Why does the media continue to carry Trump's press statements? He is a dangerous, dishonest demogogue that should be frog-marched out of office, not given a daily platform for his reelection campaign.

He is consumed by self pity. He fingerpoints at everyone and takes no responsibility. He calls the Times story fake news. He plays a powerpoint with selected clips praising him. He denies he wanted Fauci fired. Fauci comes up to distinguish what he said earlier from being a criticism of Trump. How so? It was a "hypothetical". Trump flounders when asked about why he re-tweeted "#FireFauci" if he didn't want him fired. He says he was just retweeting someone else's opinion.

Astonishingly, Trump says the Governors elected not to get ventilators. (They should have had their own stockpiles). "We've done this right," he claims.

Trump says he, not the governors, has the ultimate authority to order the country to re-open. He says he's close to doing so, and it may happen ahead of schedule. "We're ready to rock". [More...]

The White House is holding a press conference today on the coronavirus. If you are online now, you can watch it live here.

Trump begins with what he calls great news and he's very happy, the Federal Reserve has lowered the treasury rate to 0.

He wants to thank Google because they substantiated what he said on Friday (it was fake news that Google denied it.)

This is quite an explanatory multi-media graphic from the South China Post on the beginning and evolution of the Coronavirus. It is updated daily.

Also interesting, again from the South China Post, is an article on the search for "Patient Zero" who authorities now believe contracted the disease on November 17, 2019 (rather than December as previously believed).

According to the government data seen by the Post, a 55 year-old from Hubei province could have been the first person to have contracted Covid-19 on November 17.

...While the government records have not been released to the public, they provide valuable clues about how the disease spread in its early days and the speed of its transmission, as well as how many confirmed cases Beijing has recorded.

Donald Trump says he did not contribute to the coronavirus pandemic by removing the office created to deal with such things that had been established under Obama.

To the suprise of no one, the coronavirus is spreading around the globe. Now that three people Donald Trump shook hands with or was otherwise close to at Mar-a-Lago have tested positive, Trump changed course (yet again) and announced he has been tested. (Update: His results were negative according to his personal White House physician, Sean P. Conley, reports his tests were negative. (This is after yesterday when he said Trump didn't need to get tested.)

Spain and France have announced partial shutdowns. France has ordered all restaurants, bars, and shops closed (except grocery stores). Here is how it has been growing. [More...]

During Donald Trump's SOTU I mentioned a few things I thought would backfire big time. First, his spotlight on his guest, Juan Guaidó, who is an opposition leader in Venezuela.

Trump called Guaidó the “true and legitimate” leader of Venezuela and said President Nicolas Maduro is a “tyrant” as lawmakers applauded.

“Mr. President, please take this message back to your homeland,” Trump said to Guaidó. “All Americans are united with the Venezuelan people in their righteous struggle for freedom.”

Here's the result of Trump's welcome of Guaidó:

Six American oil executives under house arrest in Venezuela were rounded up by police hours after President Donald Trump met Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s chief opponent at the White House, according to family members of the men.

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Donald Trump sounds just like Alec Baldwin.

Is anyone listening to this bubbe meise?

If he touts Kushner's peace plan, I bet he neglects the direct threats ISIS made in response via an audio message released this week. ISIS is promising a world boom, not just a blue-collar boom.

Update: Trump claims great credit for the First Step Act -- a bill that excludes relief for deportable immigrants. What kind of reform is that? It's really not a progressive bill at all . (Trump's son in law Jared Kushner knows only slightly more about federal criminal justice than he does about Middle East peace solutions. [More...]

Donald Trump must be desperate to misdirect the world's attention from his impeachment trial. Today he upstaged his defense counsel by holding a presser with Benjamin Natanyahu to announce his middle-east peace plan.

He called it a two party solution but it is not.

Via the New York Times:

Rather than a serious blueprint for peace, analysts called it a political document by a president in the middle of an impeachment trial working in tandem with a prime minister under criminal indictment and facing his third election in a year in barely over a month.

It is hard to think of enough accolades for Adam Schiff's many presentations at the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Update: An hour after writing this I have to take him to task for his cheap dig at criminal defendants in general. ("We all know if a defendant says he didn't do it, he didn't do it." (/snark)). Many who say they didn't do it in fact did not do it. Check the stats of the Innocence Project.) A much better way to make that argument is "It is true that some criminal defendants who insist they didn't do it in fact did not do it. Donald Trump would not be one of them."

Added: One other quibble: Schiff ended with the concept of a fair trial and said "Give America a fair trial." Sorry, but the Sixth Amendement guarantees a fair trial to the accused, the defendant on trial -- not crime victims. In fact, almost all of the Bill of the Ribhts is for the protection of the accused, not to protect crime victims.)

Republicans are too scared for their own hides to buck the Republican Party line. So Donald Trump won't be impeached. If they had an ounce of integrity they would vote to find Donald Trump's impeachment charges are high crimes and misdemeanors and have been proven. The penalty is not up to them, it's written in the Constitution. He shall be removed from office.

There can be only one way to make up for this, and that is for a Democrat to win the presidency in 2020 and appoint an attorney general who will seek and obtain an indictment against Donald Trump and Rudy Guiliani for the actions they undertook with respect to the Ukraine.

One small consolation: Donald Trump will never overturn the moniker that will forever be attached to his name: Donald Trump, impeached by the House of Representatives.

Donald Trump's impeachment trial begins with arguments about the rules. Here is the House Manager's Statement on McConnell's rules. The New York Times reports that McConnell made two modifications after objections: there will be three rather than two days of opening statements and all the documents and evidence from the House proceeding will be entered in the Senate proceedings. The amended version of Sen. Res. 483 is here.

The House Brief and Statement of Facts is here. It's reply to Trump's trial brief is here. [More...]

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts swore in the members of the Senate today as the impeachment trial of Donald Trump begins.

With great pomp and circumstance, the articles of impeachment were brought in by a team of 7 Democrats, and prior to reading them Adam Schiff called out:

“Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye,” the sergeant-at-arms declared, using language from another era to admonish the senators not to speak while Representative Adam B. Schiff, the lead impeachment manager, prepared to read the articles aloud. “All persons are commanded to keep silent upon pain of imprisonment.”

Also today, a GAO report was released finding that Donald Trump broke the law in withholding aid to the Ukraine.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth
Blowing down the backroads headin’ south
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe

That's what I think of Donald Trump's decision to take out Iranian Quds Force leader Qassim Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes. What's next? [More...]

Remember Rudy Giuliani's son Andrew, who went from disrupting Rudy's swearing in as Mayor to being asked to leave the Duke University golf team?

Well we all knew he got a job at the White House. There was a big to-do when John Kelly revoked his clearance to the West Wing (he later got it back.) But I had no idea until I read it in the Irish Times today that his salary is reportedly $90k a year and his job is to serve as Donald Trump's "golf pro in residence".

Giuliani has been in the public eye since 1994 when, as a precocious seven-year-old, he stood next to his father while he made his inaugural address as mayor. As Rudy laid out his plans for cleaning up the city and remaking it as capital of the world, Andrew hammed it up on the podium beside him, blowing kisses to the cameras, mimicking his dad’s every hand gesture and even shouting out random declarations like, “It should be so and it will be so!

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