1. Toluse Olorunnipa: Trump uses Republican to try to rewrite coronavirus history, casting himself as lifesaving hero

At the Republican National Convention on Monday, Trump was hailed as a bold and lifesaving leader who “was right” on the novel coronavirus while Democrats, doctors and pundits were wrong from the beginning. One campaign-style video that aired during the convention hailed Trump as the “one leader” who stood up to the virus while quoting Democratic figures who played down the severity of the virus in its early stages. Trump uses Republican convention to try to rewrite coronavirus history, casting himself as lifesaving hero

Faced with a pandemic that has killed more than 175,000 Americans, President Trump used glitzy video and misleading testimonials to spin a tale of heroism and resolve far removed from the grim reality of a country in the throes of an uncontrolled public health crisis.

In his revisionist version of recent history belied by hours of videotape in which the president minimized the threat of the virus for months, falsely predicted that it would “disappear” with warmer weather, promoted several unproven miracle cures, pushed states to reopen before meeting federal government benchmarks, equivocated on mask-wearing, defied social distancing guidelines and repeatedly told Americans that everything was under control. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-convention/2020/08/25/e3741c40-e6e1-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html

2. Ezra Klein: A loyalty test for the GOP, a reality test for the country

The problem for Republicans is that the main thing Trump has told them to support is himself. There are no detailed policy proposals, much less a coherent ideology or set of governing principles. And so speech after speech followed the same template: How was America going to stop the coronavirus? By reelecting Donald Trump. How was it going to revive its economy? By reelecting Donald Trump. How was it going to ensure domestic harmony? By reelecting Donald Trump.

The contradiction at the heart of the convention, of course, is that Donald Trump is currently president. I’m dead serious. How would reelecting Trump resolve these crises that Trump has proven unable to resolve — and has, in many cases, worsened — in office? No one even took a shot at that Rubik’s cube. Instead, the speakers awkwardly talked around the fact of Trump’s incumbency. He was presented, strangely, as both incumbent and challenger; the man who had fixed America’s problems, but also the man needed to fix an America beset by more problems than ever. https://www.vox.com/2020/8/25/21400476/republican-convention-night-one-donald-trump-rnc-facts-2020

3. Greg Sargent: The GOP convention just ripped the mask off Trump’s corruption and lies

The second night of the GOP convention showcased a party that is unshakably confident in its ability to get away with flaunting President Trump’s corrupt manipulation of the levers of government to remain in power — on national television, with absolute impunity.

It also showcased a party that’s equally confident in its power to create a hermetically sealed-off alternate universe in which the only corrupt party is the opposition. Completing this picture, the levers of government are currently being manipulated to manufacture that invented reality about the opposition, too.

If they get away with this, what will be left of our political system?

These stakes were illustrated with unsettling clarity by Pam Bondi’s speech on Tuesday night. The former attorney general of Florida oozed a phony air of sincerity while recycling entirely debunked nonsense about Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Ukraine. The Biden campaign didn’t take the bait.

This is not a moment we should allow to slide by. Taken along with the blatant lawbreaking at the convention on Tuesday, it all demonstrates a level of seething contempt for our political system and institutions — and even for the very idea that there should be baseline standards in political competition — that the media still struggles to convey faithfully. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/26/gop-convention-just-ripped-mask-off-trumps-corruption-lies/

4. Paul Waldman: The Trump children are here to feed your grievance and resentment

Before the Republican National Convention began, party chair Ronna McDaniel promised “an aspirational and uplifting tone.” And some speakers certainly have described the paradise America will turn into should President Trump be given a second term.

But much more, the convention has been a showcase of grievance, anger and resentment. And the most enthusiastic purveyors of this, oddly enough, have been those who have the least cause to be aggrieved about anything: Trump’s own children.

This has long been a core part of Republican politics, especially around race. Minorities are taking your jobs, killing your children and living off welfare, generations of voters have been told; the only answer was to elect the party whose highest priority is cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations. In 2016, Trump told that same story, but this time the villains were immigrants.

