffers knew that hundreds of people could have been exposed through their reckless behavior.

In other words, Trump’s illness is an almost too-perfect illustration of the consequences of his careless, egotistical approach to this pandemic, an approach that has caused the U.S. to have 20% of the world’s cases, despite only having 4.5% of the world’s population.

Many liberals remain traumatized from the 2016 election and tend to imagine that Trump has political superpowers, and as such will find a way to turn this news to his benefit. They worry he’ll be able to garner widespread public sympathy or that, if he gets well quickly, he’ll use that as “proof” that he was right to claim that this virus is no big deal and affects “virtually nobody.” Indeed, some people are so certain that this is all part of some dark Trumpian scheme that conspiracy theories have begun to fly suggesting that Trump is faking the diagnosis for political gain.

That’s just silly. Trump won’t even admit that he wears reading glasses. He’s not going to fake catching a disease that he’s been minimizing for months.

As I see it, odds are that most Americans will see Trump getting COVID-19 the same way progressive political junkies do, as the direct result of his own carelessness. Furthermore, they’ll see his willingness to put other people in danger — even his own supporters, staff and family members — as more proof that Trump puts his ego in front of his duty, as president but also as a human being, to be careful with the health of other people.

The New York Times has already put together a photo essay depicting all the people Trump interacted with over the past week, mask-free and often indoors. Seeing those photos provokes a visceral response, because they look like they come from some alternate timeline, where there’s no pandemic and everything is fine.

That, of course, was the point. Trump has been pointedly acting like there’s no virus in hopes that, reality TV-style, he could make his predictions that it will “disappear” come true and convince people that the pandemic is behind us. Now the images that were meant to present an image of a carefree, normal America read very differently, as a concrete illustration of how careless Trump is with the health of the people around him.

Trump’s base voters, who were already willing to risk sickness and death to support him, will find a way to excuse this, of course. But he needs way more than his hardcore fanatics to win a second term. Looking like Donny Coronaseed in those last photos before he went into quarantine isn’t likely to help him.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett signed letter calling for overturn of “barbaric” Roe v. Wade

President Donald Trump‘s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett signed an open letter in 2006 demanding that courts overturn Roe v. Wade. It referred to the landmark ruling, which guaranteed women the legal right to abortion, as a “barbaric” decision.

“The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion for any reason,” read the letter, first reported by The Guardian. “It’s time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore laws that protect the lives of unborn children.”

Barrett and her husband joined hundreds of others in signing the letter, which an anti-choice group placed in the South Bend Tribune. At the time, she was teaching law at the University of Notre Dame.

While the letter reflects the ideology held by a vast majority of conservatives, it may pose a hurdle for Barrett’s confirmation to the high court. Democratic Senate aides told NBC News that Barrett should have disclosed the letter in her judiciary confirmation questionnaire as part of her response to a question asking for citations of “books, articles, reports, letters to the editor, editorial pieces or other published material you have written or edited.”

St. Joseph County Right to Life, the group who placed the ad, claims that life begins at fertilization. It has also called for the criminalization of discarded frozen or unused embryos created through in vitro fertilization — an extreme position even among the anti-choice movement.

Conservative journalist Ramesh Pannuru defended Barrett by claiming that she had signed on to the half of the letter calling for an end to “abortion on demand” — not the half calling Roe “barbaric.” The pages appeared side-by-side in the newspaper.

Trump, who pledged to nominate anti-choice justices, dismissed Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s claim that Roe v. Wade was on the ballot in November at Tuesday evening’s presidential debate. Trump claimed that Barrett’s views on abortion were still a mystery.

“It’s not on the ballot,” Trump said. “There’s nothing happening there. You don’t know her view on Roe v. Wade.”

Asked about the matter over the weekend, Trump told Fox News that “it will work out.” However, the president did not clarify the meaning of his words.

“She is certainly conservative in her views — in her rulings,” Trump said. “And we’ll have to see how that all works out, but I think it will work out.”

But Republican lawmakers have publicly stated the opposite. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told Senate reporters on Tuesday that Barrett’s anti-choice views were “awfully clear.”

“I think that’s one where she meets my standard of having evidence in the record — out there in public, on the record — that indicates that she understands Roe was really an act of judicial imperialism and wrongly decided,” Hawley said.

Barrett’s open views on abortion, as well as the extreme religious doctrine which appears to inform those views, will come under scrutiny as senators weigh her background and qualifications — including from nominally pro-choice moderates like Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

The New York Times reported last week that Barrett and her husband were members of People of Praise, an obscure Christian sect which opposes abortion and teaches that God has willed men to assume authority over their wives and family.

According to The Times, People of Praise describes itself as a “charismatic Christian community” whose members swear “a lifelong oath of loyalty, called a covenant, to one another, and are assigned and are accountable to a personal adviser, called a ‘head’ for men and a ‘handmaid’ for women.”

The Associated Press (AP) reported that former women members of the group said wives were taught to obey their husbands at all times – and must provide sex on demand.

One woman told the AP that the group barred her access to birth control, because wives were expected to have as many as children as God allowed.

Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who finds himself in an unexpectedly fierce re-election fight, said the committee’s process was merely a pro forma matter.

“So, we’ll start on Oct. 12, and more than half of the Supreme Court justices who have had hearings were done within 16 days or less,” he told Fox News. “We’ll have a day of introduction. We’ll have two days of questioning: Tuesday and Wednesday. And on the 15th, we’ll begin to markup. We’ll hold it over for a week, and we’ll report her nomination out of the committee on Oct. 22.”

“Then it will be up to (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell as to what to do with the nomination once it comes out of committee,” Graham said.

Nancy Pelosi: “Unmasked” Trump created a “brazen invitation for something like this to happen”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) weighed in on President Donald Trump’s positive coronavirus results as she reflected on his behavior leading up to this point.

During an appearance on MSNBC Friday morning, the California Democrat offered prayers and a speedy recovery to the president and first lady Melania Trump.

“Well, of course, as with everyone, we all received that news with great sadness,” she began. “I always pray for the president and his family that they’re safe. Continue to do so more intensified, and I know that he’ll have the best of care, and that’s what we want for everyone in our country.”

Pelosi went on to reiterate the importance of enforcing proper safety measures to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus as she noted Trump’s failure to comply with mitigation guidelines.

She criticized the president’s ongoing disapproval and mocking of mask-wearing and repeated efforts to hold large rallies despite concerns about the spread of the virus as she described his actions as “a brazen invitation for something like this to happen.”

“But more than learning it has to be something that is acted upon,” she added. “This is tragic. It’s very sad. But it also is something that, again, going into crowds, unmasked and all the rest was sort of a brazen invitation for something like this to happen. Sad that it did, but nonetheless, hopeful that it will be a transition to a saner approach to what this virus is all about.”

