This blog is dedicated to the struggles of people everywhere to advance human progress and save this planet from the decline of capitalism. 12 February 2013 Now that I have been banned from the Daily Kos for criticizing Obama's stand on the Syrian Revolution, I will start by moving my seven years of Daily Kos diaries to this blog and then take it from there.
While being asked “Are you a super spreader, sir?" US President Donald Trump left Walter Reed Hospital via Marine One helicopter Monday to return to the White House, and the campaign trail. Apparently, Trump was bored with the hospital already. Insiders were saying he is “done with it.” Normally, remdesivir is given only in a hospital setting, but his doctors are planning to give him the fifth, and final dose, at the White House today. His doctors are justifying his early release by pointing out that the White House has fully staffed, state-of-the-art medical facilities, with the equivalent of an ICU room. With all that at home, and his illness being so mild, it's likely he never really needed to go to the hospital at all, but coming, or going, you can bet it was Trump, and not his doctor, that was calling the shots. I mean shots, as in film. This has all been political theater, a Trump Production,
I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
Which he sent out before he left the hospital were designed to downplay the potency of COVID-19, while re-framing his campaign in relationship to it, much as I had predicted on Saturday, when I wrote:
For eight months now, Trump has been trying to “beat” Covid as a political problem with “magic,” snake oil, and other tricks of the con man. None of that is working; a vaccine can't come soon enough, and now, between the Rose Garden fiasco, and the general uptick in cases we are seeing all over the country, he is about to lose that battle for good. So, instead, he checks himself into the hospital, and neutralizes all that. Later he can emerge victorious, saying: “It was just like the flu, just like I said.”
Trump is nothing if not predictable. He sent out the tweet below this morning. A similar message saying the flu was worst than COVID-19 was taken down by Facebook, and in record time. [Tweet]:
On Monday morning he also said, “As your leader, I had to do that. I knew there was danger, but I had to do that.” Again with the cryptic messaging! Had to do what? Had to get the virus? Wouldn't it be safer just to act like you got the virus?
Later came sooner than I expected on Saturday. Still, many questions remain about his disease, and its treatment.
The most troubling thing remains its timeline, which his doctors, and the White House staff, have gone to great lengths to obscure. We have been told that the president is tested often, even daily, for the virus. So, it's hard to imagine that the disease had progressed so quickly, and so drastically, that in less than 24 hrs. after first being discovered in testing, he already required admission to the hospital, even out of an abundance of caution. Especially now, when he is being released but still, “not out of the woods yet.”
At the first briefing on Saturday Dr. Conley said Trump is “doing very well,” and they were “just 72 hours into the diagnosis now,” which he later corrected to say he meant 3 days, he also said on Saturday “in particular days seven to ten, are the most critical in determining the likely course of this illness.” Well, that would be this Wednesday through Saturday. So, given he probably didn't need the hospital when he went there, why bring him home now?
If Trump has COVID-19, which I doubt, he is lucky enough to have a very mild case, the kind that tens of thousands of Americans catch everyday, and work through in their basements without any fanfare. I think it far more likely that he isn't really sick, but the old con man saw the advantages, even the necessity, of appearing to take a loss along with everyone else, while close to a thousand Americans are dying of COVID-19 everyday, and positive test results are popping up like mushrooms, even in his inner circle. So, to deal with this messy situation at work, he simply called in sick.
On Saturday, his doctors said he had “a mild cough and some nasal congestion and fatigue.” That had been on Thursday, but that was all behind them on Saturday. Later, they said “he did have a fever Thursday into Friday,” but that was gone too, although on Sunday it was reclassified as a “high fever.” On Sunday, they also said he had "two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation,” and he was given 2 liters of supplemental oxygen one time. They “debated the reasons for this," because transient drops in oxygen saturation, can be caused by many things besides COVID. For example, it is commonly associated with COPD and sleep apnea. According to this article“Normal oxygen saturation levels range between 95% and 100%.” Home oximetry, used to measure this at home are designed to trigger for a drop of more than 4% below a person's normal daytime level for at least five minutes. Dr. Conley said that late Friday morning Trump had a high fever, “and his oxygen saturation was transiently dipping below 94%," so it might have made the machine go beep.
The whole problem with trying to read these tea leaves left by his doctors is that Trump has no credibility, and he is giving the orders, not them. Therefore, his doctors have no credibility. I would really like to see enough information to determine whether his COVID was “slim” or “none,” because I wouldn't put it past him to make the whole thing up. That might have looked like a smart move, given the circumstances. Or he may have genuinely caught a mild case, just like 7 million other Americans, and played it into the same con. I don't know; when I looked at him squeezing at the top of the stairs last night...One thing is certain, if he doesn't already have COVID, and he goes back into his White House maskless, he soon will have it.
There is also this: I must tell you that there is one dataset that I looked at that strongly indicated that he really was feeling bad for a few days, his Twitter output. In September, Trump averaged 44 tweets a day, even while traveling, campaigning, and running the country😒. On Thursday, 1 Oct., it was 32 tweets, on Friday, the day he checked into Walter Reed, he tweeted only twice, on Saturday only three times. Sunday was 9 tweets, Monday it was up to 21 tweets, on Tuesday, he'd already done that many by noon. That's what I call a "V" shaped recovery. Now, in defense of my theory that Trump's COVID really is a hoax, I could argue that not tweeting much for a few days was necessary to make his story stick, and he knew it. But, I don't think he would have the discipline, do you? He had to be one sick puppy to get his tweets below one an hour.