But in this election the GOP has found a different avenue to promote that resentment and anger. Liberals, they say, are silencing you, making you a victim of “cancel culture.”

And the Trump children are here to tell you that the thought police are coming for you. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/26/trump-children-are-here-feed-your-grievance-resentment/

5. Robin Wright: A Dubious Pompeo Speech for an Empty Trump Foreign Policy

As Trump seeks reëlection, some of the toughest criticism on his foreign policy is from other Republicans, including a scathing joint condemnation last week by seventy-five senior Republican officials from four Administrations. “Without question, Trump has denigrated our standing with friends and with foes. They all think less of us,” Richard Armitage, one of the signatories, and the Deputy Secretary of State during the George W. Bush Administration and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration, told me. “Our standing globally has not been this low since the end of the Cold War and probably not since before World War Two. . . . People don’t really care about us. They’re so over us because of this guy.”

Long-standing American principles and policies shared by both parties—promoting democracy, defending human rights, containing aggression, and addressing climate change, migration, and public health—have been discarded or ignored. As Pompeo spoke from Jerusalem—a transparent appeal to Trump’s evangelical base and a boost to Pompeo’s own Presidential ambitions—the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny lay in a coma, in intensive care from poisoning. Trump has remained largely silent on what German doctors claim was clearly an attempt on Navalny’s life. Trump has also avoided questions about the ongoing popular protests in Belarus against Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s last dictator.

Trump has done little to confront President Vladimir Putin on his most egregious aggressions, including Russian bounties reportedly paid to the Taliban for killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Trump called the New York Times story “a made-up fake news media hoax” designed to damage his reputation. Putin is running rampant and penetrating deeper into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, but Trump still has illusions of befriending and transforming the former K.G.B. operative. “Trump’s Russia policy has been a complete and utter failure,” Richard Burt, the chief U.S. negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the Soviet Union, during the George H. W. Bush Administration, told me. “Putin has gotten away with whatever he wants.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/at-the-republican-national-convention-a-vacuous-pompeo-speech-for-an-empty-trump-foreign-policy

6. Eric Levitz: The RNC Has Made a Compelling Case for America’s Imminent Collapse

America has never been greater than it is today — or at greater risk of collapsing tomorrow.

This is the central message of the Republican National Convention through its first two nights. And while the RNC has done little to substantiate the triumphalist half of its argument (a tall order amid a pandemic that’s killed 177,000 U.S. residents and more than 6 million U.S. jobs), the convention has made a strong case for believing the American Republic isn’t long for this earth.

On the convention’s opening night, the GOP informed America that teachers unions are bad — not because they oppose “school choice” or donate to Democratic campaigns — but rather because they are hell-bent on “subverting our republic” by deliberately undermining “educational excellence, morality, law and order” in our classrooms. Florida congressman Matt Gaetz proceeded to warn that Democrats want to “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door.” Trump campaign adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle clarified that Democrats don’t just want to endanger your family but rather “to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear.” The president, for his part, told convention-goers that the opposing party was “trying to steal the election from Republicans, just like they did it last time, with spying.”

On night two, we learned that Joe Biden will force all Christians to choose between “being obedient to God and obedient to Caesar — because the radical left’s god is government power,” and that Planned Parenthood is actually a racist, eugenicist organization whose “abortion facilities are strategically located in minority neighborhoods.” Florida lieutenant governor Jeanette Marie Núñez then revealed that Joe Biden is actually a crypto-communist who serves a radical left that “systematically chisels away at the freedoms we cherish,” as its members “normalize socialism to dismantle our Constitution.” Eric Trump declared that “Democrats want an America where your thoughts and opinions are censored,” while his half-sister Tiffany warned that even now, liberals have made it impossible for Americans to trust their own minds, as “our thoughts, our opinions … are being manipulated and coerced by the media and tech giants.”

