Breaking: Trump Won't Get Younger in 2026

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments.  In 2024, Trump was already showing signs of cognitive decline. It's getting worse.

 Annie Linskey, Josh Dawsey, and Meridith McGraw at WSJ:

President Trump is taking more aspirin than his doctors recommend. He briefly tried wearing compression socks for his swelling ankles, but stopped because he didn’t like them. And he regrets undergoing advanced imaging because it generated scrutiny of his health.

“In retrospect, it’s too bad I took it because it gave them a little ammunition,” Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on his decision to get a cardiovascular and abdominal scan in October. “I would have been a lot better off if they didn’t, because the fact that I took it said, ‘Oh gee, is something wrong?’ Well, nothing’s wrong.”

Trump, 79, the oldest man to assume the presidency, is showing signs of aging in public and private, according to people close to him. Yet he has at times eschewed the advice of his doctors and scoffed at the medical community’s widely accepted health recommendations, relying instead on what he calls his “good genetics.” Trump and his doctor say he is in excellent health, and aides say he maintains a vigorous schedule.

Trump gets little sleep and has recently struggled to keep his eyes open during several televised events in the West Wing. Aides, donors and friends say they often have to speak loudly in meetings with the president because he strains to hear. Aside from golf, Trump doesn’t get regular exercise, and he is known to consume a diet heavy on salty and fatty foods, such as hamburgers and french fries.

The large dose of aspirin he chooses to take daily has caused him to bruise easily, he said, and he has been encouraged by his doctors to take a lower dose. But Trump has declined to switch because he has been taking it for 25 years. “I’m a little superstitious,” he said in the interview.

...

Trump said he had plenty of energy, which he credited to his parents, who he said were energetic until their old age.

“Genetics are very important,” he said. “And I have very good genetics.”

 

Interesting that this story on Trump’s aging omits previous reporting (by Wash Post) of Alzheimer’s/dementia of Trump’s father. Trump brags about his “genes” so often. https://t.co/DhquefOli8

— Barbara Comstock (@BarbaraComstock) January 1, 2026

Polarized Reactions to Biden's Cancer

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses Biden's late withdrawal from the 2024 race.

At Politico Playbook, Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns quote Trump's pro forma staff-written reaction to Biden's cancer diagnosis.

And in years gone by, that would have been it. A bipartisan show of support for a former president of the United States upon their diagnosis with what would appear to be incurable cancer.

But this is 2025. So, no, it didn’t go like that.

MAGA-adjacent social media is lit this morning with accusations that this announcement is suspicious, on two grounds. And you can hardly ignore just the noise, given all we’ve learned this past week.

First is the extraordinary timing, coming with Biden at the center of a firestorm of accusations that he was losing his mental faculties while in office and that his closest aides covered it up. The book helping shape those allegations, “Original Sin” by Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper, is literally out tomorrow. The conversation around those claims will inevitably feel different now.

Just check out this quote from David Axelrod, the former Obama aide and frequent Biden critic, who told CNN any discussion about the former president’s mental acuity “should be more muted and set aside for now as he’s struggling through this.” You can imagine how that’s going down on the right.

Second, and more significantly, there are accusations spreading like wildfire — including from Trump’s son, Don Jr. — that aspects of this tragic diagnosis stretch back further than last week, and that Biden’s cancer was kept quiet while he was in office. Certainly, plenty of doctors say it would be unusual — though far from impossible — for prostate cancer this serious to suddenly emerge out of the blue. Far-right activist Laura Loomer’s claims from back in July 2024 that Biden had a terminal illness are now being reamplified by his critics. Pro-MAGA X users are also reupping Biden’s statement to camera in 2022, when he bluntly said he had cancer, which aides insisted at the time was a misunderstanding.

None of which proves anything. Publicly available facts are sparse, and plenty of people are outraged this is even being discussed at such a sensitive time. But it does matter.

Given the already intense scrutiny of Biden’s mental and physical state — and that he insisted he was in good health while trying to secure another four-year term as president with his party’s fulsome support — these accusations are not going away quietly.

Yeah Science!

