A week of distractions from Trump shows a leader in crisis

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/30/politics/trump-distractions-pandemic-racial-unrest/index.html

Trump's efforts to change the subject at moments of peril have been a hallmark of his entire career in politics and, when successful, a constant source of frustration for his rivals. But rarely have they appeared more blatant or off-key than now, as a battered nation emerges from a pandemic that has left more than 100,000 dead and as racial unrest brews again.

Fact check: On Memorial Day, Trump falsely attacks Democratic congressman who is a Marine Corps veteran

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/26/politics/fact-check-trump-conor-lamb-pelosi/index.html

Trump claimed that Lamb -- whose first and last name he misspelled as "Connor Lamm" -- is a "puppet" for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump continued: "He said he would NOT vote for her for Speaker, and did."

Facts First: Lamb, elected in a special election in March 2018 and then again in the general election in November 2018, kept his promise not to vote for Pelosi as speaker. Lamb voted for Rep. Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts.

 

Monday was not the first time Trump has made an egregious false claim about Lamb. In 2018, Trump falsely claimed Lamb had said he loves Trump's tax cuts -- which Lamb had campaigned against. In 2019, Trump falsely claimed Lamb called Trump "excellent" and said Trump was "doing a good job."

Police: Former student at Ner Israel Rabbinical College tries to run over staff member, others

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/police-former-student-at-ner-israel-rabbinical-college-tries-to-run-over-staff-member-others/32672425

The suspect was identified as Manooel Yerooshalmy, 33, of Baltimore. He is charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of attempted second-degree murder and various other charges.

Seattle Judge Tosses Suit That Tried to Gag Fox News Commentary

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/fox-news-lawsuit-washlite-dismissed-1234617658/

A Seattle judge has dismissed a lawsuit from a little-known advocacy organization that hoped to bar Fox News Channel from transmitting its popular primetime opinion programs to its large cable-news audience.

WASHLITE argued in its initial filing that Fox News was subject to established protections for consumers against false information and put forth the notion that deceptive or unfair acts may be enjoined under statutes in Washington state.

In an eight-page document, however, Superior Court Judge Brian McDonald said WASHLITE had failed to establish a case, noting that its  “assertions do not hold up to scrutiny.”  He added: “WASHLITE’s professed goal in this lawsuit – to ensure that the public receives accurate information about the coronavirus and COVID-19 – is laudable.” But its argument of using a consumer protection act, he said,  “runs afoul of the protections of the First Amendment.”

Fox News During the Coronavirus Pandemic Is Awful Even by Fox News Standards

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/fox-news-is-denying-coronavirus-and-risking-viewers-lives.html

Since the novel coronavirus first came to America, many marquee Fox personalities have been rushing to diminish its seriousness while simultaneously blaming everyone but the Trump administration for the virus’s rapid spread across the United States (which, of course, is not that serious). On Wednesday, as he has done all week, Hannity argued that the novel coronavirus was less of a threat than the seasonal flu. “There have been 1,200 cases of corona versus 34 million cases of the flu,” Hannity said. “As the senior director at Johns Hopkins pointed out this week, the flu is having much more of an impact than coronavirus. These are facts.” On her own program Wednesday night, Laura Ingraham echoed Hannity’s skepticism. “Where the risk is minimal, the business of America must go on,” she said. “FDR told us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Earlier this week, on the Fox Business Network, host Trish Regan informed her viewers that the “chorus of hate being leveled at the president is nearing a crescendo as Democrats blame him—and only him—for a virus that originated halfway around the world. This is yet another attempt to impeach the president.”

On this matter, as on so many other things, Regan, Ingraham, and Hannity are dead wrong. First of all, it beggars belief to say that the Trump administration has done an exemplary job of containing the spread of the coronavirus. “This is an unmitigated disaster that the administration has brought upon the population, and I don’t say this lightly,” Harvard Global Health Institute director Ashish Jha told Bloomberg; on Twitter, Georgetown University global health law professor Lawrence Gostin called Trump’s temporary European travel ban “incoherent.” Second, in point of fact, COVID-19 isn’t just a more mild version of the flu. It’s something different, and it is incredibly dangerous for the elderly and immunocompromised. Fox News is risking its aged viewers’ lives by downplaying the risks of COVID-19. The network’s coverage here is grossly irresponsible.

More False Mail-In Ballot Claims from Trump

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/more-false-mail-in-ballot-claims-from-trump/

 

California will send every registered voter in the state a mail-in ballot for the November general election. But President Donald Trump falsely said, on Twitter and at the White House, that the ballots would go to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there” and “people that aren’t citizens.”

The president went on to make the unsupported claim that mail-in voting would be “substantially fraudulent.” Experts have told us that voter fraud via mail-in ballots is rare, though more common than in-person voting fraud — another topic Trump has repeatedly been wrong about.

Five states already conduct elections primarily by mail-in vote: Utah, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon. All of them will send registered voters a mail-in ballot in advance of the election, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and the individual state election materials. In Utah, all but two counties automatically sent ballots to registered voters in the 2018 elections, and this year’s June 30 primary will be conducted primarily by mail, due to the coronavirus pandemic, with no regular polling places available in all but one county.

 Last week, Trump made the false claim on Twitter that Michigan was “illegally” sending “absentee ballots to 7.7 million people” for this year’s primary and general elections. The state said it will send absentee ballot applications to all registered voters. Trump later corrected his tweet on that point but still claimed it was against the law. However, Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska and West Virginia also have sent absentee applications.

He further claimed Nevada was sending “illegal vote by mail ballots.” The Republican secretary of state in Nevada announced: “All active registered voters in Nevada will be mailed an absentee ballot for the primary election,” and her office noted that a federal judge had ruled this was a lawful exercise of her authority.

