The Donald Trump Score Card

I haven't seen this many turnovers since the last time I was a a bakery.
Acting secretary of the Navy has submitted his resignation after calling ousted aircraft carrier captain 'stupid' - CNNPolitics
What a fucking jackass.

 

It's Time To Say It: Trump Is Handling COVID-19 Like A Dictator | HuffPost

Before the early 2000s, the typical dictator was a military leader, a monarch or the head of an established political party. When he gained power, he brought an entire hierarchy into office with him. What made leaders like Stalin, Hitler and Mao so dangerous was not only their genocidal policies, but their competence in implementing them.


Since then, however, evil-genius authoritarians have become rarer. The new generation of dictators are more likely to be what Inglehart and Norris call “populist authoritarians” — charismatic leaders who promise to be the political vessel for their supporters’ cultural frustrations and xenophobia.

“Authoritarian populists depict themselves as outsiders,” Norris said. Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Turkey’s Erdogan and Hungary’s Orbán all rose to power by bragging about their lack of political experience, blaming minority groups for their country’s problems and promising to restore traditional values. (Sound familiar?)


“Authoritarianism is fueled by insecurity, fear and tribalism,” Norris said, adding that most of the world’s authoritarian populist leaders appeal to older, rural and conservative populations, majorities who feel they are losing their grip on power. “These groups feel their status and power is under threat and they are willing to vote for someone who promises to speak for them.”


In contrast to traditional dictators, however, modern-day authoritarians often don’t have the skill — or, in many cases, the interest — to competently enact their agendas. Instead of employing experienced administrators, authoritarians typically appoint loyalists and family members. When they fail to deliver on their outsize campaign promises, authoritarians double down, blaming shadowy conspiracies and wily saboteurs inside their own government agencies.


“Authoritarian populists don’t trust science and expertise in general and they mistrust scientific evidence,” Norris said. “And it’s not just them as individuals. It’s a philosophy that defines how they approach everything they do.”


This explains why modern authoritarians have responded to COVID-19 with paranoia and denial: They’ve deliberately purged their administrations of anyone who will tell them hard truths about their own performance.


Trump’s COVID-19 response follows the same outline: deny science, purge whistleblowers, and install unqualified family members in key positions.

“When leaders hollow out the institutions and get rid of people who aren’t loyal to them, that leads to erratic behavior,” Frantz said. “They insulate themselves from information

 

Trump’s New Press Secretary Is the Ultimate Cable-News Spin Master
Kayleigh McEnany may not bring back the daily press briefing, but she’ll surely be on TV, where she was recently downplaying coronavirus and bashing the media, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.
By Caleb Ecarma
April 7, 2020

Trump’s New Press Secretary Is the Ultimate Cable-News Spin Master

excerpt:

"The most high-profile addition is McEnany, who more than anything else, has proven to be one of Trump’s most enthusiastic, consistent foot soldiers on one of his favorite media battlefields: daytime cable news. When the president was still writing off the coronavirus in late February as “very much under control in the USA,” McEnany told__Trish Regan__—who parted ways with Fox Business last month after downplaying the outbreak—that America will never “see diseases like the coronavirus come here…and isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama.”"

 

Wisconsin primary election back on despite coronavirus pandemic
Phil Thomas
The Independent
April 6, 2020, 6:42 PM EDT

Wisconsin primary election back on despite coronavirus pandemic

excerpt:

"Wisconsin will hold its in-person primary election on Tuesday after the state's Republican-dominated supreme court voted along party lines to overturn the Democratic governor's bid to delay it amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier on Monday, governor Tony Evers had said he was postponing the primary to protect voters from the risk of spreading Covid-19, overriding the objections of Republican politicians in the state. He had previously opposed moving the primary himself.

However, the supreme court voted 4-2 that he did not have the legal right to postpone the vote on his own authority.

Many Democratic primaries have either been postponed – several until 2 June – or else switched to mail-in ballots, such as this month's contests in states including Alaska, Wyoming and Ohio, because of the pandemic,"

 

VG - I've had a supply of face masks - N95 and regular surgical masks - for quite a long time. My work requires them in certain circumstances. But as soon as the word came out about the oncoming outbreak FROM THE EXPERTS - not Trump's denials and downplaying - I started wearing them. I also have a huge supply of nitrile and rubber gloves because I refinish wood and finish new wood projects as a hobby. Cleaning surfaces and washing hands is no problem for us either. We like to err on the side of caution. Prudence ……… not blind faith in an incompetent.

