The Trump Pandemic
This has been sitting in my 'to do' list for a while. It's the long horror story we've been living all these months and it includes links ['the receipts' ].
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
On July 17, President Donald Trump sat for a Fox News interview at the White House. At the time, nearly 140,000 Americans were dead from the novel coronavirus. The interviewer, Chris Wallace, showed Trump a video clip in which Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned of a difficult fall and winter ahead. Trump dismissed the warning. He scoffed that experts had misjudged the virus all along. “ Everybody thought this summer it would go away ,” said Trump. “They used to say the heat, the heat was good for it and it really knocks it out, remember? So they got that one wrong.”
Trump’s account was completely backward. Redfield and other U.S. public health officials had never promised that heat would knock out the virus. In fact, they had cautioned against that assumption . The person who had held out the false promise of a warm-weather reprieve, again and again , was Trump . And he hadn’t gotten the idea from any of his medical advisers. He had gotten it from Xi Jinping , the president of China, in a phone call in February.
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Trump never prepared for a pandemic. For years, he had multiple warnings — briefings , reports , simulations , intelligence assessments —that a crisis such as this one was likely and that the government wasn’t ready for it. In April, he admitted that he was informed of the risks: “ I always knew that pandemics are one of the worst things that could happen .” But when the virus arrived, the federal government was still ill-equipped to deal with it. According to Trump, “ We had no ventilators. We had no testing. We had nothing .”
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In early January, Trump was warned about a deadly new virus in China. He was also told that the Chinese government was understating the outbreak . ( See this timeline for a detailed chronology of what Trump knew and when he knew it. ) This was inconvenient, because Trump was about to sign a lucrative trade deal with Beijing. “We have a great relationship with China right now, so I don’t want to speak badly of anyone,” Trump told Laura Ingraham in a Fox News interview on Jan. 10. He added that he was looking forward to a second deal with Xi. When Ingraham asked about China’s violations of human rights, Trump begged off. “I’m riding a fine line because we’re making … great trade deals,” he pleaded.
Trump signed the deal on Jan. 15. He lauded Xi and said previous American presidents , not Xi, were at fault for past troubles between the two countries. Three days later, Alex Azar, Trump’s secretary of health and human services, phoned him with an update on the spread of the virus . On Jan. 21, the CDC announced the first infection in the United States . Two of the government’s top health officials—Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases—said the virus was beginning to circulate around the world .
Trump would later claim that he saw from the outset how grim the situation was. That was clear, he recalled, in the “ initial numbers coming out from China .” But at the time, he told Americans everything was fine. “ We’re in great shape ,” he assured Maria Bartiromo in a Fox Business interview on Jan. 22. “China’s in good shape, too.” He preferred to talk about trade instead. “The China deal is amazing, and we’ll be starting Phase Two very soon,” he said. On CNBC, Joe Kernen asked Trump whether there were any “worries about a pandemic.” “ No, not at all ,” the president replied. “We have it totally under control.” When Kernen asked whether the Chinese were telling the whole truth about the virus, Trump said they were. “I have a great relationship with President Xi,” he boasted. “We just signed probably the biggest deal ever made.”
The crisis in China grew. In late January, Trump’s medical advisers agreed with his national security team that he should suspend travel from China to the United States. But Trump resisted . He had spent months cultivating a relationship with Xi and securing the trade deal. He was counting on China to buy American goods and boost the U.S. economy, thereby helping him win reelection . He had said this to Xi explicitly, in a conversation witnessed by then–National Security Adviser John Bolton. Trump also worried that a travel ban would scare the stock market . But by the end of the month, airlines were halting flights to China anyway. On Jan. 31, Trump gave in.
His advisers knew the ban would only buy time. They wanted to use that time to fortify America. But Trump had no such plans. On Feb. 1, he recorded a Super Bowl interview with Sean Hannity. Hannity pointed out that the number of known infections in the United States had risen to eight, and he asked Trump whether he was worried. The president brushed him off. “ We pretty much shut it down coming in from China ,” said Trump. That was false: Thanks to loopholes in the ban, the coronavirus strain that would engulf Washington state arrived from China about two weeks later . But at the time of the interview, the ban hadn’t even taken effect . The important thing, to Trump, was that he had announced the ban. He was less interested in solving the problem than in looking as though he had solved it. And in the weeks to come, he would argue that the ban had made other protective measures unnecessary.
T here were three logical steps to consider after suspending travel from China. The first was suspending travel from Europe. By Jan. 21, Trump’s advisers knew the virus was in France . By Jan. 31, they knew it had reached Italy, Germany, Finland, and the United Kingdom . From conversations with European governments , they also knew that these governments, apart from Italy, weren’t going to block travel from China. And they were directly informed that the flow of passengers from Europe to the United States far exceeded the normal flow of passengers from China to the United States. Trump’s deputy national security adviser, Matthew Pottinger, pleaded for a ban on travel from Europe, but other advisers said this would hurt the economy in an election year. Trump, persuaded by Pottinger’s opponents, refused to go along .
Not until March 11, six weeks after blocking travel from China, did Trump take similar action against Europe. In a televised address, he acknowledged that travelers from Europe had brought the disease to America . Two months later, based on genetic and epidemiological analyses , the CDC would confirm that Trump’s action had come too late , because people arriving from Europe—nearly 2 million of them in February, hundreds of whom were infected —had already accelerated the spread of the virus in the United States.
The second step was to gear up production of masks, ventilators, and other medical supplies. In early February, trade adviser Peter Navarro, biomedical research director Rick Bright, and other officials warned of impending shortages of these supplies. Azar would later claim that during this time, everyone in the administration was pleading for more equipment . But when Azar requested $4 billion to stock up, the White House refused . Trump dismissed the outcry for masks and ridiculed Democrats for “ forcing money ” on him to buy supplies. “They say, ‘Oh, he should do more,’ ” the president scoffed in an interview on Feb. 28. “ There’s nothing more you can do .”
