Trump, Guilty Of Negligent Homicide, Has Succeeded In Spreading The Pandemic Into Rural America

 

On Tuesday, a dozen countries reported over 10,000 new cases. The U.S. led the way with 63,663. COVID-19 has found a very welcoming environment in Trumpistan. Rural America paid attention to Trump's self-serving bullshit and gaslighting-- and now they're starting to pay the price. The pandemic spread into rural America at what the Daily Yonder called "a record-breaking pace again last week, adding 160 counties to the red-zone list and bringing the total number of rural Americans who have tested positive for the coronavirus to more than 1 million. Nearly 70% of the nation’s 1,976 rural (nonmetropolitan) counties are now in the red zone, a term used by the White House Coronavirus Task Force to designate localities where the spread of the virus is out of control. Red-zone counties have a rate of at least 100 new infections per 100,000 in population. Rural America had 82,188 new infections last week, a 16% increase and the fourth consecutive week of record-breaking levels of new cases. With last week’s cases, the total number of rural residents who have tested positive for the coronavirus broke 1 million (1,068,949), according to data compiled by the nonprofit USA Facts."

That's Trumpistan: the Dakotas and all the states bordering on them that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem-- homicidal maniac-- infected: Iowa, Nebraska Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado.

Every single rural county in Wisconsin-- there are 46-- is in the COVID red zone now, In South Dakota 57 rural counties (out of a total of 58) are in the red zone, as are 58 of Minnesota's 60 rural counties, 75 of Iowa's 78 rural counties, 45 of North Dakota's 47 rural counties, 75 of Nebraska's 80 rural counties, 58 if Illinois' 62 rural counties, 49 of Tennessee's 53 rural counties, 54 of Oklahoma's 59 rural counties, 46 of Montana's 51 rural counties and 73 of Missouri's 81 rural counties. Those are the states where over 90% of the rural counties are in the COVID red zone, meaning the pandemic is out of control.

These were counties that voted, overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016 and will vote for him again a week from Tuesday. Rural Florence County, Wisconsin went for Trump with 71.6% of it's vote. Taylor County, Wisconsin went for Trump 70.0% to 25.5%. Haakon, Campbell, Perkins, Jones, Potter and Douglas counties in South Dakota went for Trump with over 80% of their votes in 2016. Harding County gave him a 90.2% to 4.9% win. These counties are where COVID is reaping a gruesome toll today. Sioux County was the Trumpiest in Iowa (82,1% to 12.7%) in 2016. In 2018, Sioux County, performing as an R+48 constituency gave Nazi congressman Steve King his biggest win. Two years later no one believed in masks or social distancing, just in Donald Trump.

The National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University released a paper that the folks in Sioux County, Iowa and the rural counties across America should turn off Fox and read. The paper is about COVID deaths and why most of them were avoidable. Between 130,000 and 210,000 peopler re dead now because of Trump and his Republican enablers. "With more than 217,000 lives lost," the 4 doctors who penned the report wrote, "and a proportional mortality rate twice that of neighboring Canada and more than fifty times that of Japan-- a country with a much older population than the U.S.-- the United States has turned a global crisis into a devastating tragedy... [T]he abject failures of U.S. government policies and crisis messaging persist. U.S. fatalities have remained disproportionately high throughout the pandemic when compared to even other high-mortality countries. The inability of the U.S. to mitigate the pandemic is especially stark when contrasted with the response of high- income nations, such as South Korea, Japan, Australia, Germany, France, and Canada, as well as low- and middle-income countries as varied as Thailand, Pakistan, Honduras, and Malaysia. All of these nations have had greater success in protecting their populations from the impact of the coronavirus.

Over the past nine months, the United States has witnessed an alarming jolt of vulnerability and anguish, as the novel coronavirus pandemic has wrought immense suffering and confusion in a country that only last year topped an international ranking of epidemic preparedness. This year, American exceptionalism has manifested in the worst way: 217,000 Americans have lost their lives to COVID-19, the highest gross numerical toll of any country by more 65,000. Over eight million Americans have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and millions more have been clinically diagnosed with COVID-19, without test confirmation.

Many of the underlying factors amplifying the pandemic’s deadly impact have existed long before the novel coronavirus first arrived in Washington state on January 20th-- a fractured healthcare system, inequitable access to care, and immense health, social and racial disparities among America’s most vulnerable groups. Compounding this is an Administration that has publicly denigrated its own public health officials-- and science more generally-- thereby hamstringing efforts by its vaunted public health service to curb the pandemic’s spread.

The result has been a tragedy: for a country with just 4% of the world’s population, U.S. citizens make up 20% of all global cases. More than 217,000 U.S. residents have lost their lives, accounting for one-fifth of all COVID-19 deaths worldwide.

...By contrasting the U.S. proportional mortality rate with that of six other high-income countries, this report highlights the stark reality that is the United States’ continued mismanagement of the pandemic response. Particularly, it is the inability or unwillingness of U.S. officials to adapt or improve the federal response over the course of the pandemic that has strongly contributed to the nation’s uniquely high Covid-19 fatality rate. The U.S. should have-- and could have-- done better to protect the nation, and particularly its most vulnerable populations, from a threat that was identified and recognized early in 2020.

The failure of the federal government to (a) create a rigorous national strategy for testing and contact tracing, (b) coordinate data collection and coordination among U.S. states, or (c) recognize the scientific validity of non-pharmaceutical interventions like face coverings and social distancing reflect a deeply inadequate national response when contrasted to other high-income countries. Our comparative analysis estimates that somewhere between 130,000 and 210,000 American deaths to date could have been avoided.

The weight of this enormous failure ultimately falls to the leadership at the White House-- and among a number of state governments-- which consistently undercut the efforts of top officials at the CDC and HHS. Further, there is little evidence to suggest that science-based policies will prevail going forward with DonaldTrump as President given his continued attacks on science and government scientists. A pandemic is not a time for a decentralized and combative national response. It requires strong leadership and coordination across states towards a common purpose of defeating the threat with the might of the whole nation. The cases of South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, Germany, and France demonstrate that the scope of the crisis and suffering did not need to reach the levels seen in the U.S.

Since the report was written, U.S. deaths from COVID have continued to rise exponentially. As of yesterday, U.S. deaths were closing in on 230,000, pushed higher by rapid growth in Texas, Florida, Georgia and Arizona, all states that Trump won in 2016 but all states that are reconsidering for 2020. Are the rural counties in Wisconsin, South Dakota and Iowa reconsidering? Maybe some people but the polling indicates that the worst-stricken COVID counties in rural America are sticking with the man who has infected their small towns.

Why Does Ron DeSantis Seem So Determined To Make His Pandemic Even Worse For Floridians?

