The Election: What’s Really At Stake

Posted on October 20, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 20, 2020

The final two weeks of the 2020 election campaign will be a terribly stressful time for Americans. Millions are out of work, COVID-19 infections are exploding all over the country, and countless small businesses are failing. With millions of families unable to pay rent and waiting in line at food banks, we are caught in a tug-of-war among three leaders, none of whom is inclined to blink.

The president changes his mind about a new stimulus bill every day, some days contradicting himself repeatedly, depending on the audience he’s addressing. His latest pitch was to increase the dollar value of the stimulus beyond what even Nancy Pelosi wants, though it’s not clear what he’d spend it on. Mitch McConnell is plowing through with a bill that Senate Republicans may pass, but has no chance of becoming law. And Pelosi postured that there can be no deal if a framework is not agreed upon by close of business today because of all the steps required to pass a law by Election Day.

By the end of today, 35 million ballots will have been cast in in-person voting, which does not count absentee and mail-in ballots that have been mailed or deposited in drop boxes. That suggests one problem may have solved itself. Trump’s constant attacks on mail-in voting and the myriad legal challenges around receipt and postmark dates will continue beyond Election Day, but voters, concerned that Trump and Postmaster Louis DeJoy have sabotaged the postal service, have found a workaround. With two weeks until Election Day, the number of votes already cast in person exceeds a quarter of all the votes counted in 2016.

If we count all the early ballots mailed or delivered to drop boxes, 50 million people may have already voted. If voter participation reaches an unprecedented 150 million, we’re probably a third of the way there. If that trend continues, we could avoid a contested election.

By railing against mail-in voting, Trump may have defeated his own argument as voters take the election in their own hands, where it belongs. But not so fast – Republicans are mounting challenges to state election laws in swing states all over the country. They seem to have lost Round 1 as the Supreme Court let stand an appeals court ruling that Pennsylvania may count ballots received up to November 6th, three days past Election Day. But television legal pundits warn that should not be taken as a precedent that will affect rulings in other states.

In states in which the outcome depends on counting mail-in and absentee ballots, we may still see court challenges that go on indefinitely. What’s really at stake is the viability of our so-called democracy. Congressional gridlock over an obviously needed stimulus bill underlines the problem of a two-party system strangling in a hyper-partisan environment. If Congress remains dysfunctional now, it’s worth asking how it can ever regain its effectiveness and the confidence of the American people.

The reality is actually worse than that. You might ask why, when House and Senate Republicans on the ballot are frantically distancing themselves from the president, the legal challenges persist. The easy answer is that Trump has thown his party into such disarray, those challenges may be the only hope for people who have clung to Trump’s coattails to avoid being dragged down with him if he loses.

Two critical questions remain. One is who is paying for all these court challenges. Big money is being spent to explore every possible way Trump can eke out an electoral college victory, though if he wins re-election while losing the popular vote by a large margin, that won’t help Republican House and Senate candidates. The big money is being spent in a last ditch effort to protect the wealth of white billionaires who are terrified of national health insurance and higher taxes.

That might have been a long shot if Ruth Bader Ginsburg were still on the bench, which is the crux of the current problem. If Amy Coney Barrett takes her seat on the Court before Election Day, she will be the deciding vote on all election challenges. To be fair, we cannot possibly know how she would vote, despite Trump’s confidence that she will side with him. The most important question may be whether Justice Barrett recuses herself on matters related to the election.

Questions of propriety aside, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham have made it crystal clear that the rush to confirm Barrett is all about the election. Trump said, “I need her on the Court” before Election Day. If Justice Barrett, who calls herself a constitutional originalist allows herself to be used to undermine the election, she will demonstrate a total lack of integrity.

Unfortunately, knowing that won’t do the rest of us any good. If she is true to the words she uttered during her confirmation hearings, she must recuse herself.

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Trump’s Latest Reveals

Posted on October 18, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 18, 2020

I’ve written that despite his bluster, lies, and exaggerations, if you listen carefully, you can always discern the truth behind Donald Trump’s words. There were two such examples last week in his raucous super-spreader campaign events.

Campaigning in Pennsylvania, amid a typical barrage of hate-filled rhetoric and crazy conspiracy theories, Trump got real for a minute looking out at the crowd, half of which appeared to be suburban white women. Although the women at the rally adored him enough to put their lives at risk to hear him speak, he must have had an epiphany, realizing how much of that demographic, which he won handily in 2016, has turned against him. He put on a face like a spoiled little boy and whined, “Suburban women, will you please like me? I saved your damn neighborhoods, ok?”

