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Trump: COVID-19 Restrictions Don’t Apply To Me

Donald Trump smirks during a press event

Donald Trump smirks during a press event
Donald Trump (photo: public domain/Flickr)
Donald Trump told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an interview Sunday that he doesn’t believe Nevada’s COVID-19 restrictions regarding large gatherings of over 50 people apply to him giving himself permission to hold his indoor rally in Henderson attended by a few thousand followers.

The president blamed the Democratic governor for forcing his campaign to abandon plans to hold an outdoor rally Sunday at Cirrus Aviation near McCarran International Airport and a Saturday rally in Reno, which was moved to an outdoor venue in Minden.

After failing to arrange alternative venues in the Las Vegas area, the campaign decided to hold the rally indoors at the Xtreme Manufacturing facility, owned by his friend Don Ahern, Trump said. “They canceled six different sites because the governor wouldn’t let it happen, all external sites,” the president said.

Henderson officials issued written and verbal warnings of compliance to the event organizers. Kathleen Richards, a spokeswoman for the city of Henderson, said in a statement “gatherings of more than 50 people in a private or public setting is prohibited.”

“If the governor’s directives are not followed,” she said, “the city may assess a fine of up to $500 per violation as well as suspend or revoke the business license.”

Sisolak was not targeting Trump in any way. Currently, no one is supposed to hold large gatherings of more than 50 people in Nevada. That’s the rule for everyone.

Sisolak clapped back in a lengthy thread on Twitter writing, “Tonight, President Donald Trump is taking reckless and selfish actions that are putting countless lives in danger here in Nevada.”

“The president appears to have forgotten that this country is still in the middle of a global pandemic,” added Sisolak.

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Andrew Gillum Comes Out As Bisexual

Former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (screen capture)
Andrew Gillum, former mayor of Tallahassee and the first Black nominee for Florida governor, came out as bisexual today on The Tamron Hall Show. “I don’t identify as gay,” Gillum said, “but I do identify as bisexual. And that is something I have never shared publicly before.” You may recall Gillum was found naked and drunk in a hotel in Miami Beach in March 2020. An associate, Travis Dyson, was treated for an apparent drug overdose at the time. Gillum denied he went to hotel room to take part in any kind of sexual situation. When it was reported the police had apparently confiscated what was believed to be crystal meth, Gillum said he’d never used the drug. He checked into a rehab facility shortly thereafter. Related: Andrew Gillum Involved In Crystal Meth Incident Gillum’s wife, R. Jai Gillum, took part in today’s interview and confirmed that she’s been aware of her husband’s sexual orientation. She shared that she feels her husband’s sexuality should not be part of the public discourse because of widespread misconceptions about bisexuality. “So many people just don’t understand bisexuality,” his wife said. “All I care about is what’s between us and what agreement we make.” Gillum came up short in the 2018 race for governor of Florida to Republican Ron DeSantis. A longtime supporter of LGBTQ rights and protections, Gillum is a former mayor of Tallahassee, the capital city of Florida.

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Lawsuit Alleges VA Docs Failed To Inform Veteran He Was HIV+ For 20 Years

A Navy veteran living in South Carolina has filed a lawsuit against the Veterans Administration claiming he tested positive for HIV over 20 years ago and his doctors never informed him of the diagnosis. The lawsuit, filed in federal court this week, alleges the medical staff at the William Jennings Bryan Dorn VA center in Columbia, South Carolina, failed to tell him an HIV test taken in 1995 came back positive. If true, the failure allowed the virus to progress for 20 years. The veteran is referred to as “John Doe” in the filing to protect his medical privacy. According to the local Columbia newspaper The State, the lawsuit reads, “The VA had actual knowledge beginning in November 1995 that Mr. Doe was HIV positive and the standard of care required he be informed of the positive test and proper treatment begin in 1995.” “In clear contravention of the standard of care, Mr. Doe was not informed of the positive HIV test until decades later,” continues the filing. The patient’s medical records reportedly mention his HIV diagnosis in subsequent visits but there’s no apparent record of the patient being informed he was HIV-positive. ‘Doe’ only learned of his status while seeing a non-VA physician who mentioned the diagnosis in passing during a December 2015 examination. The doctor wrote in his notes, “I looked at the patient and ask (sic) him who was his infectious disease doctor, and patient states (he) did not have one and (I) ask (sic) him if he knew that his HIV test was positive, and he stated (he) never was told it was positive.” According to reports, the veteran didn’t begin receiving antiretroviral treatment until he was admitted to a non-VA hospital in New York in 2018 at which point he had developed full-blown AIDS. The lawsuit, which requests an unspecified amount for punitive damages, claims the man’s health and immune system are permanently affected.

