For Barr there were no chemical irritants because, Barr said about pepper, "It's not chemical." I think if you ask any chemist they'll tell you everything's a chemical.
For Barr the crowd was violent, despite that correspondents observed no violence and video shows no violence.
For Barr the clearing of the crowd had nothing to do with Trump's walk to the church, despite that the crowd had to be cleared to make Trump's walk to the church possible.
Trump's lying is more honest because he mostly tells obvious lies. Barr's lying is a lot more subtle and cutesy.
Trump is floating conspiracy theories he's made up himself again, this time about the 75-year old man Buffalo police pushed to the ground then left lying and bleeding:
Martin Gugino remains in the hospital in serious condition. Here's a video of the push:
The concern of the police for the man they just injured is touching. 57 Buffalo police officers resigned in protest when two officers were suspended, perhaps unwittingly giving a head start to any reallocation of resources for city services (referred to in shorthand as "defund the police").
quote:We’ve made every decision correctly, Trump claimed in remarks in the Rose Garden Friday morning. We may have some embers or some ashes or we may have some flames coming, but we’ll put them out. We’ll stomp them out.
Anyone remember similar promises, er, lies back in February and March? After more than 110,000 Covid-19 deaths and still rising at around 1000 per day does anyone think Trump knew what he was talking about back then? Is there any reason to think he knows what he's talking about now?
There are some out there insisting that Trump is dealing with a more hostile media than any prior president. The truth is that Trump calls negative attention to himself by his constant lying and inability to inform himself on subjects like, well, anything. We know Biden is a gaffe machine, but Trump is a complete lie manufacturing industry.
That Trump is an idiot is self evident, but he provided yet another example yesterday:
quote:If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any, the president told reporters later in the day during a meeting with some members of his Cabinet.
And if we stopped medical testing altogether we'd have very few cases of any disease. Trump has just solved our health care crisis. What a genius!
They want the court to make Bolton tell the publisher not to proceed even though the books have already been printed and ought to be in distribution by now (and maybe even in storage at bookstores - it’s not unknown for books to go on the shelves early).
Stephen Colbert held up a copy of Bolton's book on his Monday night show. You can preorder it now at Amazon: The Room Where It Happened
I'm replying to your post but have given my own message a different title.
There's no need to add anything to the facts you already provided, but I wanted to put a finer point on Barr's lies. As I've said before, Trump is by far the liar extraordinaire of his administration, but his lies are often obvious and blatant. Attorney General William Barr's lies are usually subtle, as witness his predistorting the content of the Mueller report before its release.
But this lie about Geoffrey Berman stepping down is not subtle. Barr made a huge miscalculation by not confirming with Berman that he would simply walk away and let Barr's lie stand?
quote:Finally, I thank Geoffrey Berman, who is stepping down...
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman:
quote:I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was 'stepping down' as United States Attorney. I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate.
quote:Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign, but he refused, so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said. Mr. Trump has been upset with Mr. Berman ever since the Manhattan prosecutor’s office pursued a case against Mr. Cohen.
Apparently TikTok fans conducted a concerted campaign to reserve Trump rally tickets: TikTok Teens Tank Trump Rally in Tulsa, They Say - The New York Times. They believe they may have submitted hundreds of thousands of requests. Those actually obtaining tickets did not attend, contributing to the lower attendance. Here's an image of the upper deck. Note the lone guy near the upper middle who is both social distancing and wearing a mask. There's another guy in the left-middle with a mask, and four more in the first rows. That's six masks for thirty-eight people or 16%. For a Trump rally that seems pretty high:
Air Force One flew over the arena before landing, noted there was no outdoor crowd, and cancelled Trump's and Pence's plans to address the outdoor crowd even before landing. During the rally Trump lied (let's just be accurate here) that the attendance was due to "Some very bad people outside. They were doing bad things." Reporters noted there were few protesters outside the arena. Several attempts to block entrances were quickly broken up by police.
Six advance staffers for the rally tested positive before Trump arrived and are quarantined. Reportedly, Trump tried to keep secret and erupted at his staff when it reached the media. He truly wants to rule like a king, only letting out information with his approval that he often makes up himself. He is the first president with a true propaganda arm and his own legislative body, and hopefully the last.
Nothing I've seen of what he said at the rally was true (see Trump’s Tulsa Rally Fizzles as Seats Go Empty - The New York Times). He appears to be doubling down on everything he thinks will rile up his base, but in doing so he may be alienating its more sane regions. We can hope.
A comment on masks, specifically surgical masks, which are becoming very popular. There's a reason they're called surgical masks: they're for surgeons and operating room staff so that they do not breath droplets into the air that could infect a patient while he is open. They're not for protecting the OR staff from the patient. When an OR operates on covid-19 patients all the staff are wearing N95 masks and face shields.
Surgical masks are only about 30-50% as efficient as N95 masks and more difficult to breath through. Get an N95 mask if you can.
It is not in me to wish Trump any better than the experience of a good friend who caught covid because Trump was minimizing the risks and dangers and is still living with the aftermath.
In January of 2017 after Trump had been in office only a week and a half I posted, "As he reacts with such outrage to every perceived slight like pictures of crowd sizes, one wonders how he will react in a true emergency. Legitimate cause for worry."
We knew then that Trump would not be able to handle a disaster like the pandemic, and we marked a milestone yesterday by passing 4000 coronavirus deaths in a single day. But we didn't know then his sheer mendacity as demonstrated by his Ukraine phone call attempting to coerce their prime minister into helping him out with the 2020 electio. We also didn't know then the sheer number of Trump supporters and enablers in positions of power ranging from industry to government itself who would make possible, and who unbelievably continue to make possible, heartrending anti-democratic acts like the insurrection at the capitol building on Wednesday.
It seems very unlikely that Trump can be removed from office in the very few number of days left to him, and so we are left to hope that he causes no more damage in the next 12 days. But he has been shameless, unrepentant and unpredictable throughout his term, and he remains even more so as a wounded beast with the maturity of a child and the capacity for mayhem of the most powerful person in the world.
How do we prevent such men from capturing the public's hopes and dreams and then destroying the nation once in power. I don't think we can. This is perhaps why no nation lasts forever. Turkey seemed to be moving toward democracy but is now moving toward a dictatorship more like Russia. Russia under Boris Yeltsin seemed to be securing Russia's place in the world as a democracy, but Putin turned it into a dictatorship. A demagogue less obvious and transparent than Trump might one day succeed in overturning democracy in America. It seems possible.
Can we prevent appealing and tantalizing lies from taking over the minds of otherwise sane and patriotic Americans while maintaining our constitutional traditions of freedom of speech? Twitter and Facebook and other social media are culpable in spreading the lies, as are news outlets like Fox News and OneAmerica. I tuned in briefly Wednesday night for a few minutes each to Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and despite the events of the day they hadn't changed their tune one bit. When asked by an interviewee about her reaction to Trump's inciting of the crowd that later invaded the capitol building a Fox News anchor denied that he did so. I don't know how we stop such insanity, and how can we keep our country while a significant proportion of Americans believe dangerous and untrue fantasies and conspiracy theories. I don't know.
™ Version 4.2
(1)
