Friday, July 31, 2020

Republican Campaign Ads: Enlarging A Jewish Man's Nose, Darkening A Black Man's Skin

Tuesday, July 28

Senator David Perdue's (R-Georgia) campaign removed a fundraising ad from Facebook which enlarged the nose of Perdue's rival, Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish. The ad also featured Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), also Jewish.

Three graphic design experts told the Forward that the Ossoff image, adapted from a 2017 Reuters photo, was changed by having his nose lengthened and widened. Other parts of his face kept the same size and proportions.

The Perdue campaign claimed it was "accidental". "Obviously". An "unintentional error" by "an outside vendor". Nothing to do with us! Not our fault!
In the graphic design process handled by an outside vendor, the photo was resized and a filter was applied, which appears to have caused an unintentional error that distorted the image. Obviously, this was accidental ...
Ossoff rejected Perdue's explanation, stating his opponent's campaign acted intentionally "to enlarge and extend my nose".
This is the oldest, most obvious, least original anti-Semitic trope in history. Senator, literally no one believes your excuses.
The Forward stated the ad had been running since July 22, adding:
Depictions of Jews with large noses have been staples of anti-Semitic propaganda since the mid-19th century. In the past two years, political ads attacking Jewish candidates in Connecticut and California have Photoshopped them to make them appear to be holding money, another antisemitic trope.
The Connecticut ad was from Republican Ed Charamut. In California, the State Building and Construction Trades Council (a trade union) attacked a Democrat candidate.

Wednesday, July 29

Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-South Carolina) campaign posted a Facebook ad featuring an image of his Democratic opponent Jaime Harrison with a digitally darkened skin tone. Harrison is Black.

Graham's ad also changed the photo's background from brightly-lit and professional to dark and ominous. Harrison condemned the ad.
Lindsey Graham is playing a part in a 400-year history of an Old South that had no room for people who looked like me. ... Lindsey Graham might have darkened my face — but it's Lindsey who the people of South Carolina can't recognize.
T.W. Arrighi, the Graham's communications director, told CNN:
The artistic effect used, the same one that was used on Senator Graham just two days before in a video, is a non-story.
It looks like Arrighi was lying. Salon reported the Graham campaign's only video featuring its candidate in the last week is a clip from a meeting with South Carolina healthcare administrators (with no "artistic effect used").

Guy King, Harrison's communications director called the move "the oldest trick in the book" and a "desperate measure" that shows "how scared he is from our grassroots movement".

July 30: Trump Suggests Delaying The Election (To Preserve Democracy)
July 31: Trump Condemns Hong Kong For Delaying Elections (It Undermines Democracy)


It's Coming In ... (Like Everything Trump Promises (And Never Delivers)) ... Two Weeks!


Assuming, for the sake of insanity, he's telling the truth.

The Russian Bounties became a huge story around the world on June 26, 2020.

That was exactly FIVE WEEKS AGO! What has he done since then? Crickets...........


Says The Guy Who Has Never Read A Book


One Day After Trump Suggested Delaying The US Election, His Administration
Condemns Hong Kong For Delaying Its Elections, Saying It Undermines Democracy


Drawing The Biggest Crowds


The New York Times Has Never Stopped Trying To Convince Its
Readers That Donald Trump Is A Rational Person & A Normal Politician


ABC News Does A Bit Of Both-Siderism, Too


Hiding The Crime In Plain Sight

"The President Says Things Will Get Better, And Then They Get Much Worse – Much, Much, Much Worse – Unimaginably Worse – And Then Somehow, On Top Of That, He Makes Them Worse Still"


Think of all the pregnant women in the world. If none of them took a pregnancy test, no babies would be born!

Trump Suggests Delaying Election To Avoid "A Great Embarrassment To The USA" (Claims Results Might Not Be Known Until "Years Later")


Here we go.

Donald Trump has brought up the possibility of postponing the November 3 election (something his own campaign laughed off as an incoherent conspiracy theory only two months ago).

Trump's (fake) reasons make no sense. He fears the results of an election with voting-by-mail will be delayed so he wants to delay the election until fewer people will vote by mail. In other words, he's suggesting doing the exact thing he doesn't want to happen. Obviously, his real reason is he is worried he will lose - and he wants to remain in power indefinitely.

