...some of the most prominent figures in the G.O.P. outside the White House have broken with Mr. Trump...
...
Some of those governors have been holding late-night phone calls among themselves to trade ideas and grievances; they have sought out partners in the administration other than the president, including Vice President Mike Pence...
...
“The president got bored with it,” David Carney, an adviser to the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, a Republican, said of the pandemic. He noted that Mr. Abbott directs his requests to Mr. Pence, with whom he speaks two to three times a week.
[“THE PRESIDENT GOT BORED WITH IT”! Bored to death? "Let them eat cake!" Or, is it this? "He's an idiot and he's scared because he doesn't know how to fix this, he's so used to being able to throw cash at his problems and then poof, they vanish. Not this time. A scared idiot is a dangerous person." -my son, May 23. And so, like the ostrich, incompetent and scared, stuck his head in the stand. He QUIT.]
...
“The straight talk here that everyone needs to understand is: This is not going away until we get a vaccine,” Mr. McConnell said on Wednesday, contradicting Mr. Trump’s rosy predictions.
Amid mounting alarm in a huge portion of the country, Mr. Trump has at times appeared to inhabit a different universe, incorrectly predicting the outbreak would quickly dissipate and falsely claiming the spread of the virus was simply a function of increased testing. With his impatient demands and decrees, Mr. Trump has disrupted efforts to mitigate the crisis while effectively sidelining himself from participating in those efforts.
["different universe": I love that Maggie Haberman has taken the gloves off. However, reading that paragraph closely, is this 25th Amendment time? What if David Carney is right? If the correct diagnosis is that Trump simply got "bored"--with the sickness and death of millions of people!--that he is telling them,"We're going to have to live with the virus--that is a Nazi's indifference to death. It is beyond lacking empathy, he doesn't care if people live or get die, get sick or stay healthy, that is clear unfitness for office (It also cost Marie Antoinette her head. By the way.) When you seem to inhabit a different universe, you are out of touch with reality. Unfit: 25th A. You go beyond unfitness however when you "DISRUPT" efforts to save hundreds of thousands of lives: then you are committing a crime. Is this the "straight talk express" from the "new" Maggie Haberman or is she gesturing with only a transparent fig leaf as cover to the real issue: that now Trump is unfit for office. When the 25th Amendment is triggered, who takes over? The vice president. Who are the governors turning to for help on the virus: the vice president. Because the president is not all there.]
The result is a quiet but widening breach between Mr. Trump and leading figures in his party, as the virus burns through major political battlegrounds in the South and the West, like in the states of Arizona, Texas and Georgia.
Mr. Trump has at times appeared to inhabit a different universe... Trump has disrupted efforts to mitigate the crisis while effectively sidelining himself from participating in those efforts.
The emerging rifts in Mr. Trump’s party have been slow to develop, but they have rapidly deepened since a new surge in coronavirus cases began to sweep the country last month.
In the final days of June, the governor of Utah, Gary Herbert, a Republican, joined other governors on a conference call with Mr. Pence and urged the administration to do more to combat a sense of “complacency” about the virus. Mr. Herbert said it would help states like his own if Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence were to encourage mask-wearing on a national scale, according to a recording of the call.
“As a responsible citizen, if you care about your neighbor, if you love your neighbor, let us show the respect necessary by wearing a mask,” Mr. Herbert said, offering language to Mr. Pence and adding, “That’s where I think you and the president can help us out.”
Mr. Pence told Mr. Herbert the suggestion was “duly noted” and said that mask-wearing would be a “very consistent message” from the administration.
But no such appeal was ever forthcoming from Mr. Trump, who asserted days later that the virus would “just disappear.”
...
Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas...said on the ABC program “This Week” on Sunday that an “example needs to be set by our national leadership” on mask-wearing.
Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, in an interview on “Meet the Press” on NBC, did not answer directly when asked if he had confidence in Mr. Trump’s leadership in the crisis. Mr. DeWine said he had confidence “in this administration” and praised Mr. Pence for “doing an absolutely phenomenal job.”
...
But many Republican lawmakers have grown exasperated with [inter alia] the president’s demands that states reopen faster or risk punishment from the federal government.
[How would we 25 A'ers classify that? "Reopen faster," causing more sickness and death "or risk punishment"? He is making a rational calculus, offering a carrot and a stick: "Sicken and kill your own people "faster" or get whacked.]
"I want...these guys [to] grasp that tens of thousands of Americans have died and tens of millions are out of work.”-Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse.
[They don't grasp that yet, it doesn't exist in their universe.]
...
A group of Republican governors have for months held regular conference calls, usually at night and without staff present, according to two party strategists familiar with the conversations. Unlike the virus-focused calls that Mr. Pence leads, there are no Democratic or White House officials on the line, so the conversations have become a sort of safe space where the governors can ask their counterparts for advice, discuss best practices and, if the mood strikes them, vent about the administration and the president’s erratic leadership.
["Erratic"-->unfit.]
Mr. Trump himself seems less interested in the specific challenges the virus presents and is mostly just frustrated by the reality that it has not disappeared as he has predicted...
Mr. Trump’s political standing is now so dire that even Republicans who have spent years avoiding direct comment on his behavior are acknowledging his unpopularity in plain terms.
...
Some of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers are adamant that the best way forward is to downplay the dangers of the disease. Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, has been particularly forceful in his view that the White House should avoid drawing attention to the virus...
[So back to the purely political: If your opponent is downplaying something, avoiding drawing attention to it, shouldn't you be mentioning it every time you open your fucking mouth!]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/us/politics/republicans-contradict-trump-coronavirus.html
...
