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WASHINGTON In his daily briefings on the coronavirus, President Trump has brandished all the familiar tools in his rhetorical arsenal: belittling Democratic governors, demonizing the media, trading in innuendo and bulldozing over the guidance of experts.

Its the kind of performance the president relishes, but one that has his advisers and Republican allies worried.

As unemployment soars and the death toll skyrockets, and new polls show support for the presidents handling of the crisis sagging, White House allies and Republican lawmakers increasingly believe the briefings are hurting the president more than helping him. Many view the sessions as a kind of original sin from which all of his missteps flow, once he gets through his prepared script and turns to his preferred style of extemporaneous bluster and invective.

Mr. Trump sometimes drowns out his own message, said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has become one of the presidents informal counselors and told him a once-a-week show could be more effective. Representative Susan Brooks of Indiana said theyre going on too long. Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said the briefings were going off the rails a little bit and suggested that he should let the health professionals guide where were going to go.

Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board chastised the president for his behavior at the briefings. Covid-19 isnt shifty Schiff, it wrote in an editorial on Thursday, using Mr. Trumps nickname for Representative Adam Schiff. Its a once-a-century threat to American life and livelihood.

With only intermittent attempts to adapt to a moment of crisis, Mr. Trump is effectively wagering that he can win re-election in the midst of a national emergency on a platform of polarization.

In interviews, Republican lawmakers, administration officials and members of his re-election campaign said they wanted Mr. Trump to limit his error-filled appearances at the West Wing briefings and move more aggressively to prepare for the looming recession. Some even suggested he summon a broader range of the countrys leaders, including former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, in an all-hands-on-deck moment to respond to the national emergency.

The consternation reflects a new sense of urgency over Mr. Trumps re-election efforts as Joseph R. Biden Jr. emerges as his likely Democratic challenger. Three new polls this week show Mr. Biden leading the president, and the Trump campaigns internal surveys show he has mostly lost the initial bump he received early in the crisis, according to three people briefed on the numbers. Public polls show he badly trails the nations governors and his own medical experts in terms of whom Americans trust most for guidance.

I told him your opponent is no longer Joe Biden its this virus, Mr. Graham said.

One of Mr. Trumps top political advisers, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger the president, was even blunter, arguing that the White House was handing Mr. Biden ammunition each night by sending the president out to the cameras.

Vice President Mike Pence, this adviser said, should be the M.C. because he projects more empathy than the president, rarely makes mistakes and, as a former governor and the chief of the coronavirus task force, has a better grasp on the details of the response.

Yet the publicity-obsessed president is unlikely to relinquish his grip on the evening sessions: Mr. Trump has told aides he relishes the free television time and boffo ratings that come with his appearances, administration officials say.

He also views it as an opportunity to put forth his version of events and rebut the negative coverage he is receiving, as he showed in a tweet Thursday afternoon. On a day that New York State reported 799 deaths from the coronavirus in a 24-hour period, Mr. Trumps focus was on himself, and his feuds.

There is some preliminary evidence that Mr. Trump is heeding the Republicans concerns. On Wednesday and Thursday, Mr. Trump made what were for him relatively brief appearances before leaving the room and turning the podium over to Mr. Pence and Drs. Anthony S. Fauci and Deborah Birx. Whether it lasts remains to be seen.

Deep divisions remain in the White House and the Republican Party over how quickly to ease social distancing orders and urge Americans to return to school and work. Some who have Mr. Trumps ear, like Mr. Graham, are urging prudence. But a number of Republican lawmakers and Fox News personalities are lobbying the president to reopen the economy as quickly as possible.

Amid the conflicting advice, the presidents gut instincts and fondness for showmanship have won out, prompting him to frequently contradict or simply obscure the scientists who polls show are most trusted by voters.

And its not just an overwhelming majority of voters who believe the medical experts should be center stage: Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, personally urged Mr. Trump at the start of the crisis to let Drs. Fauci and Birx be the face of the response, according to a Republican official familiar with their conversation.

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said: Any suggestion that President Trump is struggling on tone or message is completely false. During these difficult times, Americans are receiving comfort, hope and resources from their president, as well as their local officials, and Americans are responding in unprecedented ways.

Some of Mr. Trumps aides have quietly suggested to him that he ratchet back his public attacks on the governors who have emerged as leaders in the response to the virus. But they acknowledge their efforts can be something of a fools errand; the president has his style and he wont change, they say.

His attacks on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a popular Democrat and potential vice-presidential pick for Mr. Biden whom Mr. Trump called a half-Whit and that woman were of particular concern to some aides and political advisers, who believe he risked alienating voters in a pivotal state.

