In other news, sources tell CNN that the Trump regime has been privately demanding that airlines give the federal government more detailed travel history and records on their passengers. Airlines say it's not that simple and Trump's staff have reportedly been raging and cursing at industry officials.
Meanwhile, a federal judge says Amazon is likely to win their challenge of the Pentagon's decision to award a $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft. Trump personally intervened to block Amazon from getting the contract just because he hates the Washington Post which is owned by Jeff Bezos.
Finally, Democratic presidential primary frontrunner Joe Biden has published an op-ed in Foreign Affairs detailing how he would turn things around after Trump. And I have to say, this answers basically all the problems we've seen and discussed here in the last four years.
By nearly every measure, the credibility and influence of the United States in the world have diminished since President Barack Obama and I left office on January 20, 2017. President Donald Trump has belittled, undermined, and in some cases abandoned U.S. allies and partners. He has turned on our own intelligence professionals, diplomats, and troops. He has emboldened our adversaries and squandered our leverage to contend with national security challenges from North Korea to Iran, from Syria to Afghanistan to Venezuela, with practically nothing to show for it. He has launched ill-advised trade wars, against the United States’ friends and foes alike, that are hurting the American middle class. He has abdicated American leadership in mobilizing collective action to meet new threats, especially those unique to this century. Most profoundly, he has turned away from the democratic values that give strength to our nation and unify us as a people.
Meanwhile, the global challenges facing the United States—from climate change and mass migration to technological disruption and infectious diseases—have grown more complex and more urgent, while the rapid advance of authoritarianism, nationalism, and illiberalism has undermined our ability to collectively meet them. Democracies—paralyzed by hyperpartisanship, hobbled by corruption, weighed down by extreme inequality—are having a harder time delivering for their people. Trust in democratic institutions is down. Fear of the Other is up. And the international system that the United States so carefully constructed is coming apart at the seams. Trump and demagogues around the world are leaning into these forces for their own personal and political gain.
The next U.S. president will have to address the world as it is in January 2021, and picking up the pieces will be an enormous task. He or she will have to salvage our reputation, rebuild confidence in our leadership, and mobilize our country and our allies to rapidly meet new challenges. There will be no time to lose.
Kamala Harris was my first choice in the 2020 Democratic primary, but she dropped out before Iowa. I will voting for Joe Biden in Ohio's democratic primary next week, but I was planning to do so even before Harris endorsed Biden.
I think strong personal character is what it will take to defeat Trump in November and all the revolutionary plans in the world, good or bad, don't matter if you can't win.
Trump can do a lot more damage to virtually everything in the next 10 months and average Americans will be clamoring for less chaos; more normalcy. They already are as reflected by Biden's resurgence and recent polling.