Pandemic: Pence to Censor Health Officials Speech

    Trump has ordered Pence to control, filter and spin all virus information and statements by government health officials, to protect Donald Trump's re-election. Keeping American citizens in the dark is the Soviet system, authoritarian solution.

    This is not the Onion, but front page NYT:

    Pence Will Control All Coronavirus Messaging From Health Officials

    Government health officials and scientists will have to coordinate statements with the vice president’s office, one of three people designated as the administration’s primary coronavirus official.

    The White House moved on Thursday to tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists, directing them to coordinate all statements and public appearance with the office of Vice President Mike Pence, according to several officials familiar with the new approach.....

    Mr. Trump rejected the assessment from a top health official that it was inevitable that the coronavirus would spread more broadly inside the United States.

    Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, one of the country’s leading experts on viruses and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told associates that the White House had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance.

    From the Atlantic Magazine a few days ago"

    Experts say this bad 'cold' virus may join 4 other common less bad corona viruses as seasonal illnesses. From the Atlantic 2 days ago"

    "Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But, he clarifies emphatically, this does not mean that all will have severe illnesses. It's likely that many will have mild disease, or may be asymptomatic, he said. As with influenza, which is often life-threatening to people with chronic health conditions and of older age, most cases pass without medical care. (Overall, about 14 percent of people with influenza have no symptoms.)

    Lipsitch is far from alone in his belief that this virus will continue to spread widely. The emerging consensus among epidemiologists is that the most likely outcome of this outbreak is a new seasonal disease a fifth endemic coronavirus. With the other four, people are not known to develop long-lasting immunity. If this one follows suit, and if the disease continues to be as severe as it is now, cold and flu season could become cold and flu and COVID-19 season..

    Note that the death rate for the flu is 0.1%, the death rate so far calculated for CO-19 is 2% with treatment, 20 times as high as the flu

     

    Comments

    Hopefully they have met their match in Anthony Fauci, there was just something the way he marched up to the podium at the press conference as if to suggest "ok enough of these clowns".Made me recall from way back during the AIDS crisis, how he's got the I-give-a-fuck-for-bedside-manner, God is Science and I am General Patton thing down pat.


    Nice to hear that, I never watch Trump, can't stand his bs.


    From this about what he's been up to today, seems to me Trump is not that worried about things, it's like he's washed his hands (no pun intended) of this pesky coronavirus thing, can now throw Pence under the bus if things go sour (llke at the Apprentice hiring and firing when appropriate) keeping the fans entertained is what's important:

    Trump spent 45 minutes today w/producers behind a play that dramatized the text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, complaining about why "some people are in prison and others aren't." He is now meeting with Diamond and Silk and others. https://t.co/5jIxvyyUfl

    — Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) February 27, 2020

    There is also this revealing how he's thinking of The Apprentice character and ratings 24/7:

    At one point during a lengthy pool spray shortly ago in the Cabinet Room, Trump got irritated when a (visibly pregnant) reporter from NBC, @HallieJackson, slipped quietly out of the room.

    He said NBC is worse than CNN, and that he made lots of money for NBC with The Apprentice.

    — Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) February 27, 2020

    He'll just take bragging about the stock market off the table for now. Never reallly cared about Wall Street votes anyways, it's all about the fans. Leaving them folks to Kudlow and Mnuchin to deal with. Again, they can always be thrown under the bus if need be.


    BIGGEST POINT DROP IN DOW HISTORY today. Obama can't say that. Trump will, as usual,  be golfing all weekend. 

    What happens if Czar Pence must talk with a female MD, will his wife need to be with him?


    .@NewYorker's Brian Stauffer nails it. pic.twitter.com/SR9LW2ekCT

    — Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) February 28, 2020


    Nate Silver:


    The governor of the state of Washington:


    Rep. Ted Lieu, to the CDC Director in congressional committee today:


    oh, reminded now I saw this from two days ago, is actually quite an amazing thing to behold: good ole GOP guy Sen. Kennedy raking Homeland Security Acting Chief Wolf over the coals; among other things, he wants to know why Wolf doesn't know if they have respirator masks for everyone in the country:

    "You're the secretary. I think you oughta know that answer" -- Even @SenJohnKennedy (R) is fed up with Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf's ignorance about coronavirus pic.twitter.com/yx1anMAAFV

    — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 25, 2020

    Article on same @ The Hill.


    Senator Chris Murphy:


    “Labs in New York City and New York state found problems with the reconfigured [CDC] test, and have rejected the option to use it altogether.” https://t.co/3DF1sAvtIC

    — southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 27, 2020

    Edit to add:

     


    Well here we are, facing a worst-nightmare scenario: A national health threat that will, at the least, require the keenest science and public health minds and resources to fight it. And who’s in the big office? The most corrupt, science-averse, organizationally inept president in the nation’s history doing -exactly- what you’d expect; bragging, lying, appointing inept expendable political sycophants to the front lines, and dropping the curtains.

    (Saw the above comment from Ken in Chicago.)



    That's silly, I'm sure Salk spent most of his time and energy praying for a cure.




    Looks like on impulse during a rally high, Trump's decided to bet the house:

     


    FWIW, Daniel Dale felt this was ambiguous, and he is an expert on Trump rally shtick by now


    He's confusing them:


    Jonathan Chait, link, -

    "....Pandemic response calls for competence and establishing trust, both qualities of which he is bereft. Trump performs best when he can locate a foil to bully, yet the virus — unlike a trade partner or opposing politician — offered no such target. Unless he planned to unveil a mean nickname for COVID-19, none of the tools in his bag seemed to work....


    The Conservatives are a cult. They would see people die rather than criticize Donald Trump. 


    Trump rally before election, Trump: "Get your mail in ballots signed and mailed in, particularly if you aren't feeling too well, I need your vote!"

    "-Trump sees absolutely everything in the world through the lens of how it affects him and only him. 

    His cult follows suit. A virus is a hoax invented by Democrats? That's crazy talk. 

    The lack of preparedness -- the firing of all the people whose job it was to protect the public from a pandemic -- makes perfect sense to Trump. He doesn't need those people to protect him from a illness. He is insulated by other methods. 

    The public needed those people. Trump does not care.-"          ( comment at WaPo)


    Major major damage control team on duty today, tried to make it all better with today's press conference performance, I watched most of it, there was great improvement, someone even got Trump to talk softly and act a little humbler than normal, tone the narcissism down a notch, he was trying to play a character. It was striking enough for me to imagine him doing a prep session as with a debate. He was almost trying too hard to praise other people, and it was clearly kinda phony. I suspect Fauci had some input as a mediator of some kind, i.e., look we don't have to disparage you political people just to get the truth out, we can do both. This became clear to me when he went out of his way to volunteer  to speak on how he hasn't been muzzled at all when the question came up, and stressed how messaging is important..

    BUT we got the story of what happened before today now by leakers galore:

    Inside Trump’s frantic attempts to minimize the coronavirus crisis

    By Yasmeen Abutaleb, Ashley Parker and  Josh Dawsey Feb. 29, 2020 at 6:13 p.m. EST

    [...] Interviews with nearly two dozen administration officials, former White House aides, public health experts and lawmakers — many speaking on the condition of anonymity to share candid assessments and details — portray a White House scrambling to gain control of a rudderless response defined by bureaucratic infighting, confusion and misinformation.

    “It’s complete chaos,” a senior administration official said. “Everyone is just trying to get a handle on what the [expletive] is going on.” [....]

    When Trump stepped in front of the cameras, “he had not slept for a day-and-a-half, two-and-a-half” days, as acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told a gathering of conservatives Friday morning. The president offered an account that was, by turns, misleading and sanguine [....]

    An 'inadequate' response

    As Trump was in the air, a problematic scene was also unfolding on Capitol Hill, where senators were returning from a week-long Presidents’ Day recess to a private briefing with the top administration officials leading the coronavirus response.

    The evening before, the administration had unveiled a $2.5 billion spending plan to combat the virus, and both at the closed-door briefing and in a subsequent open hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a number of Republican senators voiced a variety of concerns. They fretted about the administration’s level of preparation to date, communication failures with Capitol Hill and, in the words of Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), the “lowball” funding request.

    Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — a target of Trump’s ire for his vote to convict the president of an impeachment charge — was among those who stood in the private briefing to register objections.

    “One, I’m very disappointed in the preparation that’s been done over the last few years anticipating the potential of an outbreak of substance,” Romney said in an interview later [....]

    Azar, who had previously been in charge, found out about his de facto demotion just moments before Trump publicly announced it. But two senior administration officials said Azar found it empowering to have the vice president formally join the response.

    “He’s not in control anymore, and that’s clear,” a senior HHS official said of Azar, who remains chairman of the administration’s coronavirus task force. “You need HHS at the table — he’s just not going to be the one guiding the administration through the response." [....]

    goes on and on...



    found retweeted by Claire McCaskill:




    EXCLUSIVECDC blocked FDA official from premises 

    Sent to help the administration’s coronavirus response, a test specialist was stopped at CDC’s door and made to wait overnight. (happened weekend of 2/22)

    BY  @ Politico.com, March 3


    Fauci in short interview Friday: 'You don't want to go to war with a president'

    How Dr. Anthony Fauci is navigating the coronavirus outbreak in the Trump era.

    By Sarah Owermohle @ Politico.com, March 3

    [....] “You should never destroy your own credibility. And you don't want to go to war with a president,” Fauci, who has been the country’s top infectious diseases expert through a dozen outbreaks and six presidents, told POLITICO in an interview Friday. “But you got to walk the fine balance of making sure you continue to tell the truth.”

    And the truth about coronavirus? “I don't think that we are going to get out of this completely unscathed,” he said. “I think that this is going to be one of those things we look back on and say boy, that was bad.”

    The plainspoken scientist with a heavy Brooklyn accent has navigated outbreaks from HIV to Ebola, Zika and the anthrax scare with an ability to talk frankly yet reassuringly about threats, to explain science, public health and risk to the public in a way few can match [....]

    Fauci sat down with POLITICO in his office Friday, amid dozens of photos of himself with presidents, politicians and celebrities from Magic Johnson to Barbra Streisand. It was just hours after reports that the White House had ordered Fauci off the airwaves sparked a firestorm of protest from senators, former government officials and public health experts.

    Fauci denied being muzzled. He did say that Pence’s office wanted him to run interviews past it for re-clearance once Pence was named the White House’s point person on the virus [....

    And yet, Fauci has not only survived the town for decades but managed to make his priorities those of the presidents, above all HIV. Along with Redfield and HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir, Fauci helped engineer getting the president include a pledge to ending HIV transmission in his State of the Union address last year.

    But many challenges are still ahead, including sometimes contradicting the president he doesn’t want to “go to war” with. Fauci says it will be OK: he knows that “even if it’s uncomfortable” his years of truth-telling have earned him a backlog of respect [....]


    I felt from the beginning, that Pence was being set up to be thrown under the bus, especially as Trump realized he can't "win" anything by taking responsibility. But this goes way beyond that! He talked as if he has inside info:

    CNN's Begala: Trump will 'dump Pence' for Haley on day of Democratic nominee's acceptance speech

    By Joe Concha @ TheHill.com,  03/02/20 04:54 PM EST

    Longtime CNN political analyst Paul Begala predicted on Monday that President Trump is "gonna dump [Vice President] Mike Pence in favor of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley" on July 16 when the Democratic nominee is slated to give his or her acceptance speech.

    The former "Crossfire" co-host "guaranteed" Trump will throw Pence "under the bus" because of his handling of the coronavirus, which the president tapped Pence to lead a task force on last week.

    “This is not a prediction. It’s a certainty. On Thursday, July 16 — that’s the date the Democrat gives his or her acceptance address — on that day, to interrupt that narrative, Donald Trump will call a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. He’s going to dump Mike Pence and put Nikki Haley on the ticket to try to get those suburban moms," Begala predicted during a panel discussion at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C.

    "You watch. Guaranteed," Begala said. “Trump put Pence in charge of coronavirus to throw him under the bus." [....]


    I predict on July 17, Deputy Führer Pence will, solo, fly a Fieseler Storch aircraft to a survivable crash landing in Britain, where Boris Johnson will detain him on orders of Vladimir Putin.


    Oh the humanity! laugh


    yeah under da bus wit ya:

    in other news, Congress passed Schumer's $8.3 billion, sending it to Trump, he better sign it if he knows what's good for him:


    heh:


    China has tested millions. Hong Kong tested dogs, some of which had mild infection. Hawaiian governor asked Japan for testing kits.

    We need a fund to reimburse those who test positive as to paychecks missed, and need a law that they can get their job back if they recover and are no longer contagious. Otherwise, many people will not want to be tested at all.


    reminder that Pence doesn't get thrown under bus until July so in the meantime it's Obama's fault: Trump attempts to blame Obama for coronavirus test kit shortagePresident vaguely attacks Obama administration ‘decision’ amid slow rollout of testing for virus @ TheGuardian.com, March 5


    he's heckuva job Pence so far, doesn't even have spin ready for basic questions:

    Pence walks out when a reporter asks the essential question, "Can the uninsured get tested for #coronavirus?" Then a WH staffer scolds the reporter. https://t.co/CCbXgOXMPy

    — Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) March 5, 2020

    by the way, this problem has been taken care of in New York state two days ago:

    Cuomo's directive prohibits insurers from imposing cost-sharing on New York residents for an in-network provider office visit, urgent care center or ER when the purpose is to be tested for #COVID19.

    Will other states follow suit?https://t.co/3KllGP93er #coronavirus

    — David Beard (@dabeard) March 3, 2020

    If you don’t have a doctor, call 311 and we will help you get care. Head to https://t.co/5D0ReMxrb8 for more information. pic.twitter.com/bGpzt1FMhA

    — Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) March 4, 2020

    I haven't seen, however, any attempt to deal with the "time-off work means no income" problem and I saw plenty of questions about it on those threads. Especially in the metro area, it's basically free-lance, sole proprietor and independent contractor central, so they're ignoring it because there's no way the state could afford it.



    still doing a heckuva job:


    Whistleblower!! NeverTrumper!!!

      The Border Control employees likely don't have training, masks or gloves, they're supposed to question people who might infect them? Trump says he has a hunch it'll be over by April anyway.


    On tinderhooks waiting to see how this month-long episode of The Apprentice ends: Stable Genius Has a "Hunch". More like Scarlett? I can't think about that right now. If I do I'll go crazy. I'll think about it tomorrow. What can I brag about?

    March 5, 10:27 pm:


    "Doomed from the start"


    Thinking now is time to re-watch some of the first season episodes of Walking Dead. Not kidding.

    APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
    Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
    Memory and desire, stirring
    Dull roots with spring rain.
    Winter kept us warm, covering         
    Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
    A little life with dried tubers.

    Not that I expect mass deaths and apocalypse (tho maybe an apocalyptic situation economically for quite some time). It's just that I have a lot of 70-something friends and acquaintances, who themselves replaced a lot of near and dear who  I lost all around age 60 in the last 10 years or so. Many in the month of April. Kind of spooked, realizing some reaping may happen again. What can one do? It's coming to grips with the grim reaper, how he can really reap wily-nily sometimes, not just at harvest time. It will no doubt seem like everyday life is still going on because we will rationalize what is happening as "normal" in trying to cope. Dejas vus allover again early 80's AIDS crisis....when no one knew what was going to happen and whether a big deal was being made of not so much. Besides the loss of so many, changed life forever, no more sexual revolution, we just watched it slowly happen, powerless.


    HIV was considered something impacting "those people". COVID-19 effects everyone and could kill grandparents. If it really spreads, there will be a freak out. That is why Trump put Pence in charge. If things fall apart, Trump will say did not follow instructions.

    It is unclear if this Coronavirus will slow down in the summer

    Looking at two other deadly members of the coronavirus family, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), could, Bollyky says, help us understand how COVID-19 may act in the summer heat. “Past coronavirus outbreaks, SARS and MERS, haven’t really exhibited clear evidence of being seasonal,” Bollyky says.”The SARS outbreak did end in July, but it is not clear that weather. MERS does not show any sign of being seasonal.”

    https://time.com/5790880/coronavirus-warm-weather-summer/


    IT'S NOT WISE TO BE A PATIENT AT AN AMERICAN HOSPITAL FOR ANYTHING RIGHT NOW. Yes I am shouting. And it's not me saying that, it's the country's nurses.

    Nurses Battling Coronavirus Beg for Protective Gear and Better Planning

    Health care workers are among the most at risk of contracting the virus, but many say they lack protective gear and protocols to keep themselves and their patients safe.

    By Farah Stockman & Mike Baker @ NYTimes.com, March 6

    [...] Concerns from nurses in Washington State and California echo those of nurses nationwide. National Nurses United, a union that represents about 150,000 nurses across the country, announced on Thursday the sobering results of an online survey it recently conducted.

    Of the 6,500 nurses who participated, 29 percent said their hospitals had a plan in place to isolate potential coronavirus patients, and 44 percent said they had received guidance from their employers about how to handle the virus.

    Sixty-three percent had access to N95 face masks, and a quarter of the respondents had access to an even more protective mask recommended by the union, known as a PAPR, or a powered air purifying respirator.

    One California nurse, who is in a 14-day self-quarantine after caring for a coronavirus patient, complained that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was not testing her for the virus quickly enough. “This is not the ticket dispenser at the deli counter; it’s a public health emergency!” she wrote in a statement shared by National Nurses United.

