As President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani attempts to alter the course of the election through the leaking of materials allegedly from the computer of Hunter Biden, fellow Republicans—including some in the president’s orbit—are holding their breath. Some of Trump’s staunchest allies conceded recently that they are reluctant to attack former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter over the more salacious content purportedly found on the now infamous laptop. Raising concerns about Hunter Biden’s overseas business ethics may be kosher, they argue. But going after his personal demons by attacking his drug use, suggesting the existence of lurid […]
Donald J. Trump
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MIAMI — For nearly an hour on Monday, Alan Herrera stood in a line to cast his early vote for Joe Biden in the heart of one of Donald Trump’s Latino strongholds. The 33-year-old Honduran American slowly inched closer to the entrance of the John F. Kennedy Library in Hialeah, a predominantly Cuban American city in the coveted swing state of Florida where the president and the former vice-president appear neck-and-neck in various polls. About a dozen people ahead of Herrera waited their turn to go inside the early voting precinct. Roughly three dozen more voters stood behind him, lining the […]
In the two-and-a-half days immediately following the New York Post’s hit job on Hunter Biden, Fox News reportedly dedicated three times as much airtime to the former vice president’s son as it did to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, at least one prominent Fox host seems to be realizing that it’s not working. During a preview segment for the final debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, scheduled for this Thursday, Steve Doocy explicitly warned the president not to talk about Hunter. “So you gotta figure the president’s gonna try to bring up Hunter Biden in some manner,” Doocy said. Brian Kilmeade […]
If The View were a horror movie—and sometimes it’s not that far off—Joy Behar would be the final girl. The comic, who looks better than any 78-year-old has any right to, is the only original panelist left on the daytime talk show, which is currently in its 24th season. When I reach Behar by phone, there’s audible commotion in the background. After telling the background noisemakers, “Keep it down!” she returns to our call. “It’s just one of those days,” she says resignedly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Behar’s been taping episodes of The View from her New York home. I’m being […]
With less than three weeks before Election Day and the coronavirus pandemic still raging, Donald Trump wants voters to consider some very important things. Like did Osama bin Laden survive the 2011 Navy SEAL raid on his compound by using a body double, and did former Vice President Joe Biden then order the murder of Navy SEALs to cover that fact up? Did Biden then order the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya to cover that up? Trump boosted that convoluted conspiracy theory twice on Twitter this week, in one case retweeting a QAnon believer and in another retweeting a […]
Huntergate was meant to be the WikiLeaks 2.0. Trumpworld hoped the story of the contents of Hunter’s laptop would mimic the trajectory of the story about the contents of Anthony Weiner’s laptop. It was literally a reprise of October 2020. Rudy Giuliani hoped another laptop might save the self-devouring Ouroboros snake of fuckery that is the Trump campaign. Hunter Biden, of course, had a drug problem. The bet in Trumpworld was clearly that the rest of America would think of addicts as hopelessly damaged, corruptible, and beyond hope, and that Joe Biden is somehow at fault for loving his addict son. […]
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer accused President Donald Trump on Sunday of “inciting” domestic terrorism by repeatedly attacking her at his rallies, calling the “Lock her up!” chants the president has encouraged even in the wake of a kidnapping plot against her “disturbing.” During a rally in Michigan on Saturday, the president appeared to dismiss what cops and the FBI have called a violent, militia-infused scheme to kidnap and possibly even kill the governor, saying, “I guess they said she was threatened.” With Trump taking aim at her over the state’s coronavirus restrictions, the crowd chanted “lock her up,” prompting the president […]
After running a cold open that mocked NBC’s controversial Trump town hall, Saturday Night Live also dedicated a portion of this week’s “Weekend Update” segment to flame the network. After Colin Jost roasted the president for hosting more “coronavirus giveaways across the country,” Michael Che went in on his home network for giving the president a platform. “What can I say?” Che said. “We have a type.” Photos of Matt Lauer, Bill Cosby, and Donald Trump appeared behind him—a nod to the alleged predators with whom the network has happily worked in the past. Che moved on to the current political […]
NBC stirred plenty of controversy this week by granting Donald Trump his own town hall in the same time slot as Joe Biden’s broadcast—but the decision seems even more cynical than some critics alleged when you realize how much Saturday Night Live maestro Lorne Michaels and his merry band of comedians must have been drooling at the prospect. Saturday night’s cold open kicked off the show, predictably, with a re-enactment of this week’s dueling town halls. Viewers toggle between the two—“trying to decide,” in the show’s parlance, “between a Hallmark movie and an alien autopsy.” Plenty of familiar faces re-appeared: Jim […]
President Donald Trump, staring down a double-digit polling deficit with less than three weeks before Election Day, has resorted to trying to make one of his vintage conspiracy theories a hit in syndication: the idea that former Vice President Joe Biden is in a steep stage of cognitive decline and is only kept lucid by a mysterious cocktail of prescription drugs. “We can’t have a leader that’s just about half-shot. Can we believe we’re even fighting against this guy?” Trump told supporters at a rally in North Carolina on Thursday. “This is crazy. This is the craziest race. You know what? […]
On Friday night, Real Time host Bill Maher weighed in on Trump’s unhinged, sweaty, hour-long ragefest on NBC Thursday with Savannah Guthrie, wherein the president defended the batshit-insane conspiracy theory QAnon, which claims that the Democrats and Hollywood are killing and raping babies (and extracting their fear for medicine), as well as his decision to retweet another wacky conspiracy theory about the bin Laden raid. “The Trump one was just amazing,” offered Maher. “Trump defended retweeting this crazy conspiracy theory—did you see this?—about how bin Laden wasn’t really killed by Obama, because of course Obama never could do anything good so […]
At first glance, the small group assembled outside Pornhub’s L.A. office might have looked like employees. They surrounded the building in black T-shirts with white script, framed by the adult site’s signature orange box. Instead of the standard logo, however, the tees read “Traffickinghub.” The sparse and socially distant protest, which happens every week, had been organized by the West Coast arm of Knock Out Abuse, the domestic violence nonprofit whose annual gala, once called a “designer bachelorette party” by the Washington Post, attracts a roster of D.C. insiders and corporate executives—including Hillary Clinton, Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, and Wolf Blitzer. The […]
