Tuesday, June 30, 2020

DEATH IN AMERICA UNDER THE TRUMP REGIME


The Coronavirus Plus the Flu Could Equal a Devastating Fall and Winter, CDC Director Says



The Coronavirus Plus the Flu Could Equal a Devastating Fall and Winter, CDC Director Says
The Coronavirus Plus the Flu Could Equal a Devastating Fall and Winter, CDC Director Says
Mandy Oaklander
Summer has just begun, but health officials are already warning Americans that the fall and winter months ahead will likely be challenging. Once flu season begins, the U.S. will have to worry about not one, but two contagious viruses.
“The real risk is that we’re going to have two circulating respiratory pathogens at the same time,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during a TIME 100 Talks discussion with senior health writer Alice Park. “We know flu by itself can cause substantial morbidity and mortality and hospital utilization,” especially for elderly people and those who have underlying health conditions. With the new coronavirus wreaking devastation in these groups and others, “this could be really a very, very difficult situation.”
Getting a flu vaccine is one way to help prevent influenza. But even though flu vaccines are safe and often quite effective, they aren’t very popular. “Historically, less than half of Americans get flu vaccines,” Redfield said. “This is the year that I’m asking the American public to seriously reconsider, because that decision may make available a hospital bed for somebody else that really needs it for COVID.”
So far this summer, as states have begun to reopen, Redfield said more than 100 counties in the U.S. are “what we consider [coronavirus] hot spots” and “experiencing higher transmission rates than we would like to see.” In response, he said, the CDC is sending teams to those areas and working with state and local health officials to understand how those cases are spreading and how best to contain them.
Redfield also denied that the CDC has been sidelined during the pandemic; in previous outbreaks, the CDC has taken a more visible role in holding press conferences to educate and answer questions from the public. “I’d say no,” Redfield said in response to whether the agency has been taking a backseat in guiding the country through the pandemic. “We have a seat at the table in the {White House Coronavirus] Task Force where I represent the CDC…and we are presenting those view and I can tell you those views are heard, and those views are respected.”
Right now, the tools Americans have been using for months—standing six feet apart, wearing face coverings, washing hands regularly—are still the best protections against contracting the virus that causes COVID-19. But by late 2020 or early 2021, that arsenal may realistically include one or more coronavirus vaccines, Redfield said.
That’s an incredibly quick timeline for a vaccine of this kind, and three months ago, Redfield would have called it “highly optimistic.” Now, though, “I think there’s a real probability that we’re going to accomplish that. No one can guarantee it, but the amount of progress that’s been made in recent weeks is substantial.”
This article is part of #TIME100Talks: Finding Hope, a special series featuring leaders across different fields encouraging action toward a better world. Want more? Sign up for access to more virtual events, including live conversations with influential newsmakers.

The Washington Post
Coronavirus Updates
Important developments in the pandemic.
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TRUMP PLANS EXIT - MAY FLEE TO SCOTTISH GOLF COURSE IF PUTIN DENIES ASYLUM REQUEST

Scarborough: ‘Trump Is Parroting Vladimir Putin,’ Putin’s ‘Propaganda Chiefs’

Volume 90%
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Tuesday, MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough continued to push the reports that Russian intelligence offered Afghan militants bounties to kill U.S. soldiers, and the White House knew about it but did nothing. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has denied President Donald Trump had any knowledge of a bounty.
After saying the White House is lying about what Trump and the White House knew about the Russia bounty, Scarborough accused Trump of “parroting Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin’s propaganda chiefs.”
“The White House is pushing two lies right now,” Scarborough proclaimed. “The first lie is the president has not been briefed on this. That’s a lie. And then, of course, you have Donald Trump’s Helsinki lie, again that the intelligence agency is fake news, which is fascinating.”
“Donald Trump is parroting Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin’s propaganda chiefs,” he continued. “So, here we are again with Donald Trump taking the word of an ex-KGB officer who said the collapse of Soviet communism was the greatest tragedy in the 20th century. He’s taking Vladimir Putin’s words over the words of his own intel chiefs. Willie, that’s where we still are in late 2020, and it doesn’t matter to him that young American troops have had bounties put on their heads and that the intelligence community has known about this now since 2019, and they were pushing the White House to do something in March of 2020.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