The top-ranking Democrat’s latest remarks come just hours after Trump tweeted to confirm that he and his wife were COVID positive. Pelosi hopes that the president’s announcement will serve as a wake-up call for those who have adamantly refused to take the pandemic seriously.

“Hopefully this enlightenment will have them say wear your mask, do your distancing, wash your hands, testing, tracing, treatment, so that we can crush this vicious virus,” Pelosi said. “Not only in our own country, but throughout the world.”

As of Friday morning, the United States has reported more than 7,494,671 confirmed coronavirus cases as the death toll continues to rise.

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera criticizes Trump for not wearing a mask: “This disease kills old people!”

Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera on Friday tore into President Donald Trump for blowing off safety protocols such as wearing a face mask in public.

While on “Fox & Friends,” Rivera said that the president’s infection with the disease should be a wake-up call for him and others to take the virus more seriously.

While co-host Brian Kilmeade suggested that there could be some upside for Trump if he survives the disease by proving that it’s not a big deal, Rivera rejected that line of reasoning and urged the president to get off the campaign trail.

“Take a break, for goodness sake!” he said.

Kilmeade insisted that Trump should stay in contact with Americans by holding virtual rallies over Zoom.

“This disease kills old people, Brian!” Rivera shot back. “I want him to be prudent now. Enough about ‘I have a mask in my pocket.’ Why wasn’t the mask on your face, Mr. President? Enough!”

You can watch the video below via Twitter:

Geraldo Rivera wants Trump to "take a break" and rest because "this disease kills old people … I want him to be prudent now. Enough about 'I have a mask in my pocket.' Why wasn't the mask on your face?" pic.twitter.com/cMWNVGP2fz

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) October 2, 2020

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel also tests positive for COVID-19

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel has now tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

Haberman’s sources say that McDaniel, who is the niece of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), tested positive for the virus on Wednesday, or a day before White House aide Hope Hicks tested positive.

Haberman also reports that McDaniel “has mild symptoms” and “was last with POTUS last Friday and has been in Michigan since then.”

BREAKING – Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chairwoman, tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, multiple sources say. She has mild symptoms. She was last with POTUS last Friday and has been in Michigan since then.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 2, 2020

Trump had close contact with “dozens” on trip after White House learned he was exposed to COVID-19

President Donald Trump interacted with “dozens” of people after flying to a fundraiser in New Jersey on Thursday even though the White House was already aware that top aide Hope Hicks had tested positive for the coronavirus, according to multiple reports.

Trump announced overnight that he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus and would isolate as they recover. The news prompted concerns among White House aides, some of whom privately told The New York Times that Trump “has comorbidities that could make him more susceptible to a severe bout of the virus.”

Trump’s announcement came after Bloomberg News reported that Hicks, one of his closest advisers, had tested positive. Two hours later, Trump confirmed the news in a Fox interview.

Hicks had been in extensive close contact with Trump as part of a small group that helped prepare him for the debate and traveled with him earlier this week.

Hicks tested negative for the virus on Wednesday and traveled with the president aboard Air Force One, according to CBS News’ Weijia Jiang. She developed symptoms during the day and later tested positive.

The White House knew of Hicks’ positive test by Wednesday night or Thursday morning, but Trump still traveled to a fundraiser on Thursday afternoon, hours before testing positive himself, according to Jiang and CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Hicks did not make the trip and the president traveled with a smaller team than usual, according to NBC News.

Trump’s closest aides also worried that the president was “feeling poorly” on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs. Some aides dismissed it as fatigue but others began to “worry he had the coronavirus.”

Despite Hicks’ positive test and his aides’ concerns, Trump and his entourage flew to a fundraiser at his Bedminster, N.J. golf club on Thursday where the president, who did not wear a mask, “was in close contact with dozens of other people,” according to The Washington Post. Trump posed for photos with supporters at the event, according to The Daily Beast.

“The fact that the president still went, knowing he’d had very close contact with somebody who’d tested positive, is irresponsible,” said CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.

Collins noted that White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held a press briefing with reporters after Hicks’ positive test.

“Why did the press secretary still hold a briefing despite knowing she had come into contact with somebody who had just tested positive for coronavirus?” she questioned.

Jacobs reported that McEnany was unaware of Hicks’ positive test.

“Only a very, very small circle knew,” Jacobs reported. “Even some of Trump’s most trusted advisers were kept in the dark about Hicks’ illness.”

It’s unclear when Trump and Hicks were infected and how many people they may have exposed. Trump traveled with his full entourage and family to Cleveland for Tuesday’s debate against Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Trump’s family were seen maskless in the audience. MSNBC reported that Trump’s family and top aides had recently traveled with Hicks.

Close Trump aide Hope Hicks has tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday. Here is a list of who has recently traveled with Hicks.https://t.co/qvklvEoVVn pic.twitter.com/UufUZnqKbn

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 2, 2020

Trump, who has repeatedly mocked mask wearing, tried to attack Biden for wearing a mask in public.

“I don’t wear masks like him,” he said. “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from them, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

Biden was reportedly tested for the coronavirus on Friday morning and is awaiting results.

A spokesman for Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen said they tested negative for the virus.

Trump’s positive test is expected to upend his campaign.

“Even if Mr. Trump, 74, remains asymptomatic, he will have to withdraw from the campaign trail and stay isolated in the White House for an unknown period of time,” The New York Times reported. “If he becomes sick, it could raise questions about whether he should remain on the ballot at all.”

The campaign has already scrapped its Friday rally in Florida but still sent out an email early Friday promoting a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enter to win a trip to meet your favorite president.”

It is unclear if Trump will be able to participate in the next debate, which is scheduled for October 15.

The announcement could also upend plans to confirm Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, according to Bloomberg. Hearings are expected to begin on October 12.

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted that Trump is at “increased risk” of severe symptoms because of his “age and his pre-existing conditions.”

“But the odds are very much in his favor,” he added, “greater than 90%, 95% chance that he will get through this.”

Biden sent his well wishes to the Trumps on Friday even though the White House did not reach out to his campaign to inform them of potential exposure.

“Jill and I send our thoughts to President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for a swift recovery,” Biden said. “We will continue to pray for the health and safety of the president and his family.”

The Kushners’ Freddie Mac loan wasn’t just massive. It came with unusually good terms, too

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This story is co-published with WNYC.

After the news broke in May of last year that government-sponsored lending agency Freddie Mac had agreed to back $786 million in loans to the Kushner Companies, political opponents asked whether the family real estate firm formerly led by the president’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, had received special treatment.