None of these things are true, of course (take it from me, the media). But the fact that the Republican base believes such things constitutes one horseman of our democracy’s apocalypse. Among the others: a presidential system that favors divided government, legislative institutions that overrepresent white rural areas, and partisan polarization along lines of racial attitudes and religious fundamentalism. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/rnc-republican-national-convention-speeches-democrats-crisis.html

7. Jonathan Chait: Trump Previews Crazy Strategy to Convince America Things Are Actually Great

Joe Biden used his convention acceptance speech to promise he could “overcome this season of darkness in America.” Speaking to a conservative group today, President Trump unveiled what appears to be his thematic response: Darkness? What darkness?

“Where Joe Biden sees American darkness, I see American greatness,” he told a conservative group in Virginia, “They spent four straight days attacking America as racist and a horrible country that must be redeemed. Joe Biden grimly declared a season of American darkness, and yet look at what we’ve accomplished.”

As messaging choices go, this is an odd one. Since the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has leaned on three primary themes. First, Joe Biden is so senile he literally doesn’t know what he’s saying. Second, if Biden wins, he will abdicate power to an AOC–ruled hellscape in which taxes triple and anarchist goons burn down your cities and marry your daughters. Third, and most importantly, Trump is the best candidate to restore prosperity.

Trump has claimed that he personally created the greatest economy in the history of the world (he didn’t), the devastation caused by the pandemic was not his fault (it mostly was) and that, once it disappears, he will restore prosperity. As Mike Pence put it, “we’ll make American great again — again.”

“Make American Great Again, Again” is not obviously not an ideal promise for an incumbent to have to make. But there’s a reason Trump was resorting to it: Everything is terrible now. And Trump’s fans don’t even actually believe things are going well. The most recent Gallup poll asking, “In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?” found 13 percent of the public satisfied with current condition and 84 percent unsatisfied.

You know who else besides Joe Biden sees American darkness? Almost everybody. A president who grossly mishandled a catastrophe in the most high-profile fashion possible, denying its seriousness day after day on camera while refusing to accept responsibility, doesn’t have a lot of great options. But telling the country that things are actually going well might be one of his worst possible options. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/trump-american-darkness-startegy-message-campaign-2020-biden.html

8. Max Boot: Trump relies on grifters and misfits. Biden is bringing the A Team

Trump came into office not knowing the first thing about government, and he surrounded himself with equally inexperienced and unethical people. Most qualified Republicans wanted nothing to do with him. (They still don’t: A new open letter signed by more than 70 GOP national security veterans excoriates Trump and endorses Biden.)

This helps to explain why so many Trump aides have been grifters and misfits. His personal lawyer Michael Cohen, national security adviser Michael Flynn, campaign manager Paul Manafort, deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, pal Roger Stone and foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos are all convicted felons. Now, Stephen K. Bannon — former Trump campaign CEO and onetime White House strategist — has been indicted for allegedly defrauding Trump supporters eager for a border wall. This populist mountebank was arrested on a mega-yacht owned by a Chinese billionaire.

To be sure, a few qualified and ethical appointees somehow made it into the administration — e.g., Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, and economic adviser Gary Cohn — but most are long gone. Trump is left with second-raters and sycophants such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf and national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien. All were promoted multiple ranks above their level of competence. But even they are superior to third-raters such as Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro, who would be allowed into a normal White House only as part of a tour group.

Little wonder that the administration has been such a shambles. While Trump has done many awful things on purpose, the greatest carnage during his presidency — his mismanagement of the coronavirus — is the result of sheer incompetence. If a few more people in the White House knew what they were doing, at least 172,000 Americans might not be dead.

Having a president who can do the job — and who hires similarly qualified aides — would be unremarkable in normal times. Today it would be revolutionary. That is what Biden offers and why it is essential that he win. America cannot survive four more years of Trump’s malign ineptitude. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/22/another-argument-bidens-experience-his-veteran-staff-advisers/

9. Darryl Fears, Faiz Siddiqui, Sarah Kaplan and Juliet Eilperin: Heat is turbocharging fires, drought and tropical storms this summer

First came the lightning, with cracks of thunder that woke Hope Weng from sleep. “I thought it was someone wheeling out one of the garbage bins,” the 23-year-old said. Then came the wildfires, mixing with the unbearable heat that was tough to escape in her Mountain View, Calif., apartment with no air conditioning. “I’m hot and I want to let the window open to let in cool air, but the air also smells like fire.”