    At a news conference on Thursday afternoon, the union demanded, among other things, that the federal government ensure all health care workers receive the highest levels of protective equipment, that any vaccine that is developed be offered to the public for free, and that Congress immediately pass an emergency spending package in response to the virus [....]


    this this this. the House has an obligation to conduct aggressive oversight of the administration’s coronavirus response, and its refusal to do so is an abdication of responsibility https://t.co/xMoyMBKGsm

    — b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) March 6, 2020


    "Capitalizing" on this pandemic should be providing competent nonpartisan national leadership based upon our best public health expertise,  as neither exists in the Trump administration. 


    Making sure the sky is the limit for the eventual vaccine maker(s):

    This is why our costs are so high. They aren't interested in a regulated playing field, ala Obamacare, that's not good enough for them. They want ruthless winner-take-all-capitalism, so that they can sell stock in their company on the chance that they're the one who discovers the golden goose. This is also why they won't do R & D for solutions to diseases that don't afflict a sufficient number of victims.


    Guess which nation produces (economically) the greatest share of the world's vaccines. Guess which nation has also done over 1 million coronavirus tests.  China. on vaccines, WHO, 2014:

    "China is currently producing nearly all of the commonly-used vaccines for viral diseases such as influenza, measles, rabies (for humans), mumps, rotavirus, hepatitis A and B and for bacterial diseases, including typhoid, tetanus and diphtheria"?

    American big pharma doesn't like antibiotics or vaccines, as vaccines are just one or two shots, antibiotics, often 5 pills for 5 days. They prefer meds people take forever,  never stop taking.


    Trump is insane

    In a rambling speech today

    President Trump interrupted a Friday press conference on the 2019 novel coronavirus to ask a Fox News reporter whether his town hall show on Fox on Thursday night had good ratings. In a rambling briefing that bordered on bizarre, Trump also said coronavirus testing kits were almost as “perfect” as his infamous phone call with the Ukrainian president and he didn’t want infected cruise ship passengers to come ashore in California because it would increase the U.S. tally of COVID-19 cases. “I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship,” he said.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-trump-interrupts-coronavirus-briefing-to-ask-fox-reporter-about-his-tv-ratings

     

    After signing an $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill, President Donald Trump fielded questions from reporters and made a number of false statements.

    • The president's remarks in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room were meandering and, at times, confusing, such as when he said "We closed it down, we stopped it," in reference to travel from China, not the virus.
    • Despite facts to the contrary, Trump said the virus has actually boosted the American economy because "We're getting a lot of business from people staying ... People are staying here and spending their money here as opposed to going to Europe and other places."
    • Once again, Trump downplayed the severity of the virus and touted his administration's response to it: "So I think we're in great shape. I mean, I think we're in great shape."

    https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-says-america-in-great-shape-amid-coronavirus-outbreak-2020-3

     

     

     


    Marketwatch article said thousands of businesses in America could go bankrupt, and 16 million jobs lost (in 2008,  - 8 million jobs were lost) if pandemic avoiding consumers cut back to 'basics'. If that happens Republicans might invoke the 25th Amendment and lock Trump up in his tower.


    Take him to the Tower? Hardly. The GOP will be like millions of Quasimodos swinging from the belfry til any final moment. 3 1/2 years I've waited for any sign of unified abandonment, rats leaving the ship en masse. Aside frim 1 or 2 strayer's, they've all stayed nicely on the plantation.

    The 25th will go unused.


    his whole business life was about spinning silken words about a sow's ear reality. I think they knew what they were getting there in this kind of situation, including someone who would blithely talk up the economy even if we were in a depression. After all, stock market and investor and consumer confidence is all strings and mirrors. But few probably knew the massive extent of his straight out lying and continuous stream of fantasy narrative, which spoiled any credibility he had from Trump branding that might have had his spin helping boost economic confidence in downturn situations. He's useless quite some time ago for this purpose, utterly ruined--Scaramucci is the perfect example: once a fan of the Trump spin, now endorsing Biden.


    He's been working off a fake business model for so long.
    How many people work at Amazon and Microsoft and WalMart and GM and Exxon-Mobil,
    vs this little mom-and-pop family business called "Trump Inc."?
    WeWork's gone down because people realized it was just a glorified office space company,
    nothing new & high tech. Trump's been running the same scam,
    except Russians aren't pumping up WeWork.


    The problem that we face is that his supporters believe what he says and many are unlikely to follow prevention suggestions made by the medical experts. Many would not take the vaccine when it becomes available. 



    Trump apparently doesn't know that his grandfather died in a viral epidemic in 1918.

