Trump's Attacks Serve Russia

It's as if President Donald Trump, through his ceaseless and groundless accusations of fraud, is serving as a Russian agent - fulfilling Russia's aim to sow doubt about our Democratic elections and dangerously distracting cyber surveillance security.

Again. It's the 5,000-pound, pink, polka-dotted elephant in our living rooms.

"The hack raises the possibility that Russian intelligence agencies saw an advantage in mounting the attack while American attention — including FireEye’s — was focused on securing the presidential election system."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/technology/fireeye-hacked-russians.html?smid=fb-share

Never Forget: Trump Did This

It remains beyond mystifying how such a significant chunk of America still rallies for a President who, as they say "lies like he breathes," enflames with each accusation he tweets and daily endorses pain, destruction and death.

America absolutely ain't what it's cracked itself up to be.

Until Trump bamboozled his way into the Oval Office, I never really considered how many self-absorbed, deluded, morally bereft and flat out foolish people I share this country with.

It truly, utterly, boggles the mind. How many of the lost existed prior to Trump's Fox News-fueled brainwashing is hard to say. But, it's definitely a cult phenomena, as the aimless who don't seem to know themselves or give a squat about the preciousness of life, have fallen prey to the Trump "cult of personality."

I always had a hard time imagining -- particularly with so much fair warning in Biblical scripture and those heavily commercialized "Left Behind" books and TV series of the 1990's -- how an anti-Christ could rise to power undetected and without getting the boot from a citizenry with the smarts to know a snakeoil salesman when they see one.

Since Trump's precipitous rise to power and popularity, I don't puzzle over that anymore.

Now, before anyone gets their "end times" up, I'm not saying Trump is the son of perdition. I'm simply pointing out that he has all the disingenuous character traits of an anti-Christ: arrogance, dishonesty, divisiveness, vengeance and, as I said earlier, a "personality of cult" that sucks in the gullible. 

As we anxiously await the results to be tallied in yesterday's runoff between Trump and challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, don't ever dare forget -- Trump did this!

We endure daily reminders of the fallout from the Trump deception -- of how he  cataclysmically, and yes, criminally, screwed up his job.

Facemasks. Caravans of pickup trucks flying "Trump" flags, threatening violence.  Business closures. Jobs lost. Evictions. Homelessness. Hate. Lies. Insults. Suffering. Infection. Sickness. Death.

Trump did all this.

The Trump-facilitated damage, heartache and challenges that Americans endure daily are incalcuable and far-reaching into every aspect of life.

We all deal with the frustration of wearing a mask daily as we enter a store or other closed quarters, sometimes forgetting them, sometimes misplacing them.

It's a small discipline to make in order to preserve life. But Trump did that. When your glasses steam up behind the mask as you try to make good time through the store, Trump did that, too.

More consequentially, when a man denied entrance at a convenience store for not wearing a mask, leaves in a fit, returns with a gun, shoots the security guard in the face, killing him -- Trump did that.

More than 8 million people in the United States have been infected with Covid-19, untold numbers suffering lasting debilitations. 

Trump did that.

Nearly, 230,000 people have stopped breathing and died from the virus.

Trump did that.

This country hasn't been so divided since the Civil War.

Trump did that.

Violent hate crimes have rose steadily each year in America since 2016.

Trump did that.

Millions have lost their jobs; many face the prospect of eviction or losing their homes.

Trump did that, too.

There's no need in rehashing Trump's dismissals, misleadings and lies about this past spring's pending pandemic that is soon to wipeout a quarter million lives as it resurges across this nation just in time for the holidays.

Just know -- and never forget -- Trump did this. And he must answer for it.

Where Are Evangelicals' 'Eyes to See'?

My fellow white Evangelical Christians like to talk about how President Donald Trump has been a "wake up call" these painful, past four years.

But way too few appear inclined to answer that call.

An overwhelming majority of white Evangelicals instrumental in Trump's winning the White House in 2016, still insist the President is their man in 2020, according to a Pew Research Center poll earlier this month.

Though the President's support slipped several points among white Evangelicals from a summertime poll, 83% to 78%, a solid majority remained in Trump's camp this fall.

How long will white Evangelical Christians advocate for the leader of the Free World who has all the character traits of an anti-Christ?

In Proverbs 6:16-19 it is written:

"These six things the Lord hates, Yes seven are an abomination to him: A proud look, a lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren."

Now that Trump's gross indifference and negligence has facilitated the deaths of more than 230,000 people in America from Covid-19, the President arguably qualifies as guilty of each one of those abominations, including shedding “innocent blood.”

The facts are undeniable and well known. While the Coronavirus incubated death across the homeland, President Trump blew it off as inconsequential. He assured that the virus would just "go away," that it was "totally under control" and labeled it a Democratic "hoax.”

Instead of alerting the American citizenry to the lethality of a pending pandemic, which we know from Bob Woodward’s audio-taped conversations with Trump that the President was unequivocally aware, Trump intentionally misled and lied to Americans. No surprise there.

"Let no man deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience," the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:6.

A few verses later, Paul warned: "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.”

In allowing Trump to consistently and obviously bamboozle them, do not God’s “very elect" risk the same judgement of the "sons of disobedience"?

Further, how can Christians seriously expect to "win souls for Christ" while again endorsing the devil's advocate for another -- even more hellish -- four years in the Oval Office?

Instead of marshalling all the forces of government to prepare and compassionately warning the citizenry of Covid’s indiscriminate death march across the nation, Trump instead, served as a deadly conspiring agent of the disease by picking political fights, sowing discord, shirking blame, actually bragging about the “great” job his administration was doing while lying the whole time about testing, personal protective equipment and contact tracing.

While Americans became infected, their lungs slowly ravaged, Trump focused on touting the stock market numbers, golfing at his own properties on the taxpayer’s dime, holding “Keep America Great” campaign rallies and seeking vengeance against patriots who testified to the President’s malfeasance during his impeachment.

Consider: In Hebrew, “Satan” is translated as “liar” or “adversary.” And Jesus Christ described the Devil as the “father of lies.”

A recent study by a group of disaster preparedness experts found that between 130,000 and 210,00 lives could have been saved in America if President Trump had acted with more urgency in dealing with the virus.

But still, criminally, President Trump won’t take the deadly contagion seriously. Even now, as Covid-19 cases surge in many states across the country foreboding a dark winter, on the eve of a monumental presidential election – which the President (as any despotic leader would) suggests he won't acknowledge if he loses – Trump delusionally declares that we are “rounding the bend” in the fight against the Coronavirus and again insists “it will go away.”

In Matthew 10:16-17, Jesus instructed his Apostles to "be as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" and to "beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves."

So, where's the wisdom among Evangelicals who should be calling out Trump's blatant carnival barker act?

In Proverbs 17:15, it is written:

"He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD."

Trump and his abetting congressional Republican loyalists have become the ruthless ruling pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm -- disingenuously declaring equality for all, while hoarding all the “milk and apples” (like tax breaks for the wealthiest) for themselves and treating the American people like a bunch of dim-witted barnyard animals.

Yet, a strong majority of white Evangelicals remain firmly rooted in Trump’s camp.

Trump is the 5,000-lb., pink-polka-dotted elephant sitting in the church pew, cracking wise, snacking on peanuts and tossing his peanut shells at the pastor while a complacent congregation sits silently by, pretending nothing's amiss.

Sure Jesus said “judge not lest, you be judged.” But he went on to say: “Judge with righteous judgement.”

Where is Evangelicals “righteous judgement” – their basic sense of right and wrong, of justice?

When will we all get the "eyes to see," -- as Isaiah and Jesus referenced -- the vast, long-engrained economic inequalities and racial disparities in our country -- which Republican policy has long exacerbated and which the Covid-19 pandemic and George Floyd's merciless killing excruciatingly has laid bare?

Jesus Christ, in Matthew, commanded his followers to look out for the "least of these" -- the hungry, the thirsty, the foreigner and the imprisoned, the oppressed. For when we do, we look out for Jesus, himself.

In the Gospels, Jesus instructed us that the “greatest gift” is love (or “charity.”) Where is the Christian love in Republican policy?

Christians have been bribed, in effect, to ignore the desperation in America that Republican policy has long fueled, based predominantly on the single issue of abortion.

While the Christian right champions itself as "pro-life," it ignores the plight of literally millions of children who go to bed hungry in this nation, or the tens of thousands of poor citizens, mostly of color, who die prematurely because they lack adequate healthcare, or the millions more who are without jobs and healthcare due to the fallout from the Coronavirus epidemic. And on it goes.

Even before the pandemic hit and racial tensions were stoked in the wake of Floyd's death, an estimated 140 million Americans were living in or near the cusp of poverty, according to The Southern Poverty Law Center, an American nonprofit legal advocacy organization.

Meanwhile, congressional hardliners from that same "pro-life" party rush through billions of dollars in tax cuts for the richest, while opposing universal healthcare, maternity care and the raising of the national minimum wage so that a single mother wouldn't have to work two or three jobs at slave labor.

In Isaiah 5:20, it is written:

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."

For decades, Christians have lacked the “eyes to see” the hypocrisy of endorsing indifferent, cruel Conservative policy that exacerbates dire living conditions for tens of millions of Americans and arguably increases the instances of unplanned pregnancies and abortions.

Pro-lifers impulsively have long opposed easy, widespread access to contraception and frown on sex education – the former of which, studies have shown, is primarily responsible for the fortunate steady decline in the annual number of abortions in America since the 1990’s.

Additionally, once a woman is contending with the formidable life choice of raising a child, typical Republican “pro-life” policy historically has done little to ease that life choice, by vehemently opposing affordable healthcare and a decent living wage that a new mother desperately needs.

Over the decades, one of the consistent reasons women give for choosing to have an abortion is that they can’t afford to raise a child. 

In 2014, some 75% of abortion patients, the majority in their 20’s, were classified as poor (with an income below the federal poverty level of $15,730 for a family of two) or low income, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Yet, while states in recent years have raised their minimum wages, U.S. Congressional Republicans led by the likes of sheer political animal and present Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, steadily have opposed raising the national minimum wage from a pathetic $7.25 an hour.

In the meantime, the Trump administration is still chomping at the bit to carve up Medicaid and privatize social security, just as the Tea Party Republicans, led by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, pushed for earlier this decade while the country was still struggling to rebound from the George W. Bush-instigated Great Depression of 2008. 

The Trump administration presently has designs to cut food stamps from nearly 700,000 American at this year’s end.

Studies suggest that women will seek and have an abortion whether it’s legal or not. If Christian Republicans truly want to further diminish unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortion why don’t they back widely accessible contraception, sex education, as well as, abstaining from sexual relations?

Hypocritical congressional Republicans may proclaim themselves defenders of the unborn. 

But as soon as that precious life makes it through the birth canal, Conservative policy virtually dictates that it's on its own. Time to lift itself up by the booty straps and get a job.

Christians should show some Christian love and fight for universal healthcare as a right, for fully funded maternity care if they really want to lower the number of abortions. They should get behind a mandated $15/hr national minimum wage, to bolster that “family life” they purport to care so much about.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has orphaned some 545 immigrant children, separating them from their parents after they crossed the Mexican border.

Excusing, endorsing and re-electing Trump is the very last thing this nation needs if it's going survive, let alone thrive again.

Christians should finally heed the father of modern day Evangelicalism, Revered Billy Graham's words from a 1981 Parade Magazine article.

"I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form," said Graham in 1981. "It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it."

Four decades later, Evangelicals remain hoodwinked in a cult-like relationship with a manipulative, money-grubbing, power-hungry Republican Party.

And it's all come to a head under the leadership of a President with the moral compass of a garden snake. God's been calling, indeed. But far too few Evangelicals seem to be home.

(Kevin McKinney is a Christian and former daily newspaper journalist whose political essays have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hill, Counter Punch and McClatchy Newspapers.)

* A shorter version of this essay appeared online in the Cape May County Herald last week: 

https://www.capemaycountyherald.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/article_b6f9a9d8-19f3-11eb-9399-6f4431ededbe.html

Recalling Trump's Boardwalk Hustle - Funhouse Floor, No More

(A version of this essay was published in the Cape May Star and Wave on Wed. Oct. 7, 2020)

The daddy of all boardwalk hustles on a surreal, cold night in the dead of winter in a boarded-up, barrier island, boardwalk town, beckons.

A carnival barker President takes center stage inside the 7,400-seat capacity Wildwood Convention Center this evening, Jan. 28, 2020, to an amusement-park roar from thousands of fevered fans.

Something’s amiss. Wildwood boardwalk’s famous, sequence-lighted, giant Ferris wheel – which on summer nights, lures thrill seekers from miles away – is ominously dark.

There's no rumble and "clickety, clickety, clack" of the Great White roller coaster, eliciting screams from daring riders. No mic-upped barkers beckoning from either side of “the boards.” 

And there’s no creepy, sideshow illusion of a giant snake with a man's head, attracting gawkers. (Yes, I’ve witnessed this.)

There is only the brash, inciting spectacle of impeached President Donald J. Trump.

And boy, does he draw a crowd.

  
The grand illusionist President and his traveling “Keep America Great” circus sideshow act, with a snap of Trump’s fingers, has turned the boardwalk convention center into one huge, jam-packed, mirrored funhouse.

In this masterful magical trick, the warped, contorting effect of the shifting funhouse mirrors flatteringly work in reverse – reflecting the unrepentant con man as a genuine Superman, fighting for truth, justice and the American way.

