Tag: Trump lies

Trump Suggests Lack of Testing Is No Longer a Problem. Governors Disagree.

New York Times logoThe president said on a conference call that he had not “heard about testing in weeks.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump told governors on a conference call on Monday that he had not “heard about testing in weeks,” suggesting that a chronic lack of kits to screen people for the coronavirus was no longer a problem.

But governors painted a different picture on the ground.

Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, a Democrat, said that officials in his state were trying to do “contact tracing” — tracking down people who have come into contact with those who have tested positive — but that they were struggling because “we don’t have adequate tests,” according to an audio recording of the conversation obtained by The New York Times. Continue reading.

Trump’s Baseless Claim That a Recession Would Be Deadlier Than the Coronavirus

New York Times logoThe opposite is more likely to be true, according to research and experts.

President Trump, in saying that he wanted to reopen the economy by Easter, has argued that an economic downturn would be more deadly than the coronavirus.

WHAT WAS SAID

“You have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies. You have death. Probably — and I mean definitely — would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about with regard to the virus.”
— at a news conference on Monday

“You’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression.”
— during a virtual town hall on Fox News on Tuesday

This lacks evidence. Though the question of the overall impact of recessions on mortality remains unsettled, experts disputed Mr. Trump’s claim that an economic downturn would be more deadly than a pandemic. (The White House did not respond when asked for the source of the president’s conjecture.) Continue reading.

Trump’s faux facts on Fox News

Washington Post logoOver the course of a day, President Trump appeared in a virtual Fox News Town Hall, in a Fox News interview and in the daily coronavirus task force briefing. During the hours before the camera, he mused about packed churches on Easter Sunday, seeking to jawbone the country back to work despite the advice of medical professionals who fear it may be too early to return to normalcy to halt the spread of the virus. Here’s a guide to 11 of Trump’s claims on March 24, most of which were false or misleading.

“I had to make a decision: Do I stop people from China and specifically that area, but from China to come into the country? And everybody was against it. Almost everybody, I would say, was just absolutely against it. We’ve never done it before. We never made a decision like that. … It was instinct.”

Trump’s recollection — that his “instinct” led him to take action over the advice of “everybody” — conflicts with reporting on the decision-making that led to the administration, effective Feb. 3, to bar foreigners (with many exemptions) from traveling to the United States from China. The New York Times reported the plan was initially recommended by staff from the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Department, and they were soon joined by public health experts. Trump was reluctant at first when the idea was presented to him. Continue reading.

Trump Parrots Hannity’s Lies About Obama Response To 2009 Swine Flu Outbreak

While speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon at the White House, President Donald Trump made a false claim about the Obama administration’s handling of the H1N1 flu (also commonly known as “swine flu”) back in 2009. And there’s a good bet that he’s learned this latest fiction from Fox News — and his favorite host, Sean Hannity.

“If you go back and look at the swine flu, and what happened with the swine flu,” Trump said, “you’ll see how many people died, and how actually nothing was done for such a long period of time, as people were dying all over the place. We’re doing it the opposite. We’re very much ahead of everything.”

As Media Matters has previously documented, Hannity and other right-wing personalities and outlets have circulated a lie that the Obama administration had done nothing about H1N1 — waiting six months to declare a national emergency, they say — while Americans died in vast numbers. In fact, this is totally false, and it also relies on obfuscations based around bureaucratic terms of art and specific effects on government regulations. Continue reading.

Trump Invented Google’s Coronavirus Test Website

During his Friday afternoon press event—an event that seemed focused entirely on pumping up the stock market by name dropping as many corporations as possible—Donald Trump claimed that Google was working on a website that would help worried Americans figure out if they needed to be tested for the novel coronavirus.

The website, according to Trump, would be done soon, and would not only provide information on whether a test was called for, but advise on where to go for a test. Trump was not only very specific, noting that Google had “1,700 engineers working on this right now,” but took the time to make a backhanded swipe at the initial difficulties of the web site connected to the Affordable Care Act.

The only problem is … everything. Google is not building the website Trump described. Not with 1,700 engineers. Not at all. Another company owned by the same parent company as Google is working on a site connected to the coronavirus, but it is absolutely nothing like what Trump described. In a press event that was entirely designed to make Trump’s disastrous handling of this crisis look better, Donald Trump decided the best approach was to simply lie his ass off. Continue reading.

Google completely undercuts Trump’s announcement of a new coronavirus testing website

AlterNet logoAfter President Donald Trump unleashed chaos with his Oval Office address about the coronavirus on Wednesday night, it seems he and his team decided they better give it a second shot. So on Friday, Trump appeared in the Rose Garden for a press conference along with business executives and leading members of the coronavirus task force to speak to the country.

And while it wasn’t quite as disastrous as Trump’s rollout of a new ban on travel to the U.S. from most European countries, the president completely misrepresented the central announcement of the event.

Trump claimed that there will be a new website designed by Google to facilitate the administration of coronavirus tests to the American people. Continue reading.

Trump insists the market will “bounce back very big” as stocks plunge due to coronavirus

On Thursday morning, just hours after one of the most mind-bending eveningsin recent political memory, Wall Street abruptly stopped trading as stocks took a swan dive and the market chugged headfirst into its first bear territory in more than a decade, amidst the White House’s floundering response to the coronavirus pandemic.

As Lawrence Summers, the treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council director, succinctly put it:

Lawrence H. Summers

✔@LHSummers

.@POTUS sets what I believe is a new world record for presidential market value destruction.

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Trump’s wobbly claim that his wall could stop the coronavirus

Washington Post logoWe’ll have 500 miles [of the Southern border fence] built by very early next year, some time, so, one of the reasons the numbers are so good. We will do everything in our power to keep the infection and those carrying the infection from entering our country. We have no choice. Whether it’s the virus that we’re talking about or many other public health threats. The Democrat policy of open borders is a direct threat to the health and well-being of all Americans. Now you see it with the coronavirus, you see it.”

— President Trump, at a campaign rally in Charleston, S.C., Feb. 28, 2020

“Going up fast. We need the Wall more than ever!”

— Trump, in a tweet, March 10, 2020

Trump is using the covid-19 outbreak to justify his push for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, even though the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public-health experts say they haven’t seen evidence it can stop the virus from spreading.

The Trump administration has contradicted itself on coronavirus no fewer than 14 times in less than a month

Washington Post logoInitially, warmer weather would kill it. Then it wouldn’t.

The number of cases would soon be close to zero. Then they rose.

It should be treated like the flu. Except Americans should know it is deadlier.

As many as 1 million people could be tested by the end of last week. Until they weren’t. Continue reading. Continue reading.

Fox News is spreading Trump’s coronavirus lies faster than the infection itself

AlterNet logoPresident Trump said that Russian interference in the 2016 election a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats to destroy his presidency. He claimed his impeachment was a Democratic hoax too and last week he said the coronavirus — or at least media coverage of the coronavirus — was one as well.

None of those were hoaxes. But that doesn’t mean hoaxes don’t exist. In fact, when it comes to the coronavirus crisis, disinformation, propaganda and hoaxes abound. Ironically, one of the sources is, you guessed it, Russia.

According to the Washington Post:

A top State Department official said Thursday that Russia is behind “swarms of online, false personas” that sought to spread misinformation about coronavirus on social-media sites, stressing the “entire ecosystem of Russian disinformation is at play.” …

The tweets themselves floated a number of harmful conspiracy theories — suggesting, for example, that the coronavirus had been created by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or was the result of a bioweapon. Some of the tweets linked to YouTube videos, according to the State Department document, suggesting the problem went beyond Twitter

Continue reading.