Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response

‘Shameful, dangerous and irresponsible’: Nevada governor blasts Trump for indoor rally against state rules

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Shortly before President Trump took the stage on Sunday night in Henderson, Nev., for his first indoor rally in months, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak blasted the president for flouting the state’s coronavirus restrictions by packing hundreds of supporters, many without masks, into a building.

The Democratic governor noted that Trump and his campaign were violating Nevada’s ban on gatherings of 50 people or more, tweeting that the president’s rally at Xtreme Manufacturing was “shameful, dangerous and irresponsible.”

“Tonight, President Donald Trump is taking reckless and selfish actions that are putting countless lives in danger here in Nevada,” the governor said. “The President appears to have forgotten that this country is still in the middle of a global pandemic.” Continue reading.

Jake Tapper Abruptly Ends Interview With Trump Aide: ‘Just Answer The Question’

The CNN host asked White House trade adviser Peter Navarro why the president misled the public on the coronavirus. It didn’t go well.

CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday abruptly ended an interview with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro following a tense exchange about President Donald Trump’s decision to initially downplay the threat of the coronavirus.

During a segment on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Tapper asked Navarro to discuss a Feb. 7 recording with journalist Bob Woodward, released last week, in which Trump said the virus is five times deadlier than the flu.

In the weeks following the recorded conversation, Trump continued to hold large rallies despite knowing the virus was airborne and deadly. On Feb. 26, he told reporters that the flu was more dangerous than the coronavirus. Continue reading.

RNC Chair Ridiculed For Criticizing Joe Biden’s Coronavirus Response

“Ronna’s right, it’s time to vote President Biden out of office and elect Trump to fix the mess of the last four years,” one critic cracked.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel faced ridicule on Sunday after she attacked Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for what she called his “disastrous record responding to the coronavirus.” 

Unlike the leader of McDaniels’ party, the former vice president has not been in office during the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 190,000 people and infected more than 6.5 million in the U.S. 

“Joe Biden can’t run from his disastrous record responding to the coronavirus,” McDaniel tweeted. “The truth hurts, Joe!”  Continue reading.

Trump holds Nevada rally, Biden gets $100 million boost from Bloomberg in Florida

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President Trump is on a campaign swing out West this weekend, while former vice president Joe Biden attended a church service in Wilmington, Del., but has no public events. The president holds a Latinos for Trump roundtable in Las Vegas on Sunday morning, followed by two fundraisers and an evening rally in Henderson, Nev.

Biden, who is leading Trump in the money race, got even more good news in the form of a pledge by former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg to spend at least $100 million in Florida to help elect the Democratic presidential nominee.

Trump’s Nevada visit comes as he continues to defend his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, after the release of an interview with Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward in which Trump acknowledged he played down the severity of the virus. Continue reading.

The president who says the coronavirus will go away makes the same prediction about global warming

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There are a range of policy issues on which President Trump’s approach varies dramatically from that of his opponent in this year’s presidential contest, former vice president Joe Biden. But on none is the difference more stark than on the issue of climate change.

Even on the coronavirus pandemic, Trump at least will occasionally pay lip service to the need to follow the lead of scientific experts. But on atmospheric warming — manifested dramatically in recent weeks in massive wildfires on the West Coast — Trump is far more likely to smirk.

Consider an exchange that took place in California at an event focused on the fires. Wade Crowfoot, head of the state’s Natural Resources Agency, called on Trump to recognize the role of climate change in the historic conflagrations. Continue reading.

They voted for him and now regret it. Why White women are turning away from Trump.

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From her home in the Philadelphia suburbs, Nin Bell works for an answering service, taking calls from people trying to reach more than 10,000 funeral homes and end-of-life companies. As the coronavirus began to sweep the country earlier this year, the number of calls related to new deaths tripled.

Caller after caller told her about losing a loved one to covid-19, as well as to suicides and drug overdoses. They provided an overwhelmingly painful window into just how badly the country was suffering.

