Bleak House: President Trump checked out of Walter Reed Hospital and returned to the White House last night still under treatment for the coronavirus, making a dramatic show on the balcony of taking off his mask before stepping inside.

  This was only hours after Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and two of her staffers tested positive for Covid-19, as the coronavirus continues to rip through the Trump administration and White House staff. Two housekeepers also have tested positive.

  Even having the disease, Trump is making a political point of ignoring it.

  The President heralded his return with a tweet claiming; “Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

  Trump’s doctor, Sean Conley, said prior to the President’s departure that, “He’s met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria,” but “he may not entirely be out of the woods yet.”

  Trump’s doctors were selective about what information they gave. They cited the President’s vital signs, all good, but refused for instance to describe results of his lung scans, citing privacy laws. Asked when was the last time Trump tested negative for the virus, Conley said, “I don’t want to go backwards.”

  Trump arrived at last Tuesday’s presidential debate too late to be tested. The White House announced his infection at 1 am Friday, after his adviser Hope Hicks was diagnosed and the President attended a Thursday night rally at his New Jersey golf resort.

  Comedian Albert Brooks tweeted, “Trump got a very nice note from Biden today. It said Stay Positive.”

See No Evil: In a rush to get a vaccine by election day, The White House is  blocking strict new federal guidelines for the emergency release of a coronavirus vaccine. The Food and Drug Administration is looking at ways to get around the White House. 

  The White House also is not conducting extensive contact tracing on the source of its coronavirus outbreak and is preventing the Centers for Disease Control from doing it. At least eight people appear to have contracted the virus while attending the White House welcome for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett nearly two weeks ago.

  Trump’s return to the residence just might give the White House a fresh injection of virus.

  With nearly 7.5 million infections and 210,196 deaths in the US, Trump has failed to protect the country and let the disease into America’s home. A CNN poll released this morning has Joe Biden leading by 16 points for the November election. Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent write for The Washington Post that, “Republicans always feared this day would come, when Trump would become not just an erratic, divisive president but someone whose manifest unfitness for office would result in full-blown catastrophe.”

Roid Rage:  Proving that he really is on steroids, Trump early yesterday posted a series of all-cap tweets:

“PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH (BRING OUR SOLDIERS HOME). VOTE!”

“SAVE OUR SECOND AMENDMENT. VOTE!”

“FIGHT THE CORRUPT FAKE NEWS MEDIA. VOTE!”

“PROTECT PREEXISTING CONDITIONS. VOTE!”

“BETTER & CHEAPER HEALTHCARE. VOTE!”

“PRO LIFE! VOTE!”

“MASSIVE REGULATION CUTS. VOTE!”

“RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. VOTE!”

“IF YOU WANT A MASSIVE TAX INCREASE, THE BIGGEST IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY (AND ONE THAT WILL SHUT OUR ECONOMY AND JOBS DOWN), VOTE DEMOCRAT!!!”

   Our favorite; “SPACE FORCE. VOTE!”

Voting Rights: Amidst a political fear campaign about potential voter fraud, the Supreme Court mostly reinstated a South Carolina law that requires absentee ballots include the signature of a witness. Lower courts had shot down the law, saying it interfered with the right to vote during a pandemic.

Monumental: Amidst the national debate about historical monuments, one of America’s largest philanthropic organizations has announced a project to “reimagine” monuments around the country.

  Among the targets of protests and teardowns have been monuments to Confederate soldiers and Christopher Columbus.

  The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation said it would spend $250 million over five years to build monuments, add context to existing ones, and relocate others.

The foundation says the project aims to “celebrate and affirm America’s diverse histories”. 

  Mellon has already spent $25 million on monument-related projects. One of its grants gave $5 million  for the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which is dedicated to slaves and lynching victims.

Elizabeth Alexander, the foundation’s president, told The New York Times, “The beauty of monuments as a rubric is, it’s really a way of asking, ‘How do we say who we are? How do we teach our history in public places?’”  

The Bulletin Board: The Internal Revenue Service is investigating longtime National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre for possible criminal tax fraud, The Wall Street Journal reports. —  The Regal Theater chain announced that it is closing all 536 of its houses in the US this Thursday, as well 127 Cineworld and Picturehouse cinemas in the UK. In the US, that’s 40,000 jobs gone. — John McAfee, the antivirus software magnate and former Libertarian presidential candidate, has been indicted for tax evasion. He’s accused of failing to file his taxes for four years despite earning millions between 2014 and 2018. —California’s wildfires have burned more than 4 million acres, a record for a single year.

Still Quotable: “They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby”

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