This Day In History, 1980: The First Picture Of Diana

Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd

This is the first picture of Diana Spencer that ever appeared in a newspaper. It wasn't published until a few weeks later but it was taken 40 years ago today, by royal photographer Arthur Edwards. In a 2017 article in the Irish Sun newspaper, he tells the story:

Those first, early meetings with Diana — then a shy teenager — remain burned into my memory nearly 40 years on.

My job on The Sun had been to be the first to identify and photograph the woman who would steal Prince Charles’s heart.

I did find her and photograph her before my rivals.

But I shoved the picture in a drawer because I couldn’t believe the Prince, who was nearly 32, would be going out with a teenager.

My remarkable friendship with Diana began exactly a year to the day before her wedding to the world’s most eligible bachelor.

Tracking down Charles’s new love had become a bit of an obsession with me as I followed him everywhere.

Along the way I saw his other girlfriends, like Davina Sheffield and Sabrina Guinness, but they didn’t last long.

He had only recently broken up with Marjorie [sic] Wallace, a stunning girl with model looks who we all thought would be The One.

Note: Charles's girlfriend before Diana was Anna Wallace. 

Then on July 29, 1980, the trail took me to a polo match at Cowdray Park at Midhurst, West Sussex.

I’d been told Charles had arrived with a girl called Lady Diana Spencer but no one seemed to know what she looked like.

Looking around I saw a pretty girl sitting among the crowds wearing a necklace with the letter D on it.

I gave it a go and politely asked: “Excuse me, are you Lady Diana Spencer?”

When she said yes I asked to take a photograph. So she posed for me, her hand delicately framing her face.

It was the first of hundreds of thousands of pictures I would take over the coming years.

But I filed this one in a drawer after discovering that Earl Spencer’s youngest daughter, who worked as a nursery teacher, had only just celebrated her 19th birthday.

I had the scoop of the year but I sent the roll of film back to the office by messenger with a note, “File this, because I’m not sure”.

A month after I’d first photographed her I was driving along the banks of the River Dee near Balmoral, certain she was The One.

Then I saw Prince Charles fishing with an unusual-looking ghillie.

It was Diana dressed as a man. I stopped the car and tore across the field, while Diana ran away, hid behind a tree and used a mirror to look over her shoulder to see where I was.

She suddenly made a dash for it through the trees and I got all these pictures.

Charles stomped out of the river fuming because his fishing had been interrupted.

We then ran my photo of Diana from the polo on Page 1 with a headline: Lady Diana Spencer — All the Qualities to be Queen. (Read the entire article here.)

And one more thing: Diana's famous blue gown, the one she wore while dancing with John Travolta at the White House in 1985, will be going on display at Kensington Palace: 

This week we welcome Diana, Princess of Wales’s ‘Travolta’ dress home to #KensingtonPalace 👗

We can't wait to reopen the palace tomorrow, with this iconic gown on display for the first time since it joined our Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection in 2019.https://t.co/DZPfyghno0 pic.twitter.com/jVzN2EshOY

— Historic Royal Palaces (@HRP_palaces) July 29, 2020

The dress was featured in the 1997 Christie's auction and sold for $222,500, the highest sale price of all 80 dresses. The buyer was anonymous and the dress has been sold a couple of times over the years. The independent charity Historic Royal Palaces purchased it in December:  

A midnight blue velvet gown worn by Princess Diana when she famously danced with actor John Travolta has sold for £264,000 ($347,000).

The princess wore the dress, made by couturier Victor Edelstein, at an event at the White House in November 1985.

Photographs of the princess and the Hollywood star gliding around the room to the music of "Saturday Night Fever" were seen around the world, and Travolta later described the experience as having been "like a fairy tale."

Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), an independent charity that looks after palaces in the UK, paid a princely sum for the dress on Tuesday -- the day after the dress failed to sell at auction.

"We're delighted to have acquired this iconic evening gown for the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection -- a designated collection of national and international importance -- over twenty years since it first left Kensington Palace," said Eleri Lynn, curator at HRP, in a statement.

"Not only is the 'Travolta' dress a fantastic example of couture tailoring designed to dazzle on a state occasion, it represents a key moment in the story of twentieth century royal fashion."

The dress had been expected to fetch up to £350,000 (about $388,000) at Kerry Taylor Auctions on Monday.

HRP purchased the gown outside of the auction, according to a spokesman.

A spokeswoman for Kerry Taylor Auctions told CNN that they wouldn't comment on why the dress didn't sell at auction, but the seller is happy that the dress will remain in the UK.

The auction house last sold at the same auction house for £240,000 ($311,000) in March 2013, to a British buyer who bought the dress as a gift for his wife.

Diana wore the dress with a sapphire and pearl choker, an outfit that has since become emblematic of the princess. Lynn said Diana had become a fashion icon like Jackie Kennedy or Audrey Hepburn, calling the princess "timeless, elegant and still so relevant." (From CNN.com; read the entire story here.)

Pete Souza, who was the official White House photographer for President Obama, also served in that role during the Reagan administration. He took the famous picture; here's another shot from the same night: 

View this post on Instagram

I’m sure Prince Harry’s mom would be proud today. (An alternate frame to my more well-known photograph from this same dance in 1985.)

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on May 19, 2018 at 8:07am PDT

If the Travolta dress got the highest price at Christie's, which dress got the lowest? It was a pink silk dinner dress by Catherine Walker, worn by Diana in 1993: 

Sale price? $21,850.

