Tag: Trump mishandling pandemic crisis

‘Pure baloney’: Zoologist debunks Trump’s COVID-19 origin theory — explains how animal-human transmission works

AlterNet logoWith the largest one-day death toll in the U.S. yet — 2,400 in just 24 hours — President Trump is trying to deflect attention from his handling of the pandemic by waging a war on public health experts and science, threatening to cut World Health Organization funding and fueling a theory that the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. We speak to a zoologist who has been sounding the alarm about a coming pandemic for years. “The idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney,” says Peter Daszak, disease ecologist and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works globally to identify and study our vulnerabilities to emerging infectious disease. “These pandemic viruses that emerge originate in wildlife.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, here in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic, with my co-host Nermeen Shaikh, usually sitting right here at my side but joining us from her home to keep us all safe and stop community spread. Hi, Nermeen.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Hi, Amy. And welcome to our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world. Continue reading.

Studying Fascist Propaganda by Day, Watching Trump’s Coronavirus Updates by Night

In 2018, Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale, published “How Fascism Works.” Although it was a slim volume, it ranged broadly, citing experimental psychology, legal theory, and neo-Nazi blogs; although it was by an academic philosopher, it was a popular book that prioritized current events over syllogisms. Viktor Orbán is mentioned more times in the book than Hannah Arendt. Donald Trumpshows up dozens of times, and he is portrayed not as a distractible bozo but as a concerted aspiring strongman. “Fascist politics can dehumanize minority groups even when an explicitly fascist state does not arise,” Stanley writes. Elsewhere, in a chapter called “Sodom and Gomorrah,” he argues that Trump’s habit of extolling the heartland while decrying urban squalor “makes sense in the context of a more general fascist politics, in which cities are seen as centers of disease and pestilence.” Stanley couldn’t have known that many American cities were, in fact, about to become centers of disease, but he could have predicted that Trump would use such a development to his rhetorical advantage. “Some people would like to see New York quarantined because it’s a hot spot,” Trump said, late last month. “Heavily infected.”

Stanley isn’t, or isn’t mainly, a scholar of public policy; he is a philosopher of language. When he insinuates that Trump is a fascist—and you don’t have to be a philosopher of language to catch the insinuation—he means that Trump talks like a fascist, not necessarily that he governs like one. Still, many passages in Stanley’s book begin with a discussion of Germany in the nineteen-thirties, or Rwanda in the nineteen-nineties, before pivoting to a depiction of the contemporary United States. “Ever since my book came out, I’ve been fighting with critics who go, ‘You’re overreacting, you’re exaggerating, it’s irresponsible to call this fascism or that fascism,’ ” Stanley said. “I’ll point to a step Trump has taken—he’s using ice to round up children, he’s surrounding himself with loyalists and generals, he’s using the apparatus of government to dig up dirt on a political rival—and the response is always ‘Sure, that’s bad, but it’s not a big enough step to justify the F-word.’ I’m starting to feel like the it’s-not-a-big-enough-step people won’t be happy until they’re in concentration camps.” Continue reading “Studying Fascist Propaganda by Day, Watching Trump’s Coronavirus Updates by Night”

‘Who takes a victory lap on piles of corpses?’: Trump blasted as ‘sociopathic monster’ for bragging about 65,000 deaths

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump is being blasted for his apparent bragging about and celebrating “only” 60,000 to 65,000 coronavirus deaths. The actual number of Americans who have died so far is currently 37,095, but Trump is projecting a little less than twice that number will lose their lives to the virus he spent months ignoring until it was too late.

Friday evening Trump spent several minutes rattling off a long litany of numbers, comparing his projected coronavirus deaths to other possible horrific death projections, in a clear attempt to frame his disastrous mismanagement of the pandemic. As he did, many took to social media to slam the President’s callous lack of empathy.

“We’ve already built sufficient capacity nationwide so states can begin their re-openings. And I think you’ll be hearing a lot about re-openings in the coming weeks and months,” Trump told reporters during Friday’s coronavirus briefing. Continue reading.

The Memo: Culture war hits coronavirus crisis

The Hill logoPresident Trump stoked the culture war on Friday with a series of fiery tweets calling for what he termed the liberation of three states, all of which have Democratic governors.

Trump was apparently backing protesters in Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia who have bridled against restrictions put in place in response to the coronavirus crisis.

His tweets were the latest — and starkest — example of how even the debate over the deadly virus is increasingly being strained by the centrifugal forces of a polarizing president and a polarized media. Continue reading.

There Is Nobody Else To Blame

When he isn’t watching Fox News or tweeting insults at his perceived enemies, President Donald Trump spends a lot of time hunting scapegoats. Always preoccupied with escaping responsibility, Trump’s lifelong delinquency is suddenly a matter of life and death, as coronavirus claims thousands of American lives on his presidential watch. And as it becomes clearer that the United States might have easily avoided the worst consequences of the pandemic — and failed because of federal inaction — it is Trump whose historic reputation will plummet.