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  His HHS secretary is an antivaxxer.

Heather Souvaine Horn at TNR

“On Earth Day, We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science,” the statement declared of an administration that has cut so much funding for science that 75 percent of 1,200 scientists responding to a survey by the journal Nature said they were considering leaving the country. The Trump administration has also laid off thousands of researchers, sidelined climate research, frozen all new grants from the National Science Foundation, appointed noted anti-scientific kooks who praise discredited measles treatments, and reportedly plans to completely eliminate the EPA’s science and research arm.

The release further listed eight “key actions President Trump is taking on the environment.” He’s “promoting energy innovation for a healthier future,” the release announced, as Trump attempts to revive coal—a fuel so old its use predates the birth of Christ—while cutting black lung programs for coal miners. He’s “championing sound forest management”—an odd way of describing rolling back forest protections while firing so many U.S. Forest Service workers that their ability either to fight fires or administer logging contracts has come into question.

The third item on the list says, “President Trump is ending the forced use of paper straws,” which can contain PFAS and are probably not much if at all better than plastic ones. This is more accurate than the last two statements, but technically Trump only signed an order reversing federal purchasing policies that favor paper over plastics. And the idea that he did this to protect people from PFAS (known as “forever chemicals”) is risible, given that the administration has reversed a plan to limit PFAS in industrial wastewater, is trying to reverse bans of PFAS in consumer goods, and just canceled about $8 million in grants for research on how to prevent PFAS “from accumulating in crops and the food chain,” according to reporting this week from The New York Times.

 Karen Freifeld at Reuters:

President Donald Trump's nominee for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, was arrested on fraud charges in 2010 and faced lawsuits in two states for writing $2 million in bad checks to casinos, according to government records and court filings.

Isaacman is a billionaire pilot and astronaut who founded the Shift4 Payments (FOUR.N), opens new tab company as a teenager and commanded the first civilian space crew in 2021 aboard a SpaceX capsule.

 

 

Trump and Disinhibition

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.

One thing is certain about the current campaign:  Trump isn't getting any younger.  He is sundowning.

Zac Anderson David Jackson Karen Weintraub USA TODAY

Donald Trump's repeated gaffes, non sequiturs, and plain odd behavior have opened the door to questions from opponents about the 78-year-old candidate's mental and physical fitness.

From bopping to the beat of his music playlist for nearly 40 minutes at a recent swing state town hall to blaming Ukraine for Russia's invasion, to riffing on locker room gossip about a pro golfer's anatomy, Trump is providing plenty of fodder for rivals who've declared him "unhinged" and worse.

As Republicans did to 81-year-old President Joe Biden earlier this year, Democrats including horror novelist Stephen King and former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are seizing every opportunity to bash Trump − and it's a target-rich environment.

Trump goes on long confused ramble: “Arnold Palmer is all man. I mean no disrespect to women, I love women, but he was all man. When he took showers with the other pros they came out saying ‘Oh my God.’ I had to say it... I had to tell you the shower part because it’s true” pic.twitter.com/Xq8BDbqXJU

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 19, 2024

Rolling Stone:

Moving on from that endowment to him addressing his competitor, who is well-endowed financially in comparison to Trump’s campaign (Harris raised $1 billion in the less than three months she’s been a candidate, more than Trump has finagled in a year of campaigning), Trump hit another low when referring to her on Saturday. While he has been plenty derogatory to Harris since she entered the candidacy, having called her “retarded” and also “mentally disabled” during recent speeches, this time he resorted to just dropping the s-bomb.

“So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it anymore,” he told attendees on Saturday while they cheered. “We can’t stand you. You’re a shit vice president. The worst. You’re the worst vice president, Kamala. You’re fired. Get the hell out of here.”