Fact-checking Trump's recent claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/27/app-politics-section/donald-trump-mail-in-voter-fraud-fact-check/index.html

 

Specifically, and without evidence, Trump has claimed that mail-in voting is particularly susceptible to fraud, casting it as a lawless, unregulated exercise where ballots are stolen from mailboxes, voter signatures are routinely forged and even the ballots themselves are illegally printed.

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted a flurry of accusations, including falsely claiming that California was sending ballots to undocumented immigrants and was prepared to let "anyone," regardless of residency, vote by mail.

Jack Dorsey says Trump fact-check does not make Twitter 'arbiter of truth'

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/28/media/jack-dorsey-donald-trump-twitter/index.html

In his tweets Wednesday, Dorsey also said he takes ultimate responsibility for decisions made by Twitter and asked people to "leave our employees out of this." Earlier Wednesday, Trump's two elder sons and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway pointed to tweets made by Twitter employee Yoel Roth in 2016 and 2017 as evidence of Twitter's alleged bias against the president.

There is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me," Dorsey said. "Please leave our employees out of this. We'll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make."

Twitter also defended Roth earlier Wednesday, saying that, "no one person at Twitter is responsible for our policies or enforcement actions, and it's unfortunate to see individual employees targeted for company decisions."

Dorsey, according to a Twitter spokesperson, did not make the decision to label Trump's tweets. A Twitter spokesperson said the tweets contained "potentially misleading information about voting processes" and had been "labeled to provide additional context."

Questions raised over hydroxychloroquine study which caused WHO to halt trials for Covid-19

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/28/questions-raised-over-hydroxychloroquine-study-which-caused-who-to-halt-trials-for-covid-19

He stressed that even if the paper proved to be problematic, it did not mean hydroxychloroquine was safe or effective in treating Covid-19. No strong studies to date have shown the drug is effective. Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have potentially severe and even deadly side effects if used inappropriately, including heart failure and toxicity. Other studies have found the drug is associated with higher mortality when given to severely unwell Covid-19 patients.

Serious concerns have being raised by bioethicists, clinicians and scientists that scientific rigour and peer review is falling by the wayside in the race to understand how the virus spreads and why it has such a devastating impact on some people.

From 'We've shut it down' to 100,000 US dead

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52775216

One of Donald Trump's first acts when he moved into the Oval Office in 2017, was to restore to a central position the bust of Winston Churchill that Barack Obama had moved out in favour of a bronze of Martin Luther King Jr.

 

And in this fight against coronavirus, Donald Trump does see himself as a war leader; the property tycoon who could work a shovel on a Manhattan building site was also going to be shown to be a man of destiny - the untried field-marshal, with a baton in his knapsack ready to command the troops to get the job done. But also keeping the home fires burning, and lifting the morale of a frightened nation. It has all been far more jagged than that. 

Donald Trump is not imbued with the gift of soaring Churchillian rhetoric; there have been no "we shall fight them on the beaches" moments. Nor has he conjured the Rooseveltian calm when delivering one of his fireside chats. There have been days of infamy, but they have been invariably generated by things that the president has said, rather than what has been done to the United States.

And anyway, for a self-styled war leader he must at least face the charge of ignoring the warnings about the enemy he was confronting in the early stages, appearing more Neville Chamberlain than Winston Churchill.

Number of abortions among IDF soldiers rises

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/267701

The Torat Halehima religious pro-IDF organization responded: "The IDF Chief of Staff's Adivsory Unit for Gender Issues' concept of mixed gender units is collapsing, and the ones paying the price are the IDF and the female soldiers."

"The difficult situations occurring recently in mixed troops, and the increase in the number of abortions in all IDF units, testify to the negative culture being created in the IDF as a result of the decision to create coed units.

"We will demand a realistic change to this negative decision, which was advanced by radical feminist organizations who do not prioritize the good of the IDF. When the IDF worries about victory instead of equality, 'abortions' will go back to referring to the abortion of enemy operations.'"

 

“A Life of Vertical & Horizontal Responsibility: Shavuot During the Coronavirus Pandemic”

A Presidential Smear

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-presidential-smear-11590535397

Trump imitates the Steele dossier in attacks on Joe Scarborough.

 

Donald Trump sometimes traffics in conspiracy theories—recall his innuendo in 2016 about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination—but his latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him. Mr. Trump has been tweeting the suggestion that Mr. Scarborough might have had something to do with the death in 2001 of a young woman who worked in his Florida office when Mr. Scarborough was a GOP Congressman.

'Mr. Trump is debasing his office': The famously conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board slammed the president for pushing a Joe Scarborough murder conspiracy theory

https://www.businessinsider.com/wsj-editorial-board-slams-trump-joe-scarborough-tweets-2020-5

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has come out against President Donald Trump for pushing a conspiracy theory about the MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough.

In response to Scarborough's criticism of Trump's handling of the coronavirus outbreak in recent weeks, Trump has revived questions about whether the "Morning Joe" cohost was involved in the 2001 death of one of his congressional aides.

The Journal's editorial board publicly condemned Trump for pushing the conspiracy theory in an editorial Tuesday, saying his comments about Scarborough were "nasty stuff" and "ugly even for him."

"Mr. Trump always hits back at critics, and Mr. Scarborough has called the President mentally ill, among other things. But suggesting that the talk-show host is implicated in the woman's death isn't political hardball. It's a smear," the board wrote.

The editorial board added that it didn't expect Trump to stop his tirade against Scarborough but wanted to make it clear that "Mr. Trump is debasing his office" and "hurting the country in doing so."