So I Googled "Donald Trump" + "Adderall"

When it's still too cold to get into the garden, and you can't really go anywhere else in this Plague Year, you decide to check out the rumors. Believe it or not, I'd only run across the accusation that Trump snorts the amphetamine Adderall a couple of times, and in no detail, in sources that mentioned there was a rumor without giving it any credence, because, after all, Roseanne's former husband Tom Arnold was a major source for that rumor, and he was no authority to launch a slander campaign.

But I remember remarking on Donald Trump's persistent sniffing myself, way back during the Republican presidential debates in 2015 and 2016, leading up to the primaries. I noted Trump's persistent, heavy, prolonged sniffs that were also very wet, like I am of a morning when my allegies are well deployed. People were saying on social media that those sniffles could be a result of snorting something.

Trevor Noah devoted a whole segment to Trump's slurred speech but hilariously chalked it up to #DentureDonald:






Who can forget a famous dry-mouth moment?





I don't know the symptoms for sniffing Adderall. Maybe Trump exhibits them. Or maybe he's got textbook ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), which is also a reoccurring rumor with coincidenally a stronger mountain of credible evidence backing it up.

San Francisco psychiatrist John Kruse reviewed the anecdotal rumors about Trump and ADHD:

Reports going back decades assert that doctors prescribed Mr. Trump phentermine. The FDA approved the stimulant medication phentermine for weight-control, but physicians also prescribe it off-label to treat ADHD. Phentermine prescriptions receive less government scrutiny than more tightly controlled stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall. During the presidential campaign two years ago, pundits extensively discussed Mr. Trump’s sniffing, grimacing and hyperactivity....

But Kruse takes us to a different set of Trump behaviors, with an entirely different presidential affect that gives Kruse hope that Trump is indeed on something like Adderall, and an even bigger hope he stays on it. Kruse, like any licensed therapist, has eyes to see what's obvious:

I examined video footage of the border wall Presidential Address [Jan. 8, 2019], comparing it to his other presidential performances. Mr. Trump’s pupils are substantially larger during the Address than during other speeches.... However, even more blatant than a change in the size of his pupils, during the Address he made many fewer head and body movements, many fewer hand gestures, twitched less, and uttered more organized sentences, in a calmer cadence, than he displays elsewhere. While some of this behavior may be in direct response to the structure of reading from a tele-prompter, we have certainly seen him go off track in other speeches, despite help from a tele-prompter. The combination of simultaneous physiologic, behavioral, and cognitive changes in the president’s behavior strongly suggest that during the Address he used stimulant medications in order to behave more coherently.

Kruse's bottomline: Adderall might be making Trump more coherent, not less:

Most people with ADHD have a myriad of thoughts ping-ponging around in their head at any instant. With a proper dose of stimulant medication they can focus on one item at a time and consider it at more depth and leisure. The frenetic behavior, the bouncing back and forth, the impulsivity, the self contradictions of ADHD are all a result of being unable to control attention, and when someone gains control of their attention, they can process their environment and their own thoughts in a more organized, calm manner.

Kruse's summary diagnosis of Trump knocked my compression socks clean off:

Stimulant medications help many adults with ADHD improve their focus on, and engagement with, their worlds. Those who seem most “over-stimulated” to begin with (but are actually under-stimulated) are often the patients who respond most powerfully to ADHD medications. It is not surprising that people have a hard time wrapping their head around medications that produce hyperactivity, rapid and disjointed speech and impulsive behavior in some people and alleviate it in others. Yet Mr. Trump, his immediate circle, and the whole country will benefit from effective treatment for his ADHD. Rather than riffing on his sniffing, maybe we should be supporting his snorting.

If any of this is mostly true, what in the world are we going to do? And what was the purpose of the 25th Amendment?

Senator Dick Burr -- An Accomplished Money-Grubber

Appreciate Jeffrey Billman's IndyWeek Primer for pointing out an article in ProPublica about how Senator Burr sold his DC townhouse to a high-powered lobbyist for what appears to be an above-market price.

 

“Burr sold the small townhouse, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, for what, by some estimates, was an above market price—$900,000—to a team led by lobbyist John Green. That is tens of thousands of dollars above some estimates of the property’s value by tax assessors, a real estate website and a local real estate agent. The sale was done off-market, without the home being listed for sale publicly.”

“The legality of this sale hinges on whether the home was purchased for fair market value. If it was purchased for more than that, it would be considered a gift. Gifts of significant value from lobbyists are generally banned by Senate ethics rules, and those that aren’t are typically required to be publicly disclosed. Neither Burr nor Green disclosed any such gifts. Gifts that are intended to influence official actions are illegal.”

“Burr, it seems, has not gotten the memo that 50 percent of North Carolinians want him to resign. He hasn’t even listened to Fox News darling Tucker Carlson, who said ‘there is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time of crisis’ and called for Burr to quit as well.”