A Message From Donald Trump

Note the date: 

A View From The Other Side

Tony Green is a conservative and a Trump supporter. He believed the coronavirus was a big hoax from the libs trying to damage Donald Trump. He made fun of people wearing masks. He ignored social distancing guidelines and threw a big party for his family. It was his God-given right. Here's how he describes what happened next:

Imagine the sound and vibration of an old-fashioned electric heater going through your whole body. Imagine gasping for air with every step you take. Imagine rubbing Icy Hot all over your head to soothe a painful headache. Imagine your eyes in a bowl of water while you’re still seeing through them. Imagine collapsing and waking up in the ER only to find out COVID-19 attacked your central nervous system, and the doctor had just saved you from a stroke.

If that were the worst of it, it would be bad enough. But that’s not the worst of it. This is the story of one family’s harrowing fight with COVID-19.

Full disclosure: I am a gay conservative, someone that often juggles persecution for my sexuality while being true to my values. Such a combination requires a lot of tenacity to earn respect from either group.

I admit I voted for Donald Trump in 2016. I admit traveling deep into the conspiracy trap over COVID-19. All the defiant behavior of Trump’s more radical and rowdy cult followers, I participated in it. I was a hard-ass that stood up for my “God-given rights.”

In great haste, I began prognosticating the alphabet soup about this “scamdemic.” I believed the virus to be a hoax. I believed the mainstream media and the Democrats were using it to create panic, crash the economy and destroy Trump’s chances at re-election.

And so, believing the pandemic to be a hoax, my partner and I hosted family members on Saturday, June 13. On Sunday, June 14, I woke up sick.

By Monday, June 15, my partner and my parents were all sick. That same Monday, my in-laws traveled to witness the birth of their first grandchild. They took with them my father-in-law’s mother and one of my partner’s sisters. That night my father-in-law became ill. Then my mother-in-law and their daughter began feeling sick. So they cut their trip short.

Two days later, my father-in-law’s mother got sick. The new mommy and daddy got sick, too. We all tested positive for COVID-19. Only the newborn was spared.

My father-in-law and I both went to the hospital on June 24. The virus had attacked my central nervous system, and the staff stopped me from having a stroke.

My father-in-law’s mother was admitted a day later. On July 1, she died of COVID-19/pneumonia. The chaplain wanted the family to break the news to my father-in-law, and he learned how his mother lay on her deathbed and then drifted off without any family by her side, even though he was in the room next to hers.

On the day of her funeral, which was July 14, five more of our family members tested positive for the virus. That evening, my father-in-law was put on a ventilator.

You cannot imagine the guilt I feel, knowing that I hosted the gathering that led to so much suffering. You cannot imagine my guilt at having been a denier, carelessly shuffling through this pandemic, making fun of those wearing masks and social distancing. You cannot imagine my guilt at knowing that my actions convinced both our families it was safe when it wasn’t. (Read the rest of the column here.)

100 Days To Go

Jonathan Bernstein looks at the state of the race at the 100-days-out mark:

Sunday marked 100 days until the election, so I’ll break my general rule of thumb — which is to ignore the horse-race polls until after the conventions — for a day. And what those polls say is pretty simple: Former Vice President Joe Biden has opened up a solid lead over President Donald Trump.

How solid? Checking the averages: FiveThirtyEight estimates an 8 percentage point lead, RealClearPolitics says 9.1 percentage points and the Economist puts it at 8.4 percentage points. How big is that lead? Big enough. Even if the polls are a bit off and Trump is actually doing better, and even if he still has an Electoral College advantage and everything breaks in his favor, there’s no way he wins if the polls look this way in November.

But of course it’s July, not November. The good news for Trump is that despite everything that’s gone wrong, even a modest rally would put him close enough that a normal polling error and an Electoral College edge could be enough to win a second term.

The bad news for him is that it seems unlikely he can do that. Trump has trailed Biden in head-to-head polling throughout the campaign, long before the pandemic and ensuing recession. It’s anybody’s guess what will happen with the virus by November, but it’s hard to believe that it will no longer be a dominant issue — and Trump’s polling on the pandemic is bad and getting worse.

The economy is a bit more complicated, but public opinion has trended against Trump there, too. I still think that a president could have sold high unemployment as an unavoidable consequence of the successful fight against the virus, but that would’ve required showing a lot more success, and a president who had built trust with the electorate and knew how to show empathy. At this point, it seems more likely that Trump will be punished for his handling of the economy.

In fact, the polls so far may even be understating Biden’s lead. Biden gets about 50% of the vote in head-to-head polls, but Trump’s disapproval rating has been at or above 55% for a while, and has almost always been higher than 52%. It’s true that some people voted for Trump in 2016 despite not liking him, but it’s a lot tougher to win votes from people who think you’re currently doing a bad job as president. And don’t forget: Polling errors could go in either direction, and there’s no guarantee that Trump will wind up having an Electoral College advantage.

There are enough unusual things going on this year that it’s worth being skeptical of anyone making confident predictions. Still, everything in the polling right now looks grim for Trump. And he’s running out of time to do anything about it. (This is the column in its entirety.) 

