Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response

Minnesota Leaders Call Out Trump’s COVID-19 Failures as Pence Visited Duluth

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA – Ahead of Vice President Pence’s visit to Duluth, Minnesota Friday, DFL Party leaders held a press call slamming the Trump admin’s failed response to the coronavirus pandemic, his divisive rhetoric, and the harmful impacts of his policies on Minnesotans. Featured on the call were DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin, General President of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Joseph Sellers, Duluth Mayor Emily Larson, North East Area Labor Council President Alan Netland, nurse Chris Rubesch, and Duluth resident Beth McCuskey. 

Excerpts from the call:

Joseph Sellers, General President of Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers: “[The Trump administration] doesn’t feel the way we do. They can’t understand it. They can’t relate to the issues that we experience as working families. Joe Biden does. We at SMART call Vice President Biden, ‘Blue Collar Biden,’ why? Because he does. He understands workers. He understands working issues. He understands working family issues, and he can relate to us. Our country is not a company where the mantra is, ‘You’re fired, and you’re fired and you’re fired.’ This administration’s cavalier attitude has collapsed our economy for the 22nd time, more than a million unemployment insurance claims were filed. This administration is disconnected from the pain and the suffering of workers.”

Continue reading “Minnesota Leaders Call Out Trump’s COVID-19 Failures as Pence Visited Duluth”

The Malign Fantasy of Donald Trump’s Convention

Using the White House as his prop, the President makes war on Joe Biden, and pretends the pandemic is all but defeated.

For four years, Donald Trump has been asking us to believe the unbelievable, to accept the unthinkable, to replace harsh realities with simple fantasies. On Thursday night, using the White House as a gaudy backdrop, the President made his case to the American people for four more years. His speech capping the Republican National Convention was long, acerbic, untruthful, and surprisingly muted in comparison to the grandeur of the setting, which no chief executive before him has dared to appropriate in such a partisan way. “We will make America greater than ever before,” he promised.

Even for a salesman like Trump, it was never going to be an easy deal to close, what with a deadly pandemic, mass unemployment, nationwide protests over racial injustice, and even a killer hurricane smashing into the Gulf Coast hours before his speech. Some seventy per cent of Americans currently believe that the country is on the wrong track, according to recent polls. Who can blame them?

This should be devastating context for a President, any President, seeking reëlection, a true picture of American carnage to replace the false one that Trump conjured four years ago. Yet the strategy of Trump and his team is now clear: to talk about how bad things would be in Joe Biden’s America, a violent socialist ruin in which freedom itself will no longer exist and rampaging protesters, like those now committing “rioting, looting, arson, and violence” in “Democrat-run cities,” will be coming soon to a suburb near you. “The hard truth is, you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Vice-President Mike Pence said on Wednesday night. “No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said on Thursday night. To say this sounded a bit off in actual America, Trump’s America, does not do justice to the bizarre dissonance of this year’s Republican Convention. Continue reading.

Four at RNC in Charlotte test positive for coronavirus

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Two attendees and two staffers contracted to work at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte have tested positive for the coronavirus, local health officials said Friday.

Mecklenburg County officials said the four people were isolated and that those with whom they came into contact had been alerted. The health department did not say whether any had shown symptoms of the virus. The two staffers were sent home before attending any convention functions.

Charlotte officials had raised concerns over the lack of social distancing measures taken at even the scaled-back convention, where only a few hundred Republicans gathered to formally renominate President Trump and Vice President Pence. Video of the event showed few people wearing masks and many posing close together for photographs. Continue reading.

What virus? At GOP’s convention, pandemic is largely ignored

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a stunning scene in a country where parents and children have been laid to rest without their loved ones present, schools have gone to online-only learning and businesses have shut their doors to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

On Thursday night, about 1,500 people gathered on the South Lawn of the White House so President Donald Trump could accept his party’s nomination for reelection in front of a roaring crowd. Masks were not required and chairs were placed inches apart from one another, with no room for social distancing, in violation of endless public health recommendations.

Only those the White House expected to be in “close proximity” to the president and vice president had been tested for COVID-19. Continue reading.

Hundreds gather at White House for Trump speech despite COVID-19 guidelines

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Hundreds of people packed the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday for President Trump‘s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, flouting federal and local health guidance on the coronavirus pandemic.

Roughly 1,500 guests are expected to attend, a Trump campaign official said, with lawmakers, congressional candidates, administration officials and first responders among them. Seats were mere inches apart, and few guests were spotted wearing masks in the hours before Trump took the stage.

Trump administration officials have urged Americans to wear masks when it is not possible to maintain six feet of distance in order to avoid spreading COVID-19. Continue reading.

Shifting CDC testing guidance sparks backlash

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Public health experts warn that the Trump administration’s change to testing guidance is a step backward in the COVID-19 response that could lead to more cases, outbreaks and deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) altered its guidance this week to say people who have been exposed to COVID-19 “don’t necessarily need a test” if they don’t have symptoms, threatening contact tracing efforts which seek to stop lines of transmission. 

The change alarmed public health officials and experts, who note that about 40 percent of people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic, meaning they will never show symptoms of the virus and won’t know they have it without testing, but can spread it to others who may become seriously ill or die.  Continue reading.

US faces long road on COVID-19 amid signs of improvement

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Coronavirus cases nationally are falling from their July peaks and some hard-hit states are showing signs of improvement, a hopeful sign even as the country deals with about 1,000 COVID-19 deaths every day.

The positive news is still dwarfed by the negative reality of the pandemic’s hold over the country.

Though the situation is not as bad as it was in July, when cases peaked around 70,000 per day, the virus is still circulating around United States at a very high level, with around 40,000 new cases per day, according to the COVID Tracking Project.  Continue reading.

How Mike Pence slowed down the coronavirus response

Taking the reins in late February, the vice president sought to bring order to a chaotic response. He also slowed things down.

Mike Pence had just accepted the biggest assignment of his political life, overseeing the nation’s response to the emerging Covid-19 virus, when White House officials confronted the vice president with an urgent question: what to do about the cruise ships?

It was the last weekend of February, and the nation’s top health officials had concluded that cruise lines were a major factor in spreading the virus — each vessel a potential hothouse of invisible infections. Hundreds of passengers already had been sickened on cruises; efforts to evacuate Americans from two virus-infested ships had become logistical nightmares; and in the health experts’ emerging consensus, the Centers for Disease Control needed to issue an immediate “no-sail” order, keeping ships in port.

The looming decision would test the vice president, pulled off the campaign trail and tapped by President Donald Trump to lead the coronavirus task force in a major shake-up of the U.S. response. “Mike is going to be in charge, and Mike will report back to me,” Trump said on Feb. 26 — before a single reported Covid-19 fatality in the United States. “He’s got a certain talent for this.” Continue reading.

#TrumpChaos: An Economy in Crisis

Trump’s biggest roadblock to reelection is COVID-19

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President Trump’s biggest obstacle to winning a second term in office is the coronavirus pandemic, which has dramatically altered the course of the presidential race and raised serious questions about his leadership.

Trump and his campaign have sought to contend with criticism by arguing that China is to blame for the global spread of the virus and that the U.S. government has done everything in its power to steer resources to states.

The president has repeatedly highlighted his decision to cut off travel from China and Europe, noting it was criticized at the time but was then followed by other countries. Continue reading.