Trump has tweeted numerous times about this issue. On July 30:
2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
Since dishonesty is Trump's default setting, in everything, that sound more like a promise than a warning.

Trump also claimed "votes from many weeks ago are missing" in New York State. "They have no idea what is going on. Rigged Election. I told you so."
"Mail-In Voting is already proving to be a catastrophic disaster. ... The Dems ... know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there's no accurate count!"

"Glad I was able to get the very dishonest LameStream Media to finally start talking about the RISKS to our Democracy from dangerous Universal Mail-In-Voting ..."

"Must know Election results on the night of the Election, not days, months, or even years later!"
Years later. What an dope.

Back in May, Jared Kushner, Trump's grifter son-in-law, told Time magazine that he wasn't certain whether the election would be held as scheduled in November. "I'm not sure I can commit one way or the other."

Trump said earlier this month that he believes expanded mail-in voting in many states "is going to rig the election" and he might not accept the results. Bill Barr, the US Attorney General, said he would leave office only if the election results were clear.

A senior administration official said Trump's comment about delaying the election was merely a suggestion, "simply raising a question".

Only Congress has the power to do anything about the election, but for some reason no reporter wants to remind Trump he has no power to alter the timetable of any election.
That's the 50th time Trump has mistakenly refers to the 1918 pandemic as happening in 1917.
Fun Fact: There were fewer than 130 million votes cast in 2016 (128,838,342).
10 Years Old is Being Kind
Update: 155,000 Dead

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Tyranny! Hypocrisy!

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

A Study In Self-Pity

Yuval Levin, National Review, July 20, 2020:
Chris Wallace's interview of President Trump, which aired on Sunday, is well worth watching if you've got a strong stomach.

The parts about the pandemic are as terrifying as you've heard—a veritable catalog of unfitness, incompetence, and willful ignorance that will leave you grateful for America's system of federalism.

But I actually thought the most interesting and telling bit of the interview was at the very end, and wasn't about the virus. Here's the final question and answer:
WALLACE: Whether it's in 2021 or 2025, how will you regard your years as President of the United States?

TRUMP: I think I was very unfairly treated. From before I even won I was under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.

WALLACE: But what about the good –

TRUMP: Russia, Russia, Russia.

WALLACE: But what about the good parts, sir?

TRUMP: No, no. I want to go this. I have done more than any president in history in the first three and a half years, and I've done it suffering through investigations where people have been – General Flynn, where people have been so unfairly treated. The Russia hoax, it was all a hoax. The Mueller scam, it was all scam. It was all false. I made a bad decision on – one bad decision. Jeff Sessions, and now I feel good because he lost overwhelmingly in the great state of Alabama. Here's the bottom line. I've been very unfairly treated, and I don't say that as paranoid. I've been very – everybody says it. It's going to be interesting to see what happens. But there was tremendous evidence right now as to how unfairly treated I was. President Obama and Biden spied on my campaign. It's never happened in history. If it were the other way around, the people would be in jail for 50 years right now. That would be Comey, that would be Brennan, that would be all of this – the two lovers, Strzok and Page, they would be in jail now for many, many years. They would be in jail, it would've started two years ago and they'd be there for 50 years. The fact is, they illegally spied on my campaign. Let's see what happens. Despite that, I did more than any president in history in the first three and a half years.

WALLACE: Mr. President, thank you, thanks for talking with us.

TRUMP: Thank you, thank you very much.
Asked to reflect on his term so far as he seeks re-election, the president's answer is that he was treated unfairly. Even when he is literally invited by his interviewer to say good things about himself, all he can reach for is resentment.

There is more to this than there might seem to be at first. The sense that he was being treated unfairly had a huge amount to do with why Donald Trump ran for president in the first place ... Channeling resentment is near the source of his political prowess. ...

[T]his sense of resentment is chiefly what drives him [and the fact] that he can't see past it or point beyond it, has been a crucial factor in many of his biggest failures as an executive.

He has treated the world's most powerful job as a stage from which to vent his frustrations with the world's mistreatment of him ... In reasonably good times, it meant that he turned our national politics into a reality-television performance—focused, as those often are, on the drama of bruised egos. But in a time of crisis, it has left him incapable of rising to the challenge of his job, and the consequences have been dire.