An honest question: If Donald Trump were trying to lose the presidency, what would he have done differently? Not much, if you ask me. No, I’m not suggesting Trump wants to lose so he can be a martyr and quit having to do any real work. This theory, which I see as the triumph of hope over optimism, continues to persist (at some points, the hope has gone so far as to suggest that Trump might even resign). Trump wants to win. It’s just that he’s pursuing a strategy that will probably guarantee he doesn’t. Consider a checklist of recent decisions: […]
Rudy Giuliani thinks it’s hilarious. He says the questions mounting around him—including those about whether his efforts to dump Hunter Biden’s documents and photos are part of some foreign election-interference operation—are “a bunch of bullshit.” He’s unconcerned about intelligence assessments that one of his former associates was a Russian agent, a proposition that he gave more or less even odds. In fact, Giuliani said, he has been “laughing my head off” about the whole affair. Instead, the pugnacious former New York City mayor said he was on a mission to push out all the contents of a hard drive he allegedly […]
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton repeatedly told his staff to actively remove themselves from conversations and meetings with Rudy Giuliani after Bolton received warnings from intelligence officials that the president’s personal lawyer was propagating conspiracy theories that aligned with a Russian operation to undermine the 2020 presidential election. Bolton even warned his subordinates to avoid meetings in which Giuliani or his agenda might be raised. According to three sources with direct knowledge of the situation, Bolton told his team not to attend an Oval Office meeting May 23, 2019 with President Donald Trump following the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr […]
As Savannah Guthrie grilled Donald Trump on QAnon at Trump’s town hall event, he did his usual lying and dodging and then whined to Guthrie about Antifa and asked her: “Why aren’t you asking Joe Biden questions about, why doesn’t he condemn Antifa?” Let’s settle this. Joe Biden does not have to denounce Antifa. He’s done so, anyway, but even if he hadn’t, he has utterly no responsibility to do so, and since this appears to be an attack line Trump might amp up in these waning days, it’s important for people to understand why. It’s important because it probably sounds […]
Americans saw two men last night in the closing days of their respective pursuits of the highest office in the land, and their split-screen town halls clarified and catalyzed an understanding of this race in a way that their one debate so far did not. It was one more sign of a Trump campaign in total collapse; broke, broken, and unmoored. As Donald Trump was eviscerated by a smart and determined Savannah Guthrie, who put up with exactly zero bullshit from a subject who usually submerges interviewers under a tidal wave of bullshit, while Joe Biden connected with both his audience […]
When the New York Post this week began publishing a series of stories on Hunter Biden, conservatives supporting President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign were openly ecstatic. But veterans of cycles past urged caution, not just because the reports were opaquely sourced and—it appeared—dubiously obtained, but because if history is any guide, they’re not guaranteed to move votes. “The nature of the news environment has just crowded out a lot of stuff,” Tim Miller, a former executive director of the GOP political action committee America Rising, told The Daily Beast. Miller, who left the organization in 2015, has since become a Trump […]
It was another balancing act for Joe Biden tonight, and if Donald Trump hadn’t killed our outrage receptors, many of us would probably find the confusion truly alarming. Even if you’re convinced that Biden is, by far, the lesser of two evils, it’s still worth taking a minute to stop to consider what we might be getting ourselves into with Biden and the Democrats. It ain’t pretty. Thursday night’s town halls were a stark contrast in style, with the ABC town hall being stylistically like Biden (slow and substantive), and Trump’s NBC event reminding me of him (flashy, interrupting, and entertaining). […]
Dealt dreadfully lousy cards—that is, widespread and justified criticism of NBCUniversal and its traumatized news division for hastily gifting Donald Trump an hour of free airtime at the same moment that Joe Biden was doing his previously scheduled town hall over on ABC—Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie did not fold. Quite the contrary, she managed to burnish her journalistic reputation, if not that of her employer, by repeatedly forcing the president to answer the sort of inconvenient questions he has easily evaded during countless press gaggles, phoned-in interviews, and his first and possibly final official debate against the frontrunning Democratic nominee. […]
On Thursday night, Jimmy Kimmel escalated his feud with NBC over their questionable decision to give in to President Trump’s demands and air a town hall with him at the same time as Joe Biden’s over on ABC. Given that Trump’s interview would also air on MSNBC and CNBC, the ratings-obsessed commander-in-chief would surely garner bigger ratings and also siphon viewers from his opponent. “Presidential debate number two was scheduled for this evening but instead we got two dueling town halls—Joe Biden on ABC, Donald Trump on NBC,” explained Kimmel on his late-night show. “NBC pulled a very sneaky move. After […]
“With three weeks to go until Election Day, and millions of votes already cast, coronavirus remains the top issue for America,” Trevor Noah said on Thursday’s episode of The Daily Show. “And any normal president would be laser-focused on getting corona under control, helping businesses stay afloat, keeping schools open. But Donald Trump is not a normal president.” Instead, Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani are counting on their “October surprise” of a secret laptop that allegedly contains Hunter Biden’s emails to change the momentum of the race. “Honestly, it’s insane that Trump’s people are even going after Biden by targeting […]
On one channel, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. On the other, a rerun of Celebrity Deathmatch. Or, at least, that’s how it felt. After more than a week of inter-campaign sniping, furious Twitter denouncements, fretful consultations with public health experts, and a last-minute surprise scheduling coup, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden squared off on dueling town hall stages—one on NBC, the other on ABC. In a matchup that was head-to-head rather than face-to-face, the two presidential contenders did less to paint their pictures of the America they hope to lead than they did exemplify the two sides of the […]
GREENSBORO, N.C.—When he arrived at the polls to vote for the first time on Thursday, Ricardo Lopez-Salazar was on edge. “On the way over here I was kind of nervous,” Lopez-Salazar, an 18-year old student at Guilford Technical Community College, told The Daily Beast. Soon enough, a Republican poll observer stared directly at him, just days after Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to show up early and often at polling places across America. Under North Carolina law, each party is allowed to have up to two observers in each polling place. Dianne Doughty, a Guilford County GOP volunteer, told The Daily […]
C-SPAN has suspended longtime political editor and senior executive producer Steve Scully indefinitely for lying that his Twitter feed was hijacked last week. “I falsely claimed that my Twitter account had been hacked. These were both errors in judgement for which I am totally responsible for. I ask for [my colleagues’] forgiveness as I try to move forward in a moment of reflection and disappointment in myself,” he said in a statement. A week ago, Scully tweeted, “@Scaramucci should I respond to Trump” when the president attacked the editor as a “Never Trumper.” Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s short-lived comms director, advised ignoring […]
