Sunday

Conflict of interest: Trump's New COVID-19 Czar Holds $10 Million In Stock Options In Vaccine Company

CC™ Politico - By Mary Papenfuss 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has slammed COVID-19 vaccine czar Moncef Slaoui’s “huge conflict of interest” after required federal filings revealed he holds $10 million in stock options in one of the companies working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.

Warren demanded that Slaoui “divest immediately.”

Former pharmaceutical company executive Slaoui stepped down from his position on the board of directors of biotech company Moderna Inc., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But he is still holding some 155,000 Moderna stock options, according to Security and Exchange Commission filings, worth more than $10 million as of Friday, reported Business Insider.
Slaoui’s economic interest in the company could influence government support for Moderna over other companies that may be more successful in their hunt for a vaccine.
Moderna last month also announced it received $483 million in federal funding for vaccine development, which sent its stocks up 15%, CNBC reported.
Slaoui was named “chief scientist” this week for President Donald Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed,” which aims to develop a COVID-19 vaccine as quickly as possible. Before taking the spot on Moderna’s board, Slaoui worked for years at GlaxoSmithKline, eventually becoming head of research and development. He left in 2017.
When he was introduced earlier this week by Trump in a Rose Garden press briefing, Slaoui said the president’s aim to have a vaccine by the end of the year was “credible,” though it would be “extremely challenging.”
Slaoui said he was “more confident” after seeing “early data from a clinical trial.” He did not name which company was conducting the trial. But health publication Stat News reported that it was probably Moderna, the company Slaoui stands to profit from, because he likely had access to that information. Moderna’s experimental coronavirus vaccine just entered Phase 2 of clinical trials, The New York Times reported. 

Slaoui could not immediately be reach for comment.
Source: HuffPost

Saturday

'It eats him alive inside': Trump's latest attack shows endless obsession with Obama

CC™ News - David Smith 

President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump once sat together in the Oval Office. “I was immediately struck by Trump’s body language,” wrote journalist Jon Karl in his memoir Front Row at The Trump Show. “I was seeing a side of him I had never seen. He seemed, believe it or not, humbled.”

