Multiple White House sources told @ABC News there is "a full-blown freak-out" in the administration waiting to see who will be next to test positive — with aides not trusting each other and some trying to find ways to avoid coming into work at all. https://t.co/MeGLIiDe2D

— John Santucci (@Santucci) October 5, 2020

Yet he has some hugely intelligent and extremely savvy operators working for him

GOP started losing specials & then a ton of states left & right the moment Trump came in power; lost the House popular vote by 10% in 2018 (while saving the day with a favorable Senate map); & Trump’s approval began as dismal & never recovered. https://t.co/MudUGm9Rv0

— Taniel (@Taniel) October 5, 2020

I have a horrible feeling he is going to beat Biden.

His poll numbers have been a disaster the last few weeks.

? this is a five-alarm fire for the president’s campaign, if true pic.twitter.com/KsM7g58Ixm

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 6, 2020

It’s not fake. He’s not a genius political strategist. He’s a shameless huckster who delights in violating norms of decency. Last time around, nobody knew how to deal with him because he did things that were always considered political suicide. A large portion of the population was sick and tired of the lameness of professional politicians so they voted for him because they thought he was a successful businessman who would shake up the establishment.

Now he is the establishment but he doesn’t have anything new to run on so he’s still trying to run on the old platform of an outsider who will shake up the corrupt Washington elite. His support is bleeding away because the last week or two has brutally exposed what a fraud he is. He’s not faking it because his staff aren’t competent enough to do something that sophisticated and also because him getting covid utterly destroys his myth of competence. He is clearly struggling to breath in that video, you don’t need to be a doctor to spot that.

I watched the video of Trump on the balcony.

Here is what I saw:

-Extra-respiratory muscles to breathe.
-Visible chest wall rise.
-Open mouth breathing at times.
-Rapid shallow breaths at roughly 25-30 breaths per minute. More than twice normal.

This is respiratory distress.

— JaneDoeMD (@Caerage) October 6, 2020

We now go live to the only member of Trump’s debate prep team who has yet to test positive for COVID. https://t.co/QxRxi40n5q

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) October 6, 2020

It’s reasonably likely that Donald’s ‘don’t fear the Covid’ message will be subtly brutally and mercilessly undermined by his symptoms rebounding by the weekend and him getting readmitted.

FTFY

Still think the whole thing is faked.

It’s not faked. Numerous White House staff have been diagnosed, along with several Republican senators. He’s utterly desperate because the pandemic has destroyed any claim he has to being a competent leader. He looks to be struggling badly to breath in the videos, but he feels he has to put on a show of being normal so he can pretend covid isn’t a big deal. There’s a good chance he’ll be on a ventilator or dead by the end of the week, he really does not look good in those videos.

People telling me to calm down. **** them, I’ll get pissed off whenever I feel like it.

Someone obviously didn't finish reading a Mussolini biography. pic.twitter.com/lescRuVMoI

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) October 6, 2020

Deleted scene pic.twitter.com/ZmpFfKsA3j

— Comfortably Numb (@YGalanter) October 5, 2020

Twitter also suggests it was a max column issue, so each record was stored/sent as a column not a row!

This is my understanding. They used columns for cases, which is extremely strange.

However, the drugs do seem to be working.

Seems Trump's fever has gone back up. pic.twitter.com/5tBhaJkKJb

— Marc Owen Jones (@marcowenjones) October 5, 2020

What if he won those states “on the day” … (even though it is expected he will lose them badly once all postal votes are counted).

The states with Democratic governors would count all the votes like normal. The Republicans in the other swing states would have to make a calculation. They know that if they just declared the vote stopped, it would go to the Supreme Court, which currently has 8 justices. The assumption that many people make is that the five justices who were appointed by Republican presidents would automatically support the Republican side. That’s extremely unlikely in something as blatantly corrupt as this because it would destroy the credibility of the court. Chief Justice Roberts has voted against some high profile Trump administration cases, for example. He’s not going to throw his credibility away on a crackpot scheme like this. So, the Republicans would go into this being fairly certain that the best result they would get at the Supreme Court would be 4-5, assuming Trump managed to get a new justice appointed before this came before the court. But the woman he’s nominated is a serious legal scholar, and she would actually have no incentive to vote for nonsense like this because it would permanently destroy her credibility. That’s assuming the other three Republican appointed justices went along with it anyway. My guess is that they would all vote against it, because it is so blatantly corrupt and they know how bad it would make them look.

