Friday Talking Points -- It Is What It Is

[ChrisWeigant]

President Donald Trump, when challenged by Axios reporter Jonathan Swan this week on the fact that over a thousand Americans are dying each and every day from the coronavirus pandemic, callously responded: "It is what it is." Not exactly presidential-caliber leadership, to say the very least. After all, who can forget Abraham Lincoln's stirring: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, because, you know, the Civil War -- it is what it is." Or Franklin Delano Roosevelt's soaring: "Fear? What fear? I mean, the Great Depression... it is what it is."

Later in the week, Trump once again lowered the bar for presidential behavior another notch by attacking Joe Biden's religiousness: "[Joe Biden is] following the radical left agenda. Take away your guns. Destroy your Second Amendment. No religion! No anything! Hurt the Bible! Hurt God! He's against God! He's against guns! He's against energy, our kind of energy."

The best response to this disgraceful statement came from KevinMKruse on Twitter:

To recap the president's campaign themes:

1. Joe Biden is very weak and feeble and hiding in his basement.

2. Joe Biden is so powerful he will hurt an omnipotent deity and somehow hurt a holy book as well.

3. Joe Biden is the candidate who has serious cognitive problems.

Others repeatedly used the word "deranged" to describe Trump's shameless attack, which seems pretty appropriate to us. A deranged president... it is what it is, right?

Trump also mispronounced "Thailand" as "thigh-land" this week, and couldn't quite manage "Yosemite" either, turning it into: "Yo! Semite!" Nothing like a very stable genius at the controls, is there?

Of course, important things were indeed happening this week, but as usual Trump was nowhere to be found. Two White House minions have been in repeated coronavirus relief talks with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, so far to no avail. Bizarrely, the Republican position in these talks is: "Let's be extra-stingy even though that will likely guarantee a double-dip recession right before the election." It's almost like Trump is trying to lose.

The Washington Post brought up a very pertinent question -- where is the master dealmaker in all of this?

What this deadlock needs is a master negotiator, someone whose extraordinary skills can break through the parties' differences and craft a deal both sides can live with, giving Americans the help they need.

Someone like President Trump, the man who wrote The Art of the Deal!

You're laughing, I know. But think about how extraordinary that is: During a difficult and complex negotiation, with incredibly high stakes for the country, we take it as a given that not only would the president of the United States much rather be off playing golf; it's also probably best for everyone if he isn't involved at all, because he'd only make things worse.

And this is the man who sold himself to voters as a virtuoso of negotiation whose supernatural deal-making talent would enable him to break through any challenge the government faced.

. . .

Yet while there are some ancillary issues being negotiated -- the Democrats' desire to protect the Postal Service; the Republicans' desire to shield employers from covid-19 lawsuits -- at bottom, the disagreement comes down to Democrats wanting to do more to help the economy and individual Americans, and Republicans wanting to do less.

Democrats want more help for the unemployed, and Republicans want less. Democrats want more aid to states and cities, and Republicans want less. Democrats want more aid to schools, and Republicans want less.

This would be the moment when a president skilled at negotiating might step in to fashion a compromise. But that's not what this president is doing.

What the president is doing instead is what he loves doing most -- taking three days off to play golf. Because there's a big deal that needs making, but Trump's attitude is that it'll all magically happen without him. It is what it is, in other words.

Trump certainly is doubling down on his "I don't care about the pandemic" position. He visited a Whirlpool factory in Ohio this week (although the state's governor couldn't attend because he tested positive for the virus). During the visit, the speakers blared what can now accurately be called Trump's coronavirus-response theme song: "Live And Let Die." Hey, it is what it is, right?

