Trump’s failed coronavirus response has led to a record surge in new cases and inadequate contact tracing to contain the virus. While Trump protects himself, he has left the American people vulnerable to the virus.
Dr. Fauci said contact tracing is “not going well” after the Trump administration failed to provide an adequate national testing strategy.
CNBC: “There’s just a handful of interventions proven to curb the spread of the coronavirus. One of them is contact tracing, and ‘it’s not going well,’ White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday.”
CNBC: “In lieu of federal leadership on tracing, underfunded and overwhelmed local health departments have scrambled to get the necessary systems in place, contact tracing specialists who previously spoke with CNBC said.”
Trump’s failed coronavirus response has led to a record surge in new infections. In fact, only two states are reporting a decline in cases.
Washington Post: “With Trump leading the way, America’s coronavirus failures exposed by record surge in new infections”
CNN: “Only two US states are reporting a decline in new coronavirus cases compared to last week: Connecticut and Rhode Island. A rise was reported in a staggering 36 states, including Florida, which some experts have cautioned could be the next epicenter for infections.”
Trump continues to hold a different standard for protecting himself than he does for the rest of the country.
CNN: “President Donald Trump appears ready to move on from a still-raging coronavirus pandemic — skipping the first White House task force briefing in months and moving the event out of the White House itself. But the measures meant to protect him from catching the virus have scaled up dramatically.”
The Trump campaign reversed measures meant to encourage social distancing at his rally and Pence had more than 100 people perform for him without masks.
Washington Post: “In the hours before President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, his campaign directed the removal of thousands of ‘Do Not Sit Here, Please!’ stickers from seats in the arena that were intended to establish social distance between rallygoers, according to video and photos obtained by The Washington Post and a person familiar with the event.”
CNN: “A choir of more than 100 people performed without masks at a robustly attended event in Texas at the First Baptist Church in Dallas on Sunday that featured a speech by Vice President Mike Pence.”
It seems as if it happened ages ago, but you may recall that at the beginning of the year the United States came very close to going to war with Iran. There had been a number of skirmishes over the previous months and Iran’s proxies had been lobbing rocket attacks at bases in Iraq, none of which was particularly unusual. But after an American contractor named Nawres Waleed Hamid was killed in one of those attacks, the Trump administration decided to retaliate by assassinating Iran’s most illustrious military leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani. It was an extreme provocation and only the surprising forbearance of the Iranian leadership prevented the region from being plunged into war.
After some very tense days in both countries, the crisis passed and we immediately turned our attention to President Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.
At the time, Trump was reported to have been so upset by the death of this American contractor that he simply couldn’t let it pass, so he almost launched a major new war in the Middle East. It’s interesting, then, that the New York Times reported this past weekend that Trump was told that Russian agents had put a bounty on American soldiers’ lives in Afghanistan and didn’t even bother to issue a warning to the Russian government.
Of course, Trump’s record on empathy for the deaths of American troops, even soldiers in distant lands, isn’t exactly stellar, so isn’t entirely surprising. His excuse for the Soleimani assassination was an anomaly. But still, putting a bounty on Americans is an extremely provocative act; one would expect some kind of response.
According to the Times, and as later confirmed by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, Trump was briefed on this in March, but made a great show of insisting that Russia be allowed back into the G7 throughout this past spring so he didn’t seem overly concerned. Setting aside the pretext for the Soleimani assassination, he is typically very cynical about these things. (Recall that he excused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s killing of journalists by saying, “Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too.”)
Since the story broke, Trump and the White House have offered a number of responses. Trump tweeted that he knew nothing about this and was never briefed. He also mischaracterized the story and said, oddly, that “there have not been many attacks on us.” Is the thinking here that even if it did happen, we didn’t lose many people, so what’s the big deal?
…Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump Administration. With Corrupt Joe Biden & Obama, Russia had a field day, taking over important parts of Ukraine – Where’s Hunter? Probably just another phony Times hit job, just like their failed Russia Hoax. Who is their “source”?
The president carried on with his weekend, playing golf with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tweeting incessantly about the arrests of four people for defacing a monument, and otherwise acting entirely unconcerned about this story.
His completely unqualified and sycophantic minion John Ratcliffe, the new director of national intelligence, weighed in to say that Trump hadn’t actually been briefed. The White House did the same. You’ll note that Ratcliffe didn’t deny that the story was accurate, which means the intelligence community really dropped the ball if they didn’t bother to tell the president about it, especially while he was out there pushing hard for Russia to be allowed back into the G7.