 

Florida Man

On Thursday, Florida reported another 2,541 COVID cases and another 172 deaths (by far the worst in the U.S.). Only 7 full countries had more deaths on Thursday than Florida:

• India- 1,144
• U.S.A.- 942
• Brazil- 818
• Mexico- 601
• Argentina- 390
• Colombia- 178
• Iran- 175

Yesterday, Florida reported another 2,847 new cases-- bringing the state's total to 695,887, third worst after much bigger California and Texas. In fact, Florida now has 32,400 cases per million residents, compared to Texas' 26,243 cases per million and Califoirnia's 20,249, which is below the national average (21,767). Florida has 417,626 active cases, are than any state by far. In short, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, aided by Trump and a Republican-controlled legislature, has turned Florida into a COVID-basket case.

Yesterday DeSantis decided to make his pandemic worse by allowing restaurants at operate full capacity and preventing even the worst hit cities and counties from ordering businesses to close. This while new daily cases are spiking like mad in a dozen counties. Yesterday these were the 10 counties reporting new cases worse than some entire states!

• Miami-Dade- 503
• Broward- 191
• Palm Beach- 157
• Orange- 157
• Hillsborough- 155
• Duval- 120 (where Trump hel;d a super-spreader event Thursday night)
• Alachua- 98
• Polk- 96
• Brevard- 92
• Leon- 88

DeSantis announced that all restaurants in Florida will be allowed to operate with at least 50 percent capacity regardless of local rules. Additionally, the governor says local governments will have to justify any capacity restrictions between 50 and 100 percent. Those would require state approval... The governor says he will not allow local governments to close restaurants. As he has stated this week, he does not believe restaurant closures have made a difference in limiting the spread of COVID-19... [B]ars will be allowed to operate with at least 50 percent capacity, just like restaurants.

Meanwhile, DeSantis' boss, Donald, is reported to have "lost patience" with Dr. Robert Redfield the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Preventio, "as well as with the other public health experts on his coronavirus team because their sober messaging on the future of the pandemic clashes with his rosy assessments.

Trump believes that breakthroughs are not coming swiftly enough, according to people familiar with the President's thinking. Trump's frustrations have caused some to question whether Redfield is on the chopping block, but a Trump adviser said they did not expect the President to make major staffing changes before the election.

The ever-looming threat, Trump's public undermining of the CDC chief and Redfield's tendency to fold to the White House are taking a toll on CDC staff, from top to bottom, employees say. Some have questioned whether their work is making a difference and others have even considered resigning-- and whether the sagging spirits may be hampering pandemic response.

Eight current and former public health officials described for CNN a crushing environment at the agencies charged with the coronavirus response brought on by a President intent on contradicting critical public health messaging and downplaying the threat of the virus, politically motivated pressure from the White House and baseless allegations from political appointees that government scientists are part of a disloyal "deep state."

"The morale is as low as I've ever seen it and we have no confidence in our leadership," a CDC official said. "People are miserable and it's a shame because this pandemic is still flying away and we still need a robust public health response."

Inside the White House, Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci have struggled to compete with the growing influence of Trump's new favorite coronavirus adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no public health or infectious disease expertise whose views are wildly out of step with leading public health experts. Birx has told people around her she is "distressed" with the direction of the task force and is uncertain how much longer she can continue to serve as the coronavirus task force coordinator.

And at the FDA, the agency's top career officials penned a Washington Post op-ed earlier this month reasserting the agency's independence and commitment to science amid political pressure from the White House and "deep state" allegations from the President.

In a nod to the dispirited mood engulfing his agency, Redfield registered his disappointment during a Senate hearing on Wednesday with since-departed top Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Michael Caputo's wild accusations that CDC scientists are part of a "deep state" engaging in "sedition."

Back to Florida for a moment. Matt Dixon reported at Politico that on Friday Bloomberg announced that he’s blanketing Florida airwaves with a $40 million TV ad buy, the first since he pledged to spend $100 million there to defeat Donald. "The massive buy, being made through the Bloomberg-funded Independence USA PAC, comes the same week that nearly 5 million vote-by-mail ballots are being sent to Florida voters in the the start of what effectively is a month-long Election Day in the nation’s largest swing state."

Bloomberg told Dixon that "This fall, the path to the presidency goes through Florida-- and with mail-in ballots going out this week, voters will soon start deciding who gets its 29 electoral votes. That’s why we’re doing everything in our power to tell the story of Donald Trump’s failed presidency and why we need Joe Biden as the next president of the United States."

Florida Republicans can't stop his ads but they are trying to stop him and others for paying the fines of felons so they can vote. Former Orlando Congressman Alan Grayson, one of the first supporters of the idea of re-enfranchising felons who had served their time, told me that "The threat to investigate Bloomberg is the best illustration so far of the psychopathology of the Florida GOP. Florida voted by almost two-to-one in favor of the principle that no one can take away your right to vote, even if you’re a convicted felon. That’s one of those 'INALIENABLE' rights-- a right that you cannot lose-- that the Founders said was 'endowed by the Creator.' But to the Florida GOP, that’s just LOL."





NPR reported yesterday that Ashley Moody, Florida's crackpot, right-wing attorney general, urged on by Matt Gaetz, the furthest right of the Florida congressional delegation, is demanding law enforcement agencies open an investigation into Bloomberg's contribution to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. The Republicans are whining that Bloomberg and other contributing to the Coalition are trying to buy their votes.

Northeast Florida state House candidate Joshua Hicks, endorsed yesterday by President Obama, isn't buying DeSantis' bullshit. "Last I checked, the pandemic is still present," he told me, "we haven't found a cure, people are still getting sick and dying. Yet, today's decision to reopen Florida by Gov. DeSantis was another example of his severe incompetence and his obvious need to please Donald Trump. This decision made by the Governor places lives in danger-- young and old-- and he's playing political games with all of our lives. It's shameful and unbecoming of a Governor. Instead of addressing this virus head on, the Governor has been spreading lies and hiding the facts from the people. He continues to do so and I look forward to holding him fully accountable when I'm elected to the Florida Legislature on November 3rd. Or, he added... as The Atlantic put it Thursday: "In present-day politics, we have one party that consistently seeks advantage in depriving the other party’s adherents of the right to vote."

Bob Lynch is a state House candidate in Miami-Dade, running against one of DeSantis' top allies in the legislature, Daniel Perez. Bob told me yesterday that "You have to remember that Ron DeSantis is doing this AFTER doing nothing to shore up our state’s unemployment, deliberately making it hard to access Federal PUA money, and not rejecting the extra $300 a week in Federal unemployment assistance. So what choice do people have who work in the restaurant industry? Go to work and get sick while bringing the virus into your home or stay home and get no assistance and risk starvation? If we had had a comprehensive state and Federal response since he beginning of the Pandemic we would not be facing this brutal decision.  We should have acted like other modern countries and paid people to stay home. Instead, the Republicans just want to send people to their deaths while providing immunity to business owners that don’t follow whatever messed up version of the CDC guidelines appear from day to day. There is no gray area on the science here. Dining indoors helps spread the virus. The negligence is criminal. The GOP has a very fluid position on states and local rights. They are all in favor of them as long as The will of the people is bent to their vision of what’s 'best'."