It’s smoke and mirrors on a twisted, Twitter-fueled, in-your-Facebook, insult-driven, black ops-level scale.

Yet, it's all so fitting.

Reality is always askew, deceptively grander, amidst the glitzy allure of Wildwood’s renowned two-mile long, sprawling boardwalk, where suckers drop big coin for long odds.

And at a rowdy Trump rally, truth and sensibility are just hostile bubble busters. Trump is his rabid believers’ ticket to shirk reality, sneer at justice, decry the righteous and disparage the less fortunate with impunity.

"While we are creating jobs and killing terrorists, congressional Democrats are obsessed with demented hoaxes, crazy witch hunts .." decried Trump to loud cheers. ""Which is worse? The impeachment hoax or the witch hunt from Russia?"

Watching it all up on the Jumbotron outside the boardwalk convention center with a few thousand uproarious Trump lovers, I’m reminded of the “World’s Greatest Showman” P.T. Barnum’s famous quote:

“The public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived.”

Trump's raucous fans seem oblivious to the fact that the funhouse floor could drop out from under them at any time.

Death Incubates In The Homeland

Back to reality. 

While Trump deluded and distracted both himself, as well as his impressionable fans that night at the Jersey Shore, the Coronavirus had already invaded other American shores – and was incubating death.

More than a week earlier, the first case of Covid-19 infection was reported in Washington State. And studies now suggest that New York's 32,000 Covid-19 deaths can be traced to infected travelers arriving from Europe "as early as January."

It wasn't like Trump was in the dark.

Earlier that day of the Wildwood rally, Jan. 28, according Bob Woodward's book "Rage," Trump was briefed by his national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien on the looming threat of the virus.

"This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency," O'Brien told President Trump. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

Also, at the meeting, Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, concurred with O'Brien. He told the President that "it was evident that the world faced a health emergency on par with the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide."

On Jan. 23,  the World Health Organization had already confirmed that Covid-19 was a contagion that spread from “human to human."

The President also had been briefed by intelligence officials on the deadly virus originating from Wuhan, China, as early as the first week in January.

Trump was fully informed. He knew a disastrous lethal pandemic, threatening to afflict millions of Americans, was looming just over the horizon.

But the President had other priorities: touting the stock market numbers; playing golf at one of his properties on the taxpayer's dime; seeking vengeance against patriots who testified to Trump's malfeasance during his impeachment; and yes, holding campaign rallies.

President Trump wasn't going to allow such alarming reports about a plaque poised to wipe out untold numbers of American lives, sour that night's planned boardwalk hustle in Wildwood.

Newly minted U.S. congressional Republican turncoat Jeff Van Drew was counting on Trump's hucksterism to gin up support for his upcoming face off with his old party come November.

As Barnum, one of Trump's mentors would declare -- the show must go on. And as Bobby Rydell sang in his famous song of the summertime beach resort "Wildwood Days": "Every day's a holiday, and every night is a Saturday night." 

Apparently, even in the dead of winter.

To hell with reality. Let's just party, man. Of course, Trump failed to utter even a peep of precaution to the people about the Coronavirus encroaching chaos on their lives that night at the rally. 

Funhouse Floor Starts To Give

It wouldn’t be for another grueling six weeks of inexcusable denial on Trump’s behalf before he was forced to publicly recognize the virus menace in mid-March, and only then go through the motions of taking the virus seriously.

The funhouse floor was starting to give.

Even so, Trump has yet to take the Covid-19 virus seriously -- even as the virus has claimed more than 208,000 American lives.

The President called the virus a "hoax," claimed it was “totally under control” and suggested it will simply disappear come April – in essence, the way truth evaporates at one of his ugly, demagogic rallies.

By shirking blame, playing politics and stoking the racial divide, the President has served more as a complicit, facilitating, destructive agent of the Covid-19 virus, than anything remotely resembling a commander-in-chief.

Turns out, Trump's boardwalk hustle carnival act rally is the perfect metaphor for his entire presidency, which, for four chaotic years has lacked anything redeeming, genuine or good.

The Trump presidency literally has been one giant, caustic, distracting sideshow -- playing the citizenry for a bunch of thoughtless fools.

Featured Freak Running Sideshow

And now, the featured sideshow freak has escaped the red-and-yellow circus tent, hi-jacked the barker's box and is peddling discount tickets for a peep inside an empty tent.

And the suckers are still lining up. Trump's cult-like believers are still guzzling down the snakeoil. Will they ever snap out of it?

Nine months since Trump's wild Wildwood rally, the Covid-19 pandemic is on pace to have killed at least a quarter million Americans by the year's end. More than 7 million people -- including the President himself, his wife, White House staff and campaign officials, have been infected. 

And just as troubling, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and health insurance.

If Trump had acted just a couple weeks earlier, experts and common sense tell us,  instead of waiting until the middle of March to alert Americans of the immediate danger and implement nation-wide social distancing, the overwhelming majority of American lives lost to the Coronavirus, would have been saved. 

Trump did this. Again and again, he did this.

The repercussions from President Trump's disastrous and criminal failures to take the pandemic seriously, are seemingly endless and ever painful.

Whether Trump believers allow themselves to see it or not, the show is over. The funhouse floor has finally given way.

(Kevin McKinney is a freelance writer and former daily newspaper journalist, living at the Jersey Shore. He traveled with a small circus in the mid 90's and for a strange, few days filled in as a sideshow barker. His essays have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hill, Counter Punch and McClatchy Newspapers.)

What "Pivot"?

What didn't sit so well with me in the just-released audio from Bob Woodward's new book "Rage", is how Woodward sounds more like a public relations man for the President, trying to coax the best PR storyline for public consumption.

Not to detract from the author's past exemplary investigative work, primarily during the Watergate scandal that exposed President Richard Nixon's foul play.

But, from the tape alone, Woodward sounds as if he's feeding into President Donald Trump mania, assuming Trump had a wake up call "pivot" in his realization of the Coronavirus' deadly potential.

We knew Trump knew. And the President never demonstrated any kind of "pivot" to take heroic action on behalf of the people. He was forced to finally warn the public after the stock market numbers dived.

Trump blew off the virus and he's still blowing it off because he's never taken his duties as President to the American people, seriously.

The President's admission to knowing the virus' lethality, but doing nothing to alert the citizenry, and even intentionally play it down, is damning and his actions are criminal. In a matter of months, Trump facilitated the deaths of nearly 200,000 human beings in America. He should be charged with manslaughter.

However, in a queer way, the interview gives Trump an opportunity to insert his alibi into the public record -- that he was simply thinking of the people all along. 

It leaves wiggle room for the likes of White House mouthpiece Kayleigh McEnany to contrivedly portray Trump as some kind of compassionate leader who "didn't want to panic" his constituents -- with the truth they urgently needed to hear.

