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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'What if he dies? - Greg Olear [See H. Cain timeline]
. . . 'Even so, theres much we still dont know. Given the White Houses staunch refusal to tell us the date of Trumps last negative test, it is difficult to construct a definitive timeline. Best as we can tell, the President was positive, and infectious, well before his September 29 debate with Joe Bidenwhen, thank God and Chris Wallace, the candidates were not made to shake hands. During that fateful period, Trump himself appears to have been a super-spreader, passing the novel coronavirus on to his senior advisers, his debate prep team, his wife, his donors, his staffers, his military brass, his campaign chairman, and at least three of the Senators he needs to install Amy Covid Barrett on the Supreme Court (Lindsey Graham would make four).
It also appears that Trump has undue influence over his doctors, particularly the star-struck Sean Conleythat he, not they, have the final word about his health. This part is no surprise. Trump has coerced doctors to lie about his physical fitness since his Queens podiatrist, his fathers tenant, conjured up phantom bone spurs to get him out of Vietnam.
There has been much talk these last four years of the 25th Amendment, with the fantasy of the Vice President and members of the Cabinet removing Trump permanently, in what MAGA would certainly describe as a coup. But the actual intention of that piece of legislation was to establish a clear chain of command should the President be incapacitated for a finite length of timeas when George W. Bush was knocked out for a few hours to have his colonoscopy. Upon showing symptoms of the virus, then, a responsible leader would have said, Under the dictates of the 25th Amendment, I am ceding power to Mike Pence for the next two weeks, so that I can concentrate on my recovery from this deadly disease. A responsible VP would have insisted upon this as well. Instead, we have a sick man desperately wanting us to believe he is Kal-El, threatening to kiss every man and beautiful woman in the house, and a lickspittle #2 who held a rally at a freakin retirement community in Florida, with Boomer cultists packed in like sardines with a death wish, and nary a mask in sight.
Covid-19 operates on a timeline that would be right at home in a horror movie. A few days after you are infected, you develop symptoms. If the symptoms get bad, you go to the hospital. After a few days, you feel betterlike you could doff your jacket and tie to reveal a Superman costume underneath. But, like the killer from the slasher film, The Nineteen is not done with you. Sometimes it comes back! And when it does, it kills you. This is what happened to gone-but-also-forgotten Herman Cain, who contracted the disease at a Trump rally in Tulsa:
Tim O'Brien
@TimOBrien
A humbling Herman Cain/coronavirus timeline:
6/24: Attends Trump rally, maskless
7/2: Tests positive for Covid-19
7/10: Says hes improving
7/15: Says his doctors seem happy
7/27: Says hes really getting better
7/30: Dies
October 5th 2020
50,505 Retweets125,654 Likes
Trump tested positive for covid-19 on October 2, exactly three months after Herman Cain. As the timeline shows, he is now in what, for Cain, was the improving/ doctors seem happy phase. Given his age, his shitty diet, his stress level, his drug abuse (the alleged Adderall addiction and the steroids hes been lately popping), and his morbid obesity, Trump remains a prime candidate to be the first sitting president since FDR to die of illness while in office. Four more years of President Donald Trump! Mike Pence promised at the debatebut the grim reality is that, like it or not, we may only get four more weeks. It may well be that hes recovered, as he claims, but if Trump is on the Cain train, he wont be around for Halloween.
No one is talking about this, at least not publicly, but everyone is thinking about ityou and me, Jared and Ivanka, Mike and Karen Pence, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, all the criminals in his orbit waiting for their pardons: everyone. Will he make it? Will he not? And: which outcome is preferable?
If Trump beats the virus, he limps into the election with cratering poll numbers, a burgeoning Second Wave he helped exacerbate, and a Republican Senate that refuses to pass an urgently-needed relief bill. Chances are, he loses in epic fashion, with Joe Biden approaching 60 percent of the popular voteas high as it gets in a true democracy. But theres still the possibility, remote though it may be, that he pulls it off. If, however, he succumbs to his infirmity, then the Trump presidency is over, forever. The reign of plunder and ineptitude of the worst leader in our nations history, a mob money launderer installed by a hostile foreign power to wreak havoc on the United States, ends, full stop.
