Donald Trump will next week announce a council of business and medical leaders to help him with the biggest decision Ive ever had to make on when to reopen America for business in the midst of a global pandemic.

Facing criticism from traditional allies over his often combative daily coronavirus taskforce briefings, the president adopted a more emollient demeanour during Fridays marathon two-hour-plus session.

Trump and his public health experts pointed to hopeful signs that the spread of the coronavirus could be slowing and the final death toll lower than once projected. This had fuelled reports that Trump is set to shift focus and appoint an economic task force.

This is beyond economic, he told reporters. I call it the opening our country taskforce or opening our country council so we dont get it confused with Mikes [Pence] taskforce, which has done so great.

And were going to have the great business leaders, the great doctors, were going to have a group of people. Well probably do it by teleconference because we dont really travelling in for their own purposes. I dont think it would look good, also.

Trump added: I want to get it open as soon as possible. This country was meant to be open and vibrant and great... The facts are going to determine what I do. But we do want to get the country open.

He promised the council will be announced on Tuesday with names that you have a lot of respect for, a lot of great names, different businesses, different people I want their views on what they think.

Media reports suggest the council could include his daughter Ivanka Trump; the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin; and the new White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

The current stop the spread federal guidelines finish on 30 April and pressure is building on Trump to reopen at least parts of the economy, which has gone into free fall and shed more jobs than in the 2008-09 Great Recession. But with infections approaching half a million, public health experts fear that pushing too soon could result in a second wave of cases.

America has tested less than 1% of its population, leaving it way behind other nations on testing per capita, yet Trump dismissed questions on this issue.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, cautioned on Friday: Were starting to see the leveling off but its important to remember that this is not the time to feel that since we have made such an important advance in the sense of success of the mitigation that we need to be pulling back at all.

Dr Deborah Birx, the response coordinator, added that as encouraging as the signs are, we have not reached the peak, and so every day we need to continue to do what we did yesterday and the week before and the week before that, because thats what, in the end, is going to take us up across the peak and down the other side.

Trump promised to heed the experts. I listen to them about everything, he said. I think theyre actually surprised. I have great respect for these people Were not doing anything until we know that this country is going be healthy. We dont want to go back and start doing it over again.

He acknowledged: I dont know that Ive had a bigger decision. But Im going to surround myself with the greatest minds. Not only the greatest minds, but the greatest minds in numerous different businesses, including the business of politics and reason.

A reporter asked what metrics would be used to help Trump decide. He pointed to his head. Later he added: I have a big decision coming up, and I only hope to God thats its the right decision.

Trumps bombastic TV briefings have been compared to campaign rallies but normally supportive sources such as the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham and the Wall Street Journal newspaper have warned that they are doing him more harm than good.

Perhaps stung, he reshuffled the order of speakers on Friday and adopted a more genial tone. OK, its Good Friday so lets be nice, Trump said as he invited questions.

But he could not resist sparring with CNNs Jim Acosta, an old foe, who asked: We hear from a lot of people who see these briefings as sort of happy talk briefings. And some of the officials paint as rosy a picture of what is happening around the country. If you look at some of these questions do we have enough masks? No. Do we have enough tests? No. Do we have enough PPE? No.

Trump snapped: A lot of it is fake news This is not happy talk. Maybe it is happy talk for you., It is not happy talk for me. Were talking about the greatest economy in the world, one day I have to close it off. And we did the right thing because maybe it would have been t2 million people died.

He added: This is sad talk These are the saddest news conferences that I have ever had. I dont like doing them. You know why? Because I am talking about death.

Read more:

Trump to announce council focused on reopening the US for business - The Guardian

Over the last few days, a few glimmers of hope have emerged amid our current national nightmare, the biggest one being: Thanks to extreme social distancing and other highly restrictive measures, health experts believe the estimate of 240,000 deaths in the U.S. from coronavirus might actually come out closer to 60,000. Rational adults likely took this news with cautious optimism, fully aware of the fact that (1) 60,000 people is still a lot, and (2) the new prediction does not mean that we should speed up the timeline for getting back to regular life, particularly in light of the fact that there may be a second and third wave of the virus. And then you have Donald Trump, whose brain seemingly stopped developing around the age of 11.

In his daily press conference on Friday, held shortly after the New York Times reported that government projections indicated lifting restrictions after only 30 days will lead to a dramatic infection spike this summer and death tolls that would rival doing nothing, government projections indicate, Trump offered his typical unscientific, from-the-gut, completely nonsense take. While acknowledging that opening up the country might lead to death, he added: Staying at home leads to death also. And its very traumatic for this country. Staying at home, if you look at numbers, that leads to a different kind of death, perhaps, but it leads to death also.

Its not clear what kind of different death Trump is talking about here. While mental health experts have expressed concern about the anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder some people will experience as a result of the pandemic, which, in some cases, could potentially lead to suicide, mass deaths nationwide would presumably also take a toll on peoples state of mind. Earlier this week, Trump supporters Diamond and Silk had their twitter account locked for spreading the ridiculous misinformation that quarantining people inside of their houses for extended periods of time will make them sick, and that the only way we can become immune to the environment is by being out in the environment.

Asked about the need for comprehensive testing, which experts believe is the only way to safely allow people to get back to work and regular life, Trump claimed theres no need for it in certain places, which of course is categorically false.

So, how will Trump make the call re: when its reasonable to lift the measures that have helped slow the deadly virus?

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Read the original here:

Trump: Reopening the Country Too Early Could Kill People but So Could Staying at Home - Vanity Fair

Trump was asked by a reporter during the White House press briefing what his message was to pastors refusing to follow federal social distancing guidelines by holding services in person. In some cases, these services are expected to take place despite outright bans of such congregations.

"I know there are some pastors and ministers and others that want to get together. And I have great respect for them. Two of them I know. But I would say first, heal -- I'm a Christian -- heal our country," Trump said. "Let's get healed before we do this and there's time to do that. We'll do it for, hopefully, the rest of our lives."

The President also said he would be watching Pastor Robert Jeffress' service online this Easter Sunday.

How much power Trump has to "reopen" the economy remains limited. The federal government only issued recommendations on social distancing and business closures, and it will be up to individual governors to reverse the mandatory orders.

CNN's Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

Read more from the original source:

Trump tells faith leaders to let the country 'get healed' before holding in-person services - CNN

Support for Donald Trumps handling of the coronavirus has plunged over the past week, polls show, as some of his advisers and Republican allies are said to be concerned over the US presidents daily briefings on the pandemic.

Trump experienced an upturn in public support as the virus hit the US, and his job approval rating surged to almost the highest rating since he was elected. As concerns over the governments response have grown, however, the number of people who believe the president is doing a good job appears to be settling back to pre-coronavirus levels.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week found approval of Trumps handling of Covid-19 had dipped to 42%, down from 48% the week before. Trumps overall approval rating was at 40%, close to where it has been for much of his presidency. According to a survey by CNN, 45% of Americans approve of Trumps coronavirus response.

Perhaps more worrying for Trump are his dwindling numbers in a match-up against Joe Biden. CNN found that Biden leads Trump 53% to 42% among registered voters nationwide.

A number of Trumps advisers and Republican allies are said to be among those unimpressed with his performance at his press briefings, which have become a daily ritual and often last several hours. Axios and the New York Times reported that a series of senior figures have become dismayed at the briefings, which Trump has used to propagate lies and disinformation about his response to the pandemic.

White House allies and Republican lawmakers increasingly believe the briefings are hurting the president more than helping him, the Times reported.

Even the Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham is among those who wants Trump to rein in his briefings, which frequently run on for more than an hour and regularly feature an upset president lashing out at the press.

Graham told the New York Times that Trump sometimes drowns out his own message, and said he had counseled the president to limit the briefings to once a week. Axios reported that Republicans are worried the rambling performances, along with the White Houses wider response to the coronavirus, could harm Trumps re-election chances.

The next 4-8 weeks is really going to decide whether Trump gets re-elected, Stephen Moore, a former Trump nominee for Federal Reserve, told Axios.

The normally forgiving editorial board of the conservative Wall Street Journal has also come out against Trumps daily presentations.

The briefings began as a good idea to educate the public about the dangers of the virus, how Americans should change their behavior, and what the government is doing to combat it, the Journal wrote. But sometime in the last three weeks Mr Trump seems to have concluded that the briefings could be a showcase for him.

Despite the pleas, it seems unlikely that Trump, who is increasingly using the briefings to push out the kind of messaging usually reserved for his campaign rallies, will put a halt to them any time soon.

Any suggestion that President Trump is struggling on tone or message is completely false, the White House spokesman Judd Deere told the New York Times.

Go here to read the rest:

Trump's poll numbers dip over handling of coronavirus pandemic - The Guardian

The WHO responded Wednesday to President Donald Trumps threat to cut its funding, saying the move would not be appropriate during the global coronavirus pandemic.

We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic so now is not the time to cut back on funding, Dr Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, told a virtual briefing, according to Reuters.

A day earlier, Trump threatened to withhold funding from the United Nations health agency, claiming it got every aspect of the coronavirus pandemic wrong.

With regard to us, theyre taking a lot of heat because they didnt want the borders closed, they called it wrong, Trump said at his daily briefing. They really called, I would say, every aspect of it wrong.

As of Wednesday, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. surpassed 400,000, according to figures provided by NBC, with 12,864 fatalities nationwide.

Its uncertain how the U.S. would withhold funding. Congress has already authorized $122 million for the WHO for this fiscal year, and while Trump has proposed only $58 million of funding in fiscal year 2021, Congress is unlikely to authorize such a drastic funding cut, especially in the the middle of the pandemic.

The president also criticized the WHOs initial response to the outbreak, which originated in Wuhan in China in late 2019, and the time it took to declare the outbreak a global pandemic, on March 11.

Take a look, go through step by step. They said theres no big deal, theres no big problem. Theres no nothing, and then ultimately when I closed it down, they said I made a mistake in closing it down and it turned out to be right, Trump said.

The WHO declared a global health emergency on Jan. 30, nearly a month before Trump tweeted that The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.

Another official at the WHO rejected that criticism.

It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this, Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior advisor to the WHO director-general, said at the virtual briefing Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Continued here:

'Now is not the time': WHO responds to Trump's threat to cut funding - CNBCTV18

Michael Atkinson, the then-inspector general for the intelligence community, departs a closed-door hearing before the House Intelligence Committee in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 4, 2019.

Photo: Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times via Redux

Three years into his presidency, Donald Trumps corruption and blatant politicization have reached into every corner of the government. Now, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed thousands of Americans, its more clear than ever that the officials who stayed in public service to try to curb Trumps worst abuses are becoming his most numerous victims.

Hoping that the country is too distracted by Covid-19 to notice, Trump has over the last few days engaged in a Stalinist purge of truth-tellers, leaving the survivors frightened and intimidated even as the federal government is shown to be too weak to counter the rampaging coronavirus.

Last week, Trump fired the intelligence communitys inspector general, Michael Atkinson. Atkinsons sin was that he took seriously a whistleblower complaint about Trumps illegal scheme to get Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 presidential election on his behalf.

Last year, Atkinson concluded that the whistleblowers complaint was both credible and urgent, and should be shared with Congress, which ultimately led to Trumps impeachment by the House of Representatives. A mountain of evidence confirmed the whistleblowers complaint and vindicated Atkinsons decision to tell Congress about it.

