Olivia Nuzzi writes: “At the best of times, Trumpworld operates with all the strategic direction of a chicken with its head cut off,” a senior Republican official told me. “Right now, they’re operating like a chicken with its head cut off, lit on fire, and thrown off a cliff.” The world has heard little from Donald Trump since he announced, just before 1 a.m. on Friday, that he has been diagnosed with COVID-19. Usually it’s the tweets that cause concern,…
Yahoo News reports: Hours after President Trump announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus, some of his own top aides were still appearing in public without protective masks, including most prominently White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the conservative former North Carolina congressman. Briefing reporters on Friday morning outside the West Wing, Meadows stood at a lectern without covering his mouth and nose, flouting the guidance of the president’s own coronavirus task force. Masks protect other people from…
Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump learned on Thursday morning that his aide Hope Hicks tested positive for coronavirus, yet continued on with a full schedule of events, including a fundraiser at his New Jersey resort that raised $5 million, according to people familiar with the situation. Trump’s movements are being closely scrutinized since he later tested positive for coronavirus, announcing the news shortly before 1 a.m. Friday, Washington time. The White House has not said when Trump first tested positive…
Philip Bump writes: Trump’s broad effort to suggest that the pandemic was all but over meant that a number of states and tens of thousands of Americans treated it as if it was. Over the summer, that approach contributed to a big surge in new cases in the South. Trump’s own infection seems like a microcosm of his “ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away” national strategy. Trump’s diagnosis occurred in parallel with a number of other newly confirmed infections, including that of Sen. Mike Lee…
Politico reports: The Agriculture Department last week began mandating that millions of boxes of surplus food for needy families include a letter from President Donald Trump claiming credit for the program. The USDA’s $4 billion Farmers to Families Food Box Program has distributed more than 100 million boxes to those in need since May, with the aim of redirecting meat, dairy and produce that might normally go to restaurants and other food-service businesses. But organizations handing out the aid complain…
The Daily Beast reports: The truck-revving, banner-waving, loudspeaker-blaring pro-Trump rally took place, conveniently, on Sept. 19, the first Saturday of early voting in the swing state of Virginia, in a parking lot where voters in Democratic-leaning Fairfax County were lined up to cast their ballots. Some Trump supporters drove circles around the voters while others—many without face masks—mingled with the line, chanting and waving flags. “We had a couple poll observers there that had to actually escort voters in because…
CBS News reports: Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said Wednesday that his company’s coronavirus vaccine won’t be ready for widespread public distribution until spring of next year, according to a report. The drugmaker also won’t seek emergency authorization for the vaccine for frontline medical workers and other at-risk individuals until November 25 at the earliest, he told the Financial Times. Speaking at a health conference on Wednesday, Bancel said Moderna would not be ready to seek Food and Drug Administration approval…
Politico reports: Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Thursday that President Donald Trump is “aiding and abetting” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to sow doubt about the American electoral system. The stern warning from McMaster, who Trump handpicked to lead the White House National Security Council in 2017, came in an interview on MSNBC, after he was asked whether he agreed that the president posed the greatest threat to U.S. election integrity. “I agree that he is aiding and…
USA Today reports: Former Justice Department attorneys expressed concerns Thursday that Attorney General William Barr is using the power of the agency to help President Donald Trump win reelection, citing statements Barr had made about mail-in ballots and the politically fraught inquiry into the Russia investigation. “We fear that Attorney General Barr intends to use the DOJ’s vast law enforcement powers to undermine our most fundamental democratic value: free and fair elections,” according to an open letter signed by about…
The Washington Post reports: A national commission on policing launched earlier this year by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr has violated federal law by seating only people in law enforcement and failing to include members with different perspectives such as civil rights activists, defense attorneys or mental health professionals, a federal judge ruled Thursday as he halted the group’s work. The commission also did not file a charter, post public notice of its meetings or open them…
Mike Giglio reports: Stewart Rhodes was living his vision of the future. On television, American cities were burning, while on the internet, rumors warned that antifa bands were coming to terrorize the suburbs. Rhodes was driving around South Texas, getting ready for them. He answered his phone. “Let’s not fuck around,” he said. “We’ve descended into civil war.” It was a Friday evening in June. Rhodes, 55, is a stocky man with a gray buzz cut, a wardrobe of tactical-casual…
The New York Times reports: Members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, celebrated on Tuesday night after President Trump mentioned them during the first presidential debate. Asked whether he condemned white supremacists and military groups, Mr. Trump demurred and then said, “Proud Boys — stand back and stand by.” Within minutes, members of the group were posting in private social media channels, calling the president’s comments “historic.” In one channel dedicated to the Proud Boys…
Gabriel Sherman writes: Inside Trumpworld there’s a view that the past week is an inflection point in the campaign. It started on Sunday night with the bombshell New York Times report that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. “For Trump the Times story was worse than losing reelection,” said the second Republican. “If you had told Donald back in 2015 that his tax returns would be exposed and he’d have all these investigations, I…
David Sanger writes: President Trump’s angry insistence in the last minutes of Tuesday’s debate that there was no way the presidential election could be conducted without fraud amounted to an extraordinary declaration by a sitting American president that he would try to throw any outcome into the courts, Congress or the streets if he was not re-elected. His comments came after four years of debate about the possibility of foreign interference in the 2020 election and how to counter such…
The New York Times reports: The White House has blocked a new order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep cruise ships docked until mid-February, a step that would have displeased the politically powerful tourism industry in the crucial swing state of Florida. The current “no sail” policy, which was originally put in place in April and later extended, is set to expire on Wednesday. Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., had recommended the…
The New York Times reports: In the last week, leading epidemiologists from respected institutions have, through different methods, reached the same conclusion: About 85 to 90 percent of the American population is still susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the current pandemic. The number is important because it means that “herd immunity” — the point at which a disease stops spreading because nearly everyone in a population has contracted it — is still very far off. The evidence came from…