Lynch said that "Residents of Florida already overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative in 2018 to restore voting rights for felons. There was no provision for a poll tax to make them pay their fees. Michael Bloomberg, LeBron James, and Michael Jordan have honorably stepped in to assist in this effort as many ex-felons can’t even find out what they will be required to pay to exercise their Constitutional rights. Overturning the will of the people is nothing new in Florida. It happened with Medical Marijuana, it happened with disenfranchising felons, and it will happen again. Hopefully not with the results of the election in November. DeSantis will not provide a critical check on the Trump Regime and Florida Republicans will never provide a check on DeSantis. Our only hope is to vote them all out and elect Democrats who believe in science and the constitution. People will continue to die due to Ron DeSantis’ decisions."

If Rachel Brown wins her state Senate race in Lee County on November 3 you will read the next day that the Democrats, despite the party leadership-- and particularly despite Gary Farmer-- have flipped the chamber from red to blue. This morning Brown told me, referring to DeSantis and his puppets in the legislature, that "they are sacrificing people, school children, for the sake of 'normalcy.' A leader does not pretend everything is ok. A leader deals with an issue head on and is honest with their people. It was absolutely devastating, revolting, apocalyptic... the news. Now that the schools have adapted in these tough times, now this? Now they will have to deal with parents not sending their kids to school with a mask? ... Now it's not safe to go to the grocery store... or go out and vote? That was their plan all along. Discusting."

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

"We will build that graveyard and you will pay for it with your lives."

He is what he is. So here you are: Your con man president addressing his America, proudly gazing at his bigly achievement, 3,000 miles of tombstones. I can also hear him telling his victims "You shouldn't have believed me, suckers." To a psychopathic grifter like Trump, all his victims are "losers," too. He'll even try to sell you your own casket.

Trump Continues Making The Pandemic Worse-- And His Moron Base Loves It

Lena Sun's report for the Washington Post over the weekend backs up fears that many have that Trump is trying to get control over coronavirus stats so that he can manipulate them for his campaign. "Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services," she wrote, "have sought to change, delay and prevent the release of reports about the coronavirus by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because they were viewed as undermining President Trump’s message that the pandemic is under control. Michael Caputo, the top HHS spokesman, said in an interview Saturday that he and one of his advisers have been seeking greater scrutiny of the CDC’s weekly scientific dispatches, known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report [MMWR], for the past 3½ months. The adviser, Paul Alexander, has sent repeated emails to the CDC seeking changes and demanding that the reports be halted until he could make edits."

Alexander, is a smart-ass and aggressive shit bag who has accused the CDC of undermining Trumpanzee. Sun wrote that his emails "are the latest evidence of how the nation’s top public health agency is coming under intense pressure from Trump and his allies, who are playing down the dangers of the pandemic ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election. 'Most often, the MMWRs are [issued] for purely scientific reasons,' Caputo said Saturday. 'But in an election year, and in the time of covid-19, it’s no longer unanimously scientific. There’s political content.'... MMWRs are written by career experts for scientists and public health specialists and are considered among the most authoritative public health reports because they provide evidence-based information on a range of health topics. The reports are independent scientific publications that undergo rigorous vetting, often with multiple drafts to check data and methodology. The reports are closely held; few individuals at the CDC have access until just before publication.

[A] report about the spread of the coronavirus at a Georgia sleep-away camp was also delayed, the former official said. That report, issued July 31, suggested that children of all ages are susceptible to coronavirus infection and may spread it to others-- a finding likely to intensify an already fraught discussion about the risks of sending children back to school.

“That report gave them a lot of grief,” the former official said. “But you can’t change facts.” The report likely was delayed, the former official said, to avoid being released around the same time Trump was calling for schools to reopen in person. The changes that were sought were not included, the former official said.

The tone of Alexander’s emails is harsh, this person said, because the CDC ignored his requests. In one email, Alexander wrote to CDC Director Robert Redfield asking that the agency modify two already published reports that Alexander said mistakenly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump’s push to reopen schools.

“CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration,” Alexander wrote in an email. “CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school reopening... Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear.”

The interference by HHS political appointees in the MMWR process has infuriated career scientists, who have been frustrated for months over the inability to allow scientists to fully share and explain information.

There was a similar report by a team of reporters in yesterday's NY Times noting that meddling from the Trumpist Regime is "turning widely followed and otherwise apolitical guidance on infectious disease, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, into a political loyalty test, with career scientists framed as adversaries of the administration.

The political involvement "undermines the credibility of not only the MMWR but of the CDC. And the CDC's credibility has been tarnished throughout COVID already," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University who sits on the external editorial board of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports.

"The MMWR had an unblemished reputation as being accurate, objective and science-based, free from political influence," he said.

The meddling from Washington has concerned Redfield, who often pushed back when Caputo called to pester him about the morbidity reports, according to a former senior government health official with direct knowledge of the conversations.

Over the weekend-- Friday, Saturday and Sunday-- the U.S. reported 117,755 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total caseload to 6,708,458. That's 20,267 cases for every million Americans. To put that in perspective, these are the dozen worst hit (non-postage stamp sized) countries in western Europe:

• U.S.- 20,267 cases per million residents
• Spain- 12,334 cases per million residents
• Sweden- 8,555 cases per million residents
• Belgium- 7,972 cases per million residents
• Portugal- 6,279 cases per million residents
• Ireland- 6,261 cases per million residents
• France- 5,836 cases per million residents
• Switzerland- 5,443 cases per million residents
• U.K.- 5,422 cases per million residents
• Netherlands- 4,789 cases per million residents
• Italy- 4,761 cases per million residents
• Denmark- 3,431 cases per million residents
• Germany- 3,117 cases per million residents

The U.S. has had close to 200,000 confirmed COVID-deaths. The 12 European countries combined have had 175,654 deaths. The U.S. population is just over 331 million. The population of the 12 European countries comes to over 392 million-- more people, fewer deaths. Why? Trump. On Friday ABC News reported that Trump is choreographing scenes that willed to illness and death. "Amid a raging pandemic," wroteWill Steakin and Ben Gittleson, President Donald Trump has repeatedly choreographed a scene experts warn could lead to illness or even death: Thousands of supporters jammed together, mostly without masks, cheering for a candidate who mocks precautions against the novel coronavirus and has vowed to ignore his own health advisers. Fighting for reelection amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Trump enters the final stretch of the election increasingly ridiculing and ignoring coronavirus-related restrictions while holding packed campaign rallies across the country. Health experts, meanwhile, warn a bad flu season colliding with the coronavirus could be a devastating double threat to the country.

“We need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter, because it’s not going to be easy,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's foremost infectious disease expert, said Thursday.

Asked during an interview with CBS News on Wednesday if it was frustrating to see Trump hold massive rallies with little-to-no mask-wearing, Fauci said, "Yes, it is."

With flu season approaching, the president’s response to the virus has again reverted to mocking health precautions and holding packed rallies with thousands of mostly maskless supporters that float local state guidelines.

The president has worked to shift focus to the economy and violent protests in the streets, looking to portray the pandemic as a thing of the past despite cases still rising in nearly two dozen states and health officials warning the fall season could be crucial to combating the COVID-19.