Catching Up With The People Covers - Updated/Regis and Harry and Meghan

During the Coronavirus shutdown, I've gotten out of my routine of weekly Guessing Game posts and posting the new cover. The missing covers are posted below, along with the "Last year at this time" covers from 2019. I'm even going to do a short Guessing Game list. What will be on the new cover this week? My guesses:

Olivia de Havilland and/or Regis Philbin: Dead celebrities
Harry and Meghan: A new book, titled Finding Freedom. It will be released in the U.S. on August 11
Oprah: Is she discontinuing her magazine (or possibly going to online only?)
Taylor Swift: A new album
Demi Lovato: Engaged
Kim and Kanye: Some kind of drama or other.

Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.

Update: I called the cover stories, and for some reason People has posted two versions of this week's cover, one with Regis Philbin as the main story; the other with Harry and Meghan:

Issue dated August 10, 2020: Harry and Meghan


Issue dated August 10, 2020: Regis Philbin



They've done this occasionally before, with one cover on issues going out to subscribers and the other for newsstand sales.

Last year at this time it was Bachelorette Hannah:

Issue dated August 12, 2019



Here are the previous covers:

Issue dated June 8, 2020



Issue dated June 15, 2020
 


Issue dated June 22, 2020



Issue dated June 29, 2020



Issue dated July 6, 2020



Issue dated July 13, 2020



Issue dated July 20, 2020



Issue dated July 27, 2020



Issue dated August 3, 2020



Here are the "Last year at this time" covers:

June 10, 2019



June 17, 2019



June 24, 2019



July 1, 2019



July 8, 2019



July 15, 2019



July 22, 2019



July 29, 2019



August 5, 2019

This Day In History, 1990: ADA Signed Into Law

30 years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law to protect against disability-based discrimination.

And today, we remain committed to the fight for equal rights for people with disabilities, including people of color with disabilities.#ADA30

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 26, 2020

Donald Catches A Ball

When Dr. Fauci's pitch goes wide, who cares, right? He's still a world-class physician and scientist who has spent his entire life working to protect Americans from infectious diseases. (I first heard of him in 1986 when I read And The Band Plays On, Randy Shilts's history of the AIDS crisis.)

This guy, on the other hand... When Donald first became president I wondered here in the blog, why does this guy always look so awkward? (Not to mention that for all his tough guy bragging and blustering, Donald looks like a scared little boy.) Sitting in a chair, wearing White Tie, trying to do anything athletic, he almost can't function in his own skin. He can't do humanness right. It reminds me of a column LA Times opinion columnist Virginia Heffernan wrote about Donald in April, 2017:

THIS is what makes my head spin: The president is not a moral figure in any idiom, any land, any culture, any subculture. I’m not talking about the liberal enlightenment that would make him want the country to take care of the poor and sick. I mean he has no Republican values either. He has no honor among thieves, no cosa nostra loyalty, no Southern code against cheating or lying, none of the openness of New York, rectitude of Boston, expressiveness and kindness of California, no evangelical family values, no Protestant work ethic. No Catholic moral seriousness, no sense of contrition or gratitude. No Jewish moral and intellectual precision, sense of history. He doesn’t care about the life of the mind OR the life of the senses. He is not mandarin, not committed to inquiry or justice, not hospitable. He is not proper. He is not a bon vivant who loves to eat, drink, laugh.

There’s nothing he would die for — not American values, obviously, but not the land of Russia or his wife or young son. He has some hollow success creeds from Norman Vincent Peale, but Peale was obsessed with fair-dealing and a Presbyterian pastor; Trump has no fairness or piety. He’s not sentimental; no affection for dogs or babies. No love for mothers, “the common man,” veterans. He has no sense of military valor, and is openly a coward about war. He would have sorely lacked the pagan beauty and capacity to fight required in ancient Greece. He doesn’t care about his wife or wives; he is a philanderer but he’s not a romantic hero with great love for women and sex. He commands loyalty and labor from his children not because he loves them, even; he seems almost to hate them — and if one of them slipped it would be terrifying. He does no philanthropy.

He doesn’t — in a more secular key — even seem to have a sense of his enlightened self-interest enough to shake Angela Merkel’s hand. Doesn’t even affect a love for the arts, like most rich New Yorkers. He doesn’t live and die by aesthetics and health practices like some fascists; he’s very ugly and barely mammalian. Am I missing an obscure moral system to which he so much as nods? Also are there other people, living or dead, like him?

It's the nothingness. There's just nothing there. (Click here to read more about the nothing of Donald.)

This Day In History, 1975: A Chorus Line

Hello 12, Hello 13, Hello Love! The original Broadway production of A Chorus Line debuted on Broadway 45 years ago today. Celebrate by telling us your favorite song from the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical! ⬇️ 👯 👯‍♂️ https://t.co/rqV1UYzfYx

— Playbill (@playbill) July 25, 2020

My favorite song? What I Did For Love. 

The Top 1% - Update

I'm going to keep posting these as I see them; see the first post here.

I donated a penny so I could make fun of the donor emails. If I’m in the top 1%... pic.twitter.com/iEkcJKPz9L

— Alexandra Bowman (@scripta_bene) July 24, 2020

 Update on Wednesday, August 5. Another one:




The sender is newly promoted campaign manager Bill Stepien. It's hard to read so I typed out the content:


CONFIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN STRATEGY: PLEASE DON'T SHARE  

Friend,

I'll get right to it.

November 3rd is coming at us fast and I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to secure another victory for President Trump.

The president said that you're one of his strongest allies. I always trust what he thinks, so I only have one question for you: are you ready to flight alongside me and CRUSH Joe Biden on Election Day?

I know you're up for the challenge. You've been a strong supporter of the President since the very beginning, which is why I need you to take the Official 2020 Campaign Strategy Survey. 

This survey is strictly confidential and is meant for your eyes only. If should go without saying, but please do NOT forward this to anyone. [end]

When I see these missives I always wonder why they're insisting on secrecy. Given that the message probably went to literally millions of people, the campaign can't possibly believe that no one will forward it. I got it from David Corn, of Mother Jones, who posted it on Twitter. Not exactly confidential. 

Is it possible this is some kind of reverse psychology? Trying to trick recipients into sharing it? No way to know. And wouldn't you love to know what's on the Official 2020 Campaign Strategy Survey?  

The Death Toll Of 47 September 11's

Writing at The Bulwark in an article titled "Why Can't Trump Land A Punch?," Molly Jong-Fast ponders Donald's campaign and why it's not
going so well:

In 2015, Trump crushed an entire political dynasty with two words: “low energy.” But Jeb wasn’t the only recipient of a truly destructive nickname. Trump was the king of the takedown. In the Republican primary, Trump eviscerated his enemies with a single tweet or a mean nickname, impaling the other two heavyweight contenders with one adjective each—“Liddle Marco” and “Lyin’ Ted.”

What a difference four years makes.

Trump’s nicknames no longer shape the news cycle. Trump’s Twitter account no longer drives the narrative. And Trump’s lies are no longer reported as fact, even on Fox News. (Well, with some obvious exceptions.)

What happened?

In 2015, the American political world had never been confronted by a politician so deeply untethered to the truth. Trump lied the same way normal people breathe. Whether it was about his finances, or his health, or “watching Shark Week” with a porn star. (Best euphemism ever?)

Trump literally paid actors to come to his announcement that he was running for president and pretend to be supporters!

Can you imagine what would have happened to any other Republican presidential candidate in the history of Republican presidential candidates if they had gotten caught paying a crowd to show up for their launch?

John [sic] Huntsman: Dead.

Bob Dole: Dead.

Phil Gramm: Triple dog dead.

And Trump’s super power wasn’t just his shamelessness in lying about himself—he was willing to lie about what he wanted to do as president.

Presidential candidates are always promising crazy stuff that has no way of passing into law.

But there has always been a line. Like, if you were running for president you could promise that you would “end poverty” or “fit your entire tax return on a postcard.” And sure, everyone knew that you weren’t going to really do those things because the problems were complex and legislating is hard and blah, blah, blah. But at least, in a perfect world, these goals were theoretically possible.

No one was ever willing to say, “Vote for me and we’ll change the universal gravitational constant.” Or, “I pledge that together, we can make alicorns real.”

But Trump kind of was. He promised not only to build an unbroken physical wall stretching across America’s entire southern border—itself an exercise in magical thinking—but that Mexico would pay for this contraption.

He would have had a better chance with the alicorns. I hear InGen is doing amazing work these days.

Democrats didn’t know what to do with someone who lied like Trump. And the media found themselves totally at sea because there was no handbook in America for a free press covering an aspiring autocrat.

But things change. And people and institutions change, too. Donald Trump is no longer an outsider promising to blow things up. He’s the guy in charge and he blew things up real good. Promises made, promises kept!

Because of Trump’s administration, the United States has endured (so far) the equivalent death toll of 47 September 11’s. The unemployment rate is double digits, and many of us cannot safely leave our homes. Weirdly enough, people now seem to view “blowing it all up” as more bug than feature. Go figure.

Trump has other problems, too.

For instance, everything Trump accuses Biden of doing, he does himself, only worse. So when Trump World tried to shop the idea that Biden was creepy with women, all it really did was remind people that Trump has more than two dozen sexual assault allegations on his rap sheet.

When Trump World pushed the idea that Hunter Biden was somehow corrupt, you couldn’t help but think about Jivanka and DJTJ and all the ways the Trump family has been siphoning cash out of the public coffers.

Trump World tried painting Joe as doddering and old at the same time that the president was rambling through daily press conferences and struggling to walk down a ramp.

This is the problem with projection: Once people get wise to the pathology, then every boomerang you throw at your opponent comes back and pops you in the nose.

But ultimately, Trump’s biggest problem is himself.

Donald Trump has been president for 3 years and 186 days. He is no longer an outsider and the country is not better off than it was in 2016.

Unemployment is at 11 percent. Numerous countries have closed their borders to America (including, this past weekend, the Bahamas). And Trump still has no plan to slow the spread of coronavirus.

In 2015 Trump was able to make the case that he was a changemaker. He could say, as he did to African Americans, “what do you have to lose?”

But in mid-2020, the problem is that Americans can see exactly how much they’ve lost and are keenly aware of how much they still could lose.

And it’s a lot. (This is the article in its entirety.)

AJ Doesn't Like Donald Anymore And Jason Miller Is Still Slime

AJ's taste in men has improved over the course of Donald's presidency. I'm not talking about Jason, she still hates him with the fury of God's own thunder (Hi, Aaron) and with good reason. But she's seen the light where Donald is concerned and is now supporting Joe Biden. As shown in the tweets below, Jason is still a deadbeat dad, and she said a few days ago that he hasn't seen his son in several months. Unbelievable.