When was the last time Trump ever tread gently on the hearts and minds of the American people? 

Instilling "panic" is Trump's lifeblood. Stirring uncertainty and civil unrest is the only thing the President does exceedingly well.

Fear-mongering about "the other" while encouraging white supremisct violence and snuggling up to dictators while subbing our allies is the President's forte.

Like all Trump Loyalist defenses, the propagandist proffering of compassion on Trump's part is absurd and isn't a defense at all.

Still, it's virtually guaranteed that pro-Trumpers of all walks will seize on this pathetic narrative that the President was simply looking out for the people's best interests.

Words matter. Those who haven't buried their heads in the sand, or hid behind a false God to excuse Trump's criminal behavior, know that the President's words can be as caustic as they are empty. And yes, Trump's words often are unsettlingly revealing.

But, they are distracting, too.

The President is sabotaging the vote. He's ignoring the desperate cries for racial and economic equality. He's squashing intelligence warnings of Russia's persistent efforts to manipulate the presidential elections -- again. 

And nearly 200,000 Americans are dead from the Covid-19 pandemic, the President simply blew off and lied to the American people about.

The President is exacerbating death, stoking extremism and threatening to destroy this nation. Regardless of what Trump uncredibly utters, he must answer to these and the rest of his crimes.

How Does A Citizenry Thrive With A President It Can't Trust?

So, I'm thinking that it's not so healthy for the American people or a democracy, if the citizenry must constantly wonder whether its President's words are serious, a joke or simply insane.

Anyone?

https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/06/23/trump-joking-slowing-coronavirus-testing-335459?__twitter_impression=true

Stand-up To Trump

Which side are you on?

While The Poor People's Campaign was celebrating its "National Call For Moral Revival" in a virtual march on Washington, DC, this past Saturday, President Donald Trump was performing his self-gratifying, demagogic, stand up comedy act in Tulsa -- mocking the nation's plight as it awakens to systemic racism and battles an unprecedented pandemic that has killed more than 120,000 people in just a few months.

The contrast between the two events couldn't be greater.

The choice between which movement to support, couldn't be more grave.

While people are still dying from Covid-19, and others are still grieving the deaths of loved ones at the hands of the lethal virus and racist, militarized cops, the President went up on stage and played the class clown for a let down crowd of some 6,000 or so.

"You know testing is a double-edged sword," Trump said, bragging that the United States had tested 25 million people. "Here's the bad part ... when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people; you're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please." 

Ba-dump-bump.

Whether he was kidding or just further muddying up his criminal role in exacerbating the virus, by pretending that he was kidding about something he very well may have done, it doesn't much matter. 

It's a creepy, shallow, damning thing to say. But that's Trump. As I tweeted when he said it, he'll say he was kidding. And his camp did. Hey, it's all part of the Trump schtick.

And it's just another reminder that the press should pay little mind to his clown show, stand up rallies that are devoid of substance or anything redeeming, and pay closer attention to his actual war on law and order in this country.

So, which side are you on?

Join the right movement:

https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org

Celebrate Juneteenth

Celebrate Juneteenth

https://www.vox.com/21296075/juneteenth-emancipation-black-lives-matter

Trump's Tulsa Hate Rally

President Donald Trump is escalating his war against decency, common sense, compassion and justice to a whole new level.

Trump will hold a rally Saturday evening in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the ravages of endemic racism and a spiking Coronavirus will collide in an unpredictable, in-your-face, volatile mix that strips away any remaining vestiges of the crumbling facade that Trump gives the slightest  damn about anything, or anyone, but himself.

In other words, Trump is holding a divisive, delusional rally, revealingly, at precisely the wrong place and exactly the wrong time.

While Tulsa and the state of Oklahoma have seen Covid-19 cases spike in recent weeks, the Trump campaign plans to pack a 19,000-seat arena with rabid fans without requiring they wear face coverings to protect them from the virus' spread.

As health officials from every walk strongly advise against such insanity -- Trump doesn't care. 

Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, 

Descript

Trump's own personal Squealer the pig -- who in Animal Farm constantly and enthusiastically twisted the truth for the leader pig, Napoleon -- assures, temperatures will be taken at the door, sanitizer handed out and masks supplied. 

The Trump campaign, however, won't mandate that the masks be worn. Trump is thumbing his nose at science, rejecting all reason, misleading masses so he can satisfy that Realty TV-shtick  impulse to shock, delude and incite.

So, why would a demonstrated demagogue like Trump, amidst national racial upheaval, decide to hold a rally on Juneteenth (Fri., June 19) weekend that celebrates Slavery's end, and in a city that, this same month 99 years ago, was ground zero of the "Tulsa Race Massacre" which left 300 black people slaughtered and an entire wealthy black community destroyed?

Some 35 blocks of America's wealthiest black community, known as "Black Wall Street," was burned to the ground and estimated 10,000 black citizens we're left homeless in one the gravest acts of racial violence in American history.

The answer is clear. Just as he has done -- ever since this country saw the misfortune of Trump entering the presidential race five excruciatingly long years ago -- the divider-in-chief is stoking the fires of hatred and violence.

In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified four different hate groups active in Oklahoma: the American Identity Movement (White Nationalist), Patriot Front (White Nationalist), Patriotic Brigade Knights of the Klu Klux Klan and Proud Boys (classified as "General Hate").

So what further pain will Saturday's hate rally bring?

Whether he's aware of it or not, Trump has abandoned any pretense of caring about racial hatred in the country or the Covid-19 virus which has claimed more than 120,000 lives in America. 

Trump never gave any indication that he genuinely cared, of course. While Covid-19 was clearly incubating death across the homeland, Trump blew it off, downplayed it. He's never embraced the full magnitude of this pandemic. He only went through the motions of pretending to care. 

And now, when it's simply too damn inconvenient to his re-election hopes and his narcissistic drive to grandstand and bamboozle the desperately gullible, the President is hedging his bets, irresponsibly, criminally, throwing caution and the health and safety of Americans, to the wind.

Time To Make This Land A Land For All Of Us

"This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me."

- Woody Guthrie

Those lyrics from Woody Guthrie's song, "This Land is your land," ran through my head as I awoke yesterday morning.

Great song. A great reminder that this land, this country, under the great Democratic experiment of America, is supposed to be the home of equal rights and justice for all. 

But it's a idyllic notion, that's never been realized -- for all of us.

This land has never really been black Americans' land. African Americans never have been made to feel welcome, dating back more than 400 years ago, to 1619 in Jamestown, VA, when Africans were first introduced to American soil as slaves.

And before this land was claimed by the white man as their own, the land, for all intents and purposes, belonged to native Americans until so many of them were slaughtered at the white man's hand.

So whose land is it, really?

Like many of us, I've been pondering the vast injustices of "our land."

