Tag: liar

Trump Praises Scientists for Developing AIDS Vaccine That Doesn’t Exist

President Donald Trump on Tuesday falsely suggested that scientists have developed a vaccine for AIDS, the late stage of HIV infection in which the virus badly damages the immune system.

“They’ve come up with the AIDS vaccine,” Trump said during a press conference on police reform, referring to scientists. “As you know, there’s various things, and now various companies are involved.”

Trump later appeared to backtrack those comments, saying, “AIDS was a death sentence, and now people live a life with a pill. It’s an incredible thing.”

The White House did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Trump’s statement.

It’s possible Trump was referring to daily antiretroviral drugs, which have proved very effective in controlling HIV, a disease that was considered a death sentence nearly 40 years ago. Left unchecked, the virus progresses into AIDS, an advanced form of the disease.

People at risk of HIV can also now take prevention medication, also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP. PrEP can reduce the risk of infection by at least 74% in people who take the drug consistently, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Roughly 1.1 million people in the U.S. are currently living with HIV, and nearly 40,000 Americans become infected with the virus each year, according to government data.

Last year, Trump’s pledged to end the HIV epidemic in the United States by 2030, a goal that public health advocates have cheered and sought for years.

The comment came as the U.S. also works to develop a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus, which has infected more than 2.1 million Americans and killed at least 116,341, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

Earlier Tuesday, Trump administration officials said the coronavirus vaccine will be provided free of charge to Americans who can’t afford it. 

[CNBC]

Trump makes baseless claim about man, 75, shoved by police: ‘Could be a set-up?’

Donald Trump has claimed a 75-year-old man who was hospitalized when police shoved him to the ground at a protest in Buffalo could be “an antifa provocateur” and suggested the incident “could be a set-up”.

Two Buffalo police officers were charged with assault after video showed them pushing Martin Gugino, a slightly built septuagenarian and longtime peace activist, with enough force that he violently struck his head on the sidewalk.

The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, responded to Trump’s claims, which were offered without evidence, on Tuesday, describing the president’s behavior as “cruel and reckless”.

“The man is still in the hospital & the president is disparaging him,” Cuomo said.

The incident has been held up as an example of aggressive policing at George Floyd protests across the country and has triggered outrage across the US and overseas.

Trump, however, claimed – without offering any evidence – that Gugino may have been attempting to infiltrate police scanners. The president also seemed to suggest Gugino had exaggerated the force used by police.

“Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur,” Trump said on Twitter.

“75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”

Gugino’s attorney, Kelly Zarcone, told WBFO News on Tuesday that the 75-year-old has been taken out of intensive care but is “still hospitalized and truly needs rest”.

“Martin has always been a peaceful protester because he cares about today’s society,” Zarcone said.

“We are at a loss to understand why the president of the United States would make such dark, dangerous and untrue accusations against him.”

Trump tagged One America News Network, a far-right conservative news network, in the tweet. Shortly before Trump’s post, OANN ran a segment which made near identical claims to Trump.

OANN, which has spread multiple conspiracy theories, cited the Conservative Treehouse, a conspiracy theory website, as its source.

The Conservative Treehouse, which is among the news sites listed in FactCheck.org’s “misinformation directory”, claimed over the weekend that Gugino “was attempting to capture the radio communications signature” when he was shoved to the ground by the police.

During the 2016 presidential election the Conservative Treehouse peddled the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton might have cancer. It has also spread conspiracy theories about student David Hogg, who survived the Parkland school shooting and has become a prominent gun control activist.

“The president is tweeting conspiracy theories about the Buffalo incident based on no evidence, no proof,” Cuomo said.

“Was the blood coming out of his head staged? Were our eyes lying to us? No.”

Cuomo added: “It’s cruel and reckless.”

The two Buffalo officers who pushed Gugino were charged with second-degree assault. All 57 members of Buffalo police’s emergency response team resigned from the team in an apparent show of support for their two colleagues.

Trump announced he would designate antifa – the term stands for anti-fascist – as a terrorist group at the end of May. Experts said the proposal is unworkable, and have said there is no actual antifa organization to be defined in such terms.

In reality, antifa relates to a broad spectrum of leftwing groups which are opposed to fascism and the far right.

Trump has often embraced conspiracy theories, most notoriously his pushing of “birtherism” – the completely false and racist theory that former president Barack Obama was not born in the US.