Trump isn't a Faustian figure or a 4-d chess evil mastermind.
He's an insecure, sad old man that longs for flattery.
Even if you did all you could to oppose him, all it takes is a compliment and he will let anyone in, let anyone mooch off his Campaign.
Just a sad old man. https://t.co/7uI7egYJow

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

Click here to read the Vanity Fair article she's referring to below. 

I contacted VF and they changed the wording. AFTER the article had been up for HOURS.
And I still want to know how Sherman felt saying that I had "claimed" to have an "affair" (and no mention that Miller FATHERED A CHILD! through the workplace! as the real reason) happens. https://t.co/exfsLWAD9v

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

Nope. .@gabrielsherman made ZERO mention of Miller being embroiled in a deadbeat dad legal battle, which is odd bc he certainly found 'child support' newsworthy in 2018 when he thought he could spin it to make Miller sound noble and like an embattled white-male. https://t.co/rDUoaV0f0Z

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

Still, let's not forget nothing will ever beat @MikeAllen. The funniest lines written in 2020 "journalism", bar none!
"Miller listens as much as he talks."
I can't even be mad. 😂 This is comedy gold.
Remember this guy gets paid to be a "journalist." pic.twitter.com/7ApHEVx00V

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

Jason spent an entire year of the 2015-2016 (June 2015 - 2016) calling you "Sleazy Donald" and attacking you, you senile old fool, @RealDonaldTrump. He switched camps to make $$$ of your gullible campaign. pic.twitter.com/68290uQ0eS

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

Also, hm, why is Jason obsessed w having his white-male bro friends write stories about "he talkz to the president on the phone, y'all!!!"
On the left, @MikeAllen last month.
On the right, @gabrielsherman today.
This is cringe and just SAD. pic.twitter.com/dHMPw25ySR

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

Judge issued another Order yesterday.
He has to pay up by July 30th on at least the underpaid child support from November until July.
(The tens of thousands he underpaid before that will be dealt with at trial.) https://t.co/59Gp10X4mp

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

I don't even know if I should criticize Trump bc I am beginning to think he really does belong in a home. https://t.co/7uI7egYJow

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

This association with Miller is really going well for you, @Parscale, @EricTrump, @DonaldJTrumpJr , @IvankaTrump . You're funding this harassment. You're responsible.

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

Yup. Did I mention it was my mom's bday and we were cutting her cake? Will started crying when the doorbell wouldn't stop; the dogs were going crazy.

Then people ask, "Gosh, why don't you just not tweet about him? He doesn't do anything to YOU!" Ok, morons. https://t.co/IGEcl94abd

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

It's pure harassment. They are completely irrelevant. Never going to happen. And we'll be seeking sanctions. https://t.co/yesb4THv5j

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

Interestingly, Miller's attorney cryptically told my attorney a few months ago something along the lines of, "Well, if he files for divorce, he's going to have even less money."

Does his wife know that? I guess she does now.

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

The neighbor called, "There's a cop outside your door." I almost fainted, thinking one our loved ones was dead in an accident. (Never thought it could be a subpoena bc my atty specifically told Monster's atty not to send a process server and that he could send any docs to HER.) https://t.co/I6FwFCBnfP

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) July 23, 2020

Click on the "AJ Episodes" label below to read previous posts about 

this situation. As you read them, be aware that over the last few years
AJ has occasionally deleted her Twitter account. Right now, she's back 
online and her tweets look like tweets again.  

Just A Little Corruption Across The Pond

From the New York Times, this is the story in its entirety:

LONDON — The American ambassador to Britain, Robert Wood Johnson IV, told multiple colleagues in February 2018 that President Trump had asked him to see if the British government could help steer the world-famous and lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland, according to three people with knowledge of the episode.

The ambassador’s deputy, Lewis A. Lukens, advised him not to do it, warning that it would be an unethical use of the presidency for private gain, these people said. But Mr. Johnson apparently felt pressured to try. A few weeks later, he raised the idea of Turnberry playing host to the Open with the secretary of state for Scotland, David Mundell.

In a brief interview last week, Mr. Mundell said it was “inappropriate” for him to discuss his dealings with Mr. Johnson and referred to a British government statement that said Mr. Johnson “made no request of Mr. Mundell regarding the British Open or any other sporting event.” The statement did not address whether the ambassador had broached the issue of Turnberry, which Mr. Trump bought in 2014, but none of the next four Opens are scheduled to be played there.

Still, the episode left Mr. Lukens and other diplomats deeply unsettled. Mr. Lukens, who served as the acting ambassador before Mr. Johnson arrived in November 2017, emailed officials at the State Department to tell them what had happened, colleagues said. A few months later, Mr. Johnson forced out Mr. Lukens, a career diplomat who had earlier served as ambassador to Senegal, shortly before his term was to end.

The White House declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s instructions to Mr. Johnson, as did the ambassador and the State Department.

Although Mr. Trump, as president, is exempt from a federal conflict of interest law that makes it a criminal offense to take part in “government matters that will affect your own personal financial interest,” the Constitution prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts, or “emoluments,” from foreign governments.

Experts on government ethics pointed to one potential violation of the emoluments clause that still may have been triggered by the president’s actions: The British or Scottish governments would most likely have to pay for security at the tournament, an event that would profit Mr. Trump.

