After “showing himself” during the first presidential debate with Joe Biden on Tuesday, he tweets on Friday that he and FLOTUS have tested positive for coronavrus. I may be a slow learner, but I believe I have been taught that whatever the president says means just the opposite. Therefore, I am alert to the possibility that this development is not what it seems. Since Hope Hicks is also said to have the virus maybe it’s true. But wait! Time will tell? Or not.

This continuing diary is headed for a denouement upon the winning of the 2020 presidential election. Whether the mystery will have been one of adventure or tragedy lies ahead.

Recently: The NYT revealed Trump’s federal income taxes since 2000: He paid $750 in taxes for two years since 2000.

Although his trick of rude interference overiding Biden’s attempt to speak during the first presidential debate (the viewer couldn’t hear either party very well) worked as interference, it was possible to note that Trump would not criticize white supremacists, and his final words had to do with Proud Boys needing to stand down and stand back. Someone has criticized Biden for “telling the president to shut up,” but what he–understandably–said was “would someone tell the man to shut up?”

A flubbed presidential debate; maybe catching the virus; the reason he refused to release his tax returns surfacing thanks to the NYT ($750 in two of the last fifteen years, nothing in the others.; an attempt to sell our Post Office down the river in order to interfere with mail in ballots and a federal judge’s order to undo recent actions by the P.O. which would interfere with mail-in voting; recently emerging information that very early during the pandemic the post office was prepared to send face masks to everyone free of charge, but was stopped from doing so by the president and….more travesties will have surfaced as soon as this is published on my Mystery Diary/blog. Oh, and he threw a monkey wrench into everything by endorsing Amy Coney Barrett, a female anti-choice activist, for a rush job onto the Supreme Court, during an ongoing election, no less.

Barr’s misbehavior would add a listing of many increasing improprieties, but perhaps you can get the drift of how things are unfolding in the struggle to save democracy. And, the most recent cover on The Nation reads, “Is Trump Planning a Coup D’Etat? Many observers–including Republicans–worry that he is. They’re organizing now to stop him,” and the cover of the October 2nd issue of The Week is labeled “The Chaos to Come–by filling Supreme Court seat, will McConnell open a Pandora’s box?” against background art depicting horror and fear.

Perhaps a funny or two to allay catatonia: Kayleigh McEnany reported that Barrett was a Rhodes scholar. Actually, she attended Rhodes college. To be fair, Kayleigh said later, “My bad.” The second funny (to me, at least) was my believing all along that the group of partiers that set at least one California wildfire–-gender reveal parties—involved transgender individuals announcing their birth sex. “My bad.”

AT HOME: Self-quarantine continues as I water and pinch my petunias, at 85. I am also a recent survivor of pneumonia–upon discharge in early March the hospital wanted me to be discharged to a nursing home…Whew!