Former President Donald Trump's United States of America

[lenaitch]

His base is solid. I am still seeing postings that he will go down in history and 'THE BEST PRESIDENT EVER!'. Then again, this from a nation where, no matter which party is in the House at the time, the other party are all criminals and should be arrested.

 

[PinkLucy]

It isn't his base that needs to change their vote, because they won't. Younger people have to get out and vote. And the Republicans who dislike him need to vote, and I think Biden is palatable enough to them to do so. I'm not sure that the younger people are on the Biden train, but they need to hold their nose this go around.

 

[Northern Light]

Trump banning all immigration to the US will help out Biden.

Needs to be said first that I just looked up executive orders signed in the last week, can't see any that create an immigration ban.

We would need to see what this really entails to understand any political impact.

For instance, the U.S. already takes very few refugees, and has a comparatively small true immigration pool at the moment.

But will an order affect H1B Visa holders? (Green Cards); will it effect student visas for international students? Will those students already studying in the U.S. be exempt?, or would they be expelled or prohibited from returning?

The details will matter.

So will how business and institutions respond.

Example, Universities whose international student programs implode could

a) lay off faculty, scale-back programs/classes

or

b) try accepting more domestic students; and might consider lowering tuitions to fill seats.

I am not in any way supportive of Trump; but I think its important to understand that bad policy decisions, made for wrong-headed reasons, may sometimes produce short-term benefits for some people (but then again, might not)

 

[PinkLucy]

Trump tweeted that he would impose a ban. Will he actually do it? That remains to be seen.

 

[tiffer24]

A malaria drug widely touted by Trump and Fox News for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in US veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported.

https://apnews.com/a5077c7227b8eb8b0dc23423c0bbe2b2

 

[Johnny Au]

It isn't his base that needs to change their vote, because they won't. Younger people have to get out and vote. And the Republicans who dislike him need to vote, and I think Biden is palatable enough to them to do so. I'm not sure that the younger people are on the Biden train, but they need to hold their nose this go around.

Don't forget that exceptions exist (such as the alt-right, which mainly consists of young white males who grew up with video games).

 

[AlbertC]

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp faces resistance over move to reopen economy

Tue April 21, 2020

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is running into resistance from mayors and businesses who fear a new wave of coronavirus infections as he seeks an early end to his state's shutdown.

Kemp, a Republican and staunch ally of President Donald Trump, on Monday announced Georgia would allow nail salons, massage therapists, bowling alleys and gyms to open Friday. In-person church services can resume. And restaurants and movie theaters can open Monday. His order also bars cities from imposing their own restrictions on businesses.

It's the most aggressive move yet to reopen a state's economy as Trump optimistically pushes for a May 1 end to some statewide lockdowns. It also came as a surprise to mayors and some members of Kemp's own coronavirus task force.

In Georgia, mayors are pushing back, some businesses are saying they'll keep their doors closed and even Trump allies are questioning whether Kemp is moving too quickly.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp faces resistance over move to reopen economy

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is running into resistance from mayors and businesses who fear a new wave of coronavirus infections as he seeks an early end to his state's shutdown.

www.cnn.com

 

[AlbertC]

Kentucky Coronavirus Cases Spike Following Shutdown Protests In State Capital

SARAH MIDKIFF
APRIL 21, 2020 2:27 PM

Following protests throughout the week at its state capitol, Kentucky reported its highest case spike. According to new reported figures, Kentucky added 273 new cases in a single day on Sunday, bringing the state’s total to 2,960.

Kentucky Coronavirus Cases Are Now Spiking Due To Shutdown Protests

Kentucky’s protests are among those that broke out in several states this past week including demonstrations in Ohio, Minnesota, and Michigan. Now, it seems those protests — which appear to lack social distancing regulations — are causing a spike in COVID-19 cases.

www.refinery29.com

 

[W. K. Lis]

Consoler-in-chief? Lacking empathy, Trump weighs the economic costs, not the human ones

Instead of weighing the human costs alongside the economic ones, Trump seems to be thinking about something else: himself

From link.