For those of us who have lived with loved ones with dementia, this story is especially frightening because what is called “disinhibition” is often an early symptom.
Maybe Trump can no longer stop himself from saying these things in public.https://t.co/OEhzhh8AhV via @NYTimes

— Richard Tofel (@dicktofel) October 20, 2024

Ipsos, September 22, 2020:

According to a recent online survey of 1,217 Americans conducted by Ipsos on behalf MDVIP, a national network of primary care doctors who focus on delivering personalized, patient-centered medicine and preventive care, finds that one-third of Americans have a close relative who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease or dementia (31%). The study also finds that two-thirds of Americans are concerned about their risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (67%), and that most are interested in mitigating this risk (80%). l

Red COVID

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the politics of COVID.

At NYT, David Leonhardt writes of the very strong negative correlation between Trump vote share and vaccination.

Vaccination has changed the situation. The vaccines are powerful enough to overwhelm other differences between blue and red areas.

Some left-leaning communities — like many suburbs of New York, San Francisco and Washington, as well as much of New England — have such high vaccination rates that even the unvaccinated are partly protected by the low number of cases. Conservative communities, on the other hand, have been walloped by the highly contagious Delta variant. (You can find data for hundreds of counties here.)

Since Delta began circulating widely in the U.S., Covid has exacted a horrific death toll on red America: In counties where Donald Trump received at least 70 percent of the vote, the virus has killed about 47 out of every 100,000 people since the end of June, according to Charles Gaba, a health care analyst. In counties where Trump won less than 32 percent of the vote, the number is about 10 out of 100,000.

...

Why is this happening?

Some of the vaccination gap stems from the libertarian instincts of many Republicans. “They understand freedom as being left alone to make their own choices, and they resent being told what to do,” William Galston has written in The Wall Street Journal.

But philosophy is only a partial explanation. In much of the rest of the world, vaccine attitudes do not break down along right-left lines, and some conservative leaders have responded effectively to Covid. So have a few Republican governors in the U.S. “It didn’t have to be this way,” German Lopez of Vox has written.

What distinguishes the U.S. is a conservative party — the Republican Party — that has grown hostile to science and empirical evidence in recent decades. A conservative media complex, including Fox News, Sinclair Broadcast Group and various online outlets, echoes and amplifies this hostility. Trump took the conspiratorial thinking to a new level, but he did not create it.

MISCALCULATION BY GOP—As an epidemiologist, I think Republicans might be killing off their voter base faster than they think. The #COVID19 death rate since June 30 in counties where Trump got >90% of the vote are 9.5x higher than where he got <10%—pretty strong. HT @charles_gaba pic.twitter.com/e5IAE6qTv5

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) September 26, 2021

GOP Vaccine Hesitancy

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the politics of COVID.

 Caitlin Owens at Axios:

Driving the news: Nearly half of Republican men — 49% — say they won't choose to be vaccinated if a vaccine is available to them, according to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey.

• Among those who said they supported Trump in 2020, 47% said they wouldn't choose to be vaccinated.
• In contrast, 6% of Democratic men and 10% of Biden supporters said they wouldn't get the shot.
• 25% of Black respondents, 28% of white respondents and 37% of Latino respondents said the same.

What they're saying: NIAID Director Anthony Fauci yesterday told "Fox News Sunday" that "it would make all the difference in the world" if former President Trump urged his supporters to take the coronavirus vaccine, Axios' Orion Rummler reports.

• "I'm very surprised that the high percentage of Republicans say they don't want to get vaccinated," Fauci said. "I don't understand where that's coming from. This is not a political issue. This is a public health issue."
• Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said on Friday that the state is seeing vaccine hesitancy among white Republicans, and said partnerships between pharmacies and churches or civic clubs will be important, CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports.

...

Go deeper: 25% of House not vaccinated as some members refuse to get shot

Partisanship and COVID Stay-at-Home

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  Our next book, title TBA, discusses the 2020 race, which unfolded in the shadow of the Coronavirus pandemic.  The latest vaccine news is good.  Other COVID news is bad.

