Tag: Trump mishandling pandemic crisis

Trump appears to back those protesting social distancing measures

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Friday appeared to back protesters in three states with Democratic governors who are gathering in opposition to extended stay-at-home orders and other restrictions meant to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

One day after Trump reportedly told governors they would “call the shots” in determining when to lift social distancing guidelines in their states, Trump heightened tensions between demonstrators and the Democratic governors in Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia.

“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” Trump tweeted, followed quickly by a call to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” Continue reading.

Trump fans can’t admit he’s to blame for this crisis — so they’re launching nonsensical protests instead

AlterNet logokOn Wednesday, a crowd of right-wing nuts — complete with their oversized but underworked utility vehicles, Confederate flags, guns and other such overcompensation accoutrements — descended on the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, to whine about the temporary pause to dinners at Applebee’s and accidental brushfires at gender-reveal parties. The deep fear of emasculation driving the protest was not particularly subtle at this protest, as the crowd chanted “Lock her up” at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who is accused of no other crime other than making deeply insecure men fuss about a woman in power.

The ostensible purpose of the protests was to pressure Whitmer to relax some of the restrictions on businesses and movement under the coronavirus lockdown. In reality, of course, this is happening because a bunch of Fox News-loving Trump supporters have been poisoned by propaganda that has convinced them the coronavirus is overblown or a hoax, all being spread by the libs to destroy Trump’s chances at re-election.

Well, that, and the fact that they’re a bunch of sexists who hate having a female governor, which goes a long way toward explaining why the Michigan protest was bigger than others in Ohio or North Carolina, whose governors are male. Continue reading.

Trump’s Pandemic Plan: “Absolute Authority,” No Responsibility

The novel coronavirus brings out the same old, same old President.

A week ago, President Trump foreshadowed his growing anxiety over when and how to end the Great Shutdown, a decision he is well aware will have existential consequences—for his own political future. He called the question of reopening the country amid the coronavirus pandemic “the biggest decision I’ll ever make” and “by far the biggest decision of my life.” Yet by the time Trump advertised a “Major News Conference” for Thursday evening, there was little suspense from a man who has been tweeting about a “LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL” and who declared, on March 24th, that he wanted church pews “packed” by Easter. Trump backed off the Easter deadline within days of promoting it, and he repeated the act this week, with a May 1st date and a new plan for “OPENING UP AMERICA AGAIN,” which started out on Monday as an imperial diktat from an almighty President and ended up on Thursday as a mere recommendation to individual states, without a fixed date. Many governors have already announced that they will not follow his guidance. “You’re going to call your own shots,” Trump reassured them on a conference call on Thursday afternoon, according to an audio recording, which promptly leaked. “You’re going to be calling the shots.”

This might seem a head-spinning reversal. But it is classic Trump. His two most memorable lines of the covid-19 pandemic, proclaiming “absolute authority” and “no responsibility at all,” are wildly contradictory, and yet also completely consistent with his approach to governing. The novel coronavirus is truly a new type of American crisis, but it has been met by the same old, same old from America’s President: unhinged press conferences and unfounded conspiracy theories; lies, attacks, and bizarre non sequiturs; and abrupt, seemingly incomprehensible policy shifts from a leader who has no problem changing course at the expense of his own credibility. Continue reading “Trump’s Pandemic Plan: “Absolute Authority,” No Responsibility”

The numbers reveal how much Trump’s dithering worsened the COVID-19 crisis

AlterNet logoThousands continue to die each day in the United States from COVID-19, and there’s no sign yet that the virus will fully retreat anytime soon. But new analysisfrom two epidemiologists published in the New York Times on Thursday showed that it didn’t have to be this way. Had the country acted sooner, it could have dramatically decreased the death toll.

And President Donald Trump, as the person best positioned to lead a national response to the crisis, should get the brunt of the blame for this failure.

The analysis by Britta and Nicolas Jewell of Imperial College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, respectively, makes use of the fact that viruses spread exponentially. Because of this fact, the social distancing measures we’ve put in place in the United States to quell the spread could have had a significantly larger impact if they had been implemented just a little bit sooner. Continue reading.

Violating His Own Social Distancing Guidelines, Trump Hosts Photo-Ops

Donald Trump on Thursday violated the guidelines his own administration put forward about avoiding close contact with others and eschewing in-person social gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic — to hold a photo-op honoring truck drivers.

The event was intended to celebrate “America’s truckers who are answering the call to action to transport supplies across the country,” according to a description from the White House.

Trump violated the rules to stand six feet apart from others, instead choosing to get close to truck drivers from companies such as UPS, FedEX, and DHL. He handed the drivers — as well as Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao and Chris Spear, CEO of American Trucking Associations — golden keys for their service, sidling up close to pose for photos. Continue reading.