Meanwhile Kayleigh McEnany, White House Press Secretary became the 18th or 19th person that was at the Rose Garden super spreader event, or close to Trump, that has tested positive for COVID-19, as Trump's White House emerges as the newest novel coronavirus hotspot.
President Donald Trump's lead physician, Dr. Sean Conley, is no doubt a first rate doctor. His current problem is that he isn't a very good liar. He led another Trump doctor's press conference today, and much of what he said contradicted what he had said just the day before, or it contradicted what White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had been saying.
If these doctors' press conferences aren't expensive photo ops, they seem to be a terrible waste of some very expensive talent. Yesterday's press conference involved Dr. Conley and nine other white lab coats. This morning he was joined by seven medical workers in white lab coats. Most of these people are clearly just there for show; they say nothing. The few that do speak always prefix their remarks with praise for their team, and their commander-in-chief. It's important to remember that they are all Naval officers in the chain of command, and Trump is their boss.
It should be expected that they will lie about the true condition of the commander-in-chief if ordered to. One could easily imagine a situation where telling such lies could be a matter of national security, but there could be less scrupulous reasons as well. Theirs is not to reason why. If we could see their orders, we'd probably understand why they sound so stupid.
When I think of the meters running over the heads of all these medical people, not only the time in front of the camera, but the time in staging as well, I can't help but think, “Don't you have something else to do?” You'd never put up with it; nor would I. I'd tell Dr. Conley to go around and talk to every member of his team, and then come back here, and give us a report - and no more meetings to discuss who will say what. Only on the taxpayer's dole! Trump's $750, on a good year, might pay for about 15 minutes of this. If all this is for the political purposes I suspect, Trump is in violation of campaign finance laws, and should reimburse the taxpayers.
Dr. Conley began, “Since we spoke last [on Saturday], the president has continued to improve.” That was good news, because on Saturday he said Trump was “doing very well.” But while his condition may have improved going forward from Saturday to Sunday, in retrospect, it seemed to be getting worse as we looked back to Friday! Whereas on Saturday, Dr. Conley had described Trump as having had a “fever” on Friday, now it had been a “high fever,” and we found out that the drug therapies he was on included not just Regeneron, and remdesivir, which we were told about yesterday, but the steroid dexamethasone too. This has raised a lot of questions among medical experts because the combined use of these three treatments at the same time is unprecedented. Much of what we were told, combined with what was said yesterday, both by the doctors and the White House, has created more smoke than light about the state of the president's health.
The most curious thing Dr. Sean Conley said was this:
“I didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction, and in doing so, you know, it came off that we're trying to hide something, which wasn't necessarily true. The matter is, is that [Trump's] doing really well.”
That first part comes off as very unscientific, even mystical. How could any information he gave to the public affect the course of the illness one way or another? Is he confusing the public's perception of the disease with the disease itself, the way Trump confuses the number of COVID-19 cases found by testing with the number actually existing? Of course, this is the doctor that prescribed him hydroxychloroquine. Fortunately, that is out of the picture now.
The reason Trump is “doing really well” is that Trump isn't really sick. The only way Dr. Conley's information could steer the course of illness is if the “illness” being treated is Trump's poor standing in the polls.
It came off that they were hiding something because they were. It's just that simple. They are doctors, yes soldiers, but doctors first, not actors or politicians. Dr. Conley gives the “tell” to that in this very statement; “wasn't necessarily true?”, who talks like that? Don't hold your breath waiting for Trump to say he's not necessarily lying to us.
If Trump really has COVID19, then why was he not wearing a mask in the hospital videos? To me, he sounds as healthy as ever, certainly not like someone just recovering from a serious respiratory virus, but what do I know? I'm not a doctor.
Trump says in this video:
“It's been a very interesting journey. I learned a lot about COVID, I learned it by really going to school. I get it, and I understand it.”
Just as I predicted yesterday, he is going use his “illness” to present himself as “re-born” on the COVID issue, and try to reframe his relationship to it ahead of the election.
Minutes after he posted this video, he had the secret service take him on a presidential motorcade so that he could wave to his supporters on the street, and then right back to the hospital. This is in sharp contrast to the visitation rights of your average hospitalized novel coronavirus patient. They may die there without ever being allowed a visit from a family member. Then there is the small question of subjecting two secret service agents to close contact with a Covid patient, in a sealed box with recirculating air. So much for Blue Lives Matter. They promised to take a bullet for the president, not a virus.
BREAKING: Moments after stating “I learned a lot about COVID”, the President takes a joyride in an enclosed space with presumably #COVID19 negative people, all while on experimental medications.pic.twitter.com/q3uc3YYLrg
Trump knows that British PM Boris Johnson was hospitalized with COVID-19, and his popularity soared, at least for a while, when he came out. Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro never had to go into the hospital, but recovering helped his popularity nonetheless.
And Trump is very familiar with the old medical excuse. He used bone spurs to avoid service in the Vietnam War. Trump may be the greatest con man that ever lived, but in this case, he is playing a trick that may be the most primal, and basic, con of all times. What child hasn't feigned a stomach ache, or such, to avoid going to school because of a test, a bully, or another reason that had nothing to do with illness? Later, this same ploy, or con, may be employed to avoid a sticky situation at work. That is precisely what Trump is doing. He is just doing it on the grandest scale possible.
