WASHINGTON POST DAILY 202
“Most everybody in town knows that Gladys Maull has been battered this year: Her father, her sister, an aunt, a great-aunt, all dead from covid-19. Maull keeps a sign on her front door: ‘Please do not come in my house due to covid-19. Thank you.’ Some people just step on in, maskless,” Marc Fisher, Shayna Jacobs and Pam Kelley report. “They mean no harm, but masks never caught on in rural Lowndes County, which has Alabama’s highest rate of coronavirus infections. In a place that gave 73 percent of its vote to Biden, the sheriff and the coroner agree that although cases are spiking and deaths are rising, most people share Trump’s view that masks are a matter of personal choice and that the end of the pandemic is just around the corner. … It has become clear that although close experiences with covid-19 do change some people’s attitudes, many Americans stick to their original notions, no matter what sorrows they’ve seen, no matter where they live. … About three-fifths of U.S. deaths from the virus have occurred in the 28 states and territories where Biden won. Yet there is no automatic correlation between the politics of a place and how people react to the death toll in their community. In Lowndes County, where more than 70 percent of the residents are Black, there’s no love lost for Trump. Yet no amount of urging from local officials seems to change people’s behavior during the pandemic, said Terrell Means, the elected coroner. … ‘It’s crazy out here. People are not being cautious at all. … They know it’s real and they don’t care.’ …
“Rural Alexander County, N.C., in the foothills of the Appalachians an hour’s drive from Charlotte, is the political opposite of Lowndes County. Seventy-nine percent of voters stuck with Trump this month. Like Lowndes, Alexander has one of the highest rates of new coronavirus cases in its state. Also like Lowndes, Alexander, population 37,000, is a county where deaths from covid-19 have had little impact on many residents’ attitudes toward the pandemic. People still chafe at the idea that masks are a must, still hang out together, still gather much as they always have when it’s time to say goodbye to a loved one. ‘There’s a lot of resentment’ about masks, said Monte Sherrill, 55, whose father died this summer of covid. Most people in shops and restaurants don’t cover their faces, Sherrill and two of his brothers said. Neither do they. All Trump supporters, they said they value their right not to wear a mask. ‘If someone can choose to have an abortion and end a human life, then I should be able to choose to wear a mask or not,’ said Kevin Sherrill, 48.”
More than 3 million people in the U.S. are estimated to be contagious with the virus.
“That number is significantly larger than the official case count, which is based solely on those who have tested positive,” Joel Achenbach reports. “To put the 3 million-plus figure in perspective: It is close to 1 percent of the population.
Long lines and delayed results again plague test centers as Thanksgiving approaches.
“Testing sites from New York to Wisconsin to Oregon are reporting lines stretching three to four hours, with results taking as long as five days,” William Wan reports. “In Denver, officials shut down one testing site within an hour of opening Tuesday because it had reached capacity. At another site, lines grew so long that officials closed over concerns about traffic safety. In New York, residents are standing in line for hours. In Olympia, Wash., officials have had to turn away as many as 200 cars in line in recent days because labs had reached capacity. … The problem is that even as the nation’s testing capacity expanded, so did demand. … In addition to running out of necessary chemicals and swabs — as happened repeatedly early in the pandemic — many labs say they are running short of other equipment, such as pipettes, a laboratory tool used to carry fluid. Testing sites say they are also experiencing shortages of workers to handle the surge.”
And yet, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, maintains that no one in his department can coordinate with the incoming Joe Biden and Kamala Harris administration until the General Services Administration determines that Biden won the election. An administration official told CNN that department leadership had warned staffers not to communicate with Biden team, and to report any contact to the deputy surgeon general. Rick Bright, who was fired from the Trump administration for warnings about the dangers of coronavirus and who is now on the Biden team, told CNN: “We haven’t been able to sit down with the Trump administration at all, to be able to understand what plans are already in place, where the gaps are, where help is needed, and how we can make sure there's a smooth hand-off after January 20, where the bulk of these vaccines will be administered after that date.”