It is hard not to think that the Presidents loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General, Atkinson wrote in a statement. He urged whistleblowers to continue to come forward: Please do not allow recent events to silence your voices.

Atkinsons firing is just the latest in a series of attempts by Trump to decapitate the intelligence community and place it under the control of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the clammy thug who has gained power over most of the national security apparatus by sucking up to Trump more compulsively than any of his rivals.

In the wake of Atkinsons firing, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff wrote a scathing letter to Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, pointing out that every Senate-appointed official in the DNI has now been removed, making it impossible for the intelligence community to function. The only problem with Schiffs letter was that he had to address it to Grenell, an empty suit who is temporarily filling the job of director after replacing yet another acting national intelligence director in February. Replacing acting officials with more acting officials is part of Trumps ongoing strategy to fill the government with unqualified yes-men.

Trumps dysfunctional leadership style is to rant and rave in public over the slightest hint of criticism. That explains why the popular captain of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier was relieved of command last week after pleading for help as Covid-19 ravaged his crew.

Replacing acting officials with more acting officials is part of Trumps ongoing strategy to fill the government with unqualified yes-men.

The captain, Brett Crozier, had angered Trump by telling his superiors that the Navy wasnt doing enough to protect its sailors. Croziers letter was promptly leaked to the media, embarrassing Navy brass, so Crozier had to go. On Monday, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, yet another Trump minion, flew to Guam and gave a profanity-laced speech to the carriers crew, in which he said that if Crozier hadnt intended his letter to be leaked, the captain was too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this. The audio of Modlys speech was itself promptly leaked to the press, and Modly was forced to resign. In trying a little too hard to be like Trump, he had actually embarrassed the president.

Trump began the week by ousting the chair of the federal panel created by Congress to oversee the management of the $2 trillion stimulus package designed to offset the economic impact of the pandemic. Trump removed Glenn Fine before he could even start his new job because he discovered that Fine had been the acting inspector general of the Pentagon and previously served as the longtime inspector general for the Justice Department. In other words, he was afraid that Fine had enough experience to actually know how to do his job and therefore, could conduct real oversight of the massive spending bill.

At around the same time, Trump publicly attacked the inspector general for Health and Human Services for issuing a report that showed that hospitals around the nation faced severe shortages of Covid-19 tests and related supplies.

Trump views anyone who tells the truth as an enemy who must be crushed. Since the onset of the pandemic, he has often assaulted the truth in the middle of White House press briefings. That the docile White House press corps has repeatedly let it happen with barely a murmur encourages Trump to keep it up.

In the middle of a press briefing on Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the governments top infectious disease expert, tried to answer a question about whether an anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, could be an effective treatment for Covid-19. Trump has continuously touted the drug in public despite the fact that there is no conclusive proof of its usefulness and plenty of evidence of its harmful side effects. His heedless quackery threatens to kill thousands.

The last thing Trump wanted was for Fauci to tell the truth while standing next to him in front of the press, so Trump blocked him from answering the question and attacked reporters for asking about it. You dont have to ask the question again, Trump told a reporter, while complaining that Fauci had already talked about the anti-malarial drug 15 times.

Fauci has tried hard over the last few weeks to avoid directly contradicting Trump, particularly in official press briefings. He has instead used alternative media interviews including a popular online chat with NBA star Stephen Curry to try to get the truth out.

Yet the fact that Fauci must stand by and let Trump spout dangerous misinformation shows how Trumps purges have intimidated the remaining professionals inside the government.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been almost completely sidelined from press briefings. Stat, a health and medicine news organization, noted that the CDC hasnt given its own press briefing since March 9, after Trump and the White House took control of public messaging about the pandemic. CDC experts, who held regular briefings to update the public about previous health threats such as the H1N1 flu pandemic and the Zika outbreak, have been silenced, Stat reported.

Instead, CDC Director Robert Redfield, a conservative Christian appointed to his position in 2018, has mainly been giving interviews to local radio stations, in which he stresses the value of social distancing while avoiding directly contradicting Trump.

Trump has lied and spouted propaganda and conspiracy theories ever since he took office. In the last few days, he has intensified his war against the truth and anyone who speaks it. With Covid-19, we are witnessing the results.

Read the original here:

Under Cover of Covid-19, Donald Trump Ramps Up His War on Truth-Tellers - The Intercept

Donald Trump made it clearer than ever on Thursday evening that he doesn't understand the crucial role that widespread coronavirus testing plays in getting America back to work again safely.

So while he talks about reopening the country "very, very soon," what he's actually showing the world, every night, is that he has no idea what it will take to do that.

The overwhelming consensus among public-health experts is that it won't be safe for Americans to resume anything like their normal lives until the country has the ability to test magnitudes more people than it does now.

Social distancing appears to be reducing the uncontrolled spread of the virus. But if we can't figure out who still has the virusand keep them away from healthy people, then when we emerge from our homes, we'll just start the cycle over.

What's required, first and foremost, is massive testing not only vastly more diagnostic testing than we're doing now, but also what's called "surveillance" testing, so public-health officials can determine what communities are safeand can identify outbreaks when they are still small and isolate the people who are infected.

Advertisement:

Barack Obama weighed in on Thursday. He gets it:

A former Obama adviser put it a bit less delicately:

Indeed, there is no sign that Trump preoccupied as he is with a fantasy narrative in which he and his administration have done everything perfectly has a clue that testing needs to be ramped up.

CNN's Jim Acosta asked exactly the right questionat Thursday's news conference.

Acosta: Mr. President, how could the administration discuss the possibility of reopening the country when the administration does not have an adequate nationwide testing system for this virus? Don't you need a nationwide testing system for the virus before you reopen?

Trump said no.

Before you read Trump's entire reply, you need to know a few thingsto help you understand how meaningless it was:

Now here's what Trump said:

Trump: No. We have a great testing system right now, the best testing system in the world. But there are certain sections

Acosta: But people can't get the test right now

Trump: there are certain sections in the country that are in phenomenal shape already. Other sections are coming online [sic]. Other sections are going down. And we, in addition to that, are giving out millions of tests and every day we're doing it exponentially, we're picking up, and what we'll be doing in the very near future is going to certain areas of our country and do massive testing. It's not necessary, but it would be a good thing to have.

Acosta: Don't you have need, though, Mr. President, to make sure people are safe going back to work? You don't want to send people back to the workplace

Trump: We want to have it. And we're going to see if we have it. Do you need it? No. Is it a nice thing to do? Yes. We're talking 325 million people. And that's not going to happen, as you can imagine. It would never happen with anyone else, either.

Trump's mention of "massive testing," but only in "certain areas of our country," was confusing at best andnonsensical at worst.

AtWednesday's news conference, Trump was asked another good question: "So what specifically has to happen for you to feel that it is safe to reopen the country?And what is your plan to do that?"

His answer was purely "aspirational" as he now calls his earlier,Easter Sunday deadlinefor reopening:

Well, I think we can say that we have to be on that down side of that slope and heading to a very strong direction that this thing is gone.We could do it in phases.We can go to some areas, which, you know, some areas are much less affected than others.

But it would be nice to be able to open with a big bang and open up our country or certainly most of our country.And I think we're going to do that soon.If you look at what's happening, I would say we're ahead of schedule.

Now, you hate to say it too loudly because, all of asudden, things don't happen.But I think we will be sooner rather than later.But we'll be sitting down with the professionals.We'll be sitting down with many different people and making a determination.And those meetings will start taking place fairly soon.

Asked about plans for "monitoring and testing," Trump lied about the current level of testing and almost certainly made up a story about how "other countries" are now "calling us" for advice.

Public-health experts are widely agreed on what needs to happen next, starting with a huge increase in testingbut also including a massive nationwide program of contact-tracing to find who may have been infected by the people who tested positive, and some way of isolating the infected.

Each of those measures involve controversial tradeoffs, and complex federal oversight and support.

That's what ought to be preoccupying Trump.

Specifically, scientists I trust have directed me to three policy roadmaps that provide exactly what the Trump administration is failing to provide: a detailed, point-by-point plan for how to reopen the country and end the crisis safely. They are also nearly identical in their broad strokes.

They are:

Reporters should hold Trump accountable to these roadmaps: Does he disagree with any of their conclusions or proposals? What if anything is he doing about them?

All three emphasize the danger of not having a serious, credible plan. As the CAP report states:

Without a coherent, evidence-based plan in place a path forward, clear benchmarks, and an end in sight the public and government officials may grow weary of physical distancing prematurely. The result would be repeated waves of exponential transmission followed by lockdowns, wreaking havoc on the economy and peoples' lives. It will be far more devastating to our economy and to public health to experience waves and waves of virus response rather than properly return to normal when it is truly safe. Americans are willing to make sacrifices and do their part to break transmission, but they need to have faith that there is a plan in place that will work.

The next step, as the AEI report explains, is:

To move from community-wide interventions that focus on large populations to case-based interventions that target and isolate individual people who are infected.

That's where widespread testing becomes essential. Butas the Duke report states:

Not one of the 50 U.S. states currently has surveillance capabilities sufficient to enable case-based interventions at the necessary scale. While these capacities are being scaled up in some places around the country, getting them to a level adequate to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks and epidemics will require a substantial expansion of our public health infrastructure and case-based management capabilities. With Federal support, surveillance mechanisms can be increased or implemented and better integrated with testing by providers.

None of this can happen just by flicking a switch, however. From the Duke report:

A reasonable first approach is to support rapid pilot program in some regions of the country that are already supporting existing surveillance capabilities. For example, Massachusetts recently announced a new program to hire and train 1,000 people to support contact tracing. Successful early models and best practices would provide the basis for CDC's guidance to expand these capabilities throughout the country.

Finding a balance between the personal and technological approaches to contact-tracing is essential, and presents a rare area of disagreement.

The CAP report, for instance, urges an approach like South Korea and Singapore, using mobile phones to notify individuals if they have been in close proximity to an individual who has tested positive but with data hosted by a trusted, nonprofit organization, "not private technology companies or the federal government."

The Duke report, by contrast, concludes that a reliance on phones raises "serious privacy, security, and logistical concerns," and instead recommends a substantial investment in strengthening the state and local public health workforce and a system for timely data-sharing.

The experts are agreed that affected individuals should be isolated, often outside of their houses. The AEI reportsays, "Comfortable, free facilities should be provided for cases and their contacts who prefer local isolation, quarantine, and treatment away from home."

Only the U.S. government can set up the necessary testing network. Only the CDC can lead an effective contact-tracing program.

And ideally, the White House could lead a constructive national debate about the appropriate role of cell phone data in contact tracing and the right approach to isolating the sick.

Despite Trump's belligerent ignorance, there are some signs that Vice President Pence and other members of the White House task force are at least a bit more aware of the variables involved but how much isn't clear.

Pence, after Trump left the room on Thursday, talked in very general terms about what needs to happen before places reopen. "First would be that we are at the end of the coronavirus for most major communities," he said. He said that "as we move into this summer and move into the fall, we'll have the testing we need" to do both diagnostic and surveillance testing.

But he also said reopening depends on having "therapeutics for Americans to take medicines if they contract the disease" which, unless you believe Trump's snake-oil pitches for hydroxychloroquine, isn't necessarily anytime soon.