He reminded me of Dennis the Menace, the blonde tow-haired ten-year-old boy who was always getting into trouble and then pouting when he was punished. For five years, Trump has been setting exactly the wrong example for suburban women who try to instill values and morality in their children. He has increased the stress level of almost every American family, and unlike young Dennis, his mischief isn’t based on misguided good intentions.

On the other hand, like Dennis, master manipulator and con man Donald Trump thought putting on his saccharine sweet expression and virtually begging for their support would change those mothers’ minds. But they know the difference between a sweet little boy who can’t help getting into trouble and a hateful, narcissistic adult who cares more about himself than the millions of Americans he swore to protect. Hollow as his plea was, it may have been the only sincere words thing uttered at that rally.

His principal base of support is shrinking, but in a population of 330 million, it’s not difficult to round up a few thousand people to attend his rallies and cheer for him. He desperately needs their adulation, a reveal that anyone can see. As his niece, psychologist Mary Trump explained, her uncle Donald has never felt loved, and it’s left to all of us to ease his pain. Poor Donald.

He feels persecuted by everyone that refuses to kneel at his feet and pledge fealty to him. To be sure, a lot of people are out to get him to hold him accountable for his actions. No doubt, he feels hounds nipping at his heels but he is not an innocent victim. They represent the people he has hurt.

Friday, in Florida, he was more manic than usual, which some doctors attribute to the steroids he takes to shield him against the effects of COVID-19. The polls continued to predict a dire outcome for him on Election Day, and every passing day, with millions of Americans already voting, there were fewer voters left to convince. The only things Trump hates more than losing are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and it was sinking in, as his Department of Justice was not producing new scandals for him to tout, that he was probably going to lose.

When he addressed that possibility to a group of Florida seniors, whose votes he desperately needs, he said, “If I lose, I might have to leave the country.” A good friend, a very smart guy who often sees the world differently from me, interpreted that as clever and witty, an ironic response to Americans who wring their hands and say they’ll move to Canada if Trump wins again. There may actually have been an element of that – it would be a mistake to view Trump’s thought process as simple and one-dimensional.

I believe there was literal truth in Trump’s words. He is incapable of controlling the impulse to talk about things that upset him. When he said he might have to leave the country he told us a couple of things. One is that despite his bravado, he knows that he is despised by three out of every five Americans. There will be no more lucrative network television contracts for him if he loses, and those were the only things keeping his financial empire above water.

More importantly, he knows that the moment he leaves office he will be hounded by his creditors and state and local prosecutors who believe he is guilty of fraud and racketeering. He also knows that while Joe Biden will undoubtedly shield him from federal prosecution because his primary goal is to heal the divisions in the country, Biden cannot shield him from indictment by State Attorneys General and local prosecutors. He knows he may face financial ruin and years of defending himself in court if he stays here.

I’ll bet you a dollar Rudy Guiliani is preparing a list of countries that do not have extradition treaties with the United States.

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The Cynical Case for Herd Immunity

Posted on October 15, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 15, 2020

A group of Iowa farmers erected this billboard to guide people to Wednesday’s rally at the Des Moines, IA airport. As rich as the English language is in adjectives and adverbs, it is insufficient to describe the utter chutzbah the sign represents.

Was it meant as a sick joke? Was it sarcasm? Or was it simply an in-your-face slap at Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx? Whichever, it was an implied insult to the people of Iowa, in particular to Trump’s loyal base there. It says loud and clear that Trump views his supporters as expendable losers whose only value to him is the votes they cast.

Of all the things Trump has said and done as president, this sign may be the most outrageous. He spends a large portion of every rally telling his audience that the pandemic is over, that we’ve defeated the COVID-19 virus and it’s fading away. All that while the number of new recorded cases in the United States approached 60,000 and the number of new COVID-related deaths exceeded 1,000 yesterday in a rising trend. This, as new data released by the CDC about unexpected deaths nationwide suggest that deaths from COVID are probably being undercounted by at least 50%.

Yesterday, writing about Trump’s election end game, I said I had no idea what was going on in Trump’s mind. His nonstop schedule of rallies in which hardly any of the attendees wear masks and people are packed in as tightly as possible seemed to me to be spiteful more than anything else. Nobel laureate, economist Paul Krugman wrote as much in a New York Times Op-ed last Sunday: “We must assume, based on all evidence, that Donald Trump’s primary motivation is not rooted in any political calculus, but is pure, unadulterated spite.” 

I no longer have no idea what Trump is thinking. Consider how his version of pandemic-related events evolved in recent weeks. First, he claimed that he took heroic action in banning travel from China and saved two million American lives, which was supposed to make voters feel gratitude that his policies have so far resulted in only 217,000 deaths. Having recovered from his own case of COVID after a combination of treatments no other American could expect to receive, he decided that the virus was “no big deal” and people should stop worrying about it.

