- The DC hotel owned by the president is asking for relief on lease payments from their landlord. Their landlord is the Trump administration. This obvious conflict of interest is expressly banned in the hotel’s lease, but the person who determined what to do about the conflict was appointed by Trump and decided to simply ignore that part of the lease. In short, the president will be deciding whether or not the government gives a payment freeze to his own company.
- The Senate Intelligence Committee has affirmed the finding that Russia’s intelligence operating in 2016 was in order to help Donald Trump get elected.
- Multiple large companies have taken advantage of PPP loans due to a loophole that considers them a small business as long as they don’t have more than 500 employees at any single location. This allows huge restaurant and hotel chains to secure the loans. While Shake Shack returned theirs after some backlash, most have not. Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse received a $20 million loan. The company was sitting on $86 million in cash reserves before the loan and recently spent $5 million on stock buybacks. (Fault here is with both Congress and the Executive Branch)
- New Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany chastised a reporter for saying “Trump” instead of “President Trump.” McEnany in February said Trump would not allow the virus to come to the United States. In the past, she frequently referred to President Obama by his last name only, once calling him “son” despite his being twice her age at the time. And like the president, McEnany is a birther who on more than one occasion said President Obama was not born in the United States.
- As the US death toll crosses 40,000, the president is tweeting doctored videos of Obama, retweeting people calling the Mueller investigation a witch hunt, lying about his approval rating, bragging about press briefing ratings (of note here, the ratings are high because everyone is inside watching TV. There isn’t a significant gain in viewers between the briefings and the hour preceding them), attacking the media in general, and calling MSNBC host Joe Scarborough “psycho” and “nuts.” He has not shown a quantum of emotion over the vast number of dead because he does not care about any of them.