Let's get back to that rather extraordinary Axios interview, though. Trump came prepared with lots of graphs on paper, none of which he understood in the slightest (this is painfully evident as he tries to explain them to the interviewer). When Swan points out that the graphs are essentially meaningless metrics designed only to make Trump feel better -- and that on the real measure of how the United States is doing, we're worse off than just about everybody else on the planet. Swan explained in a later interview what he was trying to accomplish: "What I was trying to get him to do was grapple with the question of why. Why is it that America with its incredibly sophisticated and advanced science and medicine, the leader of the free world, is doing so much worse than so many other advanced countries on a death-as-a-proportion-of-population basis?"

But Trump just flat-out did not understand the point that Swan was making:

"Right here," [President Donald Trump] said at one point, showing [Axios reporter Jonathan] Swan a chart, "the United States is lowest in -- numerous categories, we're lower than the world."

"Lower than the world?" Swan asked. "What does that mean?"

"We're lower than Europe," Trump continued. "Take a look. Take a look. Right here."

He handed Swan the sheet of paper, allowing the reporter, at least, to actually understand what Trump was claiming.

"Oh, you're doing death as a proportion of cases," Swan said. "I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, et cetera."

"You can't do that," Trump replied.

"Why can't I do that?" Swan asked.

"You have go by..." Trump continued, fumbling with his papers. "You have to go by where... Look, here is the United States... You have to go by the cases of death."

"It's surely a relevant statistic," Swan said a bit later, "to say if the U.S. has X population and X percentage of death of that population versus South Korea..."

"No, you have to go by cases," Trump interjected.

"Well, look at South Korea, for example. Fifty-one million population, 300 deaths," Swan said. "It's like... it's crazy."

"You don't know that," Trump replied, suggesting that South Korea was perhaps hiding its true death toll. Which, of course, is nonsense.

. . .

"There's never been anything like this," Trump said. "And by the way, if you watch the fake news on television, they don't even talk about it. But, you know, there are 188 other countries right now that are suffering... some proportionately far greater than we are."

The example he used was Spain, which he said was "having a big spike."

Here are the facts, which nobody has bothered to tell Trump: Spain is averaging 2,600 new cases and 5 deaths a day over the past week. During the same period, the United States was seeing 60,000 new cases and over 1,000 deaths per day. On a proportional scale, Spain is seeing 56 new cases and 0.1 deaths per million people each day, while the U.S. has 184 new cases and 3 deaths per million. And a new estimate just out predicts the United States will have 300,000 deaths by the end of the year -- almost twice what we've already suffered.

Some other statistics showing how wrong Trump is: Japan has had 41,000 cases and just over 1,000 deaths total during the pandemic. We're doing worse than that each and every day, even though Japan has roughly one-third our population.

When you compare the countries of the world on the "total deaths per million" scale, the United States is currently the tenth-worst country in the world (out of over 200 countries). And two of the countries worse than us are there because they have such tiny populations it skews their per capita numbers (because the total population of both countries together is just over 100,000 people). The United States currently has 492 deaths per million. We're closing in on Chile, who is currently ninth-worst at 517 deaths per million. As mentioned, there are two countries higher -- San Marino as the world's absolute worst with 1,238 deaths per million, and Andorra with 673 deaths per million -- but these countries' populations are so miniscule that the numbers are skewed (San Marino only has a grand total of 42 deaths while Andorra only has 52 total deaths). Without those two, the United States is really doing worse than only seven other countries in the world. Or, to put it another way, over 200 countries are doing better than we are. Japan, in this comparison, has only eight deaths per million people. Eight. Versus our 492.

Trump really could not be more wrong about how we're doing in respect to other countries. But nobody's ever going to break this news to him, obviously, because as he put it: "You can't do that."

In related news, this week for the first time Twitter blocked a tweet and Facebook removed a post from the Trump campaign, because it contained dangerous misinformation about the coronavirus, which is against their rules. In the blocked clip, Trump says: "If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease." This is simply not true, which is why Twitter told Team Trump: "You can't do that."

