Tag: liar

Trump says coronavirus testing ‘overrated,’ claims fewer cases if no testing

While health officials continue to stress the importance of testing as the key to controlling the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested testing is “overrated.”

Speaking to employees at an Owens & Minor Inc. OMI, -3.00% medical-supply plant in Allentown, Pa., Trump said testing might be the problem.

“So we have the best testing in the world,” Trump said. “It could be the testing’s, frankly, overrated? Maybe it is overrated.”

The country has more than 1.4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, but Trump said that’s only because the U.S. has carried out more tests.

“We have more cases than anybody in the world, but why? Because we do more testing,” Trump said. “When you test, you have a case. When you test you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases. They don’t want to write that. It’s common sense. We test much more.”

Many on social media were quick to point out the obvious flaw in the president’s logic.

[Market Watch]

Trump attacks whistleblower Bright as ‘disgruntled employee’

President Trump on Thursday criticized health official Rick Bright and said he should “no longer” be working for the federal government shortly before the whistleblower was slated to testify before a House panel about the Trump administration’s response to the novel coronavirus.

Trump tweeted that he had never met nor heard of Bright and claimed that the former federal vaccine doctor was “not liked or respected” by people whom the president has consulted, labeling him a “disgruntled employee.”

“I don’t know the so-called Whistleblower Rick Bright, never met him or even heard of him, but to me he is a disgruntled employee, not liked or respected by people I spoke to and who, with his attitude, should no longer be working for our government!” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

Bright is expected to deliver critical testimony to a House committee later Thursday saying that the Trump administration was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic. He plans to warn that without a coordinated national response, this year will be “the darkest winter in modern history,” according to a leaked copy of his prepared remarks.

Bright served at the helm of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority from 2016 until last month, when he was reassigned to a narrower position based at the National Institutes of Health.

Bright filed a whistleblower complaint following his reassignment alleging that his early warnings about the virus were met with indifference at the Department of Health and Human Services and that his efforts to push back on the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus, something Trump touted, contributed to his removal from the high-level post.

Bright is seeking to be reinstated in his former position and asked for a full investigation into the decision to reassign him.

Bright, who first came forward with his claims in late April, is slated to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health at 10 a.m. Thursday morning.

Trump has repeatedly said he didn’t know Bright, while dismissing him as a seemingly “disgruntled employee.”

“I don’t know who he is. I did not hear good things about him at all,” Trump told reporters at the White House on May 6. “And to me he seems like a disgruntled employee that’s trying to help the Democrats win an election.” 

[The Hill]

Trump demands Obama be made to testify in the Senate

For the past few days, President Trump has been talking nonstop about something he has termed “OBAMAGATE” — a largely incoherent conspiracy theory that positions former President Obama as the mastermind behind a conspiracy to use federal law enforcement to undermine Trump’s campaign and presidency.

It is, in effect, the new birtherism: an unfounded campaign against the legitimacy of America’s first black president that Trump is trying to exploit to rally the political faithful.

This morning, Trump seriously escalated his campaign against Obama, tweeting at one of his most reliable supporters in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, to force Obama to testify before Congress about this allegedly dastardly plot.

The specific wording of the tweet — “Do it… just do it” — is striking; the request sounds like a childish dare, as if Trump were daring Graham to shave his head during a late-night Zoom call. But the absurdity of the language shouldn’t distract from the nefariousness of the request.

The president of the United States is labeling a fringe right-wing conspiracy theory “the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR.” He’s also more or less ordering a particularly compliant senator — who happens to chair the Judiciary Committee — to use the powers of the Senate to treat one of his predecessors as a potential criminal suspect or witness on the basis of this conspiracy theory.

Throughout Trump’s presidency, he has consistently treated the investigatory and law enforcement powers of the US government as tools to be deployed for purely political reasons. During the coronavirus crisis, when his presidency is once again in mortal danger, he has stepped on the gas on this kind of abuse of power — the Justice Department has dropped charges against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty,and Trump now seems to be trying to get them to treat Obama like a criminal.

In democracies, presidents are not supposed to use law enforcement agencies as shields for their crooked political allies and swords against their political enemies. The threat that Trump poses to the rule of law, and the basic principles of a free society, has never been clearer.

[Vox]

Update

Graham denied Trump’s request.

Trump refuses to say what crime he is accusing Obama of committing

President Trump repeatedly declined at a press briefing to specify what crime he accused former President Obama of committing in a series of tweets over the weekend and Monday morning, telling reporters: “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody.”

Why it matters: In the wake of the Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump has sent hundreds of tweets and retweets of conservative media — many of which use the phrase “Obamagate” — that allege the Russia investigation was a political hit job directed by the former president.