In times of national tragedy, the US president has, going back at least to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, filled the unique role of consoler-in-chief.

As Roosevelt did during his Great Depression-era fireside chats, the president has given voice to personal suffering and made victims of hardship feel recognized.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump was widely viewed as a weak consoler-in-chief. Sometimes he blamed local leaders for natural disasters, as when California was struck by wildfires in 2018. Sometimes his shows of empathy rang hollow, as when local leaders and victims’ families shunned him on his visit to Pittsburgh following a 2018 synagogue shooting.

But Trump has especially fallen short as consoler-in-chief during the coronavirus crisis, analysts say, failing day after day to muster expressions of sympathy for victims and their families as the death toll in America increased into the tens of thousands.

And in the current crisis, Trump’s failure to grasp the scale of the American tragedy on a human level could do more than fuel emotional turmoil – it could cost more lives, according to historians, public affairs experts and political analysts interviewed by the Guardian.

Instead of weighing the human costs attached to decisions about whether to reopen the economy or rush medical equipment to certain states, analysts said, Trump seems to be thinking about something else: his own political future and his need for the economy to rebound quickly if he is to be re-elected in November.

Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, said Trump’s emotional blindspots during the coronavirus crisis could hinder his policymaking.

“If he’s not sharing the feelings and demonstrating the capacity to understand what’s going on in the hospitals, what’s going on in quarantined bedrooms and homes, and why people are not just frightened but devastated … if he’s not able to have real empathy for someone who had someone die and was not be able to see them, then he’s not going to be sensitive to why scientists are saying, ‘Don’t open up too quickly,’” Zelizer said.

“He’s just not thinking of those kinds of costs. And so his lack of empathy is directly linked to his kind of rush to reopen the economy, which in another president’s hands might seem very different.”

Unlike most national disasters, the coronavirus emergency is not a discrete event that concludes abruptly with a price tag attached for total damages, or a summary death toll.

The coronavirus crisis is malleable, analysts said, and can be made bigger or smaller, longer or shorter, by how the White House responds, and by how the president encourages tens of millions of people to act. Epidemiological models portray how reopening the country too soon would lead to additional waves of infections, and many more deaths.

But the message Trump delivers each day in press briefings seems to be motivated more by his quest for re-election than any fellow feeling for beleaguered Americans, said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist.

“The Trump people feel, and they may be right, that his re-election prospects are dependent on a thriving economy,” Bannon said. “And so it’s imperative for his re-election that the economy open again.”

Trump often makes reference in his daily press briefings to the death toll in the US, which at about 45,000 represents about one-quarter of coronavirus deaths worldwide. But apart from some narrowly scripted remarks delivered in an uninterested monotone, Trump fails, day after day, to deliver expressions of sympathy for the loss of life, which remains on a grim trajectory. Instead his press briefings are more marked by attacks on opponents, whether Democrats, the media, China or the World Health Organization.

“He makes attempts at it usually when he’s reading prepared remarks, then he makes attempts at [empathy],” said Elaine Kamarck, founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. “But frankly, he’s not very good at it, and he can’t sustain it. The minute he goes off script, he’s back to that pile of accusations, insecurities, false statements, and attacks.”

Kamarck agreed that Trump’s inability to muster human empathy hindered his ability to respond effectively to the crisis. “If you really are feeling people’s pain, then you really are concentrating on how to help them,” she said.

Past presidents from both parties have responded to tragedies with expressions of sympathy and regret that historians credit with aiding the national recovery.

After the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986, Ronald Reagan delivered a subdued Oval Office address paying tribute to the courage of the lost crew and addressing their families: “We cannot bear as you do the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we’re thinking about you so very much.”

At a memorial to victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 including 19 children, Bill Clinton delivered a personal speech addressing the families of victims: “Though we share your grief, your pain is unimaginable, and we know that.”

Barack Obama sang Amazing Grace during a eulogy for a black minister killed by a white supremacist during a church massacre in Charleston in 2015.

