Trump Book Drops, Virus Uptick
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Vol. 9, No. 156
Uncle Dearest: Copies of Mary Trump’s book about her uncle, the President, have been released to the press and the quick takeout is that Donald was messed up for life by his domineering father. We pretty much knew that.
Mary Trump, a psychologist, writes that “By limiting Donald’s access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it.”
The author’s father, Fred Jr., died an alcoholic. She writes that her grandfather’s kids routinely lied to him; for her own father, “Lying was defensive — not simply a way to circumvent his father’s disapproval or to avoid punishment, as it was for the others, but a way to survive.”
For her uncle Donald, “Lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was.”
Advance sales have already made a bestseller of the book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”
Mary Trump says that Donald paid someone to take the SAT college admission tests for him.
She writes that, “His deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he’s soaked it in,”
And she says that the President has all the clinical markers of a narcissist but, “The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neurophysical tests that he’ll never sit for.”
What Goes Around: Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro 65, one of the biggest coronavirus deniers in the world, has been diagnosed with the disease.
Bolsonaro has dismissed the coronavirus as “the sniffles” and refused to wear a mask, even though his country is doing second worst in the world behind the US. Brazil has had 1.6 million cases and nearly 67,000 deaths.
The Brazilian president says he’s taking the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, also taken by President Trump and which has not been proven effective against the coronavirus. But Bolsonaro said, “I am feeling very well. I believe that the way they administered the hydroxychloroquine on, the effect was immediate.”
The prime test case for doing nothing about the coronavirus is Sweden, which imposed no social restrictions or business closures. The result, Peter Goodman writes in The NY Times, is that “Not only have thousands more people died than in neighboring countries that imposed lockdowns, but Sweden’s economy has fared little better.”
So far during the pandemic, Sweden’s overall death rate is up 30 percent. Death rates in Norway and Finland on either side of Sweden are unchanged.
Here at home, still holding first place for doing worst in the pandemic, the Trump administration formally announced that it is pulling the US out of the World Health Organization in a year, cutting off one of the organization’s primary sources of money.
Deaths took an upturn in the past 24 hours; 1,174, bringing the US total to 131,480. We’re #1! We’re #1!
School Daze: After a daylong series of conferences President Trump is pushing public schools to re-open on schedule despite the expanding pandemic.
“We hope that most schools are going to be open, and we don’t want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons,” said the President whose political angle is to get things back to normal despite the health risks. “They think it’s going to be good for them politically, so they keep the schools closed. No way,” he said. “We are very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools to get them open, and it’s very important. It’s very important for our country.”
Running the Numbers: The FiveThirtyEight blog says the latest average of presidential polls has Joe Biden leading by 10 points; 51.5 percent Biden to 41.5 for President Trump. The site has Biden leading in Michigan by 5.7; Pennsylvania, 7.5: Wisconsin, 8.1; and Arizona … ARIZONA … Biden up by 3.1 percent.
Monuments Men: This morning the only statue remaining on Richmond, Virginia’s famed Monument Avenue is the one depicting Gen. Robert E. Lee, and only because it stands on state property. Yesterday the statue of Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart was removed.
Preceding Stuart in falling from grace were Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Matthew Fontaine Maury, a lineup of guys who rebelled against the US and fought for slavery. Robert E. Lee still stands because a judge has ordered the governor not to take down Lee’s statue.
The Obit Page: Mary Kay Letourneau, the former Washington state teacher who had sex a 12-year-old student and married him when she got out of prison, has died of cancer at age 58. It was one of those things that fed the maw of tabloid news coverage.
Letourneau was a 34-year-old married mother of four when her relationship with sixth-grader Vili Fualaau turned sexual. They had two children before she went to prison, married when she got out, and divorced last year.
The Bulletin Board: With some colleges and universities re-opening online only in the fall, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says foreign students must go home if they can’t physically attend class. — The federal government has agreed to pay the Maryland vaccine maker Novavax $1.6 billion to expedite development of a coronavirus vaccine. The deal would pay for 100 million doses of a new vaccine by the beginning of next year, of course, only if it works.
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