J. Clinton, J. Cohen,  J. Lapinski and M. Trussler have an article at Science Advances titled: Partisan pandemic: How partisanship and public health concerns affect individuals’ social mobility during COVID-19." The abstract:

Rampant partisanship in the United States may be the largest obstacle to the reduced social mobility most experts see as critical to limiting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyzing a total of just over 1.1 million responses collected daily between April 4th and September 10th reveals not only that partisanship is more important than public health concerns for explaining individuals’ willingness to stay-at-home and reduce social mobility, but also that the effect of partisanship has grown over time – especially among Republicans. All else equal, the relative importance of partisanship for the increasing (un)willingness of Republicans to stay-at-home highlights the challenge that politics poses for public health.

From the article:

While our analyses do not identify the source for the partisan differences we identify, they do rule out some important plausible explanations. In particular, the fact that partisan differences we identify persist regardless of the partisanship of the governor, differences in the regulatory environment of the state, regional differences, local differences (at the zip code level) and media consumption suggests that they are due to either national stimuli (e.g., cues being provided by national partisan leaders such as President Trump and/or partisan-related differences in the beliefs and values of partisans. In either case, it is clear that national leadership seems required to help bridge the partisan differences we identify.

Bad Optics

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway.   It unfolds as Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to public policy and the electoral process.  

Trump has COVID. His premature departure from the hospital did not look good.

 

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what about a video? This 8 second video destroys all attempts by @realDonaldTrump to downplay the virus because it shows him gasping for air.

Many Americans are now visually seeing how the virus causes breathing difficulties & lung damage. https://t.co/6SuysTBCsZ

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) October 6, 2020

Drudge. pic.twitter.com/HSCgfOnffc

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) October 6, 2020

Wear a mask. pic.twitter.com/TSuLuzAXEB

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 6, 2020

Bad Trump Weekend

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway.   It unfolds as Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to public policy and the electoral process.  

Trump has COVID.

Ryan Lizza and Daniel Lippman at Politico:

“Today feels like the election’s over,” said a veteran Republican strategist who, like others in the party, requested anonymity to speak candidly. “The polls have dropped all last week everywhere, it just feels like the end is near. And I don’t know what they can do to rehabilitate it until he gets better. There’s too many seniors who think he’s been irresponsible and this all started when he politicized the coronavirus. It started back in April and May, but it’s really peaking now.”

A senior Republican congressional official spoke for many by arguing that the handling of the issue over the weekend was “incredibly worrying,” but that it was too early to judge whether the issue further jeopardizes Trump’s reelection chances, the Barrett nomination or GOP control of the Senate.

“Do people show sympathy because he’s sick and is trying to battle through this?” he asked. “Or do they say, ‘You’re the president and if you had taken common sense precautions there’s no way you would have gotten sick.’ If it becomes, ‘You are reckless and this is the metaphor for how reckless he was,’ then we’re facing a tsunami. But it’s too early.”

The official added one caveat, a scenario that he believed would crush the GOP on Nov. 3.

“If the White House lied about the timeline and he went to events and was around people knowing he was covid-positive,” he said. “I think that is the single biggest thing that would resonate with regular people in terms of how irresponsible he was — if he put other people in danger.”

He added, “That could turn this into a death spiral.”

Mark Murray at NBC:

Joe Biden's national lead over President Donald Trump nearly doubled after Tuesday's presidential debate, with voters saying by 2-to-1 that Biden has the better temperament to be president, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The poll was conducted in the two days after the unruly and insult-filled debate Tuesday but before Trump tested positive for Covid-19 and was hospitalized Friday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Biden is now ahead of Trump by 14 points among registered voters, 53 percent to 39 percent — up from his 8-point lead in the previous poll, before the debate.

Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig and Hannah Knowles at WP:

Current and former Secret Service agents and medical professionals were aghast Sunday night at President Trump’s trip outside the hospital where he is being treated for the coronavirus, saying the president endangered those inside his SUV for a publicity stunt.

As the backlash grew, multiple aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations also called Trump’s evening outing an unnecessary risk — but said it was not surprising. Trump had said he was bored in the hospital, advisers said. He wanted to show strength after his chief of staff offered a grimmer assessment of his health than doctors, according to campaign and White House officials.