I know most of you will think me a cynic for what I am about to suggest, but actually, I think this view is rather optimistic, for if I am right, it means our commander-in-chief is in no serious jeopardy. Besides, when it comes to Trump, I find that cynicism is the best policy.
What if Trump isn't really sick? What if he is just gaslighting us?
Let's first start by looking at Trump's
Week In Review
Last Saturday was truly the high point. In the last weeks of his re-election campaign, Trump as able to move one step closer to delivering on one of the campaign promises most cherished by his right-wing Christian base with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and they celebrated in the Rose Garden. Of course, being called upon to deliver on a campaign promise likely to lead to the overturning of the very popular Roe v. Wade decision, or ending the very popular Affordable Care Act, isn't likely to win him more votes. More likely, with six right-wing Justices in the bag, some who support him for those reasons, despite some ethical squeamishness, may decide they don't have to do that any more, but what could he do?
You can see the Rose Garden affair here, but fast forward for eleven minutes because that's how long Trump made them wait, maskless, seated cheek by jowl, for him. I nominate him the least likely person to get Covid at this affair because he was up front, away from the others. The only person he was close to for any length of time was Amy Coney Barrett, and she wasn't a danger because she's already recovered from Covid.
Monday was not a good day. Thanks to the New York Times, we finally got a good look at his tax returns, and Donald Trump was revealed as a tax fraud and a failed businessman. The next day brought more of the same from the NY Times. This is very bad for him. He was already running 8% behind in national polls, and 4-6% in some key battleground states.
Tuesday was debate night. It was his big chance to turn things around, but it did not work out well for him. His adolescent antics didn't win him any new supporters, and pissed off many formerly undecideds. His refusal to just say no to white supremacy, and his marching orders to the Proud Boys, did manage to push his tax returns off the frontpage, but only at the cost of spending Wednesday denying the obvious. Trump, besides being perhaps the greatest con man that ever lived, is also a racist.
Wednesday was also the day Cornell Universityrelease a study naming Trump “the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid.” Not “a good look” when a quarter-million of the citizens you are suppose to serve are likely to be killed by Covid before election day.
The incubation period for the novel coronavirus is from 5 to 12 days, so the first indications of the Saturday super spreader now known as the #RoseGardenMassacre would have started trickling in on Wednesday. By Thursday, they would have known they were looking at another big public relations disaster. Never mind how many might die.
By Thursday morning, Trump's unwillingness to disavow white supremacy was competing with his refusal to guarantee a peaceful transition of power if he loses, for headlines, and post-debate polls were shouting that this was the most likely scenario. With only two days to go, it was turning into a pretty lousy week for candidate Trump, one month ahead of the election.
His campaign has been flailing around for weeks. They pulled their ads because they weren't working. They were running out of money. Local officials were rejecting his super spreader rallies, and the campaign manager he just replaced turned suicidal. But his most intractable problem remained the novel coronavirus. With more than 7.4 million infected, and more than 210 thousand killed in the United States, he just couldn't con enough people into believing it's a hoax. He needed a reset for his whole campaign. More than anything, he needed a face saving way of re-aligning his Covid policy in the face of the big spike in both infections and deaths this Fall is likely to bring ahead of the election.
Doctor, my eyes ..Just say if it's too late for me
Then he changed everything in an instant. At 10:44 PM ET Thursday, Trump tweeted out that Hope Hicks had tested positive for COVID-19, and that he and Melania were awaiting results:
Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for Covid 19. Terrible! The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process!
Two hours and ten minutes later, Friday @ 12:54 AM ET, he tweeted out that they both had tested positive. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnanysaid Trump had received the test results only an hour before announcing them.
Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!
Suddenly, it's as if he had turned the world on its head. The news all day Friday was about Trump and his illness. In the morning, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was outside the White House telling reporters that Trump had “mild symptoms.” It was topic #1 for White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's morning press conference. About 4 PM ET, the White House announced that Trump had received a dose of Regeneron, and would be checking into the hospital soon, “out of an abundance of caution.” A few hours later he took a helicopter ride to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. It's as if all that had gone before was behind him. From being the perpetuation of their misery, he had joined the Covid victims. All concerns went to him. All the criticisms, even from the beginning of the week, were drowned out. The Biden campaign even pulled its negative ads without expecting, or receiving, reciprocity.
"If you can't beat'em, join'em"
This age-old wisdom is never lost on the good con man. Sometimes a change in tactics may be necessary, and sometimes this can be a guide. For eight months now, Trump has been trying to “beat” Covid as a political problem with “magic,” snake oil, and other tricks of the con man. None of that is working; a vaccine can't come soon enough, and now, between the Rose Garden fiasco, and the general uptick in cases we are seeing all over the country, he is about to lose that battle for good. So, instead, he checks himself into the hospital, and neutralizes all that. Later he can emerge victorious, saying: “It was just like the flu, just like I said.”
It's very strange that he should first test positive less than 24 hours before he needs hospitalization, for someone who is tested regularly. That's much faster than the normal progression of the disease. It's certainly possible that his doctors wanted him there, out of an abundance of caution, even for a mild case, but I don't think he'd go along with them if he thought it would hurt him in the election. If he had listened to his doctors about wearing a face mask, we probably won't be having this conversation in the first place.
