Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Day by day: What Trump administration officials and GOP sycophants said about the virus (June 16-30, 2020)



News4Jax, 6/30/2020
On The Morning Show on Tuesday, Fried said time is running out to get the virus under control. 
“If we don’t get this under control now we are really going to have some issues and of course, you guys in Jacksonville have the RNC coming at the end of August,” Fried said. “And so now we’re not only putting the citizens of our state at risk but the 50,000 plus individuals that will be traveling to Jacksonville. Which you know of course it’s great for our economic boost but it will cost, you know it’s at the cost of the lives of those who attend and those in the surrounding areas in Duval County.”


Indeed!


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June 29 update starts here

Judd, we've always know how this game is played by Trump.  (Yup, we're letting the title of this series stretch it out a bit.)


This Week, 6/29/2020
President Trump on Sunday retweeted a video in which one of his supporters in a Florida retirement community, The Villages, shouts "white power" at a group of protesters calling for racial justice. The video, which also was laced with profanity, was later deleted from Trump's feed. White House spokesman Judd Deere said Trump "did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters."

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June 28 update starts here


Birx thanked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his decision to close bars and appealed to every Texan to wear a mask, though there is no statewide requirement for their use in public.

UCLA Health, 12/4/2020
Now that we have learned so much more about how this particular coronavirus spreads, wearing a mask turns out to be a crucial part of protecting our families and communities. The bottom line is that you wear a mask to keep your breath to yourself. Research shows that the main way this virus travels is via the droplets and aerosols we emit when we sneeze, cough, speak and sing, and even when we breathe. When you wear a mask, you create a barrier that catches some of these particles and limits the distance your breath can travel. Combine that with the 6-foot buffer zone we have come to know as social distancing, and the odds of transmission are significantly reduced.


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June 24 update starts here


“The President of the United States is not a civilian. Anyone who is in close proximity to him, including staff, guests, and press are tested for Covid-19 and confirmed to be negative,” White House spokesperson Judd Deere said in a statement.


President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania are among the more than 7 million Americans who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. As of October 7, at least 11 people who work in the White House have contracted COVID-19.

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“WHO is an easy one,” said one former administration official. “It is foreign body in Switzerland. CDC will be tough to create a boogeyman around for the average voter.” 
The moves are among the White House’s efforts to deflect attacks on President Donald Trump and place blame elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy. Protecting the president is seen as increasingly important by political aides as the general election approaches in just over four months and criticism mounts from former Vice President Joe Biden, other Democrats and even former national security adviser John Bolton, who say the blame rests squarely on Trump. 
The efforts risk backfiring if they blame career health experts at the CDC, whose warnings early in the crisis were dismissed by Trump and his top aides as fearmongering.  [emphasis added]

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Dictionary definition from Merriam-Webster (red box added)

After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) reiterated over the weekend that he will not be implementing a statewide mandatory mask rule, several city mayors across Miami-Dade County are announced local restrictions. 
The cities of Miami, Aventura, Hialeah, Miami Gardens and North Miami Beach are all enacting new mask rules, which mandate that residents wear masks or facial coverings in public. 
Miami’s regulation was announced at a news conference for the Miami-Dade County League of Cities Mayors’ Coalition on Monday. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said the city’s new mask rule was in response to the recent increase in cases.
26 days after DeSantis made his stubborn reiteration, Florida's 7 -day average of new Covid cases increased 260% -- from 3,270 per day to 11,875 per day.  And that was just the first wave.

Heckuva job, Ron.

New York Times (arrows added)

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June 21 update starts here


An administration official told CNN later Saturday that the President was "obviously kidding," and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday that the remark was made in jest. 
"Come on now, that was tongue in cheek," Navarro told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." "That was a light moment for him at a rally." 
But acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the President's comments reflected his "frustration" with the relentless focus on the increasing Covid-19 case count in America.
Two days later


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June 20 update starts here

Donald Trump as superspreader


White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday that all Tulsa rally attendees “assume a personal risk” for exposure to the virus.

 

“When you come to the rally, as with any event, you assume a personal risk. That is just what you do,” McEnany said.


In other words, Trump doesn't give a shit about your safety.

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June 19 update starts here


“We’re in a more regular routine where when we see a spike or an ember as the president calls them we’re able to quickly go and put it out and we have that system in place,” she added.

 

That 'regular routine' resulted in untended embers blazing up into a raging fire after the election.


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June 18 update starts here


The explanations echo the Trump administration's current positioning on the state of Covid-19 in America: denial and excuses. 
At a time when Floridians continue to pack bars and restaurants, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis brushed away questions about his culpability in aggressively reopening his state during a press conference this week. In remarks layered with racial overtones, he blamed the surge in cases, in part, on crowded living conditions in migrant families. He said the state would also take a closer look at the spread of the virus among construction workers and day laborers, who he said are "overwhelmingly Hispanic."

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June 17 update starts here


Trump is "very excited to get back on the road and connect directly with people," his counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. "I'm sure there are those who will never want to do that again because obviously that is the gold standard and his stock and trade for him."
The gold standard for Covidiocy

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June 16 update starts here

In June 2020, the White House campaign to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic was at full throttle.



GOP HAPPY TALK.
While talk of an increase in cases dominates cable news coverage, more than half of states are actually seeing cases decline or remain stable. Every state, territory and major metropolitan area, with the exception of three, have positive test rates under 10%. And in the six states that have reached more than 1,000 new cases a day, increased testing has allowed public health officials to identify most of the outbreaks in particular settings—prisons, nursing homes and meatpacking facilities—and contain them.


There was, in fact, a second wave (July 2020) as well as a huge third wave (December 2020/January 2021) and a 4th (April 2021) 






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