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WH Moves To Screen Scientists’ Statements On Coronavirus

As fears grow of a politicized White House response to the coronavirus outbreak, the White House has placed Vice President in charge of messaging about the virus, the New York Times reported Thursday.

Pence, who Trump said Wednesday night would be the White House point person on the outbreak, will clear public health officials’ statements on the virus, the Times reported citing several unnamed people familiar with the matter.

The White House also announced Thursday that top economic adviser Larry Kudlow, along with the surgeon general and the Treasury secretary, would join the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

Public health officials — rather than Trump loyalists like Kudlow — have been praised for speaking bluntly about the virus.

For example, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, Anthony Fauci, has spoken openly about the timetables for vaccines and therapies for coronavirus. While progress has been quick according to epidemiological standards, Fauci has repeatedly been clear that a vaccine is at least 12-18 months away. Trump, meanwhile, has simply said that vaccines are on the way “rapidly.”

Fauci has told associates that he’d been instructed by the White House not to say anything else without clearance, the Times reported Thursday.

...Markets plunged the same day, and Kudlow subsequently went on CNBC. The economic adviser claimed three times that the director-general of the World Health Organization had urged people not to “overreact” to the virus — something the WHO head hadn’t actually said.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Ebola is much easier to transmit than the CDC and government representatives are admitting. Spreading all over Africa-and fast. Stop flights
1:52 AM - Oct 2, 2014

Josh Marshall
@joshtpm
Pence taped a 15 minute Coronavirus interview with Hannity to appear on tonight's show - per pool.

In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday morning, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk declared enthusiastically, “Finally we have a president that understands the seven mountains of cultural influence.” Many CPAC attendees and online viewers may have missed the quick reference to seven mountains dominionism—sometimes called the seven mountains mandate—whose proponents argue that God wants a certain kind of Christian to be in charge of all the “mountains” or spheres of cultural influence: government, media, education, business, arts and entertainment, church and family.

Seven mountains dominionism is associated with the New Apostolic Reformation, a network of Pentecostal and charismatic leaders who believe God has given modern-day apostles and prophets the power to work miracles, transform the church and whole nations, establish God’s kingdom on earth, and speed the return of Jesus Christ. The rhetoric of the seven mountains has been adopted across the religious right even by leaders who may not share NAR’s theology, but find the concept a convenient lingua franca for encouraging conservative evangelicals to get more involved in politics.

Ebola is much easier to transmit than the CDC and government representatives are admittin

As always, this is the premiere gathering of modern right wing coco puffs.

A Trump nominee to serve on a court that hears claims against the government once argued that several federal agencies should be eliminated and that Social Security should be abolished because economic disparity “is a natural aspect of the human condition.”

Stephen Schwartz, nominated to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, spelled those ideas out 15 years ago in a student newspaper as an undergraduate at Yale. Schwartz wrote that the departments of Transportation, Agriculture and Education lack a “constitutional basis,” and that Social Security benefits were intended to prevent “outright starvation” but had become a “standard component of most retirement programs.”

In the years since, the view that federal government powers should be sharply curtailed has been central to his legal work. Schwartz, 36, has recently worked as a lawyer on controversial efforts that would have severely restricted the voting rights of African Americans in North Carolina and bathroom rights of transgender students in Virginia.

I'm particularly fond of that "natural aspect of the human condition". You know, like rape, murder, sickness, theft, lying, greed, bullying, slavery, starvation, torture etc

There’s a certain binary logic to it.

"That's the way it is. We're fucked"

Post Exclusive: Trump administration sent U.S. workers to greet returning coronavirus victims without protective gear -- and when HHS whistleblower told federal bosses about it, she was reassigned and threatened with sacking.

Matt Ford
@fordm
14m
The epidemic is showcasing all of the Trump administration's worst habits: the relentless lies, the hostility towards expertise and competence, the self-serving obsession with optics and control.

Chris Murphy
@ChrisMurphyCT
President Obama set up anti-pandemic programs in 47 vulnerable countries, as a way to protect against something just like Coronavirus breaking out across the world.

Experts begged Trump to keep them open.

He closed 37 of them.

FreedomWorks
@FreedomWorks
· 46m
It took him two years, but ⁦@SecAzar⁩ FINALLY realized that socialist drug price controls would DESTROY medical innovation! #ampFW #FixPatientsNotPrices

as a way to protect against something just like Coronavirus breaking out across the world.

Judicial Watch Files House Ethics Complaint against Rep. Ilhan Omar over Potential Immigration, Marriage, Tax, and Student Loan Fraud

We call upon the Office of Congressional Ethics to launch an investigation into Rep. Omar’s conduct immediately.

Ebola is not like Coronavirus.

What's your medical background?

“Sadly, the left is already, yup, politicizing tragedy,” host and close Trump ally Sean Hannity said on Tuesday night, hammering Senate Democrats for saying that the administration had sought too little funding to deal with the mounting crisis.

“Watching the media coverage today, it seemed like some of the Trump haters were actually relishing in this moment,” Laura Ingraham said on her show the following hour. “A new avenue it was, coronavirus, that is a new pathway for hitting President Trump. How sick that these people seem almost happiest when Americans are hurting.”

Speaking about the coronavirus outbreak Wednesday, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) made another assertion about how Republicans treated President Barack Obama while he was in office.

“Anybody that’s playing partisan games with this, especially while the president’s in a foreign country, should be ashamed of themselves,” Scalise said.

Then-Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Obama was “not protecting our country and our families from Ebola,” suggesting the administration was not doing enough to combat the disease.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called Obama’s Ebola response “fundamentally unserious” for refusing to ban travel from nations battling Ebola (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this would make it harder, not easier, to contain and combat the outbreak).

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said “political correctness” was hindering the U.S. response to Ebola and that Obama was putting U.S. troops at risk by sending them to countries battling Ebola.

"We have ISIS. We have Ebola. We have to secure the border,” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said at the time, even though there was no evidence or eventual Ebola cases linked to the southern border.

Then-Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst accused Obama of “failed leadership” on Ebola.

“Gosh, can you imagine if Mitt [Romney] was the president right now?” former senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) said. ” … I guarantee you we would not be worrying about Ebola right now.”

Scalise himself accused the Obama administration of incompetence in its Ebola response.

“This president in general, all across his agencies, has not shown the ability to run a competent administration,” Scalise said, one day before Obama appointed Ronald A. Klain as Ebola czar.

Some of these same Republicans have since praised the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus, despite new reporting of a faulty government-created test that has delayed monitoring of the disease.

In 2014, Donald Trump slammed Obama’s appointment of Klain, tweeting, “Obama just appointed an Ebola Czar with zero experience in the medical area and zero experience in infectious disease control. A TOTAL JOKE!”

On Wednesday, Trump appointed Vice President Pence to lead the coronavirus response, someone with no medical experience.

Stuart Varney Tantrum: No Wall Money For Coronavirus!
The Fox Business host flips out over funding against a pandemic and blames Elizabeth Warren for the market this week. Really.

Josh Dawsey
@jdawsey1
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://thedailybeast.com/amid-coronavirus-mayhem-trump-takes-time-to-meet-with-actors-in-deep-state-play