    The outbreak was initially dismissed by the sitting President

    In May 1918, Frederick Trump—Donald’s paternal grandfather—was taking an afternoon stroll with his young son when he suddenly announced that he felt too ill to continue, and needed to retire to his bed. One day later, Frederick died at home, having succumbed to a case of pneumonia that would later be identified as a complication of the “Spanish flu.” The president’s grandfather, in fact, was one of the first domestic casualties of the world’s worst modern pandemic, which ultimately killed millions. 

    The death toll was undoubtedly worsened by the efforts of President Woodrow Wilson’s administration to talk down the health risk. Sound familiar?

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-pandemic-killed-trumps-grandpa-this-one-could-destroy-his-presidency?ref=scroll


    Interesting but then there's also that he has known germaphobe tendencies, so there might be some strange psychological issues as regards denial or some such. Being a narcissist in itself is denial that others are of equal value to your own value.


    All the supportive Fox News spin about how everything is under control and people are panicking unnecessarily, soon to be history?


    Whistleblower to the A.P. (which makes it harder to call it "faux news)":

     



    Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) mocked coronavirus concerns by wearing a gas mask on the House floor just days before an infected man from his district died.

    “Reviewing the coronavirus supplemental appropriation and preparing to go vote,” he said in a tweet Wednesday before the Senate approved an $8.3 billion emergency funding bill to combat the virus.

    In the tweet, Gaetz is seen wearing a gas mask

    Just two days later, Gaetz released a statement saying a death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, had occurred in his district.

    “I’m extremely saddened to learn of the first fatality in our district from coronavirus, a Northwest Floridian residing in Santa Rosa County,” he said. “Our prayers are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/matt-gaetz-gas-mask-mock-coronavirus-concerns-one-of-his-constituents-just-died-from-it_n_5e64067cc5b68d61645545d6

    Gaetz, like Trump, is a jerk.



    some CPAC peeps apoplectic:


    Hitler's generals eventually felt they had to act...


    Trump insult tweet to Gov. Cuomo:


    And then they came for Burroughs...


    Preet Bharara epic twitter rant, mad as hell, can't take it anymore:

    https://t.co/PPRcZW4PuZ

    — Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) March 9, 2020

    Donald Trump is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on America

    — Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) March 9, 2020

    He is a liar

    He is a cheat

    He is a bad businessman

    He can’t spell

    He doesn’t read

    He doesn’t listen

    — Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) March 9, 2020

    He has no principles

    He doesn’t give a shit about anyone

    He is profoundly disloyal

    He projects his every flaw on others

    — Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) March 9, 2020


    Let them eat tennis #BeBest


    A skating rink comes to Manhattan.

    Old folklore rehashed.

    The GOP does Uncle Remus

    https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/kt-mcfarland-trumps-coronavirus-response...



    Some Hospitals Are Close to Running Out of Crucial Masks for Coronavirus

    As hospitals in the U.S. prepare for an influx of the highly infectious cases, their supplies of a much-needed respirator mask are dwindling fast.

    @ NYTimed. com 47m ago

    Compare the kind of protective equipment South Koreans have to transport an infected patient in the photo below, sigh:


    Matt Gaetz possibly an asymptomatic community spreader to Trump! Secret double agent? Stranger things have happened! Qanon needs to get on this!

    2 Congressmen Who Spent Time With Trump Go Into Isolation Amid Fear of Coronavirus

    One of them, Representative Matt Gaetz, rode back on Air Force One from Florida to Washington on Monday afternoon. He announced his self-quarantine an hour after getting off the president’s plane.

    By Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman & Annie Karni @ NYTimes.com, March 9, 5:19 pm

    WASHINGTON — Two Republican members of Congress who have spent time with President Trump in the last few days, including one who just rode back to Washington on Air Force One, put themselves into self-quarantine on Monday because of concern over exposure to coronavirus.

    Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who attended a party with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate over the weekend and traveled with him from Florida to the capital on Monday afternoon, announced an hour after getting off the president’s plane that he would remain out of contact with other people for two weeks.

    Mr. Gaetz boarded Air Force One in Orlando through the front door just steps behind the president, who had stopped there for a fund-raiser on the way back to Washington. Shortly after takeoff, Mr. Gaetz learned that he had been in touch with an infected person at the Conservative Political Action Conference late last month, according to two people informed about the situation.

    He then essentially quarantined himself, sitting in a section of the plane alone. Reporters spotted Mr. Gaetz getting off the back of the plane at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland outside of Washington, where he was then escorted to a waiting car [....]


    The pup's only 37 - he'll be fine.



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