As Trump gaslights America about coronavirus, Republicans face a critical choice

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/06/politics/us-election-trump-coronavirus-republicans/index.html

 

The gulf between reality and President Donald Trump's delusional vision of a waning coronavirus threat was on full display this weekend, as cases soared in key hotspots while he delivered speeches at Mount Rushmore and at the White House, with little physical distancing and few masks, directly contradicting the advice from his public health experts.

A majority of Americans do not approve of Trump's handling of the pandemic (or his response to the nation's racial reckoning), which has stirred consternation even in his own campaign as the President banks on an economic revival and good news about a vaccine to restore his political fortunes.

When the President's own medical advisers refuse to correct his misleading claim, the coronavirus trust gap grows

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/05/politics/trump-medical-advisers-fda-commissioner/index.html

On Saturday night, President Donald Trump made the dangerously inaccurate claim that 99% of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless." On Sunday morning, one of his top health experts failed to correct the assertion, a stunning breakdown of the government's core duty to keep Americans safe and protect the public health.

CNN's Dana Bash pressed US Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn repeatedly Sunday morning to explain the President's false statement in his Fourth of July speech from the South Lawn of the White House, one that minimized the devastating effects of the virus and seemed to encourage Americans to ignore the deadly risks of a pandemic that has so far claimed more than 129,000 American lives.

Hahn's refusal to specifically address Trump's misleading claim underscored the growing trust gap between Americans and this administration. Hahn apparently was afraid to correct the President -- a pattern that has repeated itself over and over again in an administration where disagreeing with or undercutting Trump has cost many appointees their jobs.

Scoop: Trump regrets Kushner advice on prison reform

https://www.axios.com/trump-kushner-second-thoughts-408d5a33-725d-442a-88e4-d6ab6742c139.html

 

President Trump has told people in recent days that he regrets following some of son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner's political advice — including supporting criminal justice reform — and will stick closer to his own instincts, three people with direct knowledge of the president's thinking tell Axios.

Between the lines: Trump never really wanted criminal justice reform, according to people who have discussed the subject with him privately. He's told them he only supported it because Kushner asked him to. Though he has repeatedly trumpeted it as a politically useful policy at times.

The president also pays close attention to Fox News' Tucker Carlson. A few weeks ago, in a brutal monologue, Carlson blamed Kushner for giving Trump bad advice.

Viewpoint: What Donald Trump gets wrong about Somalia

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53268582

President Donald Trump is making Somali-American congresswoman Ilhan Omar one of the bogeywomen of his campaign for re-election to the White House in November - and by proxy her country of birth, Somalia.

In his most recent attack, at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he tore into the 37-year-old alleging that she wanted to bring the "anarchy" of Somalia to the US.

"She would like to make the government of our country just like the country from where she came - Somalia. No government, no safety, no police, no nothing, just anarchy. And now, she's telling us how to run our country. No, thank-you."

Ms Omar, who arrived in the US as a child refugee in 1995, is the congressional representative for Minnesota, which includes the city of Minneapolis where African-American George Floyd was killed by police in May, reigniting Black Lives Matter protests.

 

But it was Ms Omar's Somali heritage the president chose to focus on in Tulsa, perhaps to distract from all the turmoil and unrest closer to home.

In response Ms Omar said his remarks were "racist". She added that his anger came out of a recent poll that had shown him trailing his rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, in her state, which is home to a large Somali-American community.

Top ultra-Orthodox MK threatens party will exit coalition if yeshivas shuttered

https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-ultra-orthodox-mk-threatens-party-will-exit-coalition-if-yeshivas-shuttered/

MK Moshe Gafni has threatened to withdraw his ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party from the coalition if the government decides to close down yeshivas in the face of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following reports that both the Health Ministry and National Security Council were pushing for yeshiva closures ahead of Monday’s coronavirus-focused cabinet meeting, Gafni told Hebrew media on Sunday that such a move would force him to turn to his party’s rabbinic leadership and “advise them not to be partners in such a government.”

 

Trump's 4th of July Speech on the National Mall. Trump's America vs. Our America

Republican Senator called out for slamming Obama for TWO Ebola deaths while Trump has 130,000

FDA commissioner refuses to defend Trump claim

Trump claims 99% of US Covid-19 cases are 'totally harmless' as infections surge

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/trump-claims-99-of-us-covid-19-cases-are-totally-harmless-as-infections-surge

“We got hit by the virus that came from China,” the president said, prompting a strange whoop and applause from someone in the audience. “We’ve made a lot of progress. Our strategy is moving along well. It goes out in one area, it rears back its ugly face in another area. But we’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned how to put out the flame.”

The number of infections now regularly tops 50,000 per day, higher than in April when the US was in the first grip of infections. Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, warned this week: “I think it’s pretty obvious that we are not going in the right direction.”