It was November 2016 and, just for once, Trump was not in charge of the room, Karl recalls. Obama was still president, directing the action and setting the tone. His successor “seemed a little dazed” and “a little freaked out”. What the two men discussed in their meeting that day, only they know.
But what became clear in the next three and a half years is that Obama remains something of an obsession for Trump; the subject of a political and personal inferiority complex.
Observers point to a mix of anti-intellectualism, racism, vengeance and primitive envy over everything from Obama’s Nobel peace prize to the scale of his inauguration crowd and social media following.
Ben Rhodes, a former Obama national security aide, tweeted this week: “Trump’s fact-free fixation on Obama dating back to birtherism is so absurd and stupid that it would be comic if it wasn’t so tragic.”
“Birtherism” was a conspiracy theory that Trump started pushing in 2011 (“He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one but there is something on that birth certificate – maybe religion, maybe it says he’s a Muslim, I don’t know.”) . Nine years later, he has come full circle with “Obamagate”, which accuses his predecessor of working in league with the “deep state” to frame Trump for colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election.
There is zero evidence for this claim. Indeed, a case could be made that the supposed “deep state” did more to help Trump than hurt him when the FBI reopened an investigation into his opponent, Hillary Clinton, just before election day. When questioned by reporters, Trump himself has struggled to articulate what “Obamagate” means. Ned Price, a former CIA analyst, dubbed it “a hashtag in search of a scandal”.
But his allies in the Republican party and conservative media are stepping up to build a parallel universe where this is the big story and Obama is at the center of it. Sean Hannity, a host on Fox News, demanded: “What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?” Over the past week, the channel’s primetime shows have devoted more coverage to the bogus crimes of “Barack Hussein Obama” than to the coronavirus pandemic – and Trump’s mishandling of it.
Trump has a problem where I think he’s just jealous of the fact that Obama is still so admired
Tara Setmayer
Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Donald Trump always needs a foil. This riles up his base because they cling to anything that diverges responsibility for anything from Donald Trump over to someone else. And in this case Barack Obama is the boogeyman of the month.”
Beyond political expediency, there is a more profound antipathy at work. From the Iran nuclear deal to the Trans Pacific Partnership, from environmental regulations to the Affordable Care Act, Trump has always seemed to be on a mission to erase his predecessor’s legacy. With few deep convictions of his own, Trump found a negative reference point in Obama. Between 22 November 2010 and 14 May 2020, he tweeted about Obama 2,933 times, according to the Trump Twitter Archive.
There are a few reasons, argues Setmayer, host of the Honestly Speaking podcast. “First off, Donald Trump has a problem where I think he’s just jealous of the fact that President Obama is still so admired. Number two, I think he has a problem with people of color who are in authority that don’t do the kind of song and dance that he wants them to do.
“Barack Obama is not a ‘shuck and jive’ person of color, and those are the kinds of people that Donald Trump seems to be attracted to if you look at who he surrounds himself with as far as minorities are concerned.”
Third, Setmayer points to the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where Trump sat stony-faced and humiliated as Obama lampooned the Celebrity Apprentice host’s nascent political ambitions. Obama even pointed to a photoshopped image of a Trump White House with hotel, casino, golf course and gold columns.
“A lot of people think that this is where this all started,” Setmayer continued. “President Trump does not have a sense of humor, he’s not self-deprecating, and the White House correspondents’ dinner is a fun event where people make fun of each other, especially in politics.”
“This obsession, of course, is absolutely rooted in racism.
Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy group, said: “This obsession, of course, is absolutely rooted in racism. Some of the accusations have been deeply racialized, from the questioning of Obama’s intelligence to talking about how much basketball he plays to questioning his birthplace and citizenship.”
Trump has shredded many norms, including that of presidents maintaining a respectful contact with their predecessors. He has dismissed the idea of seeking Obama’s input during the coronavirus pandemic. For his part, Obama has carefully chosen his moments to condemn certain decisions or policies without mentioning Trump by name.
But tensions flared last week when a tape leaked of Obama on a private conference call with about 3,000 alumni of his administration, describing Trump’s leadership in the pandemic as “an absolute chaotic disaster”. He also warned a justice department move to drop charges against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who admitted lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition, indicates that “the rule of law is at risk”.
Trump has described Flynn as a wronged “hero” and argued that Obama and his vice-president, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November’s election, should “pay a big price” for supposedly derailing the retired general’s career. Critics suggest that the president is seeking to weaponise the justice department for electoral gain.
Matthew Miller, a former director of the office of public affairs at the department, said: “In terms of any real action against Barack Obama, he obviously doesn’t have anything to worry about. But when you look at what’s happened at the justice department with the complete politicisation of that department, I think it’s quite possible that they’re going to be coming after people from the Obama administration, using the criminal justice process any way they can.”
The 2016 rally chants of “Lock her up!” might be replaced by “Lock him up!”
It would be one of the gravest consequences of Trump’s Obama obsession. Miller added: “There’s some racism there but, most of all, it’s driven by the fact that Obama has the thing that Trump has always craved but never achieved, and that’s respect. I’ve always thought that the respect that Barack Obama gets from people in this country and around the world is something that just eats Trump alive inside.”
Obama issued a tweet on Thursday that contained one word: “Vote.” He is expected to campaign vigorously for Biden, wooing voters who crave a return to what they saw as the dignity and stability of his era. But his presence is also likely to be inverted by Trump to rally his base with dark warnings that, like Clinton before him, Biden would effectively represent a third term of Obama. The 2016 rally chants of “Lock her up!” might be replaced by “Lock him up!”
The 2020 election could yet turn into a final showdown between Obama and Trump, even if only one of their names is on the ballot.
It will be a clash of opposites: one a mixed-race cerebral lawyer who has been married to the same woman for nearly three decades and publishes annual lists of his favorite books; the other a white billionaire and reality TV star who wed three times and measures success in TV ratings. Where one is renowned for elegant turns of phrase and shedding tears after mass shootings, the other serves up jumbled word salads and schoolboy spelling errors and has struggled to show empathy for the coronavirus dead.
Michael D’Antonio, a political commentator and author of The Truth About Trump, said: “There’s so much that separates them, it’s hard to imagine two presidents more different. It’s very obvious Trump is continually comparing himself with Obama in his own mind. Obama’s over his head, over his shoulder, always looming as the guy who could speak in paragraphs and juggle more than one thing at once and deal with them effectively.”