On CNN, the mostly invisible CDC director, Robert Redfield, offered a little more insight on Thursday evening, acknowledging the need for contract tracing and "using the data that we have from surveillance to understand the most important places for us to reopen."

According toPolitico, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, told lawmakers earlier this week "that administration officials are developing a framework for getting back to 'normality' and that he expects the White House to issue more guidance about eventually reopening society in the coming days."

On Wednesday, Brett P. Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, discussed movement toward antibody testing. "This allows for surveillance screening to understand if1 percent, 5 percent, 30 percent of Americans have been infected.But it also allows us to have very widespread tens and tens of millions of people screened with a finger prick on the spot."

He predicted that "if things work out the way we believe they will, we will have millions [of tests] on the market by May in a sophisticated way, in a prospective way that we get the surveillance we need.We can test people to see if they've been exposed, immune, and [can] go back to work.And a combination of that kind of test with the current kind of tests we have now is how America opens back up again."

Meanwhile, Trump continues to be obsessed with hisTV ratings, not testing. He continues to insist, vaguely, that everything will be better soon.

Emanuel, the lead author of the CAP report, recentlytold Deadline:

Everyone knows that the President knows nothing, and is just doing what he hopes, rather than what is realistic. What they want is what's realistic. It's, "Tell me what the plan is over that time."

I think I have a plan. There are other people who have slightly different plans, but we have to have a concerted discussion going forward.

The media's role here is essential.Every time Trump says things are "headed in the right direction," reporters should be demanding answers to specific questions about the plan forward and should make it clear to the public that he has no serious, concrete, plausibleor credible plan at all.

Reporters need to expose his ignorance, rather than continue to indulge him like the Washington Post'sMatt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey, Jose A. Del Real and William Wandid Thursday night, in their story headlined "Trump administration pushing to reopen much of the U.S. next month."

Read all the way down and you learn that he can't do it (only the governors can); that health experts say itwould be completely crazy; and that no one in Trump's inner circle can answer the simplest questions about how this could possibly be safe.

But Trump and the zealots he listens to inside and outside the White House got the headline they wanted, nonetheless.

Go here to see the original:

Trump fails the test: Yet more evidence he has no idea what he's doing - Salon

Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal

If we were doing a bad job, we should also be criticized. But we have done an incredible job, Trump said on February 27. Were doing a great job with it, he told Republican senators on March 10. I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, he tweeted on March 18.

For three-quarters of his presidency, Trump has taken credit for the economic expansion that began under President Barack Obama in 2010. That expansion accelerated in 2014, just in time to deliver real prosperity over the past three years. The harm done by Trumps own initiatives, and especially his trade wars, was masked by that continued growth. The economy Trump inherited became his all-purpose answer to his critics. Did he break laws, corrupt the Treasury, appoint cronies, and tell lies? So what? Unemployment was down, the stock market up.

Suddenly, in 2020, the rooster that had taken credit for the sunrise faced the reality of sunset. He could not bear it.

Underneath all the denial and self-congratulation, Trump seems to have glimpsed the truth. The clearest statement of that knowledge was expressed on February 28. That day, Trump spoke at a rally in South Carolinahis penultimate rally before the pandemic forced him to stop. This was the rally at which Trump accused the Democrats of politicizing the coronavirus as their new hoax. That line was so shocking, it has crowded out awareness of everything else Trump said that day. Yet those other statements are, if possible, even more relevant to understanding the trouble he brought upon the country.

Read: The two states where Trumps COVID-19 response could backfire

Trump does not speak clearly. His patterns of speech betray a man with guilty secrets to hide, and a beclouded mind. Yet we can discern, through the mental fog, that Trump had absorbed some crucial facts. By February 28, somebody in his orbit seemed to already be projecting 35,000 to 40,000 deaths from the coronavirus. Trump remembered the number, but refused to believe it. His remarks are worth revisiting at length:

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, theyre politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, Hows President Trump doing? They go, Oh, not good, not good. They have no clue. They dont have any clue. They cant even count their votes in Iowa. They cant even count. No, they cant. They cant count their votes.

One of my people came up to me and said, Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didnt work out too well. They couldnt do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. Theyd been doing it since you got in. Its all turning. They lost. Its all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.

But we did something thats been pretty amazing. We have 15 people [sick] in this massive country, and because of the fact that we went early. We went early; we could have had a lot more than that. Were doing great. Our country is doing so great. We are so unified. We are so unified. The Republican Party has never ever been unified like it is now. There has never been a movement in the history of our country like we have now. Never been a movement.

So a statistic that we want to talk aboutGo ahead: Say USA. Its okay; USA. So a number that nobody heard of, that I heard of recently and I was shocked to hear it: 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. Did anyone know that? Thirty-five thousand, thats a lot of people. It could go to 100,000; it could be 27,000. They say usually a minimum of 27, goes up to 100,000 people a year die.

And so far, we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the United States. Nobody. And it doesnt mean we wont and we are totally prepared. It doesnt mean we wont, but think of it. You hear 35 and 40,000 people and weve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.

On February 28, very few Americans had heard of an estimated death toll of 35,000 to 40,000, but Trump had heard it. And his answer to that estimate was: So far, we have lost nobody. He conceded, It doesnt mean we wont. But he returned to his happy talk. We are totally prepared. And as always, it was the media's fault. You hear 35 and 40,000 people and weve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.

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This Is Trumps Fault - The Atlantic

"You should say congratulations, great job, instead of being so horrid in the way you ask a question," Trump scolded Fox's Kristin Fisher.

The "horrid" question that Fisher had the gall to ask? "When can hospitals expect to receive a quick turnaround on these [Covid-19] test results?"

Which, unless you have spent the last month or so on another planet, is a very relevant question. Testing for coronavirus was very slow to get started and there remains, in many hospitals, a delay in getting back results from the tests.

"More and more rapid tests are coming onto the market and private companies like Quest and LabCorp are now running thousands of tests a day. But as the virus has spread from state to state infecting hundreds of thousands of Americans, demand for testing has overwhelmed many labs and testing sites. Doctors and officials around the country say that lengthy delays in getting results have persisted and that continued uneven access to tests has prolonged rationing and hampered patient care. In addition, swabs and chemicals needed to run the tests are in short supply in many of the nation's hot zones."

There's no question, then, that Fisher was well within her rights to ask Trump about the continued testing delays. So, why did he react the way he did?

Simple; Trump has absolutely no real idea of (or care for) how a free and independent media actually works.

He's demonstrated this repeatedly -- on some of the biggest stages in the world.

So, yeah. Trump doesn't seem to grasp -- or, more worryingly, doesn't care -- about the difference between how the press should function in the US and how it is allowed to function in an authoritarian state. He likes how authoritarian rulers are "covered" by their media because it is so favorable. He seems to not connect the dots that the reason it is favorable is because a) reporters' work in these countries is heavily censored and b) there are real-life repercussions for journalists who are seen as insufficiently loyal to the political leadership of the country.

The job of journalists in a free and open society is to ask questions -- even uncomfortable ones. And to keep asking them until they get answered. Because in this country reporters never have to -- or should never have to -- worry that asking a hard question of the president might lead to negative consequences.

The media's job is not to ask "nice" or "good" questions, and it's certainly not to say "congratulations." The media's job is to ask questions that elicit critical information about issues affecting the American public. Like, say, when will the rapid-result tests for coronavirus be available to hospitals battling the virus around the country?

That the President of the United States doesn't grasp that basic fact about one of the institutions at the center of a healthy democracy speaks volumes.

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Here's the biggest thing Donald Trump doesn't get about the media - CNN

Most people find Donald Trump bewildering. His lies, cruelty, corruption, greed, delusions of godlike powerand other unconscionable behavior seemunbelievable. If Trump werea character in a TV show, movie or comic book, the audience would laugh at his clumsy, obvious villainy. The whole story would be rejected as horrendously bad writing and a waste of time.

But Trump is not that in fact complicated or puzzling once his core motivations are understood and then accepted as basic facts: He appears to be a sociopath. As such, helacks human empathy and a capacityfor the norms of healthy human social relationships. In so many ways, Donald Trump is like a space alien who came to Earth and is (badly) impersonating a human being.

The coronavirus pandemic, and Trump's cruel and callous reactions to it, have only served toamplifyhis gross defects in personality, behaviorand values.

Writing at the Guardian, Lloyd Green summarizes Donald Trump's emotional and cognitive defects as magnified by the coronavirus crisis:

On Sunday, initially at least, there was no White House briefing on the president's public schedule. But the bad news kept coming. Coronavirus deaths continued to climb and reports of the heartland being unprepared for what may be on its horizon continued to ricochet around the media.

In the words of one administration insider, to the Guardian: "The Trump organism is simply collapsing. He's killing his own supporters."

Members of the national guard, emergency workers, rank-and-file Americans: all are exposed. Yet Trump appears incapable of emoting anything that comes close to heart-felt concern. Or just providing straight answers.

In a recent op-ed forthe New York Times, Frank Bruni speaks tothe human emptinessandlack of care, concern, empathy, and overall decency atthe center of Donald Trump:

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One more question: Do you remember the moment when President Trump's bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it?

It passed me by, maybe because it never happened.

In Trump's predecessors, for all their imperfections, I could sense the beat of a heart and see the glimmer of a soul. In him I can't, and that fills me with a sorrow and a rage that I quite frankly don't know what to do with.

And while I'm not looking to Trump for any panacea, is it too much to ask for some sign that the dying has made an impression on him, that the crying has penetrated his carapace and that he's thinking about something other than his ratings? I watch. I wait. I suspect I'll be doing that forever.

I recently spoke with Dr. Lance Dodes, a retiredassistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and now a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. We discussedthe coronavirus pandemic and what this crisis hasrevealedabout Donald Trump's mental health and behavior.

Dodes wasa contributor to the bestselling volume "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," and is a regular guest on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell".

In this conversation, Dodes explains how the coronavirus pandemic offers further evidence of Trump's predatory, sociopathic behaviorand his lack of care or concern for other human beings. Trump's programming and behavior, in fact makes him perhaps the worst person imaginable to lead the United States through the coronavirus crisis. Dodes also explains why too many people, especially in the news media, remain in a state of deep denial about Trump's behavior and the depths of his mental pathologies.

If Trump had not been born into money, Dodes told me, he would have wound up in prison by now. Instead he ispresident of the United States and vigorously protected by the Republican Party and its supporters.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Is Donald Trump the freest man alive? He has no internal restraints and increasingly no external restraints either.

I think he is the least free man. You and I have some degree of choice about how we're going to behave and react to the world around us; we are complex and we make complex decisions because we have a conscience and we care about the effects of our actions on others. Donald Trump, in contrast, is very simple. Everything he says or does is for himself, either to have power over others or to hurt them in revenge against their disagreeing or standing in his way. Because he has shown himself to be incapable of either conscience or empathy, he is basically a predator, lacking the most essential parts of our humanity.

Despite this, he has two techniques that have allowed him to be successful in business and politics: He is a bully, and he lies continuously. Repeating his lies over and over is like the "big lie" technique made famous by Hitler.It works because when a lie is endlessly repeated, even decent people assume there must be some truth in it.

Donald Trump has lied at least 16,000 times. Why are there journalists, reporters, politiciansand peopleamong the general publicwho keep giving him the benefit of the doubt despite the overwhelming evidence that he is a compulsive liar?