In other words, his answer seems right: Whether it's in 2021 or 2025, the blinding power of self-pity and resentment may well end up being what stands out most when we regard Donald Trump's years as President of the United States.
Heather Digby Parton, Hullabaloo, July 21, 2020:
I'm not sure if any of the right has fully grasped just how fundamental this spoiled, whining, self-pitying airing of grievances has been to the conservative movement. It is the air these people breathe. And yet they live in the richest country on earth and have opportunities people elsewhere can only dream of. Their resentment comes from the fact that they are having to share this country with people who don't look like them and who they believe are usurping their place at the top of the social and economic hierarchy. Donald Trump is the pure essence of the conservative movement.
"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

Trump Has Spoken To Putin Eight Times Since February; He Has Never Mentioned The Russian Bounties On US Soldiers

"I have never discussed it with him."
Donald Trump admitted that in the EIGHT phone calls he has had with Russian leader Vladimir Putin since February 2020, the subject of Putin paying the Taliban cash bonuses for murdering US soldiers has never come up. Not even once. In every single call, Trump and Putin spoken about "other things".

"I have never discussed it with him" will sit alongside "I don't take responsibility at all" as one of the defining quotes of Trump's four years in the White House.
***
Trump assures his white voters in the suburbs they will "no longer be bothered" by "low-income housing" (i.e., non-white neighbours). The Affirmative Furthering Fair Housing Rule has its roots in the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which was passed to prevent housing discrimination. In 1973, Trump was sued by the Department of Justice under Richard Nixon for racial discrimination in many of his New York housing developments. Nearly 50 years later, he is waging a war for segregation.

Also: "Generations of Texas oil workers before you gave every last bit of sweat and heart and grit that they had to build up this country – they loved our country, they loved our country so much they couldn't breathe." ... Trump said that. What the hell does that even mean? It's an interesting and bizarre choice of words considering the current state of the US, but it still makes no sense.
". . . seeking an even higher level of restrictions, mandating net zero carbon emissions, which, frankly, is impossible, for all new homes, offices, and buildings by 2:30not possible to do, and if you ever did it, it would cost so much that your home would be valueless"

Especially since it's already 3:41.
***
***

Trump Pours A Fine Whine: "Nobody Likes Me", Calls Criticism Of Him On Twitter "Illegal"

Hall of Fame Chyron (First Ballot):
On Monday night, Trump whined that Twitter's trending-topics section includes too much criticism of him, which is "very unfair", "really ridiculous", "so disgusting" and "illegal".


Trump eventually deleted that tweet and posted a new one. The company responded.



Stuart Stevens, Republican political consultant and author of It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump:
I am here to bear reluctant witness that Mr. Trump didn't hijack the Republican Party. He is the logical conclusion of what the party became over the past 50 or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race-baiting, self-deception and anger that now dominate it. Hold Donald Trump up to a mirror and that bulging, scowling orange face is today's Republican Party.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Trump Tells US To Trust Doctor Who Believes Medical Aliments Are The Result Of Demonic Sperm Injections During Dream-Sex; Also Wonders Why He's Not Trusted Re COVID-19


The president of the United States of America told the nation on Wednesday afternoon that they should listen to, and trust, a doctor who believes that reptiles control large portions of the US government, that scientists are working on a vaccine to prevent people from becoming religious, that witches are using Harry Potter books and children's toys in an effort to destroy the world, that numerous medical issues (cysts, miscarriages, infertility, impotence) are caused by demonic spirits who collect sperm (during dream-sex) from a man and deposit it (again, during dream-sex) in either a man or a woman, that other doctors are using DNA from aliens to treat patients, and who vows that if her banned videos (which Trump described as "must watch") are not restored to Facebook, then Jesus Christ will destroy the social media platform.

The president of the United States of America also wondered why he is not trusted as much as Dr. Anthony Fauci when it comes to COVID-19 information.

