The Donald Trump Score Card

Mike Pence inserted a provision into Medicare and Medicaid so a church which has a wheel chair or two could get payments from the government for helping disabled people. We should start our own church, wadya think?

 

Great way to make tax free money fleecing frightened people. "god" always needs more money.

 

I wasn't going to leave you out, Bro. We can turn it into a commune church and get Trump to pay for our lunch and cartridges too.

 

Azar has to make a decision on whether to reinstate Bright for 45 days while the whistleblower complaint is reviewed.


Whistle-Blower Exposes Infighting and Animus in Trump’s Coronavirus Response
The allegations suggest personal clashes influenced how the administration responded to the pandemic.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Sharon LaFraniere, Michael D. Shear and Ben Protess
May 9, 2020
Updated 3:19 p.m. ET

Whistle-Blower Exposes Infighting and Animus in Trump’s Coronavirus Response

excerpt:

"But the consequences of such clashes were vividly brought to life by Dr. Bright’s complaint. Email messages show that, as early as January, when President Trump was saying the outbreak was “totally under control,” Dr. Bright was pressing for the government to stock up on masks and drugs and to commence a “Manhattan Project” effort to develop a vaccine.

But Dr. Bright was largely sidelined by personal disputes with Dr. Kadlec and his aides, some of which long predated the coronavirus, the documents suggest. By the time the pandemic arrived in force, the relationship between them had become toxic, with Dr. Bright increasingly left out of key decisions. His ideas about battling the threat “were met with skepticism,” the complaint says, “and were clearly not welcome.”

On Friday, lawyers for Dr. Bright said the federal watchdog agency handling his complaint, the Office of Special Counsel, had notified them that it had found “reasonable grounds” to believe he was retaliated against and was seeking his reinstatement for 45 days while it investigated."

Mr. Azar must now decide whether to reinstate Dr. Bright. An H.H.S. spokeswoman, Caitlin Oakley, declined to comment on a “personnel matter.” But, she said, the agency “strongly disagrees with the allegations and characterizations in the complaint from Dr. Bright.”

 

Yeah, he is running so scared, he doesn't bother wearing facemasks

 

Trump's contention is that mail-in voting will create massive fraud that will favor only the Democrats.

Trump's committee to investigate the alleged 3 million votes that Trump claimed went to Hillary instead of him in the 2016 election quietly disbanded without producing any useful result.

For the 2020 election, Trump will need to make a similar claim and show evidence if he wants legal standing to stop expansion of mail-in voting in states whose laws permit such voting.



Trump increasingly engaged in legal battles unfolding over mail-in voting
CNN Digital Expansion 2018 Abby Phillip
By Abby Phillip
Updated 5:06 PM ET, Sat May 9, 2020

Trump increasingly engaged in legal battles unfolding over mail-in voting - CNNPolitics

excerpt:

"The RNC's legal efforts are largely defensive in nature, but have dramatically ramped up in response to an increase in lawsuits by Democrats seeking to expand mail-in voting rules across the country in light of the coronavirus crisis. Republicans are involved in legal battles in 13 states across the country.

Experts say there is no evidence that mail-in voting benefits one party over the other. And while Trump has claimed that mail-in voting will result in massive fraud, experts say voter fraud involving mail-in voting is still rare. A majority of Americans favor changing election laws to allow everyone to vote by mail, according to an April NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, but Republicans are far less likely than Democrats to agree.

On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announced that ballots will be mailed to all eligible voters in the state ahead of the November general election because of coronavirus. A source said that Republicans are actively examining their legal options, but it is unclear if they would have standing to stop the move."

 

You trying to claim most lefties are socialists now? Bernie would be now leading the charge if that were true

 

Trump is probably thinking that he needs to find a way of disposing of the Office of Special Counsel or somehow controlling it like he did the Justice Deparment when he appointed Barr to be its attorney general.

 

That's almost comical you saying that given the current situation

 

....or, more simply, all those flowcharts may have been too complicated for the general population...not to mention not actually based on science

Anyone worked out yet where the 6ft rule comes from? Anyone?

 

Keep America Great no longer sounds like a good slogan for Trump's 2020 campaign.

Trump said he has come up with a new one: Transition to Greatness.

Other possible slogans:

Make America Great Again (After Trump Wrecked It WIth His Coronavirus Response)

Make Another Grave Assumption

Make America Grift Again

Make America Recuperate Again



Trump Has a New Word Lump
The president is topping even the greatest geniuses in the world, if he does say so himself.
Andrew Ferguson
Staff writer for The Atlantic
May 9, 2020 6:30 AM ET

Trump Has a New Word Lump

excerpts:

"But of course nothing that carries the Trump brand can be conventional. There were switchbacks and zigzags, surprises on top of surprises. Having discontinued the briefings by the task force, the president reasoned that the purpose of the task force itself was therefore exhausted—in keeping with a general belief that its primary value wasn’t to gather expertise and manage federal activity but to hold briefings at which the president could appear. No briefing, no task force! On Tuesday he mentioned offhand that the task force would be winding down; on Wednesday he tweeted that the task force would continue its work and probably grow bigger."


