Monthly Archives: April 2020

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.

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

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:

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

"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

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge in Manhattan rejected an effort by U.S. President Donald Trump and his adult children to send a lawsuit accusing them of exploiting their family name to promote a marketing scam into arbitration.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump kisses Senior White House Advisor Ivanka Trump as Donald Trump Jr. watches during a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S., February 10, 2020. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo

In a Wednesday night decision concerning the American Communications Network, U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield accused the Trumps of acting unfairly by seeking arbitration after first obtaining the benefits of litigating in federal court, including the dismissal of a racketeering claim.

This conduct is both substantively prejudicial towards Plaintiffs and seeks to use the [Federal Arbitration Act] as a vehicle to manipulate the rules of procedure to Defendants benefit and Plaintiffs harm, Schofield wrote.

Defendants included Trumps adult children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka, and an affiliate of the Trump Organization.

The court erred, and while we are disappointed, we will take an immediate appeal, Joanna Hendon, a lawyer for the Trumps, said in an email.

In the October 2018 complaint, the Trumps were accused of misleading victims into becoming salespeople for ACN, a multi-level marketing company that charged $499 for a chance to sell videophones and other goods.

According to the plaintiffs, the Trump family conned them into thinking Donald Trump, who had yet to become president, believed their investments would pay off.

They said the real goal was for the Trumps to enrich themselves, including through the receipt of millions of dollars in secret payments from 2005 to 2015.

The Trumps have called the lawsuit politically motivated, and said Donalds Trumps endorsement of ACN was merely his opinion.

In rejecting arbitration, Schofield noted the plaintiffs claim that they had no reason to believe their agreements to arbitrate with ACN also covered the Trumps.

Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an email she looked forward to pursuing the proposed class action on behalf of her clients and thousands of others like them who were defrauded by the Trumps.

Last July, Schofield said the plaintiffs could pursue state law claims of fraud, false advertising and unfair competition against the Trumps, despite dismissing the racketeering claim.

The case is Doe et al v Trump Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 18-09936.

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler

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Trump family loses bid to move marketing scam lawsuit to arbitration - Reuters

President Donald Trump was accused of political favoritism in the administration's coronavirus response after only sending a fraction of the ventilators sought by Colorado's Democratic governor "at the request" of the state's Republican senator.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has been pleading for the federal government to provide his state with 10,000 ventilators since last month.

"Colorado's COVID-19 death rate is rising faster than any other state right now; the pandemic is spreading so fast that lags in testing are masking the true conditions experienced by Coloradans across the state," Polis said in a letterto Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading the White House coronavirus task force.

Not only did the federal government not respond to the request, but Polis also told CNNjust days later the federal government seized an order of 500 ventilators bought by the state.

"We can't compete against our own federal government," he said. "So either work with us, or don't do anything at all. But this middle ground where they're buying stuff out from under us and not telling us what we're going to get, that's really challenging to manage our hospital surge and our safety of our health care workers in that kind of environment."

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But Trump announcedWednesday that his administration wouldbe "immediately sending 100 Ventilators to Colorado at the request of Senator [Cory] Gardner," a vulnerable Republican up for re-election.

The announcement came after Gardner spoke with the president personally, he told Fox News.

"The governor has been searching for ventilators and FEMA has also been searching for ventilators. I talked to the president last night about the Colorado need for ventilators, and of course, I'm very thankful that he provided that last night," Gardner said. "We're going to continue to work with the president for more and continue to meet Colorado's needs, but I think it's just a sign that we are fighting for Colorado."

Pence pushed back when asked whether Gardner's personal relationship with Trump led to Colorado getting life-saving equipment.

"We've been watching Denver very closely . . . We're beginning to see some encouraging news in our interactions with the governor and with local officials and with the senator," he told reporters at Wednesday's White House news briefing. "We've made an effort not only in Colorado, but around the country, to be particularly responsive to states where we've seen a growth in cases."

But Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, told CNNthat the move smells of political favoritism.