The third and most important step was to test the population to see whether the virus was spreading domestically. That was the policy of South Korea, the global leader in case detection. Like the United States, South Korea had identified its first case on Jan. 20. But from there, the two countries diverged . By Feb. 3 South Korea had expanded its testing program , and by Feb. 27 it was checking samples from more than 10,000 people a day . The U.S. program, hampered by malfunctions and bureaucratic conflict , was nowhere near that. By mid-February, it was testing only about 100 samples a day. As a result, few infections were being detected.
Fauci saw this as a grave vulnerability. From Feb. 14 to March 11 , he warned in a dozen hearings , forums , and interviews that the virus might be spreading “ under the radar .” But Trump wasn’t interested. He liked having a low infection count—he bragged about it at rallies —and he understood that the official count would stay low if people weren’t tested. Trump had been briefed on the testing situation since late January and knew test production was delayed . But he insisted that “ anybody that wants a test can get a test ” and that “the tests are all perfect.” Later, he brushed off the delay in test production and said it had been “ quickly remedied .” He complained that additional tests, by exposing additional cases, made him “ look bad .”
To keep the numbers low, Trump was willing to risk lives. He figured that infections didn’t count if they were offshore, so he tried to prevent infected Americans from setting foot on American soil. In mid-February, even as he refused to bar Europeans from entering the United States, he exploded in anger when more than a dozen infected Americans were allowed to return from Japan. “ I hated to do it, statistically ,” he told Hannity. “You know, is it going to look bad?” In March, he opposed a decision to let passengers off a cruise ship in California . “I’d rather have the people stay” offshore, he explained , “because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship.”
When the spread of the virus in the United States could no longer be denied, Trump called it the “ invisible enemy .” But Trump had kept it invisible. The CDC would later acknowledge that due to woefully insufficient testing , the overwhelming majority of infections had gone undiagnosed . Models would show that by mid-February, there were hundreds of undetected infections in the United States for every known case. By the end of the month, there were thousands .
Trump didn’t just ignore warnings. He suppressed them. When Azar briefed him about the virus in January, Trump called him an “ alarmist ” and told him to stop panicking . When Navarro submitted a memo about the oncoming pandemic, Trump said he shouldn’t have put his words in writing . As the stock market rose in February, Trump discouraged aides from saying anything about the virus that might scare investors .
The president now casts himself as a victim of Chinese deception. In reality, he collaborated with Xi to deceive both the Chinese public and the American public. For weeks after he was briefed on the situation in China, including the fact that Beijing was downplaying the crisis, Trump continued to deny that the Chinese government was hiding anything . He implied that American experts had been welcomed in China and could vouch for Beijing’s information , which—as he would acknowledge months later —wasn’t true. On Twitter, Trump wrote tributes worthy of Chinese state propaganda. “Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation,” he proclaimed .
On Feb. 10, just before a rally in New Hampshire, Trump told Fox News host Trish Regan that the Chinese “ have everything under control . … We’re working with them. You know, we just sent some of our best people over there.” Then Trump walked onstage and exploited the political payoff of his deal with Xi. “Last month, we signed a groundbreaking trade agreement with China that will defeat so many of our opponents,” he boasted . He told the crowd that he had spoken with Xi and that the virus situation would “work out fine.” “By April,” he explained, “in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
Trump didn’t tell the crowd that he had heard this theory from Xi. But that’s what the record indicates. There’s no evidence of Trump peddling the warm-weather theory prior to Feb. 7, when he had an overnight phone call with Xi. Immediately after that call, Trump began to promote the idea . Later, he mentioned that Xi had said it . When Fauci, Messonnier, Azar, and Redfield were asked about the theory, they all said it was an unwise assumption , since the virus was new. The American president, against the judgment of his public health officials, was feeding American citizens a false assurance passed to him by the Chinese president.
Three days after the rally in New Hampshire, Trump defended China’s censorship of information about the virus. In a radio interview , Geraldo Rivera asked him, “Did the Chinese tell the truth about this?” Trump, in reply, suggested that he would have done what Xi had done. “I think they want to put the best face on it,” he said. “If you were running it … you wouldn’t want to run out to the world and go crazy and start saying whatever it is, ’cause you don’t want to create a panic.” Weeks later, Trump would also excuse Chinese disinformation about the virus, telling Fox News viewers that “ every country does it .”
Trump envied Xi. He wished he could control what Americans heard and thought, the way Xi could control China’s government and media. But Trump didn’t have authoritarian powers, and some of his subordinates wouldn’t shut up. As the virus moved from country to country, Fauci, Redfield, and Azar began to acknowledge that it would soon overtake the United States. On Feb. 25, when Messonnier said Americans should prepare for school and workplace closures , the stock market plunged . Trump, in a rage , called Azar and threatened to fire Messonnier. The next day, the president seized control of the administration’s press briefings on the virus.
On Feb. 26, shortly before Trump held his first briefing, aides gave him bad news : The CDC had just confirmed the first U.S. infection that couldn’t be traced to foreign travel. That meant the virus was spreading undetected. But when Trump took the podium, he didn’t mention what he had just been told. Instead, he assured the public that infections in the United States were “ going down, not up ” and that the case count “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” He predicted that America wouldn’t “ever be anywhere near” having to close schools or distribute more masks, since “our borders are very controlled.” When a reporter pointed out that the United States had tested fewer than 500 people , while South Korea had tested tens of thousands, Trump shot back, “We’re testing everybody that we need to test. And we’re finding very little problem.”
Trump’s eruption brought his subordinates into line. Shortly after the president’s angry call to Azar, Redfield told Congress that “ our containment strategy has been quite successful .” At her next briefing, for the first time, Messonnier praised Trump by name . She parroted his talking points: that the United States had “acted incredibly quickly, before most other countries” and had “aggressively controlled our borders.” Azar, in testimony before the House , went further. When he was asked to explain the discord between Trump and his medical advisers, the health secretary argued that Americans, like citizens of China, needed to be soothed. The president, Azar explained, was “trying to calm” the populace because, as “ we see in China, panic can be as big of an enemy as [the] virus .”