Heather Cox RichardsonJun 30
If you feel overwhelmed, there is good reason. We are currently in the midst of a number of storylines, any one of which would define any other administration. And the news comes so fast you can barely figure out who the players are before there’s another twist.
Friday’s news that Russia offered—and paid—bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American soldiers, and that Trump chose to make friendly overtures to Russia President Vladimir Putin rather than retaliating, is huge. People trying to downplay it are saying that of course other countries want to kill American soldiers, and yes, that seems rather a given. But in this case, the president was informed of a direct plot on the part of a country not officially involved in a hostile situation to pay militants to kill our soldiers, and rather than retaliate for that engagement, the president has extended friendly overtures to that country. This behavior is both unprecedented and unfathomable.
After the story broke, the White House stayed quiet for almost 24 hours, then White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that the president and Vice President Mike Pence had not been briefed on the issue. First thing Sunday morning, Trump tweeted: “Nobody briefed or told me, [Vice President] Pence, or Chief of Staff [Mark Meadows] about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an ‘anonymous source’ by the Fake News [New York Times]….”
But news broke yesterday that US intelligence officers had, in fact, notified their superiors back in January about the Russian plot, which they believed resulted in at least one U.S. death. Two intelligence officials told reporters that the information had been delivered to the president and that last week, American officials shared the information with the British government. Today, it was confirmed that the president had gotten a written briefing on the issue in February.
Today, Trump and White House officials tried to argue that the intelligence was not credible, and the newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, warned that any leaks about the issue are a crime.
But in response to congressional outcry, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, DNI Ratcliffe, and National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien briefed seven House Republicans from the Armed Service and Foreign Affairs committee: Liz Cheney (R-WY), “Mac” Thornberry (R-TX), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Jim Banks (R-IN), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), and Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Also present was Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who is chair of the far-right Freedom Caucus.
A few Democrats will be briefed tomorrow, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has demanded a briefing for the whole House. This procedure is irregular: there is a process for informing Congress of military threats that involves leaders of both parties equally, not by party in different groups.
More news broke at 11:30 tonight, when the Associated Press published a story saying that “top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.”
That story alone should define a presidency, but the upcoming election is also huge. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Trump’s advisors are worried about his falling poll numbers and have urged him to try to appeal to a wider group of voters than the base to which he continues to cater.
But the story appeared shortly after the president retweeted a video of a man in the Florida retirement community The Villages shouting “white power” at protesters. Trump wrote: “Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!”
White House aides immediately recognized they had a problem, but it took them three hours to delete the tweet, and even then, no one in the White House denounced it. White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere simply said that the president did not hear the “white power” slogan on the video. Today, McEnany said that Trump had retweeted the video “to stand with his supporters, who are oftentimes demonized.”
As Trump focuses on his base, he is losing important support.
At the Supreme Court today, Chief Justice Roberts joined the majority to strike down a Louisiana law that put restrictions on abortion providers disproportionate to those put on other procedures with similar risks. The Supreme Court decided a Texas case much like this one four years ago, and while Roberts wrote that he thought the previous case was wrongly decided, he deferred to that legal precedent, sending a strong signal that he wants his court to defend the rule of law.
Republican leaders are also changing their tune on the pandemic, as we now have more than 2.5 million confirmed cases, and southern and western states have severe new spikes. Many have refused to wear masks as they tried to downplay the virus and urge people to jump start the economy. But today, Pence urged Americans to wear masks and keep distance from each other, and on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said “We must have no stigma — none — about wearing masks when we leave our homes and come near other people. Wearing simple face coverings is not about protecting ourselves. It is about protecting everyone we encounter.”
Finally, Carl Bernstein tonight published a deeply researched piece in CNN about Trump’s phone calls with world leaders. Trump is unprepared, boastful, and deferential to Putin and Turkey’s autocratic ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with whom he talks frequently. When he picks up the phone, he is unable to distinguish between his own interests in revenge and reelection and the interests of the nation. According to Bernstein, U.S. withdrawal from northeastern Syria and abandonment of our Kurdish allies to a Turkish invasion last fall was at Erdogan’s urging.
Trump caves to autocrats but bullies allies, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Theresa May. He also denigrates former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush to foreign leaders.
According to the piece, Trump’s senior officials, “including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff,” have concluded “that the President himself" is "a danger to the national security of the United States.”
Aside from the content in this piece, this level of leaking suggests that Trump has lost his grip on the White House. Bernstein’s sources told him—and through him, Congress—that almost all of Trump’s phone chats with foreign leaders were caught on dictation programs, supplemented by extensive note taking.
They suggested that a reexamination of Russia expert Fiona Hill’s testimony might provide a road map to the calls, and that if revealed, the contents of the calls would “be devastating to the President’s standing” with members of both parties as well as with the public. Recognizing that Trump would try to stop investigations with claims of executive privilege, some former officials suggested they would be willing to testify to what they had heard.
Tomorrow will likely be wild….
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Notes:



Trump in ‘fragile’ mood and may drop out of 2020 race if poll numbers don’t improve, GOP insiders tell Fox News

Richard Hall













Getty
Getty

Donald Trump may drop out of the 2020 presidential race if he believes he has no chance of winning, a Republican Party operative reportedly told Fox News.
The claim comes in a report in the president’s favourite news outlet that cites a number of GOP insiders who are concerned about Mr Trump’s re-election prospects amid abysmal polling numbers.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, currently holds an average lead of nine points over the incumbent, according to a tracker of 2020 polls by RealClearPolitics.
Crucially, Mr Trump has lost support from older white voters — typically a bedrock of support for the Republican Party and a group that was crucial to his narrow 2016 victory. Mr Trump is also trailing the former vice president in almost all the swing states.
“It’s too early, but if the polls continue to worsen, you can see a scenario where he drops out,” one anonymous GOP operative told Fox News.
Charles Gasparino, the author of the Fox News report, said in a series of tweets that he had spoken to “major players” in the Republican party for the story. One of them described Mr Trump’s mood as “fragile” as his chances of a second-term looked increasingly dim.
Another of the GOP sources cited in the report said of the likelihood that Mr Trump will drop out: “I’ve heard the talk but I doubt it’s true. My bet is, he drops if he believes there’s no way to win.”
Mr Trump has repeatedly hit out at polling that shows him far behind Mr Biden. Last month, he tweeted that Fox News “should fire their Fake Pollster. Never had a good Fox Poll!”
On Monday, he tweeted: "Sorry to inform the Do Nothing Democrats, but I am getting VERY GOOD internal Polling Numbers. Just like 2016, the @nytimes Polls are Fake! The @FoxNews Polls are a JOKE! Do you think they will apologize to me & their subscribers AGAIN when I WIN? People want LAW, ORDER & SAFETY!"
But polls from all polling organisations show Mr Trump consistently behind by similar margins. In particular, they have shown high levels of disapproval over the president’s handling of the coronavirus and mass protests calling for racial justice after the police killing of George Floyd.
A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 36 per cent of American adults approve of Trump’s handling of the protests, while 62 percent disapprove. A New York Times poll returned similar numbers.
The same New York Times-Siena College poll found 58 per cent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, while only 38 percent approve — the worst ratings since the crisis began.