America is roasting.

At least 140 Western weather stations notched record highs in the past 10 days as a thermometer in California’s Death Valley hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit, one of the highest temperatures measured on Earth. Eighty million U.S. residents are under excessive heat advisories. More than 35 wildfires are raging in California, burning 125,000 acres in the San Francisco Bay area alone, threatening 25,000 businesses and homes this week. Parts of the country are suffering drought conditions. And in the Atlantic Ocean, a marine heat wave is fueling what is becoming an unusually active storm season.

Scientists say there is no doubt that climate change is driving the extreme weather, increasing the threats to property and life. “Yeah, it’s summer, and summer is hot, but this is different,” the National Weather Service tweeted. “These are dangerous conditions.”

Conditions are made even more perilous by the worst pandemic in a century. Tens of thousands of people are trying to escape wildfires and extreme heat at a time when they are also asked to wear masks and keep a distance from strangers. And as a hurricane season turbocharged by heat gets underway, the virus promises to complicate responses. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/08/21/heat-climate-change-weather/

10. Eric Lutz: Trump Wants To Station Armed Guards At The 2020 Polls

Donald Trump has spent months now mounting a brazen assault on the integrity of the November election, sowing doubt in the democratic process with unfounded claims of fraud and scheming to keep turnout low—including, it seems, by hamstringing the United States Postal Service via his handpicked postmaster general, megadonor Louis DeJoy. Now, he’s raising fears over another potential disenfranchisement tactic: armed poll watchers.

Speaking to Sean Hannity on Thursday evening, the president vowed to enlist law enforcement to monitor polling stations, apparently to root out the rampant fraud he insists will occur this fall. “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys,” he said. “And we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals [sic].” As CNN pointed out, Trump doesn’t actually have the authority to mandate this, though election law expert Rick Hasen told the outlet that he could potentially hire off-duty law enforcement as poll watchers --something that would almost certainly trigger pushback from Democrats. “Trump tells Hannity that he will send law enforcement to the polls,” Democratic attorney Marc Elias said Thursday night. “Not without a legal fight he won’t!”

The GOP has a history of deploying poll watchers as an intimidation tactic, particularly in predominantly Black and brown precincts, and have already launched a massive recruitment campaign to monitor voting this November. The Republican party is working to send 50,000 people to police the polls, its first national poll-watching operation in about four decades, NBC News reported in June. While both parties make use of poll watchers, voting rights advocates are skeptical of the GOP’s operation. “They’re not going to sit idly by and ensure the lines move swiftly,” Elias told the outlet at the time. “They’re recruiting these folks so they go to the polls and either intimidate voters, or at a minimum slow the process.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/08/trump-wants-to-station-armed-guards-at-2020-polls

11. Amanda Carpenter: Trump’s Bad Bet on the Politics of Fear

Given President Trump’s inability to run a positive campaign based on his record over the last four years, he only has one chance of winning re-election: scaring the ever-living crap out of the Republican base.

Sure, his campaign is signaling for the millionth time that they’ll have a “new tone” and saying they’ll produce an “optimistic, hopeful” convention. And maybe there really will be some attempt, now and then during this week’s RNC, to reach out to undecided voters. Trump’s surrogates have said there will be “surprises,” and positivity would certainly count as an unexpected change. But don’t expect much of it: What Trump is really pitching is a bonanza of political and medical disinformation designed to confirm the fears of his army of internet trolls, who already think he’s some kind of deep-state avenging superhero who is saving the world from a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping, pedophiliacs who drink children’s blood.

Aside from hawking miracle coronavirus cures and pretending the election is already rigged against him, Trump has only one play. He’s asking housewives who aren’t yet brainwashed by QAnon wellness influencers on Instagram to believe the suburbs will be pillaged and looted by a roving mob of Black Lives Matter socialists led by . . . Cory Booker. (Heaven forbid, the hug-it-out New Jersey senator might bring you over some vegan cupcakes while he’s spreading “radical love” through the neighborhood. Yikes!)

