Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[Karl Henning]

Thanks to Trump, the coronavirus is very much not under control in the USA

On February 24, President Trump tweeted, 'The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.' It wasn't.

"I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead. We're going to go through a very tough two weeks."

With these words, on Tuesday afternoon, President Trump sounded a new and welcomed tone on the coronavirus.

But make no mistake, hard days lie ahead because of the president's botched, selfish, and incompetent response to the coronavirus crisis. A change in tone can't change that catastrophic reality.

Trump's calls for vigilance are a bit like declaring it's time to close the barn doors after the horses have escaped — and the barn is on fire and it's threatening to burn the entire farm down.

Tens of thousands of Americans (and possibly more) are likely to die because of the president.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Trump's public statements and actions have followed a similar trajectory: They have been dishonest, misleading, fantastical, and dangerous. It would blow over soon, he said early on. It would go away when the weather got warmer. "The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA," he tweeted. It wasn't.

While thankfully there's no more talk of re-opening the economy on Easter, the damage has been done. America has become the epicenter of a global pandemic.

Consider that the United States and South Korea reported their first coronavirus cases on the same day — Jan. 20. More than two months later, South Korea has just under 10,000 confirmed cases and 169 deaths. By comparison, the United States has more than 216,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 5,000 people have died. Taking into account population differences (the US has 327 million people and South Korea has around 51 million people), the number of cases is more than three times greater than South Korea — and the death toll is nearly four times as great.

These horrific numbers could have been avoided with genuine presidential leadership.

After the initial case was diagnosed in January, South Korea immediately began aggressive testing and quarantines. Private companies were encouraged to develop diagnostic tests. Within a month drive-through screening centers had been set up and thousands were being tested daily.

In the United States, Trump refused to focus on the issue. Two days after that initial positive case he declared "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming from China. It's going to be just fine." When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was first able to talk to Trump about the coronavirus on Jan. 18, Trump wanted to talk about a recently announced vaping ban.

Into February, Trump was still stubbornly resisting bureaucratic efforts to deal with the emerging crisis. The weeks lost in ramping up testing were a lost — and unforgivable —opportunity to save lives.

Trump's obstinance is bad enough — but the delay was also undoubtedly influenced by Trump's diktat that testing should not be a priority. The more testing that was done, the more positive results there would be and that was an outcome the president did not want.

Keeping the numbers low in order to avoid spooking Wall Street and negatively affecting Trump's reelection became the administration's focus.

Those presidential-created obstacles did more than prevent essential equipment from getting to communities in need — it seeded a deadly message of doubt, particularly to Trump supporters.

Researchers at the University of Washington look at five critical social distancing policies and the varying implementation between states. They found that states "with Republican governors and Republican electorates" delayed each of these initiatives "by an average of 2.70 days."

While more than 30 states have issued stay-at-home orders, a host of states have either not made such state-wide declarations or done partial orders. Nearly all are helmed by Republican governors. In Arizona, GOP Governor, Doug Ducey prevented cities and counties from putting in effect stay-at-home orders. He didn't issue his own statewide decree until this week. Last week, the Republican governor of Mississippi Tate Reeves overruled city and county social distancing measures. Under pressure, he announced a stay-at-home order on Wednesday that will go into effect Friday.

Trump is not directly responsible for these delays, but did Trump's suggestion that the disease was no worse than the flu give cover to Republican governors who preferred to delay social distancing efforts? Did it encourage them to drag their feet? It's hard to argue otherwise. With the combination of misinformation spread on Fox News (particularly during a crucial period in late February and early March when the outlet's anchors were playing down the threat from the coronavirus), will more Americans in red states test positive for the coronavirus and die needlessly? Almost certainly.

Trump has also publicly suggested that Democratic governors who don't show him proper veneration will have to get in the back of the line for medical supplies. And there is emerging evidence that Republican states are having their requests for ventilators and protective equipment met while blue states are getting the short end of the stick. How many people, simply because they live in a blue state, are going to die because of this president's petty cruelty?

It's not an easy thing to accuse a president of being personally responsible for the deaths of Americans, but with Trump and the coronavirus, it's simply a fact.

[SimonNZ]

Trump administration ended pandemic early-warning program to detect coronaviruses

"Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.

The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September, and organizations that worked on the PREDICT program laid off dozens of scientists and analysts, said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a key player in the program."[...]


Strategic National Stockpile description altered online after Kushner's remarks

"The official government webpage for the Strategic National Stockpile was altered Friday to seemingly reflect a controversial description of the emergency repository that White House adviser Jared Kushner offered at a news conference Thursday evening.

According to a brief online summary on the Department of Health and Human Services website, the stockpile's role "is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well."

But just hours earlier, the text characterized the stockpile as the "nation's largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out."

The previous language stated that when "state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency."

Also stripped from the new summary is a sentence that affirmed the stockpile "contains enough supplies to respond to multiple large-scale emergencies simultaneously."

The revisions come after Kushner argued at the White House coronavirus task force press briefing Thursday that the stockpile's reserves are the property of the federal government, not the states."

[SimonNZ]

Donald Trump fires intelligence watchdog who sparked impeachment process

"Donald Trump has fired the inspector general for the intelligence community who handled the whistleblower complaint that led to his impeachment, prompting fierce criticism from Democrats.

The US president chose a Friday night, with America consumed by the coronavirus pandemic, to tell the House of Representatives and Senate intelligence committees of his decision to dismiss Michael Atkinson.

In a letter, Trump claimed it was "vital" that he had confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general, and "that is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general".

The president would nominate an individual who has his full confidence at a later date, he added."[...]

[Que]

More on Trump's epic - and disastrous - failure:

How science finally caught up with Trump's playbook – with millions of lives at stake

But Trump's behaviour is symptomatic for a dangerous development in present day politics in which expert's advice is "just another opinion". No, it isn't. ...

Q

[SimonNZ]

Trump tells Americans to take unproven malaria drug to prevent Covid-19

[...]

""What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose?" Trump said from the White House podium. "Take it."

He also said he "may take it" himself, though he would "have to ask my doctors about that".

[...]


there simply aren't enough facepalm meme images available to cover that

[JBS]

Trump tells Americans to take unproven malaria drug to prevent Covid-19

[...]

""What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose?" Trump said from the White House podium. "Take it."

He also said he "may take it" himself, though he would "have to ask my doctors about that".

[...]


there simply aren't enough facepalm meme images available to cover that

The drug has actual uses (for Parkinson's and another disease, IIRC).  The surge in demand for the drug because the Right's blathersphere talked it up is causing s shortage of the drug for those patients who actually have a need for it.

And then there is the man who dosed himself with fishtank cleaner because the active ingredient is related to this drug, and died.

Like a lot of things, the Right's echo chamber and Trump repeat each other's talking points so much it's hard to say which one is imitating the other.

[SimonNZ]

'Too Naive Or Too Stupid To Be CO': Leaked Speech Transcript Shows Acting Navy Secretary Modly Trashing Fired Carrier Captain To Group Of Sailors

Acting Secretary to the Navy Thomas Modly flew to Guam Monday and delivered a fiery speech to the sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt after their captain was fired over a leaked letter pleading for those infected with coronavirus.

The speech, a transcript of which was obtained by the Daily Caller, backs the decision to relieve Capt. Brett Crozier of his duties. Modly called the letter, which begged the Navy to send resources and help to at least 100 sailors on board who have the virus, a "betrayal of trust."

"If he [Crozier] didn't think, in my opinion, that this information [the letter] wasn't going to get out into the public, in this day and information age that we live in, then he was either A, too naive or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this. The alternative is that he did this on purpose," Modly said, adding that the letter had "sensitive information" about the condition of the aircraft carrier.

"So think about that when you cheer the man off the ship who exposed you to that," Modly continued. "I understand you love the guy. It's good that you love him. But you're not required to love him."[...]

[JBS]

'Too Naive Or Too Stupid To Be CO': Leaked Speech Transcript Shows Acting Navy Secretary Modly Trashing Fired Carrier Captain To Group Of Sailors

Acting Secretary to the Navy Thomas Modly flew to Guam Monday and delivered a fiery speech to the sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt after their captain was fired over a leaked letter pleading for those infected with coronavirus.

