Sunday School 7/26/20

Who's trying to make headway in the classrooms today?

Well, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, for one; he sat in ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos classroom for his first interview as CoS. He's the only interview for Sunday School; I'll have more in our Extra Credit post tomorrow.

Meadows said that, in the face of the rising death toll from the coronavirus (five straight days of at least 1000 deaths each, and at least 145,000 deaths overall), and the president's "sinking poll numbers," the strategy to turning this around is to

...focus, obviously, on trying to make sure there's therapeutics, vaccines and a number of mitigation strategies, hopefully for those that are suffering from the coronavirus.

And he said, money and time are no object; the president has made that clear. And, given "some of the breakthrough technology" on therapeutics, he's hopeful there'll be some new therapies announced soon. And, he said,

But this is a virus that came from China, something that's unexpected. Obviously, when you're in a political world, there are those things that you can control. There are those things that you can't. 

Now, I don't think - at all - it's acceptable for him to be pretending at this point, six months past the virus arriving in the US, with 145,000 people dead and projections of what, 200,000 deaths by fall, that anything here is "unexpected." That ship, Mr. Meadows, has long since sailed.  And what's also likely too late?

And, as we look at this, it's trying to make sure that we have got our entire team there to provide the relief that so many Americans are looking for and the hope that so many Americans are looking for.

And I'm hopeful that, in the next couple of days, that we will have some very good news on the therapeutic and vaccine fronts, as we try to address this China virus.

You want a way to 'address' the China virus?  Address it as the President Trump Virus - that's what we're dealing with now.

He also said that masks and shutting down the economy aren't the solution to the virus, but "Hopefully it is American ingenuity that will allow for therapies and vaccines to ultimately conquer this." He also spouted the Trump line on testing: we're testing more than any other country; they're only testing sick people, we're testing everyone; we're finding more cases because we're doing more testing; and so on. Nothing new there, at all.

On unemployment, he was clear that the $600 COVID unemployment bump will not be extended, saying that the benefits paid people not to work, which we've heard anecdotally but I haven't seen any real numbers on that.  Regardless - the Republicans "have been very clear" that won't be extended.

We are going to be prepared on Monday to provide unemployment insurance extension that would be 70% of whatever the wages you were prior to being unemployed, that it would reimburse you for up to 70% of those wages. Hopefully as a way to get people back on their feet. We’re prepared --

George interjected, saying that "administrators have said that that's going to be almost impossible to administer and people are going to face real gaps before they get any money.  Meadows said have no fear, they've already been talking about that, and

we believe that in a combination of working with (Treasury) Secretary Mnuchin and (Labor) Secretary Scalia, we'll be able to find a way to actually provide a threshold that will meet that guideline. 

He talked about "antiquated" state benefit systems and so the feds are going to have to work on this, and that Mnuchin is "willing to step in and help with that." And, he said, the economy's not where they want it, but "it's improving very quickly." They've been busy on a bill, he said, with the Republicans, adding

 But, honestly, I see us being able to provide unemployment insurance, maybe a retention credit, to keep people from being displaced or brought back into the workplace, helping with our schools. If we can do that along with liability protection, perhaps we put that forward, get that passed as we can negotiate on the rest of the bill in the weeks to come.

Moving to the upcoming election, George asked "Why does the president keep questioning the election? And why won't he say clearly, as every president has done before, that he’ll accept the results?"

That question turned into a discussion about mail-in ballots, and whether or not there has been wide-spread fraud with that method of voting. Meadows said basically that's because we haven't had "widespread mail-in ballots" and that the Dems "see this as their panacea of being able to put a ballot in every mailbox and hope for the best." Absentee ballots are OK, and the president supports it (even though he doesn't know where he lives and his permanent address may not be valid for legal - and voting- purposes.) 

What we do know is a number of times as we have mail-in ballots, if there is -- is not a chain of custody that goes from the voter to the ballot box, mischief can happen. And we’ve seen that throughout our history. We also see very clearly that if you're going to cast a ballot, you want to make sure it goes in the ballot box and it’s your vote that counts, not your vote for someone else that gets decided by another person.

Moving on to possible foreign interference in our election, from China, Russia and Iran, our intelligence community warned, George wondered if Trump talked about that with his favorite dictator, Vladimir Putin, and what Trump was doing to help prevent the interference.

No answer on the Putin question, but Meadows said Trump's doing a lot, a lot more than the previous administration; "hundreds of millions of dollars" have been invested and there were "two different legislative actions that this president has signed off on to make sure that election integrity is - is important." DHS is on it, DOJ is on it, the intel community is on it, he said.

Now, there's a big difference between foreign interference and foreign influence. They continue to try to influence, as everyone does across the globe. But in terms of actually affecting the vote totals and interacting, I think we're in a good place. We've been willing to work with secretaries of states of every -- of all 50 states as we look at that and the territories to make sure that their systems have the needed resources for the integrity to be there and so that we can count on that.

Well, goody for them, that they've "been willing to work with" all 50 states.  I mean, in any other administration, not immediately doing that would be a dereliction of duty, but this is the 'be nice to me or you're screwed' administration, so I guess we should give them a participation medal or something.

George switched to "continuing unrest" in the Oregon and Washington, where the feds have been sent in to protect federal property, and now the new deployments of feds to cities such as Albuquerque. He noted that New Mexico's gov. Michelle Lujan Griffin, had threatened to sue, and has invited the feds "to work together first" instead of just coming in. Will Meadows take her up on that? 

He said "we certainly want to work with" the governors of New Mexico and the other states where the feds are being deployed. And he took pains to describe the difference between the riot stuff and the crime stuff.  In Portland, he said, the agents are there to protect the courthouse that "has not only been vandalized, but they're trying to burn it down... I mean, we can't have this in American cities." In the other places, they're "trying to "come in and help with gang violence..."

This new thing - Operation LeGend, named after four-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was killed in Kansas City back in June. The op

-- is really designed to make sure that those moms and dads who have -- who have lost loved ones, who have lost kids and grandkids, and perhaps kids that have lost their parents because of gang violence in these cities, that we come in a very covert way to investigate and work alongside local law enforcement.

Again, we have the 'willing' concept -

Attorney General Barr has been willing to do that, is doing that now and certainly working with the governor in that fashion is what we would love to do.

So, are they willing to admit that a lot of this is really the president trying to shore up his base, and his all-important ratings? Or would they have us believe that this is all coming from the willing goodness of the president's heart?

Stay safe, stay skeptical, stay apart from others, and stay behind your mask.

See you around the virtual campus, and for tomorrow's Extra Credit.