Having cowed his health officials, Trump next went after the press. He told Americans to ignore news reports about the virus. On Feb. 26 and Feb. 27, Trump denounced CNN and MSNBC for “ panicking markets ” by making the crisis “look as bad as possible.” He dismissed their reports as “fake” and tweeted, “ USA in great shape !” At a rally in South Carolina on Feb. 28, he accused the press of “hysteria,” called criticism of his virus policies a “hoax,” and insisted that only 15 Americans were infected. Weeks later, he would tell the public not to believe U.S. media reports about Chinese propaganda , either.
I n the three weeks after his Feb. 26 crackdown on his subordinates, Trump opposed or obstructed every response to the crisis. Doctors were pleading for virus tests and other equipment. Without enough tests to sample the population or screen people with symptoms, the virus was spreading invisibly . Fauci was desperate to accelerate the production and distribution of tests, but Trump said it wasn’t necessary. On a March 6 visit to the CDC, the president argued that instead of “going out and proactively looking to see where there’s a problem,” it was better to “ find out those areas just by sitting back and waiting .” A proactive CDC testing program, lacking presidential support, never got off the ground . Nor did a separate national testing plan—organized by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—which was supposed to be presented for Trump’s approval but, for unknown reasons, was never announced .
Trump also refused to invoke the Defense Production Act , which could have accelerated the manufacture of masks, gloves, ventilators, and other emergency equipment. In January, HHS had begun to plan for use of the DPA, and in early February, some members of Congress suggested it might be needed . But Trump declined to use it until the end of March . When he was asked why, he said that governors, not the president , were responsible for emergency supplies and that telling “companies what to do” might upset the “ business community .”
The president’s most decisive contribution to the death toll was his resistance to public health measures known as “mitigation”: social distancing, school and workplace closures, and cancellations of large gatherings. Messonnier and others had warned since early February that Americans needed to prepare for such measures. On Feb. 24, Trump’s health advisers decided it was time to act. But they couldn’t get a meeting with Trump, because he was off to India to discuss another trade deal . When he returned, he blew up at Messonnier for talking about closing schools and offices. The meeting to discuss mitigation was canceled .
Mitigation required leadership. The president needed to tell Americans that the crisis was urgent and that life had to change. Instead, he told them everything was fine. On March 2, he held another rally , this time in North Carolina. Before the rally, a TV interviewer asked him whether he was taking more precautions because of the virus. “Probably not so much,” Trump replied. “ I just shook hands with a whole lot of people back there .” The next day, he said it was safe to travel across the country, since “ there’s only one hot spot .” On March 5, at a Fox News town hall, he repeated, “ I shake anybody’s hand now. I’m proud of it .” On March 6, visiting the CDC, he was asked about the risks of packing people together at rallies. “ It doesn’t bother me at all ,” he said.
As schools and businesses began to close , Trump pushed back. On March 4, he dismissed a question about further closures, insisting that only “ a very small number ” of Americans were infected. On March 9, he tweeted that the virus had hardly killed anyone and that even in bad flu seasons, “ nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on .” Italy locked down its population, the NBA suspended its season , and states began to postpone elections . But through the middle of March, as advisers urged the president to endorse mitigation, he stood his ground . Finally, as the stock market continued to fall, Trump’s business friends agreed that it was time to yield. On March 16, he announced mitigation guidelines .
By then, the number of confirmed infections in the United States had surged past 4,000 . But that was a fraction of the real number. The CDC would later calculate that in the three weeks from “late February to early March, the number of U.S. COVID-19 cases increased more than 1,000-fold.” And researchers at Columbia University would find that the final two-week delay in mitigation, from March 1 to March 15, had multiplied the U.S. death toll by a factor of six . By May 3, the price of that delay was more than 50,000 lives .
On March 23, a week after he announced the mitigation guidelines, Trump began pushing to rescind them. “ We have to open our country ,” he demanded. He batted away questions about the opinions of his medical advisers. “If it were up to the doctors, they may say, ‘Let’s keep it shut down,’ ” he shrugged. But “you can’t do that with a country, especially the No. 1 economy.” The next day, the stock market soared, and Trump took credit . Investors “ see that we want to get our country open as soon as possible ,” he crowed.
Trump fixated on the market and the election. In more than a dozen tweets , briefings , and interviews , he explicitly connected his chances of reelection to the speed at which schools and businesses reopened . (Trump focused on schools only after he was told that they were crucial to resuming commerce .) The longer it took, he warned, the better Democrats would do in the election. In April, he applauded states that opened early and hectored states that kept businesses closed . In June, he told workers in Maine, “ You’re missing a lot of money .” “Why isn’t your governor opening up your state?” he asked them.
Trump pushed states to reopen businesses even where , under criteria laid out by his health officials, it wasn’t safe to do so. He called for “ pressure ” and endorsed lawsuits against governors who resisted . He issued an executive order to keep meat-processing plants open , despite thousands of infections among plant employees. He ordered the CDC to publish rules allowing churches to reopen , and he vowed to “ override any governor ” who kept them closed. In April, he made the CDC withdraw an indefinite ban on cruises , which had spread the virus. In July, he pressed the agency to loosen its guidelines for reopening schools .
He continued to suppress warnings. In April, he claimed that doctors who reported shortages of supplies were faking it . When an acting inspector general released a report that showed supplies were inadequate , Trump dismissed the report and replaced her . When a Navy captain wrote a letter seeking help for his infected crew , Trump endorsed the captain’s demotion . The letter “ shows weakness ,” he said. “We don’t want to have letter-writing campaigns where the fake news finds a letter or gets a leak.”
Having argued in March against testing, Trump now complained that doctors were testing too many people . He said tests, by revealing infections, made him “ look bad .” When Fauci and Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said more tests were needed , Trump openly contradicted them. In July, he claimed that 99 percent of coronavirus infections were “ totally harmless ”—which wasn’t true —and that the testing system, by detecting these infections, was “ working too well .”
