One of the great enigmas in American history. But I conclude the obvious. Trump is a natural product of a two-party system that divides us in half. This was decades in the making. And it once again has us on the verge of a civil war:

There are also, of course, many Trump voters who are convinced that he is the lesser evil, because Biden is supposedly plotting to turn the United States into a “large scale version of Venezuela,” even while suffering from “dementia.” They claim Biden is a “puppet” of the far left, even though he opposes Medicare-for-all, the Green New Deal, a ban on fracking, defunding the police, expanding the Supreme Court and other progressive ideas.

The very fact that so many are so willing to believe such balderdash about Biden — a lifelong centrist who remains far more articulate and coherent than Trump — is a worrisome sign of how cut off from rational, factual discourse so much of the country has become. Many voters are still supporting Trump because they’re living in a hermetically sealed disinformation bubble that is impermeable to reality.

The blamer-in-chief is back to scapegoating immigrants. He is now talking about keeping all immigrants out. Although it’s something Trump probably just thought it up during the middle of the night. Apparently blaming WHO is not really going very far. Nor is blaming the Governors. Trump’s organizing protests (by way of Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos) in swing states is an obvious ploy. It’s also going to kill a whole bunch of people unnecessarily. But none of it will work. He can no longer run away from taking responsibility for what he did. His failure to prepare the country has led to the highest number deaths in the World, by far.

Another Trump White House scandal that will probably be swept under the rug:

The Trump administration awarded an N95 mask procurement contract worth eight times the usual price to a bankrupt company with no employees which has never even manufactured the respirator masks, according to a new report.

The company, Panthera, claims to provide tactical training and “mission support” for the Department of Defense and other government agencies. However, it has no experience with manufacturing or medical equipment, The Washington Post reported this week. Panthera’s parent company filed for bankruptcy in the fall, and it has not employed anyone since May 2018.

At least they don’t bother to deny it. The Trump mafia knows they can get away with just about any crime. No one to hold accountable:

The wife of one of Donald Trump’s sons and the girlfriend of another one are each receiving $180,000 a year from the president’s reelection campaign. But that money isn’t being handed out in the open. They’re each getting paid through the company run by Trump’s campaign manager in order to avoid the public disclosure that couldn’t be avoided if they were getting the money directly, reports HuffPost.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, and Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife, are each receiving $15,000 a month, two GOP sources tell HuffPost. Campaign manager Bradley Parscale is cutting the checks through his private company rather than the campaign itself. Parscale didn’t deny anything when HuffPost asked him about it. “I can pay them however I want to pay them,” Parscale said.

This scandal will be also forgotten or ignored because the media/press can’t do more than one thing:

In the middle of a pandemic that has killed 27,000 Americans and counting, the Army this week gave a politically connected Montana firm half a billion dollars—not to manufacture ventilators or protective gear to fight the novel coronavirus, but to build 17 miles of President Trump’s southern border wall.

On Tuesday, the Army Corps of Engineers announced it awarded BFBC, an affiliate of Barnard Construction, $569 million in contract modifications for building “17.17 miles” of the wall in two California locations, El Centro and San Diego. That works out to over $33 million per mile—steeply above the $20 million-per-mile average that the Trump administration is already doling out for the wall. Construction is supposed to be completed by the end of June 2021.

Finally Twitter has taken action against the Trump mafia. They’ve been spreading dangerous lies for years now. They should have acted sooner. Lot’s more need to be done with the Trump lies being spread online:

After trying to get Dr. Fauci fired, Trump’s lying sycophants and lawyers are helping to spread dangerous lies about a treatment for COVID-19 in an effort to defend Donald’s bungled response to the virus, and his constant attacks on governors demanding help from the federal government.

Meditate grabbed the tweet pictured above before it was deleted by Twitter because it violated the platform’s rules.

It’s bad enough for Rudy to spread false information – that could lead to panic and death – about the unproven and untested drug hydroxychloroquine that Fox News TV hosts have been hawking as a possible treatment. But to use a tweet by Charlie Kirk, who is using lies posted by Jim Hoft, just compounds the lunacy of it all.

Anyone who comes within 6 miles of Trump should have their heads examined and then quarantined:

There’s deep concern about New York City and the metro area, said Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force response coordinator, where around 56 percent of all the cases in the United States are coming out.

“To everyone who has left New York over the last few days because of the rate of the number of cases you may have been exposed before you left New York,” Birx said.

Vice President Mike Pence then encouraged Americans from the New York City metro area to follow guidelines and avoid non-essential travel. Pence called on those that have traveled out of the metro area to elsewhere in the country “to self isolate for 14 days.”

“We have to deal with the New York City metropolitan area as a high risk area,” Pence said.

During the pandemic, Trump hasn’t been shy about verbally scorning New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been among the public officials taking the most aggressive action to fight the virus.

The courts have been the only check on this administration. The politicians have failed miserably, so far:

Yesterday, a Texas federal district court handed a stunning victory to the county of El Paso in a lawsuit against Donald Trump.

The court found that the US president’s February declaration of a state of emergency at the border between Texas and Mexico injured the county’s reputation and exceeded his executive powers, holding that use of funds allocated for other purposes could not legally be used to fund the border wall.

“Defendants’ use of funds to build a border wall violates the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA),” the court wrote. Based on rules of statutory construction that dictate how to read laws about specific and general appropriations, Trump’s use of funds allocated for other purposes—such as drug law enforcement and military building—to construct the border wall was illegal, it held…

This article gets what the press keeps missing. The betrayal of the Kurdish people people was about doing the bidding of Putin, who controls Trump. Just like the keeping of military aid from Ukraine directly benefited the Kremlin. There are also alternate motivations that not only benefit Putin but also help Trump’s agenda. Trump thought it would help his reelection chances by withholding military funds earmarked by Congress from Ukraine, to get dirt on Biden. But it was also in the interest of Russia. Let’s also remember removing U.S. troops from Syria is exactly what Putin wants since it gives him a free hand in the region. It’s also a gift to Turkey which recently made purchases of advanced weapons systems from Moscow:

Just as the furor over Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation subsided over the summer, two new international storms engulfed the White House.

On Ukraine, President Donald Trump’s use of diplomatic pressure to damage a 2020 election rival have House Democrats poised to impeach him. On Syria, his green light for Turkey to attack American-aligned Kurdish forces has roiled Republicans, too.

The simultaneous spectacles may confuse average Americans who pay scant attention to foreign affairs. In fact, they contain a common thread.

In each case, the president has helped Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which has helped him for years with money and political support. They represent different chapters of the same story.