But a quote meme circulated in May 2020 presented Trump as saying
that undertaking more coronavirus testing made the U.S. “look bad” by
revealing more infections — even though revealing infections is one of
the primary purposes of the testing. According to the meme, Trump
lamented that, “More testing only reveals more infections and therefore
increases the numbers. In a way, by doing all this testing we make
ourselves look bad”:
As Washington Post once observed,
“Trump’s obsession with numbers has dominated and shaped the
administration’s response to the coronavirus, as advisers and public
health experts try to placate a leader who largely views the global
pandemic through the political lens of how the statistics reflect on his
presidency and hopes for reelection.”
Leaders of the Kiryas Joel community spoke out publicly against Zelenko in an open letter in March.
The announcement comes after Zelenko was accused by community
leaders of spreading disinformation about the rate of coronavirus
infection in Kiryas Joel, leading to discrimination against residents of
the village. Zelenko is also being investigated by a federal prosecutor over his claim that a study of the drugs he promoted had won approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
The economy has gone from President Donald Trump's greatest political asset to perhaps his biggest weakness.
Unemployment is spiking at an unprecedented rate. Consumer spending is vanishing. And GDP is collapsing. History shows that dreadful economic trends like these spell doom for sitting presidents seeking reelection.
The
coronavirus recession will cause Trump to suffer a "historic defeat" in
November, a national election model released Wednesday by Oxford
Economics predicted.
The transportation
secretary thought it’d be cool to bring family members to government
meetings in which they had a financial interest.
In a normal presidential administration—hell, in a
normal professional setting of any kind—it would be considered
inappropriate to bring one‘s family members to official work meetings
and/or on business trips. But of course, the Trump administration is not
normal. Rather, it‘s a family affair, the primary goal of which is to
enrich Donald Trump and the people who surround him—who, among others, include his not-very-bright son-in-law. That M.O. starts at the top with the grifter-in-chief, but it also extends to dozens of current and former cabinet members who’ve seen no issue with taking their wives on taxpayer-funded European vacations, using a government plane to get a better shot of the solar eclipse, plunking down $31,000 on dining-room sets, and allegedly planning
work travel based on a “desire to visit particular cities or
countries.” So it’s not entirely surprising that Transportation
Secretary Elaine Chao thought it would be no big deal
to bring her relatives—who happen to have major business interests in
Beijing—to meetings with government officials during a visit to China in
the fall of 2017, but unfortunately for Chao, not everyone in government has adopted Team Trump’s way of thinking.The New York Timesreports
that in October 2017, an alarmed official at the American Embassy in
Beijing wrote an urgent email seeking advice concerning “a series of
unorthodox requests” made by Chao‘s office related to her first visit to
China as a Trump cabinet member. According to the Times, Chao—who is married to Senate leader Mitch McConnell—wanted
federal officials to “coordinate travel arrangements for at least one
family member and include relatives in meetings with government
officials.” Such requests would be wildly inappropriate for any
secretary’s relatives, but were even more so given the Chao family’s
business: her father, James Chao, founded Foremost Group, a shipping, trading, and finance company now run by Elaine’s sister Angela Chao. While the company is based in New York, its fleet is, per the Times,
“overwhelmingly focused on China,” with roughly 72% of the raw
materials it has shipped since early 2018 going to China, cargo that
“helps feed” Beijing’s “industrial machine, which manufactures steel
products that are a point of dispute in the deepening trade war between”
China and the U.S. The company reportedly constructs almost all its
vessels in state-owned shipyards in China, some with loans from the
Chinese government.
The Chinese
government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to President Donald
Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump over the last two months, Chinese
public records show, raising concerns about conflicts of interest in the
White House.
In
October, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16
trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC, bringing to 34 the total number of
marks China has greenlighted this year, according to the office’s
online database. The new approvals cover Ivanka-branded fashion gear
including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty
services and voting machines.
In interviews with CNN, CDC officials
say their agency's efforts to mount a coordinated response to the
Covid-19 pandemic have been hamstrung by a White House whose decisions
are driven by politics rather than science.
President Donald Trump wrote this week a letter to the World Health
Organization (WHO) chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus criticizing the
U.N. agency and his leadership during the coronavirus pandemic,
specifically its work with China, where the outbreak first emerged.
Here, Newsweek presents Trump's letter to the WHO in full,
along with annotations to add context, facts, counterclaims, and other
relevant information.
Observers have warned that the loss of U.S. funding would degrade the
WHO's ability to prepare for and fight future pandemics. Philanthropist
billionaire Bill Gates, himself a major funder of the organization,
said Trump's threat is "as dangerous as it sounds."
Isaac Ben-Israel says virus disappears everywhere
at same speed, rendering interventions irrelevant. Public health expert:
He ‘has no clue about epidemiology and public health’
Many medical professionals have raised their
eyebrows over Ben-Israel’s claims. The public health expert Nadav
Davidovitch, asked to comment for this article, said he agrees with
Ben-Israel’s sentiment that “hysteria” must be avoided but added: “He is
an excellent scientist, yet he has no clue about epidemiology and
public health.”
Ben-Israel doesn’t have a medical
background, but claimed that simple mathematics can yield an
understanding of the virus’s pattern. He argued that this pattern proves
that lockdowns are “unnecessary no matter what,” and have been a
needless disruption to life and a waste of money.
Ben-Israel has supported social distancing and hygiene measures but
said that they only have a limited impact on infection rates. He argued
that this is now shown to be true because he can’t draw a clear
correlation between a country’s hygiene level and a significant change
in the pattern of infection rates.