President Donald Trump continued his attacks on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday, calling the Democratic lawmaker a “dictator” as authorities announced charges against a 14th suspect in the thwarted plot to kidnap her and violently overthrow the government. “Michigan, she has to open up. [Whitmer] wants to be a dictator in Michigan and the people can’t stand her,” Trump said Thursday in a FOX Business interview. Blasting Whitmer’s COVID-19 policies, he insisted people “want to get back to work.” The president has repeatedly attacked Whitmer even after authorities announced last week charges against more than a dozen individuals who allegedly […]
Whoopi Goldberg just came out and said it Thursday morning. She does not believe President Donald Trump ever tested positive for COVID-19. During a discussion on The View about the president resuming his large campaign rallies as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the country, Goldberg said: “You know what? The more he talks, the less I think he had it, personally. That’s just me, that’s just me.” But it wasn’t just her. “Me too!” Joy Behar agreed. “I’m starting to think that too, Whoopi.” “I’m starting to feel like, really?” Goldberg added. “Because I just feel like, wait a minute.” […]
Elizabeth Marvel is as tickled by the lame joke as everyone seems to be while making it. The stage and screen actor, best known for roles on Homeland and House of Cards, stars in Hulu’s Helstrom, the latest TV series tie-in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), based on characters from Marvel Comics. She’s Elizabeth Marvel, about to star in Marvel’s Helstrom. Marvel and Marvel. Get it? (That’s it. That’s the joke.) When we connect with Marvel via Zoom ahead of the series’ premiere this Friday, the actress laughs about the connection. “How they’re getting free advertising just by listing my […]
President Trump’s influential supporter Rupert Murdoch is telling close associates he believes Joe Biden will win the election in a landslide. The Australian-born billionaire is disgusted by Trump’s handling of COVID-19, remarking that the president is his own worst enemy, that he is not listening to advice about how best to handle the pandemic, and that he’s creating a never-ending crisis for his administration, according to three people who have spoken with Murdoch. In response to an email inquiry for this story asking him if he believes Biden will win in a landslide and his thoughts on Trump’s handling of coronavirus, […]
It’s always confusing when Black celebrities gather around to pontificate about what needs to be done for Black America, like rapper Ice Cube, CNN pundit Van Jones, and others did on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk this week. In the U.S., we’re supposed to be interested in political and historical analyses by crafty capitalists rather than by those who are currently living under the failed economic and social conditions that have been engineered by the few in power. Unsurprisingly, both Ice Cube and Jones have recently been on blast for collaborating with the Trump administration on policy instead of humbly […]
During his late-night monologue on ABC Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmel waded into the brewing controversy over dueling town hall events happening Thursday on both his network and NBC. “You know, there was supposed to be a debate tomorrow night, but since Trump would not agree to the virtual format that they wanted to have because he tested positive for the coronavirus, he backed out altogether,” the host explained. “So because there was no debate, Biden agreed to do a town hall on ABC that night.” Then came the announcement that Trump would also be doing a town hall on NBC at […]
Rudy Giuliani’s latest effort to push more dirt on the Bidens weeks before the 2020 presidential election had some important backers—chief among them, the president of the United States. In recent weeks, Donald Trump was made aware of an alleged secret trove of material about Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings and private life, and was keen on getting it out into the public domain as soon as possible, according to two sources familiar with the matter. “Have you heard about this [hard drive]?” one of the people recalled the president asking recently. The president made clear this latest salvo against the Bidens […]
Pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly on Tuesday halted one of two trials of a major new novel coronavirus therapy after independent safety monitors observed an unspecified problem with the testing. The Data Safety Monitoring Board froze trials of the Indiana company’s monoclonal antibody drug bamlanivimab, which was being administered in combination with the antiviral drug remdesivir. The board didn’t freeze separate trials testing bamlanivimab on its own, and the move doesn’t mean the company’s drug is unsound. But it does raise a slew of new questions about an antibody treatment that has been aggressively flogged by Donald Trump, who took a similar […]
Not this time. In 2016, many mainstream media outlets let themselves be used by Donald Trump and his henchmen (Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, etc.) to amplify nutso Hillary conspiracy stories. It helped put Trump in the White House, where he has violated the Constitution and his oath of office and common-sense decency pretty much every day of his presidency. So far this time around, the track record has been better. But it’s better because all the conspiracy-mongering has fallen flat. Prosecutor John Durham, who I really thought was going to do Bill Barr’s dirty work and try to rig […]
President Donald Trump backed a budding conspiracy theory on Tuesday that four Americans were killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack to cover up the blood-sacrifice of Navy SEALs and the “fact” that Osama Bin Laden is still alive, marking what is perhaps the president’s strangest brush yet with far-right conspiracy theories. Trump’s promotion of the new Benghazi conspiracy theory, which is fast gaining traction on the far right, came in the form of a retweet of a QAnon believer pushing the claim. The president’s backing helped push the tweet about Benghazi above 14,000 retweets. The bizarre theory, which is outre even […]
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) used her first allotted questioning time during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to zero-in on the Democratic ticket’s closing campaign message: an unambiguous defense of the Affordable Care Act. “Over the last nine years, Republicans in Congress have tried 70 times—70 times—to repeal or roll back the ACA,” Harris said on Tuesday evening. “In 2013, Senate Republicans were so desperate to stop its success that they shut down the entire government four weeks after President Trump was elected. Washington Republicans spent nearly a year trying to repeal […]
Donald Trump may be feuding with Dr. Anthony Fauci. But at least, as Trevor Noah put it Tuesday night, the president did get “a very real endorsement from another top scientist” this week. The Daily Show host was referring to Eric Trump, who appeared on ABC News’ This Week on Sunday and boasted about the “vaccine” that supposedly saved his father’s life. “It goes to speak how good some of these vaccines that are being created are and what my father’s done on the vaccine front no one could have done,” the president’s deeply confused son told host Jonathan Karl. “My […]