After briefly pausing rallies following the debacle in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, Trump has ramped up his campaign schedule to now holding multiple packed, outdoor rallies a week in airport hangars that often skirt local coronavirus restrictions.

At a rally last week in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the president in one breath urged supporters to wear masks over the Labor Day weekend while in the next repeatedly attacking his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, for wearing them, despite his own administration’s recommendations and the president himself in July tweeting a photo of himself in a mask calling it “patriotic.”

“Did you ever see a man that likes a mask as much as him?” Trump asked his supporters. "It gives him a feeling of security. If I was a psychiatrist, I'd say this guy has some big issues."

...Trump’s approach to the virus clashes with warnings about the seriousness of preventing spread entering the fall season.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has for months warned about the coronavirus and the seasonal flu striking at the same time this fall and winter.

"I'm asking you to do four simple things: wear a mask, social distance, wash your hands, and be smart about crowds," Redfield said in an interview with WebMD last month. "If you do those four things it will bring this outbreak down. But, if we don't do that… this could be the worst fall from a public health perspective we've ever had."

On Thursday, the president told reporters that even if "the experts" recommended a "lockdown," he would not listen, although enacting social distancing restrictions is largely a call for state and local officials.

"Whether expert or not, we're not doing any more shutdowns," Trump said.

Hospitals across the country are bracing for the looming double threat of a bad flu season combined with the coronavirus that could put significant strain on the health system.

“Flu season can hit really hard,” Leslie Gomez, a nurse in the Emergency Department at Sharp Chula Vista told ABC News. “And COVID-19 has been devastating so I’m worried that these two forces will combine and cause a really difficult fall and winter.”

As the president has taken a growing dismissive tone toward the virus, some of his supporters continue to follow his lead-- questioning the seriousness of COVID-19 and rejecting masks.

Americans Are Largely Unaware That, As A Country, We're Doing Worse And Worse-- And There Is No Political Solution In Sight... At Least Not For The Next Few Years

In his NY Times column yesterday, that the U.S. is #28... and dropping. And he wasn't talking about soccer. He wrote that "The newest Social Progress Index... finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America’s." It's worth noting that Brazil and Hungary have also elected fascist-type leaders similar to Trump.

The index, inspired by research of Nobel-winning economists, collects 50 metrics of well-being-- nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health, education and more-- to measure quality of life. Norway comes out on top in the 2020 edition, followed by Denmark, Finland and New Zealand. South Sudan is at the bottom, with Chad, Central African Republic and Eritrea just behind.

The United States, despite its immense wealth, military power and cultural influence, ranks 28th-- having slipped from 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.

...The United States ranks No. 1 in the world in quality of universities, but No. 91 in access to quality basic education. The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet we are No. 97 in access to quality health care.

Make sense of the moment.

The Social Progress Index finds that Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Chile, Jordan and Albania, while kids in the United States get an education roughly on par with what children get in Uzbekistan and Mongolia. A majority of countries have lower homicide rates, and most other advanced countries have lower traffic fatality rates and better sanitation and internet access... and lags in sharing political power equally among all citizens. America ranks a shameful No. 100 in discrimination against minorities.

The data for the latest index predates Covid-19, which has had a disproportionate impact on the United States and seems likely to exacerbate the slide in America’s standing. One new study suggests that in the United States, symptoms of depression have risen threefold since the pandemic began-- and poor mental health is associated with other risk factors for well-being.

That's what neoliberal policies have wrought-- and what Trumpism has exacerbated. If if we get rid of Trump, we still have one of the worst examples of neoliberalism in American politics sitting in the Oval Office. Dartmouth economist David Blanchflower told Kristof that "Rising distress and despair are largely American phenomenon not observed in other advanced countries." Kristof suggests we "wake up, for we are no longer the country we think we are."

You think Trump is going to resign or even seriously consider resigning? It would be a smart move for him, since he could make a deal with Pence-- who would get to be "president" for a couple of months or weeks-- to pardon him and his churlish family. But he won't. He'll fight to the last second and then refuse to give up the White House until Biden pardons him. How's that possible? In David Remnick's words, "Trump is who he has always been, and the details that we learn with every passing day merely fill in the portrait with sharper focus and more lurid colors. The man who lied about the nature of the novel coronavirus to the American people (but confided in Bob Woodward) is the same man who, as a real-estate huckster, used to say that the best way to hype a new building was to 'just give them the old Trump bullshit.' Deception is his brand." It's worth reading Remnick's take on RAGE-- the nightmare presidency that doesn't want to let us wake up from. "As he proves almost daily, Trump is capable of saying or doing anything to win. And if he doesn’t win, the presumption that he will hand over power without some sort of duplicity is far from assured."

Trump’s Presidency has been appalling–– but not unpredictably so. That he would bring misery and division to this country should have been obvious from the start. Flagrantly corrupt and instinctually autocratic, he immediately set about threatening democratic values and the rule of law, while encouraging autocrats abroad and white nationalists at home. He has aroused hatred for the free press and slimed the patriotism of everyone from John McCain to John Lewis. It is a painful thing to say, but the evidence assaults us daily: Trump is a miserable human being. Ask his sister, a retired federal judge; in a taped conversation with the President’s niece, she refers to him as "cruel." It is the rare adviser or satrap who leaves the White House and does not hasten to write a memoir or speak to the press with the intention of sounding a common alarm, that Trump poses a threat to national security even more profound than the news-weary public can imagine. Woodward reports that the former director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, came to believe, more and more, that the Russians had something on Trump. "How else to explain the President’s behavior?" Woodward writes. "Coats could see no other explanation."

“So you just had to deal with it,” Woodward quotes Mattis as saying, about the situation inside Trump’s White House. “It was, how do you govern this country and try to keep this experiment alive for one more year?” Mattis says he resigned only when Trump went “beyond stupid to felony stupid” and made an abrupt decision to withdraw troops fighting ISIS.

Trump’s reaction to the book has been Trumpian. He gave Woodward eighteen interviews, often calling Woodward at home at night just to deepen the hole he began to dig at more formal sessions in the Oval Office. Woodward taped the conversations with the President’s knowledge. But, as a way to cover all bases, Trump tweeted last month, “The Bob Woodward book will be a FAKE, as always, just as many of the others have been.” And, of course, he has now tried to pick at the critical thread that the reporter should have published his remarks about the dangers of covid-19 earlier. “Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. “If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!”

The executive in charge of saving lives was, and is, Donald Trump, not Bob Woodward. And the President’s delays and denials insured that the American response, compared with that of other nations, would be tragic. William Haseltine, the chairman and president of access Health International and a world-renowned biologist, told CNN, “How many people could have been saved out of the hundred and ninety thousand who have died? My guess is a hundred and eighty thousand of those. We have killed a hundred and eighty thousand of our fellow-Americans because we have not been honest with the truth.”