People want to trust others.I, too, would rather believe that the president of the United States was an honest, decent, thoughtful person. For some people, having an authority figure be trustworthy is so important that they will not accept the obvious facts about Trump. Like other predators, or other sociopaths, Trump takes advantage of this very human quality by pretending to be trustworthy through endless lying about his real motivations and even his real actions.

Donald Trump has said and done many unconscionable things during his time in the White House. But his recent suggestion that doctors and nurses are stealing ventilators from hospitals is, even by standards, one of his most despicable comments.Is that just his instinct to go to such an unbelievably dark place?

As my colleague Dr. John Gartner pointed out, if Trump were walking around wearing a tinfoil hat and talking about Martians controlling his mind, it would be easy for the public to recognize how severely ill he is. Trump is the most dangerous person we could have as a president precisely because his delusional core is not as obvious. When he makes these claims about ventilators and the coronavirus, they need to be understood as delusional beliefs that he summons from his imagination to protect himself, and which he is incapable of altering when presented with reality.

Donald Trump actually believes that he is a great president. I believe he is likely to win a second term. His entirepresidency stands as an indictment of the American people, the news media, the political classand the country's culture and values as a whole.

With respect to the political class, Donald Trump would have been removed from office already if the Republicans in Congress were not propping him up. If a Democrat were behaving like Trump, Republicans would certainly have impeached and convicted him already.Many decent Americans have been successfully conned by Trump, but there is no excuse for the Republicans in Congress.Trump's decisions about the coronavirus are killing Americans and he will continue doing it. The Congress should remove him from office immediately.

If Trump was not born into wealth, what do you think would have happened to him?

People with Donald Trump's very severe personality disorder are rare, which is good for civilization but helps explain why most people cannot understand his behavior. Sociopaths can be camouflaged by being successful in certain areas precisely because they get to the top by lying, cheating, bullying and manipulating, stepping on people who are in their way. Dictators, crime bosses and similar types of people are examples. But most sociopaths end up with criminal records. Donald Trump has committed multiple civil crimes that we know of.If he had not been born into money, it is likely that he would be in prison.

In terms of "metacognition,"is Donald Trump aware of what motivates and drives his behavior?

Donald Trump has made it clear that he processes reality in a different way than most human beings. When he says that if 100,000 people were to die from the coronavirus it would be a "victory" for him, he is revealing who he really is. He is showing that his perceived self-interest is the only thing that is ever on his mind.Insight into himself wouldn't make any sense to him.

Given your expertise in mental health, do you find Donald Trump to be an interesting person to study?

I find Donald Trump to be boring because he's so simple; it is always obvious what he's going to do. In any situation, its merits or complexity will have no bearing on his statements or actions; he will simply say or do whatever he thinks will benefit himself.Part of that calculus, of course, is to act as though he actually cares about others.But with fouryears of experience, everyone now ought to be able to see through that. When he was first elected, many reporters and commentators wrote that they hoped he would change and become "presidential." People with the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorderdo not change. This is just who Trump is.

What do you want the American people and the world to be prepared for, in terms of Donald Trump's behavior?

No matter what happens with the coronavirus, Donald Trump is going to claim victory. He will say that he did the best job possible and use the "big lie" strategy to double down on this falsehood. He will blame his critics for his failures with the virus. If there is a truly horrible outcome, Trump will blame the Democrats, the doctors, the governorsand anyone else he can imagine while, as he has already said, taking no responsibility himself.

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Dr. Lance Dodes on Trump: A "predator" who "would be in prison" if he hadn't been born rich - Salon

WASHINGTON A watchdog has found that the Treasury Department appropriately handled Congress' request for President Donald Trump's tax returns, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has refused to provide.

But the acting inspector general for Treasury, Rich Delmar, also said he had no opinion on whether the advice Mnuchin followed which came from Justice Department attorneys was itself well-founded. In refusing to hand over the returns, Mnuchin decided he was legally bound to comply with that advice, Delmar noted in a letter Wednesday to senior House lawmakers.

The Justice Department legal opinion backed Mnuchin's refusal, saying that Neal's request lacked a legitimate legislative purpose and was an unprecedented" use of congressional authority.

Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.

The argument is the same one Trump has used in refusing other demands from Democrats in Congress for financial records from banks and accountants that have had business with Trump and his family. Lawsuits over those records were filed in federal courts in Washington and New York.

Rep. Richard Neal, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, asked Delmar last fall to probe how Treasury received, assessed and responded to Neal's earlier request for six years of Trump's tax returns.

Delmar found that Treasury processed the request properly, sought legal guidance from the Justice Department, determined that it was bound by that guidance and, based on that advice, decided not to provide the tax information.

Hie letter went to Neal and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the senior Republican on the tax-writing Ways and Means panel.

In the long-running legal battle over Trump's records, Neal cited a 1924 law that says the Treasury secretary shall furnish" tax returns to any of the three congressional officers empowered to obtain them, one of whom is the Ways and Means Committee chairman.

Neal has said the records are needed because the committee is looking into the effectiveness of IRS mandatory audits of all sitting presidents.

The fight between Democrats and Trump dates back to the 2016 election campaign, when Trump claimed that he couldn't release them because he was under IRS audit. The records hold the promise of information that Trump has carefully guarded from public view, including details of his business entanglements, relations with foreign creditors and governments, and the value of his assets.

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Treasury acted appropriately on Trump tax returns: watchdog - NBCNews.com

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the coronavirus response daily briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 10, 2020. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday ordered top U.S. administration officials to help Italy in fighting the novel coronavirus by providing medical supplies, humanitarian relief and other assistance.

In a memo to several Cabinet ministers, Trump ordered a variety of measures to help Italy, including making U.S. military personnel in the country available for telemedicine services, helping set up field hospitals, and transporting supplies.

The Italian Republic (Italy), one of our closest and oldest Allies, is being ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already claimed more than 18,000 lives, brought much of the Italian healthcare system to the brink of collapse, and threatens to push Italys economy into a deep recession, Trump said in the memo.

Italy has recorded the biggest number of deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, followed by the United States.

Trump ordered his commerce secretary to encourage U.S. suppliers to sell products requested by Italian authorities and healthcare providers, except those required for the United States own response to the pandemic.

The memo said the secretary of state, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the president of the U.S. Export-Import Bank may use available authorities to support the recovery of the Italian economy.

(This story corrects name in paragraph 6 to Agency for International Development, not Aid)

Reporting by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Daniel Wallis

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Trump orders U.S. government to help Italy in coronavirus fight - Reuters

President Donald Trump | Getty Images

By MATT DIXON and MARC CAPUTO

04/09/2020 03:04 PM EDT

Updated 04/09/2020 06:43 PM EDT

TALLAHASSEE Days before President Donald Trump deceptively called vote-by-mail corrupt and damaging to Republicans, his campaign hired an operative tied to a 2012 absentee ballot scheme that sent a Florida Democratic operative to jail.

The plot involving Giancarlo Sopo who has never been charged with wrongdoing was highlighted in a report on election fraud that Trumps campaign blasted out Wednesday to support his wild vote-by-mail attacks. Sopo joined the Trump campaign April 1.

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The national news media routinely and condescendingly dismiss any concerns about voter fraud, including state vote-by-mail provisions, the campaign wrote in an email highlighting the Heritage Foundation report, a document that was used by the presidents voter fraud task force, which failed to turn up proof of widespread voter fraud.

The email, in addition to exposing an uncomfortable incident in a staffers past, highlights the exaggerated nature of the presidents attacks on voting by mail. The absentee ballot scheme involving Sopo wasnt technically voter fraud, it was caught by authorities, and it never would have resulted in illegally cast ballots even if it hadnt been stopped.

The case tied to Sopo, Trumps new director of rapid response for Spanish-language media, was listed in the Heritage report along with hundreds of others throughout the country over the span of three decades a tiny fraction of the total elections held during that period.

The 2012 ploy involved 1,800 phony absentee ballot requests that were made for voters without their knowledge, an activity that is illegal in Florida. The plan was to use the requests to target infrequent voters to cast ballots for Joe Garcia, a candidate in a four-way Democratic primary for Congress, the Miami Herald reported at the time.

The scheme was directed by Jeffrey Garcia, a former top aide to former Rep. Joe Garcia. The two are not related.

Sopo, a Garcia campaign volunteer who later became the congressmans spokesperson, said Jeffrey Garcia tricked him, a cousin, and other staffers into thinking the phony requests were legitimate.

After Joe Garcia won the election, investigators raided the Miami-Dade home of Sopos cousin. Sopo resigned as the congressmans communications director and testified against Jeffrey Garcia.

Breaking his silence in the case, Jeffrey Garcia on Thursday accused Sopo of being duplicitous about his involvement in the crime.

He literally begged to be part of this scheme, Jeffrey Garcia told POLITICO in an interview. He knew it was wrong. He did this with eyes wide open.

Sopo denied Jeffrey Garcias accusations and shared a 2013 email in which Jeffrey Garcia resigned as Joe Garcia's chief of staff.

This was brought on by my own doing and personal failures and I am solely responsible, Garcia wrote at the time.

Garcia, who was charged with two misdemeanors and a felony, said no one committed voter fraud. He was found guilty of the misdemeanors and sentenced to 90 days in jail.

This was a not-well-thought-out attempt to get more voters to participate in vote by mail, he said. Obviously it didnt work.

Trump campaign spokesperson Matt Wolking called Garcia a twice-convicted fraudster who is just trying to retaliate against Sopo.

Despite his admission that he alone orchestrated the fraud, some Democrats continue to hire him, Wolking told POLITICO. The irony is that Democrats routinely deny the existence of voter fraud, but here they are using Democrat Jeff Garcias illegal ballot scheme to try to smear President Trumps campaign.

Sopo told POLITICO he was a young volunteer at the time and had no direct role in the scheme.

I was asked to help with what was described as a data-entry project that had been approved by the campaign's legal counsel, Sopo said in an email. At the time, I was going to school and working full time, so I referred others for the project.

I cooperated fully with the inquiry, I never requested any ballots, never touched any ballots, and never was accused of wrongdoing, he said.

Jeffrey Garcia said he regrets taking responsibility for the crime.

Giancarlo remains ungrateful for my successful attempts to keep him out of jail," Garcia said. Sopo, he said, is lying about and has "finally found his home on the Trump campaign because Democrats would no longer hire him.

Sopos political bent has shifted over the years. He began writing for a conservative publication in 2018 and joined the Trump campaign as the president began demonizing voting by mail.

The presidents assault on absentee voting comes less than a month after he and the first lady mailed in their own ballots for the March 17 presidential primary in Florida, their newly adopted home state.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also voted by absentee ballot in Florida, and a host of Trump appointees and associates also cast mail-in ballots.

Election officials and operatives in both political parties say Trumps claims of widespread voter fraud are bogus.

According to the best empirical data Ive seen, there were fewer than 500 prosecutions for crimes related to absentee ballots over a 12-year period, out of billions of ballots cast, said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and author of the book Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy.

That, and the success of five states, including Colorado and Washington, in running all-mail elections has convinced most people that the convenience of voting by mail is worth the small risk, Hasen said in an email.

Now, of course, the calculation has changed because the benefits of voting by mail are much greater: Without it, millions of voters face potential disenfranchisement, he said.

