The Weekly List

This week opened and closed with Russia: opening  with a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report reaffirming U.S.  intelligence’s January 2017 conclusion that Russia interfered to help  install Trump, and closing with Trump surreptitiously signing an unusual  joint statement with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the  pandemic.

This week the country passed the tragic  milestone of 50,000 deaths from the coronavirus — more than 1 in 4  deaths worldwide. The country is losing 10,000 Americans every four days  now, and as New York sees its cases and deaths ebb, several other  states surged. Trump flipped from encouraging states to reopen, to  pulling back, to encouraging again. Polling showed the vast majority of  Americans want to stay home, despite the optics of protest rallies, some  fomented by far-right groups or groups with ties to Trump himself. He  and his regime have yet to come up with a plan or strategy to control  the pandemic, as the U.S. continues to be the global epicenter. Data  this week revealed the virus was already in major U.S. cities in  February, quietly spreading undetected to thousands of Americans.

After a major study cautioned against the use of  hydroxychloroquine, Trump later in the week made a remarkable  suggestion to try ultraviolet light or disinfectant. Following the  uproar thereafter, Trump finally backed off from his daily task force  briefings, which had morphed into campaign rallies, some two hours long.  Republicans, Trump aides, and campaign staffers fretted the briefings  and his lack of response to the outbreak have hurt him in 2020 polling  in battleground states, and threaten to drag down not only Trump in  2020, but also Republicans could lose the Senate.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-180/

This week Trump threw a series of shiny coins to  distract from the growing death toll and his mishandling of the  coronavirus response. On Monday, he proclaimed he, not the governors,  had “absolute authority” to reopen the country; on Tuesday he halted  funding to the World Health Organization in the midst of a global  pandemic; on Wednesday he threatened to adjourn Congress to make recess  appointments; on Thursday he announced his plan to reopen the economy to  much ballyhoo and which wasn’t actually a plan; and on Friday he  encouraged protestors with tweets to “liberate” states from lockdown  orders. Each item was remarkable on its own, and the media spent their  days dissecting the legality of the pronouncements and whether they were  presidential, as the death toll surpassed live lost in three years of  the Korean War and kept going.

As the week came to an end, the United States  accounted for nearly 1 in 3 worldwide coronavirus cases, and nearly 1 in  4 deaths. The U.S. is just 4.2% of the world’s population. It became  increasingly clear that months of inaction, lies, and disinformation had  turned a country which up through the Obama administration had been a  leader in preventing global pandemics, into the epicenter of infection,  death, and dysfunctionality.

As the U.S.counted 2,000 or more deaths per day,  with no slow down in sight, Trump, Fox News, and conservative  commentators minimized the import with various whataboutisms, and  not-so-subtly pushed for the country to reopen. Not that the country was  ready — it was definitely not according to public health experts.  Rather Trump was singularly focused on getting re-elected, which  required an economic upturn, as 22 million Americans filed for  unemployment — even if that meant inciting insurrection.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-179/

This week, nearly 12,000 Americans died of the  coronavirus. The U.S. became not only the country with the most cases by  a factor of three, but also the country with the most deaths in the  world. As American bodies piled up, Trump was obstinate and refused to  change his approach, instead continuing to tweet grievances and holding  daily campaign rallies masquerading as task force briefings, some  lasting hours long.

It became clear this week that neither Trump nor  our federal government would have a plan or much of a role to play in  stopping the growing outbreak — unthinkable in the history of our  country. Instead, states were left to fend for themselves, and Americans  learned to count on one another to stay home and volunteer to help.  Trump’s short-lived bump in the polls disappeared, and approval of his  and the federal government’s handling of the outbreak fell considerably.

This week Trump pushed the unproven drug  hydroxychloroquine as his game changer, amplified by Fox News — taking a  page from the Roger Ailes playbook of casting Trump as a hero bringing  hope, and the “other media” and Democrats as villains who downplayed the  drug to get back at Trump. Fox News and Trump allies also pushed other  conspiracy theories, including that the death count was overstated.

