1. Richard North Patterson: Trump Is Cornered. Here’s Why.

From January to mid-March, Trump dismissed the pandemic as of negligible concern. Thereafter, obsessing on how its economic impact would affect his re-election campaign, he treated COVID-19 primarily as a cultural and political problem, blaming Democrats for the public health measures his own government had prescribed. He even mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask. Only this past weekend—more than six weeks after Biden and millions of other Americans started wearing masks—did Trump finally wear a mask in public, and even that reportedly required his staff “pleading” with him.

His remarks about masks have been far from his only idiocy. Trump’s public statements would comprise a litany of buffoonery were his derelictions not so lethal. A few early examples:

• The virus will vanish “like a miracle.”
• We’re doing a great job.
• We’re reopening on Easter.
• Hydroxychloroquine would be one of the biggest game changers in history of medicine.
• Injecting household disinfectants into the body could kill the virus.
• Anyone who wants a test can get one.

Such preposterous misstatements became a case study in political malpractice. In mid-May he proclaimed: “We have met the moment and we have prevailed.” “He’s declaring victory,” former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe observed in wonder. “We’re going to use his own words. . . . That will sink him.”

But, like a panicky salesman, Trump cannot stop himself: “When you have all those tests, you have more cases”—“99 percent of which are totally harmless.” As the coronavirus surged, he announced on the Fourth of July that “our strategy is moving along well. . . . We’ve learned how to put out the flame.” In keeping with the pattern of his entire career, he cannot stop himself from the grotesque exaggerations and outright lies of a carnival barker. https://thebulwark.com/trump-is-cornered/

2. Stephen Collinson: Trump offers denial and delusion as pandemic crisis overtakes his presidency

Rarely has a president shown himself to be so unequal to a tragic national emergency.

Hundreds of Americans are dying daily and tens of thousands are getting infected from a once-in-a-century virus. States and cities are closing down again, threatening to trigger a ruinous new economic slump. Doctors and nurses lack sufficient protective gear as they battle the deadly pathogen. And with testing swamped by waves of disease, one top official is warning of the "the most difficult time" ever for US public health this winter.

Yet this is what is on Donald Trump's mind: Joe Biden didn't fix the country's roads and bridges, crowds of bikers and boaters in MAGA hats prove that election polls are wrong, and the border wall is almost finished (except it isn't). Oh, and by the way, where is Hunter Biden? https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus/index.html

3. George F. Will: The nation is in a downward spiral. Worse is still to come.

Because of his incontinent use of it, the rhetorical mustard that the president slathers on every subject has lost its tang. The entertainer has become a bore, and foretelling his defeat no longer involves peering into a distant future: Early voting begins in two states (South Dakota and Minnesota) 61 days from Sunday, which is 107 days before Election Day.

Never has a U.S. election come at such a moment of national mortification. In April 1970, President Richard M. Nixon told a national television audience that futility in Vietnam would make the United States appear to the world as “a pitiful, helpless giant.” Half a century later, America, for the first time in its history, is pitied.

Not even during the Civil War, when the country was blood-soaked by a conflict involving enormous issues, was it viewed with disdainful condescension as it now is, and not without reason: Last Sunday, Germany (population 80.2 million) had 159 new cases of covid-19; Florida (population 21.5 million) had 15,300.

Under the most frivolous person ever to hold any great nation’s highest office, this nation is in a downward spiral. This spiral has not reached its nadir, but at least it has reached a point where worse is helpful, and worse can be confidently expected.

The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime. It is helpful to have this made obvious as voters contemplate renewing the regime’s lease on the executive branch. Roger Stone adopted the argot of B-grade mobster movies when he said he would not “roll on” Donald Trump. By commuting Stone’s sentence, Stone’s beneficiary played his part in this down-market drama, showing gratitude for Stone’s version of omertà (the Mafia code of silence), which involved lots of speaking but much lying. Because pandemic prevents both presidential candidates from bouncing around the continent like popcorn in a skillet, the electorate can concentrate on other things, including Trump’s selection of friends such as Stone and Paul Manafort, dregs from the bottom of the Republican barrel.

This nation built the Empire State Building, groundbreaking to official opening, in 410 days during the Depression, and the Pentagon in 16 months during wartime. Today’s less serious nation is unable to competently combat a pandemic, or even reliably conduct elections. This is what national decline looks like. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-what-national-decline-looks-like/2020/07/14/ef499fd4-c5f0-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html

4. Mona Charen: Dr. Fauci Was Doomed from the Start. No serious, sober, dedicated, public servant can survive in this administration.

