Tag: Trump trying to weasel out of blame for COVID deaths

Trump is peddling a new fake scandal — but reality is causing him big problems

AlterNet logoOn Monday afternoon, President Trump tried once again to declare victory in the fight against what he calls “the invisible enemy” by holding one of his so-called briefings in the Rose Garden to celebrate America’s allegedly successful testing program. As one would expect, trying to sell the assembled press on such a blatant lie did not go well. At best, the testing program has been “anemic and spotty,” as former President Obama has put it, and the long delays and dithering in the response have led to the deaths of 83,000 people, and counting, within just a couple of months.

It was a sad and perfunctory performance, ending with a racist attack on an Asian-American reporter, after which Trump flounced off the stage like a disappointed second runner-up at one of his sleazy pageants.

He is clearly very upset that the medical community hasn’t devised a magic cure and that the virus isn’t succumbing to his repeated exhortations to “just go away.” The grand reopening of the economy is a chaotic mess and the “numbers” he’s so obsessed with keep going in the wrong direction. But his friends in the media and his top henchman at the Department of Justice, Attorney General Bill Barr, have come up with something thrilling to distract him from his troubles and make the pain go away. Continue reading.

McConnell’s claim that Obama left behind no ‘game plan’ for the coronavirus outbreak

Washington Post logo“They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that’s no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this.”

— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), in an online discussion hosted by the Trump campaign, May 11, 2020

There is little continuity in the top levels of the U.S. government when one political party replaces the presidential administration led by another. The natural inclination is to ignore much of the work left behind by the previous folks — and to reinvent the wheel all over again.

But former Obama administration officials cried foul after McConnell’s comments. “We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook…. that they ignored,” tweeted Ron Klain, the former “Ebola czar” in the Obama administration.

What’s going on? Continue reading.

Pompeo is Trump attack dog on China, COVID-19

The Hill logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo has positioned himself as the Trump administration’s most aggressive China critic, pushing the argument that Beijing holds responsibility for the coronavirus pandemic.

He’s drawn the ire of Chinese officials and state-backed media, who label him a “liar” and have called him “the common enemy of mankind” for his attacks on the Communist Party, shifting their attacks directly on the secretary and away from earlier accusations speculating the U.S. military spread COVID-19.

And despite mixed messages from U.S. officials and pushback from allies, the secretary continues to speculate whether the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese laboratory as he demands a global investigation. Continue reading.

Poor Donald Trump has no fixer to make COVID-19 go away

AlterNet logoDonald Trump said something Friday that should have ended his re-election prospects the moment it left his mouth:

“I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests. This is going to go away without a vaccine, it’s gonna go away, and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully.”

Of course, viruses don’t just “go away” regardless of the amount of propaganda or wishful thinking you throw at them. His theory, however, is telling. Trump’s strategy from the beginning of this crisis has been to minimize the threat and wish it away. His refusal to initiate a comprehensive federal testing-and-contact-tracing program has as much to do with his refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of the pandemic as it does with the Republican laissez-faire approach to public policy. Continue reading.

Trump plays down coronavirus testing as U.S. falls far short of level scientists say is needed

Washington Post logoPresident Trump is increasingly dismissing the consensus of health experts, scientists and some of his Republican allies that widespread testing is key to the safe end of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus, saying Friday that “testing isn’t necessary” and is an imperfect guide.

The president has played down the need for testing as he overrides public health recommendations that would prolong the closures of schools, businesses and much of daily life. Although he is now tested every day with a rapid-result machine, Trump has questioned the value of extensive testing as the gap between available capacity and the amount that would be required to meet public health benchmarks has become clearer.

Trump’s comments came as a second employee in the White House complex tested positive for the coronavirus, a development that prompted increased testing for staff and other precautions not generally available to most Americans. Continue reading.

Fact check: Trump falsely claims Obama left him ‘nothing’ in the national stockpile

Trump has repeatedly said an empty stockpile hampered his pandemic response. Budget cuts had affected it, but shelves weren’t bare, former officials said.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly complained that he inherited an empty national stockpile from the Obama administration, hamstringing his pandemic response because of a lack of emergency supplies.

“The cupboard was bare. The other administration, the last administration, left us nothing,” Trump told ABC News’ David Muir on Tuesday. “We didn’t have ventilators. We didn’t have medical equipment. The tests were broken — you saw that. We had broken tests. They left us nothing. We’ve taken it and we’ve built an incredible stockpile, a stockpile like we’ve never had before.”

It’s a sweeping claim Trump has made several times when faced with criticism that the government was slow to help states hit hard by the coronavirus and in dire need to supplies like personal protective equipment for front line workers and ventilators for an influx of patients — and one that former Obama administration and past news reports dispute. Continue reading.

Fact-checking Trump’s knocks at Obama in his Fox town hall

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s virtual town hall on Fox News on May 3 sounded like an oral reading of our Trump database of false or misleading claims (or our upcoming book, “Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth,” being published June 2 by Scribner). There were so many old chestnuts, from his false claims about NATO spending to his tale that the United States has spent $8 trillion on Middle East wars to his ahistorical bragging that he had built the greatest economy in the history of the world.

But the president’s favorite foil is his predecessor, Barack Obama. Anything Obama did is inherently suspect, in Trump’s telling, and anything Trump has done is surely superior.

We’ve also covered many of these in the past, such as his attacks on Obama’s successful handling of the swine flu pandemic. But here are two repeated claims that we have not had the opportunity to unravel previously. We will deal with them quickly in this roundup, so we won’t be awarding Pinocchios. Continue reading.

Fauci: No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab

In an exclusive interview, the face of America’s COVID-19 response cautions against the rush for states to reopen, and offers his tips for handling the pandemic’s information deluge.

ANTHONY “TONY” FAUCI has become the scientific face of America’s COVID-19 response, and he says the best evidence shows the virus behind the pandemic was not made in a lab in China.

Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shot down the discussion that has been raging among politicians and pundits, calling it “a circular argument” in a conversation Monday with National Geographic.

“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,” Fauci says. Based on the scientific evidence, he also doesn’t entertain an alternate theory—that someone found the coronavirus in the wild, brought it to a lab, and then it accidentally escaped. Continue reading.

Trump steps up effort to blame China for coronavirus

The Hill logoThe Trump administration is escalating an effort to blame China for the novel coronavirus pandemic as global pressure grows on Beijing to cooperate with an investigation into the origins of the outbreak.

President Trump, who has endured consistent scrutiny for his own lagged response to the virus domestically, has accused China of covering up the outbreak and suggested that the virus wouldn’t have spread globally if Beijing had been more transparent to begin with.

“I think they made a horrible mistake and they didn’t want to admit it. We wanted to go in. They didn’t want us there,” Trump said during a Fox News virtual town hall Sunday. “This virus should not have spread all over the world. They should have put it out.” Continue reading.