As the week came to an end, Trump seemed on  unfamiliar ground, unable to deploy his typical strategy of casting  blame and making it stick and redirecting as Americans were dying, and  dying alone — and the virus developed new hot spots in major cities and  rural America.

This week coronavirus cases and deaths in the  U.S. spiked, adding close to 200,000 reported cases, and by midweek,  more than a thousand Americans were dying each day. Trump pivoted from  denying the crisis and wanting to reopen the country, to suddenly  acknowledging the gravity and claiming if 100,000 to 200,000 Americans  die, he will have done a “very good job” — a remarkable claim! Only two  times in American history, the Civil War and World War II, did more  Americans die.

Trump continued to blame governors, the media,  and this week accused hospital workers in New York City — as that city  became the global epicenter of the pandemic — of stealing masks and  selling them off for a profit. Trump made this accusation three times.  As New York prepared for the apex of cases, Trump denied Gov. Andrew  Cuomo’s request for more ventilators, and when asked by reporters Friday  if New York had enough for the expected weekend surge, responded,  “we’ll see.”

This week Jared Kushner was introduced at a task  force briefing as leading much of the federal government response,  despite his background as a real estate developer with no public health  and scarce government experience. Kushner parroted Trump, saying the  states are on their own and the national stockpile is not for them, and  then when questioned by reporters on his misstatement on the stockpile,  changed the associated language on the government’s website overnight.  Reporting continued to reveal how poorly Trump has handled the pandemic  response, including spending the first 70 days denying the problem  existed and taking almost no action.

This was perhaps the most frightening time since  Trump took office, as he appeared unmoved by the growing number of  American deaths, and unwilling and unable to take any sort of action to  improve matters, as the pandemic continued to ravage the U.S. By week’s  end, the U.S. accounted for 1 in 4 worldwide cases, and 1 in 8 deaths.

Throughout the week, Trump tried throwing shiny  coins to change the narrative: from launching a military  counternarcotics operation, to bragging about a phone call with Saudi  Crown Prince MBS on oil prices, to a blistering letter sent to Senate  Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to firing Intelligence Committee  Inspector General Michael Atkinson late Friday night. But none of these  acts distracted from the slew of American people dying.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-177/

This week Trump finally was no longer able to  sustain a narrative minimizing the severity of the coronavirus outbreak.  The week started with 387 cases in 28 states, and ended with more than  2,500 cases in 49 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico, with 51 Americans dead.  Trump continued to blame everyone but himself: the Obama administration  for lack of testing, the Federal Reserve for stock market volatility,  the media for creating panic and holding him to account. On Friday, he  called a national emergency as the country was gripped with fear and  uncertainty.

The stock market, to which Trump has hitched his  re-election, had another tumultuous week, gyrating up and down with  historic movements, and entering bear territory. A furious Trump  addressed the country some days, and hid on others as one by one, normal  parts of American life, from professional sports to Broadway shows,  were cancelled. Million of K-12 and college students will also start  Monday with weeks long school closures and remote learning, with an  unknown return date.

This week, numerous Republican lawmakers who  attended the Conservative Political Action Conference and Mar-a-Lago  self-quarantined due to exposure to those who tested positive.  Nonetheless, all week both Trump and Pence continued to shake hands and,  until week’s end, refused to be tested. The first containment zone was  established in New Rochelle, New York after a single case last week  mushroomed to over 173 in Westchester County by the end of the week. A lack of testing meant the country really had  no idea how widespread the outbreak had become, as reporting indicated  Trump knew about the threat from the virus months ago, but sought to  hide it by minimizing testing and avoid taking action to warn the  public.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-174/

This week the coronavirus spread in the U.S.  from 15 to 387 cases in 28 states, with at least 19 people dead. The  number of cases is likely well under-reported due to the lack of  available testing kits — one of many signs that the Trump regime is  ill-equipped to tackle what is likely to become a global pandemic. The  lack of verified information, combined with the constant disinformation  put forward by Trump and his regime, led to a general sense of panic, as  travel, conferences, and other events were canceled.

