Did Joe Biden confuse Donald Trump with George W. Bush?

 https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/26/context-did-joe-biden-confuse-donald-trump-george-/

 In the clip, Biden says "George" while discussing the significance of the upcoming election, which some viewers took as an allusion to former President George W. Bush.

The clip was shared on Twitter by Republican National Committee rapid response director Steve Guest, who used it to attack Biden’s mental acuity. The next day, media outlets including Fox News, Sky News, and the Today Show published stories on Biden’s comments, and Trump tweeted about it.

Some reporters, however, pointed out that Biden could have been referring to his interviewer, comedian George Lopez. 

 

 Joe Biden: "Well, first of all, the reason they should vote is that there’s a lot on the ballot this year. I mean, this is the most consequential… Not because I’m running but because of who I’m running against. This is the most consequential election in a long, long, long time. And the character of the country in my view is literally on the ballot, what kind of country are we going to be. Four more years of George uh… George, we’re going to find ourselves in a position where if Trump gets elected, we are going to be in a different world. And so… The reason I think people should be voting is out of their own self-interest right now, because look, you know, everything is at stake from the environment to our health. You heard what his, his, his chief of staff —"

 

 

Obama blasts Kushner for suggesting that Black Americans need to 'want' to be successful

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/27/obama-blasts-kushner-black-american-comments-432829

 Kushner made the comments during an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Monday morning during which he also referred to raising concerns about racial inequality as “complaining” and suggested that those who protested systemic racism over the summer were more interested in “virtue signaling” than solving those issues.

 "The thing we've seen in the Black community, which is mostly Democrat,” Kushner argued, “is that President Trump's policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they're complaining about, but he can't want them to be successful more than they want to be successful."

Jared Kushner Faces Backlash Over Comments Considered Racist | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Trump tries to distract Americans on pandemic in final election sprint

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/27/politics/donald-trump-confirmation-amy-coney-barrett-joe-biden-election-2020-supreme-court/index.html

President Donald Trump launched a new attempt to mislead America over the state of the fast-worsening pandemic Tuesday, after his prime time televised celebration of Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court confirmation failed to distract from the mishandled emergency that is threatening his reelection hopes.

Coronavirus: Trump labels U.S. COVID-19 spike a media conspiracy

Haredim and Coronavirus: Policy Recommendations for Exit from Second Lockdown

 https://en.idi.org.il/articles/32679

 Large portions of the ultra-Orthodox community and their leadership have come to the conclusion that the risk posed by the virus is not as severe as claimed by the experts and professionals. This stems from their skepticism about the authorities but also from their dismissal of scientific and medical knowledge. The fact that the ultra-Orthodox sector in Israel is among the youngest communities in the world, has intensified this feeling, especially among the younger generation, that “It won't happen to me," and encouraged them to ignore the rules.

 

No matter who wins the US election, the world's 'fake news' problem is here to stay

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/25/world/trump-fake-news-legacy-intl/index.html

But the specter of disinformation and foreign electoral interference, which has loomed large over the 2020 presidential race, is perhaps not as pernicious as the language now coming out of the White House itself. Less than two weeks out from the election, Trump has touted unfounded narratives and conspiracy theories casting doubt over mail-in voting and the November results -- which could leave Americans even more vulnerable to further manipulation, experts warn. 

 

"There is no question that the fact that the President of the United States is using this term to attack independent media gives an element of license to other politicians elsewhere, including some authoritarian leaders to dress up their own attacks on independent media and point to the example of the US," said Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Third wave of coronavirus infections in the U.S.? More like 'wildfire,' epidemiologist says

 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/third-wave-coronavirus-infections-u-s-more-wildfire-epidemiologist-says-n1244603

“I look at it more as an elongated exacerbation of the original first wave,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Monday at an annual event for Yahoo Finance. “It’s kind of semantics. You want to call it the third wave or an extended first wave, no matter how you look at it, it's not good news.”

U.S. COVID-19 Cases Are Skyrocketing, But Deaths Are Flat—So Far. These 5 Charts Explain Why

 https://time.com/5903590/coronavirus-covid-19-third-wave/

But despite this rapid uptick in cases, the daily death count in the U.S. is not yet rising at the same rate, and remains at lower levels than in April. At face value, a lower case-to-fatality rate suggests that fewer people who test positive for the virus are dying from it. But the virus hasn’t necessarily become less lethal; it isn’t mutating quickly enough for that to be the case.

