This week Erin and Radha regroup while Loren takes a much-deserved vacation. They do a quick review on COVID-19 with the good (100 days no new cases in New Zealand), the bad (cases in Brazil, India, and the United States continue to grow), and the ugly (long-term economic consequences in the United States, India, and Brazil). They also dig into the recent explosion and protests in Lebanon and then go deep on the recent executive order impacting TikTok and WeChat. After reminding us that Afghanistan is still a thing, they talk about the lack of accurate and comprehensive briefings for POTUS and the mayhem that ensues, including quotes (and misquotes) by Robert O'brien (yes, he's the national security advisor!). To calm us all down, they then talk about pop culture from baseball movies (The Rookie, Bull Durham) to Arthurian legend-ish TV shows (Cursed).

Links

• Abbie Cheeseman, “Protesters in Beirut, Still Reeling from Massive Explosion, Cash with Police,” NBC News, August 09, 2020
• Elian Peltier, “How to Help Lebanon After Beirut Explosion,” New York Times, August 05, 2020
• Dennis Wagner and George Petras, “Massive Explosion Rocks Beirut: Before and After Images Show Extensive Damage,” USA Today, August 06, 2020
• Nick Perry, “New Zealand Marks 100th Day with No New Reported Cases of Coronavirus,” ABC7NY, August 09, 2020
• Derek Hawkins, Marisa Iati, and Jacqueline Dupree, “US Coronavirus Infections Surpass 5 Million,” Washington Post, August 09, 2020
• “Coronavirus: Brazil Passes 100,000 Deaths as Outbreak Shows No Sign of Easing,” BBC, August 09, 2020
• “Record 64,399 New Covid-19 Cases; 861 Deaths in India,” Times of India, August 09, 2020
• Elaine Chen, “Drugmakers Race to Build Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Chains,” Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2020
• Michael Crescione, “Europe Sees Rise in Covid-19 After Reopening,” Healthline, August 06, 2020
• Swati Bhat, “India to Halt 101 Military Imports in Push for Defense Self-Reliance: Minister,” Reuters, August 09, 2020
• Ryan Browne and Jamie Crawford, “Esper Says US Troop Levels in Afghanistan to Go Below 5,000 by End of November,” CNN, August 09, 2020
• Brad Heath, “Esper: US Will Cut Troop Levels in Afghanistan to Less Than 5,000,” Reuters, August 08, 2020
• Jim Sciutto, “Trump Advisers Hesitated to Give Military Options and Warned Adversaries Over Fears He Might Start a War,” CNN, August 06, 2020
• Justine Coleman, “Trump Advisers Were Wary of Talking Military Options Over Fears He’d Accidentally Start War,” The Hill, August 06, 2020
• Philip Bump, “Trump Actually Doesn’t Appear to Understand How Bad the Pandemic Is,” Washington Post, August 04, 2020
• Geoffrey Gertz, “Why is the Trump Administration Banning TikTok and WeChat?” Brookings, August 07, 2020
• Robert Chesney, “Banning TikTok and WeChat: Another Primer,” Lawfare, August 07, 2020
• Chaim Gartenberg, “Apple’s Chinese Business Could be Devastated by Trump’s WeChat Ban,” The Verge, August 08, 2020
• “Trump Targets WeChat and TikTok, in Sharp Escalation with China,” New York Times, August 06, 2020