Tag: Trump COVID-19 lies

A former Fox exec blasted the network for peddling Trump’s election-fraud claims and airing anti-mask comments, saying he knows Rupert Murdoch doesn’t buy into its coverage

A former Fox executive has blasted Fox News, saying that not even the network’s longtime proprietor Rupert Murdoch believes its coverage.

In an op-ed published Sunday by The Daily Beast, Preston Padden, who served as president of network distribution at the Fox Broadcasting Company for seven years, wrote that Fox News is a TV channel “that no reasonable person would believe.”

Padden wrote that Fox News had perpetuated former President Donald Trump’s “wild and false claims” that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that Fox’s decision to question masks had contributed to “the unnecessary deaths of many Americans” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue reading.

CDC identifies public-health guidance from the Trump administration that downplayed pandemic severity

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The analysis was done to promote public trust and ensure that the agency’s coronavirus guidance ‘is evidence-based and free of politics,’ a memo says.

Federal health officials have identified several controversial pandemic recommendations released during the Donald Trump administration that they say were “not primarily authored” by staff and don’t reflect the best scientific evidence, based on a review ordered by its new director.

The review identified three documents that had already been removed from the agency’s website: One, released in July, delivered a strong argument for school reopenings and downplayed health risks. A second set of guidelines about the country’s reopening was released in April by the White House and was far less detailedthan what had been drafted by the CDC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A third guidance issued in August discouraged the testing of people without covid-19 symptoms even when they had contact with infected individuals. That was replaced in September after experts inside and outside the agency raised alarms.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky ordered the review as part of her pledge to restore public trust in the beleaguered agency, which had seen its recommendations watered down or ignored during the Trump administration to align with the former president’s efforts to downplay the severity of the pandemic. Continue reading.

Poor handling of virus cost Trump his reelection, campaign autopsy finds

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Former president Donald Trump lost the 2020 election largely because of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a post-election autopsy completed by Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio.

The 27-page document shows that voters in 10 key states rated the pandemic as their top voting issue, and President Biden won higher marks on the topic. The report also indicates that Trump lost ground among key demographic groups he needed.

The internal report cuts against Trump’s claims that the election was stolen from him and that Biden could not have fairly beaten him — and mirrors what many Trump campaign officials said privately for months. Continue reading.

Facebook and Twitter take action against misleading Trump post

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Facebook on Tuesday removed a post from President Trump in which he falsely claimed that COVID-19 is less deadly “in most populations” than the flu. Twitter labeled the tweet for violating its rules about “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information,” but left it up because it may be “in the public’s interest.”

Why it matters: Facebook has been criticized for not removing posts that violate community guidelines in a timely manner, yet the company sprung to action when Trump posted misinformation about the virus that “could contribute to imminent physical harm.” Twitter took action about 30 minutes later.

What they’re saying:

  • A Facebook spokesperson told Axios: “We remove incorrect information about the severity of COVID-19, and have now removed this post.”
  • A Twitter spokesperson told Axios: We placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our COVID-19 Misleading Information Policy by making misleading health claims about COVID-19. As is standard with this public interest notice, engagements with the Tweet will be significantly limited.” Continue reading.

Trump claims that he had no choice but to risk his own health. Americans disagree.

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Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani called his old friends at the New York Post to pass along a message from his most prominent legal client, President Trump.

“I am the president of the United States. I can’t lock myself in a room,” Trump told the world through his lawyer Saturday. “I had to confront [the virus] so the American people stopped being afraid of it so we could deal with it responsibly.”

In a video message published on his personal Twitter account a few hours later, Trump offered a similar sentiment. Continue reading.

Invincibility punctured by infection: How the coronavirus spread in Trump’s White House

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The ceremony in the White House Rose Garden last Saturday was a triumphal flashback to the Before Times — before public health guidelines restricted mass gatherings, before people were urged to wear masks and socially distance.

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcomed more than 150 guests as the president formally introduced Judge Amy Coney Barrett, his nominee for the Supreme Court. A handful of Republican senators were there, including Mike Lee of Utah, who hugged and mingled with guests. So was Kellyanne Conway, the recently departed senior counselor to the president, as well as the Rev. John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, who left his Indiana campus where a coronavirus outbreak had recently occurred to celebrate an alumna’s nomination.

Spirits were high. Finally, Trump was steering the national discussion away from the coronavirus pandemic — which had already killed more than 200,000 people in the United States and was still raging — to more favorable terrain, a possible conservative realignment of the Supreme Court. Continue reading.

Trump is the “single largest driver” of coronavirus misinformation in the world: study

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President Donald Trump is responsible for nearly 38% of coronavirus misinformation in traditional media around the world, according to a new study by researchers at Cornell University.

The study looked at what the World Health Organization has termed the “infodemic” of misinformation about the new coronavirus across 38 million traditional media articles published between Jan. 1 and May 26 in English-language media around the world.

“We found that media mentions of U.S. President Donald Trump within the context of COVID-19 misinformation made up by far the largest share of the infodemic,” the study said, noting that Trump mentions comprised 37.9% of the overall misinformation conversation. Continue reading.

Trump’s economic adviser says president ‘led wisely’ when he downplayed the deadly potential of COVID-19

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President Donald Trump has been widely criticized this week because of the bombshell revelations in veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” which shows that back in February, Trump was privately acknowledging that COVID-19 had “deadly” potential and could become the worst health crisis in over 100 years —even though publicly, Trump was claiming that it didn’t pose a major threat to the United States. Trump has defended his coronavirus lies by claiming that he didn’t want to create a “panic,” and his economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, is defending the president’s COVID-19 response.

Kudlow told CBS News, “I think we did the right thing, and I think we did it pretty well. We did the best we could, and I think it’s really quite effective. I think the president led wisely, I think the vice president led wisely.”

Trump’s critics have been stressing that tens of thousands of lives in the U.S. could have been saved if the president had publicly acknowledge the danger that COVID-19 posed earlier and had promoted social distancing measures back in January and February. But Kudlow is echoing Trump’s talking point that he didn’t want to cause a “panic.” Continue reading.

Trump folly steps on Senate GOP message again

Questions over Woodward revelations overshadow Republican effort to show unity on coronavirus relief

Senate Republicans spent a month developing a coronavirus relief bill that their conference could unify around and go on record as supporting to show voters they were trying to help families and businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But as the messaging vote arrived Thursday, Republicans couldn’t talk to reporters about Democrats blocking their bill — which fell short on a 52-47 procedural votewith only one GOP senator in opposition — without also having to dodge or defend President Donald Trump’s latest folly.

Washington’s press corps was still consumed with news that broke the day before about Trump admitting to journalist Bob Woodward back in February that COVID-19 “is deadly stuff” and then in March that he was intentionally understating the danger of the novel coronavirus in his public comments. Continue reading.

2 big problems with Kayleigh McEnany’s Bob Woodward response

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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany faced a characteristically unenviable job in defending President Trump on Wednesday — this time with regard to his newly published comments to legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about the coronavirus pandemic.

Woodward’s book reveals that Trump internalized the true nature of the threat early on, even as he continued to downplay it publicly. His comments to Woodward indicate he knew the virus was deadlier than the flu in early February, but he continued to compare it to the flu for weeks afterward. He even conceded in mid-March that he “always” sought to downplay the threat.

But two of McEnany’s arguments, in particular, strained credulity. Continue reading.