With the release of the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by a group of scientists and medical professionals that has been unversally condemned by the mainstream public health community, we see what Trump’s final play is. The Declaration says two things. One is that people who are at low risk of serious complications and death from COVID should go about their lives normally – no masks, no social distancing – with the deliberate intent of allowing the virus to spread through the community until herd immunity is achieved. And while this is going on, we’re supposed to identify and isolate those seriously at risk to protect them from being infected.

The CDC estimates that such an approach would result in at least two million more deaths, and possibly many more. I suppose Trump thinks that’s a fair trade for the two million he claims to have already saved. But the bottom line is that the idea, as underlined by the aforementioned billboard in Iowa, is a cynical statement that those who die in the service of Trump’s re-election campaign are expendable. Attitudes like this are reminiscent of Joseph Stalin using tens of millions of people as cannon fodder to stop the Nazi advance during World War 2.

Interviewed by ABC News this morning, Anthony Fauci said, “this idea that we have the power to protect the vulnerable is total nonsense … and you’ll wind up with many more … hospitalizations and deaths. So I think that we just got to look that square in the eye and say it’s nonsense.” And WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called herd immunity “scientifically and ethically problematic. … Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic.”

Tedros’ point is that the concept of herd immunity is only used in conjuction with an effective vaccine. In that context, achieving herd immunity tells us that the vaccine worked. The Great Barrington Declaration’s approach is equivalent to throwing people into a pit of vipers to see how many develop immunity to snake venom.

Mandarin philosophy has always held that it is both moral and necessary to sacrifice the present generation when it is deemed necessary for the benefit of future poopulations. Yet even the Chinese Communists, while lying about the extent of the COVID virus, took the most draconian measures of any major nation to stop the spread of the virus to save lives. Trying to achieve herd immunity through mass infection was too cynical even for Xi Jinping, but not apparently, for Donald Trump.

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Trump’s Stretch Run Strategy

Posted on October 14, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 14, 2020

I can’t help but wonder what’s going on in Trump’s head these days. His rants and actions appear true to form: brash, offensive, divisive, his own unique blend of truth, lies, and hyperbole. None of that should surprise anyone who paid attention for the last five years. But considering what is at stake, I can’t make sense of his stretch run strategy.

He made it clear in 2016 that he disdained traditional campaigns and had no respect for professionals who’d been managing political candidates for decades. He claimed that his instincts served him better than all their collective advice. Since he won, the easy conclusion is that he was right. But many of the factors that turned the election his way had nothing to do with strategy.

Would James Carville or David Axelrod have consorted with Julian Assange? Would Karl Rove have violated federal law by soliciting support from a foreign adversarial government? Were the actions of then FBI Director James Comey or Hillary Clinton’s inexplicable mishandling of Benghazi and her infamous emails examples of Trump’s brilliance? What I saw was ineptitude on the part of Clinton’s campaign advisors.

What Trump calls his native, instinctive talent is a combination of being driven by his narcissistic need for adulation and a carefully schooled approach to business learned from sleazy mentors like his father, his long-time lawyer Roy Cohn, and the mobsters he palled around with in the 1970s and 1980s. That they often served him well in his real estate ventures, however, may reflect more about the intimidation value of well-paid lawyers and a loophole-filled legal system than business acumen.

We now have considerable evidence of that. His well-publicized bankruptcies made him a bad loan risk in the opinion of every major American bank. His niece and sister, and former fixer Michael Cohen all describe him as a con man. And the New York Times’ revealed that Trump has $400 million in personal debts, and his flagship hotels and golf courses are all financial disasters.

If we consider the final twenty days of this election in light of everything we know about Trump, his actions make no sense. Real Clear Politics and 538.com report that the most highly regarded polls currently have Biden leading Trump by ten points among likely voters, and ahead in almost every battleground state. No incumbent with numbers as bad as Trump’s has ever won re-election.

Trump still has a loyal, some would say rabid base, but that base is no more than a third of the electorate, not nearly enough to re-elect him. His margin of victory in 2016 came from independents who were angry at establishment politicians and disaffected Democrats who disliked Clinton. The 2018 mid-terms showed that Trump was losing his grip on those groups, and his mishandling of the pandemic caused independents to leave him in droves. In Biden, he faces an opponent who has a consistently high approval rating with voters, well in excess of 50%, while Clinton’s never approached 50%.