***

Before House Judiciary Committee, DOJ Head Bill Barr Denies Existence Of Racism In Police Depts., Refuses To Condemn Brutal Beating Of Navy Veteran, Believes Florida Is Doing Amazing With Virus, Says He & Trump Will Leave Office "If The Results Are Clear"

***

In Twitter Binge, Trump Shares Info from Crackpot Doctor Claiming To Have Covid Cure; Also: Many Health Problems Caused By Sperm From Demons, US Govt. Run By Reptilians, Scientists Inventing Vaccine To Prevent People From Becoming Religious, DNA From Aliens Currently Being Used In Medicine, Witches Are Using Children's Toys To Destroy The World, Vows Jesus Christ Will Destroy Facebook If Her Banned Videos Are Not Restored

It would appear that Donald Trump has abandoned whatever serious and mature "tone" the mainstream media naively claimed he had recently adopted.

Trump's New Favorite COVID Doctor Believes In Alien DNA, Demon Sperm, And Hydroxychloroquine
Will Sommer, The Daily Beast, July 28, 2020
A Houston doctor who praises hydroxychloroquine and says that face masks aren't necessary to stop transmission of the highly contagious coronavirus has become a star on the right-wing internet, garnering tens of millions of views on Facebook on Monday alone. Donald Trump Jr. declared the video of Stella Immanuel a "must watch," while Donald Trump himself retweeted the video. ...

Immanuel, a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and other issues. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches.

She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by "reptilians" and other aliens. ...

Immanuel alleges that she has successfully treated hundreds of patients with hydroxychloroquine ... Studies have failed to find proof that the drug has any benefit in treating COVID-19 ...

Immanuel said in her speech that the supposed potency of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment means that protective face masks aren't necessary ... Toward the end of Immanuel's speech, the event's organizer and other participants can be seen trying to get her away from the microphone. ...

[B]oth Facebook and Twitter eventually deleted videos of Immanuel's speech from their sites, citing rules against COVID-19 disinformation. The deletions set off yet another round of complaints by conservatives of bias at the social-media platforms.

Immanuel responded in her own way, declaring that Jesus Christ would destroy Facebook's servers if her videos weren't restored to the platform.

"Hello Facebook put back my profile page and videos up or your computers with start crashing till you do," she tweeted. "You are not bigger that God. I promise you. If my page is not back up face book will be down in Jesus name." ...

In sermons posted on YouTube and articles on her website, Immanuel claims that medical issues like endometriosis, cysts, infertility, and impotence are caused by sex with "spirit husbands" and "spirit wives"—a phenomenon Immanuel describes essentially as witches and demons having sex with people in a dreamworld.

"They are responsible for serious gynecological problems," Immanuel said. "We call them all kinds of names—endometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts, but most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband," Immanuel said of the medical issues in a 2013 sermon. "They are responsible for miscarriages, impotence—men that can't get it up."

In her sermon, Immanuel offers a sort of demonology of "nephilim," the biblical characters she claims exist as demonic spirits and lust after dream sex with humans, causing all matter of real health problems and financial ruin. Immanuel claims real-life ailments such as fibroid tumors and cysts stem from the demonic sperm after demon dream sex, an activity she claims affects "many women."

"They turn into a woman and then they sleep with the man and collect his sperm," Immanuel said in her sermon. "Then they turn into the man and they sleep with a man and deposit the sperm and reproduce more of themselves."

According to Immanuel, people can tell if they have taken a demonic spirit husband or spirit wife if they have a sex dream about someone they know or a celebrity, wake up aroused, stop getting along with their real-world spouse, lose money, or generally experience any hardship. ...

In a 2015 sermon that laid out a supposed Illuminati plan hatched by "a witch" to destroy the world using abortion, gay marriage, and children's toys, among other things, Immanuel claimed that DNA from space aliens is currently being used in medicine. ...

Immanuel claimed in another 2015 sermon posted that scientists had plans to install microchips in people, and develop a "vaccine" to make it impossible to become religious. ...

Immanuel has also used her pulpit to preach hatred of LGBT people. Shortly before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, Immanuel warned her flock that gay marriage meant that "very soon people are going to be seeking to marry children" and accused gay Americans of practicing "homosexual terrorism." In the same sermon, she praised a father's decision to not love his transgender son after a gender transition.

"You know the crazy part?" Immanuel said. ...
Yeah, Doc, I think I do.