A growing number of Secret Service agents have been concerned about the president’s seeming indifference to the health risks they face when traveling with him in public, and a few reacted with outrage to the trip, asking how Trump’s desire to be seen outside his hospital suite justified the jeopardy to agents protecting him. Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis has already brought new scrutiny to his lax approach to social distancing, as public health officials scramble to trace those he may have exposed at large in-person events.

 

Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential “drive-by” just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.

— Dr. James P. Phillips, MD (@DrPhillipsMD) October 4, 2020

Masks: "He's a Fool on This"

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway.   It unfolds as Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to public policy and the electoral process.  

Trump has COVID.

Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

America locked down this spring during the worst pandemic in a century, inside the Trump White House there was the usual defiance.

The tight quarters of the West Wing were packed and busy. Almost no one wore masks. The rare officials who did, like Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, were ridiculed by colleagues as alarmist.

President Trump at times told staff wearing masks in meetings to “get that thing off,” an administration official said. Everyone knew that Mr. Trump viewed masks as a sign of weakness, officials said, and that his message was clear. “You were looked down upon when you would walk by with a mask,” said Olivia Troye, a top aide on the coronavirus task force who resigned in August and has endorsed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

In public, some of the president’s favorite targets were mask-wearing White House correspondents. “Would you take it off, I can hardly hear you,” Mr. Trump told Jeff Mason of Reuters in May, then mocked Mr. Mason for wanting “to be politically correct” when he refused.

Tim Alberta at Politico:

To recap: Meadows went on the record with Reuters to contradict what he told other reporters on the condition of anonymity earlier in the day—comments that contradicted what the president’s own doctor had broadcasted to the public after 18 hours without official word on the president’s medical condition.

 From the debate:

Chris Wallace: (07:27) I want to ask you both about one last subject because your different approaches has even affected the way that you have campaigned. President Trump, you’re holding large rallies with crowds packed together, thousands of people.

President Donald J. Trump: (07:38) Outside.

Chris Wallace: (07:39) Outside. Yes, sir. Agreed. Vice President Biden, you are holding much smaller events with-

President Donald J. Trump: (07:46) Because nobody will show up.

Chris Wallace: (07:47)… people with masks.

President Donald J. Trump: (07:47)Well, it’s true. Nobody shows up to his rallies.

Chris Wallace: (07:50) All right. In any case, why you holding the big rallies? Why you not? You go first, sir.

President Donald J. Trump: (07:56) Because people want to hear what I have to say. I mean-

Chris Wallace: (07:59) But are not worried about us spreading disease?

President Donald J. Trump: (08:01) … I’m doing my job as a president, and I’ll have 25, 35,000 people show up at airports. We use airports and hangers and we have a lot of people-

Chris Wallace: (08:06) Are you not worried about the disease issues, sir?

President Donald J. Trump: (08:08) Well, so far we have had no problem whatsoever. It’s outside. That’s a big difference according to the experts. We do them outside, we have tremendous crowds, as you see, and literally on 24 hours notice. And Joe does the circles and has three people someplace.

Vice President Joe Biden: (08:26) By the way, did you see one of the last big rallies he had? A reporter came up to him to ask him a question, he said, “No, no, no. Stand back, put on your mask, put on a mask. Have you been tested? I’m way far away from those other people.” That’s what he said, “I’m going to be okay.” He’s not worried about you. He’s not worried about the people out there [crosstalk 00:08:48].

President Donald J. Trump: (08:48) We’ve had no negative effect.

Vice President Joe Biden: (08:49) No negative effect. Come on.

President Donald J. Trump: (08:51) We’ve had no negative effect, and we’ve had 35, 40,000 people at these rallies. 

Chris Wallace: (08:55) All right. Do you want to just quickly finish up? Because I want to move on to our next- 

Vice President Joe Biden: (08:57) Yes, I would. He’s been totally irresponsible the way in which he has handled the social distancing and people wearing masks, basically encouraged them not to. He’s a fool on this.

President Donald J. Trump: (09:08) If you could get the crowds, you would have done the same thing. But you can’t. Nobody cares.

 

Primaries in Kansas, Michigan, and Missouri

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race. 

