The Banter Brief: "He’s Got His Hand On The Self Detonator Now.”

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Banter Brief! In our weekly round up, we aim to provide Banter readers with a useful summary of the week that was, and how to contextualize the ever changing political landscape. It’s 100% free, so if you’re not signed up to get it, please do so below:

1. Most Important Story Of The Week

Mary Trump’s Book “Too Much And Never Enough” Is Out.

And it isn’t a very flattering portrayal of Donald Trump or his family. Having sold over a million copies after being released on Tuesday, Trump’s niece is hitting the president at the exact moment he doesn’t need it — less than four months before the election.

“I feel, as I write in the book, that there are so many parallels between the circumstances in which my family operated — and in which this country is now operating,” Trump told George Stephanopoulos on ABC this week.

“He's [president Trump] utterly incapable of leading this country. And it's dangerous to allow him to do so … based on what I’ve seen my entire adult life.”

Mary Trump described the president as growing up with an absent mother, and a sociopathic father who was incapable of showing love or affection.

“For my grandfather in particular, there was no such thing as having enough money,” she told Stephanopoulos. “And so I was thinking about what that meant, and also thinking about the psychology behind him and his children, I was very curious about the foundational issues that Donald and his siblings lived through.”

“He had no empathy. He was incredibly driven in a way that turned other people, including his children, his wife, into pawns to be used to his own ends.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, Mary Trump said that growing up in her family she experienced “a knee-jerk anti-Semitism, a knee-jerk racism.”

“Growing up, it was sort of normal to hear them use the n-word or use anti-Semitic expressions.”

The revelations in the book are not particularly surprising — men like Donald Trump are not created in a vacuum, and one shudders to think what it must have been like growing up in such a horrific household. Mary Trump’s story is almost enough to make one feel sorry for the president. However, the damage Trump has inflicted on the nation and rest of the world is unforgivable, and as terrible as his childhood must have been, he must, as Mary Trump urges, still be held accountable.

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2. Poll Analysis

According to a report in the New York Times today, Biden is so far ahead of Trump in the polls that even if there were “another 2016 polling meltdown”, he would still win the presidency comfortably. Just take a look at this analysis done by FiveThirtyEight:

Can Trump still win? Yes, but his path to 270 Electoral College votes is narrowing by the day.

3. Quote Of The Week

“I always tell people 120 days is, like 500 years in Trump World but he’s on a trajectory of a downward slope and he’s doing something – because I know the son of a bitch well – he’s doing something that I find fascinating. He’s subconsciously self-detonating. He’s doing things every single day that is literally forcibly unravelling his political career and that is the hidden secret, the underbelly of a narcissist. They have a very full blown self-destructive streak in their personalities. He’s got his hand on the self detonator now.”

- Anthony Scaramucci speaking to the Guardian

4. What to Watch

What: “Wanted” - an Australian crime thriller starring Rebecca Gibney and Geraldine Hakewill.

Why: This is truly a hidden gem and one of the best crime dramas on television right now. “Wanted” is about two women who accidentally intervene in a fatal carjacking only to embroil themselves in a fraught chase from corrupt authorities across Australia. The series features two diametrically opposed female lead characters who have to figure out how to not only navigate the crisis they have fallen into, but each other’s rather extreme idiosyncrasies. It is fast pace, fraught stuff with stellar acting and a first rate script. A definite watch.

Where: Netflix

5. Good News

Truly exciting news on the race to get an effective Coronavirus vaccine

Results from phase one of Moderna’s experimental mRNA vaccine show that in the 45 adults between the ages of 18 and 55 tested, all displayed a significant immune response with no severe side effects. It’s still early days, but the data is promising. Vanderbilt University Medical Center staff scientist and protein chemistry expert Sanjay Mishra told Yahoo News:

The results are promising. At least they proved the concept. The results show that when you give this vaccine, the body makes antibodies. But we don’t know whether those antibodies will lead to immunity in the body because all of the results that we have are observed outside the body [in blood samples].

And so that proof will come from a larger data set in the next stage. Then we would know whether the people who have received these vaccines are at least 50% less likely to become infected [to meet FDA guidelines for vaccine efficacy]. So they are good results, they are promising results, but they are pretty early in the game, so to speak.

Some studies appear to show that immunity might only last a couple of months after infection, so this means an effective vaccine has to elicit a very strong immune response or have to be administered more regularly. We are not out of the woods yet, but there is hope.

Have a great weekend!

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