Please remember that the New York Times reported *months ago* that the official COVID-19 death toll in the United States represents an undercount of somewhere between 40,000 and 80,000. So every time you see or hear the nation's COVID-19 death toll, the number is off. By a *lot*.
The way to think of it as we had toward election day is this: there's no question more than a quarter of a million Americans have died in just 7 months from contracting COVID-19—the only question we don't have an answer to is how *many* more than a quarter of a million have died.
Every time media refuses to acknowledge the very undercount that *it itself* reported, it benefits the Trump administration by severely understating the toll of its malfeasance and incompetence.

It also provides an opening for Trumpists to lie about the severity of the pandemic.
It also messes up modeling. When we're told that 400,000 Americans will be dead of COVID-19 by around the time a new president is inaugurated (or, God forbid, Trump begins his second term), that again excludes an undercount that by that time will almost certainly be over 100,000.

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More from @SethAbramson

12 Oct
I'm finding it hard to care about the Barrett hearings because (1) the only meaningful option Democrats had was to try to stop them from happening, and they let them happen, (2) Barrett can and will make her own recusal decisions, (3) credentials are immaterial in the Trump era.
The calculus was—and is—simple: it was—and is—an obscenity that the nomination is going forward at this historical moment and on this timeline, but the moment it did go forward, the hearings became mere theater. No one cares about her credentials. Either she has the votes or not.
Is it possible Democrats will suddenly unearth something big about about Barrett? Sure—but that could come out as easily in the news as via hearings, and if GOP senators wouldn't convict Trump on overwhelming evidence, why would they block Barrett due to some big new revelation?
Read 9 tweets
11 Oct
Here's how the GOP—the party that thinks we're all losers and suckers—operates: it drops our taxes by $50 while dropping taxes for the rich by trillions, and then, when Dems try to end this crazy GOP giveaway, shouts, "They're raising your taxes!" How stupid do they think we are?
The GOP platform on so many issues is a bait-and-switch con—making Trump the *perfect* party leader. On taxes, the GOP realized long ago that as long as a person's taxes will temporarily go up by $1 while a better tax cut is being passed, you can shout, "Your taxes are going up!"
And of course Democrats very much have it within their power—if they control Congress—to not repeal Trump's paltry middle-class tax cut until the moment they're replacing it with a better one, but the GOP—in its thetoric—always gets to indulge the idea that that plan won't work.
Read 5 tweets
10 Oct
BREAKING: After many smug, premature "reopening schools in September was fine" articles, here are new infections since last Saturday:

Oct. 4: 33,972
Oct. 5: 41,599 🔼
Oct. 6: 44,666 🔼
Oct. 7: 49,356 🔼
Oct. 8: 56,653 🔼
Oct. 9: 60,558 🔼

Oct. 9 was the most cases in 2 months.
(PS) Keep in mind that many schools opened in mid-September, and many colleges and universities that reopened in early September didn't begin reporting their clusters until mid-September. And remember the incubation period of the virus. And this is what October looks like so far.
(PS2) We can't clearly say what's caused the current spike—but it seems too early for a flu-season effect and the weather hasn't changed so significantly that folks are suddenly regularly staying indoors. The most dramatic change in the last four weeks has been schools reopening.
Read 9 tweets
10 Oct
ICYMI: Know who went to Moscow in 2013 to let the Russians and their allies in Ukraine know Trump would be running for POTUS? Phil Ruffin (not clear if his Ukrainian wife went).

Know who co-owns the Trump hotel that sent out $21 million in suspicious payments pre-election?

Yep
PS: Remember, when the Kremlin-agent Agalarovs came to Vegas to offer Trump ~$20 million in June 2013, they were coming to Ruffin's bailiwick. Isn't it interesting that a Ruffin-owned Vegas hotel suddenly had $21 million to give directly to Trump just weeks before the 2016 vote?
PS2: To be clear, I understand the NYT is saying the 2016 money may have come from an LA bank loan. But Ruffin guaranteed the $30 million loan with no real hope of Trump paying it back. What influx of cash to Ruffin suddenly allowed him to guarantee that loan? That's my question.
Read 4 tweets
9 Oct
(AUDIOBOOK THREAD) This thread contains the first four chapters of the PROOF OF CORRUPTION audiobook, as well as half of the epilogue. I hope you'll give these excerpts a listen and share them with anyone you think might be interested. Purchase link below: amazon.com/Proof-Corrupti…
(PROOF OF CORRUPTION: INTRODUCTION)
(PROOF OF CORRUPTION: CHAPTER 1)
Read 7 tweets
9 Oct
When Trump finally departs the political landscape, we'll experience a wave of shame over the fact that things got to this point in America. He incited a coup in Michigan, and now that the plot is revealed, is attacking the intended victim. We are witnessing historic obscenities.
All Americans alive today must in some way feel that we've disgraced the generations of brave Americans who came before us. America didn't beat back the British at the Old North Bridge in the town I was born in—Concord, MA—just to sink to this ignominious low under Donald Trump.
We're a *better nation* than this. A better people. We deserve more—and even more importantly, our predecessors marched and fought and died and made great art and built incredible innovations so that we could hold our heads higher than any of us can right now. We are in disgrace.
Read 8 tweets

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