Tag: Scandals

Reporters are Starting to Probe Trump’s Covidgate and the Questions are Disturbing

Trish

Although the word has been used in other contexts, “Covidgate” is now the suspicion that the White House could be covering up that Pres. Trump himself is the one who spread the disease to so many in his inner circle, at Republican fundraisers, and countless numbers of those people’s contacts. The facts remain to be proven but reporters, who have also been exposed, are investigating.

There is no question that Trump continued to expose others after he had the virus.* The only question is did he mean to? When did he know he had COVID and how many lives did he choose to put at risk?

CNN’s Jake Tapper posted a Twitter thread that asks repeatedly when Trump last tested negative. This is a question the White House, and Trump’s medical team, including his osteopath, Navy Commander Sean Conley, is refusing to answer. It’s an alternate way of asking when Trump tested positive.

We know Trump arrived for the first debate too late to be tested before taking the stage with Biden. Was this on purpose to cover up because they already knew what the test results would be, or was it simply typical of his chaotic movements? And why is the White House refusing to do contact tracing after the superspreader event for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett? Is it because they already know who the results will trace back to?

Trump had famously been tested multiple times a day, as had those allowed to enter his airspace at the White House. Why did this abruptly stop? Check out Tapper’s musings on the subject.

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So This is What Living In a Failed State is Like

Trish
Marc Maron

I know most of you realize, I don’t need to tell you, that obviously we are living in a failed state.

And that our government’s reaction to this was too late, and that it was not enough. and a lot of what the federal government is supposed to do they’re not doing.

Because over the last few years — but certainly over the last 20 — whenever possible, Republicans tried to dismantle the government, everything they see as non-essential. And some of that being what was needed to respond to this properly.

So this is the goal: the failed state. This is the Republican vision. Let private enterprise take care of it. Great. So now we have people who need ventilators and masks and there’s a bidding war going on over who is going to make a profit on those items and which states they’re going to sell to. It’s all working out.

— Marc Maron, speaking on his WTF podcast about the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of Adam Schlesinger from the disease, the consequences and reality of running government like a business, and the catastrophe that is the Trump administration.

Don Trump Jr. Didn’t Have Secret Service Protection at Time of the Meeting

Trish

MeetingThe latest attempt to blame Obama for Trump’s Russia problem is for Team Trump to claim the Secret Service approved the June 9, 2016 meeting with Don Trump, Jr. Present at that event were Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and representatives of the Russian government who offered incriminating information about Hillary Clinton to help Trump win the election.

Aside from the very valid observation that it’s not the job of the Secret Service to green-light who the campaign can meet with, is this pesky detail:

The Secret Secret wasn’t guarding Don Trump, Jr. at the time of the meeting.
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Peeling the Sex Scandal Onion

Buck Banks

If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.

— Orin Kerr, writing in the Washington Post.

Four Orgies Per Year Is Not ‘Out of Control’

Buck Banks

When you read the criminal complaint you get the impression it was this frenetic activity. But it was four times a year, not more than that. It wasn’t this out-of-control activity.

— Former IMF President Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quoted by the Financial Times, on the sex parties he helped organize between 2008 and 2011.