Like watching a championship game in which you despise both teams, its win-win, but also lose-lose. And in this Trump vs. Rona Super-spreader Bowl, we are all mere spectators. Me, I would rather he survive, at least for the next three weeks, so he can know the humiliation of a historic ass-kicking at the ballot box. (I dont want him to die as the president, Lincolns Bible told me). The risk of him winning in November is one Im willing to take, so that justice may prevail.
But, like, what if he doesnt make it? What if the virus he called a hoax claims him? The ripple effects are enormous:
With 21 days until Election Day, and tens of millions of votes already cast, it is too late to remove him from the ballot. Voters would have to choose between two defenders of democracy in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and, in Trump and Mike Pence, a dead despot and his soulless lackey, a poltroon too pusillanimous to even try to stop the spread of the virus he was charged with stopping.
The vote would be closer, I thinkalthough, one hopes, not by much. The Democrats could talk incessantly about how Mike Pence, who presided as governor over a major HIV outbreak in Indiana, presided as head of the White House coronavirus task force over a bungled pandemic response, and killed a quarter of a million Americansincluding his own boss. If there were time, we could revisit Nick Ayers, and Pences deleted AOL emails, and the Ukraine imbroglio he was also part of, and the fishy Mike Flynn stuff. Some anti-Trump Republicans would probably hold their noses and vote for that piece of human flypaper. On the other hand, Pence has no truck with the QAnon/Proud Boys/MAGA crowd, which might stay home. So: Biden would likely still win, but we would sweat it out a bit more.
But theres more than just the election that would be effected. Trump being Chief Executive has put the kibosh on any number of state and federal criminal investigations. All of that protection and deference to the office immediately goes away. Tax documents are turned over. Presidential privilege goes out the window for the likes of Don McGahn and John Bolton. NDAs become less meaningful. Cy Vance is free to indict Eric, Ivanka, and Don, Jr. The details that emerge of the various crimes, pay-for-play schemes, and treasonous activities will make it difficult to muster sympathy for these traitors, who would face justice. The fact that US marshals didnt take John Wilkes Booth alive didnt make it any easier for his conspirators, who were hung by the neck on a scaffold built at what is today Fort McNair.
We would enter the lame duck period under the stewardship of Mike Pence, who, desperate to salvage his unsalvageable political career, would not be as generous with the pardon pen. Indeed, the House Democrats would have no reason not to impeach the interim president immediately, for his role in the same Ukraine scandal that Trump participated in, and could certainly threaten to do so unless he behaved himself. So: Pence has zero incentive to save Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn, or their seditious ilk. Superseding indictments may be unsealed on all of these felons, to moot their sentence commutations by Trump . . . '
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwKhqkQTCCLZGtFChjcCKgzwjfk
Roland99
(53,342 posts)see posts 7, 15, 16, 17
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214219159
Celerity
(43,485 posts)Olear's tweet smearing Pete by trying to tie him to Gabbard (and insulating he is a 'come from nowhere' stalking horse) in addition to the Zuckerberg rot.
Twitter is a pure cesspool. I have to laugh when I see anti-Sanders and anti-Gabbard people (which is a completely understandable and valid stance for them) but who also happen to be Biden supporters push tweets by trolls like Hoarse Whisperer (a known liar who has started shitstorms on here via false tweets such as the pure lie that AOC was attacking Pelosi at that climate sit-in, when all AOC did was tell the demonstrators that SHE HAD PELOSI's BACK, ffs) and who (Hoarse) also pushes tweets by known pure scum conspiracy theorists like Greg Olear, Olear being notorious for, amongst other things, labelling BIDEN Handsy McGee.
Here is the Hoarse Whisperer reweet of a bullshit Olear smear of Buttigieg (Olear smears the vast majority of Dems running for POTUS he is a big Gillibrand fanboy, and says Waren and Harris are the only two real ones left)
and here is Olear smearing Biden as (not for the first time) 'Handsy McGee'
Link to tweet