"The White House statement addressing this issue earlier today, which denied such a briefing occurred, was accurate. The New York Times reporting, and all other subsequent news reports about such an alleged briefing are inaccurate.” (2/2)
Trump finally stepped up on Sunday night and suggested that the whole thing is a hoax, as we all knew he would.
Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!! https://t.co/cowOmP7T1S
Since Graham had spent the day on the golf course with Trump, this is a strange exchange. Did the subject not come up? But more importantly, in none of these tweets and statements does the president indicate even the slightest interest in finding out more about this. Nor does anyone seem even slightly interested in why the intelligence professionals wouldn’t tell the president about such a thing, even if it were just a rumor. The story says they found piles of American money — and you know Trump would at least be interested in that.
We know for sure Trump doesn’t read his daily briefings, and we know that he gets angry whenever someone brings up Russia in the truncated oral briefings he prefers. You may remember that he also wanted to personally hold peace talks with the Taliban at Camp David, planning a surprise summit that fell apart after the Taliban killed an American and 11 other people in a car bombing just before the meeting. (I wonder if that one was part of the bounty scheme?) Perhaps intelligence briefers didn’t want to combine bad news by suggesting that Russia and the Taliban, Trump’s supposed partners in peace, were actually sabotaging him.
It’s also possible that, just as Trump was so consumed by his “big trade deal” with Chinese President Xi Jinping last January that he ignored all the alarm bells about the growing threat of a pandemic, this spring he was obsessed with planning his big G7 pageant hosted by the U.S. (but sadly, not at his Doral golf resort, as he had once proposed). He wanted to show off for Putin, get him back in the club and put on a big extravaganza just before his convention. He didn’t want to get into a beef over something silly like a few dead American soldiers. How would that help him get re-elected?
Considering Trump’s total lack of empathy for the 128,000-plus people who have died of COVID-19 in just four months, I think there’s also a good chance that his aides told him about this, he only halfway listened and didn’t much care. After all, it’s obvious that Trump is more concerned about saving the statues of dead Confederate generals than he is about saving the lives of American citizens.
Little did we know, back in 2016, that when Trump blithely excused Putin’s assassinations of his own people by saying “our country does plenty of killing, too,” he saw that as part of his job description.
Chris Hayes was pissed last week. He raged at the Trump administration’s many failures. People have made tremendous sacrifices for months and his government still doesn’t have the testing and contact tracing capacity we need.
His guest, former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, spoke about the disaster in Florida and brought up just how bad our contact tracing is.
9,000 new cases in one day. 29,000 in the last seven days. It’s a disaster. It’s a catastrophic failure of leadership. Of our Governor, of our President. The mayors are scrambling to try to do the right thing.
We don’t have contact tracers as you pointed out. Listen. Rwanda, in Africa, has 12 million people. They have 60,000 contact tracers. We’re not even in the ball game.
I’ve been writing about contact tracing issues since the beginning of this pandemic. I wrote “Let’s Track The COVIDIOT Protesters” back in April. By now I thought I’d be writing about privacy concerns in a national database. But it hasn’t been implemented because of another massive failure of Trump admin.
In April I though the Michigan state police should have enforced the Governor’s executive orders about wearing masks and social distancing. They didn’t, possibly because the protesters were white–and armed.
The state also had the ability to trace the people protesting the lockdown in Lansing. They didn’t. However, Dr. Rob Davidson (@DrRobDavidson) and my friends at the Committee to Protect Medicare did. To be more exact, they traced the cell phones of 300 of the 3,000 at the protest. The data suggested the people at the Lansing protest spread COVID-19 throughout the state.
Contact tracing should to be used for public health and not co-opted for other uses. I attended a conference on technology, public health and the pandemic recently. (Flatten the Curve Summitt) They stressed all contact tracing programs must have oversight designed in so misuse can be detected and stopped.
They also discussed privacy and apps on smart phones but pointed out not everyone has one. The good news is the basics of contact tracing can be done with humans talking to humans.
Some worried the Trump administration would use the data in a national database to go after their enemies and deport “illegals.” Instead the Trump admin just didn’t develop a national contact tracing program at all. Contact tracing was pushed off to the states and then wasn’t sufficiently funded
Then the Trump Campaign held a big rally of unmasked people standing close together while shouting about their freedums. This is a textbook superspreader event.