"“It’s a great term,” he said. “It just came out, at this meeting. That’s right, it came out by accident. It was a statement, and it came out, and you can’t get a better one. We could go to Madison Avenue and get the best, the greatest geniuses in the world to come up with a slogan, but that’s the slogan we’re going to use: transition to greatness.”"

 

Trump promised his voters in 2016 that the power of the government would be given back to the people.



We’re Now Living the American Carnage Trump Promised Would End at His Inauguration
Trump is not responsible for the virus itself, but he must be held accountable for his horrifying response to it.
By Dahlia Lithwick
April 09, 2020 5:00 PM

We’re Now Living the American Carnage Trump Promised Would End at His Inauguration

excerpt:

"For those of us who didn’t quite recognize the shattered ruins of a once-great country that the president described at the time, it’s now arrived on our doorsteps. Even without the juddering trauma of a coronavirus that has closed streets and schools, and asphyxiated the economy, and killed thousands, the world he painted then ended up becoming our world now, but with his response to this crisis, it’s grown ever worse. “For too long,” he warned in 2017, “a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth.” Today we watch as his son-in-law’s attempts to help himself and others profit off the coronavirus, as the federal government strangles states’ efforts to purchase protective equipment. We watch, horrified, as the president fires the inspector general hired to oversee the $2 trillion stimulus package; we watch as our taxes pay for his golf junkets; we watch as his businesses profit from pay-to-play lobbyists and elected officials; and as his cronies profiteer from an immigration policy that stuffs money into the pockets of private prisons.

In that speech, Trump promised that above all things, at the center of his presidency lay a “crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.” And yet, as the United States has the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the world, its citizens wait for tests, for hospital beds, and for relief. Jared Kushner insists that stockpiled emergency equipment that should go to front-line workers in fact belongs to the federal government. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been hollowed out by Kushner’s disaster hobbyist cronies, and the federal government is backing out of its testing support by week’s end. States unwilling to bow and scrape for supplies don’t get them, while craven politicians use access to Trump to game the distribution channels. This nation is not serving its citizens. It is offering mealy-mouthed promises that private interests will magic up cures, and supplies, and websites, and vaccines while its citizens die and unemployment soars. Federal officials who are supposed to serve citizens have clocked out, even as they gut federal laws that would keep the air clean, and emissions lowered, and environmental degradation at bay. Meanwhile, Trump’s administration is muzzling health officials and distorting public information, such that the American people are left in the dark in the middle of the most devastating public health disaster we’ve seen in a century. The invisible people are no longer merely invisible. Now they are invisible and dying."

 

Yet during the coronavirus pandemic, Trump boldly and angrily claimed that he had absolute authority over the states.

When he found out that such authority would be difficult to explicitly implement by law, he encouraged protesters to violate the state laws and the health safety guidelines his own administration had drafted during a lethal pandemic and agitate the governors at their state legislatures to coerce them into doing what Trump wanted.

 

My favorite is from the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo: Eat more beans - America needs the gas.

 

That was when I laughed so hard that I had to go pee.

 

It's a fake version of 'power to the people' where Trump selectively chooses the people he wants to violate his own guidelines and state laws to protect his nepotist and authoritarian administration that is in jeopardy of losing the 2020 election due to his incompetent response to the coronavirus.

 

Apparently you aussies don't know what sarcasm is.

 

Nebraska Governor Defends Decision To Hide COVID-19 Stats At Specific Meatpacking Plants
Mary Papenfuss
HuffPost
May 8, 2020, 11:45 PM EDT

Nebraska Governor Defends Decision To Hide COVID-19 Stats At Specific Meatpacking Plants

excerpt:

"Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) did reveal on Thursday that more than 1,000 people in all of the state’s meatpacking plants have tested positive. That’s roughly one-sixth of all cases in Nebraska, he said. He would not, however, provide the numbers at particular plants.

Ricketts’s stance comes as the Trump administration is demanding meat processing plants remain open even as they remain among the most dangerous for COVID-19 infections among workers. About 10,000 COVID-19 cases have been linked to workers at meatpacking plants across the nation, USA Today and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting have found. At least 45 workers have died.

Ricketts claimed on Wednesday that specific statistics from individual plants are prohibited by the federal law protecting individuals’ privacy under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. But reported COVID-19 cases don’t reveal the identities of the people who have tested positive, only the numbers. And other states have reported infection rates at particular plants."

 

Trump says US will start buying dairy, meat and produce from farmers amid supply chain disruptions
Emma Newburger
Published Sat, May 9 2020 3:21 PM EDT

Trump says US will start buying dairy, meat and produce from farmers amid supply chain disruptions

excerpt:

"The U.S. will start rolling out a program to purchase $3 billion of dairy, meat and produce from farmers and ranchers early next week, President Donald Trump said Saturday.

As the pandemic disrupts supply chains across the country, farmers have been forced to destroy their crops, dump milk and throw out perishable items that can't be stored. Prices and demand for agricultural products have plummeted during national lockdown and farmers have been left with an oversupply of food they can't sell.

The president in a tweet said the $3 billion purchase is part of the "Farmers to Family Food Box," but did not provide further details."