The Democrats' Akin ploy failed in Kansas.  James Arkin and Ally Mutnick report at Politico:

Rep. Roger Marshall won the GOP primary for an open Senate seat in Kansas on Tuesday, turning aside the controversial Kris Kobach — to the relief of Republicans concerned that Kobach could put not just the state but the party's Senate majority at risk this fall.

With nearly all the votes tallied, Marshall had 40 percent of the vote, to only 26 percent for Kobach. The result was a more decisive victory for Marshall than expected by many Republicans, who had predicted with deep concern that the race was a tossup going into Tuesday.

...
 Republicans got another piece of good news in Kansas on Tuesday, when Rep. Steve Watkins was ousted in his primary by state Treasurer Jake LaTurner, who has seized on Watkins’ litany of ethical and legal transgressions, including felony charges of voter fraud in the closing weeks of the primary. Some Republicans feared Watkins' renomination could have jeopardized the party's hold on an otherwise GOP-leaning House seat.

Clare Foran at CNN:

Freshman Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan has prevailed against a Democratic primary challenge from Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, CNN projected Wednesday morning.

In Michigan's 13th Congressional District, Tlaib faced a rematch in Tuesday night's Democratic primary against Jones, who beat her once before to serve out the remainder of former Rep. John Conyers' term, but lost to Tlaib in the full-term election for the seat in the heavily Democratic district.

As a member of the so-called progressive "Squad," Tlaib, who made history in 2018 along with Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar as the first two Muslim women ever to serve in Congress, has a number of built-in advantages as she runs for reelection, including high name recognition, the ability to raise significant amounts of money and a devoted national following. At the same time, however, Tlaib has faced controversy over some outside-the-mainstream political positions and at times she has faced criticism, including from Democrats, over statements related to Israel.

Nicholas Fando at NYT:

Cori Bush, a progressive activist and a leader of the swelling protest movement for racial justice, toppled Representative William Lacy Clay Jr. of Missouri in a Democratic primary on Tuesday, notching the latest in a stunning string of upsets against the party establishment.

Ms. Bush, 44, had captured nearly 49 percent of the vote by late Tuesday evening compared with 45.5 percent for Mr. Clay, according to The Associated Press. She had tried and failed to unseat Mr. Clay in 2018, but this year rode a surge in support for more liberal, confrontational politics within the Democratic Party amid the coronavirus pandemic and the national outcry over festering racial inequities.

James Hohmann at WP:

The vibe inside the House Democratic Caucus has changed dramatically since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toppled Joe Crowley, then the No. 4 in party leadership, two summers ago in a primary. AOC, as everyone calls her, is a member of the self-described “Squad” of four far-left liberals who won their seats in 2018. Another member of that quartet, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, easily fended off a primary challenge on Tuesday in Michigan from the president of the Detroit city council, who is more aligned with the Democratic establishment and only lost by 900 votes last time.

Clay is the third Democratic incumbent to lose a primary this year. Rep. Eliot Engel, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, lost to former middle school principal Jamaal Bowman last month in New York. Rep. Dan Lipinski (Ill.), who chairs a railroads and pipelines subcommittee, lost in March to activist Marie Newman in Chicago largely because of his opposition to abortion rights.

Speaking to supporters in a purple mask, Bush thanked a list of far-left groups for supporting her bid, including the Democratic Socialists of America. “I will never take for granted the movement that got me here,” she said. “An incremental approach isn’t going to work any longer. We’ve decided that we’re not going to wait any longer for change.”

 Rachel Roubein at Politico:

Missouri voters on Tuesday approved Medicaid expansion to many of the state’s poorest adults, making their conservative state the second to join the Obamacare program through the ballot during the pandemic.

The Missouri ballot measure expands Medicaid to about 230,000 low-income residents at a time when the state’s safety net health care program is already experiencing an enrollment surge tied to the pandemic’s economic upheaval. The measure was supported by 53 percent of voters.

A winning streak: Missouri becomes the sixth Republican-led state where voters have defied GOP leaders to expand Medicaid, just weeks after Oklahoma voters narrowly backed the program. No state has ever voted down such a ballot initiative in recent years, underscoring the popularity of Medicaid expansion even in parts of the country hostile to Obamacare.

