Tag: Trump putting re-election above American lives

New Numbers Showing Coronavirus Spread Intrude on a White House in Denial

New York Times logoBoth President Trump and Vice President Pence seem oblivious to the new chapter in the pandemic.

WASHINGTON — In the past week, President Trump hosted an indoor campaign rally for thousands of cheering, unmasked supporters even as a deadly virus spread throughout the country. He began easing up on restrictions that had been in place at the White House since Washington instituted a stay-at-home order in response to the coronavirus in March, and he invited the president of Poland to a day of meetings. Then, on Thursday, he flew to Wisconsin to brag about an economic recovery that he said was just around the corner.

But by Friday, it was impossible to fully ignore the fact that the pandemic the White House has for weeks insisted was winding down has done just the opposite.

The rising numbers in Texas, Florida and Arizona made that clear, as well as the reality that those are all states where the president and his Republican allies had urged people to return to normal. Continue reading.

Trump rejects Fauci’s warning about football’s return

The president’s rebuke came after Fauci threw cold water on football’s plans to spring back to action.

President Donald Trump on Friday rebuked his administration’s top infectious disease expert, rejecting Dr. Anthony Fauci’s warning that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic could keep football from returning this fall.

“Tony Fauci has nothing to do with NFL Football,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “They are planning a very safe and controlled opening.”

The president’s social media post put him at odds with the man who spent weeks as perhaps the most prominent face of the White House’s coronavirus response team. But Fauci’s role appears to have diminished in recent weeks as the Trump administration has shifted toward efforts aimed at reopening the country. Continue reading.

Top Trump Adviser’s Model Predicts Deaths At Zero By May 15

A Trump administration economic adviser with no experience in epidemiology created a coronavirus model that predicted deaths from the virus dropping to near zero by May 15, the Washington Post reported. The model offers an extremely optimistic prediction that no others have shown.

The adviser who created the model, Kevin Hassett, has denied it plays a role in decisions related to the virus. “I have never, ever said that that’s my projection of what the death count was going to be, and no administration policy has been influenced by my projections,” he told the Post.

However, according to a Post report, Trump and his aides used that model to justify plans to start reopening the economy. White House officials, like Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, were reported to have relied on it because it “affirmed their own skepticism about the severity of the virus and bolstered their case to shift the focus to the economy, which they firmly believed would determine whether Trump wins a second term,” the Post reported. Continue reading.

Don’t fall for Trump’s false dichotomy: It’s not a choice between human lives and the economy

Trump wants us to think we must choose between lives and the economy — but he’s the reason both are in jeopardy

Donald Trump and his allies desperately want people to believe there’s a conflict between saving lives and saving the economy. In Trump’s daily propaganda dump disguised as a “coronavirus briefing,” the runner-up in the 2016 popular vote spends much of his time fantasizing about how he will soon “reopen” the economy and hinting that governors have overreached by instituting mandatory lockdowns to prevent the coronavirus from spreading. Republican politicians are assisting Trump is promoting this vapid dichotomy, demanding congressional investigations into the shutdowns and claiming that letting people die is a reasonable price to pay for (supposedly) rescuing the economy.

This effort at pitting lives against jobs is bolstered, of course, by Fox News and other right-wing pundits, who are hyping the idea that we need to let the coronavirus run rampant through the country in order to save the economy. Over the past week, right-wing astroturf groups linked to the DeVos family and other big donors have staged anti-lockdown protests, aimed at reinforcing this economy vs. lives framework. Trump and Fox News unsurprisingly jumped in, cheering on the protesters and using these tiny groups of knuckleheads as evidence that the country must make a stark choice.

Spoiler alert: This “choice” between saving lives and saving the economy is a false dichotomy. In fact, it isn’t a choice at all. You can’t do one without the other. Continue reading.

Enraged Trump Wanted To Fire CDC Official Who Warned Against Virus

In a deeply reported Wall Street Journal piece on Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, a bombshell detail buried in the story cast light on President Donald Trump’s own disastrous instincts.

According to the report, Trump wanted to fire Dr. Nancy Messonnier — the official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who first shared the gravity of the pandemic with the American people.

On Feb. 25, after Trump had spent a month downplaying the outbreak and defending China’s honesty in its response, Messonnier sent a clear signal about just how bad things could get. Continue reading.

We Are Living in a Failed State

The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos. Continue reading.

Hold these Republicans accountable for deaths caused by recklessness

Washington Post logoPresident Trump tweeted a series of all-caps messages Friday that Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota—states with responsible stay-at-home orders — should “LIBERATE” themselves. It’s not clear whether this was a suggestion for armed insurrection, as his Virginia tweet referenced the Second Amendment, or simply a grossly irresponsible call for Americans to congregate in protests at a time when large gatherings risk infection spread and possibly more deaths. Either way, by encouraging violation of state measures to fight the pandemic, Trump abandoned his position of a day earlier, when he declared that governors should call their own shots. Trump was already morally responsible for the lost lives that could have been saved by prompt action to combat the coronavirus. He has no national plan to ramp up testing, which is critical to safe reopening. He should be held accountable for endangering those people encouraged by his irresponsible tweets.

Trump is not the only Republican who must be held accountable. Without ample testing, governors do not know how widely the virus has spread, the true infection rate or the risks posed by relaxing stay-at-home orders. None of that appears to bother Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who initially delayed closing beaches statewide. “Florida’s governor on Friday gave the green light for some beaches and parks to reopen if it can be done safely,” the Associated Press reports, “and north Florida beaches became among the first to allow people to return since closures because of the coronavirus. [Jacksonville] Mayor Lenny Curry said Duval County beaches were reopening Friday afternoon with restricted hours, and they can only be used for walking, biking, hiking, fishing, running, swimming, taking care of pets and surfing.” Continue reading “Hold these Republicans accountable for deaths caused by recklessness”