"It seems that way to me," she said when asked if it appeared to be a political favor to Gardner. "I was totally outraged."

DeGette, who has served in Congress for more than two decades, told the network that "this thing that happened with Sen. Gardner and President Trump is very disturbing."

In a private call with House Democrats on Wednesday, the congresswoman accused Pence of "lying" about the process for distributing ventilators, according to CNN.

"Nowhere did it say if a Republican senator calls up the president they can get it," she said, adding that the vulnerable Republicans then took "all kinds of credit on national TV."

Polis dodged questions about the issue when pressed Wednesdayby reporters.

"Well, you're not going to get my read on it,because I'm not here to do political analysis," he said. "I'm here to celebrate any ventilators that arrive in our state, andof course, we are grateful for 100 ventilators."

Officials in at least a half-dozenstates have complained that the federal government has seized equipment shipped to states and numerous governors, including Republicans in Maryland and Massachusetts, slammed the fedsfor bidding against states to acquire vital ventilators.

Details about the federal response from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released Wednesdayby the House Oversight Committeealso show that the federal government sent the same number of N95 respirator masks used by emergency workers to every state in its "final push" to get equipment from the national stockpile out before handing the task off to the private sector.As a result, Vermont received about 193 respirators per 1,000 residents while Texas received just five per 1,000 residents.

"Now that the national stockpile has been depleted of critical equipment, it appears that the administration is leaving states to fend for themselves, to scour the open market for these scarce supplies and to compete with each other and federal agencies in a chaotic, free-for-all bidding war," House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said in a statement. "The president failed to bring in FEMA early on, failed to name a national commander for this crisis and failed to fully utilize the authorities Congress gave him under the Defense Production Act to procure and manage the distribution of critical supplies. He must take action now to address these deficiencies."

Under fire from Democrats over the administration'sresponse, Trump has used the White House coronavirus press briefings to instead push conspiracy theorieshe hopes will boost hisre-election efforts.

Trump this week claimed,without evidence,that mail voting, which is used widely by numerous states, including Republican strongholds like Utah, is "corrupt" and used by Democrats to "cheat." There is no evidence of any widespread mail ballot fraud,and the only recent anecdotal evidence is a mail ballot fraud scheme orchestrated by a Republican operative in North Carolina.

"Mail-In Voting, which is 'RIPE for FRAUD,' and shouldn't be allowed!" Trump falsely claimedWednesday onTwitter.

"There is no evidence that voting by mail results in significant fraud. As with in-person voting, the threat is infinitesimally small," said a reportfrom New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. "Twenty-three percent of ballots were cast by mail in 2016, and twenty-six percent of ballots were cast by mail in 2018. Five states Hawaii, Utah, Oregon, Washingtonand Colorado will run all-mail elections this year. And in 28 states and the District of Columbia, any voter has the right to request a mail ballot without excuse in November."

But Trump has been surprisingly transparent about his opposition to mail voting, arguing that Republicans cannot win if large numbers of people vote.

Discussing a Democratic proposal to fund mail voting efforts amid the coronavirus pandemic, Trump told Fox Newsthat "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again" if states expanded mail voting.

Trump has also used the briefings to push his agenda againstglobalorganizationsby picking a fight with the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing itof being "China-centric" while receiving a large portion of their funding from the U.S.

"The World WHO World Healthgot it wrong.I mean,they got it very wrong. Inmany ways, they were wrong. They also minimized the threat very strongly andnot good," Trump saidat Wednesday's briefing.

Taking its cues from Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson, the White House is working on a possible plan to cut WHO funding as the pandemic rages on, NBC Newsreported.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general, appeared to respond to Trump's threats by condemning politicization of the crisis.

"The focus of all political parties should be to save their people. Please don't politicize this virus," he said at a Wednesday news briefing. "If you want to be exploited and if you want to have many more body bags then you do it. If you don't want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it."

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Trump says he only gave Colorado 1% of the ventilators it needs after GOP senator asked for them - Salon

The challenge of implementing the small business loan program surfaced vividly last week, when the Small Business Administration delivered guidelines to banks just hours before they were due to turn on the spigot. As of Wednesday, banks said they still lacked critical information needed to close out loans and that SBA's loan authorization system continued to malfunction.