  • Trump called it the “biggest political crime in American history, by far!” on Sunday and tweeted that “OBAMAGATE makes Watergate look small time” on Monday morning.
  • He also responded to an article from The Federalist on Monday that asked why Obama allegedly told the FBI under James Comey to withhold intelligence from the incoming Trump administration: “Because it was OBAMAGATE, and he and Sleepy Joe led the charge. The most corrupt administration in U.S. history!”

What they’re saying: Trump told reporters on Monday: “Obamagate, it’s been going on for a long time. … Some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again. And you’ll be seeing what’s going on over the coming weeks.”

[Axios]

Trump claims Obama committed ‘biggest political crime in American history’

Donald Trump continued to fume over the Russia investigation on Sunday, more than a year after special counsel Robert Mueller filed his report without recommending charges against the president but only three days after the justice department said it would drop its case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

“The biggest political crime in American history, by far!” the president wrote in a tweet accompanying a conservative talk show host’s claim that Barack Obama “used his last weeks in office to target incoming officials and sabotage the new administration”.

The tweet echoed previous messages retweeted by Trump, which earned rebukes for relaying conspiracy theories. On Sunday afternoon the president continued to send out a stream of tweets of memes and rightwing talking heads claiming an anti-Trump conspiracy. One tweet by Trump simply read: “OBAMAGATE!”

Trump fired Flynn, a retired general, in early 2017, for lying to Vice-President Mike Pence about conversations with the Russian ambassador regarding sanctions levied by the Obama administration in retaliation for interference in the 2016 election.

The US intelligence community has long held that such efforts were meant to tip the election towards Trump and away from Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI – which Trump has acknowledged – and co-operated with Mueller, who was appointed to take over the investigation of Russian interference after Trump fired FBI director James Comey.

Mueller did not establish a criminal conspiracy but did lay out extensive links between Trump and Moscow and instances of possible obstruction of justice by the president.

Flynn sought to change his plea while awaiting sentencing and the president championed his case, floating a possible pardon. On Thursday, in an act that stunned the US media, attorney general William Barr said the justice department would drop the case entirely.

Trump and his supporters have loudly trumpeted the decision and across Saturday and Sunday the president unleashed a storm of retweets of supporters and conservative commentators attacking targets including Obama, Mueller, Comey and House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff.

The talkshow host retweeted by the president, Buck Sexton, is a former CIA analyst who now hosts a show which he says “speaks truth to power, and cuts through the liberal nonsense coming from the mainstream media”.

In another message retweeted by the president, Sexton called former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe – who Trump fired just short of retirement – “a dishonorable partisan scumbag who has done incalculable damage to the reputation of the FBI and should be sitting in a cell for lying under oath”.

In February, the US justice department said it would not charge McCabe over claims he lied to investigators about a media leak.

Like Comey, McCabe released a book in which he was highly critical of Trump, who he said acted like a mob boss. McCabe also wrote that Trump had unleashed a “strain of insanity” in American public life.

In his own tweets, Trump did not directly address comments by Obama himself which were reported by Yahoo News. The former president told associates the Flynn decision was “the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic – not just institutional norms – but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk”.

But Trump’s anger was evident.

“When are the Fake Journalists,” he wrote on Sunday, “who received unwarranted Pulitzer Prizes for Russia, Russia, Russia, and the Impeachment Scam, going to turn in their tarnished awards so they can be given to the real journalists who got it right. I’ll give you the names, there are plenty of them!”

The president did not immediately name anyone.

But in 2018 the Pulitzer committee did, awarding its prize for national reporting jointly to the Washington Post and the New York Times for “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the president-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.”

Trump has further reason to resent the Pulitzer committee and question its choices.

In 2019, for example, a New York Times team won a Pulitzer for an “exhaustive 18-month investigation of President Donald Trump’s finances that debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges”.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, was rewarded for “uncovering President Trump’s secret payoffs to two women during his campaign who claimed to have had affairs with him, and the web of supporters who facilitated the transactions, triggering criminal inquiries and calls for impeachment”.

Trump’s actual impeachment, which he survived at trial in the Senate in February, concerned his attempts to have Ukraine investigate his political rivals. No reporter or news outlet won a 2020 Pulitzer, announced this week, for its coverage of that affair.

Trump’s focus on Sunday remained largely on the Russia investigation despite continuing developments in the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 1.3m Americans and killed nearly 80,000.

With cases confirmed among White House aides close to the president, top public health experts including Dr Anthony Fauci in quarantine and Trump reported by the New York Times to be “spooked”, the president claimed in a rare non-Russia-related tweet: “We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic.”

He also attacked Obama and his vice-president, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president this year, over their response to the “disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu” in 2009.

Trump also marked a special day in the calendar, tweeting in trademark capitals: “HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!”

