Awkward Mixture's Presidential Events
of May debuted only a week ago, but already I've compiled the
Presidential Events of June, and here
they are.
My singular thought, before jumping in,
is that at least temporarily for the month of June, Trump seemed to
successfully distract from his atrocious response to the coronavirus
with his attacks on the protesters. It wasn't clear if his strategy
aided him in the polls. Whether because of one or the other, Trump
slipped to his worst numbers since the self inflicted government
shutdown of January 2019. Some evidence theorized that the protests
might be Trump's bigger problem for the moment. Six in ten Americans
disapproved of Trump's response, but I'd question whether they
disprove for the same reason. There are likely some who are upset
because the President threatened to impose order, but has not taken
the action necessary to do so.
Protests
Trump opened the month of May by
unleashing an unprovoked attack on protesters outside the White House
with tear gas and police violence. The police
began the assault just after 6:30 even though the curfew did not
begin until 7pm. The violence enabled the
President to parade through the cleared streets to a nearby church
for a photo op. The
Bishop of the Episcopal church condemned the president
for using rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the peaceful
protesters. Despite an abundance of
evidence that the violence was committed by police against
protesters, the US Park Police blatantly lied.
The
USPP claimed protesters were violent and that no tear gas was used,
but Australia
officially asked for an investigation because two of its reporters
were assaulted. Later reporting accused
Attorney
General Bill Barr of ordering the illegal assault on protesters,
and
he defended his decision with lies.
Before the propaganda parade,
Trump stood in the Rose Garden and threatened protesters with
military force. He could do this
by activating the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law
allowing the deployment of soldiers on United States soil. He later
backed
away from this possibility. Trump's former
Sectary
of Defense, James Mattis, denounced the President's inclination to
martial law. Trump
responded with childish insults. When
Republican Senator, Lisa Murkowski (who voted to acquit the President
of conviction in the Senate), supported
Mattis, Trump said he would campaign against her.
Trump continued to threaten protesters
and promote conspiracy theories. He
tweeted threats, though protesters were almost entirely peaceful.
Trump tweeted
a letter from a former attorney of his, labeling protesters
“terrorists”. The President
of the United States tweeted that an older protester, knocked down
and severly injured by police in Buffalo, NY, was a member of Antifa.
(he
was released from the hospital a few weeks later after he recovered).
Trump even threatened Governors, saying they were weak, and
that they needed to “dominate” their citizens.
As protesters pulled down statues of
Confederate generals,
the President of the United States signed an executive order
denouncing them. Trump asked
for the statues to be restored, and signed
an executive order protecting federal monuments
(a uselessly redundancy because current law already makes destruction
of federal property a crime). He probitited
the Army from stripping military bases of their Confederate names.
The Department
of Justice arrested and charged protesters,
overstepping normal prosecution by the state, to reinforce the
President's message. Donald Trump can't tell the difference between
Presidents and rebels. He doesn't understand the difference between
a history museum and a memorial. And he certainly doesn't understand
that the people of today have the right to dethrone the ill-contrived
shrines of the past. Everyone has the right to venerate the memory
of their great-great grandfather, but the nation doesn't have to
uplift traitors.
China and Hong Kong
As the President condemned protesters
in his own nation, and Republican officials largely followed his
lead, the citizens
of Hong Kong honored the victims of Tiananmen Square.
Fearing to antagonize China,
the White House responded with unnamed travel visas over the
curtailing of freedom in Hong Kong. Then trade
adviser Peter Navarro disrupted relations between the two nations,
when he said the trade deal was over, because
China hid the coronavirus.
Russia Investigation
A rogue judge tried to overrule the
judge currently overseeing the Flynn case. Judge
Neomi Rao hijacked a case that wasn't within her jurisdiction, and
attempted to dismiss all charges against Michael Flynn.
Another of Trump's cronies, Roger
Stone, was ordered to report to jail on July 14th
for his three year term. The President
responded by retweeting a call for Stone to be pardoned.
One
of the prosecutors of Stone testified about improper politicization
by the Justice Department. The prosecutor,
Zelinsky, and his team wrote a memo for the sentencing. Then he
learned “our team was being pressured by the leadership of the U.S.
Attorney’s Office” to change the recommendation. Zelinsky was
told to reduce the sentencing for political reasons, but he refused
to make the changes. Zelinsky's boss approved the initial memo, but
after Trump threw a tantrum, Attorney General Barr forced the US
attorney office to change the recommendation. Zelinsky and three
other prosecutors resigned from the case in protest.
Immigration
Immigration has taken a back seat ever
since the coronavirus, yet the wall and the cages remain. A judge
ruled that $2.5 billion that Trump had diverted to the wall, was done
illegally. After the Supreme
Court ruled 5-4 that Trump could not block DACA, Acting Homeland
Security Secretary Chad Wolf, claimed the ruling proved DACA was
unlawful. Another judge ordered
ICE to release all children held in family detention centers because
of the coronavirus. Despite these setbacks,
Trump
banned nearly all employment visas through 2020.
The Supreme Court
Even though the Supreme Court dealt the
White House a defeat on DACA, it
allowed the administration to expand those eligible for immediate
deportation. The Supreme
Court invalidated the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau, allowing the President to remove its
director at will, even though the law creating the department
required Congress to appoint the director. The Supreme Court also
enabled
the Trump administration to resume federal executions, which had been
suspended since 2003. And the Department
of Justice asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care
Act, stripping twenty-three million citizens of
their healthcare.