Assuming his attempts to undermine the electoral process don’t succeed, Trump’s best chance of winning re-election requires getting voters’ minds off the COVID crisis and expanding his base. Yet, he seems hell-bent on doing neither. He announced that he will hold rallies like the ones this week in Sanford, FL and Johnstown, PA every day until the election. And rather than engage Biden in another debate, he will hold his own competing Town Hall tomorrow evening while Biden goes ahead with the one already scheduled.

Every public health expert has warned that raucous rallies with almost no one wearing masks and people jammed together for hours with no distancing are all likely to be COVID super-spreaders. Only Trump’s most devoted supporters attend them, they are smaller than in 2016, and they don’t receive the endless television coverage this year. The rallies, which are the heart of his stretch run strategy keep the virus front and center and are generally ignored by the very people he needs to win over.

What’s he up to? Is he expecting an October surprise? U. S. Attorney John Durham, who was tasked by Attorney General Bill Barr with re-investigating the Russia investigation and Hunter Biden was supposed to be preparing a blockbuster report. But Durham announced that there would be no report before the election and has turned his attention to the Clinton Foundation. Does Trump think he’s still running against Hillary or has his well-known reputation for spite overcome him?

The only explanation I can come up with is that Trump is deliberately trying to create COVID hotspots throughout the battleground states so he can declare a state of emergency and cancel the election. Far-fetched, I know, but if you have a better explanation, I’d love to hear it.

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Trump’s Callous Disregard for Americans

Posted on October 13, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 13, 2020

Now it’s personal. I’ve seen it happen in other places, watched it evolve on TV and every media outlet, because one of Donald Trump’ least endearing qualities (out of so many to choose from) is his need to constantly dominate both the airwaves and the broadband signals.

Trump’s willingness to sacrifice the health of the Americans he swore to defend for his own benefit is beyond dispute. For anyone who had the slightest doubt until now, his resumption of densely packed rallies with no distancing or masks surely silenced them. And Trump supporters at his rally in Sanford, Florida last evening seemed to gleefully accept it, proudly proclaiming to the television cameras that they don’t care about the pandemic, saying brilliant things like, “If I die, I die.”

That’s fine if they’re, say, cliff diving at Acapulco, not putting anyone else at risk except the unfortunate fish they might land on when they hit the surf. But in Sanford, these imbeciles were, and still are putting my family and friends at risk, and I am PISSED. Thanks to Governor Ron DeSantis, who has mismanaged the pandemic using the Trump playbook, the infection rate in Florida remains north of ten percent. For every thousand people who attended that rally, around a hundred were likely carrying COVID, and some fraction of those were spreading it to the people with whom they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

Those same people then stopped in motels, shopped in local stores, and dined in local restaurants which remain open at near capacity. Professor Michael Osterholm, Director of Infectious Disease Reasearch at the University of Minnesota, this week predicted that Florida would be the worst hot spot in the country during the second wave of the pandemic, for just those reasons. Central Florida, where life revolves around theme parks, beaches, football, and nightlife is a place where an alarming percentage of the population value their “personal freedom” over everything else. In Florida-speak that means they have no respect for rules or authority.

Trump’s rally was the very definition of a super-spreader event. That’s extremely personal to me, because it occurred five miles from where my son, my daughter-in-law who is days away from having a baby, and my two grandsons live. They shop in the same stores and take out food from the same restaurants in which those rally goers are still shedding virus today. The kids go to school with other kids whose families are equally at risk from Trump’s total disregard of their health and well-being. If that’s not bad enough, Florida being what it is, the next stop for many of those lemmings who are happy to follow Trump off the nearest cliff was to jump into their pickups or mount their hogs and head for the nearest beach town with their guns and confederate flags.

Unfortunately, that means they headed to the county where my wife and I spend a third of every year so we can watch the kids grow up. It’s also where many thousands of seniors reside full time or vacation, many of whom are our friends and sometime colleagues. Some of our friends, who are in their seventies and eighties, are severely health compromised. For them, the only way to remain safe is to live in a bubble for the next few weeks, until the wave of sickness and death that will surely emanate out of Sanford passes.

A reasonable person might ask what is driving this madness. The answer is Donald Trump’s ego and need for adulation. Three weeks out from an election which he will almost certainly lose, Trump’s only hope of victory is to broaden his support. Yet, he is embarking on a series of typical Trump rallies which are attended by only his most committed supporters, the ones he was referring to when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a single vote. Most political observers believe these rallies will do nothing to improve his chance of being re-elected. Their only purpose is to provide our president with a daily sugar high.

