July 28, 2020 – A day that will live in ignominy

Commentary

The day that Attorney General William ‘Lower the Bar’ Barr and President Donald John Trump (I) out did themselves

Yesterday, July 28, 2020, will go down in history as one of the most consequential and ignominious days in the history of the Trump administration. Why? Because of the appearances and statements of two of the most important figures in that administration, Attorney General William ‘Lower the Bar’ Barr and, the man himself, President Donald John Trump (I)*

(*Impeached)

Attorney General William Barr

When I nicknamed Attorney General William Barr, “William ‘Lower the Bar’ Barr, I, and many readers, thought the nickname was pretty clever. After reading about, and seeing clips from Barr’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday (I didn’t have the stomach to actually watch the appearance live), I realized that ‘Lower the Bar’ doesn’t go far enough. So henceforth, every mention of the so-called Attorney General of the United States will be written as follows:

“Bill ‘No Bar Is Too Low’ Barr.”

Barr, who is often called, among other things, “Trump’s personal attorney,” “Trump’s fixer,” “Trump’s Roy Cohn” and “Trump’s new Michael Cohen,” is actually all of those stuffed into one, extremely tight, roll-polly package. And yesterday’s performance (yes, performance, not testimony) was what has earned this consummate enabler, obfuscater and all-around despicable human being, the new Around the Block sobriquet, ‘No Bar Is Too Low.’

I won’t bore you with all the details; you can read about or watch it elsewhere. But I will outline some particularly smarmy outtakes (courtesy of Dana Milbank of The Washington Post):

• Peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square hit with chemical agents, stun grenades and rubber bullets had been “unruly.” 
• Regarding non-violent demonstrators:  “protesters” — he made quotation marks with his fingers — “are not following police directions.” 
• Justified the use of weapons against peaceful demonstrators by saying “it’s hard to separate” them from the criminals.
• Dismissed the idea that there is systemic racism in policing.
• Alleged that police use deadly force more often against white men than black men. (Fact: black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police).
• Said a “mob” using “slingshots, tasers, sledgehammers, saws, knives, rifles and explosive devices” to attack federal officers serving on a strictly “defensive mission” — omitting mention of federal officers throwing nonviolent demonstrators into unmarked vans for questioning without probable cause. 
• Said, Operation Legend, which forces federal police into U.S. cities: “The FBI went in very strong into Kansas City, and within two weeks we’ve had 200 arrests.” (Fact: The actual number of arrests in that period? One.).
• Defended Trump’s pardon of Roger Stone after Stone refused to incriminate Trump, defended the attempted dismissal of Michael Flynn’s guilty plea, defended the imprisonment of Michael Cohen after he refused to disavow criticism of Trump, defended the dismissal of the prosecutor overseeing investigations of Rudolph W. Giuliani, defended the baseless allegation that voting by mail is fraudulent, and defended armed, right-wing protesters who invaded the Michigan Capitol and called for killing the governor. (They were against “crazy rules.”)
• He even defended Trump’s handling of the pandemic as “superb,” while blaming the Obama administration.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Attorney General of the United States of America, William ‘No Bar Is Too Low’ Barr!

President Donald John Trump (I)

Yesterday, Donald Trump retweeted a video with false covid-19 claims from a group called “America’s Frontline Doctors” (a name, by the way, that was only registered two weeks ago and is funded by a right-wing PAC called, Tea Party Patriots). One doctor in it, Stella Immanuel, has said demons cause illnesses. Trump’s tweet, and the live-streaming of the video by Breitbart, resulted in over 20 million views…before it was taken down by both Facebook and Twitter.

The centerpiece of the video was the aforementioned Stella Immanuel, a doctor and pastor and founder of Fire Power Ministries. Immanuel is a self-described “wealth transfer coach”, a long-time critic of “unmarried couples living together, homosexuality, bestiality, polygamy” and so-called “homosexual terrorism” and, as you can imagine, an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump.

Among Doctor Immanuel’s theories:

• The uterine disorder endometriosis is caused by sex with demons that takes place in dreams.
• Endometriosis, as well as infertility, miscarriages, and sexually transmitted infections are caused by the spirit husbands and spirit wives.
• Space alien DNA is used in medical treatments and that reptilians and aliens run the government.
• Illuminati are using witches to destroy the world through abortion, gay marriage, children’s toys and media such as Harry Potter, Pokémon, Wizards of Waverly Place and Hannah Montana.
• Scientists are developing vaccines to stop people from being religious.

You get the point. Frankly if the AQA (American Quack Association) had a poster child, Dr. Immanuel would be it.

But enough of what I think of Dr. Immanuel, here’s what the President of the United States, as he leads and guides the nation through the worst medical crisis in over one-hundred years, thinks:

• “I can tell you this, she was on air along with many other doctors.”

• “They (America’s Front Line Doctors) were big fans of hydroxychloroquine and I thought she was very impressive in the sense that from where she came, I don’t know which country she comes from, but she said that she’s had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients, and I thought her voice was an important voice.”*

• “For some reason the internet wanted to take them down and took them off. I guess Twitter took them off and I think Facebook took them off. I don’t know why. I think they’re very respected doctors.”

• She is “spectacular” in her statements about hydroxychloroquine.

• “I know nothing about her.”

(*Note: Trump does defend immigrants – but apparently only when they support his theories)

Wait, what? You know nothing about her and you retweeted the video, giving her and her group presidential credibility and lending credence to this “voodoo science” to over 20 million Americans?

And to add insult to injury, your impossibly sycophantically tone-deaf vice president Mike Pence met with America’s Front Line Doctors the same day? Really?

President Donald John Trump (I) and Attorney General William ‘No Bar Is Too Low’ Barr (with a smattering Mike ‘Toady’ Pence thrown in) on July 28, 2020 – not only National Milk Chocolate Day, National Waterpark Day and my birthday, but one of the most consequential and ignominious days in the history of the Trump administration.

With that, I’ll leave you with this:

God-willing!