The speech, a transcript of which was obtained by the Daily Caller, backs the decision to relieve Capt. Brett Crozier of his duties. Modly called the letter, which begged the Navy to send resources and help to at least 100 sailors on board who have the virus, a "betrayal of trust."

"If he [Crozier] didn't think, in my opinion, that this information [the letter] wasn't going to get out into the public, in this day and information age that we live in, then he was either A, too naive or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this. The alternative is that he did this on purpose," Modly said, adding that the letter had "sensitive information" about the condition of the aircraft carrier.

"So think about that when you cheer the man off the ship who exposed you to that," Modly continued. "I understand you love the guy. It's good that you love him. But you're not required to love him."[...]

Crozier was relieved of duty because he sent a memo to at least 20 people, some of whom were not actually involved or in the chain of command, in a situation where the memo would almost certainly be leaked.

Modly give his speech to an audience of almost 5000 men, and then....
https://mobile.twitter.com/attackerman/status/1247212941830754310

In a sign of losing the plot, a Navy official said Modly's remarks — that he delivered to 4800ish people, who cheered Crozier as he departed the ship — "were intended to be private, between the secretary and each member of the crew."

So Modly thought a memo to 20 people would be expected to leak, but a speech to 5000 sailors would not...

[drogulus]

     Oh, that drug Trump is pushing, guess what?

     Trump Has 'Financial Interest' in Hydroxychloroquine Manufacturer: NYT

The Times reports that the president's family trusts all have investments in a mutual fund whose largest holding is Sanofi, the manufacturer of Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine. Associates of the president, such as major Republican donor Ken Fisher and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, have also run funds that hold investments in the pharmaceutical firm.

     Is that the Ken Fisher, the investment guy responsible for the most disgusting commercial I've ever seen, and Wilbur Ross?

     

     

[SimonNZ]

     Oh, that drug Trump is pushing, guess what?

     Trump Has 'Financial Interest' in Hydroxychloroquine Manufacturer: NYT

The Times reports that the president's family trusts all have investments in a mutual fund whose largest holding is Sanofi, the manufacturer of Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine. Associates of the president, such as major Republican donor Ken Fisher and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, have also run funds that hold investments in the pharmaceutical firm.

     Is that the Ken Fisher, the investment guy responsible for the most disgusting commercial I've ever seen, and Wilbur Ross?

     

   

Sigh. Yeah, I guessed that was how that story would end.

That deserves to be an even bigger scandal than his attempts at election interference.

[Herman]

     Oh, that drug Trump is pushing, guess what?

     Trump Has 'Financial Interest' in Hydroxychloroquine Manufacturer: NYT

The Times reports that the president's family trusts all have investments in a mutual fund whose largest holding is Sanofi, the manufacturer of Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine. Associates of the president, such as major Republican donor Ken Fisher and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, have also run funds that hold investments in the pharmaceutical firm.

That had to happen.
For Trump this health crisis is all about... Winning!

     Is that the Ken Fisher, the investment guy responsible for the most disgusting commercial I've ever seen, and Wilbur Ross?

     

   

[Spineur]

1/ Hydrocloroquine is in the public domain, anybody can make it and it costs next to nothing.

2/ A large scale clinical study of putative Covid-19 has been launched 9 days ago.  It includes
hydroxychloroquine
Remdesivir
favipiravir
lopinavir/ritonavir

Although the results wont be published for another couple of weeks, so far this study says that NONE OF THEM work.  Which means that our only hope left is a vaccine.  We are in very deep S..T.

     Oh, that drug Trump is pushing, guess what?

     Trump Has 'Financial Interest' in Hydroxychloroquine Manufacturer: NYT

The Times reports that the president's family trusts all have investments in a mutual fund whose largest holding is Sanofi, the manufacturer of Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine. Associates of the president, such as major Republican donor Ken Fisher and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, have also run funds that hold investments in the pharmaceutical firm.

     Is that the Ken Fisher, the investment guy responsible for the most disgusting commercial I've ever seen, and Wilbur Ross?

     

   

[MusicTurner]

A lot of options concerning medicines and vaccines are being investigated and tested by professionals, WHO etc. Their  numbers are counted in dozens.