...Early in his term, there were moments when Trump would seemingly abandon his customary venom and wildness and do something ordinary, such as read a bland speech from a prepared text. The spectacle would be so striking that we’d hear commentators say such things as, “This is the night that Donald Trump became President of the United States.” Meaning that there was half a chance that he would now behave somewhere within the bounds of sanity and decency. There was never any chance of that happening. Trump is who he has always been. The rest is details. And he is not going anywhere until he’s compelled to do so.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Donald Trump has always prided himself as some sort of "marketing genius" and if, as a psychotic con artist, your mark is naive or dumb enough (That's tens of millions of people), he certainly appears to be that on some low level. Trump's marks apparently have no pride. So, when the most recent campaign slogans Trump has come up with are "I Don't Really Care, Do You" and "It Is What It Is," he is openly flaunting the cynicism and contempt he has for anyone not named Trump. Anyone who buys into what Trump is selling is someone he also considers to be a "sucker" and a "loser." They even bought the hat.

The billboard pictured in tonight's meme is up in Minnesota, North Carolina, and a godforsaken hellhole named Florida. It's updated regularly but, of course, it's difficult to keep up with the ever-mounting results of Dear Leader's handiwork. By the time you read this, the total of people who didn't have to catch their death of COVID-19 will be over 191,000. That's 4000+ corpses happier Dear Leader will be. I expect that soon it will leak out that Jarred and Ivanka have bought a controlling interest in a national chain of funeral homes.

No matter how high the corpses pile, the 42% of Americans who are Trump's followers, will continue to stick with him. The remaining 58% of us are often bad enough but Trump's 42% are a deeply hypnotized cult. Trump studied how to market himself by watching the speeches of his idol Adolf Hitler. He understands the power of vocal cadence and tone when combined with a set of steady, repetitious hand and arm gestures and facial expressions. One of his former wives, Marla Maples, testified to the fact that he kept a book of Hitler's speeches by his bedside. That's some night time reading, eh? Very relaxing, if you're a psychopath. That's the kind of thing that makes Psycho Donnie Trump tick.

Don't ever hope that any of Psycho Donnie's cult of personality (and worse) will decide not to vote for him. As I've said many times before, they are gone. They will never come back to even the lowest standards of normalcy. To think otherwise is to be a fool, or, should I just say, another kind of "sucker" or "loser." After Trump has departed this plane of existence, whether as president or ex-president, they will still revere him. They will watch rebroadcasts of Trump's Greatest Rallies on FOX "News" and One America and they will buy the box set. They will hold parties. They will drift off into some Argentina of the mind.

Iowans May Not Understand The Nature Of Pandemics-- And They May Not Be The Only Americans Who Don't

In all likelihood Americans will go to the polls in November knowing over a quarter million of our fellow citizens had died-- most needlessly-- because of Republican mishandling on the pandemic. By early next year, deaths will tick up beyond 300,000. How do Republicans defend themselves when it has been their policies and their incompetence that are behind the catastrophe? They deny it. It's a hoax; it's the media out to get them; the numbers are fake; it's just a bunch of fat old people who would have died anyway. Yesterday, Joni Ernst hadn't gotten so much national press for her clueless comments about pandemic deaths since it came out she used to be a hog castrator before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014. As the Washington Post put it Wednesday: "Ernst’s comments echo conspiracy theories pushed by QAnon followers that have been debunked by doctors and public health experts." She told a crowd of Republicans near Waterloo-- hopefully her Waterloo-- that "These health-care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if covid is tied to it, so what do you think they’re doing?" That's a conspiracy theory straight out of Q-Anon.

Critics lashed out at Ernst over the claim, including Democrat Theresa Greenfield, who is seeking to unseat her in a November election expected to be tight.

“It’s appalling for you to say you’re ‘so skeptical’ of the toll this pandemic has on our families and communities across Iowa,” Greenfield said in a tweet directed at Ernst. “We need leaders who will take this seriously.”

...Her inaccurate figure of 10,000 or fewer covid-19 deaths is similar to a widely spread QAnon meme that misinterpreted a recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That study said the coronavirus was the only contributing factor in 6 percent of reported deaths. The conspiracy theory that claims the U.S. death toll is inflated incorrectly assumes that only 6 percent of deaths should be counted in the covid-19 death tally. The study does not support that claim.

In the other 94 percent of coronavirus deaths, the victims had at least one other contributing factor. Those deaths still count toward the overall number of deaths caused by the virus. Health experts have known since the early days of the pandemic that preexisting conditions, such as asthma, diabetes and heart disease, increase a patient’s likelihood to die of a coronavirus infection.

The suggestion that the U.S. death toll has been inflated has been echoed by QAnon accounts and even retweeted by President Trump. When Trump on Sunday retweeted a QAnon follower named “Mel Q” who made the claim on Twitter, the social media site removed the tweet for spreading false information about the pandemic.

In the past week, new coronavirus cases have spiked by nearly 84 percent in Ernst’s state and the death toll increased by 25 percent. Nightclubs, concert venues and sporting arenas are still closed in Iowa, but most other businesses have been allowed to reopen and children are required to attend in-person classes at public schools throughout the state.

The senator’s unfounded claims inspired backlash from some observers, who viewed the remarks as undermining health-care workers who have been on the front lines of the pandemic.

“Senator Ernst is from Iowa, where currently is having one of the WORST #COVID19 OUTBREAKS hotspot in the entire nation as a region, and some say maybe the world,” Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist, health economist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, tweeted Tuesday in response to Ernst’s comments. “To deny that is to deny the suffering of Iowans.”

COVID-Kim (R-IA)

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds-- backed by a GOP-controlled state legisalture-- has been responsible for one of the worst over-all responses to the pandemic of any governor in America. A 100% Trump puppet, she has consistently ignored science and public health best practices in favor of partisan and ideological gobblygook that has killed 1,125 Iowans. The state reported 646 new cases yesterday, bringing the total to 66,136-- or 20,962 cases per million Iowans-- a far worse rate than any European country, including Spain (10,073 cases per million), Sweden (8,361 cases per million) and Italy (4,470 cases per million).

In 2016, Iowa nearly ceased being a swing state. After two consecutive wins there for Obama, the state's voters overwhelmingly rejected Hillary Clinton's status quo message and Trump won Iowa's 6 electoral votes 800,983 (51.15%) to 653,669 (41.74%). Hillary won just 6 of the state's 99 counties. Two years later, the anti-red wave returned 2 of the state's 3 GOP congressional districts to Democratic hands. And current presidential polling average is firmly back in swing state territory. Trump leads Biden 46.7-45.0%. (1.7 points). The most recent poll from the Des Moines Register is a dead heat within the margin of error-- 44-43% with Trump ahead.

An even more recent Iowa poll by Monmouth shows registered voters giving a slight edge to Ernst over Democrat Theresa Greenfield, 48-45%. The poll results, though, seem to indicate that many Iowans don't understand the nature of pandemics and it is likely to require many more cases and deaths before Iowans will understand how contagious diseases work and how they can be stopped. With many Iowans opting for simplistic partisan tropes to deal with the pandemic, it will be probably some time before Iowa is part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Is Trump's Latest Twitter Rage Proof That He's Insane Or Proof That He Thinks His Base Is? Or Both?