The intense hatred and engrained racism is borne of fear. And that fear is covered up by the pathetic political posturing of ruthless, alarmist, greedy, elitist, controlling miscreants, posing as heroic defenders of righteousness, so they can satisfy their obsessions with self, and have their way.

So much has been written about the horrible killing of George Floyd for the past three and half weeks. What is there left to say? Plenty. Hundreds of years of oppression, discrimination demands it.

How does a cop crush the life out of a man for more than eight minutes, seemingly without a care in the world, while being video-tapped doing it?

What makes Floyd's killing so unfathomable was that it wasn't the result of an impulsive, adrenalin-fueled, act of fear, where a cop fires his gun at an unarmed black man.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with Floyd's murder, acted like a wild animal, a jungle cat which, after it initially takes down a vulnerable Gazelle, firmly clamps it's jaws down on its prey's throat, patiently squeezing out its last breath. 

Chauvin's act, coupled with the look on his face, was evil.  Period. It was cold-blooded murder, which is how I described it when I first saw it on Twitter, shortly after Memorial Day.

When I watched it again, incredulous, like many of us, I cried.

On Tuesday, Minneapolis state police filed court documents, indicating it too is reviewing former cop Chauvin's actions.

Now, amidst the inspiring  peaceful protests, demanding police accountability and serious reform, all across this land and the world, it feels like real change, real justice is finally possible.

Jesus Christ, who preached love, truth and forgiveness was crucified on a crude cross, to save man, according to God's plan. God's righteousness demanded such a price.

George Floyd, who once told a friend "I want to touch the world" and who mostly spread love and joy during his 46 years on earth, was also killed by hate, it seems, to save the rest of us.

(I wrote the piece below for Counter Punch a year and a half ago, amidst racial tensions surrounding a Mississippi senate race. It relates my experience with southern racism when I lived in the Magnolia State in the late 1990's.)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/27/mississippi-memories-youre-not-black-are-you/

Trump's Twitter Tizzy Isn't About Free Speech At All

Free speech is one matter. But intentional, self-obsessed, alarmist lies, plainly designed to cause serious, irreparable harm to the U.S. citizenry, is another.

After President Donald Trump's Twitter tizzy on Tuesday, the President signed an executive order just two days later, on Thursday, that threatens U.S. government oversight of political speech on social media. 

Trump, at his press conference Thursday, proposterously feigned: "We're here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers." 

The President's executive order comes after Twitter, on Tuesday, added clarifications at the bottom of a pair of Trump's tweets, which baselessly fear-mongered that voting by mail invited rampant voter fraud. 

But Trump is the only true fraud. Twitter simply clarified the truth and the prerequisites of voting by mail, setting the record straight in the public's interest.

By the way, election fraud, not voter fraud, is the real looming threat to the integrity of the 2020 presidential elections. But Trump and his abetting Republican loyalists, for obvious reasons, don't want to go there.

Trump's childish lashing out at Twitter, unsettlingly, has become the typical, vengeful behavior we have come to expect from the tempestuous "commander in chief." 

Conveniently, such blowhard displays distract from Trump's criminal complicity in a deadly pandemic that has now claimed more than 100,000 American lives.

Of course, what Trump actually is proposing to do with his new executive order, is squeeze the life out of the First Amendment rights of free speech in America.

He's convolutedly, wrongly suggesting that free speech gives one, namely him, the right to purposefully mislead the public to their detriment.

It's illegal to scream "fire" in a crowded movie theater, risking panic and serious injury, if there is no fire. But, that's what Trump has been doing these past nearly five, mind-numbing years with mounting malevolence.

Trump's been screaming "fire" through: his discriminatory policy that deprives the needy to feed the greedy; in his accusatory pressers that provoke chaos; and his exhaustively inciting tweets that gratingly disparage the righteous to offer cover and comfort for the criminal.

The "Fairness Doctrine," requiring TV and radio broadcasts to provide equal time for advocates from both sides of a public issue, was disbanded under President Ronald Reagan in 1987. That gave us the caustic, misinformation-generating, Trump-propagandist news outlet, Fox News.

Now, Trump is attempting to twist our inherent sense of fairness, under the guise of "free speech," into something much more grotesque and un-American.

'Each Man's Death Diminishes Me'

Reading through the list of names of deceased Covid-19 victims on the front page of the New York Times Sunday, I was sorry to see famed, immensely talented jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli's name.

Bucky Pizzarelli, 94, Saddleback, NJ, master of jazz guitar, jumped out from the list of names on the Times' front page, just 1 percent of the nearly 100,000 dead from the Coronavirus pandemic.

Bucky Pizzarelli

Bucky Pizzarelli. It was a musically punchy name my brother and I heard a lot growing up. It's a name that's fun to say. Bucky Pizzarelli. It was a name my mother, Doris Kavanaugh McKinney, mentioned often.

"He could really play that guitar," my Mom would rave, pretending to fast strum a guitar as she relived exciting days of her youth and her brush with fame as the lead female vocalist with The Vaughn Monroe Orchestra in the late 1940's.

Bucky was the young, versatile rhythm guitarman, in his early 20's, for Monroe's big band when my mother joined Monroe's orchestra for a year right after graduating from Notre Dame High School for girls in Radnor, PA. in 1948.

My Mother Doris Kavanaugh

My mother, then, simply Doris Kavanaugh, aged 18, was often featured with Monroe's orchestra, accompanied by the "Moon Maids" quartet, on the Camel Caravan, a musical variety radio program. They broadcast out of New York City. My father, who had yet to marry my mother, would be listening in Philadelphia.

After a year, my mother lovestruck and homesick, would return to Philadelphia and marry my father, Jack McKinney who shared my mother's love for music.

While my father landed a gig as music/opera critic at the Philadelphia Daily News, my mother would continue to sing professionally the rest of her life, but closer to home.

As I reflect on the unfathomable number of lives lost from the pandemic, I can't help reminisce, conscious not so much of our transient lives, but the intransigent gifts of music, song, laughter, love and artistry in many forms that live on long after we've gone.

My mother would be a featured performer at the South Jersey Shore summertimes through the late '50s into the early '90s -- singing at Cozy Morley's in North Wildwood, The Whitebrier in Avalon and the Two Mile Inn just outside Wildwood Crest.

In the late '70s and early '80s, Doris Kavanaugh headlined summers at the Red Garter in North Wildwood, NJ, belting out Roaring Twenties favorites like "Hard Hearted Hannah" and "Second Hand Rose" to jubilant, crowds of Styrofoam "straw" hat-wearing, pitcher-of-beer drinking crowds. 

My father, Jack, gained notoriety as a fine music critic and then would become known as "Fearless Jack" in the Daily News' sports pages, sparring with Heavyweight Boxing Champ Sonny Liston and braving a cage of Clyde Beatty's lions, armed with just a whip and a chair. Later, he helped pioneer talk radio with his four-hour program "Night Talk."
.