The flood of companies seeking assistance seems sure to compound the challenges facing banks, and the Treasury Department and SBA have done little to ease concerns that theyre getting on track.

The CARES Act included a provision meant to provide relief to companies by allowing them to get tax refunds by redoing their previous years taxes to include their current losses. There's one glaring problem: The companies are required to file for those refunds on paper and mail them in and most IRS employees are working from home. There's virtually no one there to pick up the mail.

There's also plenty of other guidance pending from the IRS, a typical problem in typical times but one sure to slow the impact of the CARES Act as companies struggle to survive.

Meanwhile, the IRS is still figuring out how to quickly parcel out the cash payments the new law promised to individuals and families across the country. The agency intends to deliver as many as possible via direct deposit, which would expedite those payments. But for many low-income Americans who don't file tax returns, the IRS would likely not have direct deposit info. So the agency is setting up a website to collect banking information in order to more quickly process the checks, but theres no timeline on when that will be up and running.

Planes are parked at Pinal Airpark on Wednesday in Red Rock, Ariz., as many passenger planes are being kept at the facility as airlines cut back on service due to the new coronavirus pandemic. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo

The CARES Act included $29 billion in an immediate infusion for passenger and cargo airlines, funding meant to quickly shore up the industry's cratering finances by paying workers' salaries and preventing layoffs. But even though the money was due to begin flowing earlier this week, it hasn't happened yet, and airlines are still in talks with the Trump administration over the terms.

Treasury released guidance for applying for the grants and loans last week, with the initial application deadline for grants last Friday. Airlines that missed that deadline won't get their applications considered as quickly. And perhaps most urgently, unions are concerned that some airlines could refuse the grants if the U.S. government insists on taking a stake in the airline as part of the tradeoff.

The law also includes another $29 billion in loans for airlines, part of the Treasury's $500 billion economic rescue fund. There's no deadline or timeframe for those funds to begin flowing, but there's no indication that any have moved yet. As of Monday, Treasury wasn't accepting applications for the loans.

So at a critical moment for the airline industry, the rescue law has done little in the way of providing relief.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

The law included $31 billion in emergency education assistance, much of it earmarked for states, K-12 schools, universities and direct aid for college students. But so far, there's been no funding distributed by the Education Department and there's been no guidance about how or when that money might arrive.

Higher education groups and state officials have been urging the Trump administration to move more quickly to immediately disburse the funding amid unprecedented school and college closures across the country. Govs. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Jay Inslee of Washington over the weekend wrote a letter on behalf of governors, urging Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to provide the funding within the next two weeks. But DeVos hasnt given any indication shes on board, meaning the relief money is still just sitting there.

Meanwhile, there's also a push among some Senate Democrats to exclude for-profit colleges from eligibility or to impose stringent restrictions on how those companies can use the money but a whole new layer of such oversight seems unlikely to be accepted by Republicans.

The FCC appears to be one of the few agencies moving quickly adopting an order last month to tap $200 million in CARES Act funding for a "Covid-19 Telehealth Program," an effort to speed grants to health care providers to expand telehealth capabilities. At the same time, the FCC is skipping its normal competitive bidding requirements to ensure the money gets to where its needed speedily a decision that could mean a worse deal for taxpayers.

Meanwhile, there are plans for a separate pot of $100 million in broadband funding flowing through the Department of Agriculture to help build out internet infrastructure in rural areas, plus another $25 million for USDA's Distance Learning, Telemedicine and Broadband program. But this infusion has already stirred some concerns about exacerbating already existing problems with duplication and waste.

A Republican FCC commissioner has repeatedly raised concerns about the departments effort, worrying that the program has the potential to undermine and wastefully duplicate other broadband efforts, some of which may already receive financial help from the FCC.

Susannah Luthi, Brian Faler, Brianna Gurciullo, John Hendel, Michael Stratford and Zach Warmbrodt contributed to this report.