As we've all been told a thousand times over: You wear masks, not just to protect yourself from the virus, but also to protect others from you, if you happen to have the virus without knowing it. If it was only the former, only for self-protection, I might be inclined towards a libertarian bent, and say the wearing of masks should be optional. But even then, not in the case of the president. To the president I would say: We provide you with special cars, special planes, a big security detail, and a whole suite of rooms waiting at the local hospital while some Covid patients lie on gurneys in the hall waiting for a bed, not because you are Donald Trump, but because you are the President of the United States, and the welfare of the president is important to the welfare of the country. We spend billions on your security, and they can protect you from many things, but they can't protect you from a virus. So, while you may not like it. this is the job you signed up for. So once again, WEAR THE DAMN MASK!
They can't get him to wear a mask, so I don't think they could get him to check in to the hospital unless he wanted to. I suspect there are enormous resources that can be bought to bedside in the White House, if he wanted to avoid the spectacle of checking into the hospital. No, if Trump wasn't at death's door, he checked into the hospital with his “mild case” because he thought the drama of it all would help, rather than hurt, his efforts to stay in the White House. Being in the hospital assures that his illness will remain the top story, even as so many others are reporting sick.
Note, this scenario is only the slightly more honest version of the totally unscrupulous one I am proposing. In this one, he is overplaying a mild case of Covid for effect, in mine, his Covid is made out of whole cloth. Either way: Cui Bono?
Saturday morning, the whole world waited so patiently for an update on Trump's condition. When the doctors were finally shepparded out by Mark Meadows, we got more doctors than answers.
To hear Dr. Sean Conley describe Trump's condition, it sounded like he had no problems at all. True, “Thursday he had a mild cough, some nasal congestion, and fatigue,” but that was all better now. He did quite a bit of gaslighting around the question of whether Trump had received any supplemental oxygen with repeated comments like “He's not on oxygen right now.” He wouldn't answer the question directly, like “yes, he has received oxygen.” Most reporters took it that he was trying to strongly imply that Trump had received oxygen, but wasn't being allowed to say. Later “sources” confirmed that he had received oxygen. I think he hadn't received any oxygen at the hospital, and the doctor's coy answer was the closest he would come to supporting that particular lie. Doctors have ethics. Conley led with the same kind of opiate line with regards to Trump's temperature, saying, “He's been fever free for the past 24-hours.” Only during the Q&A did he clarify, “He did have a fever Thursday and Friday,” although he was shy about giving us any numbers. He said all his organs were good, everything else was fine, and his blood-oxygen levels were normal. It sounded as if he had never been sick at all. Nevertheless, they started a five day treatment of Regeneron on Friday, and that needs to be administered in the hospital, so he is likely to be there through Tuesday. They didn't say that. I deduced it. Mark Meadows shepherded them back into the building before the questions got too specific.
A little later Meadows returned as “a source familiar with the president’s health” to sharply contradict the rosy picture painted by the doctors:
The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.
Apparently the rosy picture wouldn't do. Looking at all those doctors telling us what a picture of health Trump is, I was reminded of the line from The Usual Suspects: “Sure you brought enough guys?” Meadows knew he needed to give us all something to worry about to keep the story interesting. A lot more people than Trump are getting sick, even in his small circle. All the talk about the contradiction between what Trump's doctors said, and what his White House said, amounted to today's distraction.
Later on Saturday, Trump tweeted out a well-produced four-minute video to a waiting, and sympathetic audience. If you ask me, he doesn't look, or sound, like someone even recovering from the flu. He looks more like someone who took off his tie to act like he is recovering from Covid.
I hope Trump comes home from the hospital soon, but if he does, we may never know whether his Covid's first name was Slim or None. In anycase, he is going to try to use this to reset his campaign. All that has gone before is in the past. He now “sees the light” on masks. He will be re-born in the fight against #COVID19. He will try to leverage his “near-death experience” into four more years in the White House. This is his first October Surprise.
Actually, this gambit isn't even all that creative. I mean, it won't exactly be the first time someone called in sick to deal with a sticky situation at work.
President Donald Trump held his first public rally since the coronavirus outbreak in Tulsa, OK on 20 June 2020. It was suppose to kick-off his re-election campaign. Instead, it was a big embarrassment for him.
His then campaign manger, Brad Parscale, bragged that they had a million requests for tickets. In addition to the main venue, which seated 19,000, they set up a second location with a capacity of 80,000 for the anticipated overflow crowd. In the end, only about 6,200 Trump supporters showed up. Had they made use of that sparse attendance to practice social distancing, perhaps Herman Cain would be alive today. He, and countless others likely caught COVID-19 at that “pathetic” Trump rally, where face masks were rare in the crowded lower seating.
Precisely one month after he sent out this tweet, Parscale was replaced by Bill Stephen. Before he became Trump's newest campaign manager, Stephen gained notoriety when New Jersey governor Chris Christie fired, and scapegoated, him as the aid responsible for "Bridgegate," a scheme to shutdown lanes approaching the George Washington Bridge to punish the mayor of Fort Lee, NJ for declining to support Christie's election bid. Clearly, he's a campaign manager of proven ability. He's willing to carry out the bosses illegal schemes, and take the fall if they are exposed.
One likely reason for the disappointing turnout is a prank played by K-pop fans that relied heavily on TikTok, a popular short-form video sharing app. After Trump tweeted that tickets would be available for free online, they organized a campaign, mainly on TikTok, that resulted in hundreds of thousands of tickets being ordered by people who had no plans of attending the rally. The New York Timesreported:
TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Mr. Trump’s campaign rally as a prank. After the Trump campaign’s official account @TeamTrump posted a tweet asking supporters to register for free tickets using their phones on June 11, K-pop fan accounts began sharing the information with followers, encouraging them to register for the rally — and then not show.
