Tag: Trump putting his re-election over American lives

Governors warn COVID-19 relief is becoming a ‘political football’

The Hill logoThe bipartisan chairs of the National Governors Association on Wednesday urged Congress to pass more economic relief efforts to help assuage the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, warning against allowing debate over the vital aid to become yet another partisan flashpoint.

In a joint statement, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said states need at least $500 billion in aid to make up for revenues lost during the crisis.

“Each day that Congress fails to act, states are being forced to make cuts that will devastate the essential services the American people rely on and destroy the economic recovery before it even gets off the ground,” Hogan and Cuomo wrote. Continue reading.

Deaths Pass 80,000 As Trump Puffs: ‘We Have Prevailed’

Donald Trump on Monday declared that the United States had “prevailed” over the coronavirus. The very same day, the New York Times reported that at least 1,346,800 people nationwide had confirmed coronavirus cases.

At least 80,095 people have died from COVID-19 so far.

From a May 11 White House briefing:

DONALD TRUMP: Thanks to the courage of our citizens and our aggressive strategy, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved. And we have saved — and if you look at… on a per-100,000 basis, we’re at the best part of the pack. Right at the bottom — Germany and us are leading the world. Germany and the United States are leading the world. Lives saved per 100,000.
In every generation, through every challenge and hardship and danger, America has risen to the task.
We have met the moment, and we have prevailed.
Americans do whatever it takes to find solutions, pioneer breakthroughs, and harness the energies we need to achieve a total victory. Day after day, we are making tremendous strides with the dedication of our doctors and nurses. These are incredible people. These are brave people. These are warriors.

Continue reading.

Republicans worry Trump is ‘in denial’ about the economic carnage that’s happening on his watch

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump is trying to project confidence that the economy will quickly rebound in the second half of the year — but even many Republicans are worried that he’s setting himself up for yet another failure.

Politico reports that the Trump White House on Friday felt “relief” that the economy shed a record 20 million jobs in just one month, as they feared the number was going to be even worse.

However, the publication writes that “many Republicans close to the White House privately believe the markets will rebound long before the employment numbers do,” and one GOP source tells Politico that Trump is “in denial” about the true depth of the economic carnage that’s occurring under his watch. Continue reading.

As deaths mount, Trump tries to convince Americans it’s safe to inch back to normal

Washington Post logoIn a week when the novel coronavirus ravaged new communities across the country and the number of dead soared past 78,000, President Trump and his advisers shifted from hour-by-hour crisis management to what they characterize as a long-term strategy aimed at reviving the decimated economy and preparing for additional outbreaks this fall.

But in doing so, the administration is effectively bowing to — and asking Americans to accept — a devastating proposition: that a steady, daily accumulation of lonely deaths is the grim cost of reopening the nation.

Inside the West Wing, some officials talk about the federal government’s mitigation mission as largely accomplished because they believe the nation’s hospitals are now equipped to meet anticipated demand — even as health officials warn the number of coronavirus cases could increase considerably in May and June as more states and localities loosen restrictions, and some mitigation efforts are still recommended as states begin to reopen. Continue reading.

Senate GOP breaks with Trump’s message on Covid-19 testing: ‘We ought to step it up’

President Donald Trump likes to boast about how well testing for Covid-19 is going in the United States, saying just this week: “We have the greatest testing in the world.”

“We have so much testing,” Trump told reporters on the south lawn of the White House. “I don’t think you need that kind of testing or that much testing, but some people disagree with me and some people agree with me.”

On Capitol Hill, many Republicans don’t agree.

A wide range of GOP senators on Thursday had a far different message: Much more needs to be done to ramp up testing before the country can safely reopen. Continue reading.

Arizona halts partnership with experts predicting coronavirus cases would continue to mount

Washington Post logoHours after Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, accelerated plans to reopen businesses, saying the state was “headed in the right direction,” his administration halted the work of a team of experts projecting it was on a different — and much grimmer — course.

On Monday night, the eve of President Trump’s visit to the state, Ducey’s health department shut down the work of academic experts predicting the peak of the state’s coronavirus outbreak was still about two weeks away.

“We’ve been asked by Department leadership to ‘pause’ all current work on projections and modeling,” Steven Bailey, the bureau chief for public health statistics at the Arizona Department of Health Services, wrote to the modeling team, composed of professionals from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, according to email correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post. Continue reading.

The ‘wartime president’ has gone AWOL. More Americans will die.

Washington Post logoBack in mid-March, President Trump declared himself a “wartime president” who was rallying the country in a battle against the “invisible enemy” of the novel coronavirus. Invoking World War II, Trump issued a clarion call: “We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together.”

Now, amid plans to wind down his coronavirus task force and efforts to reopen the country quickly, Trump is again invoking martial imagery, describing the American people as “warriors.”

“They’re warriors — we can’t keep our country closed,” Trump said on Tuesday night. “Will some people be affected badly? Yes.” Continue reading.

This data shows Trump’s efforts to weaponize COVID-19 against governors is harming him more than the governors

AlterNet logoGiven his incessant insecurities, it perhaps comes as no surprise that Donald Trump cannot (and, as time has proven, will not) stop talking about his “ratings.”

But, clearly, the few fonts of wisdom that exist within the walls of the Trump White House have gotten to him over the past handful of weeks. Despite his commanding the airwaves for hours per day with his COVID-19 “briefings,” poll after poll showed that voters across the nation, be they in red states or blue states, were far more likely to approve of the governmental responses to COVID offered by their governors than the response offered by the Trump administration. So, notably, we’ve seen his self-congratulatory tweets largely go from poll numbers to TV ratings.

But we’ve seen another marked strategic shift. Over the past few weeks, Trump started very pointedly attacking governors who have been aggressive in utilizing measures such as “shelter-in-place” orders to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus. While it had occasionally popped up in his briefings, it reached its apex on April 17 with a series of utterly bizarre tweets that called for three Democratic-controlled states to be “liberated,” a move that one think tank specializing in domestic terrorism fears could act as a dog whistle for right-wing attacks. Continue reading.

Reopening economy emerges as new political battleground

The Hill logoAs Washington policymakers scramble to contain the fallout from the coronavirus crisis, the question of how quickly to reopen the economy has emerged as the latest political battleground dividing the two parties.

Behind President Trump, Republicans are increasingly eager to get businesses reopened and customers into their doors, warning that a prolonged economic shutdown — even in the name of protecting public health — will do more harm to the nation’s long-term viability than the coronavirus itself.

“It is time for Texans to go back to work,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told a local news station on Wednesday. “Because the consequences of this economic shutdown are serious and dire.” Continue reading.