Democrats accuse Republicans of using voter fraud as an excuse to pass measures designed to suppress the vote. And in Florida they were quick to point out the irony of Trump hiring someone connected to an election fraud incident highlighted by his campaign.

The Miami case underscores a fundamental weaknesses of claiming widespread fraud related to mail-in ballots.

In that case, the fraud was limited to requesting absentee ballots for registered voters without their knowledge. The requests were flagged as suspicious by the Miami-Dade elections office and reported to state investigators. The ballots were never used to cast votes.

Trump has taken a particular interest in elections-related crimes tied to the Miami-to-Key-West congressional district where Sopo was ensnared in the Garcia scheme.

In addition to the absentee ballot plot, Jeffrey Garcia was involved in secretly and illegally funding a phony tea party candidate who ran to siphon votes from the Republican in the race, state Rep. David Rivera. Rivera went on to defeat Joe Garcia in 2010.

In an apparent act of revenge, Riveras associates then secretly and illegally funded a Democratic candidate, Justin Sternad, to siphon votes from Garcia in a 2012 rematch. Sternad and Riveras girlfriend and adviser were jailed. Federal prosecutors named Rivera as a suspect but the Republican was never charged. Rivera lost the election to Garcia.

The scandal had particular salience for Trump, because Rivera was a close friend of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a Trump opponent in the Republican presidential primary. The Trump campaign ran TV ads that highlighted what it called Riveras corruption.

Before the 2016 Florida Republican primary, Trump, again without evidence, raised the specter of dishonest voting and said he would ask law enforcement to investigate. Law enforcement officials told POLITICO at the time that the candidate never made the request and they saw no evidence of fraud.

Trump dropped his rhetoric after he defeated Rubio.

Since then, Trump has painted vote-by-mail as an anti-Republican hotbed of chicanery even as both major political parties spend huge sums to boost their vote-by-mail capabilities.

In Florida, the nations largest swing state and a key for Trumps re-election, 2.6 million people voted by mail in 2018, more than one-third of all votes cast. That year, like most, Republicans returned more mailed ballots than Democrats.

Florida, like other states, has gone to great lengths to prevent ballots from being cast illegally.

To manipulate a mailed-in ballot, a fraudster would have to find the voters signature which is not public record in Florida then fraudulently copy it to the absentee ballot envelope sent back to the election supervisors office.

The forged signature would have to be good enough to fool the staff who compare the one on file with the one on the envelope. Staff members train with a signature-verification expert, said Miami-Dade election supervisor Christina White. And absentee ballots in Florida are sent only to voters who request them.

Its a safe and secure voting method, White said. We have multiple levels of security measures. And they work.

Read more from the original source:

Trump's wild claims of voter fraud blow back on campaign aide - POLITICO

President Trump called on congressional Democrats Friday to drop their demands for extra spending in an administration proposal to replenish a fund to help small businesses keep their employees on the payroll during the coronavirus crisis.

Democrats are blocking a 251 Billion Dollar funding boost for Small Businesses which will help them keep their employees. It should be for only that reason, with no additions, Mr. Trump tweeted.

Senate Democrats on Thursday objected to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells bid to add the money to the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers small businesses up to $10 million in grants and loans if they keep employees paid for two months during the coronavirus shutdown. Republicans say the demand is so high that the current $350 billion fund will run dry in a few days.

Democrats said there should be hundreds of billions added for food stamps, low-income communities, states and hospitals.

The president said there will be more economic relief provided when Congress and the administration tackle a phase four bill in the coming weeks to boost a recovery.

We should have a big Infrastructure Phase Four with Payroll Tax Cuts & more. Big Economic Bounceback! Mr. Trump said on Twitter.

The president also urged lawmakers to go back to DEDUCTIBILITY by businesses if Restaurants, Clubs & Entertaiment is expected to flourish (like never before)!

The 2017 tax cuts revoked a provision allowing corporations to deduct entertainment expenses annually, and limited deductions for meals.

IRS guidance in 2018 allowed corporations to deduct 50 percent of the cost of meals not considered lavish or extravagant.

Prior to the law, businesses also could deduct up to 50% of expenses such as sports tickets, golf outings and casinos.

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Donald Trump urges Democrats to drop demands for extra spending with 'paycheck protection' fund - Washington Times

The Steele Dossier key evidence the FBI used to justify spying on a Trump campaign figure in 2016 was based in part on Russian disinformation, two top senators revealed Friday, citing newly declassified footnotes from an inspector generals report.

Sens. Charles E. Grassley and Ron Johnson, both committee chairs and top investigators, said given the Steele Dossier was funded by the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, that means they were actively responsible for spreading Russian disinformation, which plunged the country into political turmoil for much of the last three years.

While the work of former British spy Christopher Steele had long been suspected of being tainted by Russian disinformation, the new revelation is the first official confirmation, and it comes from the Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitzs authoritative report on the FBIs bunglings.

The information was contained in several footnotes in the report, which had been redacted from the public release, but which were made public Friday.

These footnotes confirm that there was a direct Russian disinformation campaign in 2016, and there were ties between Russian intelligence and a presidential campaign the Clinton campaign, not Trumps, Mr. Grassley and Mr. Johnson said.

Footnote 350 says Mr. Steeles reporting about the activities of former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen were part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.

The footnote also says information on Mr. Trumps 2013 trip to Moscow were falsified by Russian intelligence, then injected into the American political conversation.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.

The FBI relied on the Steele Dossier as key evidence in its application for a secret warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Carter Page, a Trump campaign advisor.

Mr. Steele was working for Fusion GPS, which was being paid by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to gather dirt on Mr. Trump.

The FBI learned that one of Mr. Steeles sources for the dossier was linked with Russian intelligence, but the FBI failed to inform the secret court that oversees FISA when it asked permission to spy on Mr. Page.

Mr. Trump, enraged by the FBI investigation, would fire then-Director James Comey in the spring of 2017, spurring the Justice Department to name a special counsel to investigate. The special counsel found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but did ding Mr. Trump for trying to interfere with the investigation.

Mr. Johnson and Mr. Grassley said the FBI knew it had contradictory and exculpatory evidence, but engaged in blind pursuit of the president.

Had FBI leadership heeded the numerous warnings of Russian disinformation, paid attention to the glaring contradictions in the pool of evidence and followed long-standing procedures to ensure accuracy, everyone would have been better off. Carter Pages civil liberties wouldnt have been shredded, taxpayer dollars wouldnt have been wasted, the country wouldnt be as divided and the FBIs reputation wouldnt be in shambles, the senators said.

Attorney General William P. Barr last year tapped U.S. Attorney John Durham to review the origins of the Russia probe and whether any crimes were committed

Mr. Barr said Thursday the investigation has uncovered troubling evidence of possible abuses, hinting that criminal prosecutions could be coming.

My own view is that the evidence shows that were not dealing with just the mistakes or sloppiness, he said in an interview with Fox News. There was something far more troubling here. Were going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.

An FBI lawyer involved in the Page warrant applications is said to be under criminal investigation for altering an email related to the warrant renewal application.

Kevin Clinesmith had changed a document submitted to the FISA Court to make it appear as if Mr. Page was not working with the CIA, when in fact he was.

Last month, Mr. Horowitz released a broader review of the FBIs FISA applications, uncovering even more flaws. Mr. Horowitz discovered an average of 20 errors in the 29 applications he scrutinized.

Missteps included the lack of documentation for accusations lodged in the warrant request, he said

The Justice Department also disclosed that an internal review turned up two FISA applications with material errors or omissions, according to court filing unsealed Friday.

However, the department maintains the errors did not change the probable cause needed to request a warrant.

The FBIs missteps have drawn repeated rebukes from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Typically tight-lipped, the court has ripped the FBI twice for failing to follow proper FISA procedures.

Judge James E. Boasberg said last week Mr. Horowitzs two reports undermine their confidence in the FBIs accuracy.

The OIG Memorandum provides further reason for systemic concern, Judge Boasberg wrote. It thereby reinforces the need for the court to monitor the ongoing efforts of the FBI and DOJ to ensure that, going forward, FBI applications present accurate and complete facts.

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FBI used Russian disinformation to launch investigation into Donald Trump: Audit - Washington Times

In the Christian tradition, Easter Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, whom Christians believe died in order to atone for their sins. It's a day of gratitude and celebration. It's a happy occasion.

But while Easter Sunday is jovial, Good Fridaydespite what its name might implyis not.

Good Friday mourns Christ's crucifixion and the sins that made it necessary. It's a somber occasion, especially in the Catholic tradition.

Christians around the world commemorate the brutal execution by fasting, refraining from speaking, praying the rosary, and attending stations of the cross.

So a tweet from President Donald Trump wishing a "happy" Good Fridaycomplete with all caps and an explanation pointstruck a sour note.

When he's not bragging about sexual assault, blatantly lying, or bullying people on Twitter, the President often touts his Christianity while speaking to evangelical Christians, who also happen to make up a large amount of his voting base.

Like many of his actions, the tweet struck numerous people as insensitive and contradictory to the values he claims to champion.

People pointed out that Good Friday does not, in fact, mean the same thing as TGIF.

Trump has previously said that, though he's Christian, he bristles at the idea of asking for forgiveness. He also referred to the Bible chapter, II Corinthians (second Corinthians), as "Two Corinthians," which is understandable because he can't name a Bible verse either, despite claiming it's his favorite book.

This was just the latest instance of Trump tipping his hand.

Jesus wept.

For a deeper look into the relationship between the evangelical community and leaders like Trump, check out The Immoral Majority, available here.

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People Made Trump Instantly Regret His All Caps Tweet Commemorating Good Friday With a Religion Lesson for the Ages - Second Nexus

Yet Trump has churned through officials overseeing the very intelligence that might have helped understand the looming crisis. At Liberty Crossing, the headquarters of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the government will have been without a Senate-confirmed director for eight months as of next week; last summer, Trump accepted the resignation of Dan Coats and forced out the career principal deputy of national intelligence, Sue Gordon. Coats temporary stand-in, career intelligence official Joseph Maguire, then served so long that he was coming close to timing out of his rolefederal law usually lets officials serve only 210 days before relinquishing the acting postwhen Trump ousted him too, as well as the acting career principal deputy. In their place, at the end of Februaryweeks after the U.S. already recorded its first Covid-19 caseTrump installed U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as his latest acting director, the role that by law is meant to be the presidents top intelligence adviser. Grenell has the least intelligence experience of any official ever to occupy directors suite.

This Friday, the role of Homeland Security secretary will have been vacant for an entire year, ever since Kirstjen Nielsen was forced out over Trumps belief she wasnt tough enough on border security. DHS has numerous critical roles in any domestic crisis, but its acting secretary, Chad Wolf, has fumbled through the epidemic; in February, Wolf couldnt answer seemingly straightforward questions on Capitol Hill from Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana about the nations preparednesswhat models were predicting about the outbreak, how many respirators the government had stockpiled, even how Covid-19 was transmitted. Youre supposed to keep us safe. And you need to know the answers to these questions, Kennedy finally snapped at Wolf. Wolf has been notably absent ever since from the White House podium during briefings about the nations epidemic response.

Actings often struggle to be successful precisely because theyre temporarytheir word carries less weight with their own workforce, with other government agencies or on Capitol Hilland they rarely have the opportunity to set and drive their own agenda, push for broad organizational change or even learn the ropes of how to be successful in the job given the usually brief period of their tenure. Anyone who has ever changed jobs or companies knows how long it can take to feel like you understand a new organization, a new culture or shape a new role.

