6 Things You Missed If You Spent the Past Week Under a Rock

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I spent very little time online last week because I was driving a U-Haul, loaded with all my possessions, the 1,800 miles from New York City to Denver. I didn’t think I would miss that much. Here’s what happened instead:

• The New York Times obtained years of President Trump’s tax returns and reported that he’d paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. He also wrote off $70,000 in haircuts and styling as business expenses.
• Trump squabbled with Joe Biden during what many people considered the worst debate in memory. I listened to about 45 minutes of it on NPR before turning the radio off in disgust.
• A former aide to the first lady leaked secretly recorded audio of Melania Trump complaining about the media’s focus on family separations at the border and its failure to appreciate the hard work she put in decorating the White House for Christmas. But that story didn’t get a lot of play because shortly thereafter…
• Trump got COVID. The eventuality we all considered but never really believed would happen actually happened. Surely, we thought, Trump exists within his own 6-foot personal bubble at all times. Surely, anyone who enters that bubble has tested negative. Not so.
• And Trump wasn’t the only one to get sick. So did Melania Trump. So did Kellyanne Conway. And Chris Christie. And Thom Tillis. And Kayleigh McEnany. And many more people who came in contact with our reckless, superspreader president.
• Instead of recuperating at the White House, or at the hospital, Trump showed just how much he cares about his Secret Service agents by getting in a car with them, risking their health so he could drive around and wave at his supporters.

Did I miss anything?

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