Source: The Guardian

Friday

Dictator-in-Chief: Trump fires State Department watchdog critical of his administration's moves

CC™ News - Matthew Lee

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has fired the State Department’s inspector general, an Obama administration appointee whose office was critical of alleged political bias in the agency’s management. The ouster is the latest in a series of moves against independent executive branch watchdogs who have found fault with the Trump administration.
A senior department official said Trump removed Steve Linick from his job on Friday but gave no reason for his ouster. In a letter to Congress, Trump said Linick, who had held the job since 2013, no longer had his full confidence and that his removal would take effect in 30 days. Trump did not mention Linick by name in his letter.
Democrats in Congress immediately cried foul, with the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee suggesting that Linick was fired in part in retaliation for opening an unspecified investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“This firing is the outrageous act of a president trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the secretary of state, from accountability,” Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo. Mr. Linick’s firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation.”
Engel offered no details of the investigation, although two congressional aides said it involved allegations that Pompeo may have improperly treated staff. Linick's office has issued several reports critical of the department’s handling of personnel matters during the Trump administration, including accusing some political appointees of retaliating against career officials.
“If Inspector General Linick was fired because he was conducting an investigation of conduct by Secretary Pompeo, the Senate cannot let this stand,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “The Senate Foreign Relations Committee must get to bottom of what happened here.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also condemned Linick's ouster, saying he had been “punished for honorably performing his duty to protect the Constitution and our national security.”
"The president must cease his pattern of reprisal and retaliation against the public servants who are working to keep Americans safe, particularly during this time of global emergency.”
Linick, whose office also took issue with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she served as America's top diplomat, played a minor role in the Ukraine impeachment investigation into Trump.
In October, Linick turned over documents to House investigators that he had received from State Department Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, a close Pompeo associate, which contained information from debunked conspiracy theories about Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election.
Linick will replaced by Stephen Akard, a former career foreign service officer who has close ties to Vice President Mike Pence, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Akard currently runs the department's Office of Foreign Missions. He had been nominated to be the director general of the foreign service but withdrew after objections he wasn't experienced enough.
Linick, a former assistant U.S. attorney in California and Virginia, had overseen inspector general reports that were highly critical of the department's management policies during the Trump administration. His office had criticized several Trump appointees for their treatment of career staff for apparently being insufficiently supportive of Trump and his policies.
Under Linick, the State Department's inspector general office was also critical of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's hiring freeze and attempts to streamline the agency by slashing its funding and personnel.
Trump has been taking aim lately at inspectors general.
In April, he fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community, for his role in the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment.
Then Trump removed Glenn Fine as acting inspector general at the Defense Department. The move stripped him of his post as chairman of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which is among those overseeing the vast economic relief law pass in response to the coronavirus.
During a White House briefing on COVID-19, Trump questioned the independence of an inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services over a report that said there was a shortage of supplies and testing at hospitals. Trump has since moved to replace the HHS official, Christi A. Grimm. She is a career person who has held the position in an acting capacity, but now Trump has nominated a permanent replacement.
Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.