“We are especially concerned about this transaction because of Kushner Companies’ history of seeking to engage in deals that raise conflicts of interest issues with Mr. Kushner,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tom Carper, D-Del., wrote to Freddie Mac’s CEO in June 2019.

The loans helped Kushner Companies scoop up thousands of apartments in Maryland and Virginia, the business’s biggest purchase in a decade. The deal, first reported by Bloomberg, also ranked among Freddie Mac’s largest ever. At the time, the details of its terms weren’t disclosed. Freddie Mac officials didn’t comment publicly then. Kushner’s lawyer said Jared was no longer involved in decision-making at the company. (He does continue to receive millions from the family business, according to his financial disclosures, including from some properties with Freddie Mac-backed loans.)

Freddie Mac packaged the 16 loans into bonds in August 2019 and sold them to investors. But Kushner Companies hadn’t finished its buying spree. Within the next two months, records show, Freddie Mac backed another two loans to the Kushners for an additional $63.5 million, allowing the company to add two more apartment complexes to its portfolio.

A new analysis by ProPublica shows Kushner Companies received unusually favorable loan terms for the 18 mortgages it obtained with Freddie Mac’s backing. The loans allowed the Kushner family company to make lower monthly payments and borrow more money than was typical for similar loans, 2019 Freddie Mac data shows. The terms increase the risk to the agency and to investors who buy bonds with the Kushner mortgages in them.

Moreover, Freddie Mac’s estimates of the Kushner properties’ profitability — a core element of any decision to back a loan — have already proven to be overly optimistic. All 16 properties in the firm’s biggest loan package delivered smaller profits in 2019 than Freddie Mac expected, despite the then-booming economy. The loan for the largest property lagged Freddie Mac’s profit prediction by 31% last year.

U.S. taxpayers could be responsible for paying back much of the nearly $850 million in Freddie Mac financing if Kushner Companies defaults and its properties drop significantly in value. Freddie Mac said that’s unlikely. But during the last real estate crash, taxpayers had to bail out the agency and its larger sibling, Fannie Mae, to the tune of $190 billion as the agencies plunged into the government equivalent of bankruptcy. (The agencies ultimately repaid the money and more.)

The involvement of Jared’s sister Nicole Kushner Meyer adds to questions about whether the family sought to exploit its political influence. Meyer, who shares her brother’s slight build, porcelain features and dark chestnut hair, lobbied Freddie Mac in person on behalf of Kushner Companies in February last year, a timeline of the deal obtained by ProPublica shows. She has previously drawn criticism for invoking her brother’s name while doing Kushner Companies’ business.

In a statement, Freddie Mac said it does “not consider the political affiliations of borrowers or their family members.” It called ProPublica’s analysis “random, arbitrary and incomplete” and asserted that the Kushner loans “fit squarely within our publicly-available credit and underwriting standards. The terms and performance of every one of these loans is transparent and available on our website, and all the loans are current and have been consistently paid.”

A spokesperson for Kushner Companies did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment. Emails to the White House seeking Jared Kushner’s comment were not returned.

There’s no evidence the Trump administration played a role in any of the decisions, and Freddie Mac operates independently. But Freddie Mac embarked on approving the loans at the moment that its government overseer, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA, was changing from leadership by an Obama administration appointee to one from the Trump administration, Mark Calabria, Vice President Mike Pence’s former chief economist. Calabria, who was confirmed in April 2019, has called for an end to the “conservatorship,” the close financial control that his agency has exerted over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae since the 2008 crisis.

The potential for improper influence exists even if the Trump administration didn’t advocate for the Kushners, said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University specializing in government and legal ethics. She compared the situation to press reports that businesses and associates connected to Jared Kushner and his family were approved to receive millions from the Paycheck Protection Program. Officials could have acted because they were seeking to curry favor with the Kushners or feared retribution if they didn’t, according to Clark. And if Kushner Companies had wanted to avoid any appearance of undue influence, she added, it should have sent only nonfamily executives to meet with Freddie Mac. “I’d leave it to the professionals,” Clark said. “I’d keep family members away from it.”

The Freddie Mac data shows that Kushner Companies secured advantageous terms on multiple points. All 18 loans, for example, allow Kushner Companies to pay only interest for the full 10-year term, thus deferring all principal payments to a balloon payment at the end. That lowers the monthly payments but increases the possibility that the balance won’t be paid back in full.

“That’s as risky as you get,” said Ryan Ledwith, a professor at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, of 10-year interest-only loans. “It’s a long period of time, and you’re not getting any amortization to reduce your risk over time. You’re betting the market is going to get better all by itself 10 years from now.”

Interest-only mortgages, which notoriously helped fuel the 2008 economic crisis, represent a small percentage of Freddie Mac loans. Only 6% of the 3,600 loans funded by the agency last year were interest-only for a decade or more, according to a database of its core mortgage transactions.

Kushner Companies also loaded more debt on the properties than is usual for similar loans, with the loan value for the 16-loan deal climbing to 69% of the properties’ worth. That compares with an average 59%, according to data for loans with similar terms and property types that Freddie Mac sold to investors in 2019, and is just below the 70% debt-to-value ceiling Freddie Mac sets for loans in its category. “What we generally have seen from Freddie and Fannie,” said Andrew Little, a principal with real estate investment bank John B. Levy & Company, “is they will do 10 years of interest-only on lower-leveraged deals.”

Loans right at the ceiling are “not very common,” Little said, adding that “you don’t see deals this size that commonly.”

Meanwhile Freddie Mac and its lending partner overestimated the profits for the buildings in the Kushners’ 16-loan package by 12% during the underwriting process, according to the agency’s data. Such analysis is supposed to provide a conservative, accurate picture of revenue and expenses, which should be relatively predictable in the case of an apartment building.

But the level of income anticipated failed to materialize in 2019, financial reports show. The most dramatic overstatement came with the largest loan in the deal, $120 million for Bonnie Ridge Apartments, a 960-apartment complex in a suburban part of Baltimore. In that case, realized profits last year were 31% below what Freddie Mac had expected.

“That’s definitely a significant amount,” said John Griffin, a University of Texas professor who specializes in forensic finance and has studied mortgage underwriting. He co-authored a recent paper highlighting as worrisome loans in which projected profits exceeded actual profits by 5%. “It’s a problem when underwritten income is inflated or overstated,” he said. “That is a key metric that determines the safety of the loan.”

Griffin’s paper found that 28% of all loans examined had projected profits that were 5% or more greater than what the properties actually earned in their first year. Some instances of underperformance could be caused by bad luck, the paper acknowledged, but “such situations should be relatively rare.” Yet in the case of Freddie Mac’s estimates in the Kushner deal, 13 of the original 16 loans met or exceeded the 5% threshold — many by a considerable amount.

Freddie Mac said it followed normal underwriting guidelines in assessing the Kushner buildings, including securing an independent appraisal and looking at historical property performance. It said investors who examined the riskiest portion of the debt also expressed no concerns.

If the underwriting had been on target, and reflected lower expectations, the loans would still have been within Freddie Mac’s credit parameters, data shows. But the resulting analysis would have suggested the Kushner Companies has a smaller cushion to sustain its loan payments. It could also have affected the interest rate the company pays. Thinner margins accompanied by relatively high rates of debt provide less wiggle room if the properties, or the economy, run into trouble. As Kushner Companies has seen before, that wiggle room can disappear quickly.

Freddie Mac’s main business has historically been buying bundles of home loans from the lenders that originated them, then selling them to investors as securities. The arrangement takes the debt off banks’ balance sheets, freeing them to make more loans. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are privately owned, but they have been financially backstopped by the federal government and are required to meet goals for lending on affordable housing.

Single-home loans are still Freddie Mac’s primary business, but since the 2008 economic crisis, the agency has greatly expanded its financing of apartment complexes.

Apartment complexes have been the specialty of the Kushner family, whose real estate holdings have spanned the mid-Atlantic and Midwest in recent years, with thousands of units scattered across suburbia. The company sold off 17,500 apartments in 2007, after the family’s patriarch, Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, returned from prison for convictions on illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering.

After Jared became CEO in 2008, the company turned its ambitions to high-profile commercial properties in New York City, a foray that turned sour. In 2018, the company gave up control of its marquee $1.8 billion building and headquarters, 666 Fifth Avenue, after being unable to keep up with its loans. Another piece of prime Kushner Companies Manhattan real estate, retail space in the old New York Times building near Times Square, was headed for a potential default in 2019, and foreclosure. (The New York Times reported in August that the foreclosure action was put off at the last minute, so negotiations with a lender could continue.)

Kushner Companies eventually resumed its residential focus and began bulking up its apartment portfolio. In the eight years before Trump entered the White House, the company and its partners secured a total of $581 million in Freddie Mac financing, according to data from the firm Real Capital Analytics first published by Bloomberg. By the end of 2018, Kushner Companies had amassed 21,000 apartment units.

Some of those loans didn’t fare well. They included a series of supplemental loans, or second mortgages, taken out on properties in Maryland that Kushner Companies owned in partnership with others (the size of the Kushner share was not clear). Landlords often use such second loans as a way to extract large amounts of cash from their holdings.

A lender had originated 10 such loans to Kushner Companies and its partners in 2015, and Freddie Mac planned to sell them to investors, or securitize them, once the properties demonstrated income consistently high enough to cover the debt payments. For four of the properties, however, profits dipped in 2016, and two more were in little better shape. Freddie Mac still hadn’t securitized the six loans, for $40 million, by inauguration day in 2017.

Mortgage industry experts say poor profits at underlying properties can lead Freddie Mac to delay selling off the loans as bonds, fearing they will be rejected by investors. By the time Freddie Mac offloaded the last of Kushner’s second mortgages in April 2017, they had racked up above-average lag times between their origination and securitization, compared with other loans in their debt packages, data shows. (Freddie Mac said the wait time was normal.)

Within 10 months of the sale of the loans to investors, one of the complexes landed on the servicer’s watchlist for mortgages at a heightened risk for default. Another soon followed, and another the year after that. All 10 complexes, which were built in the early 1970s or earlier, exhibited upkeep issues alarming enough to earn a flag in Freddie Mac data for “deferred maintenance” problems. (A Freddie Mac spokesman said the issues identified were almost all related to exterior asphalt and concrete, with one instance of an exterior drainage system in need of repair.)

At one property, a representative of Kushner Companies and its partners blamed residents of the nearby neighborhoods, who are primarily Black and low-income, for its declining profits and a rash of evictions: “The main driver is the client base in the area,” the servicer reported the borrower as saying, Freddie Mac records show.

Kushner Companies had other problems, too. In 2017, ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis documented the company’s practice of charging aggressive, and what some tenants’ lawyers called illegal, fees to occupants of some of those complexes. Tenants also claimed Kushner Companies’ property management arm, Westminster Properties, at times neglected basic repairs and allowed the property condition to deteriorate, including raw sewage flowing out of one kitchen sink.

The complaints spurred a lawsuit filed in October 2019 by the attorney general of Maryland, Brian Frosh. Frosh accused the management company and its partners of charging “illegitimate fees” and having “rented apartments and townhomes to consumers that are distressed, shoddily maintained, and have conditions that can adversely impact consumers’ health and well being.” (Westminster has defended its conduct in legal filings for the suit, which remains active.)

Kushner Companies first approached Freddie Mac in August 2018 through Berkadia Commercial Mortgage, then abandoned its application without explanation in mid-October of that year. Berkadia did not return messages seeking comment.

In February 2019, Berkadia approached Freddie Mac again and informed the agency that Kushner Companies wanted to move forward. It’s not clear what explains the renewed interest. But two things had changed in the interim. The rates on 10-year Treasury bonds had dropped, a circumstance that typically fuels borrowing and the securitized lending that Freddie provides. And the Obama appointee in charge of the FHFA was gone, leaving an interim Trump appointee in place.

Six days after rekindling its interest, Nicole Kushner Meyer and two Kushner Companies executives, President Laurent Morali and Chief Operating Officer Peter Febo, met with Freddie Mac officials, along with representatives of Berkadia and an advisory firm, documents show. The records don’t say which Freddie Mac officials attended. The meeting covered the “business plan for assets, track record and general overview of the Kushner Companies.” Meyer followed up, documents say, sending multiple emails to a senior Freddie Mac official, who was not identified.

Meyer has been serving as a principal at Kushner Companies since 2015, according to her LinkedIn profile. She caused a stir in 2017, when she invoked her brother on a trip to China to pitch potential investors for a Kushner Companies development in Jersey City, New Jersey. The company was seeking investors to participate in a government program known as EB-5, which grants visas to foreigners who make high-dollar investments intended to create jobs in struggling areas.

Freddie Mac said Meyer did not mention Kushner by name during the meeting. The agency also said no one connected to the White House asked that the deal be done.

But the political sensitivity was obvious to Freddie Mac, whose officials emailed each other in the weeks after the meeting, expressing a desire to minimize press coverage of the deal, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. They also took the unusual step of notifying FHFA, their regulator, of the transaction, the timeline shows. Freddie Mac and FHFA both declined to say why Freddie made the notification except to say that it was necessary as part of the agency’s conservatorship. (One source suggested deals above a certain dollar amount require such notification.)

In March, Kushner Companies was able to move fast to lock in a favorable interest rate, documents show. It submitted a financing application, which is needed to request a lock on a component of its interest rate. Freddie Mac’s website says that single loans are eligible for such a procedure, but that groups of loans must obtain additional approval. The day after Kushner Companies submitted its application, documents show, Freddie locked the rate for all 16 mortgages.

Through a spokesman, Freddie Mac said that such locks are an important part of its business model, and that timing is at the borrower’s discretion.

Kushner Companies’ full-term interest-only loan proved exceptional in another way: Freddie Mac had granted Lone Star Funds, a private equity firm managing $85 billion in global investments, interest-only terms for only the first three years of its seven-year mortgages when it had acquired the same apartment complexes in 2015. As a result, Lone Star had been able to borrow more money. But it soon faced a sharp hike in its monthly payments, when it added principal to interest.

(Freddie Mac said full-term, interest-only loans are more common when the pool of mortgages examined is restricted to larger, conventional loans. Nonpublic data shows they made up roughly 20% of such loans over the last three years, the agency said.)

Freddie Mac completed its due diligence for the Kushner Companies deal and on May 22 of last year, Kushner Companies and its partner, Torchlight Investors, took ownership of the 16 properties, with $785,803,000 in loans pledged. Torchlight did not respond to questions.

The properties were largely in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore suburbs. Their average construction date was 1980, almost a decade older than the other properties Freddie approved for similar loans in 2019.

From a profit standpoint, the 16 properties were a mixed bag. Appraisers pegged their value as having increased 2% overall in the previous four years. Four of the properties lost value, according to the analysis.

The Kushners also benefited from another provision that increased the deal’s risk. Groups of loans are often cross-collateralized, meaning that if one defaults, the lender can seek to seize others to recoup their losses. The strategy provides an extra hedge against risk for the lender. The Lone Star properties were cross-collateralized under their previous loan. But not those for Kushner Companies. (A Freddie Mac spokesman said cross-collateralization is not required and each of the company’s loans met credit parameters without it.)

Another curious phenomenon emerged in the disclosures for the new loans: The reported profits for seven of the Kushner buildings in 2017 were higher than those listed for the same buildings and same year in prior loan documents. For some properties, the difference was slight. But for others, it was more substantial. At one Kushner complex, for example, the Apartments at Cambridge Court in suburban Baltimore, the 2017 net operating income was nearly 6% higher in the new loan filing than it had been for the same year in an old disclosure.

In May, ProPublica reported a pattern of similar discrepancies in bonds that hold mortgages across the commercial real estate industry. And the paper by Griffin, the University of Texas finance professor, and his colleague Alex Priest also found a pattern of such profit alterations, suggesting multiple institutions are manipulating historical financials to downplay risk and bolster more aggressive lending.

Financial data on how the 18 Kushner properties are faring in this year’s economic slump is not yet available.

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“Attempt to manipulate”: Abbott limits Texas counties to one absentee ballot drop-off location

Gov. Greg Abbott threw the weight of his office Thursday behind Republican efforts to limit options for Texas voters who want to hand-deliver their completed absentee ballots for the November election — a rebuke to some large, Democratic counties that have set up multiple drop-off locations in what they call an effort to maximize voter convenience.

The Republican governor issued a proclamation directing counties to designate just one location for ballot drop-offs, and allowing political parties to install poll watchers to observe the process.

An unprecedented number of absentee ballots are expected to be cast this year as voters who qualify under Texas’ unusually strict vote-by-mail rules opt to avoid the health risks of voting in person. Republican officials have aggressively fought Democratic efforts to expand access to mail-in ballots during the pandemic.

President Donald Trump and many Republicans have sowed misinformation and confusion about the integrity of mail-in voting, which experts say is safe. With the U.S. Postal Service warning of potential delays, many Texans are eager to deliver their completed absentee ballots in person.

Harris County, the state’s most populous and a major Democratic stronghold, had designated a dozen locations where voters could deliver their own ballots — and already began collecting them this week. The locations are spread out across the county’s roughly 1,700 square miles, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.

In Travis County, also a major Democratic stronghold, officials had designated four locations where voters could deliver their ballots.

“This is a deliberate attempt to manipulate the election,” Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said Thursday at a press conference outside one of the county’s drop-off locations. Travis County officials say they plan to fight the order.

Lina Hidalgo, the Democratic Harris County judge, said “this isn’t security, it’s suppression.”

Harris County is bigger than the state of Rhode Island, and we’re supposed to have 1 site? This isn’t security, it’s suppression. Mail ballot voters shouldn’t have to drive 30 miles to drop off their ballot, or rely on a mail system that’s facing cutbacks. https://t.co/IeKwzdB0Hb

— Lina Hidalgo (@LinaHidalgoTX) October 1, 2020

And Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins said “to force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities to use a single drop-off location in a county that stretches over nearly 2,000 square miles is prejudicial and dangerous.”

Democratic groups are weighing filing a lawsuit as soon as Friday challenging Abbott’s order, according to one party source who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The ballot drop-off locations are staffed, and voters must present an approved form of identification to deliver their ballots. They may not turn in ballots for other voters.

Voting rights advocates say Abbott’s move will make absentee balloting more difficult in a year when more Texans than ever are expected to vote by mail. Drop-off locations, advocates said, are particularly important given concerns about Postal Service delays, especially for disabled voters or those without access to reliable transportation.

“It raises a real concern that people are going to have just one more barrier to successfully submitting their ballot,” barriers that will disproportionately hurt voters of color and those with disabilities, said Mimi Marziani, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, which advocates for voting rights among other issues. “And it opens the door to voter intimidation.”

Texas has extended the early voting period by six days and is allowing voters to drop off absentee ballots before Election Day, but has done little else to give voters more options for safely casting ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. Other states have allowed for universal absentee voting or even set up drop-off boxes where voters can deliver their ballots.

Abbott described his proclamation as an effort to “strengthen ballot security protocols throughout the state.” A spokesperson did not respond to questions about how allowing multiple drop-off locations might lead to fraud.

There is “not a shred of evidence,” Marziani said, that it would.

Abbott also announced that election clerks may collect absentee ballots only if they also permit poll watchers to observe the delivery of those ballots, “including the presentation of an acceptable form of identification.”

Nationally, the Republican Party is ramping up a multimillion-dollar effort to recruit poll watchers this year, the first presidential election in almost 40 years that the Republican National Committee has not been under a federal court order imposed to rein in the party’s “ballot security” efforts, which have a history of trying to intimidate voters of color.

In Texas, poll watchers are selected by candidates, political parties, or proponents or opponents of ballot measures — that is, people who have a stake in the outcome of the election. They must stand as silent sentinels and are not permitted to speak to voters or be inside voting booths.

