Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
19h So now the Fake News @nytimes
is tracing the CoronaVirus origins back to Europe, NOT China. This is a first! I wonder what the Failing New York Times got for this one? Are there any NAