The Donald Trump Score Card

Americans are underestimating how long coronavirus disruptions will last, health experts say
By Helen Branswell
April 3, 2020

Americans are underestimating duration of coronavirus crisis, experts say

excerpt:

"“If we want to be able to — as I think we need to — turn our economy back on in a safe way, we need to be able to do that sort of thing at scale,” Konyndyk said. “And we do not have anywhere close to the public health infrastructure that’s needed to pull that off.”

“That’s fundamental to getting us out of this lockdown phase. And the government’s not talking about it, much less acting on it,” he said.

Public health experts have said the near-term goal is to flatten the epidemic curve of new cases. There are signs that the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle are starting to see some results in this respect, but progress is not yet apparent in most parts of the country.

Michael Mina, an infectious diseases epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the United States squandered a chance to prevent the virus from taking off here and now must do what it takes to beat it back.

“We let things get out of hand,” said Mina, who is also associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “So now the place that we’re left in is we have to absolutely beat this down with a hammer and get to near zero cases.

“What the means is we have to be patient. By the end of April shouldn’t be anyone’s consideration at this point,” he said. “We have to assume at the very least this is going through May.”

 

Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development:

"You can have the best system in the world, but if you give the virus an eight-week head start it will eat you alive."

 

Trump could have waited about one more week and fired Atkinson on Holy Thursday of a four-day Easter holiday weekend to try to bury it even more, like G.W. Bush did with delaying the 9/11 testimony of Condoleezza Rice until Holy Thursday in 2004.

 

You don't understand. That form of questioning is a part of going to school for a law degree, or a criminal justice degree. It's an entrapment question, not allowed in court.

 

Yes.... Yes I do.

 

Oh good … praise Allah! I have been wondering about you of late. I have been asking my special Genie if Mister T turned Trumpist and capitalist? BY the way, gas was $1.45 today and everything is closed. I can't even renew my driver license. The Hoosier State is locked down hard and tight.

 

Another example of disrespect to the military. So we can't kneel at a football game even when a vet suggests that vs sitting. But we can endanger the lives of the Navy because the chain of command is not official? This guy was making someone look bad by doing the right thing. In times of conflict you are supposed to make tough decisions. Maybe in that moment bureaucracy is not important. It's something that can be very important when people want have dirt on you.

Republicans are such hypocrites. Take a fraction of that rage for Colin Kaepernick and apply it to the real enemy. Take your support of the troops beyond a bumper sticker.

Removing the USS Theodore Roosevelt captain was reckless and foolish (opinion) - CNN

Absent a more complete understanding of the circumstances around Crozier's conduct in this matter, we are left to conclude that the captain may have been fired because of the embarrassment his email caused the Trump administration rather than for any real transgression or failing of leadership.
When he disembarked the carrier on Thursday, Crozier's crew gave him a rousing and emotional send-off. Video of that send-off is going viral on social media, with its loud applause, cheers and chants of Crozier's name.
Those sailors aren't just sending a message to their captain; they are sending a message to Modly. And if I were him, I'd be much more embarrassed about that

 

That was August 2019.

Trump is now faced with a real international crisis.

The social and economic aftermath of the coronavirus will require global cooperation for years. Trump has consistently railed against global relations, branding it as 'globalism' and portraying it as being a threat to patriotism and his 'I alone can fix it' approach based on his gut feelings which failed badly for the coronavirus threat.

If he is in office for a second term, he will need to eventually bow to the reality of the need for global cooperation and collective action that involves compromise, as he did when he finally bowed to the objective facts of science about the spread of the coronavirus that he had previously downplayed.

 

Trump defends firing ‘terrible’ intel community watchdog as Republicans question sacking
“I thought he did a terrible job,” Trump said of Michael Atkinson.
By ANDREW DESIDERIO
04/04/2020 04:06 PM EDT
Updated: 04/04/2020 06:11 PM EDT

Trump defends firing ‘terrible’ intel community watchdog as Republicans question sacking

excerpt:

"President Donald Trump on Saturday defended his decision to fire the intelligence community’s top watchdog, calling the sacked official a “total disgrace” over his handling of a whistleblower complaint that led to the president’s impeachment.

“I thought he did a terrible job. Absolutely terrible,” Trump said of Michael Atkinson, who was let go from his role as the inspector general of the intelligence community on Friday night."

 

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

excerpt:

"Pueyo points out that Republican voters are additionally vulnerable as they have a higher age profile than Democratic voters. Coronavirus makes no distinctions as to party, but it does prey on the elderly.

So it is one of the great paradoxes of Trump’s pandemic that he may have put many of his own loyal supporters in mortal peril. As Konyndyk put it: “Trump has endangered his own supporters by sending out a message in contradiction to the science, and they believed him.”"

 

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

excerpts:

"“This will be regarded as the worst public health disaster in America in a century,” said Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in San Diego. “The root cause of the disaster was the lack of readiness to understand where, how and when the disease was spreading.”"


"For Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard, the unfolding calamity is the fulfilment of her worst fears.

