The Weekly List

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Week 188 - Tulsa Jun 22, 2020

Show notes

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/

Week 187 - Questionable Jun 15, 2020

Show notes

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/

Week 186 - Coward-in-chief Jun 08, 2020

Show notes

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/

Week 185 - Kerosene on the Flames Jun 01, 2020

Show notes

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/

Week 184 - Transition to Greatness May 25, 2020

Show notes

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/

Week 183 - Obamagate May 18, 2020

Show notes

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/

Weeek 182 - Outbreak in the West Wing May 11, 2020

Show notes

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/

Week 181 - Vietnam War May 04, 2020

Show notes

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/

Week 180 - Global Epicenter Apr 27, 2020

Show notes

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/

Week 179 - Absolute Authority Apr 20, 2020

Show notes

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/

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