Fauci, Birx, Redfield, and other health officials pointed out that mitigation was working. They argued against premature resumption of in-person social activities, noting that the virus wasn’t under control and might roar back. Trump publicly overruled them, tried to discredit them, and pressured them to disavow their words. To block Fauci from disputing Trump’s assurances that the virus was “ going away ,” the White House barred him from doing most TV interviews . In June, when Fauci said resuming professional football would be risky , Trump rebuked him. “Informed Dr. Fauci this morning that he has nothing to do with NFL Football,” the president tweeted .
Trump interfered with every part of the government’s response. He told governors that testing for the virus was their job, not his . When they asked for help in getting supplies, he told them to “ get ’em yourself .” He refused, out of pique, to speak to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or to some governors whose states were overrun by the virus. He told Vice President Mike Pence not to speak to them, either. He refused to consult former presidents, calling them failures and saying he had nothing to learn from them.
Trump didn’t just get in the way. He made things worse. He demanded that Wisconsin hold elections in early April , which coincided with dozens of infections among voters and poll workers. (Some researchers later found correlations between infections and voting in that election; others didn’t .) He forced West Point to summon cadets , 15 of whom were infected , back to campus to attend his commencement speech in June. He suggested that the virus could be killed by injecting disinfectants . He persistently urged Americans to take hydroxychloroquine , a malaria drug, despite research that found it was ineffective against the coronavirus and in some cases could be dangerous . Trump dismissed the research as “ phony .”
The simplest way to control the virus was to wear face coverings. But instead of encouraging this precaution, Trump ridiculed masks . He said they could cause infections , and he applauded people who spurned them . Polls taken in late May, as the virus began to spread across the Sun Belt, indicated that Trump’s scorn was suppressing mask use. A Morning Consult survey found that the top predictor of non-use of masks, among dozens of factors tested, was support for Trump . An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found that people who seldom or never wore masks were 12 times more likely to support Trump than to support his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. Some scientific models imply that Trump’s suppression of mask use may have contributed to hundreds, if not thousands , of deaths.
On June 10, Trump announced that he would resume holding political rallies. He targeted four states: Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma . The point of the rallies, he explained, wasn’t just to boost his campaign but to signal that it was time to “open up our country” and “ get back to business .” When reporters raised the possibility that he might spread the virus by drawing crowds indoors, he accused them of “ trying to Covid Shame us on our big Rallies .”
Despite being warned that infections in Oklahoma were surging , Trump proceeded with a rally at a Tulsa arena on June 20. To encourage social distance, the arena’s managers put “Do Not Sit Here” stickers on alternate seats. The Trump campaign removed the stickers . Trump also refused to wear a mask at the rally— few people in the crowd did, either—and in his speech, he bragged about continuing to shake children’s hands . Two weeks later, Tulsa broke its record for daily infections, and the city’s health director said the rally was partly to blame . Former presidential candidate Herman Cain attended the rally, tested positive for the virus days afterward , and died at the end of July.
At the rally, Trump complained that health care workers were finding too many infections by testing people for the virus. He said he had told “my people” to “ slow the testing down, please .” Aides insisted that the president was joking. But on June 22, in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, he said he was only half-joking . He affirmed, this time seriously, that he had told “my people” that testing was largely frivolous and bad for America’s image. Weeks later, officials involved in negotiations on Capitol Hill disclosed that the administration, against the wishes of Senate Republicans, was trying to block funding for virus tests .
Two days after the Tulsa rally, an interviewer asked Trump whether he was putting lives at risk “ by continuing to hold these indoor events .” Trump brushed off the question: “I’m not worried about it. No, not at all.” The next day, June 23, the president staged another largely mask-free rally , this time in a church in Arizona, where a statewide outbreak was underway. Days later, Secret Service agents and a speaker at the Arizona rally tested positive for the virus. On June 28, Trump urged people to attend another rally , this time featuring Pence , at a Dallas church where five choir and orchestra members had tested positive .
In his interview with Wallace , which aired July 19, Trump conceded nothing. He called Fauci an alarmist and repeated that the virus would “disappear.” He excoriated governors for “not allowing me to have rallies” and accused them of keeping businesses closed to hurt him in the election. He claimed that “masks cause problems” and said people should feel free not to wear them. He threatened to defund schools unless they resumed in-class instruction. As to the rising number of infections, Trump scoffed that “many of those cases shouldn’t even be cases,” since they would “heal automatically.” By testing so many people, he groused, health care workers were “creating trouble for the fake news to come along and say, ‘Oh, we have more cases.’ ”
Since that interview, Trump has attacked and belittled his medical advisers. He lashed out at Birx for acknowledging the ongoing spread of the virus. He retweeted a false claim that Fauci was suppressing hydroxychloroquine “ to perpetuate Covid deaths to hurt Trump .” When Fauci told Congress that infections had increased due to insufficient mitigation, Trump rebuked him and blamed the surge on increased testing. And when Dave Portnoy, a wealthy Trump supporter, complained that his stocks tanked every time Fauci called for mitigation, Trump assured Portnoy that the doctor’s pleas would go nowhere. “He’d like to see [the economy] closed up for a couple of years,” Trump said of Fauci. “But that’s OK, because I’m president. So I say, ‘I appreciate your opinion. Now somebody give me another opinion.’ ”
It’s hard to believe a president could be this callous and corrupt. It’s hard to believe one person could get so many things wrong or do so much damage. But that’s what happened. Trump knew we weren’t ready for a pandemic, but he didn’t prepare. He knew China was hiding the extent of the crisis, but he joined in the cover-up. He knew the virus was spreading in the United States, but he said it was vanishing. He knew we wouldn’t find it without more tests, but he said we didn’t need them. He delayed mitigation. He derided masks. He tried to silence anyone who told the truth. And in the face of multiple warnings, he pushed the country back open, reigniting the spread of the disease.
