Trump has always refused to see the difference between truth and lies

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/16/politics/borger-analysis-trump-truth-and-lies/index.html

 In the world according to Donald Trump, the years bring little change.

Back in 1990, when he was an aspiring monarch in the Atlantic City gambling hierarchy, his Taj Mahal casino was a mess -- plagued by slot machines that didn't work. The casino control commission shut one-third of them down -- on opening night, no less. A complete disaster.

But Trump, ever the con man, had a tale in mind. When asked about it by Larry King, he just lied. "The slots were so hot," he said "They blew apart...they were virtually on fire."

 At a certain point, as Woodward implies, Trump believes his own lies. And he lives his own lies. He wanted to talk with Woodward to impress him because he believes in his own ability to schmooze and succeed. So he spoke with him 18 times. And he did not succeed.

HHS says spokesman will take a two-month 'leave of absence' following apology for conspiracy-laden rant

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/16/politics/michael-caputo-hhs-cdc/index.html

 Michael Caputo, the top spokesman at the Department of Health and Human Services, is taking a two-month leave of absence from his post, the department announced Wednesday, a day after he apologized for a conspiracy theory-laden rant he made against career government scientists in which he accused them of "sedition" and working to undermine President Donald Trump.

Does Cuomo Share Blame for 6,200 Virus Deaths in N.Y. Nursing Homes?

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/nursing-homes-deaths-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

 Using self-reported data from nursing homes, the report cited data that showed that the deaths in nursing homes peaked on April 8 — a week before nursing homes admitted most of their infected patients from hospitals.

The patients transferred to nursing homes following their hospital stay, the report said, were likely no longer contagious because health experts believe infected individuals likely stop being contagious nine days after showing symptoms.

 

 

New York Times accused of going soft on Cuomo over NY nursing home controversy

 https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-accused-of-going-soft-on-cuomo-over-ny-nursing-home-controversy

 A report published on Wednesday in the Times posed the question "Does Cuomo Share Blame for 6,200 Virus Deaths in N.Y. Nursing Homes?" in its headline. However, just two paragraphs deep, the report suggests that any uproar towards Cuomo's weeks-long order for nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients is partisan.

 Conservative commentator Stephen Miller mocked the Times for using the "Republicans pounce" trope and called the paragraph "incredible."

"Thousands dead and The NY Times is still hedging for their dude," Miller tweeted.

 

Fox News' Bret Baier Slams Trump Surrogate Claiming He Didn’t Lie Abt Covid as Trump Blames Woodward

How The President Donald Trump WH Uses Lying As A Strategy | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Erdoğan’s Schoolboy Response to the Israel-UAE Deal

 https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/erdogan-israel-uae-turkey/?dicbo=v1-a1bb18a23552cd875453d198803871c9-0089f9b1d6697bc3ef352ad40f2d5213f8-gu4tqnjuhfswkljwhbqtcljumuztqljyha4gellbgq2dqnbyhe3wkntggm

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Turkey is protesting the UAE for establishing diplomatic relations with Israel—even though Ankara has had diplomatic relations with Israel for the past 71 years. If the UAE, as Ankara argues, has betrayed the “Palestinian cause” just by having diplomatic relations with Israel, then Turkey has been betraying the “Palestinian cause” since 1949.

 

Donald Trump's answer on how the Covid-19 pandemic will end is, um, not comforting

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/16/politics/donald-trump-covid-19-coronavirus-abc-townhall/index.html

 During a town hall on ABC Tuesday night, moderator George Stephanopoulos asked President Donald Trump why he said that he liked to "downplay" the threat posed by Covid-19 to the American public.

Here's the exchange that followed:

Trump: I'm not looking to be dishonest. I don't want people to panic. And we are going to be OK. We're going to be OK, and it is going away. And it's probably going to go away now a lot faster because of the vaccines.

It would go away without the vaccine, George, but it's going to go away a lot faster with it.

Stephanopoulos: It would go away without the vaccine?

 If Trump was referring to herd immunity when it comes to the number of people getting the virus, well, then he was talking about a massive loss of human life -- well in excess of the 400,000+ American deaths that one oft-cited model is projecting by January 1, 2021.

Almost 6 million deaths. And 60% of the population getting Covid is the low end of what experts estimate is necessary for her immunity to be achieved. The Mayo Clinic, for example, estimated that 70% of Americans would have to contract and then recover from Covid-19 in order for herd immunity to be achieved. That would mean 229 million cases and, with the death rate at 2.96%, about 6.8 million Americans dead from Covid-19 before herd immunity was achieved. That's more than 10 times the number of Americans killed in the Civil War.

 

 

Fact check: Trump made at least 20 false or misleading claims at ABC town hall

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/16/politics/fact-check-trump-abc-town-hall/index.html

 President Donald Trump got a rare grilling at an ABC News town hall in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

He responded to a series of tough questions from Pennsylvania voters, and some more from moderator George Stephanopoulos, much like he responds to easy questions from his favorite conservative television hosts -- with a barrage of dishonesty.