With your loyal, unswerving trust in HIS IMPERIAL GENIUS GREATNESS, I'll bet you're not using any protection of any kind. "Maybe even going to work." - or "Going on with your lives." as the Genius - in - Chief suggested???

 

Yes I'm working, the crazier this gets the more I have to work, no I'm not wearing a facemask. Yes, I hope to get this before our winter

Lockdowns are only going to be sustainable for 3 months at the very most. Very slim chance a vaccine is less than 18 months away, reasonable chance we may never see one

You are all going to have to roll the dice way sooner than you think

 

All turned into every state for themselves pretty quickly didn't it, no one else is really helping NY are they

And you lot, just sitting on your arse, orange man bad comments on the internet, while doing sweet FA. Probably writing love letters to Xinnie the Pooh for helping make orange man look bad. A complimentary CCP badge gets returned in the mail, along with 5 face masks you could use to sift flour

 

Trump claims he ended an FDA rule or regulation from the Obama era that he says limited the availability of COVID-19 test kits. The facts don't support his claim.


Trump Blames Obama Decision for Coronavirus Test Kit Shortage
By Jennifer Jacobs
and Robert Langreth
March 4, 2020, 12:09 PM EST
Updated on March 4, 2020, 5:37 PM EST

Trump Blames Obama Decision for Coronavirus Test Kit Shortage

excerpt:

"Experts on lab testing said they were unaware of any Obama-era rule that would have hindered the administration from authorizing lab-developed tests for the coronavirus in an emergency. The FDA has had the authority to authorize tests for emergency use under the 2004 law, signed by President George W. Bush, aimed at advancing medical countermeasures for biological weapons.

“We cannot find a basis for this,” said Peter Kyriacopoulos, chief policy officer for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents state and local laboratories. “We are not familiar with the rule they are referring to.”

About a decade ago, the FDA grew concerned about what it called “high-risk” lab-developed tests -- products that made exaggerated claims unsupported by evidence or relied on falsified data. In 2010, the agency said it would begin reviewing its policy of “enforcement discretion” for the tests.

But the review ended in January 2017, days before Trump was inaugurated, without the FDA issuing any new regulations. The agency published only a “discussion paper” that it said wasn’t enforceable, in addition to the guidance on emergency authorizations."

 

AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s mislaid blame on Obama for virus test
By MATTHEW PERRONE and HOPE YEN
March 5, 2020

AP FACT CHECK: Trump's mislaid blame on Obama for virus test

excerpt:

"Under a 2004 federal law, the FDA has wide power to authorize drugs, tests and other therapies during emergencies. That means no legal authority was hindering the Trump administration when it earlier decided to limit testing to public health labs using the CDC test.

“All they did was reverse a policy that they themselves set,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, an FDA official during the Obama administration who is now a vice dean at Johns Hopkins-Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Former FDA testing employees said that during public health emergencies the agency tended to increase its scrutiny and require diagnostic labs to seek authorization before launching their tests. But they said that was not a binding policy and it preceded the Obama era.

Trump and Pence appeared to be referring, in part, to draft FDA guidance circulated during the Obama administration in 2014 that called for tighter regulation of so-called laboratory-developed tests, a market traditionally not overseen by the agency. That nonbinding guidance cited a need for accurate and reliable tests to help consumers make better health care decisions. But that guidance, which did not pertain to public health emergencies such as the coronavirus, never went into effect."

 

Trump blames WHO for getting coronavirus pandemic wrong, threatens to withhold funding
Dawn Kopecki and Berkeley Lovelace Jr.
Published Tue, Apr 7 20207:45 PM EDT

Trump blames WHO for getting coronavirus pandemic wrong, threatens to withhold funding

excerpt:

""They did give us some pretty bad play calling ... with regard to us, they're taking a lot of heat because they didn't want the borders closed, they called it wrong. They really called, I would say, every aspect of it wrong," Trump said at a White House press conference Tuesday.

The WHO, the United Nations' health agency, started sounding the alarm on the outbreak of a new coronavirus in Wuhan, China in mid-January, designating the COVID-19 pandemic as a global health emergency on Jan. 30 when there were just 8,200 cases in 18 countries across the world. The coronavirus has since wreaked havoc across the globe, spreading to more than 1.4 million people and killing more than 81,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University."

 

Trump is on a campaign of blaming inspectors general and accusing such people of being part of the Deep State.