Representative Paul Mitchell, a Michigan Republican, said he had contacted a senior White House official, as well as Ms. Whitmer herself, to express his unhappiness about their mutual sniping.

It is not helpful to hurl names and talk about badly about people, Mr. Mitchell said. We need to focus on the problem.

At Mr. Trumps re-election campaign, staff members have closely monitored internal polling data showing an erosion of the gains Mr. Trump made immediately after he put social distancing guidelines in place. Advisers are torn between knowing that a less abrasive approach would help Mr. Trump and their awareness that he cant tolerate criticism, regardless of the setting.

Mr. Trumps limited gains in the polls are all the more striking when compared with those made by governors in both parties; many are enjoying double-digit gains in their approval ratings. And Mr. Trumps penchant for ad hominem attacks, Republicans say, illustrates why he has little room for growth among the electorate.

He cant escape his instincts, his desire to put people down, like Mitt Romney, or to talk about his ratings, said former Representative Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican. Thats why hes not getting the George W. Bush post-9/11 treatment. A leader in this sort of crisis should have a 75-to-80-percent approval rating.

That would prove difficult for even a more conventional president at a time the country is so politically divided, but a number of prominent Republicans believe Mr. Trump has hurt himself by making only the most halting attempts at demonstrating an above-the-fray unity.

For example, aides to both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama said that neither had been asked by the White House to do anything to aid the response to the crisis.

The model of Obama asking Bush and Clinton to work on Haiti is a really good model, said former Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee, recalling how Mr. Obama deployed Mr. Bush and former President Bill Clinton to lead the United States assistance to Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake there.

But Mr. Haslam and other Republicans believe Mr. Trump needs to go much further. Mr. Haslam called for creating a recovery team and installing the economic equivalent of Dr. Fauci as its leader. Asked whom he had in mind, Mr. Haslam suggested Mitch Daniels, who previously served as the governor of Indiana, the head of the Office of Management and Budget and as a top executive of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.

A number of senators, including Mr. Graham, are also pushing for a sort of economic task force to complement the virus task force.

The administration needs to be thinking through what does it look like to get back to business, said Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, suggesting that it should give a lot of thought to how we scale back up economically, because thats going to be the next big challenge for us.

The health of the economy may pose the biggest challenge to Mr. Trumps re-election.

Mr. Toomey said he wont be surprised if we have 25 percent unemployment, which would match the height of the Great Depression, by the start of the summer. But he said that if voters believed the president has handled this well under the circumstances, and were on a good path, he has a shot.

Other Republicans are more skeptical that Mr. Trump can win if hes still saddled with double-digit unemployment in November. I think that makes it really hard, said Tony Fratto, a former Bush administration official.

And then theres the matter of Mr. Trump and his conduct at the daily briefings.

Mr. Toomey has been outspoken about the need for Americans to wear masks when they leave home. Last week he had a 20-minute conversation with the president, whom he described as thoughtful and engaged.

By weeks end, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had issued guidelines: People should wear cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain. The agencys decision was based in part on recent studies showing that people without symptoms can give the virus to others.

But in the same briefing where he announced the guidelines, Mr. Trump diminished the move as a recommendation.

I just dont want to wear one myself, he said, explaining that he had no symptoms. I am feeling good.

See the article here:
Trump Keeps Talking. Some Republicans Dont Like What Theyre Hearing. - The New York Times

On Wednesday, writing for The Washington Post, conservative columnist Max Boot outlined the stakes of the election in November and why principled moderate conservatives turned off by Trump should unhesitatingly vote for former Vice President Joe Biden.

Trumps failures have made us the world capital of the coronavirus, with more than three times as many deaths in New York City (pop. 8.3 million) as in all of Germany (pop. 83 million), wrote Boot. Having dodged responsibility for fighting the coronavirus (I dont take responsibility at all), Trump now claims dictatorial powers to determine when social distancing ends. If he wins another term, he is likely to put not only a lot of Americans but also American democracy itself into the ICU.

If Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) were the Democratic nominee, the choice would be a difficult one, continued Boot. I would still have voted for Sanders, but a lot of my fellow former Republicans wouldnt have. Now that Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, the choice is easy.

Trump would like to depict the election as border security vs. open borders, capitalism vs. socialism, prosperity vs. economic ruin, wrote Boot. But that will be hard to do now that the economy is already ruined and the Democratic nominee is no socialist. Bidens pending nomination brings the real choice into stark relief: competence vs. incompetence, facts vs. conspiracy theories, moderation vs. extremism, inclusion vs. division, empathy vs. narcissism. Biden warned of the coronavirus danger when Trump ignored it, and now, unlike Trump, he has a plan for the recovery. Biden was vice president when the nation recovered from its last recession; he can lead our comeback from our present nightmare.

