In recent days, President Donald Trump has been (as he calls it) "cheerleading" the American economy, for three basic reasons. First, to Trump everything is a P.R. problem, at absolute worst. Second, it's all he really knows how to do when it comes to the economy (or anything else, for that matter). And third (and most important to Trump), he knows full well his re-election is going to hinge on whether the voters are going to be feeling any better about the future in November. In particular, Trump has essentially bet all his chips on the third quarter of 2020.

He has no other realistic choice in the matter, since the calendar is going to dictate things. To be sure, Trump is also actively talking up the periods beyond the third quarter of the year, by saying that the fourth quarter will be "tremendous" and that 2021 could be "the best economy ever" as all of that "pent-up demand" skyrockets the American economy back up again. But none of that is going to matter to his re-election effort, because the fourth quarter and all of 2021 are going to happen after people vote.

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[Program Note: What follows is only a partial Friday Talking Points column. Due to struggling with my domain name server and internet service provider throughout Friday while the site was down, I didn't have time to write a full column. But I did manage to get through an abbreviated introduction, so I thought I'd format and post this today (our very first "Saturday Talking Points" column ever, I think). Hopefully all the problems are now fixed and this sort of thing won't be happening again any time soon. Thanks to everyone for their patience, and my apologies once again for the interruption in service.]

Nothing shows that irony is dead in Trump's White House more than Donald Trump making a tour of an Arizona factory this week while refusing to wear a mask -- since the site he visited was actually a mask factory. They even presented him with his very own mask as a souvenir of the visit, which Trump (of course) failed to put on. He later tried to claim that he was indeed wearing a mask "backstage," but that nobody saw him do so. This wasn't even remotely believable, though.

It has also been reported that very few White House personnel wear masks at work. And now the virus is apparently inside the building, as Trump's personal valet just tested positive as well as an aide to Mike Pence. No word yet on whether a more-widespread outbreak within the White House has developed yet, but it certainly shouldn't surprise anyone if this turns out to be the case. All while Trump is telling everyone to get out of their house and restart normal life once again, because as far as he's concerned the pandemic is now nothing to worry about. In his mind, it has already magically disappeared, so let's go shopping, everyone!

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As you can see, ChrisWeigant.com is back up and running again. I have now been assured that the problems are permanently fixed and will not recur again. I will believe that when it happens, but that's what I'm being told at any rate.

Obviously, due to being down yesterday, there was no Friday column. But I did spend at least part of the day writing, so what I'm going to do is post what I've got after I have a chance to quickly edit and format it. It's basically just the introduction, with no awards or talking points (just to warn everyone -- it's not a full column). Sorry for the partial posting, but I figure something's better than nothing, right?

In any case, my apologies once again for the interruption in service and hopefully this won't be happening again. At least, that's what they tell me....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Donald Trump's re-election campaign has hit upon what they consider a winning attack line against Joe Biden: "China, China, China!" Truly, that's about as sophisticated as their effort has been, to date, and the new ad they just unveiled doesn't really move that needle much at all. Their political equation rests on the fact that many Americans don't have a favorable opinion of China in general, and in specific Team Trump is trying to explain away his own massive coronavirus response failings by saying everything was China's fault, for lying to the world in January. Which adds up to (according to the Trump campaign): Joe Biden has said some polite things about China, therefore he is obviously some sort of pinko agent of the Chinese Communist Party. As I said, not exactly sophisticated campaign rhetoric or anything. But the problem with trying to paint with such a large brush is that the paint can slop back all over you.

Donald Trump slamming Biden for saying nice things about China is absolutely ridiculous, of course. But that doesn't mean the Trump campaign can't use such an attack successfully. Remember the swiftboaters, if you will. The standard Republican playbook during elections has always been: "attack your opponent on the issue where your own candidate is the weakest." This is yet the most recent manifestation.

In order to get re-elected, Team Trump has the task of causing all Americans to totally and completely forget that February (and the first two weeks of March) ever even existed. This was the period when Trump was pooh-poohing the coronavirus, insisting that it would never hit America, and denigrating it as no worse than the seasonal flu. His dithering for almost two months is precisely why America leads the world in coronavirus cases and is still so frighteningly behind the curve that many other countries have already successfully flattened. South Korea had their first case the same day we did, and they've got the pandemic completely under control by now. Us, not so much (obviously).

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In the latest whiplash-inducing reversal of a monumentally stupid idea from the president, Donald Trump has now announced that he's changed his mind and the White House coronavirus task force will not actually be disbanded. One day earlier, he had floated the idea of just sending them all back to where they came from and instead convening a "let's get the country open no matter how many people it kills" task force in its place. But then Trump saw the public's reaction, and he hastily reversed course.

The Electoral College elected a reality-television president, and Donald Trump has not changed one iota during the current crisis. He actually admitted today that the reason he changed his mind was that he didn't realize "how popular" the task force is with the public. His decision-making hinged entirely on the equivalent of television ratings, in other words -- and not on things like whether the task force was effective, whether the task force still had a big job to do, or whether it was in any way medically necessary to continue it. "The public" really liked the task force, and apparently several close friends had called Trump up and let him know what a disastrous decision shutting it down now would be, so he changed his mind. That's how presidential decisions get made in the Trump White House.