By 6 AM on Sunday, Trump was up and doing what he enjoys most-- raging at his political enemies on Twitter, screaming about cracking down on "agitators and thugs" (for him a synonym for protesters, people of color and Democrats) and fanning the flames of civil unrest. In all, he entertained his followers with nearly 100 tweets and retweets about his great poll numbers-- from a GOP firm that allows their clients to practically pick their own results-- and both defending violent right-wing terrorists and savaging Democratic politicians trying to cope with the Trump-inspired chaos in their cities and states. His armed supporters drove into Portland to do one thing: wreak havoc on Trump's behalf-- a real caravan this time.

I believe someone may have since talked Trump out of going to Kenosha (still not sure), but on State of the Union yesterday Karen Bass (D-CA) explained that Trump’s trip there was "to agitate things and to make things worse... He is campaigning. It is clear his campaign is all about law and order. It is a throwback to the past. And he's going to do everything to disrupt law and order in this time period."

The NY Times' Peter Baker wrote the story everyone else is quoting: Trump Embraces Fringe Theories On Protests And The Coronavirus, although "embraces" is such a Times kind of description for what Trump is actually up to. Baker noted that President Sociopath was claiming on Sunday morning that the "street protests are actually an organized coup d’état against him."

One of the Trumpists was killed in Portland precisely what the country's chief agent provocateur was hoping for. In his weekend diarrhea of hate messaging to his Twitter followers, Trump "embraced a call to imprison Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, threatened to send federal forces against demonstrators outside the White House, attacked CNN and NPR, embraced a supporter charged with murder, mocked his challenger, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and repeatedly assailed the mayor of Portland, even posting the mayor’s office telephone number so that supporters could call demanding his resignation."

One of the most incendiary messages was a retweet of a program from the One America News Network, a pro-Trump channel that advances extreme theories and that the president has turned to when he feels that Fox News has not been supportive enough. The message he retweeted Saturday night promoted a segment accusing demonstrators of secretly plotting Mr. Trump’s downfall.

“According to the mainstream media, the riots & extreme violence are completely unorganized,” the tweet said. “However, it appears this coup attempt is led by a well funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.” Accompanying it was an image of a promo for a segment titled: “America Under Siege: The Attempt to Overthrow President Trump.”

Mr. Trump likewise reposted messages asserting that the real death toll from the coronavirus is only around 9,000-- not 182,000-- because the others who died also had other health issues and most were of an advanced age.

“So get this straight-- based on the recommendation of doctors Fauci and Birx the US shut down the entire economy based on 9,000 American deaths to the China coronavirus,” said the summary of a story by the hard-line conservative website Gateway Pundit that was retweeted by the president, denigrating his own health advisers, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. Deborah L. Birx.

Over the weekend (Saturday + Sunday), there were 1,325 new COVID-deaths reported. The actual U.S. death total is 187,224, despite the denialism from Trumpist conspiracy theorists encouraged by Trump himself. The half dozen states with the most new deaths this past weekend:

• Florida 163
• Texas 188
• Georgia 133
• California 102
• Alabama 55
• South Carolina 54




Maybe Trump wants to tell their families that they didn't die of COVID and that's it's all a hoax and all about him. It is likely that by election day, something like a quarter million Americans will have been majority of American voters agree that Trump is an unreliable source of information about the pandemic and that, in general, he is untrustworthy and untruthful. Poor thing... must be frustrating for him.

But Mr. Trump also retweeted a message calling for Mr. Cuomo to be locked up because of the high death toll from the coronavirus in New York nursing homes earlier in the pandemic. “#KillerCuomo should be in jail,” said the message by the actor James Woods, a strong supporter of the president’s.

And the president even “liked” a tweet that offered support for Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Trump supporter who has been charged with homicide after two demonstrators were shot to death in Kenosha, Wis. “Kyle Rittenhouse is a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump,” the tweet said.

Mr. Cuomo responded on his own Twitter feed a few hours later, pointing to the Trump administration’s failure to contain the pandemic. “The White House has learned nothing from COVID,” Mr. Cuomo wrote. “National threats require national leadership. It’s been 6 months without a national strategy on testing or mask mandate. Only the federal government has the power to go to war with COVID. They are failing and the nation suffers.”

For his part, Mr. Biden issued a statement condemning the violence in Portland as “unacceptable” regardless of one’s political views and criticizing Mr. Trump for trying to raise the temperature rather than lower it.

“What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters?” Mr. Biden asked. “He is recklessly encouraging violence. He may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong-- but his failure to call on his supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he is.”

...Trump repeatedly assailed Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland for resisting federal help and delighted in showcasing a peaceful protest held at the mayor’s own home on Friday, even retweeting a post accusing the Mr. Wheeler of “committing war crimes.” Rather than calling for calm, Mr. Trump seemed to justify aggressive action against demonstrators by his supporters.

“The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected after 95 days of watching and incompetent Mayor admit that he has no idea what he is doing,” Mr. Trump wrote, as he retweeted a journalist’s post reporting that Trump supporters were firing paintballs and pepper spray, including at the reporter. “The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer. The Mayor is a FOOL. Bring in the National Guard!”

Mr. Trump plans to travel on Tuesday to Kenosha, where emotions have been raw since the police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back seven times, leaving him paralyzed. The president’s trip has caused concern that he could inflame the situation. He made no comment on the shooting for days until he was asked about it on Friday in an interview with WMUR of New Hampshire during a visit to the state.

“It was not a good sight,” he said. “I didn’t like the sight of it, certainly. I think most people would agree with that. But we’ll be getting reports in very soon, and we’ll report back.”

His Twitter comments on Kenosha, however, have focused on restoring order in the streets. The president’s string of Twitter messages trailed off on Sunday morning before he got into his motorcade and headed to his golf club in Virginia, where he was greeted by a handful of protesters, including one dressed as a grim reaper holding a sign that said “183K,” referring to the number of people in the United States who have died from the coronavirus.

Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian told NPR that Trump shouldn't come to his city tomorrow. "Realistically, from our perspective, our preference would have been for him not to be coming at this point in time... All presidents are always welcome and campaign issues are always going on. But it would have been, I think, better had he waited to have for another time to come... Peaceful protests are not a problem. Our biggest problem really did come from people coming from outside the area and causing a great deal of damage and destruction."

Meanwhile Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes was more explicit. He told John King on Inside Politics that "You look at the incendiary remarks that the President has made, they centered an entire convention around creating more animosity and creating more division around what is going on in Kenosha. So, I don't know how given any of the previous statements that the President made that he intends to come here to be helpful. And we absolutely don't need that right now." 

Josh Paul is Wisconsin's Attorney General. He made some good points yesterday about why Trump should not show up in Kenosha tomorrow. He end his Twitter stream by reminding people that "While Donald Trump has spoken about law and order, he has pardoned his allies, flouted the law, and spewed hate and division, day after day, from our highest office. He is a catalyst for chaos and a threat to the rule of law."