6,000 at Trump’s Tulsa Rally, June 20
Dozens of Secret Service officers and agents told to self-quarantine after Trump’s Tulsa rally, June 24 (link)
The failure of Trump’s campaign to keep their own people infection free will lead to more infections and deaths.
In the Washington Post article you can already see how the campaign staff are stalling. Every day they delay more can get infected.
How long is the incubation period for the disease?
Two to 14 days, but typically five days.
When does someone become contagious?
Two days before showing symptoms.
From COVID-19 Contact Tracing course offered by Johns Hopkins University (link)
We don’t know yet if the campaign even turned over their attendee data to the understaffed Oklahoma State Department of Health.
State Plans to Hire Fewer Contact Tracers Than Experts Recommend
Trevor Brown OklahomaWatch (Maybe Campaign head Brad Parscale @parscale dumped the million ticket requests on them and said, “Sorry about all those TikToc users!”)
A functioning CDC or state department of health could use the infection rate at rallies to prove the dangers of maskless indoor shout fests. But the Trump admin does NOT want to know the results of testing and tracing of people at the rallies.
Reporter at Trump’s Tulsa rally tests positive for COVID-19, June 26 (link)
Paul Monies @pmonies was the Oklahoma Watch reporter who tested positive.
Friends, I tested positive for #COVID19. I’m pretty surprised. I have zero symptoms (so far) and I feel fine. In fact, I ran 5 miles this morning. I spent the last few hours calling people I know I’ve been in contact with in the last 14 days. Be safe out there. 😷 https://t.co/oGpKsGs5u0
Trump held two rallies in Tucson and Phoenix where about 9,000 gathered indoors to cheer and chant. Most didn’t wear masks.
When the news shows covered the Trump rallies they discussed concern about the spread of COVID-19. It was met online with classic Whataboutism. “Where was your concern when you were praising BLM protests?!!!”
I’ve always been concerned about big gathering. Was that maskless person on the left in the photo infected? If people were exposed to COVID-19 at a protest or a rally there should be contact tracing so that the people exposed can take steps to be tested and to self isolate.
Protesting the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, in Brookside neighborhood near 34th Street and Peoria Avenue, on Saturday, May 30, 2020. CORY YOUNG/ Tulsa World
Both groups should be traced. It’s not supposed to be political, it’s about public health.
In this video I combined an interview with the Director of Arizona’s Department of Health Services, Dr. Cara Christ, discussing contact tracing with video from the Phoenix rally. I then followed it with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey telling people to expect a call from public health.
Temperature tested before the rally. Masks REQUIRED during testing, then 95% of the people TOOK THEM OFF during the rally. This station COULD have been a COVID testing location, but Trump didn’t want it and OSDH didn’t provide it.
Once it was revealed people infected with COVID-19 attended the rally the contact tracing for everyone should have started–not just for Trump’s advance team and Secret Service.
Contact tracing is just another part of this pandemic Trump botched because he doesn’t want to know the number of infected, even if it will save the lives of his own followers. (Remember the attack on Saddam Hussein? “He gassed his own people!”)
If the “Right” people die–in the right way–things change
Eventually we will get a general idea of how many of Trump’s rally attendees were suicide bombers and how many were just bomb carriers. If we had enough contact tracing capacity before these events lives could have been saved.
In the future I hope Governors will ban indoor, maskless rallies. But based on their past actions they will only do so if enough of the “Right” people die (i.e. white men and women who are Trump supporters).
To make a ban happen they will need hard evidence, otherwise the right will cry “We didn’t KNOW if they got it from that event! They might have gotten it from some place else! Like a BLM protest!” They are very good at working the scientist refs. A good scientist has to acknowledge they can’t know for certain if a person was infected at the event unless that person
1) Tested negative before the event
2) Only attended the event
3) Went into 14 day quarantine
4) Tested positive following the 2-14 day incubation period.
(These steps are EXACTLY what OSDH suggested people do on June 16th!)
I don’t have a lot of hope that we’ll see any good contact tracing following the two Trump rallies. But the one good thing that has happened with all the attention on the maskless indoor shoutfest is that Mike Pence just canceled his rallies in Tucson and Florida!
"His point in tweeting out that video was to stand with his supporters, who are oftentimes demonized," says @PressSec, on Fox, explaining why Trump tweeted out a video of a supporter at The Villages yelling "white power."