Trump returned to his now familiar and baseless complaint that America has a high caseload because it performs more tests. “Now we have tested almost 40m people. By so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless. Results that no other country can show because no other country has the testing that we have, not in terms of the numbers or in terms of quality.”

 

It was unclear how the president arrived at the “99%” harmless figure.

Trump uses July 4th address to put forward a dangerously misleading claim

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/05/politics/donald-trump-july-4-coronavirus/index.html

 As the nation marked a somber Fourth of July with many Americans confined to their homes amid an alarming rise in coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump used his stage on the White House's South Lawn Saturday to put forward a mystifying -- and dangerously misleading claim -- that 99% of coronavirus cases in America are "totally harmless."

The President's assertion without evidence about the virus was his latest attempt to minimize the threat of the coronavirus as it ravages the United States with cases rising across the country, and as an increasing number of top Republican officials from the nation's governors to members of Congress pleaded with Americans to redouble their efforts to curb the spread of the virus, warning of the dangerous consequences if current trends continue.

It was in that same speech that he made his latest puzzling claim about the virus, as he described the administration's flawed and lagging response to the pandemic as a great American success story and falsely suggested, once again, that the rise in cases in the US is due to increased testing.

It is unclear how the President could be under the impression that 99% of cases are "totally harmless." There have now been at least 2.8 million cases of coronavirus in the United States, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. While the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 35% of cases are asymptomatic, those patients can still spread the virus. As of Saturday, Johns Hopkins estimated that the fatality rate for the US was 4.6%. The White House has not returned CNN's request for comment on the President's claim.

The commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration on Sunday declined to defend the President and repeatedly refused to say whether Trump's remark is true or false.

Trump faces a now historical disadvantage

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/05/politics/polls-july-analysis/index.html

Now, the past isn't necessarily prologue. There is time for volatility. The polls will probably bounce around during the convention period. (Part of the reason the first 10 days of July are a good snapshot is that it is usually after the primary season but before the conventions.) Trump could close the gap and could very well win.

But make no mistake: An incumbent trailing by double-digits in early July with an opponent over 50% is a heavy underdog for reelection.

The ADL’s data proves it: The right owns anti-Semitism in America

https://forward.com/opinion/446360/the-adls-data-proves-it-the-right-owns-anti-semitism-in-america/

For all that headlines like to talk about anti-Semitism as a phenomenon that clusters on the ideological extremes of both sides of the political spectrum, the ADL data confirms that in the United States today, the vast majority of ideologically-linked anti-Semitism is committed by the political right.

 

To be clear, the left is not blameless in the rise of anti-Semitism in the US. And, of course, Jews in other countries such as the United Kingdom face very different threats. But the ADL’s US numbers suggest that out of the 270 anti-Semitic incidents committed by known political extremists in the US in 2019, at least two-thirds were committed by known white supremacist groups.

Duckworth to Trump: I won't be lectured by draft dodger

Trump's powerful message of rage

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/04/opinions/trump-mount-rushmore-speech-monuments-rhetoric-dantonio/index.html

 

Breathe easy, America. President Donald Trump's got this. A deadly pandemic is tearing through the country, but the statues are going to be all right.

Trump swooped into the heartland on Friday and delivered this news, along with a message of rage at the foot of Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. Ignoring the fact that nearly 130,000 Americans have already died from Covid-19, with new cases topping 50,000 a day, he stoked fears of an "angry mob" engaged in "a merciless campaign to wipe out our history." In an address that could be called "American Carnage II" for following the emotional blueprint he laid out in his inaugural address, Trump declared that federal officers would be dispatched to protect monuments and statues wherever they were threatened.

Trump's 40-minute speech was a master class in rhetorical deception. He lumped together the racists of the Confederacy with the figures on Mt. Rushmore, insisting they are all being reconsidered in the same way. Several elected officials have ordered the removal of Confederate monuments in an effort to recognize the painful legacy of slavery, while the debate over monuments of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt is more nuanced, given their positive contributions to the nation. No sweeping effort is being made to remove all of these monuments and to suggest one exists amounts to sounding a false alarm.

In his speech, Trump appeared to want to associate himself with the more admired figures of the past; as he spoke of Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and others, Trump sounded like a fifth-grader reading random pages of a history book. There was Washington crossing the Delaware, Jefferson dispatching Lewis and Clark and Roosevelt overseeing the construction of the Panama Canal.

In the simpleton's view of history offered by Trump, there is no room for the slaves owned by Washington and Jefferson or for Roosevelt's white supremacy. According to this perspective, sins and flaws must be denied; otherwise the greats of history cannot be honored. This is, of course, what a child might think upon learning that his or her parents are not quite perfect. But with maturity, children, like citizens, can both revere their heroes for their strengths and criticize them for their failings -- and judge who, in the end, deserves to be on a pedestal.