A once restrained Fauci unleashes on White House coronavirus approach days before election

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/01/politics/donald-trump-anthony-fauci-2020-campaign/index.html

 As President Donald Trump fights his way through the final days of the presidential campaign denying the pandemic — by lashing out at doctors, disputing science and slashing the press for highlighting rising coronavirus case counts — the long-running rift between the White House and Dr. Anthony Fauci burst into the open Saturday night.

For months as Trump undercut his own medical experts, sidelined scientists and refused to take basic steps to control the virus while mocking former Vice President Joe Biden for wearing a mask, the nation's top infectious disease specialist held his tongue and took the President's attacks in stride as he continued to plead with the American people to socially distance and wear masks.

 But Fauci's restraint appeared to have evaporated in a Washington Post interview that was published Saturday night, in which he called out the White House for allowing its strategy for fighting the virus to be shaped in part by a neuroradiologist with no training in the field of infectious disease and said he appreciated chief of staff Mark Meadows' honesty when he admitted to CNN's Jake Tapper during a recent interview that the administration has given up controlling the spread of the virus.

 

Historian who correctly predicted every election since 1984 makes his call

Marc Anthony

Doctors groups rip Trump for touting baseless conspiracy over COVID-19 death count

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/31/trump-claims-doctors-profiting-attributing-deaths-covid-19/6101540002/

  Medical groups are slamming President Donald Trump for resurfacing a baseless conspiracy on campaign stops that doctors are inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths in the USA in order to drive up profits during the pandemic.

 

 

Trump uses Midwestern swing to launch false attacks on doctors while Covid cases rise

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/31/politics/donald-trump-doctors-midwest-2020-election/index.html

"Our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, 'I'm sorry but everybody dies of Covid,' " Trump said at a rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, on Friday. Unearthing conspiracy theories from the bowels of the Internet, the President claimed with no evidence that doctors from other countries list underlying diseases as the cause of death, while US doctors choose coronavirus.

 "With us, when in doubt -- choose Covid," Trump said. "Now they'll say 'Oh that's terrible what he said,' but that's true. It's like $2,000 more, so you get more money."

White House aide says Trump's vaccine-by-Election Day promise was 'arbitrary'

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/30/white-house-aide-says-trumps-vaccine-by-election-day-promise-was-arbitrary-433670 

 A top White House adviser on Friday called President Donald Trump’s long-shot pledge to have a coronavirus vaccine by Nov. 3 “kind of an arbitrary deadline,” as Election Day prepares to come and go with no shot having even applied for approval yet.

“We’ve got nearly half a dozen vaccines that are in Phase Three clinical trials, which is record time to get it there for a novel virus like we’re dealing with,” White House strategic communications director Alyssa Farah told reporters. “We’re still highly confident we’ll have one by the end of the year and be prepared to deploy it to a hundred million Americans.” 

 In the Oct. 22 debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Trump claimed that “we have a vaccine” that is “ready” and would be announced “within weeks.”

 At a campaign rally in Arizona this week, Trump assured attendees that they would have a vaccine “momentarily,” a promise that came as the country has seen a surge in new cases nearly everywhere.

Twitter CEO suggests Holocaust denial not banned, in Senate grilling

https://www.timesofisrael.com/twitter-ceo-suggests-holocaust-denial-not-banned-on-platform-in-senate-grilling/ 

 Gardner specifically asked Dorsey: “If somebody denied the Holocaust happened, it’s not misinformation?”

“It’s misleading information,” Dorsey responded. “But we don’t have a policy against that type of misleading information.”

Trump Rushes Sen. Martha McSally On Stage During Arizona Rally | NBC News NOW

Donald Trump has run a historically bad reelection campaign

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/29/opinions/trump-bad-reelection-campaign-wierson-honan/index.html

 As we head into the final days of the presidential contest -- a time when candidates generally race to make their best closing arguments to the voters -- it is worth looking at how badly run the Trump campaign has been.

Barr/Trump Lose Big in NY Court: Judge Rules DOJ Can't Protect Trump from E.Jean Carrol Lawsuit

White House informs Congress of plans to sell as many as 50 F-35s to UAE

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/white-house-informs-congress-of-plans-to-sell-as-many-as-50-f-35s-to-uae/

  The Trump administration has updated Congress of its intent to sell F-35 advanced fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates, a ranking House Democrat announced on Thursday. The informal notification to the House Foreign Affairs Committee revealed that the White House plans to sell as many as 50 units of the Lockheed Martin-made jets for roughly $10.4 billion, a senior congressional staffer told The Times of Israel. Israel has ordered the same number of F-35s from the US, though not all of them have been transferred yet.

Donald Trump's secret sauce for not paying his debts

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/28/politics/donald-trump-loans-debt-new-york-times/index.html

How do you get a bank to forgive almost $300 million in loans for a failed real estate project? You act like Donald Trump.

This, from The New York Times about a Chicago skyscraper built by Trump that led to him to incur $287 million in unpaid debt by 2010, is remarkable:

"When the project encountered problems, he tried to walk away from his huge debts. For most individuals or businesses, that would have been a recipe for ruin. But tax-return data, other records and interviews show that rather than warring with a notoriously litigious and headline-seeking client, lenders cut Mr. Trump slack — exactly what he seemed to have been counting on."

 Which means this: Donald Trump was such a public bully that the lenders preferred to work to eat the debt (or a large portion of it) rather than risk a fight with him because, well, they had made the calculation it simply wasn't worth it.

 

 

U.S. election result will shake up Israeli politics

 https://www.axios.com/us-presidential-election-israeli-politics-eb6a8835-dc54-4d15-b5f0-8f646b1e080d.html

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's biggest domestic political asset is on the ballot on Nov. 3 — his relationship with President Trump.

Why it matters: The outcome of America's election could help determine whether Israel soon faces yet another election of its own.

 

trump ended pandemic