The Trump Administration adaptation of the fringe theory of “herd immunity” as its official–if unacknowledged–strategy to address the coronavirus pandemic is being derided by virologists and public health experts as a reckless surrender that will cost millions of American lives.

As the Washington Post reports, the White House is seeking people to reinforce its policy.  Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no public health experience who has become a chief advisor to President Trump on the coronavirus met with a number of fringe doctors advocating the strategy.

“We heard strong reinforcement of the Trump Administration’s strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace,” Azar tweeted after the meeting.

NEW: Twitter has locked the personal account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing a New York Post article.

— Henry Rodgers (@henryrodgersdc) October 14, 2020

University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban and athletic director Greg Byrne tested positive for coronavirus Wednesday, the University announced, reports ESPN.

“I found out earlier this afternoon that I had tested positive for COVID-19,” the 68-year-old Saban said in a statement. “I immediately left work and isolated at home. At this time, I do not have any symptoms relative to COVID, and I have taken another PCR test to confirm my diagnosis.”

While the coach tested positive, there are no plans to delay this weekend’s football game against the University of Georgia.

The university has tested players daily since September, but only did sporadic testing of the staff around the players.  All members of the team, coaches and surrounding staff will be tested Thursday.

A Oshkosh, Wisconsin bar owner who hosted an interview with Don “Lucky Sperm” Trump, Jr. back in March is now in an ICU thanks to the coronavirus, and now he wants to take it out on President Trump, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

The 64-year-old Mark Schultz, co-owner of Oblio’s, said he had three rules if you were going to drink at his bar:  Don’t talk about politics. Don’t talk about religion. And don’t talk about someone’s wife.

But when Axios co-founder and Oshkosh native Jim VandeHei asked him to use the bar for a taped interview with Donald Trump Jr., Schultz couldn’t refuse a friend.  “I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else,” he said of VandeHei. “I don’t like playing politics.”

The Independent: “Voters in Georgia have reported waiting in lines for more than 10 hours for the chance to vote in the 2020 US election. The longest reported lines were in Atlanta, but voters outside of the state’s largest city also reported long lines. Voters waited for six hours or more in Cobb County and reported extremely long lines in DeKalb County. Dekalb has historically been carried by Democrats, and Cobb County – though once reliably Republican – has in recent years backed Democrats. Though the majority of line issues occurred in Democratic counties, there was at least one Republican county – Floyd County – that reported long lines.”

Business Insider: “Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott is a frequent critic of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo because of how he handles state spending. But Scott and his wife are also helping the Empire State and New York City finance public debt by purchasing between $2.2 million and $4.5 million of revenue bonds during September, according to new US Senate investment transaction disclosures. This isn’t the first New York-focused investment for the Florida couple. Earlier this year they also disclosed between $1.1 million and $2.25 million worth of New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority bonds. ‘These investments are unrelated to the fact that liberal states like New York are woefully mismanaged, with bloated budgets, high taxes and unfunded pensions, leading businesses and taxpayers to flee to greener pastures like Florida,’ Scott’s communications director said in response to an Insider inquiry.”

Daily Beast: “On Wednesday afternoon, a group of reporters, among them a journalist for The Daily Beast, spoke with the owner of the shop, a man named John Paul Isaac who lives in Wilmington, Delaware. Isaac appeared nervous throughout. Several times, he said he was scared for his life and for the lives of those he loved. He appeared to not have a grasp on the timeline of the laptop arriving at his shop and its disappearance from it. He also said the impeachment of President Trump was a ‘sham.’ Social media postings indicate that Isaac is an avid Trump supporter and voted for him in the 2016 election.”

“Isaac refused to answer specific questions about whether he had been in contact with Rudy Giuliani before the [alleged Hunter Biden] laptop drop off or at any other time before the Post’s publication. Pressed on his relationship with Giuliani, he replied: ‘When you’re afraid and you don’t know anything about the depth of the waters that you’re in, you want to find a lifeguard.’ Seeming to realize he’d said too much, he added: ‘Ah shit.’ So, Rudy was your lifeguard, the reporters asked. ‘No comment,’ he replied.”

CNN: “For more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN. The investigation, which both predated and outlasted special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, examined whether there was an illegal foreign campaign contribution. It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the President’s foreign financial ties, and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel’s pursuits.”

“The investigation was kept so secret that at one point investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, so Mueller’s team could fight for the Egyptian bank’s records in closed-door court proceedings following a grand jury subpoena. The probe, which closed this summer with no charges filed, has never before been described publicly. Prosecutors suspected there could be a link between the Egyptian bank and Trump’s campaign contribution, according to several of the sources, but they could never prove a connection. It’s not clear that investigators ever had concrete evidence of a relevant bank transfer from the Egyptian bank. But multiple sources said there was sufficient information to justify the subpoena and keep the criminal campaign finance investigation open after the Mueller probe ended.”

Bloomberg correspondent Jennifer Jacobs reported it on Twitter Wednesday afternoon. Jacobs was the first to break the news that Hope Hicks had tested positive on Thursday, October 1st, so this is almost 100% certainly legitimate.