Trump strategically stretches truth to manipulate media, former adviser says

 | June 23, 2020
President Trump routinely, strategically exaggerates his achievements and stretches the truth to manipulate the media, according to a former adviser.
Some examples of Trump's intentional exaggerations: inflating the GDP growth numbers in 2018, overstating the magnitude of drug price declines under his watch, falsely suggesting that all Democrats want to outlaw private health insurance, and claiming that he's the best president ever for African Americans.
“[Trump] began with a now-familiar strategy for getting the press to cover a new fact, which is to exaggerate it so that the press might enjoy correcting him and unwittingly disseminate the intended finding,” said Casey Mulligan, who served as the chief economist of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers from 2018 to 2019.
“The president’s gamble is that voters aware of his successes on substance will tolerate his eccentricities and improprieties in form,” said Mulligan, who lays out the case in detail in his forthcoming tell-all book, You’re Hired!: Untold Successes and Failures of a Populist President.
One part of Trump’s tenure that he’s particularly proud of is economic growth. The economy had grown 3.1% over the four quarters of 2018, which had not happened in one calendar year since 2005.
Although having the highest economic growth rate in 14 years based on the annual calendar was significant, Mulligan said, Trump nevertheless complained that the accomplishment was “not getting fair coverage.” Trump decided to put a tweet out to get more attention.
“POTUS asked whether the tweet should say that it was the fastest growth in 20 years. Or 50? What would be the sweet exaggeration spot that would get media attention?” Trump said in a private conversation with his economic advisers in 2019, according to Mulligan’s book.
Trump went on to cite the exaggerated GDP growth numbers during some Trump rallies, Mulligan said.
Mulligan explained in the book that, on many occasions, Trump would first report or tweet the numbers given to him by advisers with “100 percent precision.” Later, though, he would embellish the claims after consulting with his communications team, primarily social media chief Dan Scavino and senior adviser and speechwriter Stephen Miller, gauging “whether the coverage needed exaggeration."
When it came to the Trump administration’s success in reducing the cost of prescription drugs in 2018, once again, the president started off quoting accurate numbers but then slipped into exaggerations when insufficient attention was given to the accomplishment, according to Mulligan.
Initially, Trump said drug prices in 2018 had dropped for “the first time in nearly half a century.” This was accurate.
Just 12 days after the new drug price data had been released, however, Trump was frustrated that the press were not talking about it and began exaggerating during a White House Cabinet meeting at which the press were present, claiming that drug prices had declined for the “first time in over 50 years.” An hour later, at another televised Cabinet meeting, according to Mulligan’s book, Trump said, “Prescription drugs, for the first time in the history of our country, have gone down in 2018." Trump said the press didn't want to report his administration's success because they didn't want to give him the satisfaction.
The president, Mulligan said, is known not just for exaggerating the facts on his own successes from time to time but also, on occasion, for doing so to highlight his opponents' weaknesses.
According to Mulligan’s book, in fall 2018, on the recommendation of Mulligan and advisers such as Miller, Trump began telling the public that Democrats' "Medicare for all" plan would be “outlawing the ability of Americans to enroll in private and employer-based plans.” This messaging on the proposed healthcare plan was meant to highlight the negative elements of socialism, touted by some Democrats such as 2020 presidential contender Bernie Sanders.
This was accurate. Sanders's Medicare for All Act, for example, would have banned private insurance.
Later, though, Trump would go on to say that “Democrats want to outlaw private health plans,” which is an accurate description of only some Democrats, the 141 Democratic members of the 115th Congress who supported "Medicare for all" bills. Finally, Trump said, “the Democrats want to outlaw private health plans” (emphasis added), which is not accurate since many Democrats do not support "Medicare for all" and thereby do not want to outlaw private health insurance.
Trump saying “the Democrats,” indicating all Democrats want to outlaw private health insurance, enraged Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who doesn’t support "Medicare for all" and bashed Trump for the inaccuracy.
Through a series of exaggerations, Mulligan said, Trump had successfully informed the public that "Medicare for all" would take private health insurance away from millions of people.
Within the current context of the race riots occurring nationwide, Mulligan said Trump’s claim that he’s the best president for African Americans is “probably not accurate.” However, Mulligan added that Trump saying this exaggeration gets newspapers such as the Washington Post to do a fact check on the claim because it's so outlandish. Such fact checks then unintentionally inform people about the positive steps Trump has taken to help the black community.
“If he hadn't made that claim, the Washington Post would have never done any analysis of Trump policies that are good for African Americans. Mission accomplished, right?” said Mulligan.
“He manipulates the fact checkers pretty easily,” added Mulligan.
An Illustrated History of Government Agencies Twisting the Truth to Align With White House Misinformation
When Trump pushes outlandish misinformation, his federal agencies have turned it into official guidance and policy. Some have later had to reverse themselves.