And yet up and down the org chart at DHS, there are people still learning the ropes. DHS is riddled with critical vacancies; according to the Washington Posts appointment tracker, just 35 percent of its top roles are filled. Its chief of staff, executive secretary and general counsel are all acting officials, and theres no Senate-confirmed deputy secretary, no undersecretary for management, no chief financial officer, no chief information officer, no undersecretary for science and technology, nor a deputy undersecretary for science and technology.

Even as we face a global crisis with complex travel restrictions and health guidelines, there are no Senate-confirmed leaders of any of DHS three border and immigration agenciesCustoms and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Nor is there a deputy administrator at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), as the airline industry faces an existential cutback to global travel.

Matthew Albence, acting head of ICE, which faces a growing Covid-19 problem in its national network of detention facilities, has been acting for so long that hes surpassed the 220 day-statutory limit for the role and instead is now technically the senior official performing the duties of the director, a legal term of art thats become all too common around the federal government as vacancies linger in the Trump era. Ken Cuccinelli, the similarly titled senior official performing the duties of the USCIS director, who is simultaneously also DHS temporary No. 2, the senior official performing the duties of the deputy secretary, is currently appealing a court ruling that hes not even legally serving at DHS.

When Trump turned to DHS Federal Emergency Management Agency last month to oversee the federal governments coronavirus response, the agency lacked Senate-confirmed officials in either of its deputy rolesincluding its deputy overseeing preparedness and continuity of government planning, a function that may become all-too-important in the days ahead if the virus sickens government leaders, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has already been hospitalized.

And the assistant secretary for countering Weapons of Mass Destructionthe person who oversees DHS chief medical officer, the doctor designated to advise the DHS secretary and the head of FEMA? That job is vacant, too. Meanwhile, in addition to its role serving the nation, DHS itself faces a growing number of Covid-19 infections in its own workforceup to 600 cases as of Mondays numbers, including 270 TSA employees and 160 CBP employees.

The effect of these vacancies ripple further than most people realize. Since vacant roles awaiting either an official appointment or a Senate-confirmed nominee are always filled by acting officials pulled from other parts of the organization or broader government, even more offices are understaffed as people do double-duty and as their own positions are filled with other actings behind them. Grenell, even as he fills in as director of National Intelligence, continues technically to be the U.S. ambassador to Germany, meaning that amid the huge economic uncertainty around Covid-19 epidemic the U.S. is without a high-level envoy to the largest economy in Europe. For the 14 months he was acting White House chief of staff, up until March 31another horse Trump changed midstream in the epidemicMick Mulvaney was still technically serving as the director of Office of Management and Budget, a normally critical role itself overseeing the nations spending. In Mulvaneys absence, Russell Vought, OMBs deputy, filled in as the acting directorleaving his own job, normally its own full-time role, to be filled in by others, and so on.

In government agencies, deputies are not like the vice presidenta spare role kept around, if needed. Often, the deputy role is the most important figure in the day-to-day operations of the department or agencythe person who runs the bureaucracy and organization while the principal (the secretary or director) attends to the policy and the politics. Robbing an agency or department of a principal and forcing the deputy to fill in means the organization will be running at reduced effectiveness, with less guidance, direction and oversight.

The vacancies at DHS and ODNI are hardly the whole story of how Trump has hampered the very jobs meant to protect the nation in crisis. While much attention has been focused on Trumps decision to shutter the National Security Councils pandemic unit, less attention has focused on an even more critical change in the NSCs structure. Another key post-9/11 reform was the creation of a White House homeland security adviser, a domestic equal to the national security adviser, a post created just days after 9/11 by President George W. Bush and filled at first by Tom Ridge, who would go on to be the first Homeland Security secretary. Presidents Bush and Obama for years had at their beck and call senior, sober homeland security advisers like Fran Townsend, Ken Wainstein, John Brennan and Lisa Monaco; Monaco helped oversee the nations response to Ebola and led the incoming Trump administration through a pandemic response exercise in the days before the inauguration to highlight how critical such an incident could be.

Over the course of his administration, Trump effectively has done away with the role of homeland security adviser; when John Bolton took over as national security adviser, one of his first acts was to fire Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert and downgrade the role in rank. Ever since, the Trump NSC has sidelined the officials who filled the role. In February, as Covid-19 loomed domestically, Trump actually even shuffled the Coast Guard official then filling the post out to a new job, overseeing Puerto Ricos disaster recovery.

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Trump Broke the Agencies That Were Supposed To Stop the Covid-19 Epidemic - POLITICO