Trump made at least 20 false or misleading claims over the hour-and-a-half event, according to our preliminary count.

U.S. Officials Buried Intel, Could Face War Crimes Charges Over Obama-Trump Support for Yemen War

 https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/u-s-officials-buried-intel-could-face-war-crimes-charges-over-obama-trump-support-for-yemen-war/

 The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has waged an unrelenting and brutal war against the civilian population of Yemen since the spring of 2015 with full-throated diplomatic and material support from the United States. Spanning the administrations of both Barack Obama and President Donald Trump, the U.S. role in that war is increasingly fraught with legal liability due to American knowledge of the extreme casualties that have resulted from airstrikes.

 “The United Nations estimates that from March 2015 to November 2018 there were 17,640 combat-related civilian casualties in Yemen, including 10,852 caused by Coalition airstrikes,” a recent report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of State notes. “High-profile incidents include a March 2016 strike on a market that killed 97 civilians, an October 2016 attack on a funeral hall that killed 140, and an August 2018 strike on a school bus that killed 51, including 40 children.”

 That same report implicated “U.S. defense firms” as the likely source of the weapons used “in each of these airstrikes” and noted that such arms sales would have legally been subject to an “arms transfer review process” that was effectively short-circuited by an executive branch emergency certification in May of last year.

The emergency certification was previously described as “phony” by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in a statement regarding the surprise ouster of former State Department inspector general Steve Linick earlier this year.

Yemen war: Trump vetoes bill to end US support for Saudi-led coalition

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47958014

 US President Donald Trump has vetoed a bill passed by Congress to end support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Mr Trump described the resolution as an "unnecessary" and "dangerous" attempt to weaken his constitutional powers.

It is only the second time Mr Trump has used his presidential veto since he took office in 2017.

Opposition in Congress to his policy on Yemen grew last year after Saudi agents killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The resolution passed the House of Representatives in April and the Senate in March, the first time both chambers had supported a War Powers resolution, which limits the president's ability to send troops into action.

 

UN: US, allies may be complicit in Yemen war crimes

 https://thehill.com/policy/defense/459679-un-us-allies-may-be-complicit-in-yemen-war-crimes

 The U.S., the U.K. and France are among the nations accused of being complicit in possible war crimes in Yemen over their supplying of arms to the region, based on a report released by the United Nations Tuesday. 

The report, based on interviews with more than 600 victims and witnesses, accuses the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of killing civilians in airstrikes and denying them food, Reuters reports.

America is likely complicit in war crimes in Yemen. It's time to hold the US to account

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/03/yemen-airstrikes-saudi-arabia-mbs-us

 Saudi-led forces have deliberately targeted civilians since the war’s early days – and US officials have done little to stop it

 Since Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened in Yemen’s civil war in March 2015, the United States gave its full support to a relentless air campaign where Saudi warplanes and bombs hit thousands of targets, including civilian sites and infrastructure, with impunity. From the beginning, US officials insisted that American weapons, training and intelligence assistance would help the Saudis avoid causing even more civilian casualties.

 But this was a lie meant to obscure one of the least understood aspects of US support for Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen: it’s not that Saudi-led forces don’t know how to use American-made weapons or need help in choosing targets. They have deliberately targeted civilians and Yemen’s infrastructure since the war’s early days – and US officials have recognized this since at least 2016 and done little to stop it.

 A team of United Nations investigators, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, presented a devastating report in Geneva in early September detailing how the US, along with Britain and France, are likely complicit in war crimes in Yemen because of continued weapons sales and intelligence support to the Saudis and their allies, especially the United Arab Emirates.

Families Of COVID-19 Victims Who Died In Nursing Homes Call For Investigation Into NYS Department Of Health’s Directive

 https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/08/25/long-island-victims-families-calling-investigation-nursing-home-covid-19/

 CBS2 reached out to the state Department of Health on Tuesday evening and received the following response:

“We’ve said from the start that protecting our most vulnerable populations, including nursing home residents, is our top priority. The Department of Health has conducted more than 1,300 COVID-19 focus inspections — at least one onsite visit to every single nursing home and adult care facility in the state — since March 1. As the Department’s in-depth analysis of nursing home data found, COVID-19 fatalities in nursing homes were related to asymptomatic nursing home staff. We continue to support and protect those frontline nursing home workers with more than 14 million pieces of PPE.”

 As the CDC itself has said, this virus had likely already reached community spread in NYS by the time the feds banned travel from Europe.

As Dr. Zucker said previously, if you want to blame someone, blame the virus.

The following are releases and video pertaining to Dr. Zucker’s July 6 briefing. Please click here and here.

The Department’s report was validated by independent reviewers as indicated here.