Later in the Axios interview, President Trump didn't just exhibit this callous indifference on the facts on the pandemic, however. He also, once again, sent his best wishes to the prison cell of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of sex-trafficking underage girls: "I do wish her well. I'm not looking for anything bad for her. I'm not looking bad for anybody. Her boyfriend died. He died in jail."

And he had only less-than-warm words for the late great John Lewis, because with Trump, everything is always about Trump:

"I don't know," Trump said. "I really don't know. I don't know. I don't know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He chose -- I don't, I never met John Lewis, actually, I don't believe."

"Do you find him impressive?" asked Swan.

"Uh, I can't say one way or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive," Trump replied.

"He didn't come to my inauguration. He didn't come to my State of the Union speeches," the president added. "And that's OK. That's his right. And again, nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have. He should have come. I think he made a big mistake. I think he should have come."

"But taking your relationship with him out of it," pressed Swan, "do you find his story impressive, what he's done for this country?"

"He was a person that devoted a lot of energy and a lot of heart to civil rights, but there were many others also," Trump said.

Trump missed a deadline last week, after promising Chris Wallace (in a different interview) that he was going to sign "a healthcare plan within two weeks -- a full and complete healthcare plan." The two weeks expired last Sunday, and still Trump has absolutely no replacement for Obamacare, which grows ever-popular by the day. Trump then doubled down on his empty promise: "We'll be doing, sometime during this month, the healthcare plan. And I think that'll be before the end of the month. And I think it'll be very impressive to a lot of people." WomenForBiden tweeted in response: "Just four more days till his 'full & complete healthcare plan' is released. We'll save you the trouble, it's a bandaid, neosporin, bleach and a bright light. You also get a $25 off coupon for hydroxychloroquine." Heh. Hey, it is what it is.

Back in the real world, the 38th state just voted to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, against the wishes of the state's GOP:

No matter how hard they tried, Republican politicians and their allies could not stop Missouri's voters from expanding access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

They tried to rig the timing of the referendum by forcing the vote during a relatively low-turnout primary on Tuesday rather than in November. That failed. They played on racial prejudice and nativism by falsely claiming a yes vote would mean "illegal immigrants flooding Missouri hospitals... while we pay for it!" That failed, too.

And so did Missouri this week become the sixth state since 2017 -- five of them staunchly Republican -- where voters took the decision on the expansion of health coverage out of the hands of recalcitrant conservative politicians.

In joining Idaho, Utah, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Maine, the place known as the "Show Me State" showed the electoral power of access to health care and the danger to President Trump and Republicans of their ongoing efforts to repeal Obamacare.

. . .

All but 12 states -- eight of them in the old Confederacy -- have now expanded Medicaid. And the evidence is strong that if their voters were given the chance, they, too, would decide for expansion. In May, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Health Tracking Poll found that in the states that had not accepted Obamacare's Medicaid offer (which then included Missouri and Oklahoma), 66 percent favored expansion.

There was some other political news this week, but for once we're just going to skip over it all, because the pandemic (and that Trump interview) was so much more important. We realize we're punting by doing so, but in the words of our fearless leader: "It is what it is."





As usual, we have some rather impressive political ads to make note of before we get to the awards.

The Lincoln Project has an anti-Susan Collins ad up that is rather funny. The guy they hired as a Trump impersonator looks absolutely nothing like him -- but his voice and inflection are perfect. Play the ad and just listen to the audio if you don't believe this....

They've also got a pretty scathing ad belittling Jared Kushner for being (as they put it) the "Secretary of Failure," which is also pretty good.

And there are a few other new ads well worth checking out this week as well.

As for impressive Democratic politicians, however, this week saw yet another successful progressive candidate win a primary election against an establishment Democrat who had apparently outlived his dynastic welcome in his district. Here's the whole story:

The defeat of longtime Missouri Rep. William Lacy Clay by Black Lives Matter activist Cori Bush took some Democrats by surprise, confounding their ideas of who was and wasn't vulnerable to a left-wing primary challenge.