Now Trump asks us to reelect him. “We had the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he told Fox News on Wednesday. “Then we got hit with the plague from China.” But now, he promised, “We’re building it again.” In Trump’s story, the virus is a foreign intrusion, an unpleasant interlude, a stroke of bad luck. But when you stand back and look at the full extent of his role in the catastrophe, it’s amazing how lucky we were. For three years, we survived the most ruthless, reckless, dishonest president in American history. Then our luck ran out.
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Trump was defending China until he needed someone to blame.
It's been pretty well known already that you can't believe half of what Trump says, and you need to be wary of the other half, so why should anyone believe what he says Xi Jinping told him? Just maybe it's all part of his "blame anyone but me" philosophy.
Half? It is more like 90%
China is totally to blame for the Covid-19 pandemic
That's not what Trump told Geraldo. You believe Trump right Greg?
Trump and the pandemic is a deeper issue than many realize. His base is solid and itching to vote. The Administration may be successful is negating and losing millions of votes cast against him.
There are members in my family that firmly believe Fauci, Obama and the Clintons created this virus with the financial backing of Bill Gates. This is what freedom, democracy and the concept of America is up against. These members of my family have also hinted for violence if Trump is not re-elected. My question is this: What is the proper response and defense if their threats become real?
Call the police.
Then move.
I would simply ask them to provide proof since as we all know, there is none.
Strange situation. All are avowed christians except for one who is an avowed racist. They firmly believe Trump was sent by god and is guided by Jesus. I am referred to as "Satan Boy." All are armed with better weapons than I was issued in Vietnam.
A/noon.. If they believe Trump was sent by God, who do they believe sent all the previous Presidents?? What were they like in previous elections or is it only Trump they are obsessing over??..Geez people really do let Politics rule their lives to the extent they get all bent and twisted out of shape over it..Hope it never gets that bad here..
MAGA is a cult. Like the Jim Jones, Hale Bopp people, Pol Pot and others---, maybe?
Crikey!!...People really do need to get a life...Far better things to do and see in life than dwell over this bulldust..Do your own thing bbl, you are a decent and fair minded American as is the vast majourity of you mob are..Sure does sound though you have a very interesting family..
No "maybe".
Exactly like. Right down to suiciding for their Prophet.
A couple of years ago I worked with a goodly number of gung ho young guys, late twenties and early thirties. They were almost all 'ammosexuals', anti-muslim and vaguely racist.
One rainy day we were all standing in the 3 bay garage and they were blustering about taking up arms 'cuz 'Merica' and I said 'The 101st Airborne will eat y'all for lunch'. I never heard another peep out of any of them about how tough they were.
Note, not one of them ever served.
IMHO, most of them are all hat and no cattle.
I'm also pretty damn sure that the Secret Service has a plan to ensure a 'peaceful succession' and that Chief Justice Roberts won't take any bullshit either. Once Biden is sworn in, they can go pound sand.
So all we have to do is hold it together from November 3rd and January 20th. Judging from the number of recently retired Generals, especially those who have worked with Trump and most recently, the leader of the DC National Guard, who have spoken out against his shit, I'm hopeful that our military will hold the line.
My brother's wife's father is one of those types. Kept talking about taking his motorcycle and his guns to DC when Obama was President and "taking back our country" - was usually drunk when he went on these rants. My dad finally got sick of it and told him to saddle up and ride, and he never said anything about it around my dad again.
Just let them keep talking and talking.....somewhere along the lines the absurdity will dawn on them on at least some of their wildest delusions.
But if there is something along the lines of a planned/organized violence guns, explosives that you pick up in the listening to the drivel..... call the FBI.
I will make the call if it comes to that.
I cannot believe what that man has done to the hearts and minds of supposedly intelligent educated American people. He will become an example in world history little different from that of Stalin, Mao and Hitler. God forbid that Americans don't learn from it, although it's become obvious, even here on NT, that many do not.
you can only laugh at how deranged the takes are...
Take your snark elsewhere Tex. Only warning.
Figure out the benefits of earthworms yet?
Thought not.
Stay on topic.
Wow, that's dumb. You don't have to like Trump and there's lots to be critical of - but that's dumb.
Morning bbl-1...I would be asking them are they going to create the violence and mayhem in their own backyard or someone elses?? And what satisfaction are they expecting to achieve out of it, other than showing what utter and feral people they are..To be honest I have never seen a country so hung up on elections and all the crap that goes along with it for months/years.. You mob must get so sick of it..and breathe a sigh of relief when it is over..I know we do....
You're not wrong. Before we've even inaugurated one President, we're strategizing the next election.
A/noon..You have my sympathy Sandy..Our elections once every three year...There is a ban on all political advertising on TV radio and newspapers 5 days before the election date, by then it is system over load...Voting is compulsory here..We find the hundreds of millions spent on campaigns over there mind blowing, then the ever on going lead up etc seems to drag on forever...
If our elections were once every 3 years, I don't know if we could handle it. It's so bad already.
How are you getting along? Staying safe?
Yes all is going very well thank you and have just come back from Melbourne after my fortnightly treatment for myeloma..Two more to go and then it goes down to once a month..Yes the virus is here to in my town..Lost a resident aged 59 to it..I knew him..brings it home when it is that close...There has been a second outbreak in Melbourne of the virus..Got up to as high as 700 infections in a day..A curfew has been brought in no one out between the hours of 8pm to 5am and face masks for all of Victoria is now mandatory..Just have to remember to put it on..Unfortunately the second outbreak comes from people not doing their jobs properly and the catastrophe this has now caused. For the whole of Australia as of today we have lost 485 of our fellow Aussies...Out of that 385 would be Victorian...The infection numbers have now dropped to approx 200 per day and still dropping so the restrictions are working in Melbourne..99% of people here are abiding by them but we have the odd feral element that wants their 10 minutes of fame...Think you refer to them as "Karens" I refer to them as "Hags" as they have all been stupid middle aged women with mouths on them like crocodiles...But even they have disappeared off the scene now as the population turned against them and they did not like the response..Tough for them..But at the end of the day it is what it is...and we just have to make the best of it..Hope all is well your way and stay safe to..
