Daily Kos Staff Picks: Florida man loses job after Costco mask meltdown went viral amid coronavirus pandemic

Daily Kos staff looks back at some of their favorite posts from the past week.

• Florida man loses job after Costco mask meltdown went viral amid coronavirus pandemic
• 
  In a now-viral video, a Florida man was seen not wearing a mask while in a Costco in Fort Meyers, Florida, on June 27, as reported by local outlet NBC 2. The video shows a man wearing a red T-shirt and flip-flop sandals. What made the video go viral is not just his lack of a face covering, but that the video shows the man shouting at another customer after he was reportedly asked multiple times why he was not wearing a mask in the store. Costco has required employees, members, and guests to wear face coverings over both the nose and mouth since May 4, 2020. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the man in the video has since been fired from his job at an insurance agency.

  In the video, the man can be heard yelling “I feel threatened!” as well as “Back the f--k up” and to “put your f--king phone down!” This incident was reportedly sparked when a fellow customer—identified in the original Twitter thread as an elderly woman—asked the man why he wasn’t wearing a mask. The person filming the video was reportedly a fellow customer who stepped in after the interaction became heated. 
  You can see the video posted below.

  According to Billy Corben, who posted the viral video to Twitter, one of the customers targeted in the tirade said Costco escorted the man outside and made sure the customer got to their car safely.

  On Tuesday afternoon, Tedd Todd Insurance Company posted a Twitter statement saying an employee had been fired after the company became aware of the individual’s “behavior in the video.” The statement does not identify the person by name.

  The same Twitter account tweeted a statement from the CEO.

  As the novel coronavirus pandemic rages on, states are still handling the public health crisis with varying guidelines and restrictions. While these mixed messages can certainly be confusing, we have received guidance from the World Health Organization, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on how to best protect yourself from COVID-19. Practicing social distancing, wearing a mask or face covering, and washing your hands frequently are some of the most common pieces of advice. Staying home when possible is also ideal. My colleague Mark Sumner has argued on behalf of a national mask-wearing mandate. 

  In Costco’s case, the president and CEO of the company, Craig Jelinek, noted in a statement back in May that while “some members may find this inconvenient or objectionable,” this is “not simply a matter of personal choice; a face covering protects not just the wearer, but others too.” The store does provide exemptions for children under two years old, as well as people with certain medical conditions. 

  Of course, this is far from the first mask-related incident to happen amid the pandemic. For example, as my colleague Aysha Qamar covered, two men were caught on video breaking an employee’s arm after being asked to wear masks while in a Target. As my colleague Lauren Floyd covered, a security guard at a Dollar General store was shot and killed after asking a woman who tried to enter the store to wear a mask. 
• 
  
• Trump wants to scare suburban white women back into his arms. Wanna guess how that's going?
• 
  The Trump campaign is cratering in the polls, riven by internal division, and trapped both by two generational crisis—the movement for racial justice, and a global mass-death pandemic. And while there is theoretically time for impeached racist Donald Trump to turn things around, he won’t. He can’t. He is utterly incapable of understanding the moment, and the kind of leadership necessary to navigate it. 

  His core electoral problem? He’s gotten hit among some of his core constituencies, such as seniors and non-college whites. Republicans, in general, suffered from greater participation among core Democratic constituencies in the last three years, chief among them, Black voters, but also youth, Latinos, and other voters of color. But nothing has electorally hurt Republicans than the loss of suburban college-educated white women. They’re the reason Democrat Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House, the reason Democrats won governorships in blood-red Kentucky and Louisiana last year, as well as total control of Virginia government. They’re the reason Trump was already hurting in the polls.

  And calling “Black Lives Matter” signs a “symbol of hate” and ranting about “chaos” in the streets isn’t bringing back those voters, or anyone else he’s lost.
  Trump’s argument is simple: the same argument that launched his campaign, and the same argument he trotted out in his hate-spewing Fourth of July speech at Mt. Rushmore. It’s “the blacks and browns are coming for you.” 