Leaked Memo Shows Officials Warned Trump Against Defunding WHO

An internal memorandum written by U.S. officials and addressed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warns that cutting funding to the World Health Organization, as President Donald Trump said he would do Tuesday, would erode America’s global standing, threaten U.S. lives and hobble global efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The memo, which was prepared before Trump’s Rose Garden announcement, was written by officials within the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and includes a detailed list of how U.S. funding to the WHO helps countries in the Middle East control the pandemic.

A draft version of the memo, which was labeled “Sensitive But Unclassified” and was titled “Information Memo for the Secretary,” was seen by ProPublica. Continue reading.

Trump’s false claim that the WHO said the coronavirus was ‘not communicable’

Washington Post logo“The WHO failed to investigate credible reports from sources in Wuhan that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts. There was credible information to suspect human-to-human transmission in December 2019, which should have spurred the WHO to investigate, and investigate immediately. Through the middle of January, it parroted and publicly endorsed the idea that there was not human-to-human transmission happening despite reports and clear evidence to the contrary. … The WHO pushed China’s misinformation about the virus, saying it was not communicable.” <

— President Trump, remarks at a news conference, April 14, 2020

The president’s announcement that he would suspend payments to the World Health Organization in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic contained a number of false or misleading claims. He faulted the WHO for believing that China was doing a good job and praising its transparency — when he had done the same thing at the time. He claimed the WHO “fought” his decision to impose some restrictions on travel from China, but WHO officials said nothing publicly; opposition to travel restrictions has been a consistent WHO policy.<

That’s the usual Trump hyperbole and flip-flopping. For the purposes of this fact check, we will examine the part of Trump’s statement that holds some credibility — that the WHO did not alert the world quickly that the new virus could travel among people. We have assembled a detailed timeline to look at what the organization said.

The Facts

The WHO is a United Nations organization, with all of its inherent bureaucracy, slow decision-making and dependence on member states. The WHO is heavily reliant on information provided by countries and cannot fine countries that fail to provide accurate information. But that does not mean officials cannot use its platform to express skepticism or prod for more transparency, rather than amplify incomplete information.

The numbers reveal how much Trump’s dithering worsened the COVID-19 crisis

AlterNet logoThousands continue to die each day in the United States from COVID-19, and there’s no sign yet that the virus will fully retreat anytime soon. But new analysisfrom two epidemiologists published in the New York Times on Thursday showed that it didn’t have to be this way. Had the country acted sooner, it could have dramatically decreased the death toll.

And President Donald Trump, as the person best positioned to lead a national response to the crisis, should get the brunt of the blame for this failure.

The analysis by Britta and Nicolas Jewell of Imperial College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, respectively, makes use of the fact that viruses spread exponentially. Because of this fact, the social distancing measures we’ve put in place in the United States to quell the spread could have had a significantly larger impact if they had been implemented just a little bit sooner. Continue reading.

Trump’s coronavirus call with top Wall Street execs immediately devolved into ‘a bit of a disaster’: Politico reporter

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump on Wednesday held a call with top Wall Street executives and bankers to discuss reopening the economy. But according to Politico reporter Ben White, things did not go well.

“The whole thing was a bit of a disaster, the way they announced this on Tuesday,” White explained on MSNBC, “read a lot of corporate CEO names that had no idea they were a part of this effort to reopen the economy, didn’t give anybody really time to plan to be on these calls. Among the Wall Street executives, a lot of them had earnings yesterday and couldn’t be on the call. One JP Morgan executive tried for 20 minutes to get in and couldn’t.”

“What they’re telling the president is, yes, of course we want the economy reopened. We want businesses to start up again,” he continued. “But we cannot do that, our employees will not feel safe until the testing regime is much more widespread, until people don’t feel like they’re going out to be guinea pigs to get the virus. There’s simply no way to do it that way. Make people feel safe. Make business owners feel like demand is going to be there and then you can start to reopen. So the whole thing was slap dash in the way it was set up, and slap dash in the way it was executed and I think Trump heard a lot of things maybe he didn’t want to hear.” Continue reading.

Thousands of OSHA complaints filed against companies for virus workplace safety concerns, records show

Washington Post logoEmployees told regulators about failures to follow social distancing, lack of protective gear and other issues at scores of U.S. employers

People working during the pandemic have filed thousands of complaints regarding their exposure to the novel coronavirus and a lack of safeguards at their places of employment, according to records obtained under a Freedom of Information request and reviewed by The Washington Post.

The employee complaints offer a snapshot of the fear experienced by the Americans compelled to work while the majority have been urged to stay at home, and they arise from an array of workplaces: hospitals, airlines, construction companies, call centers, grocery stores, beauty spas, pharmacies and shipping companies, among others
Collectively, the records depict the desperation of the employees as well as their frustrations with employers who in their view were at best simply unprepared for a pandemic and at worst callously unconcerned with worker safety. Continue reading.