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**OCTOBER 5, 2020**

Kuttner on TAP

Thoughts and Prayers

****

I share Joe Biden's wish for Donald Trump's survival and recovery.
He is worth a lot more to this Republic alive than dead.

Trump is now the palpable evidence of his own recklessness. The
post-diagnosis polls suggest a Biden landslide to the point where trying
to steal the election will be futile.

Despite brave talk, Trump is likely to be sick for a while. COVID often
seems to recede only to worsen, especially with symptoms as serious as
Trump's. With four weeks to go until Election Day, we should wish him
a slow, gentle convalescence.

The alternatives are worse. Should Trump go on a ventilator, his Cabinet
would invoke the 25th Amendment, certify that the president is
incapacitated, and name Pence acting president-or even president.

We can be sure that Attorney General Bill Barr, the Iago of this drama,
has already been on the phone, trying out scenarios. His opportunism
knows no bounds.

Barr's loyalty is to the Trumpian project of destroying democracy, not
to Trump personally. He would jump to Pence in an oxygen-deprived
heartbeat.

Even so, if Trump should expire or be cynically displaced while in a
coma, Pence would be eminently beatable. Trump has a feral charisma.
Pence is an ordinary hack politician. He took the VP nomination only
because he was on the verge of being dumped as governor of
Indiana-quite a feat for a Republican.

Should we perhaps worry about the Ghost of Christmas Past scenario,
where Trump emerges from his near-death experience a changed man,
contrite and compassionate? Not bloody likely. Trump's narcissism is
deep in his reptilian brain. Next to Trump, Scrooge is Mother Teresa.

Meanwhile, back at Walter Reed, Sean Conley has served Trump mainly as a
spin doctor, not a medical one, even less a specialist in viral diseases
or pulmonology. He even spelled one of Trump's drugs wrong and
misstated its clinical category.

The doctors have thrown everything at his case, Clorox excepted, in a
manner that seems to defy best practice. This is known as the VIP
syndrome.

With COVID, the immune system sometimes goes into overdrive and attacks
the rest of the body. One drug Trump is getting, remdesivir, boosts

****the immune system. But he is also receiving a steroid to depress any
excess immune response.

The steroid Trump is taking, dexamethasone, sometimes causes psychotic
behavior (emulating and exaggerating Trump's normal condition).

This is a drug combination usually reserved for the most severe cases.
The sequencing has to be done with great care, requiring inpatient
monitoring throughout and beyond the course of treatment.

Trump will be out of action for weeks. Our thoughts and prayers should
also be with Trump's doctors.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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How Uber and Lyft Are Buying Labor Laws

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What Biden Means When He Says, 'I Am the Democratic Party'

There isn't anything we could call Bidenism, but over his long career
he moved as the party moved. BY PAUL WALDMAN

Florida's Voter Suppression Obsession

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Unsanitized: COVID Outbreak Tightens Republican Margin for Error on
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Plus, the Trump virus saga. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for
October 5, 2020. BY DAVID DAYEN

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