  This is the reason conservatives have rallied around the odious St. Louis couple that pointed their guns at protesters peacefully marching past their house. This is their worldview, one of being under siege, and playing into every historically racist trope about rapist dark hoodlums coming after virginally pure white blonde girls. 

  

  While the nation both laughed and recoiled at the cartoonish buffoonery of these retrograde assholes, conservatives applauded enthusiastically. Finally someone was standing up to the lawless hordes rampaging through America’s cities! 

  And in his Fox News and twitter bubble, Trump saw an opening he could fully embrace—he mustered up every bit of his innate racist and despotic tendencies, firmly rooted in the foundational premise of the modern GOP (the politics of racial division and grievance), and let loose: “We will never allow an angry mob to tear down our [confederate traitor] statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children or trample on our freedoms,” arguing that protesters were “not interested in justice or healing.” 

  This speech was written by top Trump advisor and white supremacist Stephen Miller, all of it designed to capture an expected backlash from those white suburban women that have so fucked Republican. Yet that backlash is a fantasy. It simply doesn’t exist. 

  While we don’t have specific numbers for suburban white woman vs others, we can glean information on white women overall—a group Trump won 52-43 in 2016. And as of today, they support Black Lives Matter by a 49-34 margin. And white Republican white women have backslid a bit (they never really supported it much),  white independent women are still solidly supportive. 

  People often criticize politicians for putting their finger up in the air to measure which way the wind is blowing—that is, they’re too easily swayed by public opinion. In this case, Trump is facing a gale wind of opposition, and has decided to double down. “Black Lives Matter” signs are a “symbol of hate,” and racial justice activists are “an angry mob.” And meanwhile, white women almost everywhere, and particularly in the battleground states, are looking at Trump as if he’s lost his mind. 

  Is it any wonder that Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden is nothing gaudy leads in these battleground states, despite having the most (justifiably) invisible campaign in modern history? White women support Black Lives Matter 53-29 in Wisconsin, 52-30 in Michigan, 49-34 in Pennsylvania, 50-34 in Iowa, 48-39 in Alaska, and 46-38 in Arizona. (And yes, Alaska and Montana, 50-32, are threatening to become battleground states). 

  Meanwhile, when it comes to the biggest issue facing white suburban women today—that mass death event that has already killed over 132,000 Americans (and counting), the numbers get worse for Trump by the day: 

  And more important than those topline numbers, Trump’s coronavirus approval ratings in the battleground states among white women is simply abysmal:

  Republicans can take some solace that Trump’s federal coronavirus response remains in positive territory among white women in Texas and Georgia, but that won’t save their presidential electoral map. In fact, outside of the Deep South, West Virginia, and Wyoming, those white women sure aren’t happy. 

  What does that mean, in the end? It means that Trump has among the worst ratings of his entire presidency, per our Civiqs daily tracker, at a woeful 41-55. And among those white women that Trump thinks will be scared back into his arms? 

  Remember, Trump won these voters 52-43 in 2016. That 9-point lead is now an 8-point deficit, and he barely won in 2016. How the hell is he going to claw back those 17-net points he’s lost with white women, if he can’t even properly diagnose the cause of their discontent? 

  Trump’s nightmare reign has obviously motivated groups far beyond these white women—we can expect record turnout among our own core demographics—youth, voters of color, and urban whites. We don’t have to guess at it, we saw it happen already in 2018. But Trump-supporting group has moved as sharply against the orange stain in the White House than these white women. And the Trump campaign’s explicit attempts to bring them back into the fold is, by all objective measures, a hopeless cause. 
• AG Barr bribed, threatened, and lied his way to ousting New York's top prosecutor, testimony reveals
  
• The coronavirus pandemic is being called 'a media extinction event.' Help progressive, independent media survive by starting a $3 monthly recurring to Daily Kos.
  