Age and Health

In Un-American: The Fake Patriotism of Donald J. Trump, I discuss the president's character.

The day before his 74th birthday, Trump was showing his age.

"Trump faced new questions about his health on Sunday, after videos emerged of him gingerly walking down a ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and having trouble bringing a glass of water to his mouth during a speech there." https://t.co/HIAnd80TGQ

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 14, 2020

At CNN, Chris Cillizza points out that his attacks on others' fitness has invited scrutiny of his own:

On Monday morning, Trump sent a tweet attacking former Vice President Joe Biden, who is 77 years old, as "weak & shot." That's part of a deliberate strategy on behalf of the President who has repeatedly suggested that Biden is losing or has lost his mental capacity.

"WOW! Sleepy Joe doesn't know where he is, or what he's doing," Trump tweeted in March. "Honestly, I don't think he even knows what office he's running for!"

"Biden can't do it," Trump said in an interview last month. "He doesn't know he's alive."
And Trump did the exact same thing during the 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton, particularly after she fell ill while attending a September 11 memorial service.

"She could be crazy," he said at a rally in October 2016. "She could actually be crazy."
"To defeat crime and radical Islamic terrorism in our country, to win trade in our country, you need tremendous physical and mental strength and stamina," he said in Wisconsin in August of that year. "Hillary Clinton doesn't have that strength and stamina."

This is a what's-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander situation. If Trump can openly question the physical and mental fitness of his Democratic opponents, then when there is a moment where he looks frail, it is absolutely fair game to ask questions about his own well-being -- particularly given his age and how little we know about his medical past.

So yes, of course, the President's tentative and slow walk down a ramp is a story. Donald Trump made it one.

In 2016, he mocked Hillary Clinton's pneumonia episode, his his imitation of her gait looked exactly like his own mincing walk down the ramp.

The President Who Needed Warning Labels

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under  way.   

Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to public policy and the electoral process. 

Matthew Herper at STAT:

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday cautioned against the use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug originally approved in 1955, to treat Covid-19 outside of the hospital or in the setting of a clinical trial. The drug has been repeatedly touted by President Trump as a potential treatment.

In a drug safety communication meant for health care providers, the FDA said it is “aware of reports of serious heart rhythm problems” in patients with Covid-19 treated with hydroxychloroquine or an older drug, chloroquine. The agency said it seeks to “remind health care professionals and patients of the known risks associated with both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine.”

Diana Bradley at PR Week:

Clorox, Lysol and even Tide Pods were trending on social media after President Donald Trump suggested people could possibly protect themselves from coronavirus by injecting disinfectant.

The social media chatter led Lysol and Dettol parent RB to quickly release a statement before anyone takes what Trump says literally.

“Due to recent speculation and social media activity, RB (the makers of Lysol and Dettol) has been asked whether internal administration of disinfectants may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus,” the company said. “As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body ...

Trump did not name any particular disinfectant brands, but this is what he said on Thursday night during the White House coronavirus press briefing: "I see the disinfectant that knocks [coronavirus] out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that."

Food and Drug Administration chief Dr. Stephen Hahn is also getting word out to protect consumers.

He told CNN's Anderson Cooper, "I certainly wouldn't recommend the internal ingestion of a disinfectant."

At a bill signing, Trump claimed that his remark was a sarcastic comment that he directed at a reporter -- even though he tone was serious.  (He used the same dodge for his "Russia, if you're listening" comment in 2016.)