But Trump has four days of programming during the convention this week to frighten voters. It’s his go-to move: If there’s one theme Trump has stuck with during his presidency, it’s the one that began with his inauguration speech—American carnage. Once again, he’s putting all his bets on the politics of fear. https://thebulwark.com/trumps-bad-bet-on-the-politics-of-fear/

12. Stephen Collinson: Obama issues a dire warning about American democracy in stunning rebuke of Trump

From the Philadelphia ground where the American experiment was born, one former president -- in a stunning prime-time address to the nation he once led -- warned that his successor was on the cusp of destroying democracy itself.

The latest installment of the long duel between Barack Obama and Donald Trump perfectly exemplified the jarring contrasts in personal and political temperaments of the two defining White House residents of this age. And it took their rivalry to a level unprecedented in the modern history of the presidency.

Obama -- serious and intellectual -- delivered a complex constitutional lecture on primetime television during the virtual Democratic National Convention. He summoned historic sweep, encompassing the Founders, the Civil Rights Movement, America's immigrant heritage and young Americans he called to action today to save their freedoms just as their ancestors had done every time the country's promise was imperiled.

Trump meanwhile, back at the White House, was rage-tweeting in real time in all-caps, flinging wild accusations and lies that, if anything, provided contemporaneous evidence of his predecessor's somber warnings. https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/barack-obama-dnc-speech-donald-trump-joe-biden/index.html

13. Eric Lach: The Stunning Predictability of Steve Bannon’s “We Build the Wall” Scam

It has been asked, repeatedly, whether the grifts of Donald Trump and the people around him would ever catch up with them. On Thursday, they caught up to Bannon. Federal prosecutors in New York announced that Bannon and three other men were being indicted for alleged fraud and money laundering for their role in a scheme that, even in a Bond film, might feel too on the nose. For the past two years, Bannon and his accomplices ran an online fund-raising campaign called We Build the Wall, whose nominal purpose was to raise the money for the monument to nativism that Trump had promised to build on the southern border. Trump had also promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. But, when those funds proved unforthcoming, and his various attempts to strong-arm Congress into giving him the money mostly failed, too, Bannon and his gang stepped forward to ask the very people who’d been thrilled by the notion of a “big, beautiful wall” to shell out. According to the government, the group raised more than twenty-five million dollars, and promised “not to take a penny in salary or compensation.” Then they pocketed a bunch of the money. Bannon allegedly routed more than a million dollars through a nonprofit he controls. One of his co-defendants, Brian Kolfage, allegedly used his share of the money to buy, among other things, a boat called Warfighter. According to the Times' Evan Hill, Kolfage sailed Warfighter in a pro-Trump boat parade held in Destin, Florida, on July 4th. Happy birthday, America. Is there a word in German for something that is at once extraordinary and shocking and yet at the same time totally predictable and stupid?

The indictment raises questions about other Trump allies as well. We Build the Wall’s board members included Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state; Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder and a brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; David A. Clarke, Jr., the former sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; and Curt Schilling, the former major-league-baseball pitcher. The indictment came out of the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In June, Trump and his Attorney General, Bill Barr, forced Geoffrey Berman out of his job as the U.S. Attorney in that office, for reasons that remain unclear, and despite Berman’s protests. It now needs to be asked whether this case against a close Trump associate played a role in Berman’s ouster. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-stunning-predictability-of-steve-bannons-we-build-the-wall-scam

14. John Stoehr: We need a worst-case scenario plan

Darkness and light are indeed the choices ahead of us. Donald Trump is bringing the country to the brink of ruin with his treacherous response to the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed over 177,000 Americans, infected 5.7 million others, and unemployed scores of millions. If he wins, expect more devastation—more corruption, joblessness, sickness and death. I haven’t even mentioned the bright attrition of our liberties. As one former administration official put it, if Trump wins, expect “shock and awe.”