“When we first heard about coronavirus, I and several of my colleagues worried that Trump would not attend to scientific advice. This is a man who has exhibited a reckless disregard for scientific evidence over climate change; if he could do that, there was always the question of whether he would take seriously any science."

Oreskes sees Covid-19 as Trump’s ultimate challenge. Would he put the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans first, or would he dig into the tried-and-tested Republican playbook of showing hostility to science and expertise, reining in government intervention and prioritizing the money markets?

“This was a test of whether Trump’s government would act. What we’ve seen is that for the people in power in this country, ideology beats even an imminent threat.”"

 

Trump fired Mulvaney in March 2020 not long before Atkinson.

At a press briefing in October 2019, Mulvaney outright admitted that Trump was using U.S. taxpayer money to coerce Ukraine into invesitagating Biden. Mulvaney told the press to "get over it."

Rumors had been circulating that Trump would fire Mulvaney. Trump denied the rumors but later fired him.

Mulvaney was never raised to a confirmed chief of staff, only acting chief of staff.

Thomas Monheim is now the acting inspector general. Another actor in the Trump administration.



Michael Atkinson: Trump fires intelligence chief involved in impeachment
BBC News
April 4, 2020

Trump fires official who triggered impeachment

excerpt:

Congressman Adam Schiff, who chaired the House impeachment hearings, said "the president's dead of night decision puts our country and national security at even greater risk."

"President Trump's decision to fire intelligence community inspector General Michael Atkinson is yet another blatant attempt by the president to gut the independence of the intelligence community and retaliate against those who dare to expose presidential wrongdoing," he said.

Last month President Trump replaced his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who was perceived to have implicated the president in the impeachment inquiry with an off-the-cuff remark at the White House podium.

Mr Trump has recently come under fire for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak in the US which has so far claimed more than 7,000 lives.

 

Mulvaney conflated political influence used in foreign policy for the national interests with Trump's influence to garner personal campaign gain by withholding U.S. taxpayer money to coerce Ukraine to help his reelection bid.

Defense attorney Alan Dershowitz made a dunderhead remark by claiming that Trump was justified in withholding U.S. taxpayer money to try to coerce Ukraine for his personal reelection bid because reelecting Trump was in the national interest.

 

Trump went out of his way to rescue basketball players accused of shoplifting and later tells NYC in need of ventilators during a virus pandemic "Try getting it yourselves."



How Trump Helped Liberate U.C.L.A. ‘Knuckleheads’ From China
By Mark Landler and Michael D. Shear
Nov. 14, 2017

How Trump Helped Liberate U.C.L.A. ‘Knuckleheads’ From China

excerpt:

"But just as concern deepened about the fate of the three young athletes in China, their detention abruptly ended, aided, it seems, by Mr. Trump’s direct intervention with the country’s president, Xi Jinping. On Tuesday, the three players, including the star freshman LiAngelo Ball, the brother of the N.B.A. rookie Lonzo Ball, were allowed to leave their hotel and board a flight back to California."

 

Americans reelected G.W. Bush after he had already started the wars in the Mideast and after he had failed to protect the country from a 9/11 attack. The voters treated themselves to failed wars and a Great Recession in the name of continuing their patriotic stupor.

Trump is faced with the task of trying to top that one in the wake of a virus that has already killed more Americans than the number of U.S. troops killed during Bush's Mideast wars or civilians in 9/11.

 

Trump offers competing coronavirus messaging, warning of death but lamenting lockdown
Alexander Nazaryan, National Correspondent
Yahoo News
April 4, 2020, 9:39 PM EDT

Trump offers competing coronavirus messaging, warning of death but lamenting lockdown

excerpt:

"On Saturday, the impatience to return to normal was evident once again. "We have to get back to work. We have to open our country again," the president said, a day after shattering unemployment numbers had some wondering if another Great Depression was at hand.

For the most part, Trump was sober on Saturday. “We're coming to a time that's going to be very horrendous, probably a time like we haven't seen in this country,” he said at one point, adding a few moments later that “it's going to be really some very bad numbers."

At the same time, he repeated a favorite refrain of some conservatives, who have said that the coronavirus “cure”—that is, a nationwide shutdown—cannot be worse than the disease itself. He did suggest, at Saturday’s briefing, that some churches could open for Easter, albeit with “great separation outside.” He said it was “something we should talk about.”

For now, the cure will have to stay in place, a fact that Trump does not dispute, even if he is irritated by it. “The next two weeks are extraordinarily important,” said Dr. Birx. “This is the moment to do everything that you can on the presidential guidelines,” she went on, preparing Americans for continued isolation."

 

Trump being robbed at gunpoint.


robber: What'll it be? Your money or your life?

Trump: (silent)

robber: Well, what'll it be?

Trump: I'm thinking, I'm thinking.

 

Ahhh, naive eggheads on nice pay packets think the rest of the country is going to put up with months

How quaint

 

Think the root cause is the bat virus

 

Good work bringing US citizens home

+3 to The Donald on the scorecard