Nevada Unemployment Rate Surges to 28%
“Nevada’s unemployment rate skyrocketed to 28.2% in April, the worst-ever unemployment rate in state history and the highest mark in the country,” the Nevada Independent reports.
Making Real Fake Again
In back-to-back tweets last night, President Trump shared a fake poll number and then dismissed a real poll number as fake.
Trump Lies About Pelosi In Memorial Day Remarks
President Trump’s Memorial Day remarks at the White House, billed as honoring American veterans, quickly turned into a stream of insults about Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump again falsely claimed Pelosi was “dancing in the streets of Chinatown” as coronavirus started to spread across the country.
He added: “These are sick people.”
Schiff Wants Flynn-Kislyak Transcripts Released
After the outgoing acting director of national intelligence declassified misleading “unmasking” requests to portray the Obama administration railroading Michael Flynn, House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) called for “any intelligence report or transcript” of Flynn’s calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, about which Flynn lied to the FBI, including intelligence reports that prompted the unmasking requests, the Daily Beast reports.
This Time Will Change Us
Peggy Noonan: “All 50 states are to varying degree unlocking. How citizens do this will determine the size and severity of second and third waves. It’s almost all in our hands. A report this week from a scientist who helped discover SARS said that a lab experiment confirms what common sense always suggested: Wearing a mask can substantially reduce disease transmission and viral loads. If we all do that one small thing, chances are we’ll get through OK.”
“How could we not? Especially after we’ve just done something so big.”
“What we did—essentially shut down a great, complex, modern nation for two months out of concern that people would become sick—had never been tried before. It’s something new in history. We will look back on it, however it turns out, with a certain wonder.”
Karl Rove Is Now Advising the Trump Campaign
Business Insider confirms what we had noticed earlier: Former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove is advising the Trump campaign and has been in regular contact with campaign manager Brad Parscale since the midterms.
Where Is Wilbur Ross?
Jake Sherman: “Where has Wilbur Ross been? I’ve been watching a lot of cable TV since this whole thing started, and I cannot remember having seen him once. He was at Cabinet meeting Tuesday. But otherwise, I cannot think of a cabinet official that’s been quieter in this crisis than Wilbur Ross.”
Fauci Is Back
After a more than two week hiatus from national TV interviews, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN he thinks the public will be “seeing more” of him and his public health colleagues moving forward and that he’s spoken with “the communications people.”
Trump As Herbert Hoover
Susan Glasser: “Of course Trump is trying to distract. The emerging politics of the pandemic are not good for him, nor are they likely to get better. They have recast the fall election as a referendum on Trump’s basic competence to lead the country through a once-in-a-century convergence of crises.”
“During the pre-pandemic impeachment era, Richard Nixon was the inescapable historical point of comparison for Trump’s corruption-ridden Presidency. Now it is Herbert Hoover. Running for reelection after the stock market crash of 1929 and three failed years of trying to stop the Great Depression, Hoover promised Americans that ‘Prosperity Is Just Around the Corner.’ Upbeat predictions amid bread lines didn’t cut it, and Hoover lost badly. The brutal political reality of running for another term while the country is experiencing mass unemployment is one that almost no President can overcome. In fact, the last time an American incumbent successfully won during a recession was in 1924.”
Then again, Hoover’s campaign slogan seems like a winner today compared with the clunker Trump has been trying out in recent days: ‘Transition to Greatness!'”
Trump Complains About Fox News Again
President Trump is again complaining about Fox News on Twitter:
“Why doesn’t Fox News put up the CNBC poll or the (believe it or not!) CNN Poll? Hope Roger A is looking down and watching what has happened to this once beautiful creation!”
Oliver Darcy: “Trump is saying the quiet part out loud again. He is making it quite clear that he does not view Fox News as a legitimate news organization. If he did, he would not believe that Fox’s job is to be working to help reelect him and other Republicans. But Trump views the network as his mouthpiece. And given most of the network’s coverage, it’s hard to fault him for the misunderstanding…”
Break It Up
Out this summer: Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union by Richard Kreitner.
“Kreitner takes readers on a revolutionary journey through American history, revealing the power and persistence of disunion movements in every era and region. Each New England town after Plymouth was a secession from another; the thirteen colonies viewed their Union as a means to the end of securing independence, not an end in itself; George Washington feared separatism west of the Alleghenies; Aaron Burr schemed to set up a new empire; John Quincy Adams brought a Massachusetts town’s petition for dissolving the United States to the floor of Congress; and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison denounced the Constitution as a pro-slavery pact with the devil.”
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Kreitner, Richard (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 497 Pages - 08/18/2020 (Publication Date) - Little, Brown and Company (Publisher)
Biden Finds Bernie’s Donors Elusive
“Joe Biden has yet to unlock a key part of the party’s fundraising base less than six months before Election Day: Bernie Sanders’s army of online small donors,” a Wall Street Journal analysis found.
“About 60,000 people who gave to the Vermont senator during the Democratic primary had also chipped in to Mr. Biden’s campaign by the end of April… That group amounted to just under 3% of the roughly 2.2 million total Sanders donors the Journal identified in public filings.”
‘Deer in the Headlights’
Joe Biden launched a new digital ad charging that President Trump has reacted to the coronavirus pandemic like a “deer in the headlights” and has been “too scared to act, too panicked to tell the truth, too weak to lead.”
The narrator continues: “Panicked at the thought of what a stock market collapse could mean to his re-election, he failed to act and the virus got out of control and shut down the nation and crushed the economy.”
Economist Who Called 2008 Crash Sees Depression Ahead
Two years before the 2008 financial collapse, economist Nouriel Roubini “warned that the U.S. housing market would soon collapse — and, quite possibly, bring the global financial system down with it,” New York magazine reports.
“A decade later, ‘Dr. Doom’ is a bear once again. While many investors bet on a ‘V-shaped recovery,’ Roubini is staking his reputation on an L-shaped depression. The economist (and host of a biweekly economic news broadcast) does expect things to get better before they get worse: He foresees a slow, lackluster (i.e., ‘U-shaped’) economic rebound in the pandemic’s immediate aftermath. But he insists that this recovery will quickly collapse beneath the weight of the global economy’s accumulated debts.”
Dark Money Networks Pour Money Into Fake News
“At a time when trustworthy journalism is more important than ever, political operations are pouring millions of ‘dark money‘ dollars into ads and digital content masquerading as news coverage to influence the 2020 election,” Open Secrets reports.
Trump Approval on Handling Pandemic Keeps Falling
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds just 39% of Americans approve of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus — the lowest percentage for the president since the poll began tracking it in March.
First Read: “What is clear is that Trump is trailing Biden right now by a larger margin than he trailed Hillary Clinton in 2016; that his approval rating is worse than the last Dem and GOP presidents to win re-election; and that Americans have increasingly soured on his handling of the coronavirus.”
Quote of the Day
“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
— Joe Biden, quoted by Politico, to black radio personality Charlamagne tha God.