So, I’m not saying that Trump wouldn’t be stupid enough to ask for this, but he would be asking for every Republican involved to commit career suicide for a desperately unlikely gamble. In the real world, Trump would have to narrow the voting gap down to 3% or less to have any shot at making this work. He’s got four weeks to convince 5% of voters to switch from Biden to him, but he’s stuck in hospital with a disease that he spent months claiming was just a bit of a cold and his key staffers are also infected.

He’s going to win the “on the day” vote by some margin… and argue that they get on with appointing him, rather than waiting for the postal votes to be counted (which he will lose by an even bigger margin). The states that resist this will be the states where his loss has been nailed on for years anyway.

That can only work in states where the Republican Party has total control (i.e. House, Senate, Governor, and Supreme Court). The swing states are unlikely to have that situation.

Nevada has a Democratic Governor.
Wisconsin has a Democratic Governor.
Pennsylvania has a Democratic Governor.
Michigan has a Democratic Governor.

Biden is ahead in those states and Trump has no chance of having the vote stopped early just because he says so. Biden is also ahead in Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida, which have Republican Governors. Trump absolutely has to win those three states. If Republican officials in those states did anything as blatantly corrupt as just stopping counting votes, they would effectively be committing career suicide for any future state-wide office because those states are fairly balanced between Democratic and Republican voters. It’s not impossible that they might try it if they thought it had a serious chance of success, but that would only happen if they were utterly confident that Trump would win the states with Democratic governors. If Trump won those Democratic states, there wouldn’t be any need for the Republican controlled states to cheat anyway because Trump would win without cheating. So chances of the states going along with a dumb scheme like that are pretty much zero.

Full details here: https://t.co/4wXe4Qe7NM

— Josh Lederman (@JoshNBCNews) October 4, 2020

This news story is an example of why he’s not faking it – it makes him look like a fool to the moderate voters he needs to attract.

Trump takes a brief car ride, ignoring own COVID infection

BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Infected and contagious, President Donald Trump briefly ventured out in a motorcade on Sunday to salute cheering supporters, a move that disregarded precautions meant to contain the deadly virus that has forced his hospitalization and killed more than 209,000 Americans.

Hours earlier, Trump’s medical team reported that his blood oxygen level dropped suddenly twice in recent days and that they gave him a steroid typically only recommended for the very sick. Still, the doctors said Trump’s health is improving and that he could be discharged as early as Monday.

With one month until Election Day, Trump was eager to project strength despite his illness. The still-infectious president surprised supporters who had gathered outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, driving by in a black SUV with the windows rolled up. Secret Service agents inside the vehicle could be seen in masks and other protective gear.

The move capped a weekend of contradictions that fueled confusion about Trump’s health, which has imperiled the leadership of the U.S. government and upended the final stages of the presidential campaign. While Trump’s physician offered a rosy prognosis on his condition, his briefings lacked basic information, including the findings of lung scans, or were quickly muddled by more serious assessments of the president’s health by other officials.

In a short video released by the White House on Sunday, Trump insisted he understood the gravity of the moment. But his actions moments later, by leaving the hospital and sitting inside the SUV with others, suggested otherwise.

“This is insanity,” Dr. James P. Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed who is a critic of Trump and his handling of the pandemic. “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die.”

“For political theater,” the doctor added. “Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater.”

I really don’t believe he has it.

It’s a ploy/stunt.

Nonsense. He definitely has it, as do all the other Republicans who were infected at the same time. The White House tried to cover it up so he could keep campaigning but it leaked and they eventually had to admit it. Trump contracting covid is a disaster for his campaign. It makes all his downplaying of the seriousness of it look foolish and it prevents him from campaigning, which he desperately needs to do because he’s behind in the polls with four weeks to go to the election.

On top of that, they are desperately trying to push through a Supreme Court nomination, but two of the key senators they need for that are now infected so Democrats have a good chance of delaying that until after the election. That’s an utter disaster for the Republican Party.

This is the biggest gift the Biden campaign could have asked for, so there is no way they are trying to fake it.

I still think he’s going to walk this election.

No. He’s massively behind and Biden gained in polls following the debate. I think Trump has utterly misread the electorate. His core voters go for the racist strongman stuff, but that only gets him to 40%. Moderates are repelled by that. In 2016 those voters thought the crazy stuff was just a show and that he was a serious businessman who knew how to get things done, while Hillary Clinton is a difficult candidate for many people to like. Now that they’ve seen the reality, they are utterly repulsed and have switched to Biden because he comes across as a decent, moderate guy.