It was not the first time the president tried to steer business to one of his properties. Last year, the White House chose the Trump National Doral resort in Miami as the site of a Group of 7 meeting. Mr. Trump backed off after it ignited a political storm, moving the meeting to Camp David before canceling it because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Trump also urged Vice President Mike Pence to stay at his family’s golf resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, last year during a visit, even though the vice president’s official business was on the other side of the country. That trip generated headlines for the golf club, but also controversy. And Mr. Trump has visited his family-owned golf courses more than 275 times since he took office, bringing reporters with him each time, ensuring that the resorts get ample news coverage.

The Trump International Hotel in Washington has done a brisk trade in guests, foreign and domestic, who are in town to lobby the federal government. Turnberry itself drew attention when the Pentagon acknowledged it had been sending troops to the resort while they were on overnight layovers at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport.

But Mr. Trump and his children have struggled for more than a decade to attract professional golf tournaments to the family’s 16 golf courses, knowing those events draw global television audiences and help drive traffic. They own most of the courses outright — as opposed to simply selling the family name, as is the case with several of their hotels and residential towers — and the courses generate about a third of the family’s revenue, with tournaments seen as a crucial way to publicize them.

This has been particularly important for the two Trump resorts in Scotland and one in Ireland, which have been losing money under Mr. Trump’s ownership. Mr. Trump himself was intensely involved in promoting them before he was elected, regularly pushing golf writers and the editors of golf magazines to play with him, often after whisking them to Scotland on his private jet.

The losses at the British resorts have come even after the family made costly investments to build or upgrade their courses, including $150 million at Turnberry. The most recent annual report for Turnberry shows it lost nearly $1 million, on $19 million in sales, in 2018.

But the campaign to recruit tournaments has been complicated by Mr. Trump’s political ascent. Executives who run the Scottish Open, for example, said in 2017 that they would most likely not hold the tournament at the Trump family’s Aberdeen golf resort, even after direct appeals by Mr. Trump.

“Politics aside, Trump would be an ideal venue — but you can’t put politics aside,” Martin Gilbert, the chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management, which is the lead sponsor of the Scottish Open, told reporters.

As ambassador, Mr. Johnson has had to navigate Mr. Trump’s up-and-down relations with British leaders. The president soured on the prime minister at the time, Theresa May, and berated her on trans-Atlantic phone calls. His relations with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a like-minded populist, have been warmer, though Mr. Johnson has sometimes steered clear of Mr. Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Britain.

A prominent Republican donor, Mr. Johnson initially supported Jeb Bush for the Republican nomination in 2016, but he later backed Mr. Trump, introducing him to other figures in the party’s money circles. Enlisting Mr. Johnson as an emissary on behalf of his golf course was another way the president was looking for help furthering his financial interests.

Beyond the legal and ethical red flags, asking for such a favor from his host country would put Mr. Johnson in an untenable position as the emissary of the United States.

“It is diplomatic malpractice because once you do that, you put yourself in a compromised position,” said Norman L. Eisen, who served as President Barack Obama’s special counsel for ethics and later as his ambassador to the Czech Republic. “They can always say, ‘Remember that time when you made that suggestion.’ No experienced diplomat would do that.”

For Mr. Johnson, 73, London was a reward fit for the billionaire heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune. Formally known as the Court of St. James’s, the assignment is the plum of the diplomatic corps — one that comes with a palatial residence, Winfield House, and entree to the highest levels of British society.

Like many political appointees, Mr. Johnson had no diplomatic experience before arriving in London. Affable and well connected, he is known mainly for the nickname Woody and his ownership of the New York Jets, a perennially struggling N.F.L. franchise. His transition to leading a large embassy was bumpy.

Mr. Johnson’s throwback style has been criticized as offensive. There have been complaints that he complimented the appearances of female employees during staff meetings, and after interviewing a candidate to replace Mr. Lukens as deputy chief of mission, he asked a colleague whether she was Jewish.

The ambassador, colleagues said, forced out Mr. Lukens after hearing he gave a speech at a British university in which he told a positive anecdote about a visit Mr. Obama had made to Senegal in 2013, when Mr. Lukens was the envoy.

At least some of those complaints were raised with the department’s Office of the Inspector General last fall, when a team of investigators began a routine review of diplomatic operations at the embassy. The findings were submitted in February, and the complaints are expected to be included, according to one of the investigators. It is not clear why the review has not been made public.

Neither the State Department nor the embassy addressed the accusations, but the department said Mr. Johnson had led the embassy “honorably and professionally.” In a statement, it said, “We stand by Ambassador Johnson and look forward to him continuing to ensure our special relationship with the U.K. is strong.”

As for Mr. Trump’s request for help in getting the Open, it is not clear how much sway the British government would have had even if it had responded to Mr. Johnson’s hints. The tournament is run by the R&A, a golf association based at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in St. Andrews, which is the British counterpart to the United States Golf Association.

A spokesman for the R&A, Mike Woodcock, said a committee selects the site from a pool of 10 courses in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland based on factors like the readiness of the course and public infrastructure.

“We haven’t received any approaches from the British government or the Scottish government about this,” he said.

How It's Supposed To Work - Updated

Donald is coming back to the podium this afternoon, with a so-called press conference at 5.00 Eastern time. Jonathan Bernstein has some thoughts:

Here we go again.

President Donald Trump has announced that he’s resuming regular pandemic briefings. Quick recap: Trump did these briefings on a daily basis back in the spring when the virus was spreading for the first time; his staff, Republicans in Congress, and virtually everybody else thought that his long, rambling statements and frequent public disagreements with his own experts weren’t helping him; the White House tried retooling the briefings to make them better sales pitches for the president; then Trump mused about injecting bleach. End of regular briefings.

