“December is shaping up to be the U.S.’s worst month of the pandemic by a significant margin . . .”
“First-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled 853,000, an increase from the upwardly revised 716,000 total a week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting 730,000.”
“Days after several US agencies confirmed their networks were compromised in a massive data breach, federal officials are still struggling to understand the scope of the damage — highlighting the sophistication and breadth of an ongoing hacking campaign that has been tied to Russia.”
What’s Donald Trump thinking about? Let’s look at a sampling of the 34 tweets and retweets he has blasted out in the past 24 hours: The great majority related to his bogus claims that he won the election (“We won Wisconsin big. They rigged the vote,” “We won the Presidential Election by a lot,” and “Just released data shows many thousands of noncitizens voted in Nevada.“), including a Washington Examiner report of Peter Navarro’s 36-page report on “voting irregularities“; complaints about “so-called ‘Republicans,‘ ” in Georgia who won’t agree to “give us the State“; and no less than ten tweets and retweets commending Tommy Tuberman, who heaps praise on Trump and “may save the Republic” by disrupting the Electoral College count in January as a man of courage, in contrast to Republican senators who lack toughness.
Trump also offers swipes at the Supreme Court and the New York Times, insists that “I have NOTHING to do with the potential prosecution of Hunter Biden, or the Biden family. It is just more Fake News,” and offers more than one tweet each regarding Liz Cheney, Peter Strzok (adding a complaint about “the Russia hoax), and a Daily Caller report of a move to strip Lincoln’s name from a high school. Trump’s nod to legislation is a threat to veto the defense bill, which mentions Lindsey Graham’s attacks on social media companies.
Trump’s references to the pandemic (“the China virus”) include four tweets on the vaccine, including the approval of Moderna’s candidate and praise for the FedEx and UPS drivers delivering the doses across the country and three retweets of Buck Sexton, who couches his insistence that “Masks work” is no more than a mantra and his ridicule of California’s failures to stem the rate of infections as defenses of freedom of speech.
Trump references the economy — that is, the rising stock market, not unemployment or struggling businesses on Main Street — once (one of his four tweets referencing the vaccine): “All-time Stock Market high. The Vaccine and the Vaccine rollout are getting the best of reviews. Moving along really well. Get those “shots” everyone! Also, stimulus talks looking very good.”
He hasn’t tweeted (or spoken of) the Russian incursion into U.S. government and corporate databases, much less offered criticism of Putin’s mischief or assurances of taking any action to counter the threat.
Thirty-three days to go until January 20. Joe Biden will have his hands full.
(Image from “Donald Trump: A Study in Leadership.”)