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia’s wife has tested positive for COVID-19—becoming at least the 13th person who attended a largely mask-free White House Rose Garden event to contract the coronavirus. Trish Scalia was seated next to Kellyanne Conway and right behind Melania Trump at the Sept. 26 ceremony to announce President Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Conway and the first lady also got infected with COVID-19, along with the president, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and two of her underlings, and Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), along […]
The Department of Justice has filed a complaint against Melania Trump’s former best friend for not submitting a draft of her tell-all book to the federal government for pre-publication review. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the planner of President Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, penned Melania and Me about the sudden souring of her relationship with the first lady. The look into Melania’s inner circle painted an unflattering portrait of the first lady, as did several clandestine recordings Wolkoff later shared. Filed in Washington, D.C. District Court, the complaint accuses Wolkoff of breach of contract and breach of fiduciary obligations. DOJ lawyers wrote, “Ms. […]
President Donald Trump’s official super PAC is shopping around opposition research to members of the media on The Lincoln Project, a political group founded by NeverTrump Republicans who have run millions of dollars in ads this year attacking Trump and vulnerable Senate Republicans. America First Action, an ostensibly independent outfit supporting the president’s reelection, recently circulated a memo to “interested parties” breaking down the Lincoln Project’s ad spending and the data it’s reported to the Federal Election Commission. The memo, titled “Lincoln Project discrepancies,” purports to demonstrate the exorbitantly high fees that the group’s principals have pocketed as it buys television […]
SEOUL—Let the missiles fall where they may, President Trump is still smitten by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Trump, who famously said he and Kim “fell in love” in their summit in Singapore in June 2018, proclaimed Kim “100 percent sharp” at a campaign rally in Florida this week. It was part of a dig against the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, saying “We have someone running who is not 100 percent.” Trump’s shout out to Kim among a pantheon of dictatorial leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping was his first mention of the North Korean potentate since he […]
It’s bad enough that we have to deal with one Donald Trump here in the U.S. of A. What’s worse, Mehdi Hasan explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal, is that Trump has become a template for a whole planet full of bad-faith actors and wannabe strongmen. Before he became the host of his own TV show in America, Hasan interviewed all sorts of international politicians. “What I noticed over the last few years is that they all now start talking like Trump. They all use the same verbal tics, the same ‘fake news,’ the same completely brazen lies,” […]
As the only major late-night host to air a new show Monday night, Jimmy Kimmel had one of the more laughable Trump stories in recent memory all to himself. Noting that today is both Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day, the host said, “Our president, though, is a big supporter of Columbus Day. He and Christopher Columbus actually have a lot in common. They both spread disease and both failed spectacularly at what they were hired to do.” Kimmel began by taking on the “contaminator-in-chief’s” first big “maskless” rally in Florida since contracting the coronavirus just a couple of weeks ago. […]
Beset by controversy and lagging in the polls, President Donald Trump this week was handed what his allies described as a gift: an opportunity to recede from the national spotlight while his party scored a win that would rearrange the tectonic plates of government. Trump promptly squandered the opportunity. For weeks, operatives from both political parties have picked up on a defining phenomenon of the presidential race: The more that President Trump has been the center of conversation the worse it has been for him. The pattern held true through the summer and into the fall, and it has contributed to […]
The nation’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci demanded that the Trump campaign refrain from using him in future campaign ads, saying Monday that it would be “outrageous” and “terrible” if he was featured in another commercial and it could “come back to backfire” on Team Trump. Asked by The Daily Beast if his comments were a thinly-veiled threat to leave his post if he ended up in a new campaign spot, Fauci: “Not a chance.” “Not in my wildest freakin’ dreams,” he said, “did I ever think about quitting.” From there, Fauci went on to explain what he meant […]
As President Donald Trump received treatment for the coronavirus at Walter Reed Medical Center last week, he and his aides worked on the stagecraft for his big return home. It needed to be showy and it would require television networks to have their cameras pointed at the White House during the beginning of their primetime shows. Disembarking from Marine One, Trump walked across the lawn, climbed two flights of stairs to the balcony of the residence, looked directly at the cameras and removed his mask. It was as overly dramatic as it was medically dangerous. For the White House the goal […]
This is a preview of Right Richter, our newsletter about the extreme right wing. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox, sign up for it here. It’s hard to stress how much effort the pro-Trump media has devoted over the last year-and-half to John Durham. The top federal prosecutor in Connecticut with a bushy, meme-ready goatee, Durham was appointed by Bill Barr in May 2019 to investigate the origins of the 2016 Russia probe. Or, in other words, to try to make something of what the president hears every night on Sean Hannity’s show. Durham’s much-awaited report was supposed to […]
Donald Trump is a uniter—just not in the way he had hoped. His presidency has brought American Jews and Muslims together to defeat him in 2020. It has also increased each respective community’s support for fellow minority groups. Those are the findings of a new report by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), a nonpartisan organization created in 2002 that focuses on issues impacting the Muslim American community. As ISPU found, Jews and Muslims are the two religious groups that, by far, least approve of Trump. Only 34 percent of Jews and 30 percent of Muslims say Trump is […]
Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) helped get Trump impeached, but now there’s a new battle: his SCOTUS pick. She worked within the government’s Internal Affairs department and became one of the impeachment managers in Trump’s case after 27 years as an Orlando police officer. And impeached he was. So on this members-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal, co-host Molly Jong-Fast asks for her thoughts on Trump’s SCOTUS appointment and how exactly Democrats and citizens alike can stop it. Source link
During last week’s season premiere on Saturday Night Live, host Chris Rock reacted to the news that Donald Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus by saying, “My heart goes out to COVID.” One week later, the president has seemingly recovered from the virus and is already back to delivering speeches to packed crowds. “Weekend Update” co-anchor Michael Che had trouble hiding his disappointment on this week’s episode. “President Trump claimed to have survived the coronavirus,” Che reported, adding, sarcastically, “Yay!” “I’m not going to say I’m disappointed, but it’s kind of like when there’s a car crash and the only […]