Boot argued that the next step needs to be conservative elder statesmen coming out and throwing their support to Biden. I have in mind former president George W. Bush and former vice presidents Dick Cheney and Dan Quayle; former governors such as Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Mark Sanford and John Kasich; former senators such as Bob Corker, Norm Coleman, Jeff Flake, Mark Kirk and Rick Santorum; former Senate majority leaders Bill Frist and Bob Dole; and former House speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan. Also former Cabinet members such as secretaries of state James A. Baker III, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger; defense secretary Robert Gates; national security adviser Stephen Hadley; treasury secretaries Paul ONeill and Henry Paulson; homeland security secretaries Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge; and attorneys general John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales.

Many of these conservatives, Boot noted, did not vote for Hillary Clinton. This time around, Republicans who are bothered by Trumps appalling misconduct have no excuse: They need to actively support the Democratic nominee. Voting for a third-party candidate such as Justin Amash wont cut it. The election is a binary choice. If you dont back Biden, youre backing Trump.

You can read more here.

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Voting against Trump should be easy for Republicans who have expressed discomfort with him: Conservative columnist - Raw Story

The Republican Party is gripped by an extreme right-wing ideology that is contemptuous of basic science and the norms of constitutional democratic government. Their model of politics is that Democrats should be prevented from voting as much as possible, and their theory of jurisprudence amounts to "laws passed by Democrats are unconstitutional." This is part of why times of Republican rule tend to end in disaster.

However, there is another aspect to Republican dysfunction that gets comparatively little attention: moral corrosion. A great many Republican elected officials think nothing of using their position to turn a quick profit during a crisis.

Take Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who was recently caught by ProPublica selling between $628,000 and $1.72 million in stocks in mid-February, immediately after receiving several classified briefings about the dangers of coronavirus on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he chairs. A week before Burr co-wrote a Fox News op-ed assuring the public that "the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus," but on Feb. 27 he warned a small private club of wealthy constituents that "There's one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic."

This sounds like the dictionary definition of illegal insider trading. The Securities Exchange Act establishes legal penalties for "purchasing or selling a security while in possession of material, non-public information[.]" This was explicitly extended to members of Congress in the STOCK Act of 2012, and while that law was later quietly watered down in 2013, the ban on overt insider trading definitely still applies. Even Tucker Carlson said that if the allegations were true, Burr should resign and be prosecuted. (The senator has denied any wrongdoing.)

And this isn't the first time that Burr has reportedly done something like this. ProPublica also recently reported that Burr sold $47,000 in stock in a Dutch fertilizer firm just weeks before its share price collapsed, perhaps because it was undermined by changes in Trump administration trade policy. There might not be the same stone obvious insider trading, but it certainly warrants an investigation. ProPublica further found that in 2017 Burr sold a house in D.C. to a corporate lobbyist whose clients were overseen by his committee and for tens of thousands of dollars more than its likely market value.

Neither is Burr the only culprit here. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who is married to the head of the New York Stock Exchange, also allegedly sold some $20 million in stocks after a closed coronavirus briefing. So did Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who also infamously bought defense contractor stocks in 2018 after pushing for a huge increase in the military budget and dumped them when reporters found out.

President Trump, of course, is worst of all. He is the only president to continue to run a vast business empire while in office and as a result, his administration is absolutely saturated with conflicts of interest, from grifting the Secret Service for golf cart rentals to a gigantic tax break for real estate developers like himself and his son-in-law Jared Kushner mysteriously making its way into the coronavirus rescue package. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has found 2,310 conflicts of interests and counting in the Trump administration.

Now, it's worth noting that Republicans are not the only ones who are less than scrupulous about civic propriety. The effort to undermine the STOCK Act was a bipartisan affair, passed in 30 seconds through half-empty chambers using unanimous consent. Both parties knew what they were doing was immoral and wanted to keep it from the public.

But these days, Democrats seldom engage in such outright graft. The husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) also sold stock in January, but this was in a biotech company which was then at a low price, and has since risen in value because the surge of funding for coronavirus research. If he was trading based on a tip from his wife, he surely would have have held on to it. Typically Dems instead go through the revolving door, passing corporate-friendly laws and regulations and then (by purest happenstance, they insist) going on to collect huge sums from those same corporate interests working or consulting for them.