The electoral college is biased towards Republicans, but that gives them an advantage of about 2 to 3 percent. If Trump could keep the popular vote loss to 3% or so, he might have a chance of winning the electoral college by litigating results in swing states, but as things stand, he’s heading for a massive loss. Clinton won the popular vote by about 2 percent and lost the electoral college by less than 100 000 votes in a few swing states. Those swing states are now quite solidly polling to Biden and his national polling lead is somewhere in the 6% to 10% range. Plus, it’s moving towards Biden and away from Trump because the swing voters are unimpressed with that shitshow of a debate. Trump’s hospital stunt might impress his core voters, but voters overall are unimpressed with his handling of the pandemic so keeping that in the news is the worst thing Trump can do.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

It would be hilarious if he faked it now and then caught it in a couple of weeks.

He’s not faking it. He has it. He’s just dumb as shit and utterly unconcerned about anyone else.

Brand X.

Yesterday, a White House official gave @PeterAlexander this explanation for why Mrs Trump has not visited her husband at Walter Reed:
“She has COVID. That would expose the agents who would drive her there and the medical staff who would walk her up to him.“

— Josh Lederman (@JoshNBCNews) October 5, 2020

There’s a few millisecond break – that I am assuming is caused by compression or something, rather than actual bad-faith tampering – that makes the shrug look unnatural.

The fundamental problem is that serious journalists no longer trust the White House enough to believe that things like this aren’t bad-faith tampering. It’s quite believable that Trump coughed and they edited it out because they want to pretend that he’s not seriously ill.

It’s okay for him to be sick and trying to get well. No need to insult our intelligence. https://t.co/TYDcgApTkO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 4, 2020

That’s a shrug of his shoulders, an intake of breath, whatever.

Whatever it is, it’s there in Trump’s version, it’s not something that was introduced in the trimmed version, so not an artifact of video compression.

It’s a poorly compressed copy of the original video. The last thing I want to do is be defending Trump, but if you look at the source video from DT’s twitter (around the 1:03 mark) you can see no such judder:

It’s still there at 1:03 in Trump’s version. The video has been edited, most likely to remove coughing. It’s nonsense like this that causes people to reflexively disbelieve anything that the White House says.

Whatever happens when Trump says "therapeutics" here is a strange moment in the video he posted this evening pic.twitter.com/TaaG13AH2E

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 4, 2020

So im assuming ivanka is the pangolin ?

— Mark Dodsworth (@markdodsworth) October 3, 2020

Is this CNN saying Mark Meadows, the WH Chief if Staff, is their source for info that Trumps vitals are not good? pic.twitter.com/7z7tweWKTD

— Darcy Burner (@DarcyBurner) October 3, 2020

BREAKING: “The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.”

–A source familiar with the President's health, to pool reporters

— Sara Cook (@saraecook) October 3, 2020

Holy shit, that was some White House party. More disease transmission than New Zealand, Taiwan, and Vietnam combined.

This is now the 24th person in the president's circle? https://t.co/csREOj71ZQ

— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) October 3, 2020

Oh, it turns out that it’s actually a devilishly clever plan to put Hillary Clinton behind bars. (Either that or Twitter is full of lunatic conspiracy nutters.)

What could possibly go wrong?

According to the Guardian, different in the US. You’re voting for the person, not the party?

Not exactly in a presidential election. Each voter does vote for the person they want to be president, but the president is actually elected by the electoral college. Each state sends delegates to the electoral college equal to the combined number of congress and senate seats the state has. Each state chooses how the electoral college electors are chosen, but nearly all award all the electoral college places to the party of the candidate with the highest share of the vote in that state. The political party then chooses electors to vote for the presidential candidate, so the party actually has a major role in this.

Occasionally, an elector votes for a different candidate than they were supposed to. Different states have different rules about whether this is legal, but there’s nothing that can be done to prevent it. If Trump has to withdraw, the Republican Party can instruct their electors to vote for Mike Pence for President instead of Trump. Nobody is going to try enforcing a rule saying they are bound to vote only for Trump, so this is not the big issue that people think it is. Even if both Trump and Pence were to die of Covid, the Republican Party could nominate two new candidates and the election would continue with Trump-Pence on the ballot.

