WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Monday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
· A leader sacrificing himself for others, or sacrificing others for himself? That was the question dividing Americans on a Monday night 30 days before a presidential election. “I stood out front. I led,” President Trump said in a video recorded upon his return to the White House from Walter Reed. “I know there’s a risk, I know there’s a danger, but that’s OK.”
· It was more than politics, more than an issue of health, with nothing related to future government policy. It was theater masterminded by a showman who was reaching for elemental emotions. For those more disposed to think of Trump as a charlatan, it all didn’t make much sense.
· He went on, “Now I’m better. Maybe I’m immune. I don’t know. Don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there. We have the best medicines in the world.”
· The video is at: https://twitter.com/i/status/1313267615083761665. It will be studied as part of the story of Trump for years to come. No one yet knows what kind of story it is, whether a tragedy, a comedy, a story of hubris and comeuppance, or of a kind of bravery and triumph.
· For viewers, the drama of a carefully choreographed pageant of departure, an exit from a hospital intended to show the majesty and power of the office, of the conquest of disease, concluding with an almost ceremonial shedding of the mask, may have been at least overproduced, and at most an inappropriate message for a pandemic plagued population. But it was more compelling than opponent Joe Biden’s Town Hall over on NBC. Which may have been the main point of the exercise.
· Biden, asked in the Town Hall by one participant about the country being split, as in, “You’re for me or you’re against me,” Biden blamed the president for much of it. He emphasized his career history of bringing people together, telling a story of how he was friends with both Republican Bob Dole and Democrat Ted Kennedy. He said he got things done by not questioning his opponent’s motives. “Debate the issues,“ don’t attack the integrity of the individual.”
· Over on Fox News, after President Trump had stood between American flags facing the camera from the South Portico, his personal lawyer was doing just that, questioning Biden’s integrity. “I see through you,” Giuliani said of Biden’s mask wearing. That mask “is a political statement to scare people.” Listen to the science? “Scientists almost always have conflicting opinions.” For Giuliani, the bottom line was the same as for that contingent on Fox that follows the president’s lead, “Democrats still want to lock us down … until the day after the election.”
· A super patriot casting aside the status quo and the conventions of the elite, or a superspreader without regard for the people paid to serve him, from the Secret Service to the orderlies who carry food in and out of the residence? As one CNN reporter said, it was the return of “Patient Zero,” shedding virus particles. As a CNN anchor said, it was a return to a White House now with more cases of COVID-19 than the entire country of New Zealand. As the New York Post said, retweeted by the president, “He will be the invincible hero, who not only survived every dirty trick the Democrats threw at him, but the Chinese virus as well. He will show America we no longer have to be afraid.”
· With the country embroiled in the spectacle, the contradictions, struggling with a pandemic with a national death toll passing 210,000 overnight, the question might be, what would Jesus say? Whoa, where is this going? Well, just to pull an appropriate quote from the Bible, specifically Matthew, 12:25: “And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” He probably wasn’t talking about Republicans vs. Democrats, liberals vs. conservatives, populists vs. technocrats, progressives vs. regressives. He was talking about good vs. evil and impossible contradictions. Something has to give.
· Upcoming economic statistics include international trade in goods and services at 8;30a ET, the weekly Johnson-Redbook read of same-store retail at 8:55a, and the JOLTS employment situation details, lagged by a month. The big event, though, is Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell’s NABE speech set to generate headlines at 10;40a.
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