The Weekly List

This week, as the coronavirus raged out of  control in many states, Trump sought to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci,  with several members of the regime publicly attacking Fauci’s  credibility. Reporting indicated Trump had lost interest in the  pandemic, with an adviser telling the Post,  Trump’s “not really working this anymore. He doesn’t want to be  distracted by it” — as the country hit a daily record 77,000 new cases. As Trump continued his fall in the polls, he  fired his campaign manager, but stuck with his strategy of us vs. them:  this week repeatedly invoking the white “suburbs” and stoking  not-so-well disguised racist tropes of integration. He turned a Rose  Garden speech meant to address deregulation into a bizarre, meandering,  hour-long campaign speech — drawing ire from even Fox News. In new tests of authoritarian boundaries, Trump  sent federal law enforcement to Portland, Oregon — uninvited and  unwelcome — to quell protests. In what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi  described as “unidentified stormtroopers” and “Trump’s secret police,”  law enforcement in unmarked cars were seen grabbing protestors off the  streets and whisking them away. Trump also sought to hide the extent of  the pandemic, by ordering hospitalization data to be sent to Washington  rather than the CDC, and threatening to block funding for testing in the  upcoming coronavirus relief bill. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-192/

This week, the pandemic continued to worsen,  with many states seeing new highs and the death toll starting to rise.  By week’s end, the U.S. registered an unthinkable nearly 70,000 new  daily coronavirus cases. Amid the surge, issues that plagued the April  wave of cases in New York and elsewhere, like shortages of PPE and  testing, reappeared, making it clear the federal government had done  nothing to address or plan for a new surge. Trump continued to deny the  severity of the virus, falsely claiming “99 percent of [cases] are  totally harmless,” and then pushing for schools to reopen. This week Trump lost a landmark case, with the  Supreme Court ruling 7-2 that Trump cannot keep his tax returns and  financial records from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney; however, the ruling  would likely mean the public will not see the documents ahead of the  election. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman retired from the Army, citing  bullying by Trump after he testified in the impeachment inquiry. Days  later, Trump commuted Roger Stone’s sentence days before his former  associate was set to serve 40 months in prison. Republican Sen. Mitt  Romney called the commuting of Stone’s sentence “unprecedented, historic  corruption,” but he was — as would be typical — the lone GOP voice to  criticize Trump, as an exhausted, outraged country had dejectedly grown  accustomed and normalized to such lawlessness from our budding  authoritarian leader. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-191/

This week the coronavirus spread further out of  control, topping 50,000 daily cases for three consecutive days — more  than 10,000 higher than the early peak in April. Trump continued to  largely ignore the pandemic, refuse to wear a mask, and make the most  trusted source of information, Dr. Anthony Fauci, less accessible,  leading to confusion in the patchwork of state responses. This week reporting indicated Trump knew as  early as 2019 that Russia had put bounties on U.S. troops in  Afghanistan, and several U.S. Marines were killed as a result. Trump  pretended he had not been briefed, and after he officially was briefed  Tuesday, continued to call the matter a “hoax” repeatedly, and took no  steps to hold Russia accountable. Trump continued to stoke an us vs. them divide  in America, invoking a straw man “new far-left fascism” in a divisive,  dystopian July Fourth speech at Mount Rushmore, claiming to be the  savior of law enforcement and our “heritage.” Even as Trump continued to  fall in the polls, and the mood of the nation continued to darken,  Trump seemed unable to rise to the occasion, and do anything other than  revert to racism and divisiveness — moving in the opposite direction of  the country’s mood amid what the New York Times coined the broadest social movement in history. By week’s end, even  Republican lawmakers worried Trump would forever associate their party  with racial animus. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-190/

This week started with a humiliating return to  the campaign trail for Trump, as a mere 6,200 supporters showed up for  his rally in Tulsa, after the campaign bragged more than one million had  registered. Trump’s poll numbers continue to sag amid his mishandling  of the pandemic and racial justice protests. Instead of rising to the  challenge, Trump reverted to drumming up racism and division — resulting  in even the conservative Wall Street Journal Editorial  Board warning he was in danger of not only losing to Democrat Joe  Biden, but also taking the Republican Senate down with him. This week the coronavirus pandemic got out of  control in several states that reopened without proper precautions.  Trump ignored the record number of daily cases, repeatedly lying that  the increase was due to an increase in testing. The White House  Coronavirus Task Force returned after a two month hiatus, and Vice  President Mike Pence likewise used it as an opportunity to lie to the  American people that the curve was flattened and states were reopening  safely. The Trump regime refused to take any leadership in testing or  contact tracing, leaving states on their own, as the death toll passed  125,000 Americans in just four months’ time. As the week came to a close, shocking reporting  indicated that Russia had put a bounty on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan,  and that Trump had been informed months ago, yet took no action, raising  renewed questions and concerns about his strange relationship with  President Vladimir Putin. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-189/