[The Guardian]

The Guardian]

Donald Trump Rips Drew Brees For Kind Of Apologizing

Right-wing culture warriors have pounced on Drew Brees’ apology for a half-decade of misconstruing Colin Kaepernick’s protests of police killings. On Thursday, Ted Cruz complained that the NFL had gotten too liberal and had banned the pledge of allegiance. On Friday, the president played the hits that started in 2017 when he called Kaepernick a “son of a bitch.”

“I am a big fan of Drew Brees. I think he’s truly one of the greatest quarterbacks, but he should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag,” Donald Trump tweeted. “OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high…We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart. There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag – NO KNEELING!”

With police brutality dominating the headlines again after Minneapolis PD killed George Floyd, Brees was asked in an interview how he’d react if more NFL players started kneeling again. “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America,” the New Orleans quarterback said.

At this point, it seems fair to say that no one cares that Kaepernick’s protests had nothing to do with the flag, and were very specifically about the police. Trump and his ilk have opportunistically attacked a black person who was using a massive platform to criticize the police. Now, they claim that even changing your mind is beyond the pale.

[New York Daily News]

Trump tweets a letter calling protesters ‘terrorists’

President Donald Trump tweeted out a letter Thursday that referred to a group of protesters as “terrorists,” following their violent ouster from a park near the White House earlier this week.

The letter is signed by Trump’s former lawyer John Dowd and addressed to “Jim” in a probable reference to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It lambasted the former Pentagon chief after he called out Trump on Wednesday for threatening a military response to protests that have engulfed cities across the country. In his letter, Dowd referred to a group of protesters who were violently forced out of Washington’s Lafayette Square on Monday as “terrorists using idle hate … to burn and destroy.”

“They were abusing and disrespecting the police when the police were preparing the area for the 1900 curfew,” the letter said.

The White House did not immediately respond when asked whether Trump views the protesters as “terrorists”.

Protesters had gathered in the park to express their outrage at the death of a black Minnesota man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer, with video showing a largely peaceful — if tense — demonstration. Police charged into the protesters about 30 minutes before the city’s 7 p.m. curfew, throwing chemical irritants and hitting protesters and journalists with shields and rubber bullets.

Trump later walked out of the White House through the cleared area for a photo-op in front of St. John’s Epsicopal Church across from the square.

Mattis joined a symphony of condemnations, which came from both parties, characterizing the episode as a grotesque abuse of power.

“Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath [to defend the Constitution] would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside,” Mattis wrote in a statement to journalists on Wednesday.

On Thursday, several protesters and the Washington, D.C., chapter of Black Lives Matter sued Trump, along with other law enforcement leadership they identified as leading the Monday clash, accusing them of violating the protesters’ rights to free assembly and freedom from unreasonable seizure.

Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is among the organizations representing the plaintiffs, decried Dowd’s letter as “abhorrent and a completely false characterization of the peacefully assembled demonstrators who were dispersed through state-sanctioned violence at the hands of government officials.”

“It is remarkable,” Clarke said in a statement to POLITICO on Thursday night, “that President Trump objects so vehemently to those speaking out against racial and police violence while embracing gun-toting activists who take siege of government buildings and violent white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville.”

[Politico]

Trump says he went to White House bunker for ‘inspection,’ not because of protests

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he went to an underground bunker at the White House last week to inspect it, not because of security concerns over protests outside the executive mansion’s gates.

Trump dismissed as “false” reports that the Secret Service rushed him into the bunker Friday night as protests inspired by the death of George Floyd escalated across the street.

“I went down during the day, and I was there for a tiny little short period of time,” he said during an interview with radio talk-show host Brian Kilmeade. “It was much more for an inspection. There was no problem during the day.”

Multiple news outlets – including CNN and The New York Times – reported that Trump was briefly moved to the White House’s underground bunker Friday night as a precaution while tensions escalated in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. 

Trump went down to the bunker at the behest of the Secret Service in an abundance of caution, said one official familiar with the incident, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. The official said he was only in the bunker for a short period of time.

Asked by Kilmeade if the Secret Service told him he needed to head to the bunker, Trump said, “No, they didn’t tell me that at all. They said it would be a good time to go down, take a look because maybe some time you’re going to need it.”

Trump also claimed he went to the bunker during the day before the protests escalated.