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Oversight sputters as Trump starts doling out billions in coronavirus aid - POLITICO

U.S. President Donald Trump listens as Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a news conference at the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House February 29, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Alex Wong | Getty Images

WASHINGTON Vice President Mike Pence's office is barring top public health officials from appearing on CNN until the news network agrees to air the White House's daily coronavirus briefings in their entirety, CNN reported on Thursday.

CNN often airs only the first portion of the daily briefings live, the part that is typically led by President Donald Trump, before returning to their news anchors during the second half of the briefing.

Only after Trump is finished speaking, taking questions from the press and calling on various experts to come up to the lectern, do Pence and other top officials have their own dedicated time to take questions and make announcements.

Health officials like Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci are typically part of this second portion of the briefing. These are the officials that Pence is refusing to allow on CNN, although they regularly appear on other news networks and broadcast networks.

"When you guys cover the briefings with the health officials then you can expect them back on your air," a Pence spokesman told CNN, referring to the second portion of the briefing, according to the network's report.

CNBC reached out to the vice president's office and to CNN, neither of whom replied to questions about the report.

CNN has held weekly townhalls on Thursday nights for the past month, each of which has featured Fauci and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta discussing the coronavirus pandemic.

In the past week, however, Pence's office has denied CNN's request to have Fauci appear on its April 9 town hall, according to CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy.

The tensions between CNN and the White House over the network's daily briefing coverage also reflect larger issues at play, however, in an administration where the chief executive has repeatedly sought to undermine, blame and denigrate the free press.

There is already a great deal of bad blood between the Trump White House and CNN, whose reporters have aggressively questioned the president during his time in office.

The White House press office has also previously rescinded the credentials of at least one CNN reporter, White House correspondent Jim Acosta in 2018. After CNN sued the White House over Acosta's revoked pass, and the Trump administration backed down and reinstated him.

But the present situationalso reflects a broader unease developing among news broadcasters over whether, and how, to air the daily press briefings, which can stretch to over two hours in length, and tend to paint a rosier picture of the deadly pandemic than many outside the administration believe is warranted.

Trump has also used the briefings repeatedly to attack his political opponents, spread misinformation about the pandemic and tout unproven drugs and treatments.

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Pence bars top health experts Fauci and Birx from appearing on CNN, the network says - CNBC

On March 18th, researchers in France circulated a study about the promising experimental use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, in combination with azithromycin, an antibiotic, as a treatment for the disease caused by the coronavirus. The study was neither randomized nor peer-reviewed, and other scientists soon criticized its methodology. But Tucker Carlson, on Fox News, highlighted the work. The next day, President Trump promoted hydroxychloroquines very, very encouraging early results. He added, mentioning another unproven therapy, I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer.

At a White House press briefing on March 20th, a reporter asked Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whether hydroxychloroquine could be effective in treating covid-19. The answer is no, Fauci said, before yielding the microphone to Trump, who countered, May work, may not. I feel good about it. Thats all it is, just a feeling, you know, smart guy. A few days later, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said, Using untested drugs without the right evidence could raise false hope and even do more harm than good.

Trumps quackery was at once eccentric and terrifyinga reminder, if one was needed, of his scorn for rigorous science, even amid the worst pandemic to strike the country in a century. Yet his conduct typified his leadership as the crisis has intensified: his dependency on Fox News for ideas and message amplification, his unshakable belief in his own genius, and his understandable concern that his relection may be in danger if he does not soon discover a way to vanquish COVID-19 and reverse its devastation of the economy.

New York City now faces a troubling and astronomical increase in cases, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the emergency is overwhelming hospitals, straining drug and equipment supplies, and threatening to cause a shortage of ventilators. The grim course of events in the city is a canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country, Cuomo said, and leaders elsewhere must take decisive action lest they, too, become inundated. Trump, though, spent much of last week promoting a contrarian gambit that has been percolating in the right-wing media. He said that, to revitalize the economy, he would like to lift travel restrictions and reopen workplaces across the country within weeks, perhaps by Easter, which is on April 12th, because, as he put it repeatedly, we cant let the cure be worse than the problem.