Environment
Trump told environmental
agencies to stop reviewing projects for damages.
He also proposed drilling
on the largest piece of public land, the
National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
Ukraine
As Ukraine
finished an investigation into Hunter, declaring him innocent,
Republicans
revived a probe into the affair, demanding testimony about Biden and
his son. A Pentagon
official who questioned the aid holdup was pressured to resign by the
White House.
Corruption
The President
fired US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey
Berman, after Berman refused to step down at the request of AG Bill
Barr. Berman
was investigating Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani,
but the exact reason Bill Barr wanted him gone remained unclear. The
President also approved
sanctions against workers from the International Criminal Court, as
they continued to investigate whether American forces committed war
crimes in Afghanistan.
The Coronavirus
In spite of all viable evidence (at
least 10.8 million cases and 520,000 deaths by early July), critics
of the coronavirus immediately misinterpreted a statement from the
World Health Organization. To critics it seemed like the WHO was
repudiating the idea that asymptomatic people could spread the
coronavirus. Here is the truth,
asymptomatic people can, and do, spread the coronavirus.
As infections plateaued around 20,000
per day, Trump planned a rally in Tulsa, OK. The Trump
campaign felt the event was so safe, they asked attendees to sign a
waiver relieving the White House of any liability.
Wearing a
mask was optional. The President implied masks
were dangerous when he described
them as “a double-edged sword.". When
the day came, the rally flopped. Of
the 19,200 seats, only 6,200 were filled. An outside event, planned
for 40,000 was canceled when only a few dozen
people arrived. At the rally the President
outrageously asked public health officials to slow testing of the
coronavirus, though officials would later
assert that this demand was another of Trump's famous jokes. The
President also
referred to the virus as kung flu, another
attempt to seem tough on China for his political base.
Officials from Trump's sphere continued
to prognosticate inaccurately about the state of the virus. Director
of the National Economic Council, Larry
Kudlow, told the public that “There is no second wave.”
At the time (6/12/20), the virus had stabilized at the same 20,000
new cases mentioned above, down from a high of 35,000 in April. By
the end of June, daily cases had doubled to 40,000. One could debate
how to label the apex, the curve, the trough, and whether to call it
one wave or two, but the reality is that the country never had the
virus under control. Five days later VP
Mike Pence wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled, “There
Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave,” an
atrocious deception that cases were declining, even as they remained
steady.
As the United
States recorded its highest single day total since April,
Trump's
administration ended its support for testing sites nationwide.
Two days later the United
States reached an all time high of 40,000 cases.
On that day (6/26/20)
Pence claimed ‘remarkable progress', while
the
President golfed. As the United States
floundered, the European Union contained the virus. As part of its
reopening, the
EU barred Americans, Brazilians, and Russians from visiting,
while allowing China and a host of other nations to travel.
Germany's
Chancellor, Angela Merkel warned that the the US appeared to be
abdicating its role as global leader.
The President continued to attack
the validity
of a vote by mail, a near necessity if the
United States fails to control the coronavirus by the November
election. A judge
in Tennessee ordered all registered voters in the state to vote by
mail. Dr. Fauci presented the gloomiest
scenario, that based on the anti-science propaganda of Trump,
Republicans,and anti-vaxxers, nearly
a third of the United States population might reject the vaccine,
making it impossible to control the coronavirus, ever.
John Bolton's Book
During the Senate trial after the House
impeached Donald Trump, Democrats requested former National Security
Advisor, John Bolton, testify. He said he would testify if the
Senate voted for it, knowing they wouldn't. His purpose in not
testifying was to retain his tantalizing information to sell copies
of his book. Trump
sued to block its release, but he was unsuccessful.
While Bolton succeed in selling his book, the details, torrid and
depressing as they are, will undoubtedly fail to change many minds.
According
to Bolton, Trump asked China's dictator for assistance in the 2020
election, told China it could continue its
genocide against the Uyghur Muslims, learned that the UK had nuclear
weapons and Finland was its own country, nearly exited NATO,
expressed a desire to execute journalists, and meddled in Ukraine.
Russian Bounty Scandal
As June ended, the New
York Times reported that Russian intelligence agencies had secretly
paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Democrats
and anti-Trump Republicans expressed outrage, but the majority of
elected Republicans remained silent. The
President
denied knowing about the Russian bounties. As
the President's allies rallied to shield him for consequence, reports
from other sources debunked the President's lie. The AP
reported that the White House was aware of the information as early
as 2019. The press secretary, National
Security Advisor, Director of National Intelligence, and director of
the CIA claimed the information wasn't given to the President because
it wasn't credible. But sources said the
information was included in the President's Daily Brief on February
27th,
2020. As Vox
lays out, there are only a few possible
options; the President was never briefed, the President was briefed
but didn't pay attention, the President was briefed and lied. It's
not clear which of these is the worst outcome.
Finally,
The President
retweeted a video from a Florida retirement community, in which a man
with Trump flags chanted “white power.”
Trump thanked the people for their support.
Recent:
Relevant:
Comments
Post a Comment