Some of those governors have been holding late-night phone calls among themselves to trade ideas and grievances; they have sought out partners in the administration other than the president, including Vice President Mike Pence...
...
“The president got bored with it,” David Carney, an adviser to the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, a Republican, said of the pandemic. He noted that Mr. Abbott directs his requests to Mr. Pence, with whom he speaks two to three times a week.
[“THE PRESIDENT GOT BORED WITH IT”! Bored to death? "Let them eat cake!" Or, is it this? "He's an idiot and he's scared because he doesn't know how to fix this, he's so used to being able to throw cash at his problems and then poof, they vanish. Not this time. A scared idiot is a dangerous person." -my son, May 23. And so, like the ostrich, incompetent and scared, stuck his head in the stand. He QUIT.]
...
“The straight talk here that everyone needs to understand is: This is not going away until we get a vaccine,” Mr. McConnell said on Wednesday, contradicting Mr. Trump’s rosy predictions.
Amid mounting alarm in a huge portion of the country, Mr. Trump has at times appeared to inhabit a different universe, incorrectly predicting the outbreak would quickly dissipate and falsely claiming the spread of the virus was simply a function of increased testing. With his impatient demands and decrees, Mr. Trump has disrupted efforts to mitigate the crisis while effectively sidelining himself from participating in those efforts.
["different universe": I love that Maggie Haberman has taken the gloves off. However, reading that paragraph closely, is this 25th Amendment time? What if David Carney is right? If the correct diagnosis is that Trump simply got "bored"--with the sickness and death of millions of people!--that he is telling them,"We're going to have to live with the virus--that is a Nazi's indifference to death. It is beyond lacking empathy, he doesn't care if people live or get die, get sick or stay healthy, that is clear unfitness for office (It also cost Marie Antoinette her head. By the way.) When you seem to inhabit a different universe, you are out of touch with reality. Unfit: 25th A. You go beyond unfitness however when you "DISRUPT" efforts to save hundreds of thousands of lives: then you are committing a crime. Is this the "straight talk express" from the "new" Maggie Haberman or is she gesturing with only a transparent fig leaf as cover to the real issue: that now Trump is unfit for office. When the 25th Amendment is triggered, who takes over? The vice president. Who are the governors turning to for help on the virus: the vice president. Because the president is not all there.]
The result is a quiet but widening breach between Mr. Trump and leading figures in his party, as the virus burns through major political battlegrounds in the South and the West, like in the states of Arizona, Texas and Georgia.
Mr. Trump has at times appeared to inhabit a different universe... Trump has disrupted efforts to mitigate the crisis while effectively sidelining himself from participating in those efforts.
The emerging rifts in Mr. Trump’s party have been slow to develop, but they have rapidly deepened since a new surge in coronavirus cases began to sweep the country last month.
In the final days of June, the governor of Utah, Gary Herbert, a Republican, joined other governors on a conference call with Mr. Pence and urged the administration to do more to combat a sense of “complacency” about the virus. Mr. Herbert said it would help states like his own if Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence were to encourage mask-wearing on a national scale, according to a recording of the call.
“As a responsible citizen, if you care about your neighbor, if you love your neighbor, let us show the respect necessary by wearing a mask,” Mr. Herbert said, offering language to Mr. Pence and adding, “That’s where I think you and the president can help us out.”
Mr. Pence told Mr. Herbert the suggestion was “duly noted” and said that mask-wearing would be a “very consistent message” from the administration.
But no such appeal was ever forthcoming from Mr. Trump, who asserted days later that the virus would “just disappear.”
...
Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas...said on the ABC program “This Week” on Sunday that an “example needs to be set by our national leadership” on mask-wearing.
Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, in an interview on “Meet the Press” on NBC, did not answer directly when asked if he had confidence in Mr. Trump’s leadership in the crisis. Mr. DeWine said he had confidence “in this administration” and praised Mr. Pence for “doing an absolutely phenomenal job.”
...
But many Republican lawmakers have grown exasperated with [inter alia] the president’s demands that states reopen faster or risk punishment from the federal government.
[How would we 25 A'ers classify that? "Reopen faster," causing more sickness and death "or risk punishment"? He is making a rational calculus, offering a carrot and a stick: "Sicken and kill your own people "faster" or get whacked.]
"I want...these guys [to] grasp that tens of thousands of Americans have died and tens of millions are out of work.”-Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse.
[They don't grasp that yet, it doesn't exist in their universe.]
...
A group of Republican governors have for months held regular conference calls, usually at night and without staff present, according to two party strategists familiar with the conversations. Unlike the virus-focused calls that Mr. Pence leads, there are no Democratic or White House officials on the line, so the conversations have become a sort of safe space where the governors can ask their counterparts for advice, discuss best practices and, if the mood strikes them, vent about the administration and the president’s erratic leadership.
["Erratic"-->unfit.]
Mr. Trump himself seems less interested in the specific challenges the virus presents and is mostly just frustrated by the reality that it has not disappeared as he has predicted...
Mr. Trump’s political standing is now so dire that even Republicans who have spent years avoiding direct comment on his behavior are acknowledging his unpopularity in plain terms.
...
Some of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers are adamant that the best way forward is to downplay the dangers of the disease. Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, has been particularly forceful in his view that the White House should avoid drawing attention to the virus...
[So back to the purely political: If your opponent is downplaying something, avoiding drawing attention to it, shouldn't you be mentioning it every time you open your fucking mouth!]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/us/politics/republicans-contradict-trump-coronavirus.html