The economy showed signs of cracks, with a  highly volatile stock market, and interest rates hitting historic lows  as investors sought safety. Trump tried one day to urge people to go to  work even if sick, then reversed himself, and all along used his own  “hunch” about death rates and spread of Covid-19, parting from  scientists and the World Health Organization. Amid the public crisis,  Friday evening, Trump fired Mick Mulvaney and installed loyalist Rep.  Mark Meadows as his fourth White House chief of staff in just 38 months.

As Joe Biden emerged on top of the 2020  Democratic pack, Trump and his allies in Congress sought to launch  investigations into Hunter Biden and Burisma. A federal judge appointed  by George H.W. Bush sharply criticized Attorney General William Barr’s  handling of the Mueller report, saying that he put forward a “distorted”  and “misleading” account of its findings to protect Trump, and his  “lack of candor” had harmed not only his reputation, but also that of  the Justice Department. The judge demanded to see a full version of the  report to determine if redactions were appropriate.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-173/

This week the coronavirus consumed the country  and the world, as it spread from continent to continent. Trump’s  strategy in recent weeks of ignoring and minimizing the virus’ import  became untenable as his precious stock market plummeted, and country by  country news spread of deaths and disruptions. The global stock markets  have lost $6 trillion in value from the outbreak, while the Dow Jones  Industrial Average and Standard & Poor’s 500 lost 12% and 11% this  week alone, the worst fall since the recession of 2008.

Trump held an impromptu news conference  Wednesday, where he openly contradicted the experts by his side. He  spent the week blaming the market’s plunge on the media, the Democrats,  and even the Federal Reserve. Trump’s firing of the U.S. pandemic  response team, and cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and  Prevention’s budget and focus, left the country flat-footed and  ill-prepared.

As the week came to a close, the first American  died from the coronavirus, and shortly after the news was publicly  reported, Trump held his second news conference on Saturday afternoon,  appearing somber and disoriented. Negative global economic news  continued to come up, suggesting the stock market’s turmoil was far from  over — and Trump, who has centered his re-election around the stock  market price, started to see polling suggesting trouble.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-172/

This week the country strayed further from  democracy, as Trump purged the Office of the Director of National  Intelligence. The firings started when Trump learned a senior official  at ODNI had briefed House lawmakers on Russia’s efforts to interfere in  the 2020 election, with the intent to help Trump. Trump fired his acting  director, installing a loyalist with no intelligence experience, who  then started the process of cleaning house of those not loyal to Trump.  Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw the raid that killed Osama Bin  Laden, noted in an op-ed, “We should be deeply afraid for the future of  the nation. When presidential ego and self-preservation are more  important than national security, there is nothing left to stop the  triumph of evil.”

At the end of the week, as Democrats were about  to vote in their third primary contest, reporting also indicated that  U.S. intelligence found Russia was interfering in the Democratic  primary, with the intention of helping Sen. Bernie Sanders and sowing  discord within the party. Predictably, chaos ensued as Sanders  questioned the Washington Post for  reporting the story the day before the primary, and tweeted his own  version of deep-state rhetoric, saying the “Democratic  establishment…can’t stop us!” Trump fueled the flames on Twitter and  sought to raise concern with the validity of the Nevada caucus results  at a campaign rally.

Trump also issued a series of pardons to  wealthy, well-connected white men — several of whom will able to help  fund his re-election race. He also publicly threatened to intervene in  the Roger Stone case, despite an apparent threat to resign by Attorney  General William Barr over Trump’s continued public remarks about Justice  Department matters. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a  stark warning in a withering dissent opinion, accusing the court of bias  towards Trump.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-171/