“There was never a problem,” he said. “We never had a problem. Nobody ever came close to giving us a problem. The Secret Service, it does an unbelievable job of maintaining control in the White House.”

The bunker reports preceded Trump’s much-criticized walk from the White House to nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church on Monday.

Trump wanted to pay his respects to St. John’s, which suffered minor damage when it was burned by protesters Sunday, but he also wanted to leave the White House grounds to prove he was not “in the bunker” because of the protesters, said one official who requested anonymity to discuss the president’s communications strategy.

Critics hammered Trump for the St. John’s visit because police used smoke canisters, pepper spray and shields on protesters in Lafayette Park, clearing a path for the president to walk to the historic church.

Church officials protested that Trump did not call them about his plans to visit the church. Mariann Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, which includes St. John’s, said she was outraged by the use of force to get people out of the way for a photo op.

Trump defended his visit to the church, saying he did not ask law enforcement officials to clear out Lafayette Park in advance.

“I didn’t say, oh, move them out – I didn’t know who was there,” he said.

Trump called his visit to St. John’s “very symbolic” and said “many religious leaders loved it.”

“Why wouldn’t they love it?” he said. “I’m standing in front of a church that went through trauma, to put it mildly.”

[USA Today]

Trump campaign demands retraction of accurate reporting on tear-gassed protesters

Donald Trump’s campaign on Tuesday demanded changes to reports that Trump tear-gassed peaceful protesters so Trump could hold a photo-op at a church across the street from the White House — even though the reports were accurate.

“It’s said that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on. This tear gas lie is proof of that,” Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for Trump’s reelection campaign, said in a statement on Tuesday. “For nearly an entire day, the whole of the press corps frantically reported the ‘news’ of a tear gas attack on ‘peaceful’ protestors in Lafayette Park, with no evidence to support such claims.”

But there is ample evidence to support the claim.

The Trump campaign’s statement even links to a statement from the U.S. Park Police, which said they deployed “pepper balls” on the protesters.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Riot control agents (sometimes referred to as ‘tear gas’) are chemical compounds that temporarily make people unable to function by causing irritation to the eyes, mouth, throat, lungs, and skin.”

And pepper spray, which the Park Police says was used against the protesters, is included in the CDC’s definition of those riot control agents.

The statement from the Trump campaign comes as Trump has faced a barrage of criticism for his move to attack peaceful protesters for a photo-op.

Democrats, civil rights groups, and members of the clergy who were pushed off the grounds of the church where Trump staged his stunt all condemned the move.

Meanwhile, just a handful of Republicans spoke out against Trump’s move, while a number of Senate Republicans avoided questions from MSNBC about whether they supported Trump’s actions.

A handful of House Republicans, on the other hand, celebrated Trump’s attack on peaceful demonstrators.

[American Independent]

Trump tweets Brian Kilmeade’s insistence that ‘white supremest groups’ didn’t overtake protests

President Trump has made a point of emphasizing that there were no obvious “white supremests” at protests across the U.S. this weekend.

Several peaceful protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody, as well as police brutality and systemic racism as a whole, had turned violent across the country as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets on protesters and as people destroyed buildings. It all prompted Trump to declare anti-facist activists domestic terrorists on Sunday, and to share Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade’s condemnation of the group.

On Monday’s show, Kilmeade declared that he didn’t “see any indication that there were any white supremest groups mixing in” to protests, blaming unrest instead on “antifa.” Trump tweeted that quote, and copied Kilmeade’s oft-used, made-up term “white supremest” instead of saying “white supremacist.”

Kilmeade didn’t explain how he was able to identify “white supremest groups” or distinguish them from antifa supporters. He also mischaracterized antifa as an “organization,” while it is rather a just a broad designation for activists who oppose the oppression of minority groups. 

[The Week]

Reality

Right-wing groups are involved in the George Floyd protests as agitators and “accelerationists,” most notably setting fire to St. John’s church in Washington D. C.

Trump Pledges To Designate Antifa A ‘Terrorist Organization’ In A Distraction From His Failures

As overlapping crises convulse an anxious nation, President Trump on Sunday sought to cast blame for widespread protests gripping cities on “radical-left anarchists,” while adding that the media “is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy.”

The president has said that members of the loosely defined far-left group Antifa — short for “anti-fascists” — have led clashes with police and looting in cities across the U.S. since the killing of a black man in police custody in Minneapolis.