And then Bell would hear President Trump — whom she voted for in 2016, helping him win Pennsylvania — downplay the severity of the pandemic. Continue reading.

Trump in Minden: Largely maskless crowd hears attacks on Nevada’s mail-in election, Biden

President Donald Trump staged a rally in Minden on Saturday after officials rebuffed similar airport rallies in Reno and Las Vegas, citing Nevada’s months-long ban on gatherings of more than 50 people during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump — speaking to a crowd of at least 5,000 largely maskless supporters densely packed on the Tarmac at Minden-Tahoe Airport on Saturday —  repeated unsupported claims that Nevada’s governor sought to scuttle an earlier planned campaign rally in Reno.

Trump went on to falsely claim that Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak controls “millions of votes” in the state, claiming without evidence Democrats are trying to “rig” the upcoming general election. Continue reading.

Measuring Trump’s Pandemic Malfeasance By Comparison With Other World Leaders

Donald Trump’s response to handling COVID-19 is the worst in the world. The United States both tops the charts in the number of cases, and before Trump can claim that this is because there’s “too much testing,” it worth noting that the U.S. also beats all comers when it comes to deaths. With the U.S. sadly set to cross the 200,000 deaths line in the coming week, it’s far ahead of even Brazil, where would-be Trump Jair Bolsonaro has done seeming everything possible to spread the disease.

As we learned over the past week, Trump’s failures to address COVID-19 were not a matter of ignorance and incompetence—though Trump has plenty of both. Instead he deliberately withheld facts from the public, downplayed the threat of the virus, and encouraged people to return to normal activities even though he absolutely knew his words were putting people at risk. This information only compounds the crime first identified back in July, when it was made clear Trump had purposely halted plans for a national network of testing centers under the belief that more people would died in states with Democratic governors so he “could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”

What Trump has done with COVID-19 isn’t incompetence, it’s malfeasance. And it’s something that absolutely, positively, did not have to happen. So what would it be like if the United States had been managed competently? How many people might really have been saved? Continue reading.

Political Appointees Meddled in C.D.C.’s ‘Holiest of the Holy’ Health Reports

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Trump loyalists at the Health and Human Services Department have been exerting influence on the Centers for Disease Control’s weekly reports on all disease outbreaks, the coronavirus and beyond.

WASHINGTON — Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to revise, delay and even scuttle weekly reports on the coronavirus that they believed were unflattering to President Trump.

Current and former senior health officials with direct knowledge of phone calls, emails and other communication between the agencies said on Saturday that meddling from Washington was turning widely followed and otherwise apolitical guidance on infectious disease, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, into a political loyalty test, with career scientists framed as adversaries of the administration.

They confirmed an article in Politico Friday night that the C.D.C.’s public morbidity reports, which one former top health official described on Saturday as the “holiest of the holy” in agency literature, have been targeted for months by senior officials in the health department’s communications office. It is unclear whether any of the reports were substantially altered, but important federal health studies have been delayed because of the pressure. Continue reading.

Public Health Experts Stunned By Trump Flack’s Attempt To Censor CDC Reports

Days after President Donald Trump admitted to knowingly downplaying the Covid-19 pandemic in his statements to the public, new reporting late Friday revealed that Trump political aides have been reviewing—and in some cases altering—weekly CDC reports about the deadly virus in an effort to bring them into closer alignment with the president’s false narrative and claims.

Politico reported Friday evening that the Health and Human Services Department’s politically appointed communications aides, led by former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo—a Republican strategist with no medical expertise—”have attempted to add caveats to the CDC’s findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior.”

The primary target of the Trump officials’ interference, according to Politico, has been the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR), a crucial resource for experts, public officials, and members of the public seeking to track the spread of Covid-19. While CDC officials have pushed back on meddling from political appointees, Politico reported that the agency has “increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording.” Continue reading.