On this day in 2020, Donald Trump left the hospital and returned to the White House while still infectious with COVID-19. His own chief of staff would reveal that Trump initially tested positive before debating Joe Biden, but did not disclose the result.
Good morning – Martin here, ready to take you through what you need to know. This Monday’s song about Mondays is by the Bangles. What can I say: I was a kid in the 80s. I too had big hair.
Today, we’re considering yet more appalling behavior and rhetoric from Donald Trump, in light of yet more appalling poll numbers for the president and his Republican Party. In particular, such numbers concern Latino voters and a run of states that were supposed to be safely red but are now very much in play; such is the mess the GOP has made of the country.
We’ll also look at efforts to pass Proposition 40 in California, which would tax billionaires to pay for healthcare, and a fascinating broadside from Rep. Ro Khanna toward Governor Gavin Newsom that seems set to echo into the presidential primary in two years’ time. There’s news about Trump’s illegal Iran war too, of course. In we go.
‘He’s a Pain in the Ass’
When Donald Trump wasn’t raving like a madman this weekend, he veered instead from petulant complaint to naked bribery, whining (inaccurately) at Fox & Friends for not covering his Saturday rally in Ohio and repeating his ludicrous offer to pay every U.S. adult if Republicans win on Nov. 3.
“Our country is doing so well under Republican leadership that only I can make you this promise,” Trump said, this time in a message filmed in, and casually sullying, the Oval Office itself. “If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the Senate, I’m going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000.”
He also spouted some nonsense about funding the bribe – sorry, “dividend” – with tariff revenues. But as observers pointed out when Trump first made his “promise,” at his absurd midterms convention in Dallas last month, giving $5,000 to every adult citizen (although on Friday he promised to pay every citizen, not just adults) simply could not work, even if it was somehow legal – and even if you didn’t take into account all the other times Trump has promised payouts for regular Americans which he has not delivered.
In the Oval Office, Trump threw in a grim warning: “If the Democrats win, you will have an economic depression much like 1929.” Around the country, reporters and editors sighed and reached again for expert opinion.