It’s unclear if any group or groups are primarily responsible for escalating protests that began following George Floyd’s death on May 25 as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck.

In one tweet on Sunday, Trump said the U.S. “will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.” It’s something he has previously floated, and last year two Republican senators introduced a resolution that sought to designate the group as a domestic terrorist organization.

Following Trump’s tweet, Attorney General William Barr said in a statement that “[f]ederal law enforcement actions will be directed at apprehending and charging the violent radical agitators who have hijacked peaceful protest.”

Barr added: “The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.”

The clashes, spreading to dozens of cities across the U.S., follow a series of racist incidents and deaths of black people, including Floyd’s on Monday.

Chauvin, now a former Minneapolis police officer, was seen on video kneeling on Floyd’s neck while holding him in custody as Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. Three other officers present at the scene have been fired but not arrested or charged.Article continues after sponsor message

Protests and clashes that have since followed come at a time of unprecedented crisis for the country, with confirmed deaths from the coronavirus pandemic topping 100,000 and millions of people out of work as a result of broad business shutdowns. Minorities, including African Americans, have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 deaths and pandemic-induced economic peril.

Trump addressed the demonstrations Saturday,striking a milder tone than he has on Twitter during prepared remarks following a space launch in Florida. He said Floyd’s death “has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger and grief.” He added that he “understands the pain that people are feeling” and supports peaceful protest, but that “the memory of George Floyd is being dishonored by rioters, looters and anarchists.”

“He should just sometimes stop talking”

Apart from Saturday’s remarks, though, Trump has not often played a unifying role in recent days. His tweets about radical-left anarchists have also included criticism of Democratic leadership in Minnesota. In another tweet on Sunday, he blamed the mainstream media for fomenting “hatred and anarchy.”

On Friday, Trump tweeted provocatively that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a phrase with a racist history that Trump said he was not aware of. Later on, he said his intent was not to make a threat but to register a statement of concern that armed violence can accompany looting.

Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, said on Fox News Sunday that the president’s tweets about demonstrations turning violent are “not constructive.”

Speaking on ABC’s This Week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on Sunday morning that she’s not paying attention to Trump’s inflammatory tweets. Instead, she said he “should be a unifying force in our country. We have seen that with Democratic and Republican presidents all along. They have seen their responsibility to be the president of the United States, to unify our country and not to fuel the flame.”

Also Sunday, Keisha Lance Bottoms — mayor of Atlanta, one city that has seen protests and clashes with police — told CBS’ Face the Nation that Trump’s tweets are “making it worse” and “he should just sometimes stop talking.”

In his own statement on Saturday, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, wrote that “Protesting [Floyd’s killing] is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not.” He added that as president, he’d lead the conversation about turning the nation’s “anguish to purpose.”

Biden made an unannounced visit on Sunday to the site in Wilmington, Del., where protests had taken place the night before.

[NPR]

Trump halts US funding for World Health Organization as it conducts coronavirus review

The U.S. will suspend funding to the World Health Organization while it reviews the agency’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday, saying the international health agency made mistakes that “caused so much death” as the coronavirus spread across the globe.

“Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” Trump said at a White House press conference.

Trump criticized the international agency’s response to the outbreak, saying “one of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations” that Trump imposed early on in the outbreak.

“Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China saving untold numbers of lives,” he said.

It’s unclear exactly what mechanism Trump intends to use to withhold WHO funding, much of which is appropriated by Congress. The president typically does not have the authority to unilaterally redirect congressional funding.

One option might be for Trump to use powers granted to the president under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Under this statute, the president may propose to withhold congressional funds, but it requires congressional approval within 45 days. Absent this approval, the funds must be returned to their original, congressionally mandated purpose after 45 days.

When asked by reporters why the administration is choosing now to withhold funds, Trump said the U.S. has had problems with WHO “for years” and the nation should have done this “a long time ago.”

He said the administration will conduct a “thorough” investigation that should last 60 to 90 days.

Trump said it wasn’t about the money, “but it’s not right. So we’ll see,” he said. “This is an evaluation period, but in the meantime, we’re putting a hold on all funds going to World Health. We’ll be able to take that money and channel it to the areas that most need it.” 

The WHO didn’t immediately return CNBC’s request for comment. But in a statement, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that now is not the time to reduce resources in the fight against Covid-19.