My father Jack McKinney

Jack and Doris would have five children. Their artistry lives on.

Bucky Pizzarelli would go on to greatness, often behind the scenes, nailing down the rhythmic bottom on hundreds of records for scores of music legends.

He performed and recorded with a who's who of big names, including Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Ben E. King to name a few.

Pizzarelli was a member of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show band when the show broadcast from New York. He widely recorded and performed up to his final years in his 90's.

I met Bucky about 15 years ago or so, when he performed at the Cape May Jazz Festival. He was awesome; a controlled explosion of jazzy chordal rhythms and exquisite runs.

Bucky was welcoming to me after his performance. "I remember her," he said fondly of my mother, the petite blonde with a bombshell voice, who had passed a few years earlier. I handed him a compact disc of my mom singing with tracks from the Nelson Riddle Orchestra.

He gladly took it and told me an acquaintance had just discovered some old recordings from the period my mom sang and Bucky played with Monroe's orchestra. I hoped to get a hold of them, particularly if they included my mother's singing. Bucky and I communicated through his manager, but apparently no recordings of my mother on the Camel Caravan or other gigs were discovered.

Seeing Bucky's name on the front page of the Times today, brought the toll of the Coronavirus pandemic a little closer to home. These just aren't simply names any more than they are mere statistics. They had families, hobbies, unique talents, dreams and loves as we all do.

They were teachers, singers, musicians, poets, cooks, artists, dancers, bus drivers and maintenance men. They strived, sweated, laughed, prayed and cried. And they loved -- a wife, a husband, their children, a pet bird or a cat. They were, and are, us.

Some reached for the stars and got a hold of one, like Bucky. I couldn't help thinking how much history, how much instructive wisdom and knowledge these mostly older Americans took with them. What gems could they have shared with us?

Many fought for their country on faraway battlefields and survived with the scars, only to be let down by their own government's failure to timely alert its citizens to a lethal virus that has claimed more lives in America in just two months than war has taken the past half century. 

A particularly inauspicious and sobering fact on this Memorial Day weekend, as we honor our fallen heroes.

Each life is so precious, worth so much more than jewels. And we lost a whole treasure chest full in just a matter of months. They are all part of a singular family now. They will be missed and thought of often and fondly.

I'm reminded of a quote from John Donne's poem, "For Whom the Bell Tolls":

Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

What of Maskless Masses?

The barrell-shaped, bearded guy with a Budweiser beer in his hand, approaches me as I belt sand smooth a deck handrail at a marina in Wildwood, NJ, last Friday. He's not wearing a facial covering, as he boldly insists that "this pandemic thing is overblown." 

The guy stood five or six feet away, but I slipped the bandana that was around my neck, up over my mouth and nose. I remind the guy that nearly 90,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States in a couple months.

"Yeah, more people die from pneumonia every year” he parroted what sounded like a Fox News soundbite.

What do you say to this?  

Then, the guy went on the tiresome lament, that Conservatives, in particular, like to muddy the water with -- "Really, you just don’t know who to believe."

Of course, he went on about how all politicians are crooked and all news stations can't be trusted.

 I suggested that for starters, he cross off Donald Trump and Fox News from the list of even remotely believable sources. "Okay, so you don't like Trump," he retorted, and went on a rant about "those Democrats."

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

It's as if we've lost our common sense, our ability to listen to our gut or think for ourselves. We need a talking head to tell us what to believe or how to feel.

So, amidst the confusion, what the heck? Why not, just party, man?

I thought of that Mark Twain line:

"Never argue with stupid people, they will only drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience."

A few minutes later, the same guy was gathered with about 5 or 6 other people around a small deck in front of a house overlooking the harbor. They were yukin' it up as if they were in a local bar and the Coronavirus had never happened. Only one person that I could see was wearing a facial mask covering.

On Saturday, hundreds of people swarmed the Wildwood Boardwalk. The Cape May Standard, published on Twitter a picture of the boardwalk crowds; the overwhelming majority were maskless. I could indentify maybe five people, out of about a hundred in the picture, wearing masks.

In the meantime, Governor Phil Murphy is still working out phased reopening plans for New Jersey. It seems to me, we need to more urgently insist that folks mask up and don't get lax about wearing a face covering in public, particularly amidst crowds.

How many individuals could be unknowingly carrying the virus and pass it on?

How many might catch the virus and spread it to wherever they came from after happy time on the boardwalk is over?

In the same way, the Trump administration criminally failed Americans by declaring a national emergency around the Covid-19 pandemic several weeks too late, hence ensuring the deaths of tens of thousands of people, President Trump prematurely, irresponsibly is chomping at the bit, egging on the impatient, to reopen the country.

This precarious moment in time demands wisdom, compassion and finesse -- three qualities in which the President is miserably lacking. Just a couple weeks could mean the difference between life or death for many.

I hope and pray the virus numbers drop steadily. But if New Jersey or surrounding states, like Pennsylvania, New York or Delaware experience any type of jump in Coronavirus cases in the coming weeks, we'll have a pretty good idea why.

So, yeah, if the maskless multitudes observed in Wildwood this past Saturday, is any indication of the senseless citizen behavior that we can expect this Memorial Day weekend re-opening -- we unwittingly could be ringing the dinner bell (to borrow from Jaws) for the "invisible enemy."

Trump: Virus "Numbers" Are "Really, Very, Very Strong"

President Donald Trump is downplaying the Coronavirus all over again. 

As parts of the United States get ready for a phased-in reopening at the President's urging, Trump is tapping out the same disingenuous dance number that led to the nearly 64,000 lives snuffed out in America.

This time, Trump is downplaying the virus's ravages, namely the deaths, fluffing off our lost souls as mere statistics and acting as if the epidemic is already over.

"Our deaths, our numbers, per million people, are really very, very strong," Trump upchucked today. "We're very proud of the job we've done."

Proud? 

It's as if the President's talking about the stock market performance of a corporate Trump sycophant like Walmart -- "Our numbers.. are really, very, very strong." 

Trump's meandering public addresses are increasingly the detached blatherings of a sociopath. And reminder: he's our President.

Those, 64,000 people happened to die because Trump was too focused, for more than two months, on stock market numbers, golfing, holding "Keep America Great" rallies and seeking vengeance against impeachment witnesses.

The President should be charged with manslaughter.

Yet, the imbecilic con man hasn't learned his lesson. He never learns his lesson. He's not interested in learning any lessons. Of course, he feigns concern. But not very well.

"This plague should never have happened," Trump said at last evening's business round table with industry execs who were present to dutifully lick the President's boots and convince America it was time to go back to work. "It could’ve been stopped, but people chose not to stop it."

