Monday, April 27, 2020

Other Voices On The Trump- GOP Response To The Pandemic



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by P.M. Carpenter | April 25, 2020 - 7:06am | permalink
Excerpt:

Trump arrives in the Oval Office these days as late as noon," reports the Times. "He has been up in the White House master bedroom as early as 5 a.m. watching Fox News, then CNN, with a dollop of MSNBC thrown in for rage viewing."


After his Oval Office appearance, there's lunch, after which he avoids the task force meetings held in preparation for the White House coronavirus briefings, where he spends two hours rhetorically strutting before the television cameras. Then dinner, perhaps with Melania.


Trump then "turns back to his constant companion, television. Upstairs in the White House private quarters — often in his own bedroom or in a nearby den — he flicks from channel to channel, reviewing his performance."


Excerpt:
After a brutal day of criticism over his Thursday remarks suggesting an injection of disinfectant could potentially help treat COVID-19 — a frankly ludicrous and dangerous suggestion that experts roundly warned against — the president cut Friday’s coronavirus press briefing short without taking questions.


It was a welcome change. Trump has turned the daily briefings into psychological replacements for his campaign rallies — now postponed until the pandemic subsides — and they frequently feature strings of falsehoods and lies along with attacks on the media. Networks have been harshly criticized for airing the festivals of disinformation live, so no one should complain that Friday’s spectacle was cut short.



Excerpt:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell might not have realized the firestorm he was inviting when he uttered the words "blue state bailout," and said the states would just have to declare bankruptcy rather than get any federal assistance. It's not just blue state governors up in arms, either.


"That's a ridiculous statement that the states 'should go bankrupt,'" New Hampshire's Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told WMUR Thursday. "Anyone who's saying that in the Senate doesn't know what's going on in the states, doesn't know the pressures that states are under, and the sacrifices we've had to make," he continued. "To say that states should just go bankrupt is a dangerous statement," Sununu said.


Excerpt:

Mass mortality spiked on my watch” is hardly the most fetching campaign slogan. Thus, the great question, whomever dismal Dems pick: “What critical mass of Trump-tied fatalities will doom his second term?” Not managing, let alone worsening the pandemic is bad enough; but must we now leverage human die-off as election shape-shifter?


Let's propose a new, riveting motto — MADA: “Make America Desolate Again.” And the most painful joke is on Trump himself, for only he -- and his unstable pathologies — are to blame. The viral spread that America's least capable doctor dismissed as a “hoax” keeps battering the world's most transparent purveyor of snake oil.



Excerpt:

Why are Trump supporters so devoted? The simple answer is that they are members of a death cult. Call it the #TrumpDeathCult. Beyond that simple answer, there’s this: When your identity rests on Trump and his party being right, to admit that they are wrong—or worse, that they don't even give a rat's ass about you and yours—requires rethinking everything you are. I guess for some people, dying is easier.



Donald Trump and his state propaganda sycophants over at Fox News hyped hydroxychloroquine as a "game changer,” until it was game over. We learned this week that taking the drug not only doesn’t help people recover from COVID-19, it makes it more likely that they will drop dead. Why doesn’t this make hordes of Republican voters say, “What in the world am I doing listening to these shameless liars?” The fact that they don’t is what makes them dangerous.

But wait, there’s more.  If this news, reported by The New York Times, doesn’t make a person run screaming from the land of Trump, Fox News, and bald-faced lies back to the world of facts and science, then I don’t know what will.



'The official who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said on Wednesday that he was removed from his post after he pressed for rigorous vetting of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug embraced by President Trump as a coronavirus treatment, and that the administration had put “politics and cronyism ahead of science.”

In a scorching statement, Dr. Bright, who received a Ph.D. in immunology and molecular pathogenesis from Emory University, assailed the leadership at the health department, saying he was pressured to direct money toward hydroxychloroquine, one of several “potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections” and repeatedly described by the president as a potential “game changer” in the fight against the virus.

“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in his statement. “I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.”
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 “What’s wrong with these conservatives?” I scream in my head. Don’t they care about themselves? About their own friends and families? Do the Fox News viewers even notice that suddenly no one is talking about hydroxychloroquine anymore, after it was hyped for weeks? Don’t they care?

by Eric Margolis | April 26, 2020 - 6:09am | permalink

Excerpt:

Take an injection of a strong disinfectant like Dettol or Listerine and call me in the morning.” President Donald Trump has clearly gone off the rails with his crazy suggestion that the public might try injecting potent disinfectants to combat COVID-19. He sounds increasingly like the late Rev. Jim Jones of toxic Kool-Aid fame and former TV evangelist Jim Baker who is now hawking his own miracle cure for COVID-19.

The difference is that Jim Baker’s nostrum is not lethal while Rev. Trump’s certainly is.


by Bill Berkowitz | April 26, 2020 - 5:31am | permalink

Is it practicable to stage protests during a pandemic? Evidently a coterie of right-wing organizations, militia groups, alt-right entities, and media enterprises think so. Their rallying cry appears to be “the hell with the thousands of deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic, let’s get America’s economy moving again.” And Donald Trump is standing with the protesters as evidenced by his recent tweets supporting protests in Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia.


Radical right-wing organizations are leading the charge in holding mask-less, glove-less and seemingly clue-less protests against sheltering-in-place orders, business closures, and in support of Donald Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. MLive reporter Malachi Barrett highlighted the president’s influence on the rally-goers, calling it “half protest, half Trump rally.” 

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