Now the president claims he’s going to revive them, at least for a while. The bottom line is that, for a normal president, such press conferences are a highly useful procedure. They begin with an opening statement, which means that the White House has to prepare something for the president to say. Knowing that they need to produce news in that statement, and preferably good news, staffers will push all the relevant agencies and departments to come up with achievements they can talk about. Yes, the process can be superficial and even counterproductive. But overall, it’s one of the ways that presidents focus the White House and the bureaucracy on getting things done.

After that the president takes questions. On the surface, this is good because it forces the president to speak about the important policy questions of the day. Perhaps even more important, the White House has to prepare answers to all the questions that are likely to be asked. Just as with the opening statement, this pushes staffers to come up with good answers — answers that make the president look good — which in turn helps them to make decisions, push policies forward and confront issues that have been avoided. It’s not just an inside game; outside groups, knowing the president is likely to speak on various topics, will understand that it’s time to apply whatever pressure they have. In short: Governing happens.

Of course, any good politician will have the skills to duck questions from even the most tenacious reporter. So a press conference never exactly forces a decision. But generally, they’ll tend to create a set of positive incentives.

It’s not clear how much those incentives apply to this administration. Normal presidents will spin, enhancing small accomplishments to make them seem important, but the truth acts as a constraint. They won’t just make something up. Trump doesn’t treat the truth as a constraint. Nor does he seem to prep the way normal presidents do. It’s possible that briefing books are prepared anyway, but with the president unlikely to read them, no one in the executive branch is likely to feel pressured to take any relevant actions, and I doubt that the White House staff puts serious effort into it.

Another problem for Trump is that he's likely to spread misinformation. But he tends to do that even without the briefings. What I wouldn’t worry much about is any electoral effect. Regardless of who the president is, the audiences are relatively small for such things, and they’re likely to be dominated by strong supporters. Of course, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign is also watching. The president has the opportunity to look good; the out-party has the opportunity to take advantage of anything he says that can be used against him.

On balance, I think it’s still better for the president to regularly face questions from the press. Realistically, though, it’s not apt to make much difference in November. (This is the column in its entirety.)

Update: It's not really a coronavirus briefing and it's not really even a press conference. It's a political rally:

So, it's a Trump Rally. https://t.co/EC4BCayXxk

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 21, 2020

This Day In History, 1969: Nixon Speaks To Astronauts On The Moon

Nixon used this Oval Office desk telephone to speak with Apollo 11 astronauts on moon, 51 years ago: pic.twitter.com/ebi33kqO1B

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) July 20, 2020

And speaking of old-fashioned telephones:

HYSTERICAL. 😂🤣😂

pic.twitter.com/nBq2DpYzEQ

— jay arnold 🎬 (@jadedcreative) July 13, 2020

Dogs! - Updated

Sometimes I just have to post a dog video:

Mummy dog teaches her kids how to make music pic.twitter.com/HzM4ALqclQ

— 🐈standardpuppies🐕 (@standardpuppies) July 19, 2020

Update: I'm especially happy whenever I see video of canines with waggy tails ganging up on a human:

 

when my time comes this is how i want to go
(goldenarloandcheech IG/TT) pic.twitter.com/JYwq9jcoRN

— Humor And Animals (@humorandanimals) July 21, 2020

See a couple more examples here. No dogs were harmed in the making of these videos, and no humans were either.

2024: Time For A List - Updated

Is it too early for a list of possible Republican candidates for president in 2024? Apparently not:

Interesting the degree to which contenders for the GOP 2024 field are already edging toward the starting line before the bloated orange corpse has been dragged off the field: Pompeo, Cotton, Liz Cheney, Nikki Haley & Romney all seem to be chomping at the bit.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) July 18, 2020

I'm intrigued by the fact that Rothkopf doesn't include the current Vice President. Too damaged by his slobbering, ass-kissing sycophancy towards Donald? Too afraid Donald will boot him off the ticket this year if he appears to be looking ahead? Probably to both, but I'm putting him on my list anyway.

2024 Potential Republican Candidates

1. Liz Cheney (Representative from Wyoming, daughter of former VP Dick Cheney)
2. Tom Cotton (Senator from Arkansas)
3. Nikki Haley (former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and former Governor of South Carolina)
4. Larry Hogan (Governor of Maryland)
5. Mike Pence (Current VP, former Governor of Indiana)
6. Mike Pompeo (Current Sec. of State, former representative from Kansas and former director of the CIA)
7. Mitt Romney (Senator from Utah, former governor of Massachusetts, 2012 Republican nominee for president)

And for a fun blast from the past, can you name all 17 Republicans who were declared candidates in 2016? No? Here's that list:

Declared 2016 GOP Candidates, in order of their official announcement (in 2015):

1. Ted Cruz (March 23)
2. Rand Paul (April 7)
3. Marco Rubio (April 14)
4. Dr. Ben Carson (May 3)
5. Carly Fiorina (May 4)
6. Mike Huckabee (May 5)
7. Rick Santorum (May 27)
8. George Pataki (May 28)
9. Lindsey Graham (June 1)
10. Rick Perry (June 4)
11. Jeb Bush (June 15)
12. Donald Trump (June 16)
13. Bobby Jindal (June 24)
14. Chris Christie (June 30)
15. Scott Walker (July 13)
16. John Kasich (July 21)
17. Jim Gilmore (July 30)

Four of these distinguished statesmen are still in the Senate (Cruz, Paul, Rubio and Graham,) two are cabinet secretaries, current (Carson) and former (Perry,) and the rest are out of government. Except for Donald, of course, but hopefully his destiny changes in 108 days. Of the "also rans," my guess is that Cruz and Rubio are pondering another run.