Q    But just to clarify — just to clarify that, sir: Are you — are you encouraging Amer- — you’re not encouraging Americans to ingest —
THE PRESIDENT:  No, of course — no.  Of course.
Q    — disinfectant?
THE PRESIDENT:  That was — interior wise, it’s said sarcastically.  It was — it was put in the form of a question to a group of extraordinarily hostile people, namely the fake news media.
Okay.  So —
Q    Some doctors felt they needed to clarify that after your comments.
THE PRESIDENT:  Well, of course.  All they had to do was see it was — just, you know, the way it was asked.  I was — I was looking at you.
Q    No, you weren’t, sir.  I wasn’t there yesterday.  (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT:  I know.  I know.
Q    You were looking at Dr. Birx.
THE PRESIDENT:  What’s that?
Q    You were looking at Dr. Birx.
THE PRESIDENT:  I was looking at Bill.  I was looking at the doctor.  I was looking at some of the reporters.  I don’t know if you were there.  Were you there?  I don’t think you were there.
Q    I was there, and I watched you ask her.
THE PRESIDENT:  No, not you.  Not you.  Not you.  You were there.  You — if you’re there, I never forget.  You were —
Q    I wasn’t there yesterday, sir.
THE PRESIDENT:  You were not?
Q    No, sir.
THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, I didn’t think you were there.
Okay.
Q    Just, Mr. President — Mr. President, I know that you continue to say — you’re obviously —
THE PRESIDENT:  Okay, hold it one second.
Q    Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT:  Any other questions from any other people?
Okay, thank you very much, everybody.  Thank you.
END

As the Death Toll Nears 50,000...

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under  way.  

Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to public policy and the electoral process.

Michael Shear and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

The official who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said on Wednesday that he was removed from his post after he pressed for rigorous vetting of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug embraced by President Trump as a coronavirus treatment, and that the administration had put “politics and cronyism ahead of science.”

Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and removed as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response. He was given a narrower job at the National Institutes of Health.

In a scorching statement, Dr. Bright, who received a Ph.D. in immunology and molecular pathogenesis from Emory University, assailed the leadership at the health department, saying he was pressured to direct money toward hydroxychloroquine, one of several “potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections” and repeatedly described by the president as a potential “game changer” in the fight against the virus.

“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in his statement. “I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.”

His attorneys Debra Katz & Lisa Banks make clear in an addendum statement:
"The Administration’s removal of Dr. Bright from his position as director of BARDA is retaliation plain and simple." pic.twitter.com/VTf4z8QSER

— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) April 22, 2020

WSJ: In late February, Trump called HHS Secretary Azar and threatened to oust Nancy Messonnier, the CDC's chief of respiratory diseases, after she said the agency was preparing for a potential pandemic and that community spread of the virus was likely.https://t.co/Mbd92sKaha

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 22, 2020

Trump Ignored Warnings

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under  way.  

Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to public policy and the electoral process.  

Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti and Julian E. Barnes report at NYT:

The shortcomings of Mr. Trump’s performance have played out with remarkable transparency as part of his daily effort to dominate television screens and the national conversation.

But dozens of interviews with current and former officials and a review of emails and other records revealed many previously unreported details and a fuller picture of the roots and extent of his halting response as the deadly virus spread:

• The National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States, and within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Mr. Trump would avoid such steps until March.

• Despite Mr. Trump’s denial weeks later, he was told at the time about a Jan. 29 memo produced by his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.

• The health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar II, directly warned Mr. Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a call on Jan. 30, the second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in two weeks. The president, who was on Air Force One while traveling for appearances in the Midwest, responded that Mr. Azar was being alarmist.

• Mr. Azar publicly announced in February that the government was establishing a “surveillance” system in five American cities to measure the spread of the virus and enable experts to project the next hot spots. It was delayed for weeks. The slow start of that plan, on top of the well-documented failures to develop the nation’s testing capacity, left administration officials with almost no insight into how rapidly the virus was spreading. “We were flying the plane with no instruments,” one official said.

• By the third week in February, the administration’s top public health experts concluded they should recommend to Mr. Trump a new approach that would include warning the American people of the risks and urging steps like social distancing and staying home from work. But the White House focused instead on messaging and crucial additional weeks went by before their views were reluctantly accepted by the president — time when the virus spread largely unimpeded.

This is an extraordinary calamity. A mark in U.S. history that will never be forgotten. The historical record matters. So we assembled a large collection of these emails and have posted them here online. Here they are for you all to read. Click on link: https://t.co/HRyAhgMFWW pic.twitter.com/LV1ZgTdhqk

— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) April 11, 2020