I don’t think McEneney knows exactly what she’s saying but we do. He liked what he saw and he wanted to show solidarity. And what he saw was an old guy defiantly shouting “white power” at his critics which is exactly what Trump would like to do. And, in fact, it’s pretty much what he does all the time.
A P.T. Barnum quote comes immediately to mind. And another from H.L. Mencken. And perhaps Mark Twain and a pal playing American rube-tourists in Rome complaining about the poor quality of Christopher Columbus’ penmanship. Gazing upon an Egyptian mummy at the Vatican museum, the pair ask their tour guide, “Is he dead?” before demanding he trot out any corpses the museum has on hand fresher than this desiccated specimen.
It is hard to know how much the acting president takes his followers for easy marks and how much he appeals to them because he is one of them, only more shamelessly dishonest. Most likely, they are so devoted because they see themselves in him.
Sacha Baron Cohen knows easy marks when he sees them. He infiltrated an alt-right rally over the weekend and took the stage to lead an offensive sing-along:
It looks like actor and notorious prankster Sacha Baron Cohen infiltrated an alt-right rally in Olympia, Washington on Saturday and had people sing along to a highly offensive song. The comedian disguised himself as a bluegrass singer and took to the stage at the rally organized by the far-right militia group the Washington Three Percenters dressed in overalls and a fake beard. And he began singing a song that included lines about injecting former President Barack Obama, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Hillary Clinton, the World Health Organization, CNN, and anyone wearing a mask, among others, with “the Wuhan Flu” or chopping them up “like the Saudis do.” Some members of the audience seemed to be happy to sing along and cheer the offensive lyrics.
No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
But they love a good sing-along.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
Dr. Birx just said this unironically in Texas as cases spike to record levels there: "It was a very serious and safe opening plan, and you can see the impact of the opening plan and how it worked out." pic.twitter.com/xHk6ifhcEJ
That is ridiculous. Texas did not follow the CDC guidelines and opened too early. The governor even defended people who defied the lock down orders and wouldn’t allow local officials to issue orders. And now the state is exploding with COVID. I don’t know what Birx is on about but she is not reliabe.
I wrote about Birx months ago. She’s part of the problem, not the solution:
White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, with Vice President Mike Pence, left, and Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield, speaks during a coronavirus briefing with Diagnostic Lab CEOs in at the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Wednesday, March 4, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
If you’ve been following the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak, you probably saw at least some snippets of President Trump’s visit to the CDC last Friday. It will stand as one of the most astonishing appearances by this or any other president — and that’s saying something. When asked if he regretted firing the entire staff of the Office of Pandemic Preparation, Trump said, “This is something that you can never really think is going to happen.” He said that everyone who wants to be tested for this virus can get tested, which is not even close to true. He called Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state, who is on the front lines dealing with this epidemic, a “snake.”
He made it clear that he wants to cook the numbers so it doesn’t look as if the nation is in the midst of an epidemic. This has been obvious from the outset, but for the president to come out and say it is something else again:
"The [coronavirus] tests are all perfect. Like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. This was not a perfect as that, but pretty good." — is Trump referring to the transcript of his phone call with the Ukrainian president here? pic.twitter.com/FU5XxPTu7Z
You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, “How do you know so much about this?” Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President.
As Wired science reporter Adam Rogers wrote:
As a reporter, in general I’m not supposed to say something like this, but: The president’s statements to the press were terrifying. That press availability was a repudiation of good science and good crisis management from inside one of the world’s most respected scientific institutions.
Let’s put that another way: The CDC was considered one of the world’s most respected scientific institutions. It has not been covering itself in glory during this crisis.
The most unnerving aspect of the government response so far has not been Trump’s gibberish. He’s in over his head and it shows, as usual. And we know from his response to Hurricane Maria and other natural disasters that his only concern in a crisis is for his own political well-being. But I wouldn’t have expected to hear the director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, laud Trump like a Fox News pundit:
"First I want to thank you, for your decisive leadership … I also want to thank you for coming here today … I think that's the most important thing I want to say" –CDC Director Redfield slathers Dear Leader-style praise on Trump during his tour of CDC headquarters pic.twitter.com/erxQxbYh1x
It’s a full-blown ritual at this point for members of the Trump cabinet and Republicans in Congress to genuflect to the president as if he were a 15th-century pope. And we know that public health experts have had to tread very softly in order not to upset him.