So Im the latest columnist to be joining the rotation of colonists over it opinion and its obviously a really peculiar time to join. OK And I used to be a daily book critic. I appear. Now, every Monday. Ive written. I wrote a column today because its my day. Even though we lose track in quarantine and I wrote one last Monday to when I was here. And Im going to be here to discuss them both. Thank you, everybody, for putting up for what was a really unbearable clumsily low tech snafu on my part. This is my second time using Periscope, and Im at age appropriately dreadful at it anyway. So again, my name is Jennifer Senior let me. Lets get right into it because I wrote two columns today that Im eager to write two columns. This past week that Im eager to discuss the first. So the one that came out, it, I ended up getting a lot of responses to it. And I have a lot to say in response to those responses. But lets start with this. I am absolutely 100% preoccupied with the idea that Donald J Trump fits perfectly like heat maps perfectly onto the personality traits of someone with narcissistic personality disorder. And it would be one thing if it were a margin call or if from the menu of 10 things that one could choose to look at. You know he fed only three of the four. Im sorry hes not. Im sorry seven of the 10 or 5 of the 10. He hits all of them and psychologists have been talking about this for a while. It was a controversial opinion initially to even come out and say, this because psychiatrist I have a rule that you shouldnt actually diagnose someone that you havent personally evaluated. The trouble with that is that people who have narcissistic personality when youre face to face with them. Its not that they present all that differently. They dont have any capacity herself. You know reflection or introspection. So my theory is that in a, if you saw Trump in a one on one clinical setting youre just going to get more Trump. Hes basically just a Patricia doll of nesting hollow Trump sees the same person. And I think over the years, this taboo has kind of gone away. I think more and more psychiatrists are perfectly willing to say that he every personality trait he has is sort of consistent with narcissistic Melissa also been writing it for a while most notably George Conway Kellyanne Conways husband. He is a never Trumper her and a lawyer and he writes for The Atlantic and he was sort of the definitive decisive piece last October talking about the fact, it looks this is what this man has. Lets call it what it is. And you. Lets if it walks like a duck lets do the definitive whats it walks like a duck piece. And he did. So what I wrote about today was all right. Well, weve sent somebody with a narcissistic personality to the White House and now hes running a crisis. So what does that look like. Anas is this camp capable really of actually managing a crisis. And here are the obstacles, I think I mean, there. And by the way, just as an aside, this is something that didnt make it into my column. But I wish Id had space for it celebrities already are as you might imagine inclined toward narcissism. They tend to be more narcissistic just as a rule. It makes sense. They think that attention functions as a narcotic so many of them. It is also people who crave attention obviously enjoy being famous. But there was a study done in 2006 that showed that the kinds of celebrities who were the most narcissistic were not surprisingly reality TV celebrities make sense. So OK, here we have like a perfect storm. Weve got Donald Trump. He was a reality television star. And he has been sent to the White House and narcissists are not very well equipped to handle crises. This is, in fact, the problem right. So here is, I think, a few of the reasons why. First of all, they are highly delusional about their own capabilities and what that means is that they are very threatened by expertise. Theyre not theyre highly disinclined to trust anyone who may indeed know more about the problem at hand. The crisis that theyre facing. So what it means is that if you think about it, right now, Donald Trump could assemble the finest minds in America, the most imaginative minds in America were facing an enormous economic crisis. Its looming its already upon us. 6.6 million unemployment claims just filed right. This is going to be formidable formidable and scary. He could enlist anyone he had to call Larry Summers or Bob Rubin who ran the Treasury Department during two previous recessions. Right they have a lot of experience. Does he do this. No disaster preparedness. You could speak to virtually anyone whos handled any kind of natural disaster before in the past. And who does he farm out most of the disaster preparedness responsibilities too. Jared Kushner I mean Jared Kushner doesnt hold any portfolio for anything. So I think my point is that he hands it. He is doling out responsibility to people who dont threaten him. What tends to happen to narcissists is they surround themselves with a gallery of sycophants thats they surround themselves with people who wouldnt dare contradict them. And this is dangerous when what you need right now are the smartest people in the room not the people who are afraid and who are there to mollify a president. So what you have is this very awkward situation where you have a few experts who are kind of youve got Dr. g youve that Dr. Burke. Yes, I know. I need to brush my hair just to all the trolls out there. I just want to say, you know what a lot of us are going to emerge without or without perfect hair without perfect highlights anyway. And he is a narcissist and a sadist combined. Yes unfortunately, I think that there is a great deal. And there is an element of sadism in what he does anyhow. And I wouldnt focus on peoples looks. Its a bad look, whoever you are, you know, this is not a time to care. Ignore trolls. Yes Always true. One should anyhow. I might give myself, my own haircut. And dye my hair pink because why not. Whos going to see my kid can do it. That would be lovely. Right you get probably gratified about to cut my hair anyway. So I think the point is what you really want is lock them and their sex. Love the love. Im getting back you. Theyre all women of course, were saying. Who cares about your hair. So I think lets go back to whats important, which is that right now, Trump needs to be listening to experts. They are the most important people to be listening to. Hes got two on hand. We know incontrovertibly that Anthony she knows a lot. Thank you for loving my hair. It looks nice usually. Anyway thank you. Anthony she is exactly who you want in this crisis and its interesting about him. This is fascinating. He knows that youre doing great. Please keep going. Thank you so Anthony 4G as he is. Its an interesting exercise in minefield walking right when you were managing a narcissist. The paradox here that all of us are all reckoning with all of us are reckoning with is that Trumps advisors are trying to and all the governors right who are managing this crisis they are all trying to create a safe space for the president when he needs to create a safe nation for all of us. Right So youve got somebody like Anthony valjean who knows very well, what the data looks like and he actually understand something about infectious diseases and contagion right. Hes an infectious disease expert and he understands the way that you know kind of the vectors and paths that all of these things take. So have any power to be president. I mean, at this moment why. Why ever not. You know I mean, certainly he should be answering the questions at the press conferences. I think that is definitely true. And I always choke a little when he starts to speak. And then President Trump cuts him off because the productive thinking and the only useful information we can really get from the epidemiologists and the doctors. So whats interesting about Fortunes approach to Trump in my view, is that the way that he actually still manages to disseminate informal information, which is critical. We all need to hear it is not by humiliating Trump because thats the best strategy you never want to humiliate a narcissist because narcissists secretly dont actually have skyscraper only high self-esteem the way we think of it narcissists secretly are. They live in fear of being exposed. They are very anxious about people realizing what they dont know. Their egos are kind of frail as foam. Theyre very easy to burst. So what do they do. They Yeah, no, I vote Democrat. Its true. I absolutely. What are the chances the chances are good. It is absolutely true. However, I would never say any of this. I would point out about George w bush who was conscientious after September 11 in the immediate aftermath I didnt think he should we should I I dont understand the Iraq war is another story. But I do believe that his public handling of September 11 was actually quite conscientious and responsible. Giuliani was extremely responsible in the aftermath of September 11. There are all sorts of Republican governors right now who are stepping up in beautiful and marvelous ways and Republican local officials. This is not a partisan point of view. This is all about how you manage giving truthful information. So to go back to the Fantasy what I think is fascinating about him is rather than correct Donald Trump, which he wouldnt respond well to what fat he does is he says the fact. Thats it. Thats it. And in sticking with this just the facts, maam kind of approach every time Trump says something, and its exaggerated. He exaggerates the potential for new therapies. He says that there are more tests available than in fact, are. What that does is he jumps in and he starts to speak. And he just he doesnt say, no, youre wrong. He just says, well, heres what we know so far about these therapies. Theyre still untested. Were looking were waiting. We hope he comes out and says, well, the tests theyre enroute we cant do them in bulk in the way that wed like. But theyre another positive development. Whenever Trump says that he thinks that the fact that the coronavirus will kind of evaporate that therell be some kind of seasonal cure that he jumps in and says, I wish that were the case too. But I dont think so. So I think that he is providing a national model for how you handle misinformation and wishful thinking coming from the Oval Office right. Because thats what were getting right now is a lot of wishful thinking and misinformation can narcissist feel empathy. The short answer is no. The whole world is a reflecting pool. Thats the problem with narcissists. Right And it makes it hard because of what your job is to be is in part to disseminate information that is in part to kind of shore up that to mollify the nerves of an anxious public. Theoretically Cuomo is very good at this right, Andrew Cuomo does a very good job of kind of coming out and saying, look, I suffer too. My brother is suffering. Hes covered positive lots leaders net you know all over the globe. Were very good at doing this. The queen did a marvelous job of this yesterday. Angela Merkel did a marvelous job of it yesterday. Why is it wrong to hope that these drugs are working when other countries other countries are not necessarily having great success. Theres a lot. We have to wait for a real body of data to know whether these drugs are working. Actually, thats not true yet the efficacy of these drugs is not yet proven. Its anecdotal and thats whats upsetting. So what you dont want is people touting these drugs and giving everyone false hope. You dont want people hoarding them. And lets see what personality types are these leaders. So thank you. It is my second time in Periscope. Im being told welcome by people young. Its probably obvious that Im a newbie anyway. So I think that what we have to just be careful about when youve got somebody because heres the other thing narcissists are quite prone to exaggeration. Right So theyre going to be speaking with great invalidity and great enthusiasm about the things that theyve done and the things that await without actually restraining themselves and hewing strictly to the facts. And that, of course, is everything. It matters a huge a great deal. So these are some things that I think that we ought to be highly mindful of anyway. OK So if youre just joining us, Im Jennifer Senior. I am one of the newest I am I think the newest kind of columnist at The New York Times to be thrown into the rotation at an awfully peculiar time I appear on Mondays also now just sort of look at some of the lost my comments. Im going to look at some people had some wonderful kind of responses and some heartbreaking responses to the last column that I did not. This Monday. But the previous one that talked about something thats very near and dear to my heart called moral injury. I just want to speak to something somebody is saying this. And I know that theyre being kind of troll ish but I think this is actually a matter of public importance saying that the media is trying to sow panic. Were not. I think you should listen to the doctors on this. I think the doctors are the ones who have the real answers and we are listening to the doctors. And we took what Deborah parks are following the data the projections is right now is that if we behave ourselves as a nation 100,000 people in the United States will die, which rivals you know cancer rates and cancer fatality rates. And its not good. It will make coronavirus one of the leading killers in the United States. Thats if we behave ourselves and lots of states were not behaving themselves. They were behaving poorly. And whats happening in New York is a harbinger. Its not an exception. This is going to for better or for worse sweep across the country. And its going to happen at different rates at different times. Hopefully we will be prepared or medical professionals will be prepared. Well have more masks. Well have more ventilators because this is happening in kind of you know in this syncopated way. Its not happening. Its happening kind of in waves and a sine curve across the country. But I dont think to accuse us of spreading this information. I think is itself. Its grotesquely irresponsible. And I wish that people would stop. I wish they would desist to call this a hoax. I mean, I think that in the aftermath when historians are watching Fox newsreels of people saying that this is now worse than the flu, its a nothing doctor, you know, Trump saying that this is just going to go away. Theres going to be a real archival theres going to be a real of people saying things that are just so kind of flat flawed Lee incorrect. So I dont think that any of us are sowing panic and we are trying to report how many are recovered instead of only deaths. The problem is that the deaths are actually still imminent and the recovery rates right now are deeply unimpressive. You know the coronavirus actually lingers for a while. And also, if we have better data out there. If we had had more aggressive testing and more tests in place wed have a much better sense of whos had the virus and for how long, and how many have recovered. But we were very, very far behind on this question. So unfortunately, its hard to know were rates. Its hard to even know penetration rates. We cant actually know how how widespread coronavirus is at the moment. So we are actually doing the best. I think reporting on the data thats available to us and believe it or not, the doctors are in the same position they are as hungry for data, especially about the United States as we are. If you want to hear more damage about the. We want to hear more about the damage that a narcissistic leader can cause. Well, I think that the tools are many. Misinformation is a big one. I think turning the conversation toward himself is another one when really the car everybody wants to hear that the world is going to return to normal and be OK. What he does is talk about how hes number one on Facebook and isnt that fantastic. And he gives himself a 10 out of 10 for handling this crisis. And isnt that wonderful. And those are, I think the last thing that people want to hear during a crisis. I think people are sort of alarmed when they hear leaders talk about themselves and not about the citizenry in general life. Thats their job. So anyway now I just want to go back and talk about the column that I did last week, which Im very invested in. And thats about the mental health of our health care professionals. Theyre already in a lot of physical danger. Thank you. Who is ever giving me the shout out of love. Oh my goodness. Thank you. And how can reporters address his mental health in the context of a Presser. Thats a great question. All right. Ill go back and answer that. The answer is we shouldnt carry them live narcissists arent inclined to give the truth. Theyre inclined to exaggerate theyre inclined to give falsehoods they are inclined to speak in temporarily and to pick fights they sow division. He picks fights with the press corps and he picks fights with governors. So one of the things that we can do strategically is just robbed him of his oxygen supply, which is attention. Theres definitely one way to do this. And then you send people into the room to cover it. But they come away and they just summarize what the main news points are which will be given by foul be given by Burkes be given possibly by the Veterans Affairs director or the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs. I mean, there are people who can actually give you materially useful goods. You just dont need to carry it live because what youre essentially getting is an infomercial thats filled with spotty information anyway. And I dont know where the times broadcast them lives. Its a great question. I dont know. Thats the newsrooms. Its a call from the newsroom. And Im befuddled diet myself, I understand why c-span doesnt because theyve got kind of a historical and archival obligation. I dont know why the networks doesnt do it. I dont know why the networks do it. And Im not sure why we do. Going back to. So again, Jennifer Senior net latest columnist I just got to tell you the story that I did that. Im invested in, which is the health care the mental health of our health care professionals. Lets start with the fact that they are inhaling a greater viral load. So doctors are going to get sicker at a faster rate than the rest of us because it turns out there is a direct relationship to how much of this disease, you are exposed to and how sick you get. And a lot of these doctors and EMTs a nurses a lot of first responders are on are overwhelmed by virus in spite of even if theyve got the best PPE in the world. If youre intimidating someone they are just obviously coughing up a huge amount of virus. So I fear no one for their physical safety. I fear it. So much. And theyre short on supply. So they are often wearing the same goggles. The same face shields the same N95 masks all day long. They are already marching into a battle without sufficient ammunition. So the equivalent of dropping our show soldiers on Utah Beach without bullets. I mean, its really frightening stuff. Whats going on right now. And so here is you know what I fear next. Its not just their physical health. I mean, in Italy. Weve already got some data about how like this. You know doctors are something like 14% of the infected. What Im nervous about next is our mental health because if indeed, we do face this ventilator shortage, which everyone is anticipating the New England Journal of Medicine just had a piece talking about this, that its inevitable basically by their estimate. Best case scenario, we have 1.4 ventilators per person who needs them. Worst case scenario, we have 31 people per one ventilator. So sorry. Sorry we have 1.4 people per ventilator. Worst case scenario. 31 people per ventilator. Those are numbers that I just theyre goose pimples only awful. They are terrible numbers. And they were I think trying to work out in this particular piece, which I found so transfixing they were trying to figure out a protocol. OK So who gets them. Right if youve got to be in the position of rationing ventilators and then what do you do. Wait Im sorry. Somebody just had a very interesting was a retired firefighter, you spoke to. Tell me about that. Oh, and that the firefighters arent going to get any PPE. Thats such an amazing point because theyre being called to all of these. See youre right. And I think that a lot of people. I mean bus drivers are getting them. I mean, they should have more protection. Theyre performing a valuable service. And theyre utterly exposed. Its terrifying. Anyway, so there was this very moving kind of testimony from a bus driver that Im sure you saw that went viral in Detroit who you know got sick anyway. And then subsequently passed away. So its true. There are shortages everywhere. Its very complicated. We dont have. And because Donald Trump has been very reluctant to make full, robust use of the Defense Production Act. Were not getting it out to the people who really want it. Im sorry to the people who really require it. Were not making it at the speed that we need it. You know I mean, Trump could be much more bullish about insisting that private companies manufacture this stuff. And hes not hes not being insistent about them making ventilators. I mean, its. And you know not enough are making masks. Its very, very complicated. And its not being distributed through kind of rational distribution trains. Anyway Im going to go back to what I wrote about last week. All of our first responders are already putting themselves in harms way. They are already feeling theyre already getting sicker. But my next fear for them is that theyre going to have to make really tough rationing decisions. And these are decisions that state with you forever in the military. There is a term was coined actually by a psychiatrist who was looking at Vietnam soldiers and he called this moral injury. It is when you do something that you never ever would consider right. It violates your every impulse your every instinct your religious training your religious beliefs your everything. And I think that doctors and nurses when they are asked to form triage committees when they are asked to be disconnecting ventilators even from patients with whom they have made even the weakest most tenuous connections. But theyve met their families theyve interacted with their families. This is going to be heartbreaking stuff. And in ordinary circumstances. These are people who they could have saved because in normal times, you can keep people on ventilators in perpetuity. There are enough of them to go around. But thats not whats going on at this moment. And I think that the kind of trauma that comes from having to make this decision about who gets a ventilator and who doesnt get a ventilator is going to live with all of us all of our mental health. Im sorry. All of our health professionals for a long time to come. Its the kind of choice that they shouldnt ever have to make. Its a devils kit of options. Theres no good options here. And so I think that Im just very deeply moved by that. And I was going to read some of the comments that I got in response to that from people who just said some beautiful things about oh in fact, here. Let me just find. There is one who is married. Here we are. This was a beautiful comment I got in response to this years ago, I opened the door to a stockroom in the hospital. I worked in and I found a weeping nurse. Her patients bone marrow transplant had failed and the woman was going to die. Never underestimate how much these people care they may hide their tears in closets because they dont want patients to see their fear and their distress, but most choose this work because lives matter. Peoples lives matter to them. And they know death. But every preventable death is a knife to the heart. I mean, I can barely read that without wanting to cry. I mean, I think this is the point. Under ordinary circumstances. These are preventable deaths. Right and right now these men and women are facing a plague of what would have been preventable deaths and what awaits them. I fear our decisions about who gets to live. I mean, who on earth should have to make that choice. And there are all sorts of extremely delicate ethical questions that go that go into this ethical calculations. So heres another beautiful sign a beautiful note that I got. I think my son needs to go. This is clarinets life with a zoom group. Im going to read one more thing. And then Im going to sign off because my son needs to use the computer. Here is just this is it. This gave me the chills but this was a response to something that I got in response to my Jennifer Senior from the New York Times. Im the latest columnist to join. Thank you. And for those who are accusing me of it. Its very interesting the dedicated army out there and people who want to see them spreading fake tears. I hope thats right. I hope Im wrong about everything. Let me just say that I hope everything I say today is 100% wrong. I hope the dad is wrong. I hope the doctors are wrong. I hope the epidemiologists are wrong. I hope every bit of health data Ive been looking at is dead is wrong. Thats all I can say. From your mouth to Gods ears may I be wrong. May I be spreading falsehoods in saying that I think too many are going to die needlessly anyway. So here is the note that I got. I live alone. And I have a big sign posted on my door. Do not call an ambulance. No ventilator no code blue to not resuscitate. Just let me die. I have an advance directive. I am sorry. I have an advanced care directive a will and a notebook with instructions. My doctor is now six. So I dont know who I will end up being my doctor anyway, if I am found and still alive. I want to make sure that I do not get into a situation of being trapped in a hospital alone and unable to make my wishes known. Let someone else who needs and wants a ventilator to have it. Ive lived a long enough life. And Im willing to let go. Of course, Id rather not die right now. But if I get sick. I dont want the medical care when other people want it and need it more, especially when the doctors and nurses would be putting their own lives at risk. I love this person. He just goes by initials s.f. to a happy day on our website. I want to leave it at that. Anyway thanks so much. Be safe stay home be responsible. My thanks to all of you whove been sending me these really beautiful notes of support that are what Ill ever do about my hair. Here and Im going to let my kid use the computer now tell everyone. Its nice to meet.

