Tag: Trump trying to hide his botched COVID-19 response

Trump again attacks Fauci’s guidance as coronavirus infections tick upward

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President Trump’s long-fraught relationship with Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease specialist, ruptured again this week in an ugly public dispute just as U.S. coronavirus cases have ticked past 50,000 per day and with three weeks left in a campaign dominated by the government’s response to the pandemic.

Trump on Tuesday responded to Fauci’s warnings that the president’s decision to resume campaign rallies this week was “very troublesome” by mocking him in a tweet that unfavorably compared his medical guidance to his errant ceremonial first pitch at a Washington Nationals game in July.

“Actually, Tony’s pitching arm is far more accurate than his prognostications,” Trump wrote, erroneously suggesting that Fauci’s advice in the early days of the pandemic that the public need not wear masks meant that the doctor was playing down the novel coronavirus. Continue reading.

Proposal to hasten herd immunity to the coronavirus grabs White House attention but appalls top scientists

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The six British patients seemed to have little in common besides this: Each was dealing with kidney failure, and each had tested positive for the coronavirus.

They were among scores of virus-stricken people showing up at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge in the early weeks of April. Had they lived in the United States instead of the United Kingdom, the link that allowed the contagion to spread among them might have slipped by unnoticed.

But the U.K. had done something in the early days of the pandemic that the United States and many other nations had not. It funded a national push to repeatedly decode the coronavirus genome as it made its way across the country. The process reveals tiny, otherwise invisible changes in the virus’s genetic code, leaving a fingerprint that gives scientists valuable glimpses into how the disease is spreading. It’s a cutting-edge technique that was not widely available in previous global pandemics but that researchers think can help hasten the end of this one. Continue reading.

Confused Eric Trump Says Dad Is Getting Cured by His Own ‘Vaccine’

Presidential son Eric Trump apparently thinks that a coronavirus vaccine has been fully developed and his father took it after he caught the virus in order to defeat COVID-19.

If you are confused by that, you aren’t alone.

Eric Trump appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday morning to discuss President Donald Trump’s return to public events and campaign rallies despite his recent hospitalization for coronavirus. Prior to the younger Trump’s interview, guest host Jonathan Karl told viewers that the White House refused their request to bring on public health experts from the coronavirus task force. Continue reading.

Candace Owens’ BLEXIT group pays for some attendees’ travel to Trump’s White House event

Attendees were told they “must” wear a BLEXIT shirt, according to emails.

Some guests for Saturday’s White House event on the South Lawn, which will be President Donald Trump‘s first since testing positive for the coronavirus, had their travel and lodging paid for by controversial conservative activist Candace Owens’ group BLEXIT, according to emails obtained by ABC News.

Supporters, who are also scheduled to attend a separate BLEXIT event earlier in the day, were invited to attend a “HUGE outdoor rally” by the group and asked to fill out a form that notified them that BLEXIT, a campaign urging Black Americans to leave the Democratic Party, will be covering travel costs.

Guests were later informed they would be receiving an invitation from the White House to attend an event with Trump. Continue reading.

Twitter Put A “Misleading” Warning On Trump’s Tweet That He Could Not Get Or Spread COVID-19

President Donald Trump’s tweet that he is immune to COVID-19 and can no longer get infected or transmit the virus was flagged by Twitter as “misleading” and “potentially harmful” on Sunday.

Trump tweeted Sunday morning that he had gotten “a total and complete sign off from White House Doctors yesterday.”

“That means I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it. Very nice to know!!!” Trump tweeted.

Hours later, Twitter put a warning on the tweet saying that it “violated Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.” Continue reading.

White House blocks medical experts on Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force from appearing on ABC’s ‘This Week’

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The White House refused to allow expert immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci or another medical expert on President Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force to appear on ABC’s “This Week,” Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl said Sunday.

Karl told viewers that while Fauci was “more than willing to join” the program to discuss the nation’s faltering response to COVID-19, as well as the White House’s current status as a coronavirus hot spot, “the White House wouldn’t allow you to hear from the nation’s leading expert on coronavirus.”