While citizens must believe in their abilities to defeat tyranny, they must not maintain the fairy-tale illusion that everything’s going to work out fine in the end. We can’t allow ourselves to trust that the system is fair and that all we need to do is ensure that enough people get out and vote. We need to imagine the worst-case scenario, and come up with a practical plan. We need to get out in front of the president, accuse him now of trying to steal the election. This is not panic or paranoia in the slightest. If you must, think of it this way: do you trust Trump to accept defeat? I didn’t think so.

Before Joe Biden gave the best speech of his life Thursday night, the president phoned into Sean Hannity’s show on Fox. He said he was going to send “sheriffs” and “law enforcement” out to the polls to make sure only Americans vote. Millions and millions of mail-in ballots are going out to people, he said in effect, and no one’s ever heard of such a thing! The implication here is there’s a massive underhanded conspiracy afoot. He was laying the rhetorical groundwork for calling Joe Biden’s victory fraudulent. https://stoehr.substack.com/p/we-need-a-worst-case-scenario-plan

15. Washington Post  Editorial Board: A second Trump term might injure the democratic experiment beyond recovery

Four years ago, after Mr. Trump was nominated in Cleveland, we did something in this space we had never done before: Even before the Democrats had nominated their candidate, we told you that we could never, under any circumstances, endorse Donald Trump for president. He was, we said, “uniquely unqualified” to be president.

“Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together,” we warned. “His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew.”

The nation has indeed spent much of the past three years fretting over whether that experiment could survive Mr. Trump’s depredations. The resistance from some institutions, at some times, has been heartening. The depth of the president’s incompetence, which even we could not have imagined, may have saved the democracy from a more rapid descent.

But the trajectory has been alarming. The capitulation of the Republican Party has been nauseating. Misbehavior that many people vowed never to accept as normal has become routine.

A second term might injure the experiment beyond recovery.

And so, over the coming weeks, we will do something else we have never done before: We will publish a series of editorials on the damage this president has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term. And we will unabashedly urge you to do your civic duty and vote: Vote early, vote safely, but vote. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/21/second-trump-term-might-injure-democratic-experiment-beyond-recovery/

16. Steve Lopez: The case for Trump in his own, uh, words

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, it’s worth noting that no one has made a greater case for reelecting Donald Trump — if not adding him to the lineup at Mt. Rushmore — than the president himself.

But don’t take my word for it. Take his:

I’m a big environmentalist.... We have the cleanest air, the cleanest water we’ve ever had.... Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump! ... Nobody would fight harder for free speech than me.... I am the only one that knows how to build cities.... Many people have commented that my fragrance, ‘Success’ is the best scent & lasts the longest. Try it & let me know what you think!

We will immediately repeal and replace ObamaCare — and nobody can do that like me. We will save $’s and have much better healthcare! ... How do you get impeached when you have done NOTHING wrong (a perfect call), have created the best economy in the history of our Country, rebuilt our Military, fixed the V.A. (Choice!), cut Taxes & Regs, protected your 2nd A, created Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and soooo much more? Crazy! ...

In addition to winning the Electoral College vote in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.... We are United in our effort to defeat the Invisible China virus, and many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance. There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President! … Much more at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/column-the-case-for-four-more-years-of-donald-j-trump-in-his-own-words/ar-BB18g9Zd?li=BBnbcA1

17. David Shaywitz: Trump’s Self-Defeating Attacks on the FDA

After distinguishing himself this week by his embrace of the conspiracy theorists at QAnon, President Trump posited early Saturday morning that the “deep state, or whoever” may also be hard at work at the FDA, determined to thwart his re-election by slowing down recruitment of patients to test promising new COVID-19 medicines.

One conspicuous concern with Trump’s latest attack on the FDA is that it represents an attempt to work the ref, and make it more likely that future decisions will resolve in fashion he regards as more favorable to him—ideally in time for him to incorporate the news into his reelection campaign.