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President Donald Trump would much prefer to live inside his own self-constructed bubble, where everything he does is the right thing to do and he gets nothing but praise for his stable genius and masterful leadership. But since it's an election year, he's not going to get that luxury. In particular, the reality of his ongoing incompetent and disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic is now beginning to invade his own personal safe space. Because more and more people are pointing out the vast difference between Trump's "reality" and the actual facts on the ground, with increasing bluntness. After all, people are dying out there -- a lot of them. Nothing could be more serious.

Astonishingly enough though, the two most effective blows to Trump's bubble this week did not come from his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, but rather from two other sources -- one very close to home, and one from afar. Two videos were released this week, one of which Trump just took notice of in a post-midnight tweetstorm (which undoubtedly boosted its viewership, much to the delight of its creators), and one of which has so far flown mostly under Trump's radar. The first came from a group of Trump's fellow Republicans which is led by George Conway, husband of Trump sycophant and apologist Kellyanne. The second came from China. Or, as we're now supposed to refer to them: "the Chinese communist government." More on that in a moment.

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Today is a notable day for a number of disjointed reasons. Fifty years ago today, Ohio National Guardsmen killed four Kent State students who were protesting the Vietnam War. For those more future-minded, it's Star Wars Day ("May the fourth be with you!"). However, I'd be willing to bet that one of today's usual yearly traditions has been especially hard-hit, because Corona beer sales are likely not spiking right now as they normally do (in preparation for Cinco de Mayo). It's a bad time for your brand to be "corona," in other words, in this time of the virus. But for most of us, it is a time of waiting. This waiting period will become notable eventually, because whatever happens next -- over the course of the next month, roughly -- may actually determine the outcome of the November election.

We're in the midst of a grand experiment -- one that Donald Trump has essentially bet his chances of being re-elected upon. When should restrictions on everyday life be lifted in an attempt to return to some semblance of normalcy? Should the medical data be the driving force behind such decisions, or should economics be the main focus instead? Lives hang in the balance to the answers of these two questions, and so does the public's view of Donald Trump.

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All week long, the pressure increased for Joe Biden to "Say it ain't so, Joe!" So this morning, he did. Biden appeared (remotely) on Morning Joe and flatly denied the accusation made against him that he had sexually assaulted Tara Reade in 1993 while he was a sitting senator and she was on his staff: "No. It is not true. I'm saying unequivocally it never, never happened and it didn't."

When asked about his previous position when Republicans had been accused of such behavior ("You've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real"), Biden tried to thread the needle:

Look, from the very beginning, I've said believing women means taking women's claims seriously when she steps forward and then vet it. Look into it. That's true in this case as well.... I'll always uphold that principle. But in the end, in every case, the truth is what matters. In this case, the truth is that the claims are false.

. . .

Look, women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt. If they come forward and say something that they said happened to them, they should start off with the presumption they're telling the truth. Then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts. And the facts in this case do not exist -- they never happened. And there are so many inconsistencies in what has been said in this case. So yes, look at the facts. And I can assure you it did not happen, period, period.

Biden did make one unforced error, which he'll hopefully reconsider soon. His senatorial papers were donated to the University of Delaware, but have not been made public yet (and won't until after he leaves "public life"). Biden asserts that even if Reade had made a personnel complaint at the time, it simply wouldn't be in his senatorial papers, therefore there's no reason to allow a search of them. Biden claimed this morning that any such complaint would reside within the National Archives, if it even existed. Reade has said she did file such a complaint with a congressional human resources office -- but not about the actual assault, rather just about other things Biden did that made her feel uncomfortable. She also said she didn't keep a copy of the complaint herself. Later today, however, the National Archives weighed in by passing the buck: "any records of Senate personnel complaints from 1993 would have remained under the control of the Senate. Accordingly, inquiries related to these records should be directed to the Senate."

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There will be no column today, sorry. I've been trying to get the website's problems (which resulted in the site going dark on Monday morning) fully fixed, which is more complicated than it originally seemed. Hopefully, this will all be resolved soon. So far, it hasn't meant any further interruption in service on the site itself (all the problems are deep behind the scenes), and I'm fairly positive that we'll get through this weekend without the site going dark again. But it has taken up all my usual writing time today, so I apologize for the lack of a column. If I get things squared away I'll try to answer some comments on previous articles later on, to somewhat make up for things. Until then, thanks for your patience with the site, and sorry once again for the lack of a new column today.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

No matter how you measure it, America has failed to meet the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic even half as well as other countries around the world. Consider the fact that we only have five percent -- one-twentieth -- of the world's population, but we now have a full third of all the coronavirus cases worldwide. That one fact alone shows how badly we've done when compared to just about everybody else on the planet.

We just topped one million cases, and we've now seen more coronavirus deaths in a matter of a few months than all Americans who died in the Vietnam War. We seem well on our way toward 100,000 deaths total, for just the first wave of the pandemic. A good way to see this is to think about all those bell curves in the "flattening the curve" charts. If we're approximately at the peak of the pandemic right now, then we're at the top of the bell curve. But being at the top of the curve means we're only halfway to the end, so doubling the number of deaths we have now is likely going to be close to the final total. The overall infection rate will decline (hopefully) and the number of deaths per day should also begin to decline, but we've still got a long way to go and the totals will reflect this fact.

Meanwhile, according to President Donald Trump and his team of sycophants, we're doing great! Fantastic! Tremendous! In fact, our coronavirus response is the envy of the world! Our testing is phenomenal, better than anyone else's! The whole thing is a great success story!

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