But they, like voters themselves, are not required to wear masks to polling places this year, an exemption from the governor’s statewide mask order.

“These enhanced security protocols will ensure greater transparency and will help stop attempts at illegal voting,” Abbott said.

While there are documented cases of voter fraud in Texas, they are rare, and experts say absentee ballots are a secure way to vote this year.

The Texas Democratic Party slammed Abbott’s move.

“Republicans are on the verge of losing, so Governor Abbott is trying to adjust the rules last minute,” Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. “We are creating a movement that will beat them at the ballot box on November 3, and there’s nothing these cheaters can do about it.”

Wesley Story, spokesperson for the liberal group Progress Texas, called the proclamation “a blatant attempt to suppress voters.”

Harris County has already begun collecting absentee ballots at a number of locations across the sprawling county. Abbott said that ballots collected before Oct. 2 remain valid, subject to earlier rules. In July, Abbott gave voters more time to deliver their absentee ballots in person, an option typically available only on Election Day.

Texas has maintained its unusually strict criteria for absentee ballots during the pandemic. Voters qualify only if they are 65 or older, are confined in jail but otherwise eligible, are outside of their county through the election period, or cite a disability or illness. The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that lack of immunity to the coronavirus does not itself constitute disability, but that voters must consider that alongside their own personal medical history to decide whether they are eligible. Election administrators do not have the power to vet a voter’s disability claims or demand documentation, but providing false information is a crime.

The question of absentee ballot delivery in Harris County is already being disputed in a legal challenge filed by Houston Republicans earlier this week. A group of candidates and officials including the Harris County GOP has asked the Texas Supreme Court to limit the locations where voters can drop off their ballots, as well as to shorten the early voting period Abbott has laid out. That case is pending before the court.

On Wednesday, the day before the governor’s proclamation, Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins weighed in at the request of the court and backed Harris County’s efforts as lawful under the governor’s earlier orders.

Nothing in the law says that multiple drop-off locations cannot be used, Hawkins argued, and “accordingly, the Secretary of State has advised local officials that the Legislature has permitted ballots to be returned to any early-voting clerk office.”

Early voting is set to begin Oct. 13.

Disclosure: Progress Texas and the Texas secretary of state have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Trump’s diagnosis could change everything — but GOP still scheming to suppress vote

Leave it to Donald Trump to test positive for COVID-19 just two days after a disastrous debate performance. It’s tempting to think this is yet another of his reality show stunts, but it’s hard to believe that he could get away with faking something like this considering that the Trump White House leaks like a sieve. It’s more likely he does have the virus and his best-case scenario will be that he’s one of the lucky asymptomatic cases and can spend the rest of the campaign testifying to his youthfulness and strength, no doubt attributable to “good genes.”

As the man himself says, “We’ll see what happens.”

Meanwhile, there’s still a lot going on that requires some sustained attention from the American people, none more important than the ongoing threat that the election, now just a month away, is going to be sabotaged. I don’t use that word lightly. It is becoming very obvious that this is being planned and will be implemented in an attempt to ensure that Trump cannot lose.

In fact, according to some incredible reporting by Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times Magazine, Republican operatives were locked and loaded back in 2016, but just didn’t need to pull the trigger. They had lawyers at the ready to contest the election on the basis of “voter fraud” in all those close states if it had gone the other way.

Rutenberg’s story makes the often-overlooked point that this is not really a Trump operation. Sure, he said back in 2016 that he wouldn’t accept the results unless he won and this time he’s telling his voters that the only way he can lose is if the vote is rigged. But this isn’t his idea. He’s just the first Republican to crudely telegraph the plan ahead of time.

The history of vote suppression in America goes all the way back to the beginning, of course. Only white men were allowed to vote. But white supremacists turned it into a winning agenda during Reconstruction and have continued to profit from it ever since. After the Voting Rights Act was passed in the 1960s and racist political power shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans, it turned into a well-funded, subversive, anti-democratic political strategy. During the last couple of decades it’s become the GOP’s life raft. The majority of their almost exclusively white party is in full-blown rebellion against what is soon to be a multiracial, multi-ethnic majority, which for obvious reasons is centered in the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump speaks to all of that, sometimes in blatant terms that the vote suppressors undoubtedly wish he wouldn’t. But I’d bet money that half the blather about voter fraud that everyone assumes are just Trumpisms are things he’s heard from establishment Republicans.

A lot of us have been chronicling this phenomenon for a long time. For me, the 2000 election was the eye-opener, when it became clear that Republicans were much better prepared to wage a scorched-earth battle to prevail in any election dispute. In a plan masterminded by Trump’s pal Roger Stone, the GOP had teams of lawyers ready to descend on Florida the moment they were called. Some of those lawyers are now on the Supreme Court — or are about to be rammed through a confirmation process, just in time for an election the president has already announced will require a vote in his favor. Again, this isn’t coming from Donald Trump. His loose lips are giving away the game, but he’s not the one who invented it.

For instance, is it even remotely reasonable to think that Trump came up with the idea to stack the Postal Service board with GOP donors, and install a crony to slow down the processing of mail in advance of an election we know will require record levels of mail-in voting? From Rutenberg’s Times Magazine piece:

When Congress headed off for its summer recess with no deal on money for voting or the Postal Service, Trump told reporters. “They need that money in order to make the Post Office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he said. “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it.”

He didn’t think of that.

That particular scheme is this year’s contribution to an ongoing, long-term plan to curtail Democratic voting. It is sophisticated and legally complex and its followers have fanned out to every state that may be close, with lawsuits and legal challenges ready to go after the election.

Right now, aside from throwing sand in the gears of the post office, they’re going to great lengths in states all over the country to make it difficult to vote early or drop off mail-in ballots. They’re filing lawsuits against states that want to count ballots that are mailed on or before Election Day but arrive later, a practice that’s been in place for absentee ballots and military ballots for many years. On Thursday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott abruptly ordered the removal of all but one early-voting drop box in each county. That includes Harris County, the home of Houston — an overwhelmingly Democratic city — which encompasses nearly 1,800 square miles and about 4.7 million people.

If Democrats decide they’d better take the risk and vote on Election Day instead, there are the possible “poll watchers” Trump has threatened to send forth. He could be provoking a disastrous situation all over the country with calls for his voters to storm polling places to “make sure” the voting is fair and their votes are counted, but he didn’t invent this either. This particular form of voter intimidation has been practiced ever since Jim Crow. We even had a former chief justice of the Supreme Court who participated in it as a young lawyer in the 1960s.

In fact, Republicans were so aggressive about such tactics that courts issued consent decrees barring them from doing it in many jurisdictions for years. Those decrees have conveniently been recently lifted, under the same logic that the Roberts court gutted the Voting Rights Act. In that decision, the chief justice famously declared:

Our country has changed and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.