So will his chances of reelection. The latest Gallup poll shows his approval rating, now mired in the low 40s, has slid six points during the past month.

Trump’s peripatetic search for someone else to blame has taken him from Beijing to Capitol Hill to Manhattan to Geneva as well as various state capitals. He complains about the Chinese government, the Democrats in Congress, the New York Times and CNN; the governors of Washington state, Illinois and Michigan; and, most recently, the World Health Organization, whose vital funding he has threatened in one of the most misguided acts ever perpetrated by an American president. Continue reading.

Internal Documents Show Federal Agencies Supported the WHO Before Trump Was Against It

In a battle between China and the U.S. over global leadership, American diplomats and aid officials cited U.S. funding of the World Health Organization as key and relied heavily on the agency for help. When Trump cut its funding, he upended all that.

President Donald Trump publicly bashed the World Health Organization over its response to the coronavirus pandemic last week, American aid officials tried to delicately sidestep the political tensions, internal documents shared with ProPublica show.

And Trump’s campaign upended weeks of partnership between his own administration and the WHO, which provides advice and support for health officials in developing countries. The U.S. Agency for International Development had chosen to funnel much of its pandemic response through the WHO.

Even as they dealt with the fallout of Trump’s decision to cut off WHO funding, his administration leaned on it for expert advice. Continue reading.

‘I have never been so mad about a phone call in my life’

Democrats erupted after receiving vague answers from Vice President Mike Pence about efforts to ramp up coronavirus testing.

Senate Democrats exploded in frustration during a conference call with Vice President Mike Pence and Trump administration officials on Friday afternoon, with one normally laid-back senator asserting it was the most maddening phone call he’s ever taken part in, according to participants and people familiar with the call.

The call between President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force and Senate Democrats on Friday left the Senate minority “livid,” according to one Democrat on the call, because of the lack of clear answers about national testing for the disease.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) called it a “dereliction of duty,” said a second person on the call. King added: “I have never been so mad about a phone call in my life.” Continue reading.

COVID-19 Protesters Just Like Rosa Parks, Says White House Adviser Stephen Moore

The economic pundit repeatedly made the shocking comparison as right-wing protesters railed against social distancing measures meant to save lives.

The largely white protesters who oppose social distancing measures to protect the public from COVID-19 are like Rosa Parks, who waged a historic battle for racial equality, right-wing economic commentator and White House adviser Stephen Moore repeatedly insisted Friday.

“I call these people modern-day Rosa Parks. They are protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties,” Moore told The Washington Post, in one of at least three instances of this astonishing comparison.

He also told CBS News: “It’s interesting to me that the right has become more the Rosa Parks of the world than the left is.” He said in a YouTube video quoted by The New York Times: “We need to be the Rosa Parks here, and protest against these government injustices.” Continue reading.

Chris Cuomo Slams Ingraham, Fox News Over Coronavirus Coverage: ‘Never Ends For State TV’

Chris Cuomo Slams Ingraham, Fox News Over Coronavirus Coverage: ‘Never Ends For State TV’

CNN’s Chris Cuomo joined the backlash against Fox News’ coverage of the coronavirus pandemic on Friday as he fired back at a tweet from the rival network’s prime-time personality Laura Ingraham.

“It never ends for state tv,” Cuomo responded to a post from Ingraham that attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Cuomo slammed the conservative network over its “constant division” and for weeks downplaying the threat posed by the coronavirus, which has now killed more than 37,000 people nationwide. Continue reading.

‘They’re Death Pits’: Virus Claims at Least 7,000 Lives in U.S. Nursing Homes

New York Times logoMore than six weeks after the first coronavirus deaths in a nursing home, outbreaks unfold across the country. About a fifth of U.S. virus deaths are linked to nursing facilities.

The first warning of the devastation that the coronavirus could wreak inside American nursing homes came in late February, when residents of a facility in suburban Seattle perished, one by one, as families waited helplessly outside.

In the ensuing six weeks, large and shockingly lethal outbreaks have continued to ravage nursing homes across the nation, undeterred by urgent new safety requirements. Now a nationwide tally by The New York Times has found the number of people living in or connected to nursing homes who have died of the coronavirus to be at least 7,000, far higher than previously known.

In New Jersey, 17 bodies piled up in a nursing home morgue, and more than a quarter of a Virginia home’s residents have died. At least 24 people at a facility in Maryland have died; more than 100 residents and workers have been infected at another in Kansas; and people have died in centers for military veterans in Florida, Nevada, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington. Continue reading.