That was the closest we'll get to an admission of guilt from the President. He's admitting "it could have been stopped, but people chose not to stop it." 

Trump just isn't saying he happens to be the guy who knew death was incubating in the homeland and simply blew it off as little consequence..

But, we knew that already.

The President ignored repeated warnings of the Coronavirus virus threat, detailed in his presidential daily briefings from early January through February.

Trump belatedly declared a national emergency on March 13. It was way too late. Some 1,700 cases of Covid-19 had been confirmed and 40 deaths reported.

The virus was already uncontrollably spreading across the homeland, compromising lives.

Now, the master illusionist President is promising once again the virus "is going to go away" as if this will happen at the snap of Trump's fingers.

In the meantime, the divider-in-chief continues to cast blame everywhere -- President Barack Obama, state governors, the World Health Organization and China. There will be others. 

I'm afraid that the death toll will climb much higher, particularly if citizens don't continue to take social distancing seriously. 

There still aren't enough virus test kits and components or reliable anti-body tests out there to track the contagion and help instruct who can safely return to the work place and when.

And I'm concerned that really deep down, the President -- who no doubt would happily turn a resurgent national emergency into a means of autocratic control come election day this November -- just doesn't give a damn either way.

The "Invisible Enemy" Has A Face: Trump's

The "invisible enemy" now has a foreboding face; it's the one President Donald Trump sees glaring back when he looks in the mirror.

Since the President first dismissed the Coronavirus threat more than three months ago, claiming "it's totally under control," Trump has served more like a facilitating, destructive agent of the Coronavirus, than anything remotely resembling a commander-in-chief. 

Peddling preposterous theory, incessantly inciting and brazenly boasting, the autocrat President has insufferably sown uncertainty across the homeland while the deadly virus morphed into a pandemic that has claimed more than 58,000 lives.

When the American people desperately needed a capable, compassionate leader committed to upholding his oath of office and look out for the common good, Trump consistently has proven himself not only incapable, but uninterested.

"I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said way back at his landmark March 13, press conference, when asked to explain his administration’s failure to ensure that Americans had  enough Coronavirus test kits, which are key to tracking and ultimately minimizing the disease’s death toll.

Not only does the President deny any culpability for failing to ensure testing for a beleagued nation,, Trump still is shirkinking responsibility for blowing off the pandemic threat even after it was clearly incubating death in the homeland in February and the first half of March.

President Trump incessantly comes off like the panicked kid who breaks the treasured heirloom antique vase while carelessly tossing the football in the house, and then repeatedly, exhaustively – hence guiltily – denying culpability to his mother.

His younger brother did it. Or, it could have been that tremor that shook the house violently, but nobody else in the neighborhood felt. Maybe it was the wind blowing through the closed window.

As far as Trump is concerned, it seems, what’s broken or lost for good, mind as well just be an inanimate nick-knack with a price tag. Something he can buy off with bluster that bamboozles a strained and fearful citizenry on the brink.

But, Trump is stiff and unconvincing when he occasionally feigns to care about the mounting number of lives lost, largely due to his atrocious failures. He seems to relish the talk of death, mentioning body bags and bodies.

Despite what the President and his cheerleading sycophant Vice President Mike Pence claimed at this evening's Rose Garden press conference, there still aren't enough test kits and test components to go around for the country to safely open back up come Friday, or soon thereafter.

And Trump should have stuck to his crybaby threat to cool off on the virus pressers after taking heat for last Thursday's disastrous display of, what Common Dream's Robert Reich today appropriately described as "quackery."

Anymore, when the President isn't insulting a reporter or stroking his ego about the "great job" his administration has done to keep the death toll down, he sounds like one of Big Pharma's TV ads, pushing a drug that might make you feel better -- if it doesn't kill you, first.

First, it was Hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug unproven to fight Covid-19. Of late, it's household disinfectant and ultraviolet rays he's floating as a Coronavirus cure. If the virus doesn't get you, Trump will.

When asked tonight about why he thinks poison control hotlines lit up from people inquiring whether it's safe to ingest or inject disinfectant, Trump predictably played dumb.

"I can't imagine why," he said. Asked if he took responsibility for the public's confusion, Trump answered "No, I don't," and quickly moved on to another reporter.

Trump may be thinking he can bamboozle his way forward with sleight-of-hand doublespeak to magically make last week's "disinfectant" advice "disappear" like a "miracle" -- as he promised the Coronavirus would two months ago.

But, just as the virus isn't dispelled by distracting bluster or disparaging tweets, Trump's latest snake oil remedy will stick in memories for sometime. 

Unfortunately, as if we all didn't have more urgent matters to address, you just have to wonder what poisonous "elixir" Dr. Don will be recommending next?

Trump Has Joined Forces With The "Invisible Enemy"

President Donald J. Trump has become one with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Even before Trump won the Republican presidential nomination in July of 2016, more than three chaotic, painful years ago, I've warned that Trump was "America's most dangerous home-bred terrorist."

"Trump whose number one goal has always been self-enrichment, is America's most dangerous home-bred terrorist," I wrote in The Hill shortly before the 2016 presidential elections. 

"His weapons are fear and divisiveness planted not-so-subtly in the hearts and minds of the disenchanted subject to explode anytime."

President Trump has done nothing but prove that out every bullying, bamboozling, bungled step of the way since occupying the Oval Office in January 2017.

Under Trump, hate crimes have skyrocketed. The citizenry has split into opposing hardened factions. And Congress, in our lifetimes, has never been more partisan.

Now, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed more than 40,000 in America and left 22 million unemployed, it's never been more clear that Trump from the get-go was not only the wrong guy for the job -- but the worst.

When the American people have most needed a capable, compassionate leader committed to upholding his oath of office and looking out for the common good, Trump consistently has proven himself incapable.

"I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said at one of his dysfunctional press conferences March 13, when asked about the administration’s failure to ensure that Americans had prompt widespread access to Coronavirus test kits – a key to identifying and ultimately minimizing the disease’s death toll.

After two months of criminally downplaying the Coronavirus threat – claiming the virus was “totally under control,” labeling it a “hoax” and saying it will magically “be gone by April"– the master illusionist President has spent more time casting blame on others, picking political fights and promoting what a “perfect” job he is doing – than protecting American lives.

While the Coronavirus reached American shores and incubated in the citizenry during January and February, Trump's focus was on his re-election prospects that hinged on a strong stock market and a bustling economy.

The President who claims he wants to "Keep America Great," while the virus spread in the homeland, was holding campaign rallies, golfing at his properties and seeking vengeance against officials who exposed his malfeasance that led to the President's impeachment.

Now, Trump’s daily, disingenuous, chaotic reality TV press conferences are sickening, bumbling displays of accusation, deflection, braggadocio and most unsettling of all – misinformation.