[The Guardian]

Trump argues with nurse in Oval Office after she explains her area still has medical shortages

On Wednesday, at an event in the Oval Office marking National Nurses Day, President Donald Trump derailed a nurse as she tried to explain there are still some parts of the country that don’t have adequate medical supplies to manage COVID-19, according to Bloomberg News.

After a reporter asked nurse volunteer Luke Adams whether he had sufficient medical equipment, he replied that he did. But Sophia Thomas, another nurse at the event who works with the Daughters of Charity Health System in New Orleans, added that she had been reusing a mask for “a few weeks” and that while the situation is overall “manageable,” supplies are “sporadic.”

“Sporadic for you,” Trump interrupted her, but he insisted not for many other people. Thomas agreed that supplies are adequate in other places.

Trump then added that the country is not “loaded up,” and said, “I’ve heard we have tremendous supply to almost all places.” He also baselessly blamed President Barack Obama for the initial shortages.

[Raw Story]

Media

Trump Retweets Claim the Media is Inflating Coronavirus Mortality Rates to ‘Steal the Election’

President Donald Trump kept up his tweeting overnight by including a claim that the media is exaggerating the lethality of the coronavirus in order to “steal the election.”

After Trump stormed over The New York Times, “Noble” Prizes, Fox News, people who don’t get his “sarcasm,” and everything else making him angry, he went on a binge of retweeting his supporters. One of the more interesting posts he decided to promote was this one from John Cardillo.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Trump repeatedly talked down the seriousness of the disease even as it continues to ravage the county. More than 50,000 Americans have been reported dead from the virus.

Trump also has an extensive history of attempts to delegitimize elections in case they don’t go his way.

[Mediaite]

Trump asks why taxpayers should help bail out blue states

President Trump on Monday questioned why the federal government should provide financial relief to states facing budgetary strains due to the coronavirus pandemic, portraying it as a partisan issue in states and cities with Democratic leaders.

It’s a signal Trump may be turning away from supporting funding for cash-strapped states and cities in a new coronavirus relief bill, though the president has sent conflicting signals on the issue already.

“Why should the people and taxpayers of America be bailing out poorly run states (like Illinois, as example) and cities, in all cases Democrat run and managed, when most of the other states are not looking for bailout help?” Trump tweeted. “I am open to discussing anything, but just asking?”

Trump tweeted last week that he hoped future coronavirus legislation would include “fiscal relief to State/Local governments for lost revenues from COVID 19.” 

But after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-Ky.) floated the idea of allowing states to go bankrupt rather than sending federal money to them, Trump said his administration was looking into the idea.

“I’ve been talking to a lot of the different senators, but I don’t want to talk about it now,” Trump said Thursday. “That was a very interesting presentation.”

Governors in both parties have panned McConnell’s comments.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) called it a “really dumb idea.”

“The suggestion was made, states should declare bankruptcy. … You want to send a signal to the markets that this nation is in real trouble? You want to send an international message that the economy is in turmoil? Do that,” Cuomo said.

[The Hill]

Reality

Fact: Blue high-tax states fund red low-tax states – in a big way.

Trump suggests injecting Bleach as treatment

US President Donald Trump has been lambasted by the medical community after suggesting research into whether coronavirus might be treated by injecting disinfectant into the body.

He also appeared to propose irradiating patients’ bodies with UV light, an idea dismissed by a doctor at the briefing.

Another of his officials had moments earlier said sunlight and disinfectant were known to kill the infection.

Mr Trump’s own public health agencies warn against bleach as a medicine.

What did President Trump say?

During Thursday’s White House coronavirus task force briefing, an official presented the results of US government research that indicated coronavirus appeared to weaken more quickly when exposed to sunlight and heat.

The study also showed bleach could kill the virus in saliva or respiratory fluids within five minutes and isopropyl alcohol could kill it even more quickly.

William Bryan, acting head of the US Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, outlined the findings at the news conference.

While noting the research should be treated with caution, Mr Trump suggested further research in that area.

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous – whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” the president said, turning to Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response co-ordinator, “and I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it.

“And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting,” the president continued.

“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?

“So it’d be interesting to check that.”

Pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on: “I’m not a doctor. But I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what.”

He turned again to Dr Birx and asked if she had ever heard of using “the heat and the light” to treat coronavirus.

“Not as a treatment,” Dr Birx said. “I mean, certainly, fever is a good thing, when you have a fever it helps your body respond. But I’ve not seen heat or light.”

“I think it’s a great thing to look at,” Mr Trump said.

A journalist at the briefing questioned whether Mr Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks could spread dangerous disinformation to Americans.

What’s the reaction?

Doctors warned the president’s idea could have fatal results.

Pulmonologist Dr Vin Gupta told NBC News: “This notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible and it’s dangerous.

“It’s a common method that people utilise when they want to kill themselves.”