GOP Death Cult Convention Celebrates Trump's Leadership-- As U.S. Hurtles Towards 200,000 COVID-Deaths

Tuesday, which was the second day of the #CocaineConvention, was just another normal pandemic day in the USA-- another 1,291 Americans killed by Trump and the Republican Party and another 40,098 new cases. These are the ten worst anti-hero Trumpist governors causing their states the most unnecessary contagion and how many new cases they caused as the GOP Convention kicked off:

• Greg Abbott +6,803-- 21,231 cases per million Texans
• Ron DeSantis +2,673-- 28,192 cases per million Floridians
• Brian Kemp +2,101-- 24,333 cases per million Georgians
• Mike Parson +1,060-- 12,692 cases per million Missourans
• Henry McMaster +937-- 22,042 cases per million South Carolinians
• Doug Ducey +859-- 27,377 cases per million Arizonans
• Bill Lee +813-- 21,293 cases per million Tennesseans
• Tate Reeves +801-- 26,614 cases per million Mississippans
• Kevin Stitt +650-- 13,690 cases per million Sooners
• Kim Reynolds +631-- 18,161 cases per million Iowans

For sake of comparison, the worst hit Europeans country, Spain, has 9,051 cases per million Spaniards. Yesterday, Texas and Florida led the nation in reported new COVID-deaths, respectively 206 and 186. All the western European countries combined didn't have as many deaths yesterday as either Texas or Florida:

• Spain +52
• UK +16
• France +16
• Germany +9
• Netherlands +5
• Italy +4
• Belgium +4
• Portugal +4
• Switzerland +1
• Greece +1

Sweden, Ireland, Austria, Denmark, Norway, and Finland all reported no new deaths on Tuesday.

All these numbers point to a failure of American political leadership-- a failure by Trump, first and foremost-- and a failure by his puppet governors. Harsh? Not at all. Ron DeSantis-- who forced his state's schools to reopen this month in the middle of a deadly, out of control pandemic infected 8,585 school children-- bringing the Florida total to 48,730 cases among children in the worst-run of big states in America. DeSantis ordered that any school not holding in person classes at least 5 days a week would be cut off from state funding. Many Floridians are asking if DeSantis should be tried for murder. Anselm Weber is the Democratic Party nominee for the open Florida state House seat representing HD-76 (Fort Myers Beach, Bonita Springs, Sanibel) He told us that "It is downright diabolical what DeSantis is doing with school reopenings. It doesn't take a genius to realize sending kids and school staff back to work during a pandemic, while not mandating masks, will lead to significant rises in COVID deaths. Israel was handling the virus relatively well before they reopened schools, which then resulted in a massive uptick in cases. Florida has already been the global epicenter for COVID-19 roughly a month ago, and we are in absolutely no standing to reopen schools. Moreover, DeSantis is using this opportunity to cut school funding for schools that wish not to reopen. The GOP is intentionally allowing massive COVID deaths while using this as a pretext to support their ghoulish austerity driven ideology."

Kathy Lewis is looking like a winner in a Tampa Bay area open seat district. She has also noticed what DeSantis is up to. "This is a sad situation for all," she told me yesterday. "There is no correct way that I am aware of to handle the back-to-school dilemma during a pandemic. But Governor DeSantis has put our children's lives and their parents' and teachers' livelihoods at risk by forcing a return to in-person classes. Parents and teachers are looking for well-thought direction from their elected leaders, not just offhand orders to 'figure it out.' For instance, this plan does not consider children who need specialized curricula, such as those with disabilities, who are being left adrift by the state while their teachers and parents struggle to find ways to accommodate them and keep all their students safe. I fully expect we will see a preventable rise in the number of new COVID cases and related deaths in early September-- all a result of this unconscionable decision requiring school districts to trade the safety of their students and teachers for desperately needed funding."

After Night Two of the GOP Lie-Fest, Glenn Kessler and his Washington Post team of fact checkers called it "another tsunami of untruths" and singled out 19 particular big lies.

And right after the second night's festivities Post reporter Touluse Olorunnipa began his analysis by noting that "Faced with a pandemic that has killed more than 175,000 Americans, President Trump used glitzy video and misleading testimonials to spin a tale of heroism and resolve far removed from the grim reality of a country in the throes of an uncontrolled public health crisis. At the Republican National Convention on Monday, Trump was hailed as a bold and lifesaving leader who 'was right' on the novel coronavirus while Democrats, doctors and pundits were wrong from the beginning. One campaign-style video that aired during the convention hailed Trump as the 'one leader' who stood up to the virus while quoting Democratic figures who played down the severity of the virus in its early stages."

It’s a revisionist version of recent history belied by hours of videotape in which the president minimized the threat of the virus for months, falsely predicted that it would “disappear” with warmer weather, promoted several unproven miracle cures, pushed states to reopen before meeting federal government benchmarks, equivocated on mask-wearing, defied social distancing guidelines and repeatedly told Americans that everything was under control.

With the pandemic still ravaging the country just 10 weeks before Election Day, the president is mounting his most ambitious effort yet to change Americans’ minds about his handling of the crisis-- relying on his background in reality television and show business to create an alternative reality that edits out his mistakes and magnifies those of his opponents.

“The RNC is taking a ‘Mission Accomplished’ approach to coronavirus, but the fact [Trump] can’t even hold a regular convention says otherwise,” said Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and a Trump critic who wrote a book titled Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies To Us.

“American life as we know it has been shut down since last March because of his magical and paranoid style of thinking, campaigning and governing,” she said.

While Trump has previously touted his coronavirus response with misleading videos, charts and quotes during news briefings and in campaign ads, the Republican National Convention gives him a platform unique in its scope and reach. Over the course of four nights, the GOP will have 10 hours of prime time coverage, with cable and broadcast networks airing large chunks of the program uninterrupted.

It is perhaps Trump’s last best chance to present an unfiltered affirmative case for a second term in a race where a majority of voters disapprove of his handling of a pandemic that has battered the economy and upended Americans’ lives.





It is likely to be a difficult task.

Government forecasts predict the country’s coronavirus death toll could surpass 200,000 by mid-September; schools continue to struggle with reopening plans as mini-outbreaks across the country shut down classes and frustrate parents; the economy continues to suffer from recession-level unemployment and desperation; a safe and effective vaccine is at least months away; and a flu season looms that public health experts say will only worsen an already precarious situation.

Trump’s positive portrayal this week of his pandemic response is also undermined by the fact that the convention is mostly virtual despite the president’s best efforts to have an in-person gathering. Still, Trump has found ways to flout public health guidance or at least to show a disregard for social distancing. He plans to have a large crowd at the White House to watch his speech Thursday on the South Lawn.

The broadly accepted view that Trump has mishandled the virus is a political liability for the president, as polls show his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, leading nationally and with key voting groups that will determine the outcome. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this month found that nearly two-thirds of registered voters say they are worried that they or their families might contract the coronavirus, and half of Republicans expressed that concern. Many of those respondents plan to vote for Biden.

Much of Monday’s convention program appeared designed to appeal to such concerned voters by convincing them they should not worry.

During one of his appearances in Monday’s program, Trump spoke with a group of front-line workers to thank them for their efforts in combating the virus.

