הגר"א וייס: משרד הבריאות עם הארץ ומיקל

https://www.kikar.co.il/360738.html

בעל המנחת אשר התייחס לנושא פתיחת בתי הכנסת והורה במהלך שיעורו השבועי כי יש להחמיר יותר מההנחיות של משרד הבריאות, כי "בדיני נפשות עסקינן" • צפו בשיעור 

 

"אני חושב שמשרד הבריאות הוא מיקל גדול, הוא עם הארץ, ואנחנו צריכים להחמיר יותר ממנו", אמר הרב שהוסיף בקריאה להקפיד ככל הניתן.

הגר"א וייס הוסיף והסביר, "אני חושב שאנחנו צריכים לנהוג במשנה חומרא במשנה זהירות, כי בדיני נפשות עסקינן".

 

 

Trump's Washington is failing badly with no end in sight to pandemic battle

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/21/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-washington/index.html

At the apex of political power, a President who ought to be unifying the country seems to be using his office to indulge his own need for attention and is exclusively talking to the sizable minority that supports him no matter what.

Amid crushing economic pain caused by shutdowns, a divided Congress cannot decide whether it wants to do more to help, compounding the impression that the fractured national political system and those in it are not equal to the moment.

Every four years, the instrument of political renewal, the presidential election, offers a pressure valve for partisan angst and, for all the nation's acrimonious political divides, legitimacy to the winner. 

 

 Trump is making clear that he plans to use every instrument of the federal government to ensure he wins a second term. This ranges from the seemingly trivial -- the use of the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop to a boosterish Fox News town hall -- to the more sinister, the declassification of intelligence to fuel conservative conspiracy theories.

On Wednesday, Trump threatened to withhold coronavirus aid from Michigan and Nevada -- states trying to protect their residents by offering them the option of voting by mail in November.

Trump, who previously falsely claimed that millions of fraudulent votes cost him a popular-vote win in 2016, warned of "thousands and thousands" of fake ballots. 

 

With polls finding Biden in the lead, Trump has shown he plans to build another campaign on false claims about Obama -- this time alleging criminality in the investigation mounted into his own 2016 campaign's many and unusual contacts with Russia.

It's an extraordinary spectacle: a President running for a second term and focusing not on his own record but pinning hopes on falsifying the conduct of his predecessor.

 

"He thinks he's a builder, but he's a destroyer of everything he touches," Biden said of his opponent.

'Morning Joe' Host Says Trump is 'Pushing 300' Pounds in Rebuttal to Fox News Host Calling His Health 'Superhuman'

https://www.newsweek.com/morning-joe-trump-300-pounds-1472433

MSNBC's Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough on Monday morning mocked White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro for conveying President Donald Trump's health is "superhuman," by suggesting Trump appears overweight and "pushing 300" pounds.

"You know, Stephanie, he's almost superhuman," Pirro said. "I don't know how anyone can deal with what he's dealing with, I mean I get frustrated with what's going on in Washington."

 

Covid-19 patients struggle with symptoms after recovery

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/05/20/coronavirus-covid-19-long-term-impact-health-recovery-gupta-dnt-newday-vpx.cnn

Did Trump Say More COVID-19 Testing Makes the US Look Bad?

 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-more-testing-look-bad/

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.”

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Mika Brzezinski: TV host blasts 'sick' Trump's conspiracy theory

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52748844

 In tweets, Mr Trump has appeared to link MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough to the death of an aide two decades ago, a conspiracy theory debunked by police.

"Donald, you're a sick person," anchor Mika Brzezinski said on air as she defended her husband.

Orthodox doctor who promoted coronavirus cocktail leaves community

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/orthodox-doctor-who-promoted-coronavirus-cocktail-leaves-community-628762

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.

Trump will lose in a landslide because of the economy, new election model predicts

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/20/business/economy-election-trump-biden-jobs/index.html

 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.

Oops: Elaine Chao Caught Pimping Her Family Business with China

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/06/elaine-chao-china-trip-foremost

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 Times reports 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.

 

China grants 18 trademarks in 2 months to Trump, daughter

https://apnews.com/0a3283036d2f4e699da4aa3c6dd01727

 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.

 

Jared Kushner Is China’s Trump Card

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/29/jared-kushner-is-chinas-trump-card

How the President’s son-in-law, despite his inexperience in diplomacy, became Beijing’s primary point of interest.

 

15 times Trump praised China as coronavirus was spreading across the globe

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/trump-china-coronavirus-188736

The president has lambasted the WHO for accepting Beijing’s assurances about the outbreak, but he repeated them, as well.

'We've been muzzled': CDC sources say White House putting politics ahead of science

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html

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.

Trump calls study his administration partly-funded phony

U.S.-China Relations Are In A Free Fall, Says Expert | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Mika Responds To Trump Tweet | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Donald Trump's WHO Letter About China Explained: An Annotated Timeline

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-who-letter-china-explained-annotated-timeline-1505379

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."

I was right, says prof who predicted pandemic would play itself out in 70 days

https://www.timesofisrael.com/i-was-right-says-prof-who-predicted-pandemic-would-play-itself-out-in-70-days/

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.

Trump Is Dangerously Predictable With China

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/01/trump-xi-china-coronavirus-trade-deal/

However erratic Trump’s positions on China appear at the surface, an honest examination of his engagement with Beijing reveals not unpredictability but a dangerous steadfastness. Trump has consistently placed his personal political interests over the national interest of the United States—even when the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Nor has Trump been shy about brandishing the trade deal as a pillar of his reelection campaign. Just before its signing, Trump crowed about the deal—describing it as a “big, beautiful monster”—at a campaign rally in the swing state of Ohio. During the signing ceremony itself, he declared: “It just doesn’t get any bigger than this.” Trump’s campaign, moreover, was planning a series of television ads touting the deal, whose signing and implementation spanned the exact period when America’s coronavirus trajectory was taking shape. It was precisely during this period when the dialogue between Washington and Beijing could have benefited from less fawning and more calls for transparency and international cooperation. But for Trump himself, the trade deal and its political implications didn’t “get any bigger,” and not even public health concerns could push him to jeopardize his rapport with Xi to secure it.

Other developments in Trump’s relations with Beijing that seem erratic on the surface display the same predictable, one-track mindset. This includes Trump’s protection of the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE against his own officials in the Department of Commerce. In March 2017, ZTE pleaded guilty in the United States to illegally exporting American technology to Iran and North Korea. A year later, when the firm violated the settlement agreement with the U.S. court, the Department of Commerce banned American companies from providing ZTE with technology for seven years. The ruling underscored the national security implications of ZTE’s original offenses, its disregard for the settlement agreement, and the company’s efforts to cover up that disregard.

 Trump upended this course of action in May 2018, when he abruptly tweeted about how he was working with Xi to get ZTE “back into business,” citing “[t]oo many jobs in China lost” and directing the Commerce Department to “get it done.” The U.S. president’s focus on unemployed Chinese—after railing against Beijing’s unfair economic practices for years—raised eyebrows and sowed confusion even within his own administration.

Trump owed tens of millions to Bank of China

https://www.politico.eu/article/trump-owes-tens-of-millions-to-the-bank-of-china-and-the-loan-is-due-soon/

Donald Trump is warning “China will own the United States” if Joe Biden is elected president.

But Trump himself has taken on debt from China. In 2012, his real estate partner refinanced one of Trump’s most prized New York buildings for almost $1 billion. The debt included $211 million from the state-owned Bank of China, which matures in the middle of what could be Trump’s second term.