Category: 2020 Election

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.

GOP Senate Nominee Jason Lewis Founded A Social Network Where People Promoted A Pro-Hitler Documentary

A members-only social media network founded in 2013 by former representative Jason Lewis, the current Republican nominee for Senate in Minnesota, hosted message boards that promoted a pro-Hitler documentary, called for migrants to be put in camps, and raised money for an ad campaign that paid Lewis and his business partners.

In 2014, Lewis sat down with Fox Business host John Stossel to promote the network, which he called Galt.io, after the hero of an Ayn Rand novel. Lewis, still a talk radio host, explained that Galt.io would be a closed community whose members could invest using a digital currency earned with their participation or bought with real money. The Galtcoins functioned like Reddit upvotes, signaling which topics people cared the most about as they invested into “causes” or “missions.”

“We’re not going to tell people what causes are going to win,” Lewis told Stossel. “That’s going to be a function of the marketplace. So once that cause is out there, what people are interested in is going to be determined on Galt.io.” Continue reading.

Fox News Defends Trump’s Covid-19 Deception — Because The Network Was Complicit

The shameless sycophants at Fox News, who spent late February and early March deluding their audience about the danger posed by the novel coronavirus, are arguing that President Donald Trump was correct — in fact, noble — to intentionally “play it down,” as he claimed in an interview with The Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward. 

In taped interviews with Woodward for his forthcoming book, Trump said on February 7 that the virus was “more deadly than even your strenuous flus” (contradicting his public statements at the time), and added on March 19 that he was “playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

The Wednesday leak of those interviews triggered a media and political firestorm over the president’s deception. But Fox quickly rallied to the president, and after he doubled down at an afternoon press conference by saying that he intentionally downplayed the virus to avoid a “frenzy,” the network’s hosts have settled on the position that he was right to do that. Their argument implicitly excuses their own irresponsible coverage as the virus spread across the country. Continue reading.

Mike Pence busted for ‘lying through his teeth’ about Trump’s COVID-19 response in damning supercut

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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough busted Vice President Mike Pence for “lying through his teeth” about President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The vice president went on Fox News and Twitter to clean up the president’s recorded confession to reporter Bob Woodward that he had purposefully downplayed the pandemic, and the “Morning Joe” host rolled supercut video of Trump’s past statements that undercut each of Pence’s unctuous praise.

“When I look at Mike Pence and I see him lying through his teeth, a man who, I mean from everything I’ve known, he’s a man of great faith and he let us know that through his entire public life that he’s a man of great faith, so who’s to doubt that,” Scarborough said. “I just wonder, though, when he’s lying through his teeth for this president, I really do, I go what’s Mike Pence going to do after this? Where does he go to get his reputation back? Because Donald Trump’s been lying through his teeth about the coronavirus for well over a year.” Continue reading.

Trump Always Seeks Calm! (Except These 22 Times When He Stoked Baseless Fear)

Donald Trump admitted on Wednesday that he intentionally downplayed the threat of the coronavirus despite knowing how deadly and dangerous it was.

He defended his actions to a crowd of reporters by saying, “I love our country and I don’t want people to be frightened, I don’t want to create panic.” However, his attempt to deflect criticism after getting caught lying to the public doesn’t match reality.

For years, Trump has attempted to stoke fear in Americans, often lying and creating alternate realities to do so. Continue reading.

The Trump team welcomed Russian disinformation, the Trump administration further confirms

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President Trump, in August, promoted information that the U.S. government has increasingly connected to a Russian disinformation campaign in the 2020 election — after his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, worked with the man promoting it. Now the U.S. government says explicitly that the man behind it is a Russian agent.

The Treasury Department on Thursday identified Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach as an “active Russian agent for over a decade” — a label that could lead to more direct penalties. It added that Derkach has “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.”

“This action is a clear signal to Moscow and its proxies that this activity will not be tolerated,” the Treasury Department said. Continue reading.

Trump Is Trying To Panic White Voters — About Black People

On Wednesday, Donald Trump confessed that he had lied to the American public—over, and over, and over, and … you get the idea—about the danger posed by COVID-19. By doing so, and by purposely refusing to provide coordinated testing, or a national strategy, Trump deliberately condemned 200,000 Americans to die and 6 million others to suffer through the disease. 

But, says Trump, there was a reason: He had to keep the country “calm.” He had to “avoid panic.” Except, in the case of COVID-19, telling people the truth would have allowed them to understand that this was far worse than the flu, that it wasn’t going to go away, that it would be months before the situation improved, and that reopening schools and businesses was not safe. Telling people the truth would have kept tens of thousands more Americans alive.

With that in mind, what does the Great Calmer have to say on the morning after he’s confessed to the greatest lie in American history? Well, he’s put out a warning that the suburbs will be “overrun with anarchists, agitators, looters, protesters” and the dreaded “low income projects” (i.e. Black people). Another tweet filled with lies about how voting by mail will lead to massive fraud. Multiple tweets about the attempted “coup” by the Deep State conspiracy. And, of course, a tweet demanding that Democrats open schools—in spite of just confessing that he knows COVID-19 is deadly and affects young people. Continue reading.

The Trump campaign goes all in on conflating ‘protesters’ and ‘criminals’

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In a summer where movie trailers are otherwise in limited supply thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump’s reelection campaign is filling the void.

A pair of videos shared by the campaign and the president on Thursday offer a preview of coming attractions: rampant violence and danger under a prospective Joe Biden presidency. And each leans heavily on an increasingly common conflation, blending the former vice president’s stated support for peaceful protests with scenes of turmoil, violence and vandalism.

Even simply considered on their own merits, each of the ads is a bit odd. Continue reading.

Senate Republicans scramble to contain fallout from Woodward bombshell

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Senate Republicans hoping to go on offense this week found themselves instead playing defense once again because of controversial remarks by President Trump — this time to Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.

It was a familiar dilemma for GOP senators used to being chased by reporters over their thoughts on Trump’s latest furor, but in this case it came with terrible timing — eight weeks before an election in which the Senate is on the line and as they hoped to call attention to Democrats blocking a coronavirus relief bill Thursday on a procedural motion.

Privately, Senate Republicans expressed bewilderment over why Trump agreed to 18 interviews with Woodward, some of then happening as late as 10 o’clock in the evening. Continue reading.

Trump’s fusillade of falsehoods on mail voting

“Mail-In Ballots will lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 Election.” 

— President Trump, in a tweet, July 2, 2020

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More than 100 times this year, President Trump has peddled false claims or imaginary threats about voting by mail.

The president may believe this disinformation campaign helps his chances of being reelected. But he is sowing confusion as states prepare for the Nov. 3 general election and is falsely accusing state officials of trying to rig the outcome. Trump also has encouraged people to vote twice, which is illegal.

A mountain of evidence shows that mail voting has been almost entirely free of fraud through the decades, but Trump insists that it’s a recipe for disaster. Continue reading.