Category: 2020 Election
Trump administration buries detailed CDC advice on reopening
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The Trump administration shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.
The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to a CDC official. The official was not authorized to talk to reporters and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
Trump hits serious headwinds in polls on COVID-19 reopening
President Trump is running against the polls with his calls for state and local governments to reopen their economies in an effort to stem the damage from what is likely to be the worst economic contraction in 90 years.
Despite the protests that have garnered attention in Michigan and other states, voters in a series of polls have said they are not yet ready to resume anything approaching daily life as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.
This raises some political risk for Trump, who fears a bad economy could swamp him in November, but who could face blame if states reopen too quickly and a new wave of COVID-19 infections hits the country. Continue reding.
Trump calls the pandemic ‘worse than Pearl Harbor’ — and declares a cease-fire
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote secretly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about the potential need for “quick action” toward the development of atomic weapons.
After Roosevelt received a scientific briefing, he is said to have called in his military aide, Gen. Edwin “Pa” Watson. “Pa! This requires action!” FDR said.
Thus began what would become the Manhattan Project, a sprawling collaboration among the military, academics and corporations, ultimately employing 130,000 and spending the then-extraordinary sum of $2.2 billion in successfully building the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oak Ridge, Tenn., worked on uranium; Chicago worked on plutonium; Hanford, Wash., built reactors; Los Alamos, N.M., designed bombs; and Alamogordo, N.M., held testing. Continue reading.
Trump doesn’t have a plan — he’s fueled by boredom, humiliation and narcissism
In March, after months of ignoring the looming threat of the novel coronavirus, Donald Trump decided to recast himself in a new role, declaring he was now a “wartime president,” clearly imagining himself in the mold of FDR or, more likely, as Bill Pullman’s presidential character in the 1996 film “Independence Day.”
This was a total joke from the beginning, as Trump’s behavior wasn’t hard to predict. As a sociopath and narcissist, Trump would enjoy a stint play-acting as president while doing nothing. But when it began to dawn on him that waging war is like, hard work, he would just drift away, letting the “war” effort fail.
Unsurprisingly, that is what exactly happened. As Heather Digby Parton explains in her Wednesday column for Salon, what has “become clear in the last few days is that the Trump administration has made a decision” to give up any semblance of trying to flatten the curve, stop the spread or do anything meaningful to defeat the coronavirus. Continue reading.
The ‘wartime president’ has gone AWOL. More Americans will die.
Back 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.
Trump and some top aides question accuracy of virus death toll
President Trump has complained to advisers about the way coronavirus deaths are being calculated, suggesting the real numbers are actually lower — and a number of his senior aides share this view, according to sources with direct knowledge.
What’s next: A senior administration official said he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically.
- The U.S. death toll has surpassed 71,000, with more than 1.2 million confirmed cases, according to the latest figures.
- Trump’s engagement could amplify a partisan gulf we saw in this week’s Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index over believing the death statistics.
Reality check: There is no evidence the death rate has been exaggerated, and experts believe coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are being undercounted — not overcounted. Continue reading.
While Thousands Die, Trump Says ‘Everybody’s Excited’ By Stock Rise
Even as the death toll from the new coronavirus continues to rise, Donald Trump is focused on the stock market.
A Trump administration internal document predicts that the daily death toll from the virus will reach 3,000 by June 1, which would be a 70 percent increase from the current number of deaths per day, the New York Times reported on Monday.
Yet before boarding Air Force One to visit Arizona on Tuesday, Trump took time to brag about stocks.
And right now, the stock market’s way up. Everybody’s excited.
They’re going back to work. Safely. But they’re going back to work. We’re opening up our country again. And this is what we’re doing. And I’ll tell you: The whole world is excited, watching us, because we’re leading the world.
Trump takes underdog role in campaign against Biden
President Trump’s campaign is heading into the reelection battle against former Vice President Joe Biden as an underdog, a role the campaign embraced in 2016 and hopes to capitalize on once again in 2020.
The White House has retooled its media strategy, and the campaign is going up early with ads casting Trump as the “comeback” president who will lead the U.S. economy to new heights after the coronavirus-induced meltdown.
The Trump campaign will soon turn its attention to tearing down Biden, casting him as complicit in China’s rise as a global superpower and raising doubts about the former vice president’s fitness for office. A pro-Trump outside group is planning to take up the allegation of sexual assault made by a former Senate staffer against Biden, a charge the former Delaware senator has vehemently denied. Continue reading.
Trump Disputes Ominous Death Projections With Fox News Talking Points
In an interview with ABC anchor David Muir, President Donald Trump repeated Fox News talking points about coronavirus models. This was his first broadcast network television interview since he spoke to NBC’s Chuck Todd in June 2019.
Fox News personalities have been using the wide array of COVID-19 models and projections to cast doubt on all modeling predicting the number of coronavirus-related cases and deaths. In response to rising projections of COVID-19 deaths in the country — and seizing on confusion about the number of the models, what they mean, and which ones are used by whom — Fox figures are downplaying the accuracy of models in general, calling them “a bit of a crapshoot,” and dismissing their predictions since “we don’t factor in human ingenuity.”
In his interview on ABC World News Tonight, Trump directly echoed that language: Continue reading.