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President Trump’s drumbeat of baseless claims about the integrity of the election and the decision by most Republican lawmakers who know better to play along are taking a damaging and dangerous toll on democracy. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, but a new poll from Monmouth University finds that 77 percent of Trump’s supporters believe President-elect Joe Biden only won because of fraud and 88 percent said they need more information on the count to know for sure who prevailed. Overall, 60 percent of Americans believe Biden won the election fair and square. But Trump’s P.R. campaign to sow doubt is working. A Monmouth poll before the election found that 55 percent of Republicans felt confident in the electoral process. Now, just 22 percent of them said they feel that way. Overall, 61 percent of Republicans are not at all confident in the election’s fairness and accuracy – up from 13 percent in September. “The anger among Trump’s base is tied to a belief that the election was stolen,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute. “It’s not unusual for backers on the losing side to take a while to accept the results. It is quite another thing for the defeated candidate to prolong that process by spreading groundless conspiracy theories. This is dangerous territory for the republic’s stability.” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) has resisted what he describes as pressure from prominent Trump allies to discard legitimate ballots in ways that could allow Trump to carry the state. He has said that his state’s vote was not tainted by fraud and that his refusal to pretend otherwise has led to a flurry of death threats. Even his wife has been getting messages on her private cellphone. "That is what is really offensive," Raffensperger told the Atlanta Fox affiliate. He shared a few of the messages with the local station: “You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it.” “Your husband deserves to face a firing squad.” “The Raffenspergers should be put on trial for treason and face execution.” I have been a social worker for many years and can anticipate this reaction when people feel powerless and angry,” she wrote. “This does not excuse the perpetrators. Their continued intimidation tactics will not prevent me from performing the duties I swore an oath to do. … But there are those, including the president, members of Congress and other elected officials, who are perpetuating misinformation and are encouraging others to distrust the election results in a manner that violates the oath of office they took. It is well past time that they stop. Their words and actions have consequences.”Meanwhile, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) warned in a chilling statement of her own on Wednesday that she, her staff and members of her family have also been receiving escalating threats of violence since Biden carried the state. Hobbs descried the threats as “a symptom of a deeper problem in our state and country – the consistent and systematic undermining of trust in each other and our democratic process.” “The refusal of most Republicans to stand against President Trump’s unconscionable campaign to discredit a free election is one of the lowest points in the history of our republic — and a threat to democracy itself,” writes columnist E.J. Dionne. This will make it even harder for an already broken Washington to govern, and it will make it harder for leaders of goodwill in both parties to bind the nation’s wounds after four years of blistering division. “Trump is in overdrive, tweeting one absurd falsehood after another to delegitimize the election he lost,” writes Fact Checker Sal Rizzo. “One repeated theme is that Republican observers were not allowed inside the room as election workers counted mail ballots in Philadelphia. Fraud thrives under cover of darkness, Trump warns. But, in fact, Trump’s own lawyers have attested in court that his campaign was granted access and observed the process, both in Philadelphia and in other cities, and has found no evidence of fraud.” “Mr. Trump may be setting a new precedent for how one wins elections in the United States: First, hold a vote; next, see whether you can bully enough state and local officials into manipulating the vote-counting and certification process on your behalf,” the Editorial Board warns. “The strategy could prove more viable in a closer election. Whether it works then will depend on whether public officials from the lowliest county clerk to the most senior U.S. senator allow previously pro forma matters of election administration to become partisan weapons.” “Rudy Giuliani is a mess,” writes Robin Givhan. “As a culture, we like to believe that with age comes wisdom. The truth of it may be that age only makes people more obviously what they’ve always been. … Giuliani, at 76, has revealed himself to be a man who believes that he can summon truth from falsehoods, bend the law to his will and conjure whatever reality suits him simply by speaking his hopes and dreams aloud. … He wears a Yankees World Series ring even though he did not earn it. The diamonds sparkle next to a pinkie ring. A pinkie ring. The mere fact of it is an abomination."
 Presidential legal adviser Jenna Ellis called Trump an “idiot” in 2016. “In one March 2016 Facebook post, Ellis said Trump's values were ‘not American,’ linking to a post that called Trump an ‘American fascist," CNN reports. “Ellis attacked Trump supporters in a Facebook post for not caring that the Republican candidate was ‘unethical, corrupt, lying, criminal, dirtbag.’ In another post, she said his supporters didn't care about the truth.” The Trump agenda Journalists have not laid eyes on Trump since he went golfing over the weekend. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany ventured out on Wednesday for two Fox News hits, but she refused to answer questions from reporters. Here she walks back to her office with two of her assistants. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) |
The Trump team is trying to set so many fires it will be hard for Biden to put them all out.
“Trump's order of a further withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq is the latest foreign policy move on a growing list in his final weeks in office that are meant to limit Biden's options before he takes office in January. The White House has directed newly installed acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller to focus his attention in the remaining weeks on cyber and irregular warfare, with a focus on China in particular," an administration official tells CNN. “It is contemplating new terrorist designations in Yemen that could complicate efforts to broker peace. And it has rushed through authorization of a massive arms sale that could alter the balance of power in the Middle East. The Trump team has prepared legally required transition memos describing policy challenges, but there are no discussions about actions they could take or pause. Instead, the White House is barreling ahead. A second official tells CNN their goal is to set so many fires that it will be hard for the Biden administration to put them all out."
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