Keep your comments civil please. Barron Trump is just a kid. He didn’t ask for this shit. He is not fair game. By all means rip his parents for being irresponsible assholes.

Washington Monthly: “Under current Postal Service policy, mail dropped in a mailbox gets picked up by letter carriers and taken to the nearest post office. Then, that mail gets put in a truck that takes it to the nearest processing center—usually a huge facility the size of several football fields—where it goes through a machine that determines which post office next receives it. After that, a truck takes the mail from the processing center to the appropriate post office, where letter carriers will pick it up and deliver it. This process has slowed in recent years because many processing centers have been closed due to cost-cutting. Those delays have been exacerbated since DeJoy’s changes, including getting rid of the much-needed sorting machines. The result is that it takes anywhere from two to seven days between the time a ballot is dropped in a mailbox to when it gets delivered to an elections office.”

“Postal union leaders have proposed to ameliorate this problem by cutting out the middleman. Rather than take ballots to mammoth processing plants, letter carriers can pre-sort election mail at local post offices themselves and then deliver those ballots directly to local election boards. The reform would cut ballot delivery time to less than 24 hours instead of either days, a week, or even more. The unions argue that this method of sorting should be temporary, just for seven to 10 days before the election”

TWITTER HAS DISABLED THE LINK to the @nypost story. @jack what the hell??

I don’t know if the allegations are true—Qs that deserve to be answered.

It’s a serious news publication raising evidence of corruption at the highest levels.@twitter shouldn’t act as Biden’s PR team. https://t.co/1KiKCAJijD

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 14, 2020

On a softball question from a republican Senator, Amy Coney Barrett admits she doesn’t know.

Under questioning by Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), Amy Coney Barrett is unable to name the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. pic.twitter.com/U3KFm5FA97

— American Journal News (@AmerJournalNews) October 14, 2020

Newsmax: “President Donald Trump offerered a ‘no comment’ on whether he plans to keep Attorney General William Barr should he win a second term. In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV that airs Wednesday night on ‘Greg Kelly Reports,’ Trump said it’s ‘too early’ to determine whether he would ask Barr to come back or if he would tap someone else for the job. Earlier Wednesday, it was reported that an investigation into the Obama administration ‘unmasking’ the names of Trump campaign members caught up in surveillance as part of the Russia probe found no wrongdoing. ‘I have no comment. Can’t comment on that. It’s too early,’ Trump said.”

“‘I’m not happy with all of the evidence I have, I can tell you that. I’m not happy.’ The Washington Post reported that U.S. Attorney John Bash did not find evidence of wrongdoing with regard to the unmasking. Trump called that conclusion ‘a disgrace’. ‘Personally, I think it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. It’s a disgrace,’ Trump told Kelly. ‘I think it’s really a horrible thing that they’re allowed to get away — when they say no indictments, they actually said no indictments before the election.'”

Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two people during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, will not face weapons charges in his home state of Illinois, NBC News reports.

The Lake County (IL) State’s Attorney’s Office said in a statement on Tuesday that the weapon used in the shooting by the 17-year-old was purchased, carried and discharged out of state.  Rittenhouse reportedly obtained the gun in Wisconsin.

Rittenhouse faces two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and a count of attempted intentional homicide, as well as a misdemeanor charge of underage firearm possession for wielding a semi-automatic rifle.

Georgia: Biden 51 – Trump 44
Ohio: Biden 48 – Trump 47
Georgia Senate: Ossoff 51 – Perdue 45
Georgia Senate Special: Warnock 41, Collins 22, Loeffler 20
Read more here.

J. Christian Adams, a former lawyer for the Department of Justice Civil Rights division, stood in front of a Council for National Policy meeting and told them, “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth.”

In videos obtained by the Washington Post, conservative lackeys praised conspiracy theories, voter suppression tactics and encouraged actions conservatives claim to despise like vote harvesting.

The truly scary thing is that a CNP delegation meets every Wednesday morning with staff from the Trump White House. 

New York Times:”With a half-million votes already cast, President Trump and Senator Thom Tillis trail their Democratic challengers in North Carolina, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College, signaling potential trouble for Republicans in a state critical to both the presidential race and the battle for control of the Senate.”

“Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. leads Mr. Trump among likely voters, 46 percent to 42 percent, while Mr. Tillis is behind Cal Cunningham, his Democratic challenger who is embroiled in a scandal over salacious text messages, 41 percent to 37 percent. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, leads his Republican challenger, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, by a larger margin: 51 percent to 37 percent.”

“Joe Biden spokesman Andrew Bates hits back at the N.Y. Post story, via Natasha Bertrand and Kyle Cheney: ‘Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath. The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani – whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported – claimed to have such materials. Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place'” – Politico Playbook.

Gosh that’s exciting. Wonder what they could have found. Maybe they finally solved the mystery of the spooky pizza basement – or announce that they’re opening a new investigation into the pizza basement. Or maybe even that next year they’ll co-sponsor a bill creating a new federal pizza basement inspection agency!