During the AIDS epidemic of the eighties and nineties, people who knowingly, deliberately exposed others to the HIV virus were prosecuted and convicted. The courts found that such negligent disregard for the health of others was a crime. If that was true, what can we say about our president? What percent of the quarter million deaths that we will have amassed by Election Day does he own? The modelers and epidemiologists who know best say 80-90%.

Do I sound angry? As I said, it’s personal now.

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Of Sound Mind and Body

Posted on October 9, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 9, 2020

Once again, we find ourselves mired in chaos created by Donald Trump. This time it’s about his physical and mental health a week after being hospitalized with COVID. There was a time when contradicting his doctors and public health experts and making demonstrably untrue assertions about the pandemic left much of the country wondering about fake news. Which reality was true, the overwhelming consensus of scientists and physicians, or the erratic, self-contradictory vision painted by Trump’s tweets and rants?

Twenty-five days before the election, Trump’s version has far fewer followers than it might have a couple of years ago, partly because it changes with his whims, sometimes multiple times a day. The reality of science and medicine has been consistent and almost unanimous for months, despite Trump’s attempt to re-write history.

He often defends his refusal to wear masks by claiming Anthony Fauci said masks were unnecessary back in March. But Fauci never said that. At a time when the nation’s stockpile of necessary medical supplies was severely depleted, Fauci suggested it was more important at that moment to assure that medical personnel had sufficient supplies of masks than for every American to have one.

We’ve seen what happens when decisions affecting millions of lives ignore science in favor of  one man’s self-interest. In the past few weeks, the president has recklessly put people directly at risk of catching the virus while attempting to convince his supporters that common sense recommendations by the CDC were just the radical left and the deep state trying to restrict their personal freedoms. And now, with COVID infections peaking all over the country, he wants to resume rallies, while unwilling to reveal the details of his health status.

There is no longer any doubt about who is promulgating fake news. The doubt and confusion which the president creates no longer obscure the truth. Instead of condemning white supremacists and hate groups, he admonished them to “stand by,” and a week later the FBI crushed a right-wing militia plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer. Amid concerns that such militia groups have been emboldened by Trump’s refusal to discredit them, and fears that they may be planning massive acts of insurrection and civil war, FBI Director Christopher Wray said domestic terrorism is the most dangerous threat facing the country.  Trump said the plot to kidnap Witmer was her fault for not opening her state fast enough.

Trump’s assertion that he has beaten COVID and Americans should not let it dominate their lives are driven by his desperation about re-election.  The same desperation caused him to attack Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, because he hasn’t produced new evidence about Hillary Clinton’s emails, and Attorney General Bill Barr, because the investigation led by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham into the “Russia hoax” will not be completed before Election Day. No October surprise?

This week, there is more evidence of Trump’s erratic behavior. He changed his mind three times in less than a week about whether he will debate Joe Biden on October 15th. He flipped back and forth over a new stimulus bill for a month, accusing the Democrats of holding up a bill while ordering Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin not to budge on the Republican Senate bill that would provide funding to bail out airlines and protect employers against liability if employees brought back to work in violation of CDC guidelines became sick or died.

Three days ago, after arguing that Nancy Pelosi wanted over a trillion dollars to reward Democrat-run states for decades of overspending he ordered Mnuchin to end negotiations with her. Yet today he undercut his own Senate caucus, telling Rush Limbaugh’s audience that he wants a huge stimulus, much larger than Pelosi’s. There’s a clear pattern in all this. We’ve seen his obsession with remaining in power play out repeatedly. But now he appears panicked, leading much of the medical community to wonder if the drugs he’s been given are affecting his stability and judgment.

We wouldn’t accept a last will and testament whose author was not demonstrably of sound mind and body, and we cannot accept the president’s version of his own legacy. In a very real sense, he is bequeathing the current state of the nation to the next administration. The body of evidence that includes both his record and his physical and mental health is all on the ballot this year. Far more important than politics, it creates a stark contrast between the current president and Joe Biden, his opponent.

If Americans can put aside their differences and focus on what’s best for the country, the choice couldn’t be clearer.

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Reading Trump’s Tells

Posted on October 8, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 8, 2020

Donald Trump’s most notable talent is a native ability to create chaos, sow discord, and enrage his adversaries in the hope that it will either intimidate them or negatively impact their judgment. He touts unpredictability and his ability to constantly keep everyone else guessing. Since people like Trump are thankfully rare, most of us were unprepared when he came on the political scene in 2015.

The way he decimated fifteen other Republican candidates in the 2016 primary race was testimony to both his power and its limitations. He reminds me of a major league baseball player from my youth. Ryne Duren pitched for the Orioles and Yankees in the 1950s and early 1960s. When he first came on the scene his trademarks were a previously unheard of 100 mph fastball and coke-bottle glasses. He would begin his warmup pitches by throwing the ball as hard as he could, missing the catcher by twenty feet.

