Today’s big story is the growing threat of violence on the part of Trump loyalists in the administration, including the president himself.

Department of Health and Human Services have been altering the weekly scientific reports issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) following the course of the coronavirus pandemic. They believe the reports are undermining Trump’s cheery pronouncements about the disease, and claim there is a “deep state” at the CDC determined to hurt the president.

Today is the nineteenth anniversary of the terrorist attack that killed almost 3000 of us on this date in 2001. It feels wrong to write about daily news today and yet, as we approach 200,000 dead from a mismanaged pandemic and face unprecedented assaults on our national government, it also feels wrong not to.

Over the course of 18 interviews, Trump spoke for nine hours to journalist Bob Woodward. He had apparently been angry at his aides for shielding him from Woodward before the journalist published his book Fury in 2018, thinking he could charm Woodward into presenting him in a better light, as he had shaped coverage of himself in the tabloids in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s. Trump was wrong.

The fifth volume of the Senate Intelligence Report came out on August 18 and, in the storm of other news, has gotten less attention than it should have. According to Republicans—as well as the Democrats on the committee—in 2016, Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was actively working with a Russian intelligence officer.

Multiple sources are confirming a story about Trump’s contempt for the military, which said, among other things, that Trump called soldiers “suckers” and dead service members “losers.”

The Atlantic published a story detailing Trump’s contempt for military service and the self-sacrifice of those killed in the line of duty. Trump is reacting with panic.

Why is Trump so hell-bent on reelection? He has made it clear he doesn’t particularly like the job.