Update: Maryland governor Larry Hogan is another name I'm seeing mentioned as a possible 2024 candidate. I've added him to the list above.

And one more thing. Two of the 2016 candidates, Carly Fiorina and John Kasich, have announced that they support and will vote for Joe Biden.

Days until the election (from Monday 7/20) 106

Immensely Powerful, Bizarrely Irrational, Increasingly Desperate

From Eugene Robinson, writing at the Washington Post:

This is the awful reality of our situation: For the next six months — at least — we are trapped on a badly leaking ship captained by an utter fool.

If he cared a whit about the well-being of the nation he is supposed to lead, President Trump would resign immediately. He would slink back to his gaudy apartment in Trump Tower, where he could look down at the new Black Lives Matter street painting on Fifth Avenue. Or he would flee to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, where his rounds of golf might be disturbed by the sirens of ambulances rushing covid-19 victims to overburdened emergency rooms.

But it is absurd to imagine that Trump cares about anyone or anything but himself. He will not go voluntarily. So on Election Day, he must be made to suffer a humiliating defeat, and on Inauguration Day, he must be firmly escorted — bodily, if necessary — out of the White House.

This election is not about politics, ideology or even red vs. blue tribal identity. At this point, it’s about our collective survival.

I believe that Joe Biden will be a good president if he is elected, and that circumstances will present him with the opportunity to be a truly great president, if he’s able. But any functioning adult would be an improvement over Trump, because he is not in fact a functioning adult. As his niece, Mary L. Trump, explains at length in her new book, he is more like a damaged child.

His callousness and refusal to admit error led us to where we are now with covid-19 — beset by worsening, out-of-control spread of the virus at a time when other industrialized countries are cautiously returning to normal. There is nothing we can do about his past mistakes. But look at what the president is doing now — pushing hard for a nationwide reopening of schools with in-person classroom instruction, just like before the pandemic. If viruses had imaginations, that would be covid-19’s fondest dream.

Trump’s hostility toward a national reckoning with structural racism is no surprise — not to those who recall his crusade for the death penalty ​after the arrests of the Central Park Five, who were ultimately exonerated; ​or his exploitation of the racist “birther” conspiracy theory about former president Barack Obama, which vaulted Trump to political prominence. But look at how he is heightening racial tensions, rather than soothing them, by going out of his way to champion Confederate memorials and the Confederate battle flag, and by turning “law and order” into code words for white nationalism. Even George Wallace, when he ran for president, was more circumspect.​

If Trump had done all of this out of calculation, reasoning that it gave him the best chance of winning reelection, he would immediately change course. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll of registered voters released Wednesday showed him trailing Biden by 11 points, with 50 percent of respondents saying that under no circumstances would they even consider voting for Trump. A Quinnipiac poll released the same day showed Trump down by a whopping 15 points.

Listening to the hour-long screed Trump delivered in the Rose Garden on Tuesday, I didn’t hear a canny politician trying to calibrate his positioning. I heard an angry, frustrated man who might actually believe the lies he tells to excuse his failures. Witness what he said about the fact that the United States is seeing tens of thousands of new cases of covid-19 every day, while European countries now see just hundreds or even dozens: 

"But if we did — think of this, if we didn’t do testing — instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing, we’d have half the cases. If we did another — you cut that in half, we’d have yet again half of that. . . . They talk about cases, and the cases are created because of the fact that we do tremendous testing.”

Can a grown man able to dress himself in the morning really not understand that all those covid-19 cases would still exist, and people would still be suffering and dying, if we were performing no tests at all? Does he sincerely believe a tree that falls in the forest makes no sound if a Fox News camera crew isn’t there to record it?

Trump is immensely powerful, bizarrely irrational and increasingly desperate. Perilous months lie ahead, and I fear that things are likely to get much worse before they get better.

The Weekly Trump Patriot 500%-Match - Updated

This is an example of fundraising by the Trump Campaign. In a not-unrelated development, Campaign Manager Brad Parscale has now been demoted, although he will still be in charge of digital outreach.






When David didn't respond, he received this:






And how about this:






I wonder how many voters are actually sending money in response to these solicitations.

Update. This one's from Don Jr.:



Clearly the Trumps don't hold their supporters in very high regard. Is there anyone stupid enough to not understand that they aren't the first person Don Jr. thought of? That this e-mail probably went out to about 5 million people? That if they don't donate tonight they will absolutely get another chance, as in every day until the election?

MeidasTouch calls this "Ponzi scheme meets stalker meets unloved child." Sounds about right.

Update #2:




The Trump Patriot 500% Club
The VIP Guest at the Convention Club
The Official Trump VIP Club
The Trump 100 Club

What's next? The Too Stupid To Know Better Club? Stay tuned.

Update #3. I'm just going to post these as I see them:




The Top 100 Supporters Club





Boat Parades!

Update #4 on Monday morning. This is what you get when you don't donate to the Trump 100 Club:






If I didn't know better, I'd swear this was parody.

Update #5 on Tuesday afternoon. This one's from Don Jr.: