VV wrote:
 
He was going West anyway for more pep rallies, and astutely (maybe someone on his staff....maybe him) knew that not going would create the debate moment about "not going" to a blue-state disaster after heading to the gulf for hurricanes.   You can't have that be a discussion topic at the debates.

 kurtster wrote:
 

Call me crazy but my guess it would be that he's the president and is expected to show up when natural disasters occur to try and show support. 

Personally I'm energized by his encouragement... so much so that me and my rake are headed to our nearest public park so that I can begin tidying up by raking up all those dead branches and leaves. Should be able to knock that out in a couple hours I'm guessing. Hope to see you all there too.

 R_P wrote:
 

JFC this is stupider than the Gargoyle King plot in "Riverdale." And that's a lowlow bar. 

Michael R. Caputo, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of harboring a “resistance unit” determined to undermine President Trump, even if that opposition bolsters the Covid-19 death toll.

Mr. Caputo, who has faced intense criticism for leading efforts to warp C.D.C. weekly bulletins to fit Mr. Trump’s pandemic narrative, suggested that he personally could be in danger from opponents of the administration. “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get,” he urged his followers.

He went further, saying his physical health was in question, and his “mental health has definitely failed.”

No foolin'! 



“I don’t like being alone in Washington,” Mr. Caputo said, describing “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.” He also said the mounting number of Covid-19 deaths was taking a toll on him, telling his viewers, “You are not waking up every morning and talking about dead Americans.” The United States has lost more than 194,200 people to the virus. Mr. Caputo urged people to attend Trump rallies, but only with masks.



Only the best people...       

The Trump Virus
Trump Health Aide Pushes Bizarre Conspiracies and Warns of Armed Revolt
Michael R. Caputo told a Facebook audience without evidence that left-wing hit squads were being trained for insurrection and accused C.D.C. scientists of “sedition.”

I have no idea why Trump even bothered to go to California today.  Nobody there wants him there. 

In fact, everyone there is blaming the fires on him.  Biden certainly is, too, calling Trump an "arsonist"

It doesn't even qualify as a photo op because he has a snowball's chance in hell of winning California.

 kcar wrote:
 
He doesn't want to scare people...

“It’ll start getting cooler,” Trump insisted. “You just watch.”

Of course! The global temperature will magically get cooler! And the coronavirus will just disappear! Trump's said so at least 33 times, so it's definitely gonna happen!

Rake those forests, dammit! 

As Trump Again Rejects Science, Biden Calls Him a ‘Climate Arsonist’

The president visited California after weeks of silence on its wildfires and blamed the crisis only on poor forest management, not climate change. “I don’t think science knows” what is happening, he said.


WASHINGTON — With wildfires raging across the West, climate change took center stage in the race for the White House on Monday as former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called President Trump a “climate arsonist” while the president said that “I don’t think science knows” what is actually happening.

...
Mr. Trump, who had come under intense criticism for barely addressing the crisis before, interrupted a western campaign swing to make a two-hour visit to an airport in McClellan Park outside Sacramento, where Air Force One descended through a smoky haze. Not far away, one of the biggest fires, now largely contained, recently burned more than 363,000 acres.

As soon as the president disembarked from the plane at Sacramento McClellan Airport, where the stench of smoke filled the air, he did not wait for his scheduled briefing to tell reporters that the cause of the conflagration was poor forest management, not climate change.

“When trees fall down after a short period of time, they become very dry — really like a matchstick,” Mr. Trump said. “And they can explode. Also leaves. When you have dried leaves on the ground, it’s just fuel for the fires.”

At his subsequent briefing, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his top environmental adviser pushed the president to acknowledge the role of climate change. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, made a point of doing so exceedingly politely, reaffirming his working relationship with the president, thanking him for federal help and agreeing that forest management needed to be improved.

But Mr. Newsom noted that only 3 percent of land in California is under state control while 57 percent is federal forest land, meaning under the president’s management as governed by federal law.


...
But Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary for natural resources, pressed Mr. Trump more bluntly. “If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians,” he told the president.

This time, Mr. Trump rejected the premise. “It’ll start getting cooler,” he insisted. “You just watch.”

“I wish science agreed with you,” Mr. Crowfoot replied.

“Well, I don’t think science knows, actually,” Mr. Trump retorted, maintaining a tense grin.



...




Some environmental specialists said that Mr. Trump had a point about forest management but that it should not be an excuse to deny climate science and refuse to take action.

“Raking the leaves and forest floors is really inane. That doesn’t make sense at all,” said Ralph Propper, the president of the Environmental Council of Sacramento. “We’re seeing what was predicted, which is more extremes of weather.”

California, 19 other states, sue Trump administration for weakening methane rules

 ScottN wrote:
 
I think you're right.  I can't imagine that Trump wants to wade into those waters.  Joe is inappropriate (but a nice guy).  Don is a creep who pays porn stars for unprotected sex while his 3rd wife is home pregnant and known not to be a nice guy.  I can't see how Donnie wins that argument.