The president is better! Or maybe not. Who knows? Spoiler: Trump’s first on-camera interview since his abrupt return to the White House, with Tucker Carlson, did nothing to answer any of those questions, though we did get to see Trump lie and present half-truths himself. It was one week ago that President Superspreader got into a helicopter on the south lawn in front of the White House and took off for Walter Reed Medical Center. Since then, we’ve heard doctors lying or presenting half-truths about Trump’s health. Was he on oxygen? No! Yes! Maybe! By Sunday he was either “not out […]
Candace Owens’ BLEXIT Foundation—founded to give people the false impression that Black voters are abandoning the Democratic party en masse for Republicanism—reportedly put together Saturday’s campaign event thinly disguised as an official government function, where Donald Trump spoke to a pro-police Black and Latinx audience from the Truman Balcony during what was in effect his first in-person rally since his trip to Walter Reed. Two thousand people were reportedly invited to hear his “Remarks to Peaceful Protesters for Law & Order,” but many of the few hundred who showed up had their travel and lodging costs paid by Owens’ group, which […]
With coronavirus running through his body in competition with a heavy steroidal dose, President Trump is frustrated that a country where over 210,000 people have died from the virus seems uninterested in the “hoax” of Russiagate. Trump spent part of his week demanding the latest version of his Russia counter-narrative—that the intelligence officials teamed up with Democrats to invent Russian collusion in 2016—be used to prosecute his political enemies. “I say, ‘Bill [Barr], we have plenty [of evidence], we don’t need any more,” Trump told Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. On Friday, he fumed to Rush Limbaugh that Republicans are “afraid they’re […]
Donald Trump hosted hundreds of people outside the White House on Saturday for his first in-person event since contracting COVID-19—but his administration wouldn’t say whether he’s still infected with the virus. “We gotta vote these people into oblivion,” Trump told the crowd of supporters in a brief 18 minute speech from a White House balcony. The in-person event marked Trump’s return to the campaign spotlight after announcing his COVID-19 diagnosis on Oct. 2 and being hospitalized at Maryland’s Walter Reed hospital. Trump appeared on several conservative media outlets, and plans to hold rallies in Florida on Monday, Pennsylvania on Tuesday and […]
The experimental novel coronavirus drug Donald Trump took last week is not, as the president claims, a cure for COVID-19. The monoclonal antibody cocktail, under development by New York pharma Regeneron, seems promising, experts and health officials say. But it and a similar antibody cocktail from Indiana firm Eli Lilly—also touted by the president—are still in trials. It’s too soon to say exactly what they do and how well they do it, and the president’s bluster about them is just the latest in a pattern of pandemic braggadocio. Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s […]
When Kimberly Guilfoyle tested positive for COVID-19 before Donald Trump’s July Mount Rushmore speech, it seemed like the result came back just in the nick of time. She and her boyfriend, who happens to be the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., skipped the rally and were said to have avoided contact with the president. But the duo had already made a lasting impression in the northern plains, where earlier that week they had headlined a two-day Trump campaign event in Big Sky, Montana, potentially exposing locals and political donors to COVID-19—and leaving some to find out about it through the news. […]
Donald Trump is headed toward a massive defeat—at least, if any of the polls (or our eyes) are to be believed. What is more, there’s a decent chance a massive blue wave could do the unthinkable, sweeping even “safe” Republicans like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham out to sea. If that happens, there will be a window of time, however fleeting, for sane Republicans to try and take back the GOP. Doing so will require following the motto of Cobra-Kai: Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy. What I am about to propose is admittedly heavy-handed. It will be called “undemocratic.” But […]
On Friday night, Bill Maher kicked off the latest edition of his HBO show Real Time by addressing how President Trump got COVID-19—after doing pretty much everything in his power to get it. “I’m telling you, this getting COVID thing, not good for him,” said Maher. “The way he handled it, I think the final blow is that, you know what, we’ve seen that he gets treatment we would never get. He’s out after everything bragging, ‘Oh, I beat it.’ Yeah—with a team of doctors and experimental drugs. When Trump gets sick he goes to Walter Reed. The average American goes […]
C-SPAN’s longtime host Steve Scully, scheduled to moderate next week’s presidential town-hall debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden that may or may not happen, received a robust vote of confidence Friday from Chris Wallace and a host of prominent Republicans the morning after a post from his Twitter account prompted a political media uproar. Fox News Sunday host Wallace, who moderated last week’s presidential debate, along with Fox News commentator Karl Rove and former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer were among Scully’s defenders after Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, announced that a question tweeted […]
“Man, woman, person, camera, TV.” The last time President Donald Trump appeared on TV with Dr. Marc Siegel, he managed to impress the Fox News medical contributor by successfully listing off those five words in the same order, twice in a row. Now, with many unanswered questions swirling about his health following an abrupt hospitalization for COVID-19 just one week ago, Trump has turned again to Dr. Siegel in a deeply bizarre, made-for-reality TV on-air “medical evaluation” on Tucker Carlson’s show Friday night. “By any measure, it’s been a remarkable turnaround,” Carlson insisted of Trump’s apparent recovery, before revealing that the […]
Hitting the closing stretch of the election, and trailing by a substantial margin in the polls, Donald Trump is placing his political hopes on winning over voters with cold hard cash. Over the past month, the president and his team have coalesced around a series of policies that would result in billions of dollars being allocated to critical constituencies right as voting begins: a proposal to dramatically increase government lending in African American communities, an order to send seniors a $200 rebate card for prescription drug purchases, and a newfound desire for an ambitious stimulus package to deal with the fallout […]
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace said on Friday that he sees no issue with the Commission on Presidential Debates making the second debate virtual amid President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, saying the president’s own behavior brings up “serious questions. Early on Thursday morning, the CPD announced that due to concerns over the president’s ongoing battle with COVID-19, they would have the candidates debate from remote locations rather than in-person. A furious Trump, meanwhile, immediately pulled out of the virtual debate, saying he was “not going to waste my time” with it. During an appearance on America’s Newsroom, Wallace first addressed the […]