But in his daily press briefings, Trump has largely left such condolences to his devoutly religious vice-president, Mike Pence. “Despite the heartbreaking losses, we’re getting there, America,” Pence said on Wednesday.

Kamarck said: “You don’t have to draw the contrast between Trump and Reagan, which is stark enough. All you have to do every day is to draw the contrast between Donald Trump and Mike Pence.”

The press briefings range across topics far and wide, but the main theme for Trump is touting an economic resurgence that awaits if only a rotating cast of villains would stop sabotaging the White House, and the country.

“We’ll be the comeback kids – all of us,” Trump said on Wednesday. “We want to get our country back. We’re going to do it, and we’re going to do it soon.”

But even when Trump talks about economic suffering, Zelizer noted, he doesn’t evoke the individual suffering and fears of the newly unemployed, people facing food shortages, and workers wondering when their relief checks will land.

“I could imagine other presidents talking about the urgency of getting back to normal for workers, schoolchildren,” Zelizer said. “But you can only do that if you really convey a feeling for why this has been so devastating, beyond everything shutting down.”

Instead, when Trump discusses the economic impact of the crisis, he is, once again, mostly talking about himself – and specifically his re-election prospects, said Bannon.

“I think Trump’s going to keep doing everything he can to get the economy open, because that’s basically the only hope he has to be re-elected,” he said. “The reality is that he was too late to recognize the crisis, and he was too early in wishing it away.”

 

[PinkLucy]

Trump blocks stimulus funding for millions of US citizens married to immigrants

American citizens who file taxes jointly with a spouse who lacks a Social Security number denied COVID-19 relief

www.salon.com

 

[W. K. Lis]

Hydroxychloroquine: US medical chief claims he was removed for questioning Trump's miracle drug, report says

From link.

A doctor who oversaw a federal agency charged with developing a coronavirus vaccine says he was removed from his job for raising concerns about using a popular malaria drug endorsed by Donald Trump to treat Covid-19.

"I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit," Rick Bright told the New York Times. He has been ousted as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and installed in a different position at the National Institutes of Health.

The White House has yet to respond to a request for comment.

Mr Trump for weeks has pushed hydroxychloroquine as a treatment drug for coronavirus, even announcing the federal government had purchased large amounts for distribution to states. The Times reported previously that the Trump family has a financial stake in the drug's parent company; the president has denied making money off the medication.

"I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science – not politics or cronyism – has to lead the way," Mr Bright said in a statement to Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

"My professional background has prepared me for a moment like this – to confront and defeat a deadly virus that threatens Americans and people around the globe. To this point, I have led the government's efforts to invest in the best science available to combat the Covid-19 pandemic," wrote the career federal official, who was not a political appointee of the Trump administration.

"Unfortunately, this resulted in clashes with HHS political leadership, including criticism for my proactive efforts to invest early into vaccines and supplies critical to saving American lives. I also resisted efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections," he added.

The doctor said he warned internally about potential side effects and other risks of using the malaria drug for Covid-19 before it was fully vetted.

"Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit," he told the newspaper. "While I am prepared to look at all options and to think 'outside the box' for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public.

 

[tiffer24]

At today's COVID 19 briefing, Trump suggested injecting disinfectant into the human body...

"So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you're going to test it," Trump said. "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."

Trump also asked if there was a way to use disinfectants on the body "by injection inside or almost a cleaning."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/do...fectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216

 

[PinkLucy]

So is he going to shoot himself up with bleach?

 

[Richard White]

So is he going to shoot himself up with bleach?

This whole presidency feels a bit like Reagan wherein staffers were covering for the start of his mental illness or like with FDR where the president was handicapped but staffers hid that from the public.

I wonder if Trump has health (physical or mental) issues that we are not aware of. This would explain alot.

 

[old boy]

At today's COVID 19 briefing, Trump suggested injecting disinfectant into the human body...

"So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you're going to test it," Trump said. "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."

Trump also asked if there was a way to use disinfectants on the body "by injection inside or almost a cleaning."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/do...fectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216

What a dunce !