Rutenberg’s story lays this entire history out in great detail and shows how it has accelerated during the Trump years. In fact, that’s the real Operation Warp Speed.

So for all of our legitimate worries about Russian interference in our election, it turns out that the most dangerous assault on our democracy is a long-term Republican establishment operation led by a bunch of lawyers from elite schools. Trump is just the first candidate to come along who is corrupt and unpatriotic enough to unleash them completely.

Fact-checking the climate change claims made during the first presidential debate

If climate had been your drinking game Tuesday night during the first presidential debate, you would have stayed pretty much sober until the last half hour, when Biden slipped a mention into Trump’s screed about how Democrats would ruin the suburbs. “They’re being flooded,” he said. “They’re being burned out.” That, he said, is what’s killing the suburbs.

Shortly after that, the booze (or in my case the Athletic Brewing Company non-alcoholic IPA) would’ve flowed freely. With roughly a half hour to go, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace departed from his official topic list and asked the president whether he believed the climate was changing and humans were causing it. The 10 minutes that followed were as garbled as the rest of the night’s words, but a few ideas could be teased out. The good news: One candidate fully acknowledges the science of climate change; the other at least grudgingly acknowledged humans are causing it (“to some extent,” Trump said). The bad: Not even Biden said he’ll commit to the dramatic action it would take to reverse course.

Trump said he wants “crystal clear water and air,” and believes “we have to do everything we can to have immaculate air, immaculate water.” An analysis by the New York Times in July, based on academic research, counted 19 air pollution regulations the administration had rolled back and reversed, and four pertaining to water pollution. Trump also said that the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity production, “was driving energy prices through the sky.” That claim is based on a study commissioned by the coal industry. But it was hypothetical at best: The Energy Information Administration thought that electricity prices might rise at first under the plan but decrease later; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the plan would cause energy costs to fall by 2030.

“We now have the lowest carbon if you look at our numbers right now,” Trump said.It’s hard to know what numbers the president is referring to when he talks about carbon, and what “lowest” means, as he offered no basis for comparison. It’s true that greenhouse gas emissions nationwide have dropped by 10 percent during the COVID-19 lockdown, according to the Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific consortium. But the decline has nothing to do with Trump’s environmental policies.

Trump talked about planting a “billion trees project, and it’s very exciting.” In his 2020 State of the Union speech Trump did talk about a “trillion trees” initiative, “an ambitious effort to bring together government and the private sector to plant new trees in America and all around the world.” And there is in fact a World Economic Forum initiative that is bringing together governments and the private sector toward the trillion tree goal, both internationally and in the U.S. It is unclear, however, to what “billion trees project” Trump was referring.

Wallace got Trump to admit that “human pollution of greenhouse gas emissions contributes to global warming.” But only briefly before Trump started in again on how California needs to manage its forests like the “forest cities” of Europe. This, despite the fact that the federal government manages more than half of California’s forests.

Biden says he was “able to bring down the cost of renewable energy to cheaper than or as cheap as coal and gas and oil” due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. It’s true the cost of solar energy, in particular, plummeted during the Obama years. But that has more to do with China’s light speed ramp-up of conventional solar photovoltaic panel production and very little to do with the recovery act. Although $21 billion in ARRA funds went to renewable energy, many of the solar projects that ARRA supported, such as the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station on California’s border with Nevada, use other technologies that have done little to lower the cost of a solar kilowatt hour. The administration also enthusiastically backed natural gas.

Biden was right, though, when he claimed that weatherizing buildings will create “thousands and thousands of jobs.” According to a report by Environmental Entrepreneurs, energy efficiency jobs grew by 76,000 in 2018, and nationwide the field “employs twice the number of workers” than the fossil-fuel industry does. Since buildings that lose energy lose money for everybody, that trend is not likely to reverse no matter who’s in office.

The Green New Deal: Was Biden for it or not? At first Biden suggested that the Green New Deal would pay for itself “as we move forward,” a claim experts I’ve talked to support. (The cost of doing nothing is much, much higher.) Later when Trump pressed him on it, he said he was talking about “the Biden plan,” not “what [Trump] calls the ‘radical Green New Deal.'” Disappointing, but maybe not significant. Just a sign for climate activists that, even if Biden wins, the work isn’t over on November 3. In the end, tweeted Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org and director of Fossil Free Media, it doesn’t matter how Biden feels about the Green New Deal. “Because we’re going to get him to pass it anyway.”

Believe it or not, Joe Biden lost that debate. To save democracy, we need a champion

You may not want to hear this: Donald Trump “won” his first presidential debate with Joe Biden. American democracy and the American people lost.

This version of Joe Biden has not shown himself up to the task of taking on Donald Trump in a debate. Like Democratic nominee Al Gore in 2000, this version of Biden also seems likely to surrender if the Trump regime’s machinations to steal the 2020 election succeed in causing causes chaos in the country on Election Day and beyond.

One participant in a focus group of undecided voters convened by Republican pollster Frank Luntz aptly described Biden at the first debate as “a nice guy lacking vision.”

During Tuesday night’s debate, Trump once again made clear that he does not plan to leave office peacefully if he does not “win” on Election Day. He does not believe in democracy, and hopes to use lawyers, the courts and Jim Crow-style “poll watchers” to subvert the 2020 election from the American people.

In a moment that rivals his description of neo-Nazis and white supremacists as “very fine people” following their murderous 2017 rampage, Trump ordered the Proud Boys and other right-wing thugs to “stand by” — presumably to await his orders.

There are several dominant narratives about the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The first such frame is that it was scatological political theater and a national and global embarrassment.

There is the obligatory and lazy “both-sides-ism” which tries to equate Trump’s rude and disruptive behavior with Biden’s attempts to intervene and (occasionally) defend himself. Some news headlines have describe Tuesday’s debate as “contentious” and “chaotic,” or as a “fracas” that featured “name-calling” and “insults” — as if the responsibility for that had been evenly shared.

Horserace journalists are of course hyper-focused on the polls. As in 2016, such myopia can blind observers to the larger cultural context of Trump’s enduring power and appeal.

The “hope-peddlers” are asserting that Trump was not prepared for the debate, that he faces inevitable defeat and is flailing. In reality, Donald Trump clearly had a plan for the debate and followed through on it.

For many observers, their traumatized emotional reaction to Donald Trump — who is a bully and an abuser — is another lens that helps make sense of that debate.

Whatever the merits of these perspectives, they avoid the obvious: As an authoritarian, Donald Trump defines what it means to “win” a debate very differently from the way the mainstream news media and other political observers do.