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Donald Trump the Narcissist Is Running the Coronavirus Crisis - The New York Times

The president has always been the central actor in American politics. But over the last several decades, the spotlight on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has shined ever brighter. And for good reason. For decades, the presidency has become ever more powerful as an overwhelmed and gridlocked Congress has left more and more to the executive branch. Some of Congress' self-imposed decline has come through specific delegations of authority, some by rolling over and letting the president dictate the legislative agenda, and some through sheer inaction and neglect.

Taken together, the decadeslong metastasizing of presidential power has corresponded to two other major, detrimental trends in American politics: partisan polarization and nationalized politics. Essentially, President Donald Trump and those who preceded him have too much power, and that's ruining our electoral process which is the heart of democracy.

Our current setup means that no matter what happens in November, too many people will feel like they are completely left out.

The core problem with the central focus in the presidency is that it has consumed our ability to evaluate individual candidates for Congress and state and local office independent of the presidency. Every choice, from bottom to top of the November ballot, is a referendum on the presidency.

This phenomenon discourages individual representatives and state and local officials from carving out an independent record. And it collapses our two parties into two highly disciplined, hyperpartisan teams, competing for a narrow and elusive majority control. This makes for a fully binary partisan alignment fundamentally at odds with our constitutional structure of separated powers, which themselves demand broad compromise-oriented policymaking.

As the two parties have separated into discrete non-overlapping coalitions, the zero-sum emotional stakes of every election continue to escalate so that each one is the most important in a lifetime. Local issues and personal characteristics matter less than which party controls the White House and the Congress.

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And if individual representatives' fortunes depend on the president's popularity, all energy naturally flows to boosting or disqualifying the current White House resident (depending on their party). Consider the recent impeachment proceedings as Exhibit A.

Consider, too, how much frustration and hand-wringing the Democratic primary has generated. The overwhelming centrality of the presidency is to blame: If everything in politics and political power revolves around winning the presidency, of course we'll obsess over the endless nomination process.

The problems are many. The process seems arbitrary, and unfair to some constituencies and states, but too solicitous of others. It relies too much on voters' whims and last-minute choices, or perhaps it doesn't trust voters enough. The debates are a mess. And, there are too many candidates; with all that media spotlight, why not run for president? Even if you lose, more people will know your name.

But while a run might help a politician individually, collectively it's a disaster. A crowded field is a divided field. And so now comes the challenge for Joe Biden, at this point essentially the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee: somehow unify the fractured field.

The obvious way to unify a party is to unify around the common enemy. In 2016, Republicans voted to defeat Hillary Clinton, and Democrats voted to defeat Donald Trump. The 2020 campaign will almost certainly be even more negative, if that's possible.

In the end, skeptical Democrats will mostly vote for their nominee because the threat of four more years of Trump is terrifying. And wavering Republicans will likely grin and bear Trump because of ... Hunter Biden? The Supreme Court? Whatever the rationales given, by November, both sides will fear and hate each other just a little more. And somehow, the winner will still have to be the president of all the people. At least in theory.

And yet, for all the expanded powers of the presidency, that power is still limited. Almost all of the major proposals Democrats have been arguing over "Medicare for All," free college, major gun control legislation are unlikely to survive the legislative gauntlet in a starkly divided Congress.

These limits haven't stopped potential presidents from over-promising what they can accomplish. After all, bold promises are exciting and attention-grabbing. But since sky-high expectations are bound to disappoint, it's no wonder so many feel frustrated by the process.

Ironically, this frustration boosts support for outsider candidates, who can make even bigger, bolder promises of more aggressive executive action that can't be fulfilled. And as resentment turns to anger, all that anger has to go somewhere. Partisan leaders have a strong incentive to channel it against the other party.

The obvious alternative to our endlessly disappointing president-as-messiah ordeal is a stronger Congress. The national legislature is the only institution capable of reflecting and negotiating the diverse pluralism of a large country such as ours and hashing out broad compromises. But Congress hasn't lived up to that mission. Instead, it has become a hyperpartisan, money-driven, top-down institution.

Reversing 40 years of institutional decline is no easy task. But it at least starts with Congress investing much more in its own capacity to make policy, and taking its cues more from bipartisan committee work than from the executive branch.

The obvious alternative to our endlessly disappointing president-as-messiah ordeal is a stronger Congress.

All of which is difficult to imagine happening without major structural change, such as fundamental electoral reform that scrambles the two-party system. Change is unlikely because we're stuck in a feedback loop. A weaker, more polarized Congress leads to a stronger, more partisan presidency which leads to a weaker, more polarized Congress which ... Breaking that doom loop is a book-length topic.

But our current setup means that no matter what happens in November, too many people will feel like they are completely left out. So we need to find a way to elevate Congress the only institution capable of representing the different constituencies of the country and working out compromises among them. Instead of searching for a single savior, we need to understand that no person alone can represent a country as big and diverse as America.

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Donald Trump and the White House have too much power. That's ruining democracy. - NBC News

President @realDonaldTrump acted early and decisively... His every move has been aimed at keeping Americans safe, while Joe Biden has sought to capitalize politically and stoke citizens fears, tweeted Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump campaigns national press secretary, quoting the campaign's communications director.

When @JoeBiden was faced with a public health crisis on H1N1, he pushed the panic button and the White House had to cover it, read a message retweeted by Donald Jr.

Other tweets in the presidents news feed framed recent comments from Biden opposing xenophobia as opposition to Trumps temporary ban on travel from China.

If Biden had been in charge, more Americans would have contracted the virus faster, a Trump campaign account tweeted.

And in response to a Biden speech in which the former vice president criticized the president for labeling COVID-19 a foreign virus, Laura Ingraham tweeted: Yeah, Joe! Lets throw open our borders, our airports, our ports to anyone and everyonethat will really stem the infection rate!

Critique of Trumps handling of the coronavirus crisis is largely absent from his Twitter feed. Instead, his allies have heaped praise on the administrations response.

Deeply impressive extraordinary partnership of Americas best and brightest business & government gathered at White House under leadership of @realDonaldTrump & @VP, tweeted Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera after Fridays national emergency declaration. They and we are going to kick #Coronas ass.

This is a very good call, conservative political commentator Eric Bolling tweeted on Friday in response to reports that Trump was planning to declare a national emergency.

This is the leadership @realDonaldTrump was elected to provide, tweeted Trumps campaign manager, Brad Parscale, after the presidents Oval Office address on Wednesday night. Acting early & decisively he put the U.S. on much better footing than other nations in handling the coronavirus.

President Trump is exactly right: smart action today will prevent the spread of the virus tomorrow, tweeted Congressman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican close to the White House. The Presidents actions are proactive and decisive. This is exactly what we need to keep Americans safe and healthy.

And a tweet from Eric Trump shared simply the headline of an adulatory New York Post column: Trump passes coronavirus test with flying colors.

The presidents eldest son, Donald Jr., has led the Trump Twitterverses charge against the mainstream presss coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. In his posts and retweets, hes accused news outlets of stoking panic and helping China spread propaganda.

That the US media is trying to run with the Chinese propaganda that China bought us time is a new low even for them, Donald Jr. tweeted in response to a New York Times op-ed. F-you!

The media has thrown everything at [Trump] and none of it has stuck, said YouTube personality Dave Rubin in a tweet shared by Donald Jr. So now they have a vested interest in spreading panic, rejoicing over market drops and sewing general chaos.

This Chinese propaganda about the origin of the coronavirus is being directly amplified and aided by the U.S. media, which is censoring anyone who notes the Wuhan origin of the coronavirus, said Mike Cernovich, a right-wing activist and conspiracy theorist, in a post retweeted by Donald Jr.

CNN is literally taking its talking points from the Chinese government, read another Cernovich tweet shared by the presidents son.

Other accounts followed by the president sounded a similar tone.

Erring on the side of maximum transparency is a good thing for the White House given the mass hysteria being stoked by the partisans in media and politics with [the] goal of affecting the election, tweeted Laura Ingraham.

I just want to stress to politicians and the media to stop using [coronavirus] as a tool to politicize things and to scare people, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a tweet shared by McDaniel. It's not responsible. This is not the time for this.

During a March 4 phone call with Sean Hannity, Trump falsely implied the coronavirus outbreak was not as bad as the seasonal fluan idea he may have picked up from his Twitter followers, who have downplayed the virus threat.

They say the mortality rate for Coronavirus is higher than the flu, tweeted Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. Consider though that we have a flu vaccine and yet in 2019, 16,000 Americans died from the flu. Imagine if we did not have that vaccine. The flu would be a pandemic.

The word pandemic is scary, but as @drsanjaygupta points out, it doesnt speak to mortality rates, only to global scope of infection, Ingraham tweeted in late February. As @CDCgov notes, actual mortality rates or coronavirus is very low.

On Friday morning, Ingraham tweeted a link to an article headlined: Coronavirus: Facts vs. Panic, which stated most people who get coronavirus have mild or no symptoms and most around the world diagnosed from January-March 1 have already recovered.

Great time to fly if not in at-risk population! Ingraham wrote Friday from the aisle seat of a Chicago-bound United flight.

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What Trumps Twitter Feed Tells Him About the Coronavirus - POLITICO