Yesterday brought some encouraging news of a survey that shows that most Americans do not believe Trump’s assertions that the US is doing a better job of dealing with the pandemic than other countries, and they are looking for the government to issue aggressive national plan to fight the epidemic and are willing to wear masks and accept other restrictions.
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He highlights the article that I wrote about a few days ago that described how Trump’s slumlord son-in-law Jared Kushner ditched a plan to fight the pandemic for partisan political reasons.
On his way to a fundraiser in Florida yesterday, Trump spoke to an absolutely YUGE overflow crowd on the airport tarmac in Tampa.
not exactly an overflow crowd at Trump's speech in Florida pic.twitter.com/uS2o0fptNE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 31, 2020
Needless to say, the wags on Twitter had a field day, with one commenting that this was “Like an aging rock star who can’t draw a crowd at the county fair.”
Trevor Noah points out that while some other countries are experiencing a disturbing second wave of coronavirus cases, their numbers are still way smaller than what is happening in the US where the first wave never ended because Trump never put in place the measures necessary because of his beliefs in crackpot theories and not in science.
Heading in to the election on November 3rd, Donald Trump and the Republicans are bankrupt morally and in terms of any policy ideas.
He says that they are being lied about by both Trump and Fox News as part of their propaganda war to get people behind the law and order message. You can view the video clip here.
Most people do not even think about whether they are cognitively impaired or not. It is only those who fear that there is a problem who may obsess about it. Seth Meyers looks at the way that Trump keeps boasting about the results of his ‘cognitive test’, a test that is not used to test how smart you are, as Trump seems to think, but to see if you are showing signs of dementia. (Note that he took this test back in 2018 and it was administered by his then White House personal physician Ronny Jackson who subsequently resigned amid allegations of misconduct and is now running for a Texas congressional seat on an ardently pro-Trump platform.)
Two men who look like surfer dudes try to hand out free masks to people in Huntington Beach, CA who were not wearing them. Hilarity ensures, except that what it reveals about people’s beliefs is not funny. It is quite extraordinary the kinds of reasons people give for not wearing masks.
Gessen, who came to the US from Russia and thus knows something about what an autocracy looks like, has long been very pessimistic about what is happening in the US. But they sees recent events such as the widespread protests as offering some signs of hope because many needed changes that would take ages in a time of stability have now become fast-tracked. Like me in my recent post, Gessen thinks that it is not enough that Trump loses in November but that he must lose bigly.