Hoo Boy! Wisconsin Gives Trump the Finger

Jill Karofsky

Donald Trump endorsed Republican Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly in the Wisconsin vote last week, the man that former Republican Governor Scott Walker had appointed to the state's high court, and Trump tweeted on Election Day a week ago, "get out and vote NOW” for Kelly. Instead, the voters of Wisconsin, much aggrieved by their Supreme Court, which refused to delay the election in the midst of a pandemic, voted for Kelly's Democratic opponent Jill Karofsky. Last update I've seen said Karofsky was leading Kelly by 11 points.

Republican voter-suppression maneuvering leading up to last week's vote is now generally seen as a major miscalculation. People do finally get fed up with the partisan games.

We trust it'll be the same in North Carolina, come November, since we've been seeing Republican boss Phil Berger disparaging easier voting and we've known him for years as a major hindrance to greater ballot access. The North Carolina state Board of Elections has moved to make requests for mail ballots available through an online portal, and the executive director of the SBOE has recommended reducing the requirement for two witnesses on absentee ballots to just one -- but Phil Berger has already signaled his opposition.

Just another brick in his wall. And one more reason for North Carolina voters to be fed up TOO with the partisan games. The Trumpist Party is looking ever more toxic.

When Your Own Children Can't Stand Your Morals

A must-read is Jane Mayer's new lengthy profile of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the chief enabler of Trump in the US Congress. Like most New Yorker pieces, it's exhaustive -- but what else are we going to do in a Plague Year but read long pieces about a thoroughly despicable top Senate enabler of the worst president in history?

Intensely interesting factoids in the piece like this: McConnell's three daughters have completely deserted their father's politics:

McConnell also appears to have lost the political support of his three daughters. The youngest, Porter, is a progressive activist who is the campaign director for Take On Wall Street, a coalition of labor unions and nonprofit groups which advocates against the “predatory economic power” of “banks and billionaires.” One of its targets has been Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and C.E.O. of the Blackstone Group, who, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, has, since 2016, donated nearly thirty million dollars to campaigns and super pacs aligned with McConnell. Last year, Take On Wall Street condemned Blackstone’s “detrimental behavior” and argued that the company’s campaign donations “cast a pall on candidates’ ethics.”

Porter McConnell has also publicly criticized the Senate’s confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh, which her father considers one of his greatest achievements. On Twitter, she accused Kavanaugh’s supporters of misogyny, and retweeted a post from StandWithBlaseyFord, a Web site supporting Christine Blasey Ford, one of Kavanaugh’s accusers. The husband of McConnell’s middle daughter, Claire, has also criticized Kavanaugh online, and McConnell’s eldest daughter, Eleanor, is a registered Democrat.

All three daughters declined to comment, as did their mother, Sherrill Redmon, whom McConnell divorced in 1980. After the marriage ended, Redmon, who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, left Kentucky and took over a women’s-history archive at Smith College, in Massachusetts, where she collaborated with Gloria Steinem on the Voices of Feminism Oral History Project. In an e-mail, Steinem told me that Redmon rarely spoke about McConnell, and noted, “Despite Sherrill’s devotion to recording all of women’s lives, she didn’t talk about the earlier part of her own.” Steinem’s understanding was that McConnell’s political views had once been different. “I can only imagine how painful it must be to marry and have children with a democratic Jekyll and see him turn into a corrupt and authoritarian Hyde,” she wrote. (Redmon is evidently working on a tell-all memoir.)

McConnell's ex-wife's "tell-all memoir" will maybe make a good stocking-stuffer for next Christmas.

Democrat Jaime Harrison Running for Senate in South Carolina

The Jaime Harrison senatorial campaign to take out incumbent Republican Lindsey Graham in South Carolina could be a bellwether for politics in a new New South. Can a moderate, business-aligned black Democrat, who learned his politics at the elbow of Rep. Jim Clyburn, defeat the entrenched Lindsey Graham, the sycophantic chameleon who now smooches the ass of a man he once called “a kook”? Graham said of Trump in February 2016, “I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office.” He now bows to him as Lord and Master.

MotherJones.com

According to reporter Kara Voght, Harrison has been a dynamo at fundraising, raising $3.5 million in the last quarter of 2019 which makes Harrison a champion in the money race though he's still some $5 million behind Lindsey Graham.

He came up from extreme poverty in South Carolina but got a degree at Yale and then at Georgetown Law and sought out a staff position with Rep. Jim Clyburn, where he learned the personalities and the ways of the Hill. From there he went on to work for the Podesta Group with clients like the pro-coal American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Walmart. In other words, he's well educated and well connected to corporate America.

But for our hyper-partisan age, he's also decided on a softer approach to campaigning, mainly refusing to draw distinctions to Graham or even mentioning his name. Gibbs Knotts, who teaches political science at the College of Charleston, said of Harrison's campaign, “To characterize this as a long shot would be accurate.” A long shot not just because of the money disadvantage and not just because he's a black man running in the former Confederacy but because he's trying to rise above partisanship when the tide of history is flowing the other direction.

Immersion, Not Conversion

Dr. Rachel Bitecofer issued her "Post-Democratic Primary Update to the Bitecofer Model" for predicting the 2020 presidential race, and she forecasts 289 electoral college votes for the Democratic candidate this November. It takes 270 to win.