This followed similar campaigns on TikTok and Twitter, that flooded the right-wing hashtags #WhiteLivesMatter, and #ExposeAntifa, with contrary or comical tweets that were successful in drowning out the original messages of those campaigns. Varietyreported:
K-Pop Fans Take Over WhiteLivesMatter Hashtag to Drown Out Racist Posts
By Jem Aswad
3 June 2020
In an anti-racist move that demonstrates their formidable social-media power, K-Pop fans took over the hashtag # whitelivesmatter, drowning out white-supremacist messages with nonsensical or anti-racist posts. The move was met with wide approval online early Wednesday morning.
“# WhiteLivesMatter LMAO I WAS READY TO INSULT THE SH– OUT OF EVERYONE,” one poster wrote. “THEN I SAW THAT K-POP STANS ARE DESTROYING THE [hashtag], DAMN NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE THAT HAPPY SEEING K-POP FANCAM”
“Imagine trying to trend # WhiteLivesMatter like a typical racist and Kpop fans said “Not on my watch bitch,’” another wrote. More...
Then the right-wing dirty-tricks Project Veritas released their #ExposeANTIFA video series, but their message proved hard to find.😈
While the Chinese-owned TikTok video sharing service may not have any political bias, the young people, that are the biggest part of its hundred million strong user base, most certainly do. They oppose Trump, and he has good reason to think they will continue to dog his re-election chances in the months remaining before the 2020 election.
A few weeks after these TikTok users helped make a fiasco of his Tulsa rally, Trump started a campaign to ban TikTok from the United States. Secretary of State Mike PompeotoldFox News' Laura Ingraham on 6 July that they were considering a ban on Chinese social media apps, “especially TikTok.” The app has been around for almost 4 years. Pompeo didn't say what prompted the sudden interest in banning it, but the response of app's users was immediate. Timereported on 10 July:
Thousands of users of the popular video app flocked to the Apple App Store in the last few days to flood U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign app with negative reviews. On Wednesday alone 700 negative reviews were left on the Official Trump 2020 app and 26 positive ones, according to tracking firm Sensor Tower.
The Trump administration has claimed that the TikTok app represents a security threat because it contains backdoors that would allow the Chinese Communist Party to illegally access personal data on smart phones. No proof of this has been found, and those IT specialists that have investigated the app report they are confident that it contains no backdoors or exploits. Cybersecurity expert Zak Doffmanaddressed this on Forbes:
In recent weeks, we have seen reports emerge suggesting that TikTok is “Chinese spyware,” alleging that the app steals data from users’ devices and sends it to China. This is certainly not proven and almost certainly not true on any level, at least not in the way it is presented.
He then goes on to say, “as with all platforms of its kind, TikTok occasionally releases software with security vulnerabilities that need to be urgently fixed.” This is a universal problem, and not what the Trump administration is talking about.
Nevertheless, Trump is continuing his campaign against the app, and its parent company, Bytedance Ltd. He announced on Monday that TikTok would have to be sold to an American company by 15 September, a Tuesday, or be banned from the US. Coincidentally, this date assures that TikTok will either be shut down, or under new management, in the crucial seven week run up to the 3 November presidential election. Microsoft has shown some interest in buying the service, but Trump has poop pooped the offer. He told Microsoft’s Nadella that U.S. should get a cut “because we’re making it possible for this deal to happen,” without explaining what this cut would be, or what laws it would be based on, and suggested that “somebody else, a big company, a secure company, a very American company can buy it.” Trump is saying his government should get a big cut of the sale's price, while China is accusing the US of “smash & grab” and “officially sanctioned theft,” in this forced sale of a very successful Chinese property.
Trump @ White House Briefing, attempting to forced the sale of TikTok | 4 August 2020
While Trump never mentions the embarrassment he has suffered at the hands of TikTok users, or their fight against his re-election, the fact that it is owned by a Chinese company gives him an excuse for attacking it that fits right into his racist anti-China campaign. Still, there are many Chinese companies doing business in the US that he could go after, and he could have gone after TikTok more than three years ago, so the timing and the target aren't explained by the front page reasons.
This brings us to another way Trump is using this pressure on TikTok to his political benefit. Trump friendly Facebook, not being satisfied with the dominance its ownership of Facebook and Instagram has given it, has already tried twice to launch its own clone of TikTok, and failed. The first was a Facebook service, named Lasso, that died a quick death. The second is an Instagram app named Reels, which is expected to launch this month. If TikTok is banned from the US, Facebook's attempts to launch a similar service (Which sounds a lot like a US company stealing Chinese technology.) will likely be easier, or perhaps Facebook itself may emerge as the “other company” Trump has in mind. Either way, it could be payback for the multi-faceted pro-Trump policies of this social media giant.
Consider:
While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tells Dana Perino on Fox News“I don't think it's appropriate for Facebook to do fact-checking,” Donald Trump is spending millions of dollars on ads featuring claims that have been debunked by Facebook's own fact-checkers, and that saying something, considering it has recruited The Daily Caller, a website founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, to become an official Facebook fact-checker, in spite of its long history of publishing misinformation.