It did not surprise the movements and organizations that pushed Bush over the finish line. The win by the 44-year-old nurse and pastor, one of several liberal victories in Tuesday's primaries, came after her own dogged campaigning was boosted by relatively new liberal PACs and by robust fundraising that caught the incumbent -- a member of a dynasty that represented St. Louis for 51 years -- by surprise.

"They counted us out," Bush told supporters Tuesday night at her St. Louis campaign office. "They called me just a protester. I'm just an activist, with no name, no title and no money. That's all they said I was. But St. Louis showed up."

Bush is the fifth left-wing Democrat to oust an incumbent member of Congress from her party since the start of Donald Trump's presidency. In April 2017, she became the first recruit announced by Justice Democrats, an organization built by veterans of Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign. Each candidate embraced the key planks of Sanders's platform -- Medicare-for-all, criminal justice and immigration reform, as well as opposition to corporate PAC money. Each was also a serious underdog.

Maybe in the next Congress, we'll see more than just four members of "The Squad," in other words. As far as we're concerned, the more the merrier!

For her stunning upset victory, progressive Cori Bush is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. We look forward to seeing her in the House next January.

[Cori Bush is still a private citizen, and we do not link to campaign webpages, so you'll have to search her contact information yourselves in order to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]



We hate to do it, but we're going to give Joe Biden the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, for a rather bizarre comment he made to a reporter this week.

There were actually two of these to choose from, but we see what he said about the African-American vote versus the Latino vote as more of a "Washington gaffe," where a politician accidentally speaks a truth that nobody's supposed to say out loud. Biden was essentially right -- Black voters are one of the most monolithic voting blocs in America. They vote for Democrats because Republicans do absolutely nothing at all for them (other than use Black people to fearmonger in their political ads). It makes perfect sense why most Republicans get less than 10 percent of the Black vote, in other words.

But the other exchange Biden had was worse, in our opinion. Here's the exchange, after yet another reporter asked Biden whether he's been tested for mental decline:

CBS correspondent Errol Barnett prompted the presumptive Democratic nominee to clarify if he had taken a test measuring his mental acuity, leading to a tense exchange.

"No, I haven't taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test? Come on, man," Biden said. "That's like saying to you, before you got on this program if you had taken a test were you taking cocaine or not. What do you think, huh? Are you a junkie?"

Um... what?

Now, we do realize that (1) it is downright insulting if not rude to ask such a question of anyone, and (2) Biden's getting tired of hearing this -- but at the same time, he's got to get a better answer than: "Are you a junkie?" Mental decline and illegal drug use aren't really equivalent, in other words, so it's impossible to understand why Biden chose to go there.

The whole issue is a rather large part of Trump's attacks on Biden, which means that Biden's going to have to address this over and over again -- at least until he comes up with a zinger such as Reagan's: "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

Perhaps something like: "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, the fact that my opponent thinks that being able to identify a camel is some sort of I.Q. test" might just work? Whatever -- Team Biden really does have to come up with a snappy answer to these questions, because the one that Biden himself came up with was pretty disappointing.

[Joe Biden is technically a private citizen, and our policy is not to link to campaign websites, so you'll have to look his contact information up yourself, sorry.]




Volume 585 (8/7/20)

The first two of these come from Joe Biden's Twitter account, because he recently made one very excellent point (in two different ways) that is one of the biggest selling points that he's got -- that the endless and pointless drama can come to an end if he gets in the White House.

The rest of the talking points are more of a mixed bag, as usual.



A winning campaign slogan

Joe Biden has hit upon what could possibly be the most potent argument he could make to convince voters that's he's the best choice. It's short, sweet, and to the point. In fact, he could retweet this every day and we still wouldn't get tired of hearing it. Think we're overstating the potency of his argument? You decide...

You won't have to worry about my tweets when I'm president.