• Teacher layoffs are coming, and this teacher's story shows how messy it can get
  
• Confederate memorials are not about Confederates
  
• New complaint ties Breonna Taylor warrant to Louisville gentrification plan
  
• Republican senators failed to hold Trump accountable. A reckoning is due. These Senate seats will make or break the Republican majority. Chip in $1 to the Demcoratic nominee in each of them now.
  
• Republicans didn't think they'd have to defend these three Senate seats. Let's flip 'em all!
  
• The year's first-ever poll of Alaska shows GOP with yet another Senate race too close for comfort
  
• Virginia still showing the good consequences of elections
  
• Sign and send the petition to the U.S. Senate: We must have funding for Vote by Mail!
  
• This Week in Statehouse Action: What a Fool Believes edition
  
• Universities sue Trump admin over dangerous ICE policy targeting international students
  
• Domestic terrorism database of the Trump years shows how the radical right has gone on a rampage
  

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MAGA

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has JUST weighed in on Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone imprisonment, saying Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.“

"We're IN! 100% ALL IN!"

 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has JUST weighed in on Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone imprisonment, saying Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.“

/S/

Full piece:

By Robert S. Mueller III

July 11 at 6:22 PM ET

[Robert S. Mueller III served as special counsel for the Justice Department from 2017 to 2019.]

“The work of the special counsel’s office — its report, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions — should speak for itself.

But I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office.

The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.

Russia’s actions were a threat to America’s democracy. It was critical that they be investigated and understood.

By late 2016, the FBI had evidence that the Russians had signaled to a Trump campaign adviser that they could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to the Democratic candidate. And the FBI knew that the Russians had done just that: Beginning in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails stolen by Russian military intelligence officers from the Clinton campaign. Other online personas using false names — fronts for Russian military intelligence — also released Clinton campaign emails.

Following FBI Director James B. Comey’s termination in May 2017, the acting attorney general named me as special counsel and directed the special counsel’s office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The order specified lines of investigation for us to pursue, including any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

One of our cases involved Stone, an official on the campaign until mid-2015 and a supporter of the campaign throughout 2016.

Stone became a central figure in our investigation for two key reasons: He communicated in 2016 with individuals known to us to be Russian intelligence officers, and he claimed advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ release of emails stolen by those Russian intelligence officers.

The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.

Russian efforts to interfere in our political system, and the essential question of whether those efforts involved the Trump campaign, required investigation. In that investigation, it was critical for us (and, before us, the FBI) to obtain full and accurate information.

We now have a detailed picture of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The special counsel’s office identified two principal operations directed at our election: hacking and dumping Clinton campaign emails, and an online social media campaign to disparage the Democratic candidate.

We also identified numerous links between the Russian government and Trump campaign personnel — Stone among them. We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities.

The investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome.

It also established that the Trump campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.

Uncovering and tracing Russian outreach and interference activities was a complex task. The investigation to understand these activities took two years and substantial effort.

Based on our work, eight individuals pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, and more than two dozen Russian individuals and entities, including senior Russian intelligence officers, were charged with federal crimes.

Congress also investigated and sought information from Stone. A jury later determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress.

He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks.

He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary.

He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks’ releases.

He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks.

And he tampered with a witness, imploring the witness to stonewall Congress.

The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.

Russian efforts to interfere in our political system, and the essential question of whether those efforts involved the Trump campaign, required investigation. In that investigation, it was critical for us (and, before us, the FBI) to obtain full and accurate information.

Likewise, it was critical for Congress to obtain accurate information from its witnesses.

When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. It may ultimately impede those efforts.

We made every decision in Stone’s case, as in all our cases, based solely on the facts and the law and in accordance with the rule of law.

The women and men who conducted these investigations and prosecutions acted with the highest integrity.