Hundreds of Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout over the company's decision to leave up 'inflammatory' Trump posts. When Twitter flagged this Trump tweet as 'glorifying violence':
[...] Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.
@realDonaldTrump
May 29, 2020
Zuckerberg said Facebook would allow that statement. He told Fox News, “At Facebook, we've tried to distinguish ourselves as being really strong in favor of giving people a voice and free expression.” When Dana Perino asked “I wondered if you thought that Twitter may have made the wrong decision here?” Zucherberg replied “Yeah, that's right, Dana. We have a different policy, I think, than Twitter on this. I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online.”
But, like I said, please try to post this blog to Facebook and report if the results are:
Your message couldn't be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.
It's always “other people,” reporting some “content,” but nothing like a clue.
Facebook has a policy that prohibits misinformation on voting methods. When Zuckerberg announced the policy, he was clear that it applied to politicians, including Trump. Now that Trump is violating that policy, and posting misinformation about voting to Facebook, they refuse to enforce it. Instead, Zuckerberg appeared on Fox New and defended Trump's right to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election, “I don't think that Facebook, or Internet platforms in general, should be arbiters of truth.” Facebook changed its policies to allow Trump and other politicians to lie in ads. Again and again, Facebook has taken action to empower Trump and the right wing in violation of its own policies.
For several years, Zuckerberg has oriented Facebook's entire public policy apparatus around placating Trump and his “base.” Facebook hired former Senator Jon Kyl to produce a report about whether Facebook was biased. It didn't make the slightest effort to look for bias against liberals or the left. (hello!)
Zuckerberg recently invited a bunch of right-wing pundits to his home to discuss partnerships and free speech. The guests included Tucker Carlson, who recently said that immigrants were making America dirtier, which is a cruel irony, because here in L.A., they seem to be the one's doing all the cleaning, and Brent Bozell, who said Obama looked like “a skinny, ghetto crackhead.”
Zuckerberg announced the launch of Facebook News on a stage with a top executive in Rupert Murdoch's right-wing media empire. The head of Facebook News, Campbell Brown, continues to be involved in her own website, The 74, which she founded with the support of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Brown used the site to write a column lavishing praise on DeVos. Brown and Zuckerberg hired a former producer for “Fox & Friends,” Trump's favorite show, to head video strategy for Facebook News. She'll be a member of Facebook News' curation team, which means she'll select what content appears in Facebook's news tab. Also, Facebook News selected Breitbart, a noxious right-wing website that was caught laundering white nationalist talking points, to be among 200 trusted news sites to include in its launch. In addition, Facebook allows The Daily Wire, another right-wing website, to operate a network of 14 large Facebook pages that purport to be independent but exclusively promote Daily Wire content. This is in clear violation of Facebook's rules. [I want to thank Judd Legum, popular.info, and the makers of this illuminating video, from which this summary of Facebook fun facts was largely plagiarized.]
Last November, there was a secret meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump. The New York Times reported it:
Last Nov. 20, NBC News broke the news that Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump and a Facebook board member, Peter Thiel, had dined together at the White House the previous month. “It is unclear why the meeting was not made public or what Trump, Zuckerberg and Thiel discussed,” the report said.
That was it. Nothing else has emerged since. Not the date, not who arranged the menu, the venue, the seating, not the full guest list. And not whether some kind of deal got done between two of the most powerful men in the world. The news cycle moved on, and the dinner became one of the unsolved mysteries of American power.
NBC Newsreported that it was the second meeting between Zuckerberg and Trump in a month. As Trump has said, “I'm very big on Facebook.” Don't be surprised if Facebook emerges as a contender for TikTok.
In today's White House Press Briefing the corespondent from OAN, a news outlet favored by Trump because it is to the right of Fox News, raised a question about TikTok. After making accusations that the platform encourages the “sexual exploitation of young people,” she asked would the White House be taking steps to control the content of a post-transferred TikTok. Kayleigh McEnany answered in the affirmative. Trump has used OAN to raise questions before. This one was raised to plant the idea that the White House would be restricting TikTok's content after 15 September, if it isn't banned altogether. This whole exercise is about the content that TikTok's users post, but knowing something about Trump's history, it's hard to believe it's prompted by concerns about the sexual exploitation of young people.
At the present time Trump is entirely consumed by the his re-election prospects. Beyond golf, he is currently only interested in things that will help him get re-elected. At a cost of tens of thousands of American lives, he has manipulated the federal government's coronavirus response to further his re-election. He first stopped his daily coronavirus briefings when he was convinced they were hurting his poll ratings. Then he restarted them in a vain attempt to push those ratings back up. It has nothing to do with the lives being lost in the country he was elected to lead, and everything to do with getting him re-elected. He had Bill Barr violently clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park for a photo op he thought would help him get re-elected. He has sent federal agents to Portland and other cities, not because he wants to bring peace to those cities, or even to bring “law and order,” but to help him get re-elected. He is slowing down the postal service, and railing against mail-in voting (except Florida 😉) because he thinks that will help him get re-elected. Why, with all of this, is he now trying to take down a company that has been operating in the US longer than he has been in the White House? It can only be because he thinks it is important to his re-election prospects, and his efforts reveal motives that go far beyond its use as another handy China target. That is largely a handy cover story, and a rather innovative way of using racism.