Trump in 2nd Day of Meltdown Over Government Report on Hospital Shortages
By Jonathan Chait
April 7,2020

Trump in 2nd Day of Meltdown Over Government Report on Hospital Shortages

excerpts:

"“Did I hear the word inspector general? Really? It’s wrong.” When told the source came from his own government, Trump began fishing around for evidence the report’s author was biased: “Well, where did he come from, the inspector general. What’s his name?”"


"The entire concept of having an inspector general is to provide a resource to the government. The president can’t correct problems without finding out what the problems are. Trump’s method is deny problems or, when they can no longer be denied, shirk all blame. The existence of independent sources of information is abhorrent to Trump. Dictators don’t have inspector generals in their government. Their response to problems is to overpower them with propaganda."

 

Experts envision two scenarios if the new coronavirus isn’t contained
By Sharon Begley
February 4, 2020

Experts envision two scenarios if new coronavirus isn't contained - STAT

excerpt:

"Any evolution that does take place in an endemic coronavirus, including one that spikes seasonally, might well be toward less virulence. “It doesn’t want to kill you before you transmit it,” Farzan said. “One would therefore expect a slow attenuation” of virulence if the virus becomes like seasonal flu. Dead people don’t transmit viruses, “and even people sitting in their beds and shivering” because they are seriously ill “don’t transmit that well,” he said.

The toll of a seasonal-flu-like coronavirus also depends on immunity — which is also scientifically uncertain. Exposure to the four endemic coronaviruses produces immunity that lasts longer than that to influenza, Webby said, but not permanent immunity. Like respiratory syncytial virus, which can re-infect adults who had it in childhood, coronavirus immunity wanes."

 

"I'm probably the only guy that will make money being president." Trump.

 

Touting Virus Cure, ‘Simple Country Doctor’ Becomes a Right-Wing Star
How Dr. Vladimir Zelenko’s claims for his coronavirus treatment spread from a New York village all the way to President Trump.
By Kevin Roose and Matthew Rosenberg
April 2, 2020

Touting Virus Cure, ‘Simple Country Doctor’ Becomes a Right-Wing Star

excerpt:

"After testing this three-drug cocktail on hundreds of patients, some of whom had only mild or moderate symptoms when they arrived, Dr. Zelenko claimed that 100 percent of them had survived the virus with no hospitalizations and no need for a ventilator.

“I’m seeing tremendous positive results,” he said in a March 21 video, which was addressed to President Trump and eventually posted to YouTube and Facebook.

What happened next is a modern pandemic parable that illustrates how the coronavirus is colliding with our fragile information ecosystem: a jumble of facts, falsehoods and viral rumors patched together from Twitter threads and shards of online news, amplified by armchair experts and professional partisans and pumped through the warp-speed accelerator of social media.

Dr. Zelenko’s treatment arrived at a useful moment for Mr. Trump and his media supporters, who have at times appeared more interested in discussing miracle cures than testing delays or ventilator shortages."

 

One thing The Donald is definately correct on

I don't see the WHO or the UN for that matter returning their former "glory days" after this

 

More Boomer propaganda basically

1. Are you still seriously listening to "experts" after this?

2. "might well be toward less virulence" - based on what? Hope? Exact same article then goes on to use RSV as an example, which is more virulent than it was 40 years ago because there are a lot more of us living in high pop density areas

 

Trump & Fox news are always looking for somebody to blame for his mistakes. WHO relayed information from Chinese officials that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”. It soon became evident that was incorrect, but the WHO sounded the alarm in mid-January and called the global health emergency on January 30. Trump, like you, was slow to respond to the correct info, and initially tried denial and minimization. And we're now supposed to believe your latest assessment of the situation?

 

Are you another boomer?

 

Now this makes sense as to why he was 'pushing' this drug to counter covid - 19 - the bastard is profiteering from other people's misery - Despicable !!!

 

Drop the Curtain on the Trump Follies
Why does the nation need to be subjected to the president’s daily carnival of misinformation, preening and political venom?
By Michelle Cottle
Ms. Cottle is a member of the editorial board.
April 7, 2020

Opinion | Drop the Curtain on the Trump Follies

excerpt:

"For those who have managed to avoid these nightly spectacles, it is hard to convey their tragic absurdity. Mr. Trump typically starts by reading a somber statement that he seems to have never seen before. Next come remarks from other administration officials or corporate executives involved in the relief effort, generally laden with praise for the president’s peerless leadership. Vice President Mike Pence is particularly gifted at this.

After the testimonials comes the Q. and A., which is where the president lets his id off the leash. His constant goal seems to be to stress that he is in no way responsible for this nightmare — including any glitches in his administration’s response. All failures he assigns to past administrations, Democrats, governors, the media and so on."