[drogulus]

1/ Hydrocloroquine is in the public domain, anybody can make it and it costs next to nothing.

     Anyone can, but the present manufacturers will probably provide it.

     This is from the article:

Several generic drugmakers are gearing up to produce hydroxychloroquine pills, including Amneal Pharmaceuticals, whose co-founder Chirag Patel is a member of Trump National Golf Course Bedminster in New Jersey and has golfed with Mr. Trump at least twice since he became president, according to a person who saw them.


     It's not just Sanofi that's linked to Trump or his associates.

     

[drogulus]

     Here's another view on what may motivate Trump to promote hydrocloroquine:

     Trump's promotion of hydroxychloroquine is almost certainly about politics, not profits

By now, the use of the drug has become a benchmark in the political culture wars, with Trump allies echoing his calls for the drug as a sign of their confidence in his instincts and as a way of promoting what they see as an optimistic view of the pandemic. The president is probably also promoting the drug because it offers a big political upside — getting to say he was right and the experts were wrong — with a small downside. (If the drugs continue to prove not to be particularly useful, precedent suggests that he will simply ignore the time he spent promoting them.)

     Why should the President be advocating for a drug? He should be doing his utmost to see that everything essential to combating the pandemic is made available. His drug commercials are not an adequate substitute.

     

[Karl Henning]

Although the 15-minute audio to  Navy Secretary Modly's speech (via intercom) to sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt is embedded in a post above, for ease I am reposting it below.  I find the speech astounding in its ugliness. Instead of offering assurances to the crew about their safety, he accuses their captain of "betrayal" and rebukes them for displaying their loyalty to him.  It is a pure political "reeducation" speech.  Modly's official online biography states that he was a Navy "helicopter pilot" and "legal officer"; but no mention of rank.  As former lowly army enlisted man, I know how important rank is in determining an officer's level of authority.  I don't think omitting it from Modly's biography was an oversight.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFIJ81Tiq-8

And Modly has resigned.

[SimonNZ]

Trump finalizes plans to open Utah monuments for mining and drilling

"Plans finalized on Thursday for two national monuments in Utah downsized by Donald Trump would ensure that lands previously off-limits to energy development will be open to mining and drilling.

The move comes despite pending lawsuits from conservation, tribal and paleontology groups, who have challenged the constitutionality of the president's action. The Trump administration slashed the size of Bears Ears national monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument by nearly half in December 2017, in what represented the largest elimination of public lands protections in US history."[...]


Trump order encourages US to mine the moon
Executive order says US will oppose any international effort to bar it from removing chunks of moon, Mars or elsewhere in space

"The world may be racked by the coronavirus, but Donald Trump has less earthly concerns on his mind, too, after signing an executive order encouraging the US to mine the moon for minerals.

The executive order makes clear that the US doesn't view space as a "global commons", opening the way for the mining of the moon without any sort of international treaty.

"Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space," the order states, noting that the US had never signed a 1979 agreement known as the moon treaty. This agreement stipulates that any activities in space should conform to international law. In 2015, the US Congress passed a law explicitly allowing American companies to use resources from the moon and asteroids.

According to Trump's executive order, the US will object to any attempt to use international law to hinder its efforts to remove chunks of the moon or, should the opportunity arise, additional mining of Mars and "other celestial bodies".[...]

[SimonNZ]

Trump threatens to hold WHO funding, then backtracks, amid search for scapegoat


Trump Broke the Agencies That Were Supposed To Stop the Covid-19 Epidemic

[...]"We devoted billions—trillions, even—of dollars after 2001 to fixing the intelligence and information-gathering problems identified by the 9/11 Commission, and Congress and George W. Bush worked through the biggest reorganization of the government since 1947 to create two entirely new entities to help prevent "the next 9/11": The Department of Homeland Security, an attempt to bring together all the agencies tasked with protecting the country at home, and the Office of Director of National Intelligence, a coordinator for the nation's 17 disparate intelligence agencies to ensure that the country better understood both the big picture and the small picture of what was happening around the world.