On a related subject

There was a similar tweet from Biden this week, on the heels of a dustup between Donald Trump and one of his pandemic experts, Dr. Deborah Birx. This came in response to a Trump tweet which called her "pathetic."

It's hard to believe this has to be said, but if I'm elected president, I'll spend my Monday mornings working with our nation's top experts to control this virus -- not insulting them on Twitter.

Place the blame where it belongs

As of this writing, it appears the talks on the next coronavirus relief bill have all but broken down between Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the White House minions. What this means for the immediate future is that we're all going to play the blame game all weekend long. Fortunately, Democrats are going to win this contest.

"You're wondering who to blame for the breakdown in negotiations? Well, look no further than the Republicans, because it was they who said they needed a "pause" of ten full weeks while they sat on their hindquarters and did absolutely nothing. When you abdicate your responsibility in such a stunning dereliction of duty, it is impossible to come back later and bemoan the fact that deadlines have passed. Democrats have been ready to go since the middle of May, I remind you. But Republicans refuse to even entertain a compromise offer. Democrats want a $3 trillion relief package, the Republicans countered with $1 trillion -- in a bill that could not even make it through the Republican Senate -- so we offered to split the difference at $2 trillion. But this offer was flatly refused. So you don't have to look very hard to see who is trying to solve the problem and rescue America's economy and American workers -- and who instead prefers to sit around and do nothing about it."



What jobs?

Hit back at this nonsense, too.

"Republicans are arguing from the position that American workers are all lazy and greedy and would rather sit at home collecting unemployment checks rather than go out and get a job. If these were normal times with a normal unemployment rate, they might have an ideological leg to stand on -- but these are anything but normal times. Unemployment is in the double digits, tens of millions are without work, and there just are no jobs out there. But Republicans don't care -- they want people out there starving and being evicted because, to Republicans, they're all lazy and greedy and are refusing to take all those jobs. You know -- all those jobs that do not currently exist."



Muddled information after an attack?

Please, please, would some Democrat point out this irony?

"After the explosion in Beirut, President Trump told the public that it was 'a bomb of some kind,' apparently based upon absolutely nothing. Trump said, and I quote, 'I mean, somebody left some terrible explosive type of devices and things around, perhaps it was that, perhaps it was on attack. I don't think anybody can say right now.' Unquote. Now let's compare this -- an early report that Secretary of Defense Mark Esper directly contradicted by saying it was 'an accident' -- with what happened right after the attack on Benghazi. It seems in this instance, early reports amplified by the president with no actual basis in fact are just peachy-keen with all the Republicans out there who were outraged that early reports out of Benghazi later turned out to be inaccurate. If a Democratic president said anything like that, we'd have multiple endless congressional investigations -- ten or twelve of them, at the least -- but when Trump says it, Republicans just shrug and go with: 'It is what it is.' How times have changed!"



When Republicans do it, it's OK

We wrote about this at length earlier, but it's worth revisiting here.

"It seems someone close to him sat Donald Trump down and explained in no uncertain terms that he was going to lose Florida if the GOP didn't turn out the mail-in vote there. So suddenly Trump decided that mail-in voting was just fine -- 'safe and secure, tried and true' -- when it is Republicans who are voting by mail. It's only when Democrats do so that the election is rigged. The closer we get to the actual election, the more we can expect to hear more of these bogus pre-emptive excuses from Trump for why he's going to lose, it appears. Who knows which one of them he'll have fixated upon by Election Day?"



Thoughts and prayers

How appropriate!

"When the news broke that the New York attorney general is trying to dissolve the National Rifle Association for essentially being nothing more than a giant con job -- with the executives taking in dues and members' money and then personally spending it like drunken sailors -- there was much snarky sympathy from all over. This mostly took the form of people promising oh-so-sincerely to keep the N.R.A. in their 'thoughts and prayers.' After all, that's what you're supposed to do when tragedy strikes, right?"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank

[flying rabbit]

1. K&R nt