Interestingly enough, the Epstein connection and more recently his "nice words" in support of Ms. Maxwell have all gone quiet.  That will all come out later.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
Do you seriously believe Biden has a more sordid past with women than does Trump?  There has, to my knowledge, been one charge against Biden—now thoroughly discredited— of physical touching. Trump, otoh, has 20+ lawsuits pending in various degrees of progress, plus an accusation of rape. In addition to many NDA's where payoffs were made for silence.

 sirdroseph wrote:
 

That may be true in your opinion, or that of Kellyanne Conway, but I'm not sure what metrics you're using.  Was openly and repeatedly boasting about dating his own daughter,  bragging to an interviewer about grabbing women "by the pussy" and getting away with it, persistently hanging around in the dressing rooms of beauty contests he sponsored, being accused by least 25 women of sexual misconduct since the 1970s, cheating on his pregnant wife by having sex with a porn star, and dozens of other malfeasances, not enough to convince you of his inherent creepiness?
True, they both seem pretty creepy to me, and really there are far more devious things Trump is engaged in that the Democratic party should be concentrating on, but he's much more than a "patriarchal bigot and a...misogynist" - (which he clearly is).
Still, that is not a good political point for either side to bring up and is largely a distraction from what elections should be about.

 Steely_D wrote: 
There is plenty much worse things going on with Trump than him being creepy.  You have just broached the one subject that Biden is considerably worse on, seems like this is one angle Democrats would want to avoid.   Trump may be a patriarchal bigot and possibly even a misogynist, but he can't hold a candle to Biden for being creepy.

Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19

Rick Perry’s Ukrainian Dream
When the then-energy secretary accidentally helped lead the president into impeachment, he was simultaneously trying to help his friends cash in on a big gas deal.

As Trump played down virus, health experts’ alarm grew

Trump's Broken Promises to His Voters—He Didn't Deliver!
by Ralph Nader

The list of broken promises could fill volumes. Compare Trump’s words and deeds and misdeeds. “We will honor the American people with the truth and nothing else.” (Over 20,000 false or misleading statements so far by the Washington Post’s reliable count).

He never said he didn't want people to panic over antifa burning down cities and BLM thugs coming to the berbs to rape yer wimernfolk. If he were a company and not the president, he would be facing 200,000 wrongful death lawsuits or more likely a class action. Not to mention those that got sick. How much was Takata fined for not wanting a "create a panic" over it's defective airbag inflators? That resulted in like 25 deaths and 300 injuries.

 R_P wrote:
 

 Lazy8 wrote:
 
It is relevant from my viewpoint. The politicization of Supreme Court nominations has hit its zenith, to the detriment of all. Ordinary citizens, with little or no knowledge of jurisprudence, claim to know what makes a good judge or justice. Have they read opinions of those judges or otherwise researched them? Almost always, the answer is no. Yet they are thoroughly convinced they do know. How absurd is that?  It has become so surreal that Trump supporters and Trump himself tout his judicial appointments as among his most significant accomplishments. And Trump releases a list from which he says he will select a Supreme Court nominee because he believes it to be an election issue â€” which, unfortunately  and as you have acknowledged, it has become. If a vacancy arises in the Supreme Court or the lower federal courts, a President is empowered and charged with filling it. Just filling a vacancy is not an accomplishment in and of itself.  Evaluating whether a judicial appointment turns out to be a great one, an average one, or a subpar one, plays out over years. That Trump nominated a judge or justice and the Federalist Society approved of him or her does not make it a great appointment anymore than Bill Clinton or Barack Obama nominated a judge or justice and he or she was rated highly qualified by the American Bar Association.

This has become an obsession among conservatives and Republicans. Mitch McConnell has made judicial appointments his highest priority. They want “conservative” judges and justices. And what makes a judge or justice “conservative?” Almost always, the response I get is one who “follows the  Constitution.” Ok, then, thanks for clearing that up. And this is putting aside the obvious: someone who sees himself or herself as a conservative wants a so-called conservative Judge or justice, and someone who sees himself as liberal wants a so-called liberal judge or justice. See how this smacks of seeking to politicize the branch of government that the Framers attempted to insulate from politics? Of course you do.

Suffice it to say that giants of the Supreme Court would have a hard time getting on the Supreme Court today.

On a lesser note, I believe history will view Bader Ginsburg as a significant Justice. I would venture to say that she and Breyer will stack up just fine when compared to Gorsuch and Kavanaugh (of course, it is way too early to evaluate the 2 Trump appointees). If Bill Clinton did not make appointments via a corrupt process, that would seem to be relevant to your assumption — I assume you do agree it is an assumption — that Hillary Clinton would have done so. 

But, as you should be able to see, I am much more concerned with the exponentially larger issue — the increasing politicization of our federal judiciary — than I am on responding to speculation whether Hillary Clinton would have “sold” a seat on the Supreme Court, and got a suspect and subpar candidate through Senate confirmation. 

steeler wrote:

When a public official has behaved corruptly it's reasonable to expect further corruption.

I  disapprove of Bill Clinton's Supreme Court appointments on their own merits, but that's not relevant here.