You just refined your skills at price gouging

Lots of browser tabs accumulated while I wrote about the nasty guy in the hospital. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wrote that the nasty guy’s debts, as revealed recently, are the single biggest national security threat. This debt means someone holds a great deal of leverage over him. We don’t know who. The longer the debt is hidden the more effort will be used to keep it concealed. To keep from defaulting on the debt might the nasty guy sell out the country? I had written that the nasty guy lost his father’s fortune, got more though being on The Apprentice, and lost that too. Noel Casler tweeted:

Anyone who attended a taping or afterparty of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ knows most of the guests were Russian ‘Mob’ types. Felix Sater was there as well and would make introductions between Ivanka & Jared to these folks. It was like speed dating for money launderers.

Sarah Kendzior filled in details, referring to a book she wrote:

In HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, I've got a chapter on how The Apprentice was used to whitewash money-laundering operations along with Trump's image: "In the end, The Apprentice canceled America."

Kendzior included part of page 125 of the book. A bit of that:

The Apprentice conditioned Americans to accept fraud as entertainment, to expect the reputational rehab of ruined celebrities, and to not consider that behind the fakeness of the show lay something very dark and real.

Meteor Blades, in his Night Owl post for Kos, quoted Chabeli Carrazana who wrote that 865,000 women dropped out of the workforce as reported in the last monthly jobs report. Many worked in service jobs that haven’t come back. Many more gave up on trying to both take care of kids doing virtual school and handle their own job. Which makes this the nation’s first female recession. Rep. Katie Porter is gaining a reputation for pointing out the corruption of the CEOs of major industries. Walter Einenkel of Kos reports on her latest efforts. A House Oversight Committee hearing had Porter facing off against Mark Alles of Pharmaceutical company Celgene. She held up a white board to show that for a cancer drug a pill cost $215 in 2005 and $763 in 2017. That price more than tripled. The average monthly cost for a patient is $16,023. Medicare paid out $3.3 billion (I think in one year) for the drug. Porter said:

So to recap here: The drug didn't get any better. The cancer patients didn't get any better. You just got better at making money. You just refined your skills at price gouging!

After all that’s happened since Friday morning it’s hard to remember there was a nasty debate Tuesday evening. In response to the nasty guy claiming he won the debate (so he wouldn’t want any rule changes), Josh Jordan tweeted:

Who won the debate? CBS/YouGov: Biden 48, Trump 41 CNN post-debate poll: Biden 60, Trump 28 CNBC post debate poll: Biden 53, Trump 29 Ipsos: Biden 60, Trump 33 If that's what winning looks like, I'd hate to see what losing is.

And Rob Flaherty, the digital director for the Biden campaign, tweeted:

well the debate showed off the president as a unhinged, petulant man child, raised joe biden $31.5 million online in just over 24 hours, registered 24,000 people to vote, and brought in 100,000 new campaign volunteers, and 60,000 new donors. so I think joe biden won!

Santiago Mayer tweeted his new favorite ad from the Biden campaign. Hint: it features dogs and has a great tagline. I had written that Joe Biden pulled all his negative ads when we learned the nasty guy was sick. Kendzior responded:

Wrong move. Most of Biden's "negative ads" are simply factual descriptions of horrific things Trump did. Some are merely montages of Trump saying terrible things. They are not "negative" due to spin, but due to truth. Keep them. The public deserves the truth.

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted a thread, starting with:

Let's be clear - Trump had a goal last night to get his right wing, white supremacists to organize an election day intimidation effort. He succeeded. Recruitment by Proud Boys and others is underway. Here's why this is especially worrying this year - and what you can do.

Rev Magdalen responded:

How long can the normalcy bias sustain the cognitive dissonance? A thread calling on the public to volunteer to face off against armed white supremacists to protect the polls, because the feds won't do that. But hey don't call it a coup, don't call him a dictator.

Elie Mystal, a justice correspondent for The Nation, tweeted:

I've always wondered how the plagues of Exodus ever got to the first born. Like, why didn't the Egyptians figure it out at BOILS? Boils is where I release the slaves. Basically, I always thought Exodus was bad writing. Until I met Republicans in the Trump era. Now, I get it.

About midnight on Friday morning Chris Geidner tweeted:

Well ... we made it through the first day of October. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Eighty minutes later, after seeing the tweet from the nasty guy, Geidner replied to his earlier tweet:

I was so much younger when I wrote this tweet.

I had written that Mark Sumner of Kos was skeptical of the timeline that the nasty guy was first tested shortly before he tweeted he was ill early Friday morning. Now from comments from his doctors confirms the nasty guy tested positive early Wednesday morning, just a few hours after his debate with Joe Biden. Sumner wrote:

Trump did not inform the Biden team of the threat, went on to a rally where thousands were present, and attended a fundraiser while knowing he was carrying a deadly disease. There seems little reason to doubt that this life-threatening coverup would have continued, were it not for Hicks’ diagnosis becoming public, followed by the rapid succession of positive results from others who have interacted with Trump over the last week. This is reckless disregard for the threat to health and life that the disease represents.

In a post Kos of Kos calls pure conjecture and an educated guess, he discussed what effect the nasty guy’s illness will have on his campaign and afterward. The campaign was based on the nasty guy as strong and invincible, that Biden is so afraid of the virus he wears a mask. And who is now in the hospital in a frail condition? How does Kos know he’s frail, even when doctors say he’s fine? He’s not tweeting. He doesn’t have enough strength to tap a few buttons on his phone. Will he gain enough strength to muster the rage and sense of grievance that riles his base? Wrote Kos:

You take away Trump’s ability to manipulate his supporters’ lizard brain, and what do you have left? Even a small 5-10% erosion in intensity and passion among his supporters would prove catastrophic—not for Trump! He’s already losing. But for the rest of the Republican Party, already facing deep losses in the House, Senate, and state-level races. You add deep electoral losses (like a defeated Sen. Lindsey Graham and a massive Electoral College Biden win) and a Trump too sickly to really work up the requisite level of outrage, and the chances of post-election violence we’ve been fearing are also severely diminished.

The Proud Boys are a white supremacist militia and during the last debate the nasty guy refused to condemn them. Walter Einenkel of Kos shared that some other proud boys – proud gay men – have claimed the #ProudBoys Twitter tag to show how gay and proud they are. Einenkel’s collection ended with one from gamelin_m that had a couple contrasting photos with words:

These are Proud Boys. They’ll walk 7 miles, half naked, in any weather, wearing 3 inch heels, and dancing. These are Nazis. They can’t even go to the grocery store without assault weapons.