What’s happening now is not a result of how the virus treats humans, but rather how humans are treating the virus—that is, how we test for it, how we avoid it and how we combat it. The following five charts explain how human-driven factors are, at least for the moment, keeping deaths from spiking as high as they did early in the pandemic, even as cases rise dramatically.

The coronavirus poses a greater mortality risk to the elderly compared to younger people. Among all Americans who have tested positive for COVID-19, the CDC’s current best estimate is that 5.4% died and were 70 or older, 0.5% died and were between 50 and 69, and only 0.02% died and were 20-49 years old.

In the first weeks of the pandemic, the virus tore through assisted-living facilities and nursing homes, where lots of vulnerable elderly people lived. As a result, the death count skyrocketed. But over time, as the virus spread in places like bars and college campuses, the share of U.S. COVID-19 cases have skewed younger, meaning many of those becoming infected are less vulnerable to severe illness. The CDC reported last month that children and adults under 30 made up around 16% of COVID-19 cases in February through April, but by August, that group accounted for more than one in three cases.

The number of younger people contracting the virus continues to grow, contributing to the rise in overall cases. Yet because they are less vulnerable to the virus, they are not driving up the number of deaths in tandem. (While young people are less vulnerable to COVID-19 in general, they can and do die from the disease, and can spread it to other people.)

Lagging in the Polls, Trump Team Predicts Win Based on 'Enthusiasm'

 https://www.newsweek.com/lagging-polls-trump-team-predicts-win-based-enthusiasm-1541073

 Eric Trump told a rally crowd in Michigan the following day that he predicts a bigger win for his father than in 2016 based on "enthusiasm."

"The enthusiasm is unlike anything that we've seen before," he told a crowd of hundreds of people. "I'm telling you the polls are wrong. I am telling you they're going to get it wrong again."

 

Jared Kushner's very revealing comment on Black Americans' desire for success

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/26/politics/jared-kushner-black-americans-welfare-queen-racism/index.html

 "One thing we've seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President (Donald) Trump's policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they're complaining about," senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said Monday morning on Fox News. "But he can't want them to be successful more than they want to be successful."

 On Monday, Democratic National Committee National press secretary Brandon Gassaway issued a sharp rebuke of Kushner and his ilk.

"This dismissive approach to the issues that Black voters care about is indicative of Trump's callousness and disregard for the lives of Black people," Gassaway said in a statement. "We cannot afford another four years of a White House that does not take our voices seriously and tells us to be grateful for whatever scraps are left over from the bargaining table."

 

FactChecking Trump’s Fox News Interview

 https://www.factcheck.org/2020/09/factchecking-trumps-fox-news-interview-2/

 Trump said, “I’m bringing many of the troops home and most of the troops home.” But the number in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria is nearly the same as it was in the last month under President Barack Obama. The overall number of overseas troops is only slightly smaller.

Four years in, Trump has plenty of unfinished business

 https://www.startribune.com/four-years-in-trump-has-plenty-of-unfinished-business/572853261/

Trump has made only modest progress toward meeting his 2016 pledge to bring home all troops from what he calls America's "endless wars."

When Trump took over the White House, the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan stood at about 8,400, and there were about 6,800 troops in Iraq.

Within a year, the number of troops in Afghanistan climbed to about 15,000. Trump approved commanders' requests for additional troops to reverse setbacks in the training of Afghan forces, fight an increasingly dangerous Islamic State group and put enough pressure on the Taliban to force it to the peace table.

In February, the U.S. and the Taliban signed an agreement that calls for the eventual complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

With an eye toward the election, Trump has accelerated his push to bring troops home, teasing that all U.S. troops could be out of Afghanistan by the end of the year.

Trump's Twitter promises to bring U.S. troops home make headlines. Has he kept them?

 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-twitter-promises-bring-u-s-troops-home-make-ncna1244572

  Consequently, in the closing weeks of his 2020 re-election campaign, it would seem appropriate to consider whether or not he has lived up to this promise, how he has attempted to do so and if this effort has made the nation safer.

 But as Americans vote this fall, Trump’s promise of a dramatic reduction in American troop presence abroad has not been achieved, nor has he dramatically shifted costs to U.S. allies. In fact, the Trump administration has increased U.S. defense spending in the last several years by nearly $140 billion, from $611 billion in 2016 to $750 billion in 2019, Foreign Affairs reported. When Trump settled into the Oval Office in January 2017, the United States had a little under 200,000 troops deployed overseas. Best estimates are that number has been reduced slightly, but this may largely reflect a difference in accounting. Since 2017, the Department of Defense has excluded troops deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria from its official reports, arguing that providing the number of troops in a combat theater violated operational security.