Still, it was surprising to hear such a slavering tribute from a scientist in the midst of a global health crisis. Likewise, it was strange to hear the highly esteemed U.S. global AIDS coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, make similar comments when she was introduced as part of the coronavirus task force back on March 2:
It is clear the early work of the president over travel restrictions and the ability quarantine has bought us the time and space to have this task force be very effective. I have never worked with such incredible scientists and thoughtful policy leaders…
It seemed just a bit over the top. But these two weren’t the only ones:
Here's Surgeon General Jerome Adams telling Jake Tapper that President Trump "sleeps less than I do and he's healthier than what I am." 😳 pic.twitter.com/bDpQWWAgUU
There’s something important happening under the surface here. It may not simply be that these health policy professionals are trying to keep the kooky president happy so they can do their work on behalf of the country. They may be Trump true believers.
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, for instance, is a Mike Pence crony who previously served as the Indiana state health commissioner. He was intimately involved in the horrific HIV outbreak in that state, where Pence refused to authorize a needle exchange program until a number of people had died unnecessarily. Naturally, Trump appointed him surgeon general.
Redfield and Birx are both evangelical Christians who have been associated with HIV research for many years, going back to the 1980s. Birx runs PEPFAR, George W. Bush’s global AIDS initiative, and both she and Redfield have been involved with Children’s AIDS Fund International, which lobbies for abstinence-only sex education around the world.
The Washington Post reported back in 2018 that they belong to a network run by an important power broker in the evangelical world:
Evangelical activist Shepherd Smith has spent more than three decades cultivating relationships with leading AIDS researchers and policymakers to promote abstinence-only sex education and other programs. Those connections now could influence government programs and funding within the Trump administration. Among the most prominent: Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
[His wife] Anita Smith is now a consultant within PEPFAR to Deborah Birx, a physician and ambassador at large who oversees the program’s estimated $5 billion annual budget. Birx is also a former board member of Children’s AIDS Fund International and served until she was hired by the CDC in 2005, a PEPFAR spokesman said.
Anita Smith was hired by Birx to “improve prevention programs aimed at preteen girls.” I’m pretty sure we know what she recommended.
Redfield and Birx both served in the military doing AIDS research in the mid-1980s. Redfield is well-known for recommending measures that were considered extreme even within the Reagan administration, including the forced quarantine of AIDS patients. He later had a financial interest in an HIV vaccine that didn’t work, but which he continued to push. Birx, on the other hand, has maintained a stellar reputation.
To be clear, none of this means that these people aren’t qualified for the jobs they hold. They both have medical degrees and relevant experience. But they seem to be part of a conservative subculture of evangelical Christians who have found a foothold in the Trump administration clustered around Mike Pence’s office. Along millions of other evangelicals, it appears they really believe in Donald Trump.
Setting ideology aside, however, what Trump wants these people to do — cover up his own ignorance and incompetence — is totally at odds with what they must know is best for the health of the American public. Is their worshipful admiration for this man blinding them to the need to communicate honestly with the American people about this crisis? Because that would explain a lot.
President Trump and his campaign team are grappling with how to resuscitate his imperiled reelection effort amid a wave of polling that shows him badly trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and losing traction even among core constituencies.
Some Trump advisers and allies are privately pushing for sweeping changes to the campaign, including the idea of a major staff shake-up and trying to convince the president to be more disciplined in his message and behavior.
But so far, the campaign has settled only on incremental changes — such as hiring and elevating a handful of operatives who worked on Trump’s upset victory in 2016 — and has yet to settle on a clear message for his reelection. Campaign officials and other advisers are also still struggling with how to best focus their attacks on Biden, which so far have been scattershot and have failed to curb his rise among voters.
And then there’s Trump himself, who has derailed his team’s desired themes on an almost daily basis — deploying racist rhetoric and mounting incendiary attacks on critics amid a surging coronavirus pandemic, an economic crisis and roiling protests over police brutality.
Numerous national polls show Trump losing significant ground with seniors and among white voters, including both those with and without four-year college degrees. He has also slipped among white evangelical voters. According to new New York Times/Siena College polls, Trump is at least slightly behind Biden in six states that he won in 2016 and are pivotal to his reelection path — including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where he trails by double digits.
“You can’t win with these numbers. They’re atrocious numbers,” said Edward J. Rollins, co-chairman of the pro-Trump super PAC Great America and the former campaign manager for Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign.