The earnest, public-spirited infectious disease specialist, who had helped to guide the nation through previous public health challenges ranging from AIDS to Zika to Ebola, was a perfect contrast to this president. On one hand you had professionalism, modesty, and integrity. On the other—well, let’s put it this way, they are such diametrically opposed types that it’s amazing they were able to stand on the same platform without causing a matter/anti-matter explosion.

At the end of June, Dr. Fauci testified before Congress that we were in deep trouble. Warning that we could soon see 100,000 cases per day, he acknowledged, “Clearly we are not in control right now.” That could not have been well-received in the West Wing. Then, on July 10, clearly concluding that the jig was up, he went further, telling the Financial Times that “I have a reputation, as you probably have figured out, of speaking the truth at all times and not sugar-coating things. And that may be one of the reasons why I haven’t been on television very much lately.”

That did it. But Trump didn’t fire Fauci, he fired at him, through leaks. The press office circulated an opposition research document with “bullet points” showing errors Fauci had made early on. The good doctor had recommended against mask-wearing! Yes, but he later acknowledged the error. Well, they say, the hoity toity Fauci said on February 29 that there was “no need to change anything you’re doing.” Yes, but what the oppo dump left out was that he added that his advice “could change if we see community spread,” which we did soon thereafter.

People of good character who attempt to tell the truth and conduct themselves as honorable public servants cannot survive in this administration. This president exalts Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rudi Giuliani, and Steve Bannon. He attempts to destroy Alexander Vindman, Marie Yovanovich, and James Mattis. Fauci was doomed from the start because he is serious, sober, dedicated, and independent, not a lackey for the Bad Orange Man. Above all, he was doomed because he tells the truth. And this administration is one continuing lie. https://thebulwark.com/dr-fauci-was-doomed-from-the-start/

5. Michelle Goldberg: In Some Countries, Normal Life Is Back. Not Here.

If you’re lucky enough to live in New Zealand, the coronavirus nightmare has been mostly over since June. After more than two weeks with no new cases, the government lifted almost all restrictions that month. The borders are still shut, but inside the country, normal life returned.

It’s coming back elsewhere too. Taiwan, where most days this month no new cases have been reported, just held the Taipei Film Festival, and a recent baseball game drew 10,000 spectators. Italy was once the epicenter of Europe’s outbreak and remains in a state of emergency, but with just a few hundred new cases a day in the whole country, bars are open and tourists have started returning, though of course Americans remain banned. According to The New York Times’s figures, there were 321 new cases in all of Canada last Friday.

And America? We had 68,241. As of last week, the worst per capita outbreak on the planet was in Arizona, followed by Florida. The world is closed to us; American passports were once coveted, but now only a few dozen nations will let us in. Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown, told me he doesn’t expect American life to feel truly normal before summer 2022. Two years of our lives, stolen by Donald Trump.

As our country plunges into a black hole of unchecked illness, death and pariahdom, the administration is waging a PR war on its own top disease expert, Anthony Fauci, trying to convince news outlets that he can’t be trusted. “The move to treat Dr. Fauci as if he were a warring political rival comes as he has grown increasingly vocal in his concerns about the national surge in coronavirus cases,” reported The Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/opinion/us-coronavirus-trump.html

6. Robert Mueller: Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so

We now have a detailed picture of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The special counsel’s office identified two principal operations directed at our election: hacking and dumping Clinton campaign emails, and an online social media campaign to disparage the Democratic candidate. We also identified numerous links between the Russian government and Trump campaign personnel — Stone among them. We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities. The investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.

Congress also investigated and sought information from Stone. A jury later determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks’ releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress.

We made every decision in Stone’s case, as in all our cases, based solely on the facts and the law and in accordance with the rule of law. The women and men who conducted these investigations and prosecutions acted with the highest integrity. Claims to the contrary are false.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/11/mueller-stone-oped/

7. Tammy Duckworth: Tucker Carlson Doesn’t Know What Patriotism Is

In his farewell address, George Washington not only recognized his own imperfections, he also urged Americans to “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism” and be wary of excessive partisanship. In the generations since, too many patriots, including many in my own family, have sacrificed too much to let our guard down now.

So when Tucker Carlson questions the patriotism of those willing to sacrifice for his freedom, or when Donald Trump promotes those smears — after having threatened to veto a pay raise for our troops to try to ensure the military continues honoring Confederate traitors who took up arms against our Union — remember Washington’s words.

Remember that part of what has always made America not just great but good is that every American has the right to question those in charge. Anyone claiming to stand up for “patriotic” values should recognize that, because, without it, the country these impostor patriots claim to love so much would not exist.