There’s plenty of reasons to worry in Wisconsin these days. While the crucial swing state maintains its standing as a national hotspot for the coronavirus and spiking cases and hospitalizations have alarmed health experts and local officials, Republicans there are continuing to attack Democratic Gov. Tony Evers over the emergency authority he’s relying on to try and combat the virus. “I don’t care if (the governor’s) actions are warranted or not warranted, he is illegally acting,” said state Sen. Chris Kapenga, a Republican who opposes the governor’s mask order and is upset the governor isn’t working with the legislature when Kapenga […]
Donald Trump insured that the fly, not Mike Pence or that “monster,” Kamala Harris, who womansplained to the vice president, would be the story coming out of the vice presidential debate by calling into Fox News before the sun was barely up. He delivered a message to that pesky Commission on Presidential Debates to take its virtual debate scheduled for Thursday and shove it. There’s no need to go virtual, since he’s “not contagious at all.” Or so says Dr. Trump, who knows more than his physicians, who can’t offer a second opinion because of blanket NDAs. What’s all the fuss? […]
During a Thursday night interview in which he repeatedly stopped to cough and catch his breath, President Donald Trump wouldn’t reveal whether he’s been tested since he was diagnosed with the coronavirus but did say he hopes to hold a campaign rally in Florida this Saturday night. Prior to Trump’s call with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the president’s doctor—who admitted he lied to the public about Trump’s health after he was hospitalized with COVID-19—cleared Trump to return to public events this coming weekend. “Overall he’s responded extremely well to treatment, without evidence on examination of adverse therapeutic effects,” Dr. Sean […]
With just a few more weeks to go until Election Day, Jordan Klepper is still putting his life on the line to make fun of Trump supporters at the president’s increasingly irresponsible rallies. After checking out one of Trump’s infamous boat parades over the summer, the Daily Show correspondent strapped on his mask and headed to Pennsylvania where he trolled the parking lot outside Harrisburg International Airport for the most embarrassing people he could find. “On the day Donald Trump most likely contracted COVID at an event in the Rose Garden, he hosted another, slightly different kind of superspreader event,” Klepper […]
Former high-dollar Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy is facing a federal criminal charge over an alleged scheme to influence the Trump administration on behalf of a Malaysian businessman at the center of a massive international money laundering conspiracy. In a criminal information filing filed in federal court in Washington on Tuesday, the Justice Department accuses Broidy of accepting millions of dollars to press the administration to abandon or reduce its criminal probe into Jho Low, who is accused of orchestrating a multi-billion-dollar fraud against a Malaysian government investment fund. The filing alleges that Broidy committed one count of conspiracy to violate the […]
Terrorists, dictators, mass shooters, gang members, deadly natural disasters, and… Kamala Harris. These are the things President Donald Trump considers “monsters.” In his first live TV appearance since his COVID-19 hospitalization, Trump on Thursday raged for nearly an hour on Fox Business Network, declaring his refusal to do a virtual debate with Joe Biden and suggesting Gold Star families may have given him the deadly virus. Towards the end of the interview, the president aimed his fury at Sen. Kamala Harris, calling her a “monster.” “This monster that was on stage with Mike Pence, who destroyed her last night by the […]
The infectious President Donald Trump has announced that he has absolutely no intention of taking part in a virtual debate with Joe Biden, just minutes after the Commission on Presidential Debates confirmed the pre-election event would take place remotely to keep everyone safe. In his first live interview since he was hospitalized for three days with COVID-19, Trump told the Fox Business Network Thursday morning: “I’m not going to do a virtual debate… I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate.” Then, in a dubious attempt to convince everyone that a debate would be safe, he added: “I […]
President Trump and his allies have responded to recent revelations of his miniscule federal income tax bills by saying they’re overheated fake news. But on the debate stage Wednesday night, Vice President Mike Pence went a step further—saying the story served to highlight that Trump, unlike Democratic nominee Joe Biden, has been a true American job creator, not a career politician. “The American people have a president who is a businessman, a job creator, who has paid tens of millions of dollars in taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes. He’s created tens of thousands of American jobs,” said Pence. “The president said […]
There has been one gnawing question that the White House has refused to answer ever since President Donald Trump publicly announced he tested positive for coronavirus last Friday, was hospitalized for three days due to his worsening condition, and returned home this week despite his doctors acknowledging he is “not entirely out of the woods yet”: When was the last time the president tested negative for COVID-19? That question, of course, would inform the public on whether the president was potentially already infected when he participated in last Tuesday’s presidential debate and if he caught the virus during what appears to […]
President Donald Trump claimed he’s “learned” more from the “real school” of contracting the coronavirus than he ever could have from “‘let’s read the book’ school.” But despite one spokesperson attacking Joe Biden for not having the “firsthand experience” of an infection, another adviser is now insisting that the campaign is “not changing course.” Confronted by Fox News anchor Sandra Smith with a CNN poll that found 63 percent of Americans believe Trump acted “irresponsibly” when it came to handling the COVID risk to the people around him, campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp seemed unconcerned with political fallout of the president’s obvious […]
Asked in a recent interview how things were going as Election Day draws near, a state elections director paused, searching for the right words. “I feel like I’ve got democracy in a boat,” the director told The Daily Beast, “and my staff is bailing water out while people are drilling holes in it.” That official, who spoke anonymously to discuss the situation candidly, sums up how many election officials around the country are feeling right now. In normal times, they’re a group of professionals used to getting the job done with what meager funds they typically get—proud of it, even. Few, […]
On Tuesday night, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah took a break from clowning on first lady Melania Trump’s hatred of the White House Christmas to address the more serious news wafting from its walls: President Trump’s made-for-TV return to the White House, even though he is still battling the novel coronavirus (and surely contagious). Trump made a big show of his premature return from Walter Reed Medical Center—where he’d spent three days recuperating on supplemental oxygen, an experimental cocktail of antibodies, steroids, and various other treatments—standing proudly on the balcony of the White House and ripping off his mask for all […]
“You know, ladies and gentlemen, when Donald Trump first contracted the coronavirus, I thought that maybe, just maybe, he would emerge from this experience with a shred of humility,” Stephen Colbert said at the top of his Late Show monologue Tuesday night. “Because honestly, nothing would disarm his critics more than if he stood up and told the world, ‘I was wrong. I have learned my lesson. And I truly sympathize with the hundreds of thousands who have been gravely ill or lost their lives due to this pandemic.’” “But I forgot about one thing,” the host continued. “He never does […]