“The president must straighten his campaign out and convey to the American people that he can move forward and lead,” Rollins said. “He’s got to go out and add 10 points pretty quick. If he can do that, he’ll win. If not, Biden is sitting there as the alternative.”
Trump’s advisers and allies have grown frustrated with some of the president’s incendiary and divisive behavior and comments in recent weeks and are dismayed by the polls, including some of their own internal surveys that also show him losing to Biden. The president also came under fire for a June 20 rally in Tulsa that failed to attract much of a crowd even as the campaign downplayed coronavirus distancing guidelines.
But many Trump allies remain deeply skeptical of the public polling — pointing to 2016 polls in key states that underestimated Trump’s support — and say the internal polling and modeling that they’re sharing with the president is less grim than the public surveys. Multiple campaign and Republican officials also asserted that they have seen no serious erosion in Trump’s political base.
“Over the past four months, the president’s support among Republican voters has ranged between 90 and 94 percent consistently,” said Tony Fabrizio, the campaign’s chief pollster, referring to the campaign’s internal polls. “As of our most recently polling, it stands at 94 percent.”AD
Fabrizio added that any erosion is among independent voters, who always swing back and forth between the two candidates.
Four recent national public polls show between 87 percent and 91 percent of Republicans approving of Trump.
Trump has polled advisers on whether he should make changes to the campaign, and several White House and campaign officials said there were ongoing discussions on how to improve the president’s political standing.
The president has responded to the turmoil by emphasizing his nativist and base instincts, attempting to rally his core supporters through controversial and racially tinged comments and tweets.
The latest example came Sunday, when Trump retweeted a video that included a supporter proclaiming “white power” in response to counterprotesters and calling his backers in Florida retirement community where the demonstration occurred “great people.” Trump later deleted the tweet and a White House spokesman said the president had not heard the “white power” shout.AD
He has twice referred to the deadly coronavirus, which originated in China, derisively as the “kung flu.” In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Monday, he baselessly accused former president Barack Obama of “treason.” And he has dismissed the racial justice protesters — who took to the streets after the killing of George Floyd in police custody — as “hoodlums,” “thugs,” and even “terrorists,” promising “retribution” in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Thursday night.
Advisers, meanwhile, are frustrated with the president’s tendency to portray himself as the victim, and have urged him to stop the public displays of self-pity.
“If the election was today, we are in big trouble,” according to one person close to Trump, who like others requested anonymity to share a candid assessment. “Thankfully it is not.”
He’s not going to change. Their only hope is that something external intervenes to either make Biden unacecpetable or rally the country around him. Asteroid hit maybe?
Obviously, the way they are planning to win is by cheating. But it’s going to be much harder to steal it if they are behind by 10 points. Still, not impossible. The country is being devastated by the pandemic and the economic destruction that goes along with it. Things may very well be so chaotic by the time November comes around that they will be able to manipulate the results and there won’t be much of anything anyone else can do about it.
If I thought Trump was capable of strategic thinking, I might even think they are mishandling the pandemic so badly for that purpose.
not convinced yet; he’s got time and he’s running against an opponent who is literally hiding in his basement. Plus the public isn’t focusing yet on just how left wing @JoeBiden has become, so much so, he can bring himself to denounce rioting.
I’m glad those Arizonans are going outside to party. It’s much better than being in some bar. But none of them are wearing masks and the virus is exploding in their state right now.
Temperatures were expected to rise to over 100 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) on Sunday along the Salt River east of Phoenix. On Saturday, dozens of people climbed into inflatable inner tubes with coolers and took to the water to escape the heat. Very few wore masks.
Texas is taking this much more seriously:
Texas shuttered tubing and rafting business on Friday and some beaches in Florida are closing again ahead of next weekend’s Fourth of July holiday to try to curb the rising outbreak in those states.
California’s Governor Newsom is threatening to shut down the state again since they’ve found that many businesses are not following the guidelines and our numbers are exploding. It looks as though all that pain we went through in the spring may have been for nothing.
Here is an interesting chart which shows the case loads per capita of all the states. It gives a slightly different picture of the epidemic. What it doesn’t show is the dramatic rise in cases per capita in the three big states California, Texas and Florida over the past couple of weeks:
As COVID explodes across the country, this is what the president was obsessing over on his twitter feed yesterday:
I’m not the first to say it but it can’t be said enough: if only Trump cared as much about living Americans and he does about statues of dead confederates.