Our nation deserves leaders mature and secure enough not to race-bait or swift-boat anyone who dares disagree with them. After these past four years, and especially after these past four months, it’s clearer than ever that we must choose public servants who will focus on the serious issues facing our country — from the spread of the coronavirus to systemic racism to foreign adversaries threatening our troops’ lives — rather than cynical bullies who use schoolyard tactics to distract from their own shortcomings.

So while I would put on my old uniform and go to war all over again to protect the right of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump to say offensive things on TV and Twitter, I will also spend every moment I can from now until November fighting to elect leaders who would rather do good for their country than do well for themselves. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/opinion/tammy-duckworth-tucker-carlson.html

8. Michelle Goldberg: Trump Threatens to Turn Pandemic Schooling Into a Culture War

Donald Trump has approached the extraordinarily complex challenge of educating children during a pandemic just as he’s approached most other matters of governing: with bullying, bluster and propaganda.

On Thursday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos gestured toward a plan of coronavirus-inspired school choice that would punish public schools that don’t fully reopen. Without offering details, she said families could take the federal money spent at these schools and use it elsewhere. She’s long wanted to give public money to private schools; perhaps she thinks this coronavirus has given her the chance.

At the end of June, the American Federation of Teachers surveyed its members and found a broad willingness to return to the classroom. Two-thirds of respondents said school buildings should reopen in some capacity, and 76 percent said they’d be comfortable being in school with the proper safeguards. But after Trump began ranting about schools, Weingarten started hearing from teachers who were scared that reopening would be done rashly.

So as Trump tries to turn school reopenings into part of his culture war, Weingarten fears “a huge brain drain of people not willing to be in schools anymore.”

Last month, NPR reported on a mostly Black nursing home in Maryland that didn’t lose any residents to Covid because its director listened to what Trump said about the virus and assumed the opposite was true. “When I heard President Trump say we only had 15 cases and by the end of the week that it would be zero, I knew that it was time to act,” the director said.

This is a president with negative credibility. The more Trump demands that schools open, the more people who’ve paid close attention to him will fear they all must remain closed. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/opinion/school-reopenings-trump.html

9. Susan B. Glasser: President Winning-by-Losing Is, in Fact, Losing

Donald Trump has approached the extraordinarily complex challenge of educating children during a pandemic just as he’s approached most other matters of governing: with bullying, bluster and propaganda.

While doing nothing to curb the wildfire spread of the coronavirus, he has demanded that schools reopen and threatened to cut off funding for those that don’t. On Wednesday, he tweeted that the guidelines for reopening schools from his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were “very tough & expensive,” adding, “I will be meeting with them!!!” Mike Pence then suggested that the guidelines would be revised. On Thursday the agency’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield, said they wouldn’t be, but later, seeming to give into pressure, said the guidelines should be seen as recommendations, not requirements.

This is a president with negative credibility. The more Trump demands that schools open, the more people who’ve paid close attention to him will fear they all must remain closed. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/president-winning-by-losing-is-in-fact-losing

10. Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: The Roger Stone Commutation Is Even More Corrupt Than It Seems

Trump’s commutation of the prison sentence of his long-time confidante Roger Stone is wholly unsurprising. Indeed, given Trump’s repeated teasing of the matter over the life of the case against Stone, it would have been something of surprise had he not intervened so that his felonious friend was spared time behind bars.

But the predictable nature of Trump’s action should not obscure its rank corruption. In fact, the predictability makes the commutation all the more corrupt, the capstone of an all-but-open attempt on the president’s part to obstruct justice in a self-protective fashion over a protracted period of time. That may sound like hyperbole, but it’s actually not. Trump publicly encouraged Stone not to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s investigation; he publicly dangled clemency as a reward for silence; and he has now delivered. The act is predictable precisely because the corrupt action is so naked.

In a normal world, this pattern of conduct would constitute an almost prototypical impeachable offense. But this is not a normal world. Congress is unlikely to bestir itself to do anything about what Trump has done—just as it has previously done nothing about the obstruction allegations detailed in the Mueller Report. https://www.lawfareblog.com/roger-stone-commutation-even-more-corrupt-it-seems

11. Max Boot: The worst president ever keeps getting worse

Three months ago — all the way back on April 5 — I proclaimed Donald Trump the worst president ever. Oh, how innocent I was. Sure, I knew he was bad. But not this bad.

Back then I thought he was barely edging James Buchanan in the annals of presidential ineptitude. But now, with the commutation of Roger Stone’s well-deserved prison sentence and so many other vile acts, he has disgraced the nation’s highest office as no previous occupant has come close to doing.

