Tag: Trump trying to rewrite his pandemic mismanagement

Trump uses Republican convention to try to rewrite coronavirus history, casting himself as lifesaving hero

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Faced with a pandemic that has killed more than 175,000 Americans, President Trump used glitzy video and misleading testimonials to spin a tale of heroism and resolve far removed from the grim reality of a country in the throes of an uncontrolled public health crisis.

At the Republican National Convention on Monday, Trump was hailed as a bold and lifesaving leader who “was right” on the novel coronavirus while Democrats, doctors and pundits were wrong from the beginning. One campaign-style video that aired during the convention hailed Trump as the “one leader” who stood up to the virus while quoting Democratic figures who played down the severity of the virus in its early stages.

It’s a revisionist version of recent history belied by hours of videotape in which the president minimized the threat of the virus for months, falsely predicted that it would “disappear” with warmer weather, promoted several unproven miracle cures, pushed states to reopen before meeting federal government benchmarks, equivocated on mask-wearing, defied social distancing guidelines and repeatedly told Americans that everything was under control. Continue reading.

Trump uses White House events to project return to normalcy while relying on testing that public lacks

Washington Post logoAt the White House this week, President Trump sat less than six feet from New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) in the Oval Office. He invited small-business owners to crowd behind the Resolute Desk for a photo shoot. His vice president toured a medical research center without a face mask in defiance of its policy.

The daily images projected a sense of confidence that life, at least for the nation’s most prominent resident, is returning to a semblance of normalcy during the coronavirus pandemic — a visual cue to the public that conditions are improving as Trump pushes to restart sectors of the economy.

Yet even as Trump aides have signaled that he could soon begin regular travel, the reality is that the White House has created a picture of security that is propped up by special access to the kind of wide-scale testing for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, that most of the nation remains without. Continue reading.

Trump Moves to Replace Watchdog Who Identified Critical Medical Shortages

New York Times logoThe president announced the nomination of an inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, who, if confirmed, would replace an acting official whose report embarrassed Mr. Trump.

WASHINGTON — President Trump moved on Friday night to replace a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services who angered him with a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

The White House waited until after business hours to announce the nomination of a new inspector general for the department who, if confirmed, would take over for Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who was publicly assailed by the president at a news briefing three weeks ago.

The nomination was the latest effort by Mr. Trump against watchdog offices around his administration that have defied him. In recent weeks, he fired an inspector general involved in the inquiry that led to the president’s impeachment, nominated a White House aide to another key inspector general post overseeing virus relief spending and moved to block still another inspector general from taking over as chairman of a pandemic spending oversight panel. Continue reading.

Trump Aide Navarro ‘Slam Dunked’ By 60 Minutes On Pandemic Preparedness

During a recent appearance on CBS’ 60 Minutes, Peter Navarro (one of President Donald Trump’s top economic advisers) aggressively defended the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and demanded to know when 60 Minutes addressed the last two presidential administrations’ preparedness for a pandemic. And a video shows that in fact, the CBS program did exactly that.

The video opens with Navarro asserting, “Show me the 60 Minutes episode — a year ago, two years ago — during the Obama administration, during the Bush administration, that said, ‘Hey, a global pandemic’s coming. You gotta do X, Y and Z’…. Show me that episode. Then, you’ll have some credence in terms of attacking the Trump administration for not being prepared.” And the video then segues into “60 Minutes” reports from 2005 (when George W. Bush was president) and 2009 (when Barack Obama was president).

In the 2009 segment, 60 Minutes can be seen warning about the threat of H1N1 and reporting, “H1N1 is a pandemic, meaning it’s a global epidemic. It’s the first flu pandemic in 41 years.” Continue reading.