Bitecofer, aside from telling Democrats what they want to hear in these dark Trump times, always offers details and insights worth munching on in our social isolation. Like this:

If Trump had political capital to spend heading into this [Coronavirus] crisis, that would be one thing. But after the Russia investigation was followed in short order by the Ukraine scandal, Trump’s political capital tank is already on empty, with few Americans outside of Republicans capable of trusting him. Trump will be heading into the fall with the dubious distinction of being the most embattled, controversial, and scandal-plagued president to seek reelection in the history of the republic — and that was before this virus emerged to create a massive public health disaster and destroy his strongest claim for reelection: the economy.

Bitecofer is also the strongest voice out there against the old Democratic Party belief that significant numbers of "moderate" Republicans can be converted to vote Democratic. That's a subset of an assumption that some 15% of the electorate swings between the parties, a mistaken impression that Bitecofer calls "the Chuck Todd Theory of American Politics." I've written about that previously.

So Bitecofer looks skeptically at Montana Governor Steve Bullock's Senate race against incumbent Republican Senator Steve Daines. Bullock was heavily recruited to run, after his presidential aspirations petered out, but Bitecofer doesn't predict a Bullock victory, mainly because she assumes Bullock will campaign on the tattered Chuck Todd Theory -- trying to convert soft Republicans to vote for him:

Bullock will need to demonstrate dominance among independents in polling out of Big Sky Country to truly be competitive there under a high-turnout scenario, as will his ticket-mate, Joe Biden. But more importantly, they’ll need every single Democrat and left-leaning independent in the state to show up and vote. Which is a problem, because although a great many Democrats and left-leaning independents will be inspired to vote in 2020 due to Trump fear, I assume the Bullock campaign’s resources will largely be spent on conversion. And I’m just not sure it’ll work against Steve Daines, a center-right, traditional, conservative. Regular followers will know that I’m generally bearish about conversion (although sometimes it works, most recently in the Kentucky governor’s race against controversial Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, who along with a reputation for Trump-like divisiveness also curtailed the state’s Obamacare Medicaid expansion program). Conversion in the polarized era is hard, and it is difficult to find evidence of it in polling data from the past decade.

I highlight Bitecofer's skepticism about "conversion" because I find too many Democratic candidates in North Carolina still inclined to the old Chuck Todd Theory, rather than to the post-Trump necessity of energizing new and infrequent voters to get up off the couch and take back their government.

Mark Meadows Took His Hatchet to the White House

We would expect little else from the congressman from North Carolina, who loved shutting down the government to get his way.

Mark Meadows, newly installed as Trump's fourth chief of staff, is reportedly increasing tensions in the White House, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed his career as congressman from the NC-11. We learn, for example, from this Bloomberg reporting that it was Meadows who fired press secretary Stephanie Grisham:

Meadows’s moves -- especially Grisham’s replacement, which she and her staff learned was under consideration in a report last week by Axios -- have suddenly dialed up tension in a building that has long been riven by infighting, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. 

Meadows told Grisham over the weekend he wanted her to give up the press secretary position and serve only as the White House communications director. She declined, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

Grisham has a powerful advocate in the White House: first lady Melania Trump, who promptly brought the ousted press secretary back to the East Wing as her personal chief of staff. The only formal announcement about the staff changes on Tuesday came from the first lady’s office, which some of the people suggested was a sign of her displeasure.

 Blunt force trauma. It's a Meadows trademark.

The Body Count -- Inspector General Glenn Fine

Glenn Fine
Photo by Michael Williamson/WashPost

A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Being Pushed Off Luxury Liner Trump

Trump has removed Glenn Fine, who had been the acting Pentagon inspector general, from the chairmanship of the federal panel Congress created to oversee the Trump administration’s management of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package — "the latest action by the president to undermine the system of independent oversight of the executive established after Watergate" (Ellen Nakashima).

"In just the past four days, Trump has ousted two inspectors general and expressed displeasure with a third, a pattern that critics say is a direct assault on one of the pillars of good governance" (Nakashima).

Late last month, Fine was selected by the head of a council of inspectors general to lead the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, created by the March 27 law.

About Fine, Matthew Miller, a former Department of Justice official, tweeted, "I know him and can tell you he was a total pain in our rear end as DOJ IG [Department of Justice Inspector General], which is exactly what you want from an IG and exactly why Trump has fired him. He’s tough, rigorous, and fair."

The Body Count -- Navy Secretary Thomas Modly

Modly

A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump

Acting Navy secretary Thomas Modly resigned yesterday after drawing condemnation for insulting Captain Brett Crozier, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, who was fired for writing a letter of concern about the service’s handling of a coronavirus outbreak aboard his vessel.

Modly's resignation came after he traveled from Washington to Guam on Monday to give a speech to the 5,000-member crew of the aircraft carrier. In profanity-laced remarks over a loudspeaker, Modly assailed Crozier’s character, accusing him of either leaking a letter about his concerns to the news media or of being “too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this.”

Modly’s comments, leaked to reporters within hours in written and audio form, angered many of the sailors on the ship, where 230 people have tested positive for covid-19 as of Tuesday, and their relatives, and triggered calls for his resignation from several Democratic lawmakers.