This week grave polling results revealed a  downtrodden country feeling the impact of concurrent and intersecting  crises, as national pride fell to its lowest level in two decades, while  just 20% were satisfied with the direction of the country. Trump  received poor marks for his handling of the coronavirus and for dividing  the country amid social unrest. The coronavirus was back with a vengeance this  week, as several states experienced spikes and daily record highs, weeks  after reopening and Memorial Day celebrations. Nonetheless, Trump  denied the new surge, claiming the virus was “dying out” and it would  “fade away.” Vice President Mike Pence also pivoted to get behind Trump  as a denier, falsely claiming that cases “had declined precipitously”  and blamed the media in an op-ed. Despite numerous warnings and pleas  from Oklahoma officials to postpone, Trump planned what the campaign  claimed would be a huge rally there for Saturday night — claiming as  many as one million had registered to attend. There was another Friday night firing this week,  of U.S. attorney general for the SDNY Geoffrey Berman, who initially  resisted late Friday and said he would not leave, leading to a standoff  as the week came to an end. Berman’s SDNY has several investigations  relating to people in Trump’s orbit, and there was much speculation  about the abrupt departure of a Trump appointee. One explanation put  forth was information gleaned from former NSA John Bolton’s book, which  was released to the media, and pointed to Trump wanting to help out his  dictator friends. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-188/

This week Trump seemed to fade into the  background, unsure of how to respond to a triple set of crises that  gripped the nation: continuing social unrest, a second wave of  coronavirus, and the stock market plunging with the economy officially  entering a recession. Trump spent most of the week locked up in the  White House, behind the layers of fencing he had constructed, which  protestors in turn decorated with signs reading “Black Lives Matter,”  “Fuck Trump,” “I Can’t Breathe,” and other such posters. Trump finally  emerged on Thursday, heading to Dallas, but still without addressing the  killing of George Floyd whose funeral was in Houston days earlier, or  coming up with any policies or plans despite one of the most rapid  shifts in opinion in our country’s history: support for Black Lives  Matter and the need for police reform. The military continued to turn on Trump, as the  nation’s top military officer, Gen. Mark Milley, publicly apologized for  his role in Trump’s photo op at St. John’s. He and Defense Secretary  Mark Esper were called out in a letter signed by more than 700 West  Point alumni, as Trump delivered a commencement address there Saturday.  More than 1,250 former Justice Department officials also called for an  investigation of Attorney General William Barr for his role in gassing  peaceful protestors. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-187/

This week, in a scene reminiscent of a crackdown  in an authoritarian regime, U.S. troops stationed in our nation’s  capital at Trump’s behest fired tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful  protestors to disperse them as Trump delivered a “law and order” speech  from the White House Rose Garden. The sounds of protestors screaming and  shots being fired could be heard in the background as Trump spoke tough  talk, and threatened to send the U.S. military to cities to take  control. Trump then awkwardly swaggered to St. John’s Church, with a few  in his inner circle, and held up a Bible. It was a scene evoking a  democracy in collapse —while the country and the world looked on in  horror. While Republicans largely remained silent and  went along, top generals, some of whom formerly worked in the regime,  spoke out about the violation of our Constitution, and Trump and the  military troops he used, violating their oath. Democracies turned on  Trump, while he embraced strongmen from Russia and Brazil, and by week’s  end said he would pull troops out of Germany. Trump spent most of the week cowering in the  White House — having extended its perimeter with, ironically, walls of  his own — and continued his tough talk, using term like “dominate” and  referring to protestors as “terrorists.” As with his inability to show  any empathy for 100,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus, Trump made  no effort to acknowledge the social unrest with healing words or  actions. But the American people were not deterred.  Protests continued, and by Wednesday, the 9th day, had turned mostly  peaceful. Americans, who had been cooped up at home for months from the  coronavirus took to the street in the broadest protest in U.S. history,  spreading to more than 650 cities and towns, across all 50 states — and  even in cities worldwide. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-186/

This was one of the darkest weeks since I  started the list. The week began with Trump spinning conspiracy theories  to distract from the country reaching the grim milestone of losing  100,000 Americans to the coronavirus, and ended with our country  literally burning in the flames of our racial divide, with Trump  throwing kerosene on the flames. Susan Glasser, a writer for the New Yorker,  noted the year 2020 has been some horrible combination of the 1918 (the  deadly Spanish flu pandemic), 1929 (the Great Depression), and 1968  (the Civil Rights Movement). The heaviness, sorrow, and sheer exhaustion  our country felt this week was the summation of Americans suffering,  dying, and starving from the pandemic, and yet another death of a Black  American at the hands of police. Trump was ill-equipped to handle any of  it — let alone all at once. He golfed, tweeted, threatened Twitter for  fact-checking tweets, and played upon every worse impulse in some hope  of salvaging his approval and re-election prospects. As we head into the November election, and Trump  plays at every ploy he can to make voting less accessible, and raise  concerns about the validity of an election with mail-in ballots, it is  starkly clear that our country may hobble through to the election, but  we could not withstand another four years of Trump — that would spell  the end of the great American experiment. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-185/