Moments after Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said next week’s debate should be canceled if President Donald Trump still has coronavirus, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume dismissed that idea out of hand, saying the debate needs to occur even if Trump shows up infected. With the president still recovering from his COVID-19 diagnosis that resulted in a three-day hospital stay in Walter Reed, Biden told reporters on Tuesday night that while he’s “looking forward” to debating Trump on Oct. 15, they “have to follow very strict guidelines” for it to happen. “I think if he still has COVID, then […]
Health experts working with President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force are accusing White House officials of ignoring the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as they try to stop the spread of the coronavirus within their complex. Over the last several days, Trump administration officials have attempted to quickly pull together a plan to mitigate the burgeoning outbreak in the White House. But as positive test results have poured in, officials have struggled to make decisions about who should be asked to work from home, whether White House personnel should wear protective masks and even if […]
The next time you’re in the presence of someone who tries to tell you that Donald Trump is a political genius, I’d like you to grab the nearest copy of Men’s Hairstyles magazine and whack them upside the head. Maybe not too many people are saying that these days, as he’s clearly in the early stages of a ’roid-driven meltdown. But people have remarked many times on Trump’s supposed genius. It has never been true. He didn’t win his massive following by being a political genius. He won it by lying his ass off and being a racist. That’s not political […]
Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller became the latest White House staffer to test positive for COVID-19 late Tuesday. Miller said he tested positive after repeatedly testing negative, raising concerns there may be many more within the president’s orbit unknowingly carrying the virus even as they report testing negative. “Over the last 5 days I have been working remotely and self-isolating, testing negative every day through yesterday,” Miller said in a statement. “Today, I tested positive for COVID-19 and am in quarantine.” Miller joins the president and first lady Melania Trump, top Trump adviser Hope Hicks, and White House press secretary Kayleigh […]
America’s 19th-richest family, the Sackler clan, made unfathomable riches by flooding the globe with OxyContin, sparking an opioid-addiction crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. They now look set to keep the vast majority of their estimated $13 billion fortune if a controversial settlement, supported by the judge presiding over a key bankruptcy trial, is accepted by a Trump White House reportedly keen to declare some form of “victory” over Big Pharma before the election. The New Yorker reports the Sacklers, who own Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, have said they will pay out a guaranteed $3 billion to […]
George Takei remembers his lowest point vividly. It came on November 11, 2017. The Star Trek actor was in Tokyo, Japan, for a gala screening of Allegiance, his Broadway passion project about Japanese internment, when his phone began buzzing like crazy. “It was right after our screening and we were celebrating, and then… we heard,” he recalls to The Daily Beast. “It was horrible.” The Hollywood Reporter had just published an eye-opening exposé wherein a former model accused the Star Trek actor and activist of drugging and sexually assaulting him in 1981. Unlike other #MeToo stories, however, the piece didn’t contain […]
Seth Meyers wasn’t the first late-night host to cover the massive coronavirus outbreak at the White House. But he may have had the most to say about it. The Late Night host dedicated his “A Closer Look” segment Monday night to everything that happened since President Donald Trump announced he had tested positive for COVID-19 early Friday morning. And he began with the president’s assurance that he’s learned from his experience. “I learned it by really going to school,” Trump said in a video message from the hospital, adding, “This is the real school, this isn’t the ‘Let’s read the book’ […]
Having left Walter Reed hospital after a three-day stint recovering from the coronavirus, President Donald Trump began, what aides and confidants say is, a new phase of the presidential campaign: an effort to turn his illness into an electoral asset. The president’s stint in the Military Medical Center may have raised serious questions about his political future and his physical status, with doctors giving him a trio of therapeutics and his physician acknowledging that he is not yet out of the woods. But during his time away from the White House, Trump spent his weekends frantically working the phones, compulsively watching […]
Three days after being flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center because of the severity of his COVID-19 infection, President Donald Trump announced that he will leave the hospital—and urged people not to fear the virus that has already killed more than 200,000 Americans. “I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M.,” Trump tweeted on Monday afternoon. “Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” The […]
If you were wondering how the Trump campaign might try to spin the president’s COVID-19 diagnosis into a positive for his re-election effort, the first hints started to emerge during a Monday morning Fox News appearance by Director of Communications Erin Perrine. Asked by Fox anchor Sandra Smith if President Trump will “change his messaging” and stop “downplaying” the coronavirus moving forward now that he has dealt with it personally, Perrine touted the importance of “firsthand experience.” “Firsthand experience is always going to change how someone relates to something that’s been happening,” she said. “The president has coronavirus right now. He […]
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has tested positive for COVID-19, just days after the president and a slew of Republican officials revealed a similar diagnosis. McEnany announced her diagnosis on Monday, stating she has tested positive “while experiencing no symptoms.” Reporters note that on Sunday she talked to the press without wearing a mask. “No reporters, producers, or members of the press are listed as close contacts by the White House Medical Unit,” she said in the statement. “Moreover, I definitively had no knowledge of Hope Hicks’ diagnosis prior to holding a White House press briefing on Thursday. As an […]
“It has been a genuinely extraordinary week for the White House,” said John Oliver at the top of Sunday night’s Last Week Tonight. There’s been so much chaos this past week that the HBO host said they didn’t have time to even address the $750 Trump paid in income tax for two years (as revealed by The New York Times), Melania Trump “essentially saying ‘fuck Christmas’” (recordings dropped by former Melania aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff), and Trump refusing to condemn the Proud Boys during the first presidential debate, telling the far-right anti-masturbation hate group to “stand back, and stand by.” All […]
On Sunday night, Desus & Mero, the most underrated late-night hosts in the game, opened their show with a round of laughter. “Trump got that ‘rona!” exclaimed The Kid Mero. The duo then filled their audience in on how President Trump and first lady Melania Trump came down with the novel coronavirus this week—and this after The New York Times revealed that Trump was not only financially underwater and a total fraud but had paid a measly $750 a year in federal income tax his first two years in office. (Trump is currently fighting the virus at Walter Reed National Military […]
