The big news today
The big news you will hear about tonight will be AG Barr’s testimony before Congress. As of this writing it has not begun, but both sides are poised for it. The Democrats think Barr has turned the DOJ into a Trump defense office. The Republicans want to know why more hasn’t happened on all the investigations.
Buckle up for this one. It will get nasty and combative.
On that topic, I watched Maria Bartiromo this AM interview Valerie Jarrett, former senior advisor to President Obama. Valerie is very bright, articulate and excellent at arguing her positions. This AM she was on to “review the 2020 election,” but the conversation went to the findings emerging from the non collusion of the 2016 election. Maria pressed her on who knew what and when. Jarrett wanted no part of it, and surprisingly to me just kept circling back to “why do you want to talk about four years ago.” She used that line on at least three occasions, which left me wondering why she didn’t have a better argument and whether the charges emerging are going to be the bombshells some say they are.
After three years of non stop daily “Russian Collusion” stories, if the whole thing was a made up lie perpetuated by rogue agents and administration personnel, it certainly is a story. It is not “four years ago,” it is current.
the president what?
We, along with others have remarked about how the President seems to be more disciplined the past few weeks, and that was leading to a narrowing of the election gap.
In fact, we saw this interview from the President on tweeting:
President Trump candidly admitted he “often” regrets his tweets. He said: “You know, it used to be in the old days before this, you’d write a letter. And you say this letter is really good. You put it on your desk and then you go back tomorrow and you say, ‘Oh, I’m glad I didn’t send it’, right? But we don’t do that with Twitter. We put it out instantaneously. We feel great. And then you start getting phone calls: ‘Did you really say this?’ I say, ‘What’s wrong with that?’ And you find a lot of things. You know what I find? It’s not the tweets, it’s the retweets that get you in trouble.”
On retweets, he said, “You see something that looks good. And you don’t investigate it and you don’t look at what’s on the helmet exactly, right? Which is in miniature and you don’t blow it up. I have found almost always it’s the retweets that get you in trouble.”
Wow, sounds like a guy that maybe finally got it?
Until last night when he went tweet crazy again. Beating on Dr. Fauci, masks and hydroxychloroquine again. They pulled the tweets later, but the damage was done.
So the answer is no, he didn’t get it.
Here’s the NYT lead headline today. It’s exactly what we predicted yesterday. Not that the Republicans want to reduce the extra unemployment payment (to $200 above the state level, moving later to 70% of prior income). Instead they would present the Republicans as taking away people’s benefits. Here’s the headline:
G.O.P. RELIEF PLAN SLICES EXTRA PAY FOR UNEMPLOYED
PART OF $1 TRILLION BILL
Democrats Balk at a Bid to Lower a Weekly Benefit by $400
other news
The University of Notre Dame withdrew as host of the first planned presidential debate in late September, citing public-health precautions. It is being moved to Ohio.
The President nominated Judy Shelton to the Fed.
As has become the norm, two Republican Senators Mitt Romney and Susan Collins have indicated they will vote against her. With the Democrats unified as usual, the President can only lose one more senator before the nominee cannot be approved.
On Covid19 the Worldometer released these stats for deaths per one million population. I think you’ll find it interesting as they listed states and countries:
New Jersey (U.S.) 1,787
New York (U.S.) 1,680
Belgium 847
District of Columbia (U.S.) 823
United Kingdom 674
Spain 608
Italy 581
Maryland (U.S.) 569
Sweden 564
Florida (U.S.) 273
Texas (U.S.) 178
South Dakota (U.S.) 139
Austria 79
West Virginia (U.S.) 57