This week, Trump fully transitioned from leader  to salesman, leaving the states to fend for themselves, while he  promoted a “transition to greatness.” After a week when two White House  employees tested positive for the coronavirus, Trump made the remarkable  claim he has been taking hydroxychloroquine prophylactically — leading  public health experts to sound the alarms to American citizens not to  follow Trump’s lead. Days later, the largest study yet on the drug’s  efficacy to date found no benefit, but severe cardiac risks for Covid-19  patients. This week, Trump continued campaign stops at  battleground states, visiting a Ford Motor plant in Michigan that had  been reconfigured to manufacture ventilators. Despite requests from the  company and demands by the state’s attorney general to abide by  restrictions requiring a face mask, Trump refused, later saying, “I  didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.” Trump also battled with Michigan’s secretary of  state (notably Michigan’s governors, SoS, and AG are all women), and  with Nevada, over those states offering voters the option to vote by  mail given the pandemic. Without offering any evidence or proof, Trump  made accusations of voter fraud and threatened both states with  withholding federal funding — something he cannot do. Days later he  commanded houses of worship to reopen immediately as “essential,” and  similarly threatened governors not to get in the way — another power he  does not have. As the week came to an end, and the death toll  neared 100,000 Americans in less than three months, Trump started  Memorial Day weekend by golfing at one of his clubs. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-184/

This week Trump tried out a new, more positive  approach as the death toll passed 80,000 and more than 36 million  Americans were unemployed, claiming, “We have met the moment and we have  prevailed.” Trump bragged the U.S. leads the world in testing, then  later seemed to indicate testing was not important, and if we didn’t  test so much, we wouldn’t have so many cases — leading an NYT health and science reporter to say of Trump, “This is not somebody whose grasp of the science is even third-grade-level.” Contrary to Trump’s upbeat assessment, this week  Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield gave somber  testimony before the Senate, warning of dire consequences of reopening  too soon. Whistleblower Dr. David Bright warned the House in testimony,  “Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern  history.” This week Trump turned to an old strategy of  blaming former President Barack Obama and accusing him of  “Obamagate” — although it was unclear what this was, and Trump never  clarified. Nonetheless, Fox News and the conservative media compliantly  spent the week on this shiny coin, turning coverage away from the  growing death toll, and grim economic news. Health experts pressured the  FDA to issue a warning after a growing body of data showed  hydroxychloroquine, the drug touted by Trump and his cohorts, could be  deadly. The week closed with an emboldened Trump firing  another inspector general, the fourth in recent weeks, as he continued  to retaliate and surround himself by incompetent loyalists — sadly, with  little pushback and no consequences. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-183/

This week, despite a White House model showing  ending social distancing would result in a spike of 200,000 new cases a  day and deaths of 3,000 a day, the majority of the country started to  reopen. Public health officials warned of dire consequences, with one  likening the premature reopening to genocide, but Trump triumphantly  declared Phase 1 was over, and now the American people would need to be  “warriors” and return to work — a possible death sentence for many of  the vulnerable. Trump was back out on the campaign trail,  visiting a factory in swing state Arizona, where his campaign music  played in the background, and Trump continued his strange bravado of not  wearing a face mask. Within days, it was discovered that two White  House employees in direct contact with Trump and Vice President Mike  Pence had tested positive, as had 11 members of the Secret Service, yet  Trump continued to flout advice from experts on wearing a mask and  social distancing. This week, the country lost 3.2 million  additional jobs, and the April unemployment rate came in at 14.7%, the  highest since the Great Depression. It became clear this week, as Trump  said the White House coronavirus task force would be shuttered, and then  under pressure, instead reconfigured its purpose to planning the  reopening, that indeed, Trump and the federal government did not  actually have a plan of what to do, or have interest in developing one.  Instead, Trump was willing the roll the dice with American lives in  hopes of reopening in time to spur the economy ahead of the November  election. As one op-ed writer noted, while numerous countries with mass  testing and contract tracing were returning to normal, Trump had  essentially quit. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-182/

This week, with his approval dropping and  Republicans alarmed about losing the Senate in 2020, Trump shifted away  from holding daily task force briefings. Instead, he and his regime  sought to portray a great economic recovery coming soon, with the worst  of the pandemic behind us. Trump told reporters, “I see the light at the  end of the tunnel very strongly,” and Jared Kushner told “Fox &  Friends” that the regime’s handling of the crisis was “a great success  story.” While Trump tried to shift the narrative, the  death toll passed another milestone — deaths during the Vietnam  War — and ended the week with more than 65,000 Americans dead. Trump  sought to move the goal posts again for what he could call a “good job,”  from 60,000 on April 10, to 70,000 early this week, then by the end of  the week to hopefully less than 100,000. As Trump continued to agitate  for states to reopen and to back protestors, a patchwork of reopenings  played out, as Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that opening too soon would “get  us right back in the same boat that we were a few weeks ago.” This week Trump and his regime focused on  shifting blame to China as part of Trump’s re-election strategy. Trump  contradicted U.S. intelligence claiming, without evidence, that Covid-19  originated in a lab in Wuhan. Others in his regime and Republican  lawmakers turned up the rhetoric and threats of retaliation. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-181/

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.