The electoral college system is deeply flawed and there have been calls to overhaul it and replace it with a system where whoever wins the national vote is automatically President, but that would require major constitutional changes. Republicans will never agree to that because they dominate in small rural states (which have the same number of senators as large states, hence carry more weight in the electoral college).

The number of senior level Republican government officials who have contracted the coronavirus is growing by the hour. I don't think there's a parallel in the developed world to what the United States is going through right now.

— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) October 3, 2020

Looking at news this morning, I'm no longer confident that critical race theory will be the defining issue of the election.

— Dave Weigel, Re-Animator (@daveweigel) October 2, 2020

I wouldn’t put it past him if it provided a chance to boost his ratings as the election looms.

If anything, the WH is downplaying the seriousness of it because it makes him look bad, not good. The one issue he really, really does not want to have to answer questions about is Covid. His message for the last six months has been that it’s just a cold and everyone should go back to normal. Being hospitalized is the worst thing possible for him. He was obviously wrong about the pandemic and he won’t be able to campaign for a couple of weeks minimum. He’s massively behind in the polls so he absolutely has to get out campaigning.

With the President's condition deteriorating, they decided Trump would go to Walter Reed now in part because he was still well enough for the photo op walking over to the helicopter, WaPo reports. https://t.co/Ro0ueKnM0z pic.twitter.com/6t4FDAE2gq

— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) October 3, 2020

For a shim that thick, I’d buy a proper one. I’ve used drink cans as shims before, fine for a very small difference but a proper shim is much better.

https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/brand-x-cnc-alloy-seatpost-shim/rp-prod6258

The hoax thing was, err a hoax. He never said that. Much like the very fine people hoax.

From the CNN story:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/17/politics/joe-biden-campaign-ad-trump-coronavirus-hoax-fact-check/index.html

Here is what Trump said in full:

“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus — you know that right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.” They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes.

One of my people came up to me and said, “Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in.” It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”

The next day Trump was asked about this comment and tried to clarify what he said, claiming he was “referring to the action that [the Democrats] take to try and pin this on somebody, because we’ve done such a good job. The hoax is on them.”

That said, Trump’s clarification has not stopped some of his supporters from believing the pandemic is, in fact, a hoax. One Trump supporter attending a campaign rally in Michigan on September 10 was asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta why he was not wearing a mask. “Because there’s no Covid,” he said. “It’s a fake pandemic created to destroy the United States of America.”

Have you considered a refurb?
You may get more value for money.

Those refurbed machines have fairly old CPUs and low resolution displays. This one, for example, has a 3rd generation i5. That’s ancient. Not value for money, really.

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/refurbished-fujitsu-lifebook-s752-core-i5-8gb-120gb-14-inch-windows-10-prof-t1-s752i58gb120gbw10p/version.asp

I don’t believe for a second he has it. It’s an election tactic. He can avoid debates and any further scrutiny and reap the sympathy vote.

He’s spent most of the year downplaying it and saying it’s a hoax, then ignoring advice and holding rallies without masks. Getting it makes him look really bad and prevents him campaigning, there’s no way this helps him.

I can’t see any new manufacturers entering after seeing how badly Renault and Honda struggled to catch up to Merc. You’re realistically talking 3 years to be remotely competitive with a new engine. Honda won’t sign over their IP to another manufacturer having seen what happened with Brawn, but it’s remotely possible that they might sell it to Cosworth or someone on the stipulation that it’s never branded as another manufacturer’s engine. I imagine you’d be talking about hundreds of millions for the IP.

Under the new rules Renault will be forced to sell them engines won’t they?

Yes, but it’s quite likely that Hass will want to ditch Ferrari engines so will switch to Renault for 2021. That will leave Merc with four teams, Ferrari with two and Renault with two. Renault would then be able to offer an engine supply to Alpha Tauri and refuse to supply Red Bull.

Another thought is that Red Bull might be able to put together a consortium of independent teams (McLaren, Williams, Aston Martin, Hass) and try to buy the rights to the Honda engine, then commission Cosworth or someone to build it for them, with each team badging it as their own. The FIA and Liberty Media would probably welcome something like this because it’s not clear how long car manufacturers are going to want to keep promoting ICEs, so having an independent engine maker would be good insurance.

or Red Bull just leave F1

As a sponsor, maybe, but those two teams will be worth quite a bit now that there’s a cost cap and a big surcharge for new entries. I’m sure Merc or Renault would be willing to supply engines if Marko and Horner were gone, but my guess would be Horner setting up backing to buy the team if Red Bull want out, so Renault would probably not be interested.