Unfortunately, President Donald Trump's routine, day-to-day mismanagement of the government has left both organizations—the very entities we tasked as a nation to prevent the next 9/11—riddled with vacancies and temporary officials as the novel coronavirus rapidly spread from a small blip in China to a global health and economic catastrophe. In fact, the four top jobs at DHS and ODNI have all been filled with temporary acting officials for literally every day that Covid-19 has been on the world stage.

While we often think of those jobs as focused on protecting against terrorism, both agencies have critical public health roles, too; U.S. intelligence spent the winter racing to understand how serious a threat Covid-19 truly was and deciphering the extent of China's cover-up of its epidemic. Just last week, news broke about a special report prepared by U.S. intelligence documenting China's deception about the disease's spread—information that, had it been more accurately captured and understood, might have caused a faster, harder response and lessened the economic and personal toll of the epidemic at home.

Yet Trump has churned through officials overseeing the very intelligence that might have helped understand the looming crisis. At Liberty Crossing, the headquarters of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the government will have been without a Senate-confirmed director for eight months as of next week; last summer, Trump accepted the resignation of Dan Coats and forced out the career principal deputy of national intelligence, Sue Gordon. Coats' temporary stand-in, career intelligence official Joseph Maguire, then served so long that he was coming close to timing out of his role—federal law usually lets officials serve only 210 days before relinquishing the acting post—when Trump ousted him too, as well as the acting career principal deputy. In their place, at the end of February—weeks after the U.S. already recorded its first Covid-19 case—Trump installed U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as his latest acting director, the role that by law is meant to be the president's top intelligence adviser. Grenell has the least intelligence experience of any official ever to occupy director's suite.

This Friday, the role of Homeland Security secretary will have been vacant for an entire year, ever since Kirstjen Nielsen was forced out over Trump's belief she wasn't tough enough on border security. DHS has numerous critical roles in any domestic crisis, but its acting secretary, Chad Wolf, has fumbled through the epidemic; in February, Wolf couldn't answer seemingly straightforward questions on Capitol Hill from Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana about the nation's preparedness—what models were predicting about the outbreak, how many respirators the government had stockpiled, even how Covid-19 was transmitted. "You're supposed to keep us safe. And you need to know the answers to these questions," Kennedy finally snapped at Wolf. Wolf has been notably absent ever since from the White House podium during briefings about the nation's epidemic response.

"Actings" often struggle to be successful precisely because they're temporary—their word carries less weight with their own workforce, with other government agencies or on Capitol Hill—and they rarely have the opportunity to set and drive their own agenda, push for broad organizational change or even learn the ropes of how to be successful in the job given the usually brief period of their tenure. Anyone who has ever changed jobs or companies knows how long it can take to feel like you understand a new organization, a new culture or shape a new role.

And yet up and down the org chart at DHS, there are people still learning the ropes. DHS is riddled with critical vacancies; according to the Washington Post's appointment tracker, just 35 percent of its top roles are filled. Its chief of staff, executive secretary and general counsel are all acting officials, and there's no Senate-confirmed deputy secretary, no undersecretary for management, no chief financial officer, no chief information officer, no undersecretary for science and technology, nor a deputy undersecretary for science and technology."[...]

[BasilValentine]

David Frum in The Atlantic stating the (mostly) obvious: It's Trump's fault:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-for-trumps-failures/609532/

[SimonNZ]

Diamond and Silk's Twitter account locked for breaking coronavirus misinformation rules

"Twitter briefly locked the account of online personalities and prominent Trump allies Diamond and Silk over a tweet that violated the company's rules against coronavirus misinformation, a spokesperson for the social media firm told POLITICO on Wednesday.

It's the latest instance of Twitter taking enforcement action against a notable surrogate of President Donald Trump for ruling afoul of its recently enacted rules against medical hoaxes and misleading information during the Covid-19 outbreak.

The duo, whose legal names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, claimed in a tweet Wednesday afternoon that individuals will get sicker if they stay inside amid the pandemic, a statement directly at odds with the advice of public health experts who have called for millions of Americans to self-isolate.

"The only way we can become immune to the environment; we must be out in the environment. Quarantining people inside of their houses for extended periods will make people sick!" the pair tweeted from their official account, which boasts 1.4 million followers."[...]


Trump claims that his daughter created 10 percent of all the jobs in the United States