Tag: Donald Trump

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#ThrowBackThursday: The Real Numbers From Obama/Biden Administration

L-R Former President Barack Obama, Donald Trump
I saw some folks trashing the results of the Obama administration years, so just a reminder here. For instance, unemployment dropped from nearly 10 percent o 4.7 percent. The current unemployment rate under Donald Trump is 10.2 percent. The Dow Jones had increased by 63.6 percent at the 43-month point in Obama’s administration, while the Dow has increased much less at 40.8 percent. Overall, by the time Obama left office, the Dow had jump 143.8 percent. We’ll have to see how that shakes out for Trump. Oh, and Obama was never impeached. There’s always that… More at FactCheck.org.

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Funny: Donald Trump Interviews Donald Trump

(screen capture)
Using footage from the now-infamous interview of Donald Trump by Axios’ Jonathan Swan, Justin T. Brown gives us Trump interviewing Trump. As one YouTube commenter wrote, “Somehow he is still losing the argument with himself.” Brilliantly edited. Just hit play.

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Two-Thirds Of Americans Oppose Delaying Presidential Election

L-R President Donald Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden
Via Reuters:

Two-thirds of registered American voters oppose delaying the Nov. 3 presidential election due to the coronavirus pandemic, and more than half think President Donald Trump floated the idea of postponing it last week to help himself politically, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling released on Wednesday.

The national public opinion poll was conducted from July 31 to Aug. 4, shortly after Trump said without providing evidence that a surge in mail-in voting would lead to widespread voter fraud and suggested the election be delayed.

The idea was immediately rejected by Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who have sole authority to change the election date.

Most Americans also rejected the suggestion. The poll showed 66% of registered voters oppose postponing the November vote, including 8 out of 10 Democrats and 5 in 10 Republicans.

Another 23% of registered voters – mostly Republicans – supported an election delay and 11% said they were not sure.

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Interview: Trump On COVID-19 Deaths ‘It Is What It Is’

Donald Trump

Donald Trump speaking to Axios (screen capture)
Other than Fox News’ Chris Wallace, I think this is the first extended example of a journalist going back and forth with Donald Trump on actual COVID-19 facts and data. Axios’ Jonathan Swan got a 38 minute sit down with Trump. In this clip, Trump argues about his ‘great success’ in addressing the coronavirus pandemic. Trump, it seems is comfortable with the ratio of death to diagnosed cases, while Swan is talking about the proportion of deaths to population in countries. Swan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.” Trump: “You can’t do that.” Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” As Swan points out, for example, South Korea has a population of 51 million but has experienced only 300 deaths from COVID-19 which factors out to 0.0005 percentage of the population has died from the virus. The U.S. has a population of 328,000,000+ but has suffered over 155,000+ deaths from coronavirus which means our percentage of the population that has died is much higher at .047. You’ll note in the clip, Trump hands Swan a graph with only four countries listed showing the U.S. being ‘the best.’ Talk about pick and choose. In the second clip below, as Trump argues the virus is ‘under control,’ Swan points out 1,000 Americans are dying on average each day. “It is what it is,” says Trump. Trump also admits he didn’t attend the funeral of civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) because “he didn’t come to my inauguration.” However, Trump does wish accused sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell “well.” Full interview at the end of this post.

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Report: Kushner Spiked National Testing Because Blue States Hit Hardest, Dem Govs Could Be Blamed

L-R Jared Kushner, Donald Trump (image via public domain/White House)
Vanity Fair has obtained a copy of a detailed plan spearheaded by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, that would have provided for a national testing approach for the COVID-19 pandemic. While the goal of the team putting the plan together was “apolitical,” the approach never saw the light of day because, according to Vanity Fair, the virus had mainly affected blue states. With that in mind, the decision was made to let states handle the health threat because “they could blame those governors” as a political strategy if things went awry. From Vanity Fair:

Countries that have successfully contained their outbreaks have empowered scientists to lead the response. But when Jared Kushner set out in March to solve the diagnostic-testing crisis, his efforts began not with public health experts but with bankers and billionaires. They saw themselves as the “A-team of people who get shit done,” as one participant proclaimed in a March Politico article.

[snip]

The effort of the White House team was “apolitical,” said the participant, and undertaken “with the nation’s best interests in mind.”

But the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures.

Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.

[snip]

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

Vanity Fair also reports Kushner’s team allegedly purchased 3.5 million Covid-19 tests from an Abu Dhabi–based artificial intelligence company without using normal procurement procedures. Despite the $52 million price tag, the tests were never utilized after being found “contaminated and unusable.”

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US Economy Contracts By 32.9% As 1.4 Million New Unemployment Claims Filed

Donald Trump

Donald Trump (image via Flickr/White House)
So. Much. Winning. Remember when Donald Trump predicted ‘only’ 60,000 deaths from COVID-19 and the economy would come roaring back in the summer when the virus magically disappeared? From CNN:

The US economy contracted at a 32.9% annual rate from April through June, its worst drop on record, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.

Business ground to a halt during the pandemic lockdown in the spring of this year and America plunged into its first recession in 11 years, putting an end to the longest economic expansion in US history and wiping out five years of economic gains in just a few months.

A recession is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of declining gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the economy. Between January and March, GDP declined by an annualized rate of 5%.

Additionally, the number of Americans filing first-time unemployment claims rose for the second week in a row. Some 1.4 million people filed for initial jobless claims last week, up 12,000 from the prior week’s revised level, which was the first increase in 16 weeks, according to the Department of Labor. At this writing, 152,074 Americans have died from COVID-19. The U.S. has more than 50% more fatalities from the virus than Brazil which ranks second in the world with 91,263 deaths.

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Trump Floats Delaying 2020 Election, Dems & GOP Say ‘No’

Donald Trump

Donald Trump during a White House press briefing (public domain)
We’ve all been expecting this, no? Donald Trump floated the idea of postponing the 2020 presidential election in a tweet today saying “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” No, Donald. First, folks have been mailing in ballots for decades. Whole states vote that way as well has hundreds of thousands of military service members. Per the Washington Post: “The U.S. Constitution gives the power to regulate the “time, place and manner” of general elections to the U.S. House and Senate, with Congress also empowered to alter the rules. States control the dates of primary elections. Nowhere is the president granted such power.”

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Trump Breaks With FL Governor As Polling Shows Biden Leading 13+

Donald Trump (image via Flickr/WhiteHouse – public domain)
While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to paint an upbeat picture of the coronavirus health threat in his state, Donald Trump broke with DeSantis saying the Sunshine state is in a “big tough position” when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic during his first briefing on the pandemic in three months on Tuesday. From Forbes:

Trump identified Florida, which is now his home state and where he plans to accept the Republican nomination next month, as a state that is in a “big tough position” when it comes to coronavirus.

Despite essentially all evidence suggesting otherwise, DeSantis has continually downplayed the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in the state during press briefings.

There are now 53 ICUs in Florida that are reporting 0% capacity, according to the state, which set a record for new hospitalizations Tuesday with 517.

Deaths have also spiked in the state, which reached a new daily high of 156 last Thursday.

Florida is clearly the U.S. coronavirus epicenter and has been for weeks, averaging over 10,000 new cases a day through much of July, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, including a national record high of 15,300 new cases on July 12.

According to Florida Public Radio, Florida reported its largest number of deaths in a single day (173) from the coronavirus today. Trump’s remark might have something to do with his polling in the vital swing state tanking as the latest Quinnipiac University poll shows him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden among registered voters by 13 points – 51 percent to 38 percent. That same poll showed 79% of Floridians support mandating the wearing of face masks when in public which DeSantis has refused to do.