Public-health experts immediately warned against such a reversal of social-distancing rules. The virus will surge, many will fall ill, and there will be more deaths, William Schaffner, a specialist in preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, told the Times. When a reporter asked the President whether any of the doctors on your team had advised him that a hasty reopening was the right path to pursue, he replied, If it were up to the doctors, they may say, Lets keep it shut down... lets keep it shut for a couple of years. Public-health specialists have said no such thing; they have spoken of a conditions-based approach (You dont make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline, Fauci has said), while advising that, to save the most lives, local leaders must wait to lift restrictions in their areas until the data show that the virus has stopped spreading. Trump said that any loosening of rules he might seek around the countryhe mentioned Nebraska and Idaho as possible siteswould be based on hard facts and data, but he also said that he chose Easter as a target date because he just thought it was a beautiful time.

It is true, as Trump also argued, that enormous job losses and an all but certain recession caused by the pandemic will harm many vulnerable Americans, and claim lives, as ill people without health insurance, for example, forgo care or struggle to get it at stressed clinics and hospitals. Yet, at least in the short term, over-all mortality rates fall during recessions; the reasons for this arent fully clear, but social scientists think they may include the public-health benefits of a decrease in pollution, as a result of the slowing economy. In any event, the case the President made for hurrying an economic revival against the advice of scientists was morally odious; it suggested that large numbers of otherwise avoidable deaths might have to be accepted as the price of job creation.

Public-health officials spoke frankly to the press about the catastrophic prospects of the Presidents Easter folly. (President Trump will have blood on his hands, Keith Martin, the director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, told the Times.) Trump responded on Twitter by lashing out at the LameStream Media for reporting such forecasts, calling the press the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. Last Wednesday, after Mitt Romney, the only Republican who voted to convict the President, on a charge of abuse of power, during the Senate impeachment trial, announced that he had tested negative for COVID-19, Trump tweeted mockingly, Im so happy I can barely speak. At the White House briefings, surrounded by the sorts of civil servants and experts he habitually disdains, Trump has adapted awkwardly to the role of solemn unifier. When he leaves the podium to tweet nonsense at his perceived enemies, he at least provides his opponents among the countrys homebound, screen-addled, and anxious citizenry with a galvanizing dose of his immutable obnoxiousnessa splash of the old new normal.

The journal Science asked Fauci why he doesnt step in when the President makes false statements in the briefings. I cant jump in front of the microphone and push him down, he said. Americas public-health system is fragmented and market-driven, conditions that only compound the challenge of quashing COVID-19. In the Trump era, however, decentralization has a benefit: the President is not solely in charge, and in the months ahead governors and mayors will continue to shape the odds of life or death for great numbers of Americans. Last week, Trump reviewed the possibilities for quarantine in New York City, his ravaged home town. He rambled about the stock exchange (Its incredible what they can do), before going on to pledge, If we open up, and when we open up... were giving the governors a lot of leeway to decide how this should be done. We can only hope so.

Excerpt from:

The Meaning of Donald Trumps Coronavirus Quackery - The New Yorker

Rep. Ilhan Omar at 'Impeachment Now!' rally on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, Sept. 26, 2019. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for MoveOn Political Action)

(CNSNews.com) -Rep. Ilhan Omar (D.-Minn.) sent out a tweet on Wednesday calling on Americans to participate in this years election and vote President Donald Trump out of office and end the rise of fascism in this country.

For those who plan to sit this election out or vote for Trump, just stop, Omar said.

The livelihoods of millions of marginalized people are at stake, she said.

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We must fight like hell to get Donald Trump out of the White House and end the rise of fascism in this country, she said.

Excerpt from:

Ilhan Omar: 'We Must All Fight Like Hell to Get Donald Trump Out of the White House and End the Rise of Fascism in This Country' - CNSNews.com

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LIVE: President Donald Trump and the Coronavirus Task Force press briefing - FOX10 News