And yet TikTok has no political agenda. I was surprise, when I signed up to TikTok, and was asked to choose a topic of interest, that politics, or anything like it, was not one of the choices. So, I chose comedy. I learned later that TikTok goes out of its way to be non-political. For example, while you can post videos that are decidedly political to your homepage, they can't be circulated. Being a Chinese owned service, probably it was trying to avoid precisely the vise it has found itself in. It was to no avail, because no matter how hard TikTok tries to be apolitical, the young people who are its “base” are decidedly not. They are anti-Trump. They have made Trump, and his white supremacist allies, look like fools, and while, admittedly, that's not hard to do, they have done it with style and flair unmatched by Brad Parscale, Bill Stephen, on even Roger Stone, and if you can't beat'em, have your friends buy'em, or ban'em.
Trump isn't after TikTok because it is Chinese owned. Plenty of iconic American companies are owned by Chinese investors, including the Chicago Stock Exchange, AMC, Smithfield Foods, Legendary Entertainment Group, GE Appliances, The Waldorf Astoria, Ingram Micro, and Motorola Mobility. He's not after TikTok because its a national security risk. It's no more or less secure than any other social media company, including Facebook. TikTok isn't being punished for its sins at all. It is being punished for the sins of its users.
Clay Claiborne
UPDATES 5 August 2020:
Sarah Cooper is one particularly high profile TikTok user that Trump would like to silence, but where this story, and similar ones about Sarah Cooper get it wrong is she's not the only TikTok user Trump wants to silence. There are thousands, maybe millions! From the Huffington Post:
People Are Convinced Trump Wants TikTok Banned Because A Comedian Is Mocking Him On It
Trump told reporters on Friday that he plans to ban the Chinese-owned short-form video-sharing app from operating in the US “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” he declared aboard Air Force One. The president claimed he could use emergency economic powers to ban the app — possibly as early as Saturday. More...
Also, today Instagram launched its TikTok clone. I said sometime this month yesterday. Billboard is reporting:
Instagram Launches TikTok Competitor Reels
by Natalie Jarvey
5 August 2020
Instagram has launched a new video feature called Reels as it looks to take on fast-growing upstart TikTok.
The feature, which Instagram tested for months in countries including Brazil and India, allows users to shoot, edit and post 15-second video clips set to snippets of music or audio. The videos can be viewed via a new portal on Instagram's Explore page, which curates and personalizes posts based on a user's preferences. More...
Pavel Durov, founder and CEO at Telegram has posted an important warning about the danger Trump's TikTok grab might have on freedom on the Internet:
[T]he US move against TikTok is setting a dangerous precedent that may eventually kill the internet as a truly global network (or what is left of it). Before the US-TikTok saga, only autocratic countries like Iran, China or Russia were known for bullying tech companies into selling parts of their businesses to investors with close ties to their governments.
...
The problem with the US-TikTok case is that it legitimises an extortion tactic previously employed only by authoritarian regimes. For decades, the US has been perceived as the defender of free trade and free speech. But now that China has started to replace them as the main beneficiary of global trade, the US (or at least the Trump administration) seems to have become less enthusiastic about those values. This is regrettable, because billions of people on this planet still like the idea of an open and interconnected world.
...
Last week, Turkey introduced a bunch of laws limiting social media companies. A few years ago, the US would have had the moral right to criticise such efforts, citing freedom of speech and free trade as ideological foundations for their concerns. Today it’s less clear whether the US still has that right. Authoritarian leaders all over the world are already using the TikTok case as justification in their attempts to carve out a piece of the global internet for themselves. Soon, every big country is likely to use “national security” as a pretext to fracture international tech companies. And ironically, it’s the US companies like Facebook or Google that are likely to lose the most from the fallout.
This is a very important side of the question that I entirely neglected in my original piece.
A number of reports have come to my attention in the last few days that would appear to answer that question in the affirmative and I now would like to share them with you.
Oh, and if NATO is still looking for a "pretext" for war with Syria as Amy and the anti-interventionists contend, they have another one. Ahram reports:
Syrian mortar round hits Turkey, no casualties
Incident marks first reported spillover from civil war in several weeks Reuters , Monday 14 Jan 2013 A mortar round, apparently fired from Syria, crashed in a field in Turkey overnight close to a refugee camp housing thousands of Syrians along the border but there were no casualties, Turkish state media reported on Monday.
The incident, which could not immediately be confirmed by Turkish officials, would mark the first reported instance of spillover from Syria's civil war in Turkey in several weeks.
NATO troops have begun deploying Patriot defence missiles in Turkey - a supporter of rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad - against a potential attack from its southern neighbour. More...
More Fun Facts below the fold
To begin with, we have what looks to be an English translation of a Russian publication that someone posted via twitlonger. No information on the authenticity of the document or the accuracy of the translation:
Russia plans to evacuate Russians in Syria from Tartus & Latakia
@samersniper Update: Russian plan to evacuate Russians #Syria over #Tartus & #Latakia "San Francisco" will be repaired in the Syrian port of Tartus 01/14/2013 Text: View Photo: BDK "San Francisco." mil.ru Repair faulty diesel generator large landing ship "San Francisco" Black Sea Fleet will perform floating workshop PM-56, which is permanently based in the Syrian port of Tartus, informed in the press service of the Russian Ministry of Defence and information.
