Reading Time: 5 minutes The series of interactions between the President and Rosen and Donoghue began in mid-December with an Oval Office meeting, included several phone calls and continued through January 3.
Trump
Reading Time: 8 minutes I occasionally hear Trump described as the “Teflon president.” Many liberals are agog at how many scandals, disasters, and offensive comments Trump has survived. It can seem like nothing sticks to him.
But Trump isn’t Teflon. It’s simply that whatever will stick to him has already stuck to him. Absorbing this much damage and provoking this much loathing has not been a successful strategy. Stable poll numbers in the low-40s are hardly a political triumph.
Reading Time: < 1 minute American Bridge PAC has released an anti-Trump ad starring Michael Cohen and says that it will air during the RNC 2020 tonight. In it Cohen pulls no punches, as is to be expected.
- Informed
“They are dying. That’s true. It is what it is.” Trump’s Axios interview was a disaster.
by Confluenceby ConfluenceReading Time: 4 minutes Trump’s difficulty with push-back is often concealed when he answers questions beside a loud helicopter or in the friendly confines of Sean Hannity’s show. But the Swan interview, which came out just two weeks after Trump’s similarly disastrous performance on Chris Wallace’s show, highlighted the degree to which Trump is unable to defend his record in the face of even mildly challenging questions.
- Engage
Vanity Fair: “We Need Them to F–king Do Something” Former Pandemic Officials Call Trump’s COVID-19 Response a National Disaster
by Confluenceby ConfluenceReading Time: 6 minutes “I don’t think people realize that the whole country remains as vulnerable as it did on day one,” said a former official who served in the Trump administration.
- News
Politico: Trump to sign executive order on social media amid Twitter furor
by Confluenceby ConfluenceReading Time: 6 minutes Any attempt to go after the tech companies through regulations could face serious obstacles, however. The president’s own regulators have shown little appetite in the past for taking on scrutiny of tweets and Facebook posts, and federal courts have ruled as recently as Wednesday morning that social media companies are private entities with the legal right to police content on their sites.
Reading Time: 3 minutes While Twitter’s move Tuesday is incremental, it signals the company is willing to take more of a stand on misleading content on its platform — even if the person tweeting that misleading information is the president of the United States. The challenge will be when it decides to weigh in on the endless bucket of half-truths, conspiracy theories, and outright lies politicians post every day, and which are likely to increase in cadence as we get closer to the 2020 presidential election.
Reading Time: 6 minutes It is shocking. More than 60 days after President Trump declared a national emergency over the novel coronavirus, there is still no clear national plan for what comes next.
- Informed
Vanity Fair: How Trump Gutted Obama’s Pandemic-Preparedness Systems
by Confluenceby ConfluenceReading Time: 8 minutes It is this federal-support piece that has been missing, sources I spoke with say. Testing for COVID-19 has been abysmal. Lacking guidance and support from the White House, governors have been left scrambling to obtain ventilators and personal protective equipment for frontline workers, creating a sellers’ market.
Reading Time: 11 minutes Since Trump’s rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.