“Well, I’m for the nurses, I’m for the doctors,” Trump said. “We just have to make this China virus go away, and it’s happening.”

The remarks echoed comments Trump has been making since January, in which he has repeatedly claimed the virus was receding or under control as it spread through the country.

“We have it totally under control,” Trump said in January when asked by a CNBC host whether he worried about a pandemic. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

A month later, he praised his administration for “a pretty good job we’ve done,” predicting that the number of confirmed cases in the country would soon decline to zero. The next day he declared “one day-- it’s like a miracle-- it will disappear.”

As cases surged by the thousands in the spring and throughout the summer-- leaving the United States with the most coronavirus deaths in the world-- Trump continued to tout his own handling of the virus and refer to it in the past tense. He regularly made announcements of breakthrough treatments that ultimately did not prove effective, including the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine and ultraviolet rays.

He held rallies and avoided wearing a mask at a time when public health experts said social distancing and face coverings were the country’s best tools to contain the virus.

More recently, Trump has pushed for schools to reopen, claiming falsely that children are essentially immune from catching and spreading the virus. Multiple schools have shut down in-person learning in recent weeks as hundreds of students contracted the virus. The president continues to promote the false idea that case numbers are rising mostly because of more testing. And on Sunday, Trump called an impromptu news conference to announce a “historic breakthrough,” touting a convalescent plasma treatment about which scientists have expressed doubt.

In the video that aired at the convention Monday, Trump was praised for instituting travel restrictions on China and leading an effort to quickly produce personal protective equipment and a vaccine. In the narrator’s telling, only Trump’s perceived opponents and critics were at fault for the country’s predicament.

“From the very beginning, Democrats, the media and the World Health Organization got coronavirus wrong,” the narrator says in the video, which features clips of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio commenting on the novel virus in February and early March.

The video, like others Trump has touted, does not include comments from the president in February, when he publicly dismissed concerns about the virus despite receiving briefings and warnings from top aides and the intelligence community. Trump also praised Chinese President Xi Jinping in January for “transparency” in comments that are now out of step with the president’s tough-on-China stance.

Democrats, who used much of their convention last week to slam Trump as mishandling the pandemic response, said Monday’s program was proof that the president continued to lack a coherent plan to solve the country’s topmost problem.

“The truth is that his failed leadership has needlessly cost over 177,000 Americans their lives, tens of millions of Americans their jobs, and left the United States the hardest hit country by the pandemic in the whole world,” Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement.

Trump has been his chief spokesman in defending his coronavirus response-- with his own public health experts regularly contradicting him publicly-- but this week’s convention provided an opportunity for the president to showcase other voices that support his boasts of handling the crisis flawlessly.

“As a health-care professional, I can tell you without hesitation, Donald Trump’s quick action and leadership saved thousands of lives during covid-19,” said Amy Johnson Ford, a nurse in West Virginia, who spoke of the Trump administration’s move to expand access to telemedicine.

Though public health experts have criticized the president as failing to take the virus seriously at the beginning of the year, Ford said Trump “recognized the threat this virus presented for all Americans early on and made rapid policy changes.”

Other speakers praised Trump for his administration’s efforts to ramp up production of PPE and testing kits, countering criticism he has received for the country’s shortages at the height of the pandemic.

Trump tried to cast criticism of his response as partisan politicking, using a speech in Charlotte to accuse Democrats of locking down states to hurt his electoral prospects.

“These Democrat governors love shutdowns until the election is over because they want to make our numbers look as bad as possible for the economy,” Trump said during a 50-minute speech that included several baseless charges.

Nancy Rosenblum, a professor of ethics in politics and government at Harvard University, said the president’s willingness to embrace conspiracy theories during a pandemic has hampered the country’s ability to mount an effective public health response. It’s a far cry from the traditional response to a crisis, in which Americans band together across political lines, she said.

“It’s a kind of polarized politics that has now reached down into every aspect of our lives, even to life itself,” said Rosenblum, co-author of A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy.

In a second video that aired during the convention, the narrator took on a more bipartisan tone while still praising Trump’s “swift action” to save lives during the pandemic.

“We are America. Despite unpredictable events, we as Americans work together to overcome challenges and write our own stories,” the narrator said.

But with the death toll continuing to mount and just weeks to go before voting begins in several states, Trump’s attempt to rewrite the script will have limited impact on voters, Carpenter said.

“Four nights of Trumptastic reality TV won’t change the dystopian reality we are living with Donald Trump as president,” she said. “People believe their own eyes and ears over Trump.”

The number of deaths is likely to surpass the benchmark Trump set for success earlier this year just ahead of the election.

“If we can hold that down to 100,000... it’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100 and 200,000, we all together have done a very good job,” he said during a March 29 news conference.

The president, who is to meet with medical professionals Wednesday to discuss the pandemic, has said he will use his acceptance speech at the convention Thursday to set the record straight on his handling of the crisis.

“So we’ll be talking, because really the job that we’ve done is incredible,” Trump said Monday in Charlotte. “It’s incredible, and none of us get any credit for it, and that’s okay.”

As Ezra Klein wrote yesterday, the convention has been "bizarre, unnerving, and unprecedented. It was banal, predictable, and expected... What is there to say upon hearing Trump described as 'the bodyguard of Western civilization?' It’s not an argument so much as a loyalty oath, an offering cut from the speaker’s dignity and burnt for the pleasure of the Dear Leader himself. But the outrageousness is the point. Protest and you’re triggered-- just another oversensitive lib who can’t take a joke. Ignore it and you’re complicit. To care is to lose. The Republican Party on display Monday night didn’t represent an ideology or a governing agenda. It was a personality cult, and a tired one at that. Republicans, in a break with tradition, refused to write a party platform. They chose, instead, to recycle their 2016 platform. But the delegates agreed that if they had met to fashion an actual agenda, they 'would have undoubtedly unanimously agreed to reassert the Party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his Administration,' and as such, 'the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.'... The problem for Republicans is that the main thing Trump has told them to support is himself. There are no detailed policy proposals, much less a coherent ideology or set of governing principles. And so speech after speech followed the same template: How was America going to stop the coronavirus? By reelecting Donald Trump. How was it going to revive its economy? By reelecting Donald Trump. How was it going to ensure domestic harmony? By reelecting Donald Trump. The contradiction at the heart of the convention, of course, is that Donald Trump is currently president. I’m dead serious. How would reelecting Trump resolve these crises that Trump has proven unable to resolve-- and has, in many cases, worsened-- in office? No one even took a shot at that Rubik’s cube. Instead, the speakers awkwardly talked around the fact of Trump’s incumbency. He was presented, strangely, as both incumbent and challenger; the man who had fixed America’s problems, but also the man needed to fix an America beset by more problems than ever... The core of Trump’s agenda has always been untethering American politics from factual reality, and among Republicans, at least, he’s been startlingly successful. The convention is a loyalty test for Republicans, and a reality check for the rest of us. What are they willing to say? What are we prepared to believe? Do we still have it in us to be surprised?"