Trump Goes On Hydroxychloroquine Twitter Binge, Retweets Anti-Mask Conspiracies And False Claims That Drug Is 'Cure' For Covid-19
President Donald Trump went on a late night Twitter binge on Monday with more than a dozen posts pushing dubious claims about the drug hydroxychloroquine, including twice retweeting a video from a woman falsely claiming that the drug was a "cure" for Covid-19 and that "you don't need a mask." ...

[T]he FDA has stopped recommending emergency use of the drug out of safety concerns about harmful side effects. In May, the WHO stopped its hydroxychloroquine trial and, similarly, the NIH halted its clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine in June because it provided "no benefit" in the patients studied. ...

Two of Trump's Monday night tweets focused on Stella Immanuel, who had appeared outside Capitol Hill on Friday with a several other doctors to make a series of outlandish claims while dismissing other "fake doctors" who doubt the efficacy of the drug as well as the idea of double blind clinical studies to scientifically test medical treatments. ...

[B]oth Facebook and YouTube [have removed] video of Immanuel's claims, citing it for spreading misinformation about the pandemic. ...

The reckless and irresponsible posts by Trump come exactly one week after the president tweeted a photo of himself wearing a mask and the press hailed him as having adopted a new, more serious tone about handling the outbreak that has claimed nearly 150,000 American lives since February.
Trump Promotes Video Undermining Fauci Which Facebook, YouTube And Twitter Remove For 'False Information'
President Donald Trump appears to have complicated feelings for Dr. Anthony Fauci. While the commander in chief has publicly said that he has a good relationship with the nation's top immunologist, his Twitter feed tells a different story.

In a flurry of curious Tweets and retweets late Monday night, Trump retweeted a podcast promotion that featured Fauci-critic Dr. Lee Vliet which is sure to cause drama at the next White House Coronavirus Task Force meeting (at least one that both Trump and Fauci will attend.)

The tweet originated from a Twitter account called WarRoomPandemic, and claimed: "Dr. Fauci has misled the American people on many issues, but particular, on dismissing #hydroxychloroquine and calling Remdesivir the new gold standard." ...

The video was also shared by Donald Trump Jr., was eventually removed by Facebook for pushing "false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19." YouTube and Twitter also pulled the video. [Junior's Twitter account was also given a 12-hour ban] ...

Fauci's approval rating for his role in fighting the coronavirus has been significantly higher than that of Trump's. ... This has led to multiple reports of the president feeling some animus towards Dr. Fauci, which may be the reason for Monday night's undermining tweet.
Dr. Fauci, on Trump's tweets:
I don't even read them.

Monday, July 27, 2020

The Short, Sad Life Of "Transition To Greatness!"

Trump's catch phrase ("you can't get a better one") of May 2020 was an admission of failure. It took Trump more than one month to realize that.

Mark McKinnon, Vanity Fair, May 25, 2020:
Earlier this month, Trump declared that "Transition to Greatness" is a phrase we're going to hear a lot about because he's decided it's the perfect reelection slogan. ...

As the former chief media adviser to three presidential campaigns (two for George W. Bush, one for John McCain), I pay attention to these things. ... As a campaign theme ["Make America Great Again"] was ideal for Trump in 2016. Simple but clear. Loaded with meaning. Fundamentally, his message to voters was: Due to reasons mostly beyond your control (immigration, technology, globalization), America has left you behind. I'll take you back to a country you recognize, a country in which you'll prosper. ...

It was no surprise, then, when Trump announced that his reelection-campaign theme would be "Keep America Great." On brand. Direct but sort of meta. He was saying that he'd made America great. And he'd keep it that way. ...

So, count me among the perplexed that Trump, who clearly considers himself a marketing genius, suddenly announced on May 8 that he was changing his theme to "Transition to Greatness." He described his decision this way: "It's a great term. Just came out at this meeting. That's right. It came out by accident. It was a statement and it came out and you can't get a better one. We can go to Madison Avenue and get the best, the greatest geniuses in the world to come up with a slogan but that's the slogan we're going to use. Transition to Greatness."