In that sense, Trump won Tuesday night’s debate. We must realize that Trump has no plans to leave office. He knows he will not win if all the votes are counted. The debates are therefore a platform for him to circulate lies about “voter fraud” so he can use the courts, Republican legislatures and other means to declare himself the victor. The debates are also a tool for Trump to encourage violence by his supporters against liberals, progressives, nonwhite voters and others identified as being the “enemy.” He accomplished these goals during the first debate.

As an authoritarian, Trump has no respect for the debates as part of a democratic process that helps to confer legitimacy on a candidate and to inform the voting public. So he ignored moderator Chris Wallace, talked over Biden and tried to bully him, and was openly contemptuous of the entire event. Attacking the premise of the debate and its norms was a way for Trump to attack democracy itself, and to establish himself as outside it and superior to it.

Trump approached the first debate with Biden as pure combat. Biden, by contrast, appeared to believe he would be involved in a conversation, even if a spirited and unruly one. Like a dirty barroom brawler, Trump tried to clinch with Biden, hold him by the belt and smother him. He interrupted Biden and Wallace some 70 times. He also “worked the ref” — in this case, the weak and overwhelmed moderator — to the point where Wallace abjectly offered Trump more opportunities to speak and promised him easy follow-up questions.

If one were to read the transcript of Tuesday’s debate, Joe Biden was more compelling, coherent, intelligent and “presidential.” But watching the debate in real time showed Biden often speaking too quietly, not getting in clear rebuttals and allowing Trump to dominate him. Biden’s face seemed inexpressive and almost sad, and he appeared lost in key moments where he did not respond to Trump with the force demanded — for example, when Trump brought up the infamous 1994 crime bill or attacked Biden’s sons. In terms of demeanor and body language, Biden looked exhausted by Trump’s orchestrated chaos.

Ideally, a debate is supposed to be an extension of the marketplace of ideas and a space for communicative democracy. In practice, the spectacle of televised political debates makes that nearly impossible.

As many media scholars have observed, television reduces “discourse” to sound and images. On that terrain, Donald Trump dominated Joe Biden.

Undecided voters are likely to be left even more confused and disheartened, and therefore less likely to vote, after watching the way Trump destroyed any semblance of coherence or literal intelligibility. Undecided viewers are not alone in that sentiment: a new CBS/YouGov poll reports that “more than two-thirds (69%) of likely voters who tuned into the broadcast say it left them feeling annoyed.”

Disgust among voters advances Donald Trump’s interests: the more he can create chaos and a lack of faith in “the system”, the easier it is for him and the Republicans to expand their authoritarian and fascist project. The goal of Trumpism in adapting fascism to America is to maintain a veneer of “democracy,” but in practice install an authoritarian regime in which the Trump family and a numerically tiny group of plutocrats and white right-wing Christian fascists wield near-total power over the whole society.

Such an arrangement is what political scientists and others describe as “competitive authoritarianism.” The Journal of Democracy explains that “the coexistence of meaningful democratic institutions and serious incumbent abuse yields electoral competition that is real but unfair…. Recently, new competitive authoritarian regimes have emerged in countries with strong democratic institutions, raising concerns about the diffusion of competitive authoritarianism to the West.”

It is true that Trump bullied Biden and Wallace in much the same way as domestic abusers bully their spouses and intimate partners. Trump’s behavior likely “triggered” many people who have faced such abuse in their own lives. But for Trump, who sees himself as an alpha-male, hyper-masculine leader, this was a preferred strategy. Dominance is central to the performance of fascism, and is a principal reason why the followers are enthralled by and in love with their Great Leader.

Joe Biden appeared vulnerable, empathetic and relatable in the face of Trump’s abuse. But that is not the type of political strength, muscle and courage needed to defeat fascism and authoritarianism.

And because fascism is a sociopathic (if not psychopathic) ideology, human decency and vulnerability will not peel away Trump’s followers and thus weaken him. Instead, such emotional openness only encourage their aggression. As mental health professionals have repeatedly warned, Donald Trump is a political sadist who is fueled by the pain and weakness of others. His deplorable supporters are motivated by the same impulses.

To defeat Donald Trump and what he represents, the American people do not need “Nice Joe” or “Reasonable Joe” or “Empathetic Joe,” a public figure who can perform his own more authentic version of Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain.”

This moment of crisis, with its fascist assault on American democracy, the rule of law and human and civil rights — along with a plague that has killed at least 200,000 people so far — demands Champion Joe.

In the upcoming debates and the weeks remaining before Election Day, Joe Biden must have some fire in his belly if he wants to win. He must speak loudly and directly, and confront Trump as the dirty street fighter — and coward — that he is. Biden must use declarative statements. He must look directly into the camera while telling the American people, “Donald Trump is killing you.”

Joe Biden has many options available for his truth-telling about the evils of Donald Trump.

He should repeatedly state that Trump is a criminal, that Trump only cares about money and not American lives, that Trump is a corrupt and so are his children, that Trump loves Russia and Vladimir Putin more than America.

Donald Trump is a failed president, husband and businessman. If you are a woman, Trump will take away your rights and control over your own body. He has been credibly accused of sexual assault by numerous women — and has openly bragged about it. If you are a Black or brown American, Donald Trump will take away your rights. If you are an immigrant, he may put you in one of his concentration camps. If you are a young person, Trump wants to burn and flood the Earth and ensure you have no future.

If you are sick, Donald Trump wants to take away your health care and let you die. In short, Donald Trump hates America and the American people. He only cares about himself, and the American people are just a means to an end.

Even if Joe Biden finds a way to win the election and take office, the deep institutional, cultural, political and social problems that spawned Donald Trump and his movement will not magically disappear.

At the Nation, Elie Mystal describes the depths of America’s problems in the Age of Trump and beyond:

Things are bad. Worse than a lot of people are willing to admit. The only reason we can even hope that voting may get us out of this mess is that Trump is historically incompetent. But he’s been able to get this far because of systemic bias in our institutions, our media, and our populace. If we do not tear down the structures that helped Trump rise and thrive in the first place, a politician who is just as racist but slightly less bumbling could easily pick up these pieces and finish what Trump started. Things are bad now, but they can always get worse.

Champion Joe could begin to heal the country from all the harm that has been done by the Age of Trump and its agents. Is the real Joe Biden up to the task? One hopes the answer is yes, because the future of American democracy depends on it.

Unfortunately, the Joe Biden who showed up at the first debate with Donald Trump seemed like an old, tired soldier who is fighting his last battle, not the warrior for hope that America (and the world) needs to lead us out of the darkness and into a new greatness of democratic renewal.

Two debates still remain. Biden still leads in the polls. There is still time for the best version of him, Champion Joe, to emerge and take the reins.