“The treatment he’s getting now is effective, but he’s had essentially 25 years of wear and tear for having no treatment,” said his lawyer, Chad McGowan, told Navy Times.

“He feels extremely guilty about the girlfriends he’s had over the last 25 years because he didn’t know,” McGowan added.

Had ‘Doe’ had been informed of his status in a timely manner, McGowan says his client “would not have suffered the losses he has suffered, and will continue to suffer in the future, and more likely than not, he would not have developed AIDS.” The medical director of the Dorn VA facility declined to comment due to the pending litigation.

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Facebook Launches Campaign To Register Election Workers

Facebook is launching a campaign to recruit volunteers to work the election polls for the presidential election. From The Verge:

Facebook is launching a recruitment drive for poll workers this weekend, putting messages into users’ News Feeds with links to poll worker registration sites in their state.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post announcing the drive that it was part of the company’s larger voting information campaign, which has a goal of helping 4 million people register and vote.

“Voting is voice, and in a democracy, it’s the ultimate way we hold our leaders accountable and make sure the country is heading in the direction we want,” Zuckerberg wrote.

The social media giant also will join dozens of other companies offering paid time off to employees in the US who work the polls on Election Day, according to Zuckerberg’s post.

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CEO Caught On Video Beating His 4-Month-Old Puppy

Jeffrey Previte (images via Daily Mail/screen capture)
Earlier this week, The Daily Mail published disturbing footage of Santa Monica CEO Jeffrey Previte violently abusing his puppy. In the short clip captured by security cameras, Previte can be seen thrashing and choking his 4-month-old dog Bici outside his apartment in the Seychelle Condominiums building in Santa Monica, California. After the video went viral, Previte reportedly emailed friends and colleagues saying, “I want everyone to know that I truly regret my actions on August 22, 2020. Words can’t fully describe how sorry I am for what happened.” “I lost my temper and took unreasonable and unjustifiable action in attempting to discipline my dog Bici,” continued the 46-year-old executive. “As I have said, words are not enough here, Bici is no longer living with me and is with another loving family. I have also stepped away from my job and am enrolling in anger management training.” Initially, Previte declared there was nothing illegal about his actions. But the Santa Monica Police Department issued a statement which included, “Based on the information received, Santa Monica Animal Control Officers turned their reports over to the Santa Monica Police Department Detectives who will present the case to the District Attorney’s Office for consideration of violation 597(a) of the California Penal Code, Malicious Mischief Against an Animal / Animal Cruelty.” His brother Nolan Previte, who works as co-CEO of EBI Consulting with his sibling, defended his brother’s actions in an email to employees saying Jeffrey is “kindhearted” and “deeply cares” for the puppy. He explained the vicious treatment as “zealous discipline of the dog for peeing on the rug.” Santa Monica police confirmed they were aware of the sickening video and are currently investigating it as a possible incident of animal abuse. The video clip is below. Warning: Very disturbing content.

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Jake Tapper Ends Scrappy Interview With Peter Navarro Over Trump’s COVID Lies