Kashif Mahmood, a doctor in Charleston, West Virginia, tweeted: “As a physician, I can’t recommend injecting disinfectant into the lungs or using UV radiation inside the body to treat COVID-19.

“Don’t take medical advice from Trump.”

John Balmes, a pulmonologist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, warned that even breathing fumes from bleach could cause severe health problems.

He told Bloomberg News: “Inhaling chlorine bleach would be absolutely the worst thing for the lungs. The airway and lungs are not made to be exposed to even an aerosol of disinfectant.

“Not even a low dilution of bleach or isopropyl alcohol is safe. It’s a totally ridiculous concept.”

Mr Trump has previously hyped a malaria medication, hydroxycloroquine, as a possible treatment for coronavirus, though he has stopped touting that drug recently.

This week a study of coronavirus patients in a US government-run hospital for military veterans found more deaths among those treated with hydroxychloroquine than those treated with standard care.

Reacting to the president’s remarks on Thursday evening, Joe Biden, his likely Democratic challenger in November’s White House election, tweeted: “UV light? Injecting disinfectant? Here’s an idea, Mr President: more tests. Now. And protective equipment for actual medical professionals.”

What’s the US government’s advice?

Only this week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Americans to be careful with cleaning products as sales of household disinfectants soar amid the pandemic.

“Calls to poison centres increased sharply at the beginning of March 2020 for exposures to both cleaners and disinfectants,” found the agency’s weekly morbidity and mortality report.

The US Food and Drug Administration has warned against ingesting disinfectants, citing the sale of bogus miracle cures that contain bleach and purport to treat everything from autism to Aids and hepatitis.

The agency’s website says: “The FDA has received reports of consumers who have suffered from severe vomiting, severe diarrhoea, life-threatening low blood pressure caused by dehydration, and acute liver failure after drinking these products.”

[BBC]

Media

Trump Claims He Never Left The White House In Feb and March (He Held Six Rallies)

President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media were relatively tame at the latest coronavirus press briefing. He even gave some praise to PBS NewsHour‘s Yamiche Alcindor, someone he has previously attacked for asking “nasty” questions.

But on Monday Alcindor pressed the president about someone she recently interviewed who said his family got sick and did not take precautions “mainly because the president wasn’t taking it seriously.”

“Are you concerned that downplaying the virus maybe got some people sick?” she asked.

Trump replied, “And a lot of people love Trump. A lot of people love me. You see them all the time. I guess I am here for a reason, and for the best of my knowledge I won. And I think we are going to win again. I think we are going to win in a landslide.”

He then referred to one of his primary defenses of the White House response — a “ban of China, when China can’t come in” back in late January. They actually were restrictions that did not entirely cut off the flow of travel from that country. He also said that before March, “we put on a ban on Europe, where Europe can’t come in.” But the European travel restrictions did not start until March 13, two days after they were announced.

That said, Trump defended the response, noting the China restrictions were put in place “before anyone in this country died.”

“So how can you say I was not taking it seriously?” Trump asked Alcindor.

Yet Alcindor then asked the president why, if he was not downplaying the threat of the virus, he continued to hold rallies in February and March where large numbers of people gathered.

Trump replied. “I don’t know about rallies…I know one thing. I haven’t left the White House in months except for a brief moment to give a ship the Comfort…”

“You held a rally in March,” Alcindor interjected.

“I don’t know? Did I hold a rally? I’m sorry. I hold a rally,” Trump said, a bit facetiously. “Let me tell you. In January, when I did this, there were virtually no cases and no deaths.”

While Trump defended the administration’s response at other points of the briefing, there was a great deal of discussion among members of the coronavirus task force of the issue of testing, which is front and center as governors try to determine whether to reopen their economies.

Vice President Mike Pence said that “we have enough testing capacity today for every state in America to go to phase one if they meet the other criteria of 14 days and sufficient hospital capacity to prepare for any eventuality that may occur.” The administration last week unveiled a set of “criteria” for states to meet if they are to begin the process of reopening their economies — even though Trump himself has been encouraging of anti-quarantine protests against governors in states that don’t yet meet that threshold.

That said, testing is still a big question mark. Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, told CNN on Sunday that the lack of testing was the “number one problem in America,” as they are a benchmark for determining the virus’ spread.

So on Monday, Hogan announced that his state had managed to secure 500,000 tests from South Korea.

At the briefing, though, Trump criticized Hogan for not realizing that there were some 5,000 labs the administration has identified to assist in testing capacity. He said that Hogan “could have saved a lot of money.”

But governors say that the testing capacity is only part of the story, as a problem has been the lack of swabs and reagents to perform tests. After Trump’s criticisms, Hogan said on CNN that he was not sure what the president was trying to say, but that one of his issues was access of federal lab facilities in his state.

[Deadline]

1 2 3 4 5 6 … 92