I believe that any bipartisan parsing of the statement would conclude that its basic meaning is: We are not currently great. But we are going to get there at some point. We are on a general trajectory toward greatness. The implication is that we are not currently great, even though Trump promised us we would be. Moreover, even though Trump had promised to keep America great, he was now saying we're not even going to do that because we aren't, in fact, great yet. Instead, he is saying: We're going to transition to all the greatness he'd been promising during the last election. We just have to wait for it. It's a bit like Trump's coronavirus policy: We're fine…Let me be clear: We're not fine, but we're going be fine very soon…Oops, hang with me on this, it's gonna be quite a while till we're fine.
David A. Graham, The Atlantic, May 26, 2020:
"Transition to Greatness" is a confession of failure, a corporate-style euphemism that tries to spin a collapse as a success ...

[T]he phrase is a flop, both as coinage and as messaging. Start with the language: Is there anything less exciting than a transition? There's a reason Barack Obama didn't offer "transition" you could believe in, because nothing inspires less enthusiasm. It's flat, dull, and corporate—the sort of language that executives use when they're trying to spin a setback as a minor blip on the way to success, which is of course exactly what Trump is doing here. It's not hat material.

"Transition to Greatness" is bad political rhetoric too. Trump said he'd make America great. Now he's acknowledging that since America isn't great, he either couldn't make it great, or he failed to keep it great—betraying the two simple guarantees of the past two slogans.
***

May 7, 2020
I'm viewing the third quarter as being a very important quarter because that's—as I said, that'll be a transition. I think you could almost say a "transition into greatness," because I think next year we're going to have a phenomenal year—a phenomenal year, economically.
May 8, 2020
So what we've done has been incredible. We're going to continue to do it. We're going into transition. And I call it "transition to greatness." It's going to be transition to greatness because we're going to do something very fast, and we're going to have a phenomenal year next year. Third quarter, transition. Fourth quarter is going to be good. There's tremendous pent-up demand, and next year we're going to have a phenomenal year. ...
So we're looking at the transition to greatness. And I think it's starting right now. It's really what it is. It's a — it's a great term. It just came out at this meeting. That's right. It came out by accident. It was a statement and it came out and you can't get a better one. We can go to Madison Avenue and get the best — the greatest geniuses in the world to come up with a slogan, but that's the slogan we're going to use: "Transition to Greatness." And it's starting right now. ... But, so, it's the transition to greatness. That's where we are. That's where it's starting right now. [Q: So if unemployment is at 14 percent now, perhaps going as high as 20 percent, where do you think that will be in the fourth quarter?] I think the number is going to be a great number. I can't — I'm not going to say exactly what. I can say, over a period of time, it's going to be where it was. Maybe better. You can't get much better ... But it will be, I think — I expect it to be where it was. The demand is going to be tremendous. And next year is going to be a tremendous year. The fourth quarter is going to be very good, maybe better than that. The transition is going to be very interesting, but you're going to see some very good numbers coming out of the third quarter. It's a transition. I call it the transition to greatness. We're going to have a great year next year. You'll see.
Two other people, Rep. Warren Davidson from Ohio and Rep. Scott Perry from Pennsylvania also used the phrase on May 8:
Davidson: "Definitely an honor to be included on this task force and be here really to work with you to help this transition to greatness. You've had great messages."