The idea was to convince batters that his vision was so bad, his aim so erratic, it would be dangerous to get in the batter’s box. Yankees manager Casey Stengel said he’d be terrified to hit against him. Duren’s mystique worked – for a while. He convinced me, but I was only eleven. After a while, batters figured out Duren’s act. He was still formidable, but hitters stopped fearing him and they learned to hit 100 mph pitches routinely.

One trick ponies like Duren and Donald Trump always come back to Earth. Trump’s ability to make people’s heads spin has a finite lifetime. The shock and awe he practices whenever the cameras are on him loses its opacity after a while. Listen carefully to him, and his meaning and intent become clear.

One reason he succeeds is that Americans are loath to believe people are evil. Despite mountains of circumstantial and substantive evidence, it takes a lot to make us suspend our disbelief. Trump is a narcissistic sociopath; if you keep that in mind it’s easy to spot his tells. Consider his actions Wednesday afternoon. First, he released a video claiming he was fine. He’d beaten the COVID virus and was a “perfect specimen” of health. He was no longer contagious, and he was ready to resume campaign rallies.

Physicians watching him unanimously blasted the video, and his own doctors have been unwilling to offer specifics on his condition, despite voters’ right to know the health of the person they vote for. Doctors who knew what to look for easily spotted his difficulty breathing and accused him of lying. He is still a sick man whose symptoms are being masked by the drugs he’s taking. There is no evidence that he is no longer shedding the virus.

The tell for us non-doctors was the part about getting back to his raucous, maskless tight-packed rallies. The only thing that matters to Trump is looking tough to his base, no matter how many of them he infects and possibly kills. It matters so much, he was willing to steal the spotlight from his running mate, Mike Pence, who was about to debate Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

The interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business News, yesterday, had a similar tell. When the Federal Debate Commission announced that next week’s presidential debate would be virtual, Trump was furious. “I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate. That’s not what debating is all about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate. It’s ridiculous, and then they cut you off whenever they want.”  

If you listen carefully, he always telegraphs his genuine intent. His objection to a virtual debate is that it undercuts his ability to ignore the rules and dominate the proceedings with bluster and constant interruptions. He cannot accept the idea of following the same rules Biden agreed to or of agreeing to limit his personal freedom to speak whenever he wishes. Allow some loser CSPAN host to turn off his microphone?

I shudder when I think of the harm he can do between now and January, to our country and the world.

Does Trump seem more erratic and crazy than usual? Many physicians believe he is being affected by psychotropic side effects of the medicines he’s taking, which led Nancy Pelosi to suggest he is living in an “altered state.” That, combined with desperation over his failing poll numbers, may be why he is acting like a caged animal. He seems more reckless every day as the election draws near. He changes his mind  daily about a new stimulus bill as more and more people become sick with COVID and employers lay off workers and cancel their health insurance. And he still holds the nuclear missile codes.

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Trump’s Hubris

Posted on October 5, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 5, 2020

In 2016, millions of Americans felt powerless and left behind. Many of them were hard-working people who the system allowed to fall through the cracks, like the “working poor” who earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but could not afford private health insurance because Mitch McConnell held the public option hostage when Obamacare was passed, hoping to assure its failure. Many had lost their jobs because it was cheaper for their employers to farm them out to China, Indonesia, and anywhere else that had no worker protection laws. And many were simply angry, about non-whites growing in influence, about anything with the word “liberal” attached, about birth control, and about propaganda that people on the left wanted to take their guns away.

People who feel angry and hopeless, who believe they’ve been ignored and see others buying new homes and fancy cars are easy prey for demagoguery. When you’re desperate and someone comes along and claims to feel your pain, promising to fix all your problems, it can be difficult to distinguish healthy, positive self-assurance from hubris. It’s understandable that they were taken in by the con man who now lives in the White House. It’s not their fault that they were caught up in the chaos created by Trump and his Russian surrogates and trusted Facebook and Twitter to shield them from lies.

They know better, now. They know Trump’s signature achievement, a three trillion-dollar tax cut that enriched his wealthy friends and grew the national debt into a burden their children will bear did little or nothing to benefit them. They know he hasn’t stopped corporations from outsourcing jobs, and has continued to do so himself. They know he isn’t smarter than his generals or public health experts, and that he lies virtually every time he speaks. If that wasn’t sufficient, they can now see that his self-serving downplaying of COVID worsened the pandemic, continues to threaten them and their families, and may have damaged our economy so much that their jobs no longer exist.