Claims to the contrary are false.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/11/mueller-stone-oped/

RSN: FOCUS: Jonathan Greenberg | Twelve Signs Trump Would Try to Run a Fascist Dictatorship in a Second Term

11 July 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
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A DAILY STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM - Is what our work at RSN has become. It’s real, it’s pervasive and most people would rather not look at it. This is a pretty serious battle against some pretty serious people. A budget would be a big help. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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FOCUS: Jonathan Greenberg | Twelve Signs Trump Would Try to Run a Fascist Dictatorship in a Second Term

Jonathan Greenberg, The Washington Post
Greenberg writes: "I first reported on Trump in 1982, when he conned me into putting him on the Forbes 400 rich list. That Trump was just a younger version of this Trump, and now I worry that what happened in June was a mere prelude; he's certainly capable of a far worse Reichstag-fire-like event that would allow him to steal the 2020 election."

He lies about voter fraud, admires authoritarians, tries to suppress free speech and uses the law against those who would hold him accountable.

eople have debated whether Donald Trump is fascist since he announced he was running for president. In 2015, Jamelle Bouie wrote in Slate that Trump, in his campaign speeches and Twitter utterances, exhibited seven of the 14 characteristics identified by the Italian novelist Umberto Eco in his defining essay “Ur-Fascism.” In 2016, the Georgetown professor John McNeill assessed Trump’s fascist tendencies on a scale of zero to four “Benitos,” after the father of fascism, Benito Mussolini. As an amateur, Trump fell short.

That was then. What about now? And, more important, what about the Trump of a potential second term in the White House?

On June 1, as demonstrators gathered and marched in Washington and around the country to protest the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, President Trump, in a brief speech in the White House Rose Garden, called for states to use the National Guard to “dominate the streets” and promised that if they didn’t, “I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.” Federal forces then used tear gas and stun grenades on peaceful protesters to clear a path for him to walk from the White House to nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo op with a Bible as prop.

“The fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on a declaration of war against American citizens,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tweeted. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) — noting in an opinion column three days later that the president’s “attempt to use chaos to shred democratic safeguards and consolidate authoritarian power is deadly serious” — put it this way: “This is our own Reichstag fire and, yes, Trump is playing the role of would-be Fuehrer, proclaiming a ‘God-given signal’ to seize more power.”

I first reported on Trump in 1982, when he conned me into putting him on the Forbes 400 rich list. That Trump was just a younger version of this Trump, and now I worry that what happened in June was a mere prelude; he’s certainly capable of a far worse Reichstag-fire-like event that would allow him to steal the 2020 election. And if he does win a second term, legitimately or not, his words and actions of the past four years provide 12 indicators that he would seek to replace our democracy with a fascist dictatorship.

1. Trump uses military power and federal law enforcement to suppress peaceful political protest. In June, he deployed the National Guard and federal officers to violently evict protesters in Washington, terrorizing them with two military helicopters flying low near the crowd. Trump also had 1,600 members of the 82nd Airborne on standby outside the capital and readied tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. It’s reported that he wanted to deploy 10,000 troops to Washington alone. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took this so seriously that he got into a shouting match with the president over the prospect of deploying active-duty troops on U.S. soil.

2. Trump persistently lies about voter fraud, setting the stage for him to use emergency powers to seize control of the election or challenge the results if he loses. During a recent special election in California, for example, after a Republican mayor requested the opening of an additional polling station, Trump tweeted falsely that the Democrats “have just opened a voting booth in the most Democrat area in the State. They are trying to steal another election. It’s all rigged out there. These votes must not count. SCAM!” Trump has repeatedly tweeted that mail-in voting will lead to fraudulent and rigged elections. After winning the 2016 presidential election while losing the popular vote, he claimed a landslide victory and said that Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote was due to “millions of people who voted illegally.”

3. Trump has repeatedly suggested that he might remain in office after a second term and has offered reason to doubt he’d leave peacefully after this first term. “Under the normal rules, I’ll be out in 2024, so we may have to go for an extra term,” he said at a rally last September. A year earlier, he remarked, “President for life . . . maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” It’s a joke he’s tossed off on several occasions, and the power of suggestion is so strong in Trump and his followers that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen have all expressed serious concern that Trump may try to steal the election or contest the results, and not leave the White House if he loses.