But what makes Trump the worst president ever is not simply that he is colossally incompetent. It is that he is also thoroughly corrupt. It is hard to think of a single major decision he has made for the good of the country, rather than for his own advantage. Trump has so egregiously abused the power of the presidency that he makes Warren Harding and Richard Nixon look like choirboys. Trump was impeached for trying to use military aid to blackmail Ukraine into helping his reelection campaign. He seems to have learned nothing from the experience save that, with Republicans in control of the Senate, he can get away with anything. Since his acquittal, he has committed one appalling act of corruption after another. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/11/worst-president-ever-keeps-getting-worse/

12. David Frum: Stone Walks Free in One of the Greatest Scandals in American History

Stone was accused of—and convicted of—lying to Congress about his role in the WikiLeaks matter. Since Stone himself would have been in no legal jeopardy had he told the truth, the strong inference is that he lied to protect somebody else. Just today, this very day, Stone told the journalist Howard Fineman why he lied and whom he was protecting. “He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.” You read that, and you blink. As the prominent Trump critic George Conway tweeted: “I mean, even Tony Soprano would have used only a pay phone or burner phone to say something like this.” Stone said it on the record to one of the best-known reporters in Washington. In so many words, he seemed to imply: I could have hurt the president if I’d rolled over on him. I kept my mouth shut. He owes me.

And sure enough, Trump did owe him. Trump commuted Stone’s 40-month sentence. Roger Stone will not go to prison. Stone’s former business partner Paul Manafort is likewise keeping silent. And so the American public will likely never know what use the Russians made of the Trump polling information that Manafort shared with them. Manafort has extra reason to keep quiet, for he must feel new confidence that his pardon is coming.

But how much more do we need to know? At every step in this story, the formula I’ve mentioned in previous essays continues to hold: “Many secrets. No mysteries.” Although crucial details remain concealed, the core narrative has been visible from the start. An American private citizen worked with foreign spies to damage one presidential candidate and help the other. That president accepted the help. When caught, the private citizen lied. When the private citizen was punished, the president commuted his sentence.

It’s all there: as bold as the spats on Roger Stone’s shoes, as ugly as the 130,000 Americans dead, and daily rising, because of the malign incompetence of the president assisted into the Oval Office by Stone, Manafort, and the Russian spy services. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/roger-stone/614068/

13. Richard North Patterson: Trump Is Cornered. Here’s Why

The core of Trump’s campaign is not about his presidency—it’s about race. As Michelle Goldberg wrote, “Trump sees clearly—more clearly than most of his party—that racism is the main thing he has to offer.”

Indeed. What other president would tweet videos of a supporter shouting “white power,” a white couple aiming guns at peaceful protesters, and blacks assaulting whites; embrace Confederate monuments; threaten to veto a defense bill which would rename military bases commemorating Confederate generals; call the slogan Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate”; and propose to scrap an Obama-era fair-housing regulation at “the request of many great Americans who live in the Suburbs.”

This is not simply a gross abuse of his office; it is politically tone-deaf. Says pollster Cornell Belcher: “What’s different today is the upward of 70 percent of Americans [who] think racism is a problem in this country.” https://thebulwark.com/trump-is-cornered/

14. Jill Lawrence: The utter failure of our system has allowed Trump to scale new heights of corruption each week

The Founders gave us basic tools: Checks and balances — a president, a Congress and a court system — that are supposed to counter the tribalism that James Madison called “mischiefs of faction.” An emoluments clause to prevent foreign gifts and influence in our new country’s affairs. Impeachment as a way to oust unfit presidents between elections. An amendment process that yielded the 25th Amendment, under which a vice president and Cabinet can determine that a president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." A free press and freedom of speech to expose the workings of government and the qualities, or shortcomings, of its leaders.

The system is failing and we are, too 

None of it has worked. A special counsel investigation and impeachment failed outright due to tribal extremism the Founders could never have imagined. The court system is so laboriously slow on every level that Trump will serve at least one full term despite egregious, even criminal, often stunningly hypocritical behavior that endangers our national security and values.

Whistleblowers, watchdogs and public servants like Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman have been punished for their conscientious patriotism. We have been inundated with journalism scoops, investigations, scorching memoirs and tell-alls — from “grab ‘em by the pussy” to stiffing contractors to dodging taxes to John Bolton’s frightening account of foreign policy madness.

And yet, Trump is still in office, scaling new heights of corruption each week. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/11/trump-corruption-cronyism-roger-stone-commutation-column/5420269002/