Both forms of graft are bad, but it's clear now that the blatant Republican form is worse. A liberal hypocrite who is betraying his or her stated principles will tend to limit the amount of graft for fear of exposure and might be pressured or shamed into changing course. Trump feels absolutely no shame about anything, and since the Republican Party and its howling propaganda apparatus support him no matter what he does, he will never stop.

Today Republican governance means the party's elected officials leveraging their power to stuff money directly into their own pockets. Republican voters are fine with that Trump may have both his hands deep in their pockets, but at least he makes liberals' heads explode.

Go here to read the rest:
The Republican graft machine - The Week

If you want a quick summary of the state of play over fiscal stimulus legislation, here it is: Republicans insist that we should fight a plague with trickle-down economics and crony capitalism. Democrats, for some reason, dont agree, and think we should focus on directly helping Americans in need.

And if legislation is stalled, as it appears to be as I write this (although things change fast when were on Covid time), its because Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is holding needy Americans hostage in an attempt to blackmail Democrats into giving Donald Trump a $500 billion slush fund.

First, lets talk about the nature of the economic crisis we face. At the worst point in the 2007-2009 recession, America was losing around 800,000 jobs per month. Right now, were probably losing several million jobs every week.

Whats causing these job losses? So far its not what usually happens in a recession, when businesses lay off workers because consumers arent spending enough. What were seeing instead are the effects of social distancing: restaurants, entertainment venues and many other establishments have been closed to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

And we neither can nor should bring those jobs back until the pandemic has faded. What this tells us is that right now our highest priority isnt job creation, its disaster relief: giving families and small businesses that have lost their incomes enough money to afford necessities while the shutdown lasts. Oh, and providing generous aid to hospitals, clinics and other health care providers in this time of incredible stress.

Now, while social distancing is currently driving employment destruction, there will eventually be a second, more conventional round of job losses as distressed families and businesses cut back on spending. So there is also a case for stimulus to sustain overall spending although helping Americans in need will provide much of that stimulus, by also helping them continue to spend.

So whats in the stimulus bill that McConnell is trying to ram through the Senate? It grudgingly provides some, but only some, of the aid Americans in distress will need. Funny, isnt it, how helping ordinary Americans is always framed as a Democratic demand? And even there the legislation includes poison pills, like a provision that would deny aid to many nonprofit institutions like nursing homes and group homes for the disabled.

But it also includes a $500 billion slush fund for corporations that the Trump administration could allocate at its discretion, with essentially no oversight. This isnt just terrible policy; its an insult to our intelligence.

After all, it would be hard to justify giving any administration that kind of power to reward its friends and punish those it considers enemies. Its almost inconceivable that anyone would propose giving such authority to the Trump administration.

Remember, weve had more than three years to watch this administration in action. Weve seen Trump refuse to disclose anything about his financial interests, amid abundant evidence that he is profiting at the publics expense. Trumps trade war has been notable for the way in which favored companies somehow manage to get tariff exemptions while others are denied. And as you read this, Trump is refusing to use his authority to require production of essential medical gear.

So it would be totally out of character for this administration to allocate huge sums fairly and in the public interest.

Cronyism aside, theres also the issue of competence. Why would you give vast discretionary power to a team that utterly botched the response to the coronavirus because Trump didnt want to hear bad news? Why would you place economic recovery efforts in the hands of people who were assuring us just weeks ago that the virus was contained and the economy was holding up nicely?

Finally, weve just had a definitive test of the underlying premise of the McConnell slush fund that if you give corporations money without strings attached they will use it for the benefit of workers and the economy as a whole. In 2017 Republicans rammed through a huge corporate tax cut, which they assured us would lead to higher wages and surging business investment.

Neither of these things happened; instead, corporations basically used the money to buy back their own stock. Why would this time be any different?

As I write this, Republicans are ranting that Democrats are sabotaging the economy by refusing to pass McConnells bill which is a bit rich for those who remember the G.O.P.s scorched-earth opposition to everything Barack Obama proposed. But in any case, if McConnell really wants action, he could get it easily either by dropping his demand for a Trump-controlled slush fund or by passing the stimulus bill House Democrats are likely to offer very soon.

And maybe that will happen within a few days. As I said, were now living on Covid time. But right now Republicans seem dead set on exploiting a crisis their own president helped create by his refusal to take the pandemic seriously.

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Republicans Add Insult to Illness - The New York Times

Republicans who voted against Obama's stimulus package during the 2008 financial crisis have embraced the coronavirus relief bill.

Republicans who have spent the past decade howling about the danger of ballooning deficits embraced thecoronavirus rescue package approved by Congress and signed by Donald Trump, shrugging off past concerns about spending in the face of a public health crisis.