Wednesday

Poll: Most voters say Trump and Pence should wear masks in public

CC™ News - By Maureen Groppe

Most Americans say President Donald Trump should wear a mask in public, a protective measure he has yet to take since the coronavirus pandemic erupted. 
About seven in 10 registered voters – including 58% of Republicans – surveyed in a Morning Consult/Politico poll this month said Trump and Vice President Mike Pence should cover their faces in public places when they travel.
"In the case of me, I’m not close to anybody," TrumpTrump plans to visit a medical supply business in Pennsylvania on Thursday, a week after being criticized for not covering his face during his tour of a mask-making facility in Phoenix.
Pence has acknowledged that he should have worn a face mask when he visited the Mayo Clinic earlier this month.
In recent days, reporters have spotted Pence wearing a mask as he arrives at the White House.
CDC guidelines call for face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.
 said Monday when he appeared mask-less at a Rose Garden news conference the day West Wing aides were told they must wear a mask when they enter the complex. The new rule, which doesn't apply to Trump, came after two aides tested positive for COVID-19.
Administration officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and HHS testing czar Brett Giroir, wore masks at the news conference, removing them only to speak. Reporters, seated in socially distanced folding chairs, kept their masks on to ask questions.
Source: USA Today

Tuesday

Prelude to a Pardon: Disgraced former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort leaves prison for home amid COVID-19

CC™ Breaking News - By Karen Freifeld and Sarah N. Lynch

President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was released from a federal prison in Pennsylvania on Wednesday to finish his sentence at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, his lawyer said, drawing fresh Democratic criticism over Justice Department actions that have benefited Trump associates.
Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, imprisoned in a separate case, also is expected to be released based on the threat of the coronavirus, a U.S. official familiar with the decision-making regarding inmates said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Todd Blanche, a lawyer for the Manafort, said the 71-year-old veteran Republican political operative was released from the Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Cambria County, Pennsylvania and would serve the remainder of his 7-1/2 year sentence in home confinement in Virginia.
Manafort's legal team last month asked the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for home confinement rather than continued imprisonment, saying his pre-existing health conditions such as high blood pressure, liver disease and respiratory ailments increased his risks should he become infected with the coronavirus.
The pathogen has led to a number of deaths amid the close quarters of federal prisons.
Manafort's sentence stemmed from two criminal cases arising from former U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation that documented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election to boost Trump's candidacy. Manafort's sentence is due to run until November 2024. 
The U.S. official did not provide information on when Cohen is expected to be let out of Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York. Cohen was imprisoned for arranging hush payments to two women who said they had sexual encounters with Trump, financial crimes and lying to Congress. Trump has called Cohen a "rat." Cohen has called Trump a "racist," a "con man" and "a cheat."
Source: Reuters

Sunday

Former U.S. President George W. Bush calls for unity and Trump promptly rebuffs his call

CC™ News - By David Jackson

Former President George W. Bush released a video this weekend encouraging Americans to stand up to the coronavirus pandemic, and did not mention current President Donald Trump. 

It doesn't sound like that sat too well with Trump.

"He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!" Trump said during a series of Sunday tweets in which he otherwise echoed praise of his performance on the virus and other issues. 

Trump's criticism of Bush dealt with the latter's silence during the impeachment investigation and trial. But he quoted a Fox News commentator who was talking about the coronavirus video that Bush made.

Pete Hegseth of Fox said he appreciated Bush's video, but wondered why the former president didn't urge people to put partisanship aside during the impeachment drama. 

In his video, Bush praised health care workers and other Americans who are meeting a historic "shared threat." 

"In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants," Bush said. "We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise." 

Bush's message of unity won widespread praise and drew comparisons to Trump. 

"In the face of a crisis that requires leadership, empathy, and trust in science, Trump has come up short," tweeted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. "Bush’s video should remind Republicans that they can do better." 

Other critics noted that Trump wrote "bye the way," when he meant to say "by the way."

Trump and Bush have made no secret of their disdain for each other. 

Bush said he did not appreciate Trump's attacks on him, his brother, and his father during the 2016 Republican primaries, as the New York businessman defeated a field of opponents that included former Florida Gov. Jeb. Bush. 

After Trump was sworn in as president, the Bush team let it be known that he found the new president's inaugural address – including a reference to an "American carnage" – to be "some weird s---." 

Trump, meanwhile, claims his predecessors, plural, left him messes that created problems. 

Asked recently if he planned to speak with living presidents about how to deal with the pandemic, Trump said no. 

"So I don't want to disturb them, bother them," Trump said. "I don't think I'm going to learn much. I guess you could say that there's probably a natural inclination not to call." 

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump attacks George W. Bush after a coronavirus video.