4. Trump appears to believe he has the power to outlaw speech critical of him, and he calls the free press “the enemy of the people.” He tweeted of the New York Times and The Washington Post: “They are both a disgrace to our Country, the Enemy of the People.” Former national security adviser John Bolton, in his new book, claims that Trump said of journalists: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags.”

5. With Fox News promoting Trump’s lies as truth, the president controls one of the most powerful propaganda machines ever created. During the impeachment trial, for example, Fox hosts repeatedly attacked the character and mental faculties of Democratic representatives and sworn witnesses, while focusing almost exclusively on the testimony of pro-Trump Republicans. When it did show footage of Democrats and witnesses, the network frequently used voice-overs to explain or interpret what was being said, rather than broadcasting what was actually being said.

6. Trump believes that he has the power to do what he wants, regardless of Congress or the courts. “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” he has said. He has also claimed to have the “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department” and, in the event the judiciary branch disagreed, “the absolute right to PARDON myself.” His attorney general, William Barr, and his own lawyers have made clear that this is the administration’s position as they have rejected both congressional and criminal subpoenas for information during the past few years. Their arguments — including an assertion to a federal appellate court last October that the president could shoot someone in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue and still be immune from prosecution until he left office — came crashing down with a Supreme Court decision Thursday. “We cannot conclude that absolute immunity is necessary or appropriate under Article II or the Supremacy Clause,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

7. Trump acts as if he owns our government and can fire any official who defends the law. He has dismissed an FBI director and a deputy FBI director, as well as five inspectors general and U.S. attorneys, all of whom were investigating or considering either his abuse of power or the alleged crimes of his cronies. This past week, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who served as a national security aide at the White House until earlier this year and was up for a promotion, resigned from the military, citing “bullying, intimidation, and retaliation” after he testified under oath to Congress counter to Trump’s interests.

8. Trump uses federal prosecutorial powers to investigate his opponents and anyone who dares scrutinize him or his allies for the many crimes they may have committed. After the Mueller investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 election, Trump’s Justice Department began a criminal probe into the origins of the inquiry — to, in Trump’s words, “investigate the investigators.” He tried to get the Justice Department to prosecute former FBI director James Comey and Hillary Clinton.

9. Trump viciously attacks his critics and has publicly implied that the Ukraine whistleblower should be hanged for treason. During a speech to diplomatic staffers in New York last September, Trump said: “I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

10. Trump has messianic delusions that are supported with religious fervor by millions of his supporters. He has “jokingly” looked up to the sky and said, “I am the chosen one” in relation to negotiations with China. Then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry echoed other evangelicals who’ve said that Trump was sent by God to do great things when he seriously proclaimed that Trump is the “chosen one.” A Guardian report described the evangelical response to Trump’s photo op in front of Lafayette Square’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, which many viewed positively: One evangelical supporter was so moved that she began speaking in tongues when she saw the footage, according to her son.

11. Trump subscribes to a doctrine of genetic superiority and incites racial hatred to scapegoat immigrants and gain power. He has rallied his base with dog-whistle attacks, calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. When he attacked a group of progressive members of Congress from diverse backgrounds, he stated that they should go back to the places they came from. Over the years Trump has frequently praised his “winning” genes, at one point telling an interviewer, “I’m proud to have that German blood — there’s no question about it.”

12. Trump finds common ground with the world’s most ruthless dictators while denigrating America’s democratic allies. The oppressive leaders he has praised include North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (“He gets it. He totally gets it”); the Philippines’s Rodrigo Duterte (“What a great job you are doing”); Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman (“You have done a spectacular job”); and, of course, Russia’s Vladimir Putin (“You know what? Putin’s fine. He’s fine”). Meanwhile, he has attacked traditional U.S. alliances and allies, like NATO and Germany’s Angela Merkel (“Stupid”).

READ MORE

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