Daily Beast: “With coronavirus running through his body in competition with a heavy steroidal dose, President Trump is frustrated that a country where over 210,000 people have died from the virus seems disinterested in the ‘hoax’ of Russiagate. Trump spent part of his week demanding the latest version of his Russia counter-narrative—that the intelligence officials teamed up with Democrats to invent Russian collusion in 2016—be used to prosecute his political enemies. ‘I say, ‘Bill [Barr], we have plenty [of evidence], we don’t need any more,’ Trump told Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. On Friday, he fumed to Rush Limbaugh that Republicans are ‘afraid they’re going to influence the election… they don’t play the tough game.'”
“Providing that ‘evidence’ to Attorney General William Barr’s special prosecutor is loyalist Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Intelligence veterans are seething as Ratcliffe helps Trump concoct a narrative to aid him in an election. ‘Everyone knows the deal here,’ said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer. ‘They know Ratcliffe is irresponsible. It’s just everything goes.’ Yet Trump and his aides, in recent weeks, have recognized that the public isn’t captivated by the Breitbart-friendly accounts of uncovered notes from former CIA officials four years ago, according to two sources familiar with the private complaints.”