by Eric Umansky June 22, 5:28 p.m. EDT

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
The 45th President and His Administration
It has become a familiar pattern: President Donald Trump says something that doesn’t line up with the facts held by scientists and other experts at government agencies. Then, instead of pushing back, federal officials scramble to reconcile the fiction with their own public statements.
It happened in March, when Trump pushed his opinion that antimalarial drugs could treat COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an unusual directive that lent credence to the president’s perspective: “Although optimal dosing and duration of hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 are unknown, some U.S. clinicians have reported anecdotally” on specific dosages that the CDC then lists. The CDC’s language — which the agency later retracted — shocked experts, who said the drug needed to be treated with caution. The CDC told Reuters the agency had prepared the guidance at the behest of the White House.
Perhaps the best known example of an agency twisting itself into a pretzel stems from “Sharpiegate.” After the National Weather Service’s Birmingham, Alabama, office contradicted Trump’s Sharpie fable that Hurricane Dorian threatened the state, the agency overseeing the office put out a statement backing the president over the scientists. Emails obtained by BuzzFeed and The Washington Post showed just how the episode roiled the agency. “You have no idea how hard I’m fighting to keep politics out of science,” one official wrote. Another email simply had one word: “HELP!!!”
On the same day last week, two separate agencies cut through the White House influence with their own factual conclusions.
The Food and Drug Administration announced last Monday that it was revoking emergency approval of the malaria drugs, saying that the dosing regimens promoted are “unlikely to produce an antiviral effect” and that their risks — which include potentially fatal cardiac side effects — outweigh the possible benefits.
Also that day, an independent panel investigating Sharpiegate on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that top officials — including acting chief Neil Jacobs — violated the policy that forbids political interference with NOAA’s scientific findings. Meanwhile, Trump nominated Jacobs to permanently lead the agency in December.
ProPublica catalogued other instances in which government entities have changed language or made other moves buttressing the White House’s unsupported assertions.
“Our Stockpile”
The morning after Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner asserted that the national stockpile is “our stockpile” and not for states, the government changed the wording on the stockpile’s website.
Before Kushner’s comments, it said the “stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most.”
That became: The stockpile’s “role is to supplement state and local supplies,” and “many states have products stockpiled, as well.”
A government spokesman said the update had been in the works for a week before Kushner’s comments. The spokesperson did not allow their name to be used.
“No Proof of Anything”
In another instance, after Trump warned in a tweet of “unknown Middle Easterners” crossing the border from Mexico — a “National Emergy [sic]” — the Department of Homeland Security released figures to support the claim. Upon inspection, it became clear the figures did nothing of the sort.
A few days later, the president backed off his claim of suspicious Middle Easterners crossing the border. “There’s no proof of anything,” Trump said, “but there could very well be.”

Agencies’ attempts to bolster the White House haven’t always borne fruit. In late 2018, Trump again warned about dangers at the Mexican border. “Women are tied up, they’re bound, duct tape put around their faces, around their mouths, in many cases they can’t even breathe,” Trump said. “They’re put in the backs of cars or vans or trucks.”
It wasn’t at all clear what Trump was referring to, but a top Border Patrol official tried to be of assistance. He emailed agents asking them to pass along any such evidence. (The email was obtained by a Vox reporter, Dara Lind, who’s now at ProPublica.)
The Border Patrol never followed up with examples.
The Inaugural Example
And then there was Trump’s first day in office. He publicly complained about what he said were misleading photographs comparing the size of the audience at his inauguration with President Barack Obama’s, and then-White House Spokesman Sean Spicer falsely claimed a record crowd size.
The Post soon reported the president called the head of the National Park Service to demand it release photos that would counter what he saw as the misleading comparisons. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy spokesperson, said the call was simply a reflection of a president who is “so accessible, and constantly in touch.”

A government investigation later found that after the call a National Park Service photographer cropped photos to take out empty areas. As the report noted, “He selected a number of photos, based on his professional judgment, that concentrated on the area of the national mall where most of the crowd was standing.”
The report noted that no one ordered him to do so.
The 10% Tax Cut for the Middle Class
Congress has also gotten involved. Right before the 2018 elections, Trump made unplanned comments that middle-class Americans would be getting a 10% tax cut. “We’ll be putting it in next week,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Houston. Nobody in the White House or Capitol Hill had even heard Trump talk about it before.
Republicans responded by saying they were working on rolling out something — reportedly a nonbinding resolution — “over the coming weeks,” as one congressman put it.
The cuts never happened.