All good here. Community spread is slowing in my area, but I expect a spike in numbers once cooler weather settles in, maybe in a few months. Kids in our county won't be doing in-person school until October at the earliest, if then. We'll be doing online, instead.
I had to get some groceries today, and only saw one older guy not wearing a mask. But it was a local university's move-in day for students living in dormitories, so there might be a spike regardless of masking. I have no idea how kids can share dorm rooms and socially distance. I imagine they'll shut down and send students home in a few weeks.
Glad you're doing well, and getting to the point where your treatments taper down a bit. I have a cousin being treated for the same condition, for the last 7 or 8 years now, and I know it's a tough road.
Yes schools are closed here to and online study for them. Spring is a week off which will bring an upsurge as people will want to start getting out more etc..and this will bring problems too. But if people do the right thing, with luck the numbers will remain low and controllable..Even New Zealand after all their time transmission free in the country has had a second outbreak..We all killed ourselves laughing when Trump said there was a "tremendous out break" in New Zealand....4 people at the time!! Not quite sure what he was thinking..
I sort of feel like the guy who thought he had a pretty banded scarlet king snake. Hand fed it - played with it. Then after many months found out that it was actually a coral snake.
I've found out that my church friends for years are totally or at least semi-totally bonkers.
Do not try to reason with them. It is a waste of time. Do not engage them on Facebook. Try to change the subject to safe topics. If at all possible avoid them.
I can count the people I can safely discuss politics with on one hand.
That is what I mean. To safely discuss politics has taken a nosedive since this-----man-----arrived.
No..... I think it goes back further than that. I put back to when the first black man ran for the White House.......
I think the hate was always there, it just became more acceptable, for some reason, for the right to openly express it when Obama became President.
I blame FOX for making far right wing fascism seem socially acceptable.
i feel your pain, but, not in the all in the family scene, more like almost all my social scene, consist of Trump defender/supporter/ Trump can do no wrong apolegetic pseudo thinkers , who are more concerned about the now, non existent threat of BLM and ANTIFA types, coming to their town to rob it, then burn it down, cause our pathetic education system has allowed so many to prove aloud, the fact that US Citizens are seriously ignorant to our actual reality, only look at what Trump, Fox, and the Hard Right, want them to not see. N notice rostitutes, somewhere lost some appeasment on Trump, as he LIES like an alpha mail women trying to cast something he couldn't spell from his Froot Looped Alpa Beta hookers, drowning, as AlphaBitz Cereal Killers supply all the LYE, for one thousandth of the compost pile he posts consistently, via inconsistencies, that only confuse his that don't wish to lose, supporters, butt, like a strap on/around his phat asz , that apparently is forever fueled with infinite amounts of Clean Coal , accumulated from Santa's technologeeez, and Anna's broken wind that winds up blowing people, like the steeple, further away fro rationality, cause, they do, ration reality, and we all wish to have others to blame, but it is our country, that he shall not leave the same
Ugh, yes. So many of my family are posturing all over Facebook, daring Antifa to come get them, and actually thinking Antifa knows they even exist. Delusional. They have no idea they're the victims of a campaign of misinformation. Again.
I have recently developed a weird fascination with watching "Karen" videos on You Tube. Until the Central Park incident with the black guy and the "Karen" walking her dog without a leash I had never heard the term "Karen". Now videos of Karens are popping up in my You Tube feed every time I look at it. There are seemingly hundreds (perhaps thousands) of videos on You Tube memorializing dysfunctional public behavior.
I mention that to refer to your comment about delusional people. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that there are many millions of delusional people in the US now. And some of them are getting aggressive with their delusions. Putting cameras constantly in the hands of everyone through their mobile phones hasnt helped either, but rather has helped spread and record delusion.
Though I shouldn't be surprised, I still have a hard time accepting just how many people in this country are so easily duped. It's sad that all too many have no curiosity or feel any responsibility to verify information that they base their actions on. They've shut themselves into echo chambers where nothing that may make a dent in their preconceived ideology can enter. It doesn't bode well for our country.
I've read quite a bit of anecdotal testimony about people who have talked to Trumpster friends, family or neighbors who are jumping off of the band wagon. For some it took a loved one dying of Covid 19 to make them see the light.
My personal opinion? Should those events come to pass and there is an coordinated armed effort to keep an illegal/unconstitutional person the the "Office of the Presidency" then I feel that it would be time for armed response by the SS and the US Military. Should that fail, then I vote for armed rebellion to restore the US Constitution. I admit I've become radicalized by the actions of the Conservatives over my lifetime.I was a centrist republican in my youth.
"I solemnly swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, Foreign AND Domestic." Some of us took that oath, it never expires. Semper Fidelis
We're on the same page....... I consider myself a Goldwater republican at heart.
Furthermore, a plaque with both my oath of enlistment and Ariticle I of the POW Code of Conduct engraved on it, has adorned every office desk I've been at.
consider myself a Goldwater republican at heart.
So you hate Trump because he’s too moderate for your right wing conservatism. when Goldwater was relevant progressives compared him to Hitler, much like they do trump.
50 years from now, some progressive will be claiming they are a Trumpian republican while parroting the standard far left wing agitprop of the day and comparing the future republican president to hitler etc..
progressives have been saying the same thing for 50 years and don’t even seem to realize it,
Trump too moderate by comparison to Goldwater......?
I see the stress of supporting Trump is really starting to take it's toll on the remining Trump-fluffers here on NT.
Okay guys, let's get back on topic please.
itching to vote
Most of them are usually itching from something else.
Excellent article.
Anyone with an open mind cannot avoid being convinced
... ... oh, wait... did I say... "open mind"...?
closed case, cause they think an open mind will allow their feeble brains to fall out
only if "it's", reefers to Trump, the gop, and a bunch of ignorant foolz
So, what should have Trump done?