"BDK" Saratov "came from the Aegean Sea eastern Mediterranean to participate in the exercises of the Navy of Russia ", - said the administration," Interfax. " Earlier it was reported that a large landing ship Black Sea Fleet "San Francisco" broke on the way to mezhflotskie exercises in the Mediterranean. The ship began to self-repair. ship was supposed to meet with a group of warships of the Black Sea Fleet, performing combat missions in the Mediterranean, and the next week "San Francisco" will go to the Syrian port of Tartus, where is the point of logistics of the Russian Navy. Recall in late December, large landing ship "Azov" and "Nicholas Filchenkov" came from Novorossiysk to the Syrian port of Tartus with the Marine Corps Special Forces soldiers and a few pieces of equipment on board. Earlier it was reported that the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry prepared a plan for large-scale operations evacuation of Russian citizens from Syria, according to the document, a few days security forces are ready to take out of the dangerous area of about 30 thousand Russians. Rescuers have provided a number of ways and routes to evacuate Russians. The first way - combined. People will bring in road transport in the Syrian port of Tartus and Latakia and forward from there by sea to Cyprus, to the port of Larnaca. Refugees from there transported to Russia plane MOE and the Ministry of Defense, as well as scheduled flights "Aeroflot", "Cyprus Airways" on aircraft Airbus-320 (capacity - 180 people). Also in the evacuation of Russian authorities plan to use four passenger ferry: "Apolonia" ( 250 seats), Ant-1 (90 seats), Ant-2 (68 seats) and "Nicholas Konarev" (75 seats). Now, these ferries are in the waters of the Red Sea, Mediterranean and Black Seas. Also expected to participate in the operation of patrol and large amphibious ships of the Baltic and Black Sea fleets.
Normally i wouldn't build a diary around something like that, but then this popped up from Trend:
Russian Consulate General in Aleppo temporarily suspends activity
15 January 2013, 16:41 (GMT+04:00) The activity of the Consulate General of Russia in Aleppo has been temporarily suspended, a representative of the Russian Embassy in Syria told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
"The Consulate General in Aleppo has temporarily suspended its work. It is now necessary to contact the consular office of the Russian Embassy in Damascus for all consular matters", the source said.
CNN is also confirming this report on the Aleppo consulate closure as of 9:00 EST and also has a very interesting "What are we? Chopped liver?" story about 2 Syrian military officers that have been captured by the FSA in October. After hearing about the swap of 48 Iranians for 2130 prisoners Assad agreed too, they issued this video begging Assad to arrange a swap for them:
"We were captured by FSA while we were armed, and we have been treated based on the International conventions," says Gen. Brig. Ahmed Raeidi, referring to international detention laws.
Raeidi and Staff Brigadier Hussein Allouch, an engineer from the Armored Vehicles Department, are shown beseeching al-Assad -- a fellow Alawite -- to help them.
"We have been pleading with the Syrian regime to consider our release and to arrange a prisoner swap in exchange (for) 50 innocent civilians, including women, but we haven't received any response from the Syrian authorities," Raeidi says.
And the most interesting of all is this report from Business Insider:
REPORT: Assad Has Left Syria For A Warship In The Mediterranean
Robert Johnson | Jan. 14, 2013, 11:47 AM After nearly two years of conflict and 117,000 displaced Syrians the UPI reports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family may have left the country to live aboard a warship manned by Russian security.
UPI cites an unconfirmed Al-Watan report that claims Assad's family is somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea and that the now semi-deposed president travels back to the country by helicopter for meetings and receptions.
Al-Watan is not the most reliable source. The fact their report is unavailable, and also unconfirmed by UPI, leaves a heavy doubt lingering over the Assad offshore family charter. But, we've seen Syrian news downplayed before when nobody on the ground was able to "confirm" reports to the satisfaction of many Western news outlets. Every policy think tank expert in the world has an opinion on how the Syrian crisis will end, before it does, this is one possibility that slipped out through UPI:
When [Assad] flies to his embattled country, the president lands at undisclosed locations and is transported to the presidential palace under heavy guard, the sources said. The Russian-guarded warship provides a safe environment for Assad, who has lost confidence in his own security detail, the report said.
Assad's presence on the warship suggests he has been granted political asylum by Russia but there has been no official comment from Moscow, the newspaper said. Assad's presence on the ship could be a sign of looming negotiations on the conflict in Syria, the report said.
Earlier today, when Switzerland introduced its letter, backed by 57 countries, asking the UNSC to refer Syria to the ICC, Russia said"We consider this initiative ill-timed and counterproductive if we are to achieve the current priority goal -- an immediate end to bloodshed in Syria,"
And now in the "This just in" Department we have this Russian response to the bombing today at Aleppo U. From KUNA:
Russia wants UNSC to strongly condemn "terrorist attacks" in Aleppo''s University complex
16/01/2013 | 12:32 AM UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 (KUNA) -- Russia circulated a press statement Tuesday urging Security Council members to condemn "in the strongest terms" the "terrorist attacks" earlier in the day in the complex of the University of Aleppo, Syria, but Western members in the Council were not very responsive, a Council diplomat said.
The diplomat said France suggested putting the draft under silence procedure until tomorrow Wednesday. One of the Western members is expected to break that silence tomorrow and the draft will be shelved, as it was the case with similar previous Russian drafts. The attack caused multiple deaths and injuries among students and other civilians. According to the Russian draft, the Council would reaffirm that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, and that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed.
The Council would also reiterate its determination to combat all forms of terrorism, in accordance with its responsibilities under the UN Charter. (end) sj.bs KUNA 160032 Jan 13NNNN
