“I don’t kid.”

As a man who above all things lacks discipline, Trump always tells on himself. People are rightly focusing on his casual claim to have told “his people” to “slow the testing down” to keep the COVID numbers low. The assumption has been that he’s possibly doing this now. And perhaps he is – we can never underestimate Trump’s depravity. But the US has now actually done a pretty sizable amount of testing relative to other major countries, even on a per capita basis. And the number of tests completed each day continues to creep up. There’s not a lot of clear evidence this is happening now. But there is a lot of evidence and has been for months that this is precisely what happened during the critical early weeks of the pandemic, from late January through the first weeks of March. That was the critical window of time in which the fate of tens of thousands of Americans was sealed.

A TPM reader whose name I will withhold checks in with a reminder on the chaos COVID-19 has unleashed within the criminal justice system. Trump ousting Berman and appointing someone with no prosecutorial experience is bad. Doing it in the middle of the pandemic? Give this a read:

Out of sight, out of mind.

All political power is unitary. It is one of the great lessons for thinking about politics. You are always in the process of adding to it or diminishing it. Assert power and sustain it and you gain power. Fail to do so and a politician grows weaker. This is why the concept of expending ‘political capital’ is mostly nonsense.

We have seen this unfolding before us over the last month. President Trump now daily asserts power he cannot sustain. ‘Law and Order’ street fighting confrontations using the US military, Bolton’s book, bungled DOJ purges, a humiliating Tulsa venture. Each gambit newly exposes his deteriorating power and thus hastens the process, emboldening others to oppose or resist him.

Just a quick note on the statement the attorney general put out this afternoon announcing that President Trump has indeed now fired the U.S. attorney in Manhattan:

An anonymous DOJ vet shares some key details about Geoff Berman’s unique legal status as US Attorney in the Southern District of New York.

Many others weighing in about the SDNY fiasco, but I’m not seeing this point, which is worth considering.

Even if Trump can ultimately dislodge Berman (under 28 USC 541 he, though not Barr, can likely fire him), he can’t pick the temporary replacement. Until the Senate confirms someone, that choice plainly belongs exclusively to the SDNY judges under 18 USC 846. If Trump tries to ignore that and install his own pick anyway he faces two problems he can’t easily overcome. First, there would be a staff revolt. Second, every criminal defendant indicted under the bogus US Attorney would have standing to seek dismissal because the indictment was not authorized or signed by the lawful US Attorney — and those motions would be decided by the same SDNY judges whose authority Trump is trying to usurp.

It’s Juneteenth and President Trump is, predictably, handling the day that marks the liberation of slaves in the United States poorly.