The actions of the Trump administration was in step with WHO guidance. Should Trump have closed the borders earlier and prohibited all travel into the United States, including prohibitions on repatriating citizens?
Should Trump have imposed stringent Federal restrictions for social distancing? That would have required clearing the streets and keeping the streets clear. The protests violated CDC guidance and Federal restrictions would have allowed stopping the protests. How could the protests have not spread the virus? A news black-out about the protests spreading the virus doesn't mean it didn't happen.
The argument seems to be that Trump did not lock down the country. But that demand by the Joe Biden faction of the Democratic Party would have required prohibiting travel into the United States, clearing the streets, and keeping the streets clear. The Joe Biden faction of the Democratic Party are recommending harsh, authoritarian imposition of restrictions on free movement and public accommodation enforced by the Federal government that could have only been accomplished with National Guards and military deployment. The Joe Biden faction of the Democratic Party are advocating that leaving your house must become a Federal crime.
The Joe Biden faction of the Democratic Party are declaring that the Federal government must force the general public to comply with requirements touted by unaccountable experts. The Joe Biden faction of the Democratic Party demanding imposition of Federal requirements to lock down the country certainly isn't free, fair, or democratic. And Donald Trump is called a Fascist?
Democrats are taking another step toward National Socialism; Fascists are known by what they do and not what they say.
The seed documents what Trump DID do, address that.
That is false.
Followed by blah, blah, blah.
You're just making shit up. Just stop.
That interpretation of the seeded article merely proves that you don't have a cogent understanding of it's content.
Bullshit. Just because you are incapable recognizing that there is an alternative plan to mitigate the effect of Covid 19 doesn't mean there isn't one. In FACT, Trump was handed that plan on a silver platter and he shit canned it.
Followed by more blah, blah, blah bullshit.
What Trump DID do is refuse to impose authoritarian stringent restrictions on free movement and public accommodation. Isn't that the gripe?
The argument is that Trump didn't do enough to restrict the public. So, the alternative to what Trump didn't do would be to impose stringent Federal restrictions. The argument is that Trump avoided the authoritarian approach for responding to the pandemic AND that a more authoritarian approach is needed.
The seeded article cites examples of Trump failing to adopt dictatorial responses to the pandemic. Isn't that the gripe?
That alternative plan is to make leaving one's house a Federal crime. The plan available to Trump was to follow a Fascist play book which Trump refused to do. Isn't that the gripe?
The available plan didn't include distributing masks, soaps, and disinfectants to the general public. The available plan didn't include stockpiling supplies that would be needed by the general public. The available plan didn't include dissemination of educational material and invoking the public service requirements on broadcasters. The available plan didn't include ramping up Civil Defense activities. The available plan didn't include deploying civil and defense assets to affected areas.
The available plan included less public preparation than was done to plan for nuclear attack.
The available plan consisted of imposing restrictions on free movement and public accommodation while placing the public on the hook to comply without any preparation. The available plan protected institutions but did not protect the public. The available plan was to stockpile supplies for institutional use. The available plan was to slow walk the response to conform to institutional methodology and bureaucratic procedure. The available plan established guidance for government action; the general public wasn't included in the available plan other than being required to comply without preparation.
If that's all you garnered from the article, I can't help you.
No is the answer to every time you asked that ridiculous question.
That, and all the other claims that you made about the 'available plan' prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you haven't actually bothered to READ the plan left by the Obama Administration. Neither did Trump. Hell, McConnell denied it existed until one of his minions told him that it DOES and he walked back his BS.
BTFW Nerm, it may behoove you to review the restrictions the Federal government placed on Americans during the 'Great Wars'. There was federal, state and local enforcement of those restrictions and those who followed them were considered patriots. Trump has claimed to be a wartime POTUS and stated that we were at war with the virus. Why then would you consider it fascist to take a wartime stance on defeating it?
BTW, do you follow the speed limit?
I realize the article is intended to be an 'orange man bad' rant. But that has only become a political dog whistle for the left; the reality of the situation doesn't really matter.
Did the available plan address Civil Defense and focusing attention on assisting the general public? You do realize that only the general public can control spread of the virus? The choice is to either assist the general pubic in its efforts to control spread - or - force the public to comply with requirements. Which approach did the available plan emphasize?
Yes, wartime government did impose rationing and restrictions on the general public. The wartime government also deployed a national Civil Defense contingent, utilized the military for domestic security, and disseminated information to educate the general public. The wartime government didn't just impose restrictions without assisting the general public in preparing for and complying with those restrictions.
The wartime government didn't impose restrictions and declare victory.
It's impossible to comply with a speed limit without the means to control speed. I've been provided what is necessary to comply with speed limits.
Which again proves that you do not have a cogent understanding of the content of the article.
The article has DOZENS of links supporting it's posit. You comments imply that the reality of the situation doesn't really matter to YOU.
Why pretend that any answer I give you is meaningful to you? Why not go READ and answer that question for yourself.
I must ask though, after your many characterizations of it's content, why don't you already know the answer to your question? Could it be that your characterizations were just as uninformed as I stated they were?
What's your point?
Relevance please.
The gas peddle/handle existed long before federal speed limits were imposed. Point?
And those citations are pointing to the fact that Trump has refused to adopt an authoritarian approach. That's the gripe. That's the reality.
You haven't said anything meaningful. If Trump has taken the wrong approach in responding to the pandemic then a meaningful response would explain the approach that Trump should have taken.
If Trump is being castigated for what he didn't do then a meaningful discussion would explain what should be done. Claiming that what Trump has done is wrong really doesn't explain what approach is right.
The article is only placing blame. The article isn't presenting alternatives for scrutiny. The right approach to the pandemic is left to the reader's imagination.
Why avoid admitting that what is being demanded as an alternative to Trump's response to the pandemic are authoritarian, stringent, dictatorial restrictions on free movement and public accommodation enforced by the Federal government?