The more Trump is seen to be putting his finger on the scale, the less credible new treatments will likely be seen by doctors and patients alike—including those that might truly be effective. This means delayed adoption of potentially valuable therapeutics, and a longer time to capture both the medical and economic benefit at the population level.

It’s more than a little disconcerting to consider that scientific deliverance from this pandemic may hinge at least in part on the President’s ability to defer gratification by stepping away from his favorite outlet. It’s like Trump’s very own, very personal marshmallow test. How long can he resist? https://thebulwark.com/trumps-self-defeating-attacks-on-the-fda/

18. Eli Stokols: Coronavirus overshadows Trump’s legacy in office

Four years ago, when Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination in a Cleveland basketball arena, he painted a dark portrait of a nation in crisis. “I alone can fix it,” he vowed.

In April this year, as a deadly contagion scythed the land and millions lost their jobs, Trump deflected all blame for his administration’s failure to control the coronavirus. “I don’t take responsibility at all,” he said.

“The defining legacy of Trump is his demonstration that a person completely lacking in a commitment to liberal constitutional democracy can be elected president and that, as an ‘elected authoritarian,’ he or she can wield great power and do tremendous damage to the nation’s institutions and norms,” said Kevin C. O’Leary, a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine.

Trump’s angry tweets and threats, and his fervid political base, have kept most Republican lawmakers in line.

Brinkley, the Rice University history professor, views Trump’s persona as a successor to bygone American demagogues Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace.

“Trump’s single greatest bit of political savvy was terrifying Republican members of Congress that he would destroy them if they broke ranks,” he said.

But the 45th president, Brinkley said, has made his mark above all for his unabashed assertion of power in the service of self-interest and the way he has tested the durability of the Constitution itself.

“Trump wants to blow up the checks and balances. He has utter contempt for Congress and really for democracy,” Brinkley said. “That type of politician has been ubiquitous in world history. But it’s been confusing to us as a country because it’s never before taken root in the American land.” https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-21/coronavirus-overshadows-trumps-legacy-in-office

19. Charlie Sykes: “Who needs Vladimir Putin when we have Donald Trump?

If you were Vladimir Putin and you wanted to disrupt this election, what would you do? You’d spread disinformation. You’d make people doubt the legitimacy of the vote. You’d peddle conspiracy theories and you might want to mess with mail-in voting. That’s all happening without him. Our president is doing that.”It’s very clear that Trump will use every lever of governmental power to stay in office. There’ll be many mail-in votes and the mail-in votes will be very different than the same-day votes.

What he will do – and it will be very much on brand for Donald Trump – is declare victory on election night and then, as the mail-in votes are counted, he will insist that that they are not legitimate, that the election is being stolen from him, and I think that has the potential to create massive doubt and chaos.”

Such a scenario promises to dwarf the acrimony, chaos and confusion of the disputed 2000 election between Republican George W Bush and Democrat Al Gore, which went all the way to the supreme court. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/23/donald-trump-v-democracy-us-election

20. The Sun Sentinel Endorsement: Save our democracy. Vote for Joe Biden

A republic, Madam, if you can keep it — Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, 1787, when asked what the Constitutional Convention had proposed

The question that Franklin answered 233 years ago overshadows every other issue in the presidential election. It is why we recommend, with enthusiasm and a sense of urgency, that voters elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to be the president and vice president of the United States. In so doing, the American people will answer whether our representative democracy, under the rule of law, is still worth keeping.

That is the overarching question, which makes this the most fateful campaign since the survival of the nation was at stake in the Civil War.

In ordinary times, citizens would be debating whether presidential policies should be conservative, moderate or liberal, whether taxes should be raised or cut and programs created, ended or changed. Reasonable people can disagree respectfully over such choices.

But now, as former President Barack Obama declared last week, the main question is whether the presidency will be “the custodian of this democracy” and “defend the freedoms and ideals that so many Americans marched for and went to jail for, fought for and died for.” https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/editorials/fl-op-edit-endorsement-joe-biden-20200823-jfla4dpm55g7vksh4n2c2vlo5a-story.html