Now they know what happens when their president, whose primary responsibility is keeping his citizens safe, reneges on that obligation for his own benefit. They know science was right at every turn and Trump was wrong, and arrogance about the virus allowed it to spread out of control. Science predicts that the death toll of 210,000 Americans could grow to 400,000 by year end. Trump’s approval ratings are tumbling as many who voted for him in 2016 now see his demeanor as pure hubris.

He has been humbled by the very virus he helped spread, and irresponsibly infected the people most loyal to him. He claims that being sick with COVID has educated him, that he gets it now, yet he still pressures his doctors to lie about his condition, to convince Americans that the virus isn’t as dangerous as the rest of us know it is. He still refuses to lead by example, eschewing masks and social distancing, placing his own staff in jeopardy.

Yesterday, we witnessed the spectacle of our chief narcissist being chauffeured down Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda so he could bask in the love of his most rabid supporters. He ignored the advice of his doctors and exposed the Secret Service agents traveling with him in a hermetically sealed SUV to the active virus. Taking a bullet for him may be in their job description, but dying of COVID to satisfy his ego is not.

Ignoring CDC’s rules, Trump continued to hold public, close-packed events refusing to require masks, until his Rose Garden presentation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett turned into a virus super-spreader. He may have even infected the judge, but we won’t know for several more days. That, my friends, is HUBRIS. He might as well have held the ceremony in a live mine field.

Today may have been the icing on the cake, when his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, whose unfailing loyalty has tarnished her reputation as a legitimate journalist, reported that she too was infected. No one thought to warn her that presidential aide Hope Hicks, with whom she interacted daily in the mask-free environment of the West Wing, was shedding the virus.

And perhaps worst, from the point of view of national security, is continuing to try to hide the truth about the president’s health because he fears it could cost him votes. That includes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who must be kept apprised at all times. If Vice President Pence were to become incapacitated at the same time as the president, Pelosi would be required to serve as Interim President.

Before it was just words and bombast. Now it’s clear that Trump’s hubris is more than noise. It’s a serious threat to our nation’s security.

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The President’s Illness

Posted on October 3, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 3, 2020

Whatever else it may be, Donald Trump’s personal battle with COVID-19 is a wake-up call for every American. After months of being battered into submission by both the virus and the political bombast that erupted in its wake, Trump’s illness is like a 5 a.m. reveille. It forced me to ask myself some critical questions.

I have made no secret of my disdain and disgust for this president’s policies, lack of a moral center, and disregard for the truth. Given my oft-stated concern that they will wreak serious, permanent harm on our country, my first question was, “do I want him to die?” The answer is a resounding “NO!” Regardless of how I feel about Trump, his death would be a catastrophe for the country.

A subtler version of that question was, “do I care whether he survives, and isn’t every human life, even his worth saving?” If I’m being honest, implications for stability and national security aside, I care about his life and health about as much as he cares about mine. As to whether he survives COVID, the best I can do is quote what he said about the 210,000 people who have already succumbed to the virus: “It is what it is.” Whether he lives or dies, the country needs him to simply go away and never come back.

The most important thing, now, is to not lose sight of what is at stake. Of primary importance is assuring that the election moves forward no matter what else happens. It must proceed in a manner that assures Americans, our allies, and adversaries that whoever wins did so fairly. If the legitimacy of the next president is in question, nothing else will matter. Don’t take your eye off the ball. However you do it, make sure your vote is counted.

No one asked for the president to contract the virus. Most people, including the entire public health and infectious disease community argued relentlessly for him to observe proper protocols. Relentlessly but pointlessly, apparently, as even during the last few days we’re learning his actions were completely irresponsible, if not criminal. He knowingly placed himself in situations that almost guaranteed people around him would be infected.

It’s ironic that based on what we know now, the people he infected were mostly his supporters. Several prominent Republicans, including three senators and multiple senior aides are now in the early stages of the illness, and there will surely be more. And what of the eighteen donors who paid $250,000 each to bask in the glow of their idol Thursday evening? Too bad no one warned them Trump was bringing them a special thank you gift.

If there is justice in this, it is that the president is now a victim of his own criminal malfeasance. It’s not a result of incompetence, as many people charge, although incompetence in governing has been a hallmark of Trump’s administration. It’s the cynical disregard for the lives of all those “disgusting people” whose hands he had to shake. When the smoke clears, we must not forget that he brought this on himself.