“In fact, they wouldn’t allow any of the medical experts on the president’s own coronavirus task force to appear on this show,” Karl said. Continue reading.

Trump May Reject Tougher F.D.A. Vaccine Standards, Calling Them ‘Political’

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In suggesting he might reject tougher guidelines, President Trump once again undermined efforts by government scientists to bolster public confidence in their work.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that the White House “may or may not” approve new Food and Drug Administration guidelines that would toughen the process for approving a coronavirus vaccine, and suggested the plan “sounds like a political move.”

The pronouncement once again undercut government scientists who had spent the day trying to bolster public faith in the promised vaccine. Just hours earlier, four senior physicians leading the federal coronavirus response strongly endorsed the tighter safety procedures, which would involve getting outside expert approval before a vaccine could be declared safe and effective by the F.D.A.

The president’s comments, to reporters in the White House briefing room, came after the doctors told a Senate panel that they had complete faith in the F.D.A., and that science and data — not politics — were guiding its decisions. Last week, Mr. Trump used the same setting to declare that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had “made a mistake” when he said most Americans would not complete the vaccination process until next summer and that masks were at least as important as a vaccine to control the virus’s spread. Continue reading.

The new CDC scandal proves Trump can’t be trusted with a vaccine

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September has featured one scandal after another stemming from Donald Trump’s belief that the best way to handle the coronavirus pandemic is to let a bunch of people get sick and die, and then deny that it’s happening. First, journalist Bob Woodward started to releasing recordings in which Trump said he “wanted to always play it down” and admitted he had deliberately lied to the public about how serious this virus really is. Then, in a town hall for ABC News, Trump confessed that his real strategy was to let the virus run loose to create herd immunity — or rather “herd mentality” which would be “herd developed,” to quote the president accurately — even though that would literally kill millions of Americans. Then the New York Times published a new exposé revealing that Trump officials had overruled medical researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, forcing the agency to publish misleading and dangerous information designed to discourage people who have been exposed to the virus from being tested.

None of this, it’s critical to underline, is good for Trump’s re-election campaign. Polling shows that only 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which is the same percentage of Americans who would probably say they’d still love Trump if he nuked their hometowns. Polls also show that because of Trump’s malice and incompetence, 69% of Americans have little to no confidence in the safety or efficacy of a vaccine that he may announce. Only 9% of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in Trump. Even his own supporters know he’s a liar and a fraud: They’ve entrusted him with the nuclear codes, but don’t trust him with a vaccine. Continue reading.

White House seeks to change subject from 200K COVID-19 deaths

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The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 200,000 on Tuesday, but the grim milestone passed without too much of a comment from a White House more focused on the battle over the Supreme Court.

Trump used a recorded speech to the annual United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to condemn China for unleashing “the plague onto the world” but did not mention the fact that the U.S. was nearing 200,000 deaths.

The U.S. passed that marker a couple hours later, according to John Hopkins University. Continue reading.

Denial and Defiance: Trump and His Base Downplay the Virus Ahead of the Election

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With resistance to face masks and scorn for science, President Trump and a sizable number of his supporters are pushing an alternate reality minimizing a tragedy that has killed almost 200,000 Americans.

Jodee Burton, a retired preschool teacher who now helps with her husband’s logging business, lives on a remote patch in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a state that has been embroiled in a partisan battle over how to respond to a pandemic that has killed nearly 7,000 people there and almost 200,000 nationwide.

Ms. Burton, 63, who is the mother of three grown children, is not convinced that there is a crisis — and she is certainly not happy with the efforts by her governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, to require some people to wear masks or restrict where they can play and work.

“There’s only been three cases in Luce County and I know all three of them,” said Ms. Burton, whose family dog wears a Trump bandanna in place of a collar. “They have husbands and they sleep with these men every night, and none of them got it.” Continue reading.