Perry: "Mr. President, thank you so much for your — your bold, visionary, decisive leadership. It has made a huge difference ... It has been a lifeline ... I will tell you, in the transition to greatness, what I don't think we did envision is the same bold vision and leadership that you've had in our — some of our state governors. ... So — so to transition to greatness ... you tried to do the right thing. ... And finally, in this transition to greatness, Mr. President, China — once we get through this, there must be an accountability. There must be an accountability."
May 11, 2020
I want to see a payroll tax cut. I want to see various things that we want. ... We'll see what happens. But as I said, it's a transition, and it's a — this is really going to be, in my opinion — we'll see, but I think it's going to be something that's going to be very special. It's a transition to greatness, and greatness is next year, right from the beginning. I think we're going to do fantastically well. I view the third quarter, as I said, as a transition quarter. It could be pretty good, but a transition quarter. Toward the end of the fourth quarter, you're going to see some numbers that are going to be tremendous, I think. And next year you're going to have potentially the kind of numbers that you saw before, and maybe even better, because there is that pent-up demand that is — you know, a lot of people wanted to do things. They were ready to do things, and they've had to hold back because of the virus. So I think you're going to have, with that pent-up demand, a phenomenal year next year, unless somebody messes it up by coming along and raising taxes — doubling, tripling, quadrupling your taxes. Like a certain party, namely the Democrats want to do. You'll mess it all up. You know, we had the greatest in the world. I presided – this administration presided over it. It got great for a reason. And we'll do it again, and we'll do it very quickly and very easily. I see that happening.
["pent-up demand" has also been a recurring (and annoying) phrase]
May 14, 2020
Joining us today are a few of the workers who have kept our hospitals supplied through this crisis and take part in a great, great rebuilding that's going forward. I say it's the "transition to greatness." The transition is the third quarter. The fourth quarter is going to do very well. And next year is going to be through the roof. We have to get your governor of Pennsylvania to start opening up a little bit. You have areas of Pennsylvania that are barely affected, and they have — they want to keep them closed. Can't do that.
May 18, 2020
Because, again, it was artificially turned on and off. But now it's off, and we're going to turn it back on. It's been turned on as of — I don't know, it almost feels like today is the first day. I think, last week, it didn't feel the same. Now it feels good. People are starting to go out. They're opening. They get it. We understand the disease much better than we did when it first came in. Nobody understood it. Nobody has ever seen it before. And it feels much different. I mean, today is almost like the first day. But the expression that we like to use — right? — "transition to greatness."
Also: Brooke Rollins, acting director of the United States Domestic Policy Council:
I am struck by the stories of true American Dreams. ... I'm also struck by this President and Vice President's commitment to our most vulnerable populations and their American Dream … This President is the jobs President. I think that none of us, other than maybe my boss, realized the economy that we would achieve in just three short years, where there were more people — more jobs available than people to fill them. And what I am so encouraged by is the resoluteness and the conviction of this President ... and working alongside all of you, as we bring this country back to even greater heights than we ever knew possible — the transition to greatness — is really what America and the American Dream is all about.
May 20, 2020
And we're going to open up very big. We're going to open up. I call it "transition to greatness." That's what it is. It's a transition to greatness. And when Larry Kudlow tells you the numbers, those are really surprisingly good numbers this early in. I mean, we're doing very well. I think it's going to be something special. ... I mean, it's been terrific.
May 26, 2020
We're making very good progress on the economy. The numbers are better than anybody would have anticipated. And certainly I think that's been reflected in the stock market, which had a very big day. And it's over 25,000. And when you think 25,000 is a very high number, when you think that it was at 29,000 and now it's at 25, that's a very big day. It's up very substantially over the last six months. So we had a very big day. But people are seeing what's happening. And they're seeing there is a pent-up demand as I was predicting and you're going to see it more and more. We call it the transition to greatness and it really is. We're going to have a third quarter that's going to be good. We're going to have a fourth quarter that has the potential to be really good. And we're going to have one of the best years we've ever had next year. That's what we see.
June 5, 2020
Earlier today, it was announced that the U.S. economy added 2.5 million jobs in May. It was supposed to lose 9 million, you know, during this period — transition period. I call it "transition to greatness" ... And our stock market is booming, and our jobs are booming. ... It's amazing. It's amazing. ... So we absolutely shattered expectations. And this is the largest monthly jobs increase in American history. American — think of that: That's a long time, right?
Trump has not mentioned those three magic words since June 9.

The amazing slogan that was such genius "you couldn't get a better one" was abandoned after only 34 days. Trump used the phrase on a grand total of 13 days.

It did pop up in two later press conferences, though.

Two days after Trump's final "transition" tweet (June 11, 2020), Police Chief Vernell Dooley, of Glenn Heights, Texas, said: "We are a country of very good departments, but we need to be a country of great departments. And this message today is about the transition to greatness. We have an opportunity in this country to transform the future of law enforcement."

More than two weeks later (June 26, 2020), after the phrase had clearly been consigned to mothballs, Ivanka Trump blurted it out: "I'm really excited about ... reform[ing] our federal hiring practices as we think about building that inclusive American economy as we transition to greatness."