There is no longer any doubt that at least 80% of the 210,000 American deaths so far caused by the pandemic would have been averted if Trump hadn’t placed his concern about re-election ahead of everything else. He would have us believe that he was interested in preserving our economy, when it’s clear that all he cared about was preventing a crash in the equity markets. The majority of health experts and economists have said that continually arguing to keep the country open, as Trump likes to say, put the long-term health of our economy at greater risk than shutting it down would have. A presidential mandate to wear masks and keep our distance from each other would have left us in an entirely different place today.

Instead, we have chaos approaching a critical election which Trump and his surrogates attempt to undermine and discredit daily. Instead, with all the crises facing us, the administration’s first and only priority is filling a vacant Supreme Court seat with a Trump-friendly justice before the voters have their say on the direction of the court. Amy Coney Barrett wouldn’t be my first choice, but if Trump won re-election, I’d accept his right to appoint whomever he chooses. Judge Barrett wouldn’t be the first Justice to surprise those who picked her for political reasons who rose above her religious views and ruled with integrity.

The best we can hope for is that Trump survives and having experienced some of the pain he caused millions of others, comes out of it a better man. He may never be capable of empathy, but at least he’ll understand. Unfortunately, that’s as likely to happen as the sun failing to rise tomorrow.

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Presidential Debates 2 and 3

Posted on October 1, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 1, 2020

After listening to Donald Trump for five years, we know how to interpret his words. They almost always mean the opposite of what they would if anyone else said them. Every time he accuses someone else of being flawed in some way, he projects his own insecurities and shortcomings. He’s been saying since the first presidential debate last Tuesday that he’s getting rave reviews for his performance.

In a typically Trump-spun version of the truth, he fails to mention that all those positive reviews are from his surrogates who are reading White House talking points. Everyone who watched that debate knows what actually happened. There was one loser and no winner. Unfortunately, the loser was the voting public. Just ask Trump’s two debate preppers.

Chris Christie, who sent Jared Kushner’s father to prison for two years in 2004, for what in Christie’s words was “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he ever prosecuted, and now has to sneak into the White House when Jared isn’t around, admitted that Trump came on much too strong and hurt himself. Christie opined that Trump might not be able to repair the damage. And legal lapdog Rudy Guiliani, who left his integrity in Central Park sometime in the 1990s and is never at a loss for words, has been silent.

Yesterday, when Trump claimed Joe Biden wouldn’t show up for the next debate, he was really telling us two entirely different things. One is that he desperately wants to avoid another face-to-face showdown himself. A public debate is the only setting in which he cannot spew lies without being called on them in real time in front of what turned out to be an audience of perhaps a billion people in 200 countries last Tuesday. The other, more important message was that he knows Biden has no reason to ever debate with him again, and he wants voters to think the former Vice President is afraid to.

As to the latter point, Trump’s premise is correct even as he lies and attempts to manipulate voters. Joe Biden has absolutely no reason to ever appear on a stage with Donald Trump again. Nothing good can possibly come from a second or third debate. If you’ve ever watched or participated in a real one, as opposed to the nonsense that passes for debates during political season, you know why. A debate can only be meaningful when both parties follow the rules and deal with facts and rational arguments. When either party acts like an out-of-control adolescent, the only possible result is chaos, which is exactly what Donald Trump intends.

I am concerned that Biden won’t heed that advice, because it is not his nature to back away from a confrontation. Moreover, it must be irresistible to be able to counter Trump’s lies as they come out of his mouth with everyone listening. I say, “Don’t waste your time, Joe. Engaging with Trump directly only dilutes your message.” Worse, like two kids fighting in a schoolyard, it never matters who threw the first punch. Once the mayhem is under way, they both look bad, and that is precisely why Trump behaves the way he does.

Speaking of schoolyards, in my mind I keep returning to Biden’s off the cuff taunt of Trump a few years back when he invited him to settle their differences the old-fashioned way the way bullies were dealt with in high school. Part of me would love to see that, but I digress.

The image of Biden on his COVID-sanitized Amtrak train doing whistle stops in Pennsylvania and Ohio was beautiful. For most of the next four weeks he should ignore Donald Trump completely and just ride that train back and forth between Philadelphia and Minneapolis. If he does that as COVID cases are surging in those states because of the criminal malfeasance of his opponent, he will sweep the rust belt, easily winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, and will have a good chance of taking Ohio, at which point the fat lady will belt out “God Bless America” and we can begin recovering from the physical and moral sickness Trump has left us with.

Think FDR and Harry Truman. If Biden intersperses train stops with flights to Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada, he can achieve a Reagan-style landslide, with the Senate riding his coattails. That’s exactly what the country needs right now. It will enable the strong guiding hand of a decent leader who genuinely cares about people to get us back on track, and maybe even start to heal the partisan divide by example.

Please, Joe. No more debates.

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