L-R CNN anchor Jake Tapper, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro
There’s a strategy in public relations. During a scandal or debacle, send out a representative to do an interview with a news outlet. When asked a question about the scandal, begin spewing the talking points you’ve been told to repeat. When asked to get back to the question at hand, repeat the talking points to continue killing time out of the 7 or so minutes of the segment. When the host tries to get back to the question at hand AGAIN, become irate and say, “You’re not letting me answer the question” when you KNOW you’re just running out the clock AND you’re just repeating the scripted talking points without addressing the actual issue. This is what happens in the clip below between CNN anchor Jake Tapper and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Now, you might wonder why a trade adviser is speaking to the news about the coronavirus pandemic. It has nothing to do with his background, he’s just the kind of pugnacious scrapper that Donald Trump likes to see defend him. That’s why he’s doing the interview. In this appearance, Navarro has an audience of one. His boss. When Tapper asked Navarro to explain why Trump privately acknowledged the coronavirus was deadlier than the flu but said otherwise publicly, Navarro repeatedly goes down a rabbit hole with his talking points. At one point, as Navarro throws out the false statement that Trump was “called a xenophobe and a racist by Joe Biden” (he wasn’t) and later apologized for it (he didn’t), Tapper corrects him. Navarro says, “We’ll do the fact-checker on that.” “I just did,” responds Tapper. In the end, Tapper ends the segment and reminded viewers of the facts: “I would just like to remind the American people that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, and the United States has more than 20 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths. That is a fact. It does not matter how many times he insults CNN.”

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No, Fauci Didn’t Say Live Theater Won’t Come Back For Another Year

(photo: Ludovic Bertron/Flickr)
This has blown up across many outlets online and I feel the need to underscore Dr. Anthony Fauci’s true words. Per the New York Times, he did not say it would be more than a year after a coronavirus vaccine becomes available that theaters can open. He said it would be a year before “people feel comfortable returning to theaters without masks.”

As theaters look to see how they might reopen with safety accommodations including mask use, Dr. Anthony Fauci says it will likely be more than a year before people feel comfortable returning to theaters without masks.

“If we get a really good vaccine and just about everybody gets vaccinated,” he said in an Instagram Live interview with Jennifer Garner on Wednesday, “you’ll have a degree of immunity in the general community that I think you can walk into a theater without a mask and feel like it’s comfortable that you’re not going to be at risk.”

He said that would likely not be until mid- to late 2021.

But that doesn’t mean he is saying when it would be safe to go to the theater without a mask. Dr. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, clarified in a phone interview on Friday that he was referring to when people could return to theatergoing at their pre-coronavirus comfort levels. “Words like ‘safe’ are charged,” he said. “I’m talking about the general trend of when we’ll start to feel comfortable going back to normal if we get a safe and effective vaccine.”

It’s an important difference to note because Broadway and regional theaters may open by January or February. The pandemic situation changes weekly. So, folks, please don’t misconstrue Dr. Fauci’s comments to mean we need to write Broadway and live theater off for another whole year. It’s not what he said.

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Twitter Flags Another Trump Tweet Urging Double Voting

Donald Trump reportedly took classified top secret documents from the White House when his administration came to an end.

Donald Trump (screen capture)
After Donald Trump again urged his Twitter followers in battleground state North Carolina to vote twice, the state’s Attorney General Josh Stein reminded his constituents it’s a felony to vote twice. Twitter also blocked likes, replies, and retweets on the Donald’s tweet. By the way, if you’re going to go to the polls to ‘check on your vote,’ why not just GO VOTE? Stein’s tweet also included a link where NC voters can track their mail-in votes to make sure they are counted. Twitter tagged Trump’s tweet with a disclaimer: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about civic and election integrity. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

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UK Prime Minister Proposes Testing Every Brit Every Week For COVID-19

New York state is about to drop its face mask mandate as COVID-19 cases continue to drop in the Empire State.

The Washington Post is reporting UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is proposing testing every citizen of his country every week for coronavirus in lieu of any health precautions like face masks or social distancing.

No masks. No distancing. The ability to go to work or school, the theater or a soccer match, as if living in a virus-free world.

That’s the vision British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pitched this past week, as he unveiled “Operation Moonshot” — a plan to test 10 million Brits every single day, or everyone in the country every week, at a cost of $130 billion.

The prospect of a return to normal has wide appeal, especially at a moment Britain is about to implement a new round of social distancing measures, prompted by rising coronavirus infections.

But many public health experts are dubious. Some say the plan is not a moonshot, but a Jules Verne fantasy.

Such massive population-wide testing for disease would be unprecedented. Though some countries have deployed mass screening during this pandemic, “Operation Moonshot” would go where no public health campaign has gone before — and yet Britain doesn’t have the best track record on coronavirus testing.

For such a plan to work, the government would need inexpensive, quick-result tests readily available on a massive scale. But such tests aren’t available or approved at this time.