Trump repeatedly lies about testing availability and still claims he inherited faulty Covid-19 testing from President Barack Obama. Of course, that’s impossible. The Center for Disease Control, under Trump, produced those initial faulty tests this year when the virus hit.

"No one saw this coming," Trump repeatedly says. But, just about everyone saw the epidemic encroaching -- except Trump.

Health and intelligence officials have been sounding the alarm bells about the Coronavirus for months. And many of the same national health officials have been warning for years, during Trump’s presidency, that the United States was woefully unprepared to contend with a global pandemic and that it was just a matter of time before one emerged.

The same day, March 13, Trump declared the Coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, releasing $500 billion in federal funding, he played dumbed when asked why his administration in 2018 eliminated the National Security Council’s global health unit.

"I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said about his administration’s dismantling of the pandemic unit that President Obama formed during the 2014 Ebolpa outbreak to help ensure the United States was prepared for pandemics such as the Coronavirus.

Trump's politicizing of the pandemic, applauding red state governors and criticizing blue state governors, as all of America scrambles to survive and confront this scourge, only abets the disease. His conflicting messages that cheer on unmasked protesters at government buildings pushing to end social distancing prematurely, is insane.

The President's latest target in his blame game is the World Health Organization WHO, which the U.S. gives hundreds of millions of dollars each year to coordinate global responses to epidemics like Covid-19.

In another pathetic case of deflection and projection to obscure his atrocious handling of the Coronavirus, Trump wants to riskily defund WHO, claiming it failed to timely alert world leaders, namely the U.S., about the pandemic.

But if WHO was sluggish in assessing the pandemic threat, Trump was inexplicably dismissive and flat-out mocked the unfolding global crisis for weeks after he was fairly warned of the virus’ lethality for which there was no vaccine.

On Jan. 23, the WHO updated its assessment of the virus threat, confirming “human to human transmission” of the Coronavirus and that the “global risk was high.”

Then, on Jan. 30, the WHO declared the Coronavirus to be a “Public health Emergency of International Concern” and warned countries “to be prepared for containment, including active surveillance, early detection, isolation, and case management, contact tracing and prevention of onward spread.”

Yet, all President Trump did was ban flights from Chinese nationals on Jan 31. Thousands of Americans who had traveled to China, still were allowed to return home, unscreened and untested for the virus. The President wouldn't acknowledge the virus' serious threat publicly or take any other significant action for another lost six weeks.

By halting WHO funding, Trump, again is making critical decisions designed to obfuscate his guilt and boost his phony stance as a “war time President” – which, at the same time, weakens the global effort to get the disease under control.

It should be clear by now, that Trump, wittingly or not, has been a facilitating arm of the Coronavirus. His multitude of missteps, incites, lies and boasts have done nothing to hinder the deadly disease’s spread.

Quite to the contrary. The President's dark-minded, contrived chaos has only exacerbated Covid-19's destructive path of death and financial dire straights for Americans. 

The pandemic not only has uncovered the engrained economic disparities of America's poor and uninsured, but it's undeniably exposed Trump as America's greatest enemy.

Bernie And Joe Uniting Key To Reclaiming Country

Finally, the kind of unity this country has been desperately lacking and unequivocally needs right now amidst the unprecedented, heartless scourge of President Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders endorses Joe Biden for president

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/13/politics/bernie-sanders-endorses-joe-biden/index.html

Sanders: "Today, I am asking all Americans, I'm asking every Democrat, I'm asking every Independent, I'm asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse."

Biden: "I think that your endorsement means a great deal. It means a great deal to me. I think people are going to be surprised that we are apart on some issues but we're awfully close" on others, Biden said. "I'm going to need you -- not just to win the campaign, but to govern."

Bring it on.

We Still Need Bernie

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) may have dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, but he's not going away. 

Announcing his withdrawal from the race on Wednesday, Sanders said:

"While Vice President (Joe) Biden will be the nominee, we must continue working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic Convention, where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions."

That's a good thing for the American people. And a logical, smart move by Sanders to stay on the ticket.

The Covid-19 pandemic, that's killed nearly 15,000 and infected 430,000 Americans, has not just exposed the criminal fraudulence of President Donald Trump, who for months inexplicably denied the reality of the enchroaching deadly virus.

It's exposing in real time the very same gross economic and healthcare disparities between the haves and the have nots in this country, which Sanders has long decried louder and more consistently than any single presidential candidate in recent history.

Sanders' movement for social equality captures the character and compassion of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt "New Deal," which was instrumental in facilitating our nation's economic recovery from "The Great Depression" of 1929.

Now, more than ever, as the death count mounts daily from the Covid-19 outbreak, and society shuts down, the need for a universal healthcare system, a living wage and a government that actually gives a damn about its people is abundantly clear.

Prior to the pandemic, some 140 million people have been living below poverty or right at the cusp, just paycheck away from going bust and tens of millions were uninsured. But now, as Americans "shelter in place" amidst the Coronavirus epidemic, millions more have lost their jobs, as well as employer health benefits.

A record nearly 17 million workers have filed for unemployment in the past three weeks. Those millions of jobless and furloughed workers now face the uncertainity of keeping enough food on the table and paying bills.

But just as crucially, despite empty promises from the Trump administration, it's still unclear to what degree the suddenly uninsured will get stuck with hospital bills if they get sick.

The $2.2 trillion relief package that Congress passed at the end of March for businesses, government agencies and citizens will help. But it won't be enough to offset expensive hospital stays.

On top of that, it's America's low-wage workers admirably working the front lines at Dollar General's and various essential businesses, who are most vulnerable.

Many of these underpaid workers putting their health on the line to serve the people, face a double or triple whammy.  Not only do they lack lack a living wage. They don't have healthcare either. And sick day pay is either scant or in some cases, non-existant.

So, what to do if they get sick?  They can't afford hospital bills. And they can't afford to not work either. Chances are they'll work sick, risking the spread of the virus to the community.

Americans may have allowed the right's fear mongering of Sanders as a "socialist" to force them to play it safe with Biden, but Sanders' Democratic socialist (there's a difference) ideas have gained wide traction across the homeland, nonetheless.

“It was not long ago that people considered these ideas radical and fringe,” Sanders said on Wednesday. “Today they are mainstream ideas.”

"I want to express to each of you my deep gratitude for helping to create an unprecedented political grassroots campaign that has had a profound impact in changing our nation,” Sanders told his supporters.

And Biden, acknowledging the success of the Sanders's movement of "Not me, Us," appears to be graciously welcoming Sanders input in shaping future Democratic policy.

“Bernie gets a lot of credit for his passionate advocacy for the issues he cares about,” Biden said. “But he doesn’t get enough credit for being a voice that forces us all to take a hard look in the mirror and ask if we’ve done enough.”

Said Biden: “While the Sanders campaign has been suspended — its impact on this election and on elections to come is far from over."

Amen to that.