I watched the press conference today; NBC cut away from it when Barr started speaking after Trump. NBC is calling out Trump for implying that he’s going to end keeping people away from work. He’s repeating the line that “The cure shouldn't be worse than the disease.”

Trump droned through the ‘briefing’ like a zombie. He issued lie after lie, and stuff that was frightening. Here’s a sample.

Nobody could have predicted anything like this. (Wrong)

Plenty of supplies are on the way. (Nope)

Vaccines will be here Real Soon Now… (Sure they will)

He called this a medical problem, doesn’t want it to become an economic problem.

Promised the government will go after hoarding and price gouging.

He was talking as though he plans to lift the social distancing — shelter in place guidelines at the end of the 15 days.

He’s still pushing the drugs as ready to go right now.

There was so much disinformation and Trump phrasing (Incredible!) it was hard to watch.

(Is it a coincidence that the timing on this had the Network cutting away before anyone could start asking questions?)

It looked like Trump was accompanied by just these people: AG Barr, VP Pence, Birx, and possibly the Surgeon General (just off screen.)

Missing: Dr. Anthony Fauci — that alone should set off alarms

The lead story on the NBC nightly news immediately following was that the critical medical supplies are running out.

Unemployment surges was next.

The fight for a relief bill on Capitol Hill was next. They do mention the secret slush fund the GOP tried to slip in for Mnuchin. Also Rand Paul being an asshole…

First story after the break: The U.K. is on lock-down and things are bad in Spain and Italy… China is worried about recontagion from outside.

Oh, and Charlie Pierce picks up on the other reason it’s scary to see Barr standing there.

It was announced in the middle of Monday afternoon that Attorney General William Barr would be attending the Monday meeting of the Coronavirus SuperFriends. Undoubtedly, this was in response to a major scoop by Betsy Woodruff Swan over the weekend in Politico. Documents reviewed by POLITICO detail the department’s requests to lawmakers on a host of topics, including the statute of limitations, asylum and the way court hearings are conducted. POLITICO also reviewed and previously reported on documents seeking the authority to extend deadlines on merger reviews and prosecutions...In one of the documents, the department proposed that Congress grant the attorney general power to ask the chief judge of any district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.” The proposal would also grant those top judges broad authority to pause court proceedings during emergencies. It would apply to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil process and proceedings,” according to draft legislative language the department shared with Congress. In making the case for the change, the DOJ wrote that individual judges can currently pause proceedings during emergencies but that their proposal would make sure all judges in any particular district could handle emergencies “in a consistent manner.”

Essentially, habeas corpus is over for the duration of the emergency if this goes through. Someone can be arrested and held indefinitely without trial.

If we don’t get rid of these people ASAP, we’re screwed. They really need to stop covering these — they’re worse than useless.