Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response

Donald Trump Willing To Sacrifice ‘Greatest Generation’ To COVID-19 In GOP Group Ad

“Band of Brothers” writer John Orloff channeled his anger with the Trump administration into The Lincoln Project’s latest spot.

A writer on the “Band of Brothers” wartime miniseries is behind a new political ad accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of being willing to sacrifice the generation of Americans who fought in WWII to the coronavirus for the sake of the economy.

“Haven’t we asked enough of the Greatest Generation?” the narrator asks at the end of screenwriter John Orloff’s 60-second spot for the anti-Trump Lincoln Project that it released over the weekend.

“I watched the Trump administration — and its enablers — argue that they were quite willing to sacrifice the health and lives of our senior citizens, I was — and still am — shocked that this was an actual, real rationalization they were making,” Orloff told Mediaite. Continue reading.

GOP-Trump fractures on masks open up

The Hill logoGOP leaders are increasingly embracing the use of masks as coronavirus cases rise sharply across the country, even as President Trump refuses to wear one and attends rallies and events where they are optional.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, opened a hearing on Tuesday by all but pleading for Trump to wear a mask, arguing it would depoliticize the issue.

“Unfortunately this simple lifesaving practice has become part of a political debate that says if you’re for Trump, you don’t wear a mask. If you’re against Trump, you do,” Alexander said. “That is why I have suggested the president should occasionally wear a mask even though there are not many occasions when it is necessary for him to do so.” Continue reading.

With Trump leading the way, America’s coronavirus failures exposed by record surge in new infections

Washington Post logoFive months after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the United States, a record surge in new cases is the clearest sign yet of the country’s historic failure to control the virus — exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils.

President Trump — who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, sidelined experts and misled Americans about its dangers and potential cures — now finds his presidency wracked by an inability to shepherd the country through its worst public health calamity in a century. The dysfunction that has long characterized Trump’s White House has been particularly ill-suited for a viral outbreak that requires precision, focus and steady leadership, according to public health experts, administration officials and lawmakers from both parties.

As case numbers began rising again, Trump has held rallies defying public health guidelines, mused about slowing down testing for the virus, criticized people wearing masks and embraced the racially offensive “kung flu” nickname for a disease that has killed at least 123,000 Americans. Continue reading.

A Sun Belt time bomb threatens Trump’s reelection

Rising Covid-19 caseloads in Florida, Arizona and Texas raise fresh doubts about the president’s reelection prospects.

The explosion of Covid-19 cases in Sun Belt states is becoming another albatross for President Donald Trump’s reelection hopes — and creating a new opening for Joe Biden and Democrats in November.

Republican governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas followed Trump’s lead by quickly reopening their states while taking a lax approach to social distancing and mask-wearing. Now, each of them is seeing skyrocketing coronavirus caseloads and rising hospitalizations, and Republican leaders are in retreat.

It’s hard to overstate the gravity of the situation for Trump: Lose any one of the three states, and his reelection is all but doomed. Continue reading.

Andrew Cuomo: Trump ‘in denial’ about coronavirus

“You can’t tweet at it,” New York’s governor said.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday said President Donald Trump and his administration are “basically in denial” about the coronavirus pandemic and aren’t doing enough to combat it.

Confirmed cases of the virus in the U.S. are rising, and the death toll has topped 125,000, leading some states, such as Texas and Florida, to roll back some of the measures they’ve taken to reopen their economies.

“This is a continuation of the first wave, and it was a failed effort to stop the first wave in the country,” Cuomo said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “If you listen to what the president says, what they said at the White House briefing, they’re saying what they said three months ago. They’re basically in denial about the problem. They don’t want to tell the American people the truth.” Continue reading.

GOP Senator Implores Trump To Wear A Mask And Let COVID-19 Experts Do The Talking

“It would help if from time to time the president would wear one,” said Senate health committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate health committee, implored President Donald Trump on Sunday to wear a mask “from time to time” and to leave coronavirus health and medical recommendations to the experts.

“I wish the president would wear a mask when it’s appropriate because millions of Americans admire him, and they would follow his lead,” Alexander, who is retiring at the end of this year, said on CNN’s “Inside Politics.”

His urging came as confirmed worldwide coronavirus cases surpassed 10 million on Sunday. The U.S. has the world’s highest virus death toll and on Friday reported an all-time high of 40,000 daily cases. Continue reading.

The Tragedy of the New Coronavirus Spikes

The pandemic’s epicenter is shifting, and Trump still refuses to act responsibly; Republican governors need to decide if they will.

Since the coronavirus first took hold in this country, Donald Trump has heedlessly promoted the idea that it can be treated solely as a political, or even a cultural, problem. Part of the tragedy of the pandemic is that, until now, many people in less affected areas of the United States believed him. In a speech last week to thousands of mostly maskless young supporters in a megachurch in Phoenix, Trump claimed that Democrats are “trying to do their best to keep the country shut down”—not to fight covid-19 but to sabotage the economy, and thus his electoral prospects. They’re also trying to “rig” the election by means of “the China virus.” He called the disease other names, including the more blatantly racist Kung Flu (it’s not a flu), and professed to find its real name “odd”: “I said, ‘What’s the nineteen?’ ” (The virus was identified in 2019, but the notion that there were eighteen previous covids figures in certain conspiracy theories.) Most fantastically, Trump spoke of the pandemic as if it were a thing of the past, even as the number of new cases rose, last week, to horrific levels, particularly in Texas, Florida, California, and Arizona. Last Friday alone, the U.S. saw more than forty thousand new cases. Continue reading “The Tragedy of the New Coronavirus Spikes”

Pence postpones Florida, Arizona campaign events as coronavirus cases spike

Florida reported 9,585 new infections while Arizona recorded 3,591.

Vice President Mike Pence has postponed campaign events in Florida and Arizona “out of an abundance of caution” as both states experience a spike in coronavirus cases, a Trump campaign spokesperson confirmed Saturday.

Pence was set to make stops in each state this coming week as a part of his “Faith in America” tour, and will also not appear at an additional Florida event Thursday organized by pro-Trump group America First Policies.

The White House confirmed Pence will still travel to both states to meet with governors and their health care teams, as well as travel to Texas on Sunday where he is scheduled to speak at a Dallas church led by Pastor Robert Jeffress, an ally of President Donald Trump and a member of Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board. Continue reading.

Workers removed thousands of social distancing stickers before Trump’s Tulsa rally, according to video and a person familiar with the set-up

White House ordered NIH to cancel coronavirus research funding, Fauci says

The research was the target of a conspiracy theory about the origin of the new coronavirus.

The National Institutes of Health abruptly cut off funding to a long-standing, well-regarded research project on bat coronaviruses only after the White House specifically told it to do so, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci made the revelation Tuesday at a Congressional hearing on the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is caused by a coronavirus that is genetically linked to those found in bats. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) asked Fauci why the NIH abruptly canceled funding for the project, which specifically worked to understand the risk of bat coronaviruses jumping to humans and causing devastating disease.

Fauci responded to Veasey saying: “It was cancelled because the NIH was told to cancel it.” Continue reading.