In many cases, the conservatives who backed the $2 trillion bill the largest economic relief measure in U.S. history were the very same ones who raged against the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package backed by the Obama administration.

But facing the unprecedented threat of a global pandemic and working under a Republican who has largely brushed off concerns about debt and deficits the GOP was willing to overlook an unprecedented flood of taxpayer spending. Leading budget hawk Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who insisted in 2009 that government cannot spend its way out of a recession, this week joined a unanimous Senate majority that approved what he described as "the biggest government intervention in the economy in the history of the world."

"This is a response to an invasion," he told reporters. "This is the kind of thing you'd have to do if we were at war."

Like other conservatives, he noted that much of the nation's current economic distress was caused by the government's social distancing orders, while the Obama stimulus was in response to a crisis created by the private sector.

Failing to take dramatic action now, Toomey said, "would be a wildly imprudent thing, and it would probably result in such a severe recession it might very well be a depression and it could take decades to come out of this."

Even before the health crisis struck, the Republican-aligned fiscal conservative movement had dramatically diminished under Trump, who has pushed the nation's budget deficit to heights not seen in nearly a decade. That's prompted arguments that the GOP is hypocritical when it comes to government spending.

Mick Mulvaney, Trump's outgoing chief of staff and a former Republican congressman aligned with the tea party movement, told a private audience last month that the GOP only worries about deficits "when there is a Democrat in the White House," according to a report in the Washington Post.

For the first time in the modern era, Republicans are on record supporting direct cash payments to most American adults a government-backed measure more likely to be found in socialist countries. While a 2008 stimulus package offered tax rebates to many taxpayers, the 2020 legislation offers all Americans making less than $100,000 grants of up to $1,200 each with an additional $500 for each child. Also in the bill: a massive expansion of unemployment benefits, $500 billion in loans to businesses and local governments, and tens of billions more for the airline industry, hospitals, and food assistance.

David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, Washington's preeminent fiscal conservative watchdog, which Toomey previously led, raised the possibility that the coronavirus package could push this year's budget deficit to $4 trillion. The largest annual deficit in U.S. history was $1.4 trillion in 2009.

"The spending is just outrageously high," McIntosh said in an interview. "But on the short-term basis, we're pleased."

He opposed the direct payments to Americans but was satisfied that a significant portion of the taxpayer-funded package consists of loans likely to be repaid. He added that Congress rejected what he called the Democrats' list of unrelated "political goodies."

"Yes, it's too much, and we're worried about overall spending, but we recognize something has to be done," McIntosh said. "That's the kind of comment I'm hearing from conservatives who would normally oppose big spending bills."

What remains of the tea party movement, which sprang up early in Barack Obama's presidency to oppose government spending, has largely been silent. One major exception: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) who upset congressional leaders and Trump himself on Friday by unsuccessfully trying to force a formal House voteon the historic legislation.

Massie tweeted that the $2 trillion rescue package, in addition to $4 trillion in stimulus from the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department, would create roughly $17,000 in new debt for every American citizen.

"Not a good deal," he wrote.

Trump, in a rare public rebuke of another Republican, punched back on Twitter: "Throw Massie out of the Republican Party."

The Congressional Budget Office reported weeks before the coronavirus outbreak that the national debt was already on track to reach nearly 100% of the gross domestic product in just 10 years. The current package, and a subsequent round of government intervention already being discussed, will substantially escalate that timeline.

The budget office did not release specific projections on the fiscal impact of the legislation before it passed. Not including the rescue package, the current national debt exceeds $23.5 trillion, which is $3.5 trillion more than when Trump took office.

The coronavirus spending surge will put heightened pressure on lawmakers to cut the social safety net in the coming year, including Social Security and Medicare. Trump and leading Democratic rival Joe Biden have both promised not to touch the popular entitlement programs, yet they consume a disproportionate share of government spending.

"The future will be more painful," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Still, she added: "This is definitely not the time to worry about the deficit. This is the time to be borrowing as much as we need to deal with the huge health crisis."

Grover Norquist, one of Washington's most notorious fiscal hawks, praised a series of temporary deregulations in the legislation that he hopes might permanently eliminate bureaucracy controlling such things as medical professionals' ability to work in other states, the use of health savings accounts, and liquor store deliveries.

He predicted that the rescue package could actually lead to a "more open society with more freedom."

"There's no permanent damage," Norquist said. "On balance, it seems to have been the best you could do under the circumstances."

Read more:
Republicans once opposed to government spending now approve of it under Trump - The American Independent