Apocalypse Now: Saturday night in his first political speech since leaving the presidency, Donald Trump introduced what is likely to be a campaign theme, calling on China to pay trillions of dollars in reparations for the pandemic.

  “China inflicted an estimated $ 16 trillion of economic damage onto the United States,” he said.

  Trump presented the North Carolina Republicans with an apocalyptic vision of America under “radical left Democrats” with “crime exploding,” the police defunded, cyberattacks, illegal immigration, soaring gas prices, the teaching of critical race theory, a stolen 2020 election. 

  “That election,” Trump said, “the 2020 presidential election was by far the most corrupt election in the history of our country. There’s never been anything like this.” 

  Trump said this although neither he nor anyone else has produced proof of election theft or corruption.

  Yet he went on, “More and more it’s coming out. The things that happened in the recent election, dead people voting, dead people. Worse is dead people voting who had to apply to vote. It’s true.” He said, “I’m talking about thousands of people, thousands and thousands of people, dead people. Illegal aliens voting.”

Conspiracy Theory: President Trump’s chief of staff in the closing days of 2020 pressed the Justice Department to investigate unfounded claims of election fraud, according to newly-released emails.

  Five emails include a wild theory that that people in Italy used military technology and satellites to remotely switch Trump votes to  Joe Biden. The so-called “Italygate” theory was one of the election-rigging conspiracy theories that made the rounds on the internet helping to spark the January 6^thinsurrection.

  Despite direct pressure from Meadows and President Trump, the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey Rosen never opened an investigation. Trump even considered replacing Rosen with someone more amenable to pursuing unsupported claims of election fraud but all the senior DOJ leadership said they would resign if that happened.

  Trump was particularly upset about losing Georgia. The NY Times reports that “Mr. Trump continued to press Mr. Rosen after the meeting — in phone calls and in person. He repeatedly said that he did not understand why the Justice Department had not found evidence that supported conspiracy theories about the election that some of his personal lawyers had espoused. He declared that the department was not fighting hard enough for him.”

The Manchin Veto: With Republican state legislatures working to restrict voting rights and congressional Democrats trying to protect them, West Virginia’s Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said in a newspaper opinion piece that he will not vote for partisan voting rights legislation that “will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy.”

  Manchin straddles party lines in the 50/50 senate, giving him near veto power over legislation. He also said he will not vote to end the filibuster, which gives the Republicans veto power over legislation passed by the Democrats.

The Fauci Denial: It sounds like the title of a Robert Ludlum novel, but it’s the latest right wing claim about the coronavirus, this time it’s that Dr. Anthony Fauci knew the novel coronavirus may have come from a laboratory and dismissed it. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who himself might be an escaped laboratory experiment, even suggested that Fauci should be prosecuted for lying to Congress.

  Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, became America’s most trusted doctor during the pandemic. At issue are email exchanges early in 2020 about the possibility that the Covid-19 virus was altered in a Chinese lab, making three workers sick and spreading to the world.

  An email from a researcher at Scripps Institute in California said that under close examination of the virus, “some of the features (potentially) look engineered.”

  Fauci has also been facing claims that the U.S. government helped pay for research at the Wuhan lab centered on “gain of function” — changing how the virus works. Also, a recent Wall Street Journalarticle has pumped up the lab-leak theory.

  What appears to have happened is that the right-wing press got its hands on emails in which the medical and science professionals were looking at all possibilities, but what Fox News found in there — at least to them — is evidence of conspiracy and lies.

  Donald Trump, in his North Carolina speech Saturday night said Fauci, is “a great promoter. Not a great doctor, but he’s a hell of a promoter.” Trump said Fauci has “been wrong on almost every issue and he was wrong on Wuhan and the lab also.” 

  Fauci told CNN, “The idea, I think, is quite far-fetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill themselves, as well as other people. I think that’s a bit far out.”

The Royals: Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, announced the birth of their second child, a daughter named Lilibet Diana.

  Following their move to the states and revealing interview with Oprah Winfrey criticizing the royal family operation, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been moved down on the list of senior royals posted to the Royal Family website. Harry and Meghan now follow his father’s sister, Princess Anne, and brother Prince Andrew. They previously ranked just beneath Harry’s older brother Prince William and wife, Kate Middleton.

The Obit Page: Clarence Williams III, who played Linc Hayes in the 1960 television series “The Mod Squad,” about three hip detectives, died in Los Angeles of colon cancer. 

The Spin Rack: Pictures on the internet make it look like Donald Trump either had his pants on backwards Saturday night, or he wore zipperless trousers. — Feminist author Naomi Wolf has been suspended from Twitter for spreading bogus Covid information, including that vaccines are a “software platform that can receive uploads”. — Daughter-in- law Lara Trump announced during the former president’s appearance Saturday night that she’s not running for the senate from North Carolina right now.

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