‘You can’t always get what you want’
The
Rolling Stones are threatening legal action against Trump’s campaign for using their music at his campaign rallies — particularly their 1968 hit “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” a favored walk-off song at the conclusion of Trump’s campaign rallies. “Despite cease & desist directives to Donald Trump in the past, The Rolling Stones are taking further steps to exclude him using their songs at any of his future political campaigning,” a spokesman for the band said.
What progress looks like
Even by the post-Orwellian standards of this White House, Pence’s statement was staggering.
“Under the leadership of President Trump, we have made truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward,”
Pence said Friday, in the latest “Mission Accomplished” moment of the pandemic. “We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives.”
Here’s what happened next: On the same day that Pence made his claim, the US
set a record for new confirmed coronavirus infections in 24 hours: 40,173.
Saturday was worse, with 42,597 more Americans diagnosed. The pandemic is raging in key population centers in southern states that heeded the President’s demands for a rapid reopening. And Texas and Florida are pausing reopenings and closing bars where young people — increasing numbers of whom are infected — congregate.
The curve hasn’t been flattened. It’s going sharply up, even as America’s key competitors, like the European Union, have been more successful in suppressing the virus. The administration is spinning the younger ages of the infected as good news, as the young tend to get less sick. But wait until they go home and infect parents and grandparents.
Given the rising crisis, you might expect Trump to have spent the weekend chairing crisis meetings. Just the reverse. He played golf twice, and vowed to defend a statue of former President
Andrew Jackson. He then retweeted, and later deleted, a video in which one of his supporters chanted “white power.” It was an apt metaphor for a presidency that refuses to take obvious steps to slow the disease — like model the wearing of masks or encourage business closures — as thousands more Americans fall ill and die.
‘Great people’
Trump on Sunday morning
retweeted a video showing an argument between his supporters and critics at the Villages retirement community in Florida — during which a man driving a golf cart adorned with Trump campaign posters can also be heard chanting “white power.”
The President was grateful, writing, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!” he wrote in the tweet. Within three hours, his tweet was deleted — but not before South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black senator in the Republican conference, described it as “indefensible.” According to White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere, Trump just didn’t hear the part about white power.
Spot the difference
Masking up to prevent the spread of the coronavirus is broadly endorsed in the US — except by Trump, who recently described facial coverings as a “double-edged sword” hygiene-wise in an interview with
the Wall Street Journal. But many members of his party and friends abroad have already adopted masks, and would like him to fall in line already. “It would help if from time to time the President would wear one to help us get rid of this political debate that says if you’re for Trump, you don’t wear a mask, if you’re against Trump, you do,” said Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander over the weekend.
Meanwhile producer
Shelby Rose has found a few examples to underline Alexander’s point — from fellow Republicans wearing masks, to heads of state that Trump admires wearing masks, to leaders on both the global left and right wearing masks. At the very least, the staffers frantically working to keep the 74-year-old Trump from exposure to the virus would surely appreciate him wearing one.
Vice President Mike Pence wore a mask on Sunday to a robustly attended event at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, though he took it off for his speech.
Florida governor and staunch Trump ally Ron DeSantis has resisted mandating masks for all, but he did don his own mask as he left a news conference on June 19 at Florida International University in Miami.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants Americans to wear masks in public until there is a prophylaxis for Covid-19. “Until we find a vaccine, these are really important,” McConnell said Friday while holding up a blue mask, according to CNN affiliate WKYT. “This is not as complicated as a ventilator, and this is a way to indicate that you want to protect others.”
Representatives Doug Lamborn and Liz Cheney, both Republicans, wore masks to a classified House Armed Services Committee briefing on May 28. Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has also posted a photo of her father sporting a mask with the quote, “Real men wear masks.”
“Everyone should just wear a damn mask,” says Republican Senator Marco Rubio. He followed his own advice as he arrived for a vote in Washington, DC, on June 14.
It’s not just Trump’s friends at home who take precautions. Much earlier in the pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping wore masks, setting an example with his blue N95 during a video address to medical workers in Wuhan, China, in March.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking no risks. He’s installed an at-home disinfecting tunnel for guests, and went for a full protective suit at Moscow’s Kommunarka hospital in March.
Nepal’s leftist President Bidhya Devi Bhandari wore a mask to the parliament in Kathmandu on May 15 to present the new government’s program.
And so did rightwing Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, at a hearing on the country’s so-called Ibiza scandal on June 24 in Vienna.
Trump, in contrast, spoke maskless at a news conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the White House last Wednesday — but had every member of the Polish delegation tested for coronavirus before the meeting.