After teasing a “little surprise visit” via video on Twitter, President Trump left the hospital on Sunday afternoon to wave to supporters from the back seat of an SUV. “It’s been a very interesting journey. I learned a lot about COVID,” Trump, who is still suffering from the coronavirus, said in the video. “I learned it by really going to school, this is the real school, this isn’t the ‘let’s the read book’ school, and I get it, and I understand it,” he added. Then, contradicting his own words and the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the […]
After months of downplaying the danger of COVID-19, President Trump and the first lady tested positive, and on Friday the president was taken to the Walter Reed Medical Center “for the next few days” as “a precautionary measure.” On Saturday, a series of confusing and conflicting updates, on and off the record, about the president’s condition landed on top of the confusion spread by the president about the virus. He’s not the first national leader to be stricken with the virus and, when he recovers, the question may be which example he follows: that of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro or British […]
White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah faced some unexpectedly tough questions about President Donald Trump’s medical condition during an interview on Fox News Sunday afternoon. And in the process, she admitted that the president’s physician Dr. Sean Conley deliberately misled the American people to make his patient feel better. Fox anchor Trace Gallagher highlighted the “confusion” and “mixed messaging coming from the White House and coming from the doctors,” asking Farah, “Why hasn’t the White House come out and just cleared the deck, cleared up all this stuff and said, you know, this is the way it is, here’s what happened […]
President Donald Trump’s head physician admitted to reporters on Sunday morning that he’d kept the knowledge that the president had been administered supplemental oxygen from the public in order to reflect an “upbeat attitude” of Trump’s health as doctors continue to treat his infection with the novel coronavirus. “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president over the course of his illness, has had,” said Dr. Sean Conley during the press briefing, the second Trump’s medical team has given since he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday. “I didn’t want to […]
Despite the president currently being hospitalized for COVID-19, Trump senior campaign adviser Jason Miller continued to mock Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for regularly wearing face masks, claiming the former vice president uses masks as a “prop.” Interviewing Miller on ABC’s This Week, anchor George Stephanopoulos brought President Donald Trump ridiculing Biden for his mask-wearing during Tuesday’s presidential debate, wondering aloud if that has backfired on the president considering his own coronavirus diagnosis. “Hasn’t the cavalier approach to masks and social distancing at these rallies been a mistake?” Stephanopoulos asked. “Will it change going forward?” Miller, meanwhile, insisted that that campaign […]
Even if Donald Trump gets voted out of office in November (and actually leaves), Trump-appointed judges with lifetime seats on the federal bench have already dramatically changed the face of our courts in Donald Trump’s image on a whole range of issues. The effects of the relentless push by Senate Leader Mitch McConnell to pack the courts with Trump’s picks is being directly felt in rulings to restrict voting rights and curtail immigration. Even if Joe Biden wins the presidency, his policies and legislative remedies will face legal challenges that before Trump took over the courts would have been tossed out. […]
President Trump was being treated in the hospital for COVID-19 on Saturday, and at least nine of his party’s top officials had contracted the virus—but it made no difference to many GOP officials and campaign aides who continued to flout social distancing guidelines and host maskless, indoor events. On Saturday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who tested positive for COVID-19 late Friday night, doubled down on his criticism of mask mandates. While they may help mitigate infection risk, he claimed, they are “certainly not a cure-all.” Instead, Johnson pointed to “individual responsibility.” After his test on Friday night, Johnson said he didn’t […]
Saturday Night Live was presumably ready to kick off its 46th season with a big Trump vs. Biden debate sketch cold open. Then came the October surprise. Yes, SNL made its triumphant return to Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center this weekend amidst the still-raging coronavirus pandemic after airing a series of entirely virtual shows this past spring. And even though the debate feels like a “hundred years ago,” SNL stuck with the plan so they could highlight their new mega-guest star in the form of Jim Carrey as former Vice President Joe Biden. “Good evening, I’m your moderator Chris Wallace and […]
President Donald Trump may be in the hospital with COVID-19. But that didn’t mean Saturday Night Live pulled any punches against him in the show’s big Season 46 premiere. After Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden paused the cold open debate sketch to celebrate the “science and karma” that led to this moment, host Chris Rock opened his monologue by addressing the “elephant in the room.” “President Trump’s in the hospital from COVID and you know, I just want to say my heart goes out to COVID,” the comedian joked. Rock went on to acknowledge the strangeness of SNL returning to live shows […]
With President Trump in Walter Reed Army Hospital, the public was inevitably going to worry, wonder, and speculate about his current and longer-term health. But his doctors are making a bad situation much worse with a cascade of confusing statements, half-truths, and rosy assessments at a time when transparency is vital. At best, his team is inviting confusion and fear after getting caught up in a White House trying to reassure the public but doing the opposite. At worst, they are misleading the public about the president’s infection with a virus, one the president has long downplayed himself. At a televised […]
As concerns for his health flew into overdrive on Saturday following mixed messages from the White House, President Trump released a four-minute video from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center promising to “be back soon” and saying he is “starting to feel good.” The video marked Trump’s lengthiest public appearance since his diagnosis, which he announced in the early hours of Friday morning. Looking paler than usual, he said he believes he will soon be “finishing up the campaign the way it was started.” “But this was something that happened, and it’s happened to millions of people all over the world, […]
Have America’s cable news anchors learned nothing? In an attempt to fill air-time leading up to a misleading press conference from the doctors treating Donald Trump at Walter Reed hospital, MSNBC anchor Alex Witt gave the president credit for his new “tone” post-COVID-19 diagnosis. “Interestingly as we listen to the president via Twitter last night, is it my imagination, or was there a somewhat gentler tone to this president?” Witt asked, in comments first flagged by The Daily Show senior digital producer Matt Negrin. “Not caustic when he said ‘Thank you to all, love,’ all-caps. There was something rather heartfelt.” She […]