He said there will come a time after the epidemic is over, to look back and understand how the disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly, “but now is not that time.”

“It is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus,” Guterres said.

The coronavirus, which emerged in Wuhan, China over three months ago, has infected more than 1.9 million people worldwide and killed at least 125,678 as of Tuesday night, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Trump had first threatened last week to withhold funds from WHO, saying it pushed back on his travel ban from China early in the Covid-19 outbreak. He claimed Tuesday that WHO “pushed China’s misinformation about the virus, saying it wasn’t communicable and there was no need for travel bans.”

“The WHO willingly took China’s assurances at face value, and they willingly took it at face value and defended the actions of the Chinese government even while praising China for its so-called transparency,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

WHO started sounding the alarm on the outbreak of a new coronavirus in China, in mid-January, designating the now 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 WHO’s global emergency declaration on Jan. 30 was nearly a month before Trump tweeted that “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA” and six weeks before he declared a national emergency on March 13.

Two days earlier, on March 11, WHO officials declared the outbreak a pandemic, when there were just 121,000 global cases. 

In response to Trump’s attacks last week, WHO’s top official urged leaders against politicizing the outbreak “if you don’t want to have many more body bags.”

“At the end of the day, the people belong to all political parties. The focus of all political parties should be to save their people, please do not politicize this virus,”  Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a fiery address on April 8. He called for unity across the globe, saying the virus will exploit cracks in political parties, religious groups or between different nations to spread even more widely. “If you want to be exploited and if you want to have many more body bags, then you do it. If you don’t want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it,” he said.

[CNBC]


Breaking precedent, White House won’t release formal economic projections this summer that would forecast extent of downturn

White House officials have decided not to release updated economic projections this summer, opting against publishing forecasts that would almost certainly codify an administration assessment that the coronavirus pandemic has led to a severe economic downturn, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.

The White House is supposed to unveil a federal budget proposal every February and then typically provides a “mid-session review” in July or August with updated projections on economic trends such as unemployment, inflation and economic growth.

Budget experts said they were not aware of any previous White House opting against providing forecasts in this “mid-session review” document in any other year since at least the 1970s.

Two White House officials confirmed the decision had been made not to include the economic projections as part of the mid-session release. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that the novel coronavirus is causing extreme volatility in the U.S. economy, making it difficult to model economic trends.

The document would be slated for publication just a few months before the November elections.

“It gets them off the hook for having to say what the economic outlook looks like,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who served as an economic adviser to the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Both liberal and conservative critics said the White House should publish its economic projections in line with the precedent set by prior administrations, regardless of the uncertainty caused by the pandemic. The White House under President Barack Obama continued to release these numbers during the Great Recession, although they were unflattering.

This year’s White House budget report is expected to include data on federal spending, along with information on enacted legislation, but not an annual federal deficit projection, the White House officials said. The officials said the White House will release the annual deficit for the year by the end of the fiscal year in October.

A senior administration official said in a statement that it would be “foolish” to publish forecasting data when it “may mislead the public.”

“Given the unprecedented state of play in the economy at the moment, the data is also extremely fluid and would produce a less instructive forecast,” said senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the White House’s decision. “Furthermore, we remain in complete accordance with the law as there is no statutory requirement to release this information, just precedent, which, when compared to our current economic situation, is dismissible.”

The magnitude of the economic impact has grown by the week. The Treasury Department said earlier this month it plans to borrow $3 trillion from April through June to finance spending in response to the pandemic, while the monthly deficit in April soared to $738 billion.

On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that Americans filed another 2.1 million jobless claims last week, bringing the 10-week total to more than 40 million.

The budget review will include a brief summary of economic conditions to date. One official said White House staff are also busy with implementing the $2 trillion Cares Act aid package approved by Congress in March.

The economic projections are jointly produced by a “troika” consisting of the director of OMB, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and the treasury secretary.

Since the release of the White House budget in January, the unemployment rate has skyrocketed from about 3.5 percent to close to 15 percent. President Trump has repeatedly expressed confidence in a rapid economic rebound from the virus, but mainstream economists and Wall Street forecasters have predicted unemployment could remain north of 10 percent through 2020 and into 2021.

Budget experts say there is no reason the White House would be unable to release its own economic projections. The Congressional Budget Office, for instance, updated its economic projections in both April and May as the coronavirus rippled through the U.S. economy.

[Washington Post]

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