Isn't the article a justification for forcing the public to stay in their homes and stay off the streets? Why not admit that the is the alternative being sought?
While that may be your limited interpretation, it's false. Many of the citations lead to QUOTES of Trump's flip flops, deflections, obfuscation and outright lies. Others document that statements by Trump were outright lies. Others QUOTE people whose statements refute Trump's claims.
BTW, most have nothing to do with MITIGATION and NONE with an 'authoritarian approach'.
I hope it doesn't surprise you that I have no intention of relying on YOUR standards for what a meaningful response would contain.
You are welcome to post a seed and have that discussion. I'd point you to Joe Biden's website for some solutions.
There is glaring evidence that what Trump has done is wrong. One need not post a detailed solution in order to document and call out that fact.
So what?
It need not to fulfill it's purpose, which is to document "A blow-by-blow account of how the president killed thousands of Americans."
Conversely, the reader can DO THE WORK and review the plan left by the Obama Administration and the one documented online by the Biden campaign.
Which in part includes the approach that Health experts have been SUGGESTING that we enact while Governors and millions of their constituents still refuse to follow, many of whom point to Trump's example for their actions.
Then there's always the examples set by the other nations of the world that have taken effective actions that have mitigated the effects of the virus in their population.
Or the reader can just pretend that the right approach is the non-existent plan that Trump has flailing with all these long deadly months.
I note that you failed to answer my question. Here it is again for your convenience.
You mean the NSC Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents ? (Caution: the link opens a fairly large PDF file and the source site may not be located in the United States. Here is another source for the NSC Playbook but the same caution applies.)
If you read through the playbook, the emphasis is on institutional capability to respond to the pandemic. And the Trump administration has generally followed the outlined steps.
The domestic portion of the playbook begins on page 31 and outlines that government response should be guided by answers to specific questions. Unfortunately the answer to most of those questions at the beginning of the pandemic was (and in many instances continues to be) 'we don't know'.
The NSC Playbook is really about assigning internal authority and responsibility for answering questions and proposing actions. The NSC Playbook does not provide guidance for specific actions that should be taken.
So, do the necessary work and read the NSC Playbook found in the links I provided and get back to me. Otherwise, admit that all of this is just an 'orange man bad' political dog whistle.
I don't know, why should a wartime stance be considered Fascist? All I know is that political opponents of Trump are calling him a Fascist for refusing to impose wartime restrictions on the country. All I know is that some (notably on the left) are claiming that people in the United States are the enemy as justification for imposing wartime restrictions.
Who is the enemy that the country is supposed to be fighting? If the public is the army fighting that enemy, then the public should be equipped to fight. If the public is the enemy then it shouldn't be surprising that the government would take harsh steps to contain that enemy.
The problem with a data driven response to a crisis is the need to collect data before responding.
Wasn't part of the problem in the initial response caused by lack of answers to questions about how best to respond? The experts responsible for providing guidance only indicated a need for more data. The continuing complaints have been that there isn't enough testing to provide adequate data. The continuing recommendation has been to perform randomized, controlled trials to collect data before making any commitments for a course of action.
What the guidance provided by experts responsible for advising how to respond to the pandemic has shown is that the data only improves hindsight. A data driven response isn't very effective when confronting the unknown. So, what was the real value of the planning by the Obama administration?
Joe Biden is going to have to make gut decisions. Waiting for the data will only open Biden to same criticisms that have been leveled at Trump.
Yes, the NSC is part of the plan left to Trump.
Wow that's one hell of an equivocation.
BTW, I didn't note "Blame the WHO for everything" or "Blame China for everything" or "Blame Obama for everything" outlined in those steps.
If the answers to any of those questions continue to be 'we don't know', that's on Trump.
No shit.
See my above reply about questions.
As for proposing actions, what has Trump implemented and followed through on? Hint: A one week semi-shutdown doesn't count.
Well that would depend on the answers to the questions wouldn't it? It states that each pandemic is unique.
No need, I READ it in February.
What would you like me to get back to you about? You haven't refuted anything from the seed or anything I've said.
Why would I do that? You haven't refuted one thing from the seeded article.
As an aside, at a press conference, Trump's minion waived around a binder holding the US Health Security National Action Plan and claimed that it replaced the NCS. One irony about that is that it documents that in 2016, the US had the highest JEE Capacity Levels which rates our preparedness. What happened between then and now is also on Trump...
Yet you insisted:
Of course then you claimed that he DID follow the play book:
So if Trump "generally followed the outlined steps" of a "Fascist play book" does that make him a fascist?
Asking for a friend...
Who on the left is claiming that ? Please be specific.
Ask Trump, he's the one that declared the war remember?
Equipped from what source?
From what dark orifice did you drag that out of?
Interesting then that other nations were capable of doing so effectively.
Not when you consider that Trump didn't give a fuck what the answers were.
Bullshit. The WHO, CDC and NIH were providing guidance very early on.
Is more data helpful? Obviously yes.
Yes that's true and after all of these deadly months, that's STILL on Trump.
Bullshit again. The CDC and NIH has published detailed courses of action for states, employers and school systems. JUST STOP.
Your pretzel logic is noted.
Doubtful.
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Stay on topic y'all.
If Trump is a wartime president, then he waived a white flag and surrendered the US to the virus.
Yep; it sucks.
However, I think we would have over 100K dead no matter who was president. Because I have seen how regular people have behaved during the virus - sometimes out of necessity and sometimes irresponsibly.
There are a few things I would like to see Trump doing differently. I imagine there are probably things he has done or said (or failed to do or say) that led to someone dying. But I can't prove it and neither can anyone else.
That's correlation, not causation. Those people might have tested positive anyway. They might have already been infected by someone they bumped into at 7-11. They might have been infected in spite of perfectly reasonable precautions or by being personally irresponsible in ways that had nothing to do with Trump. Unless you see an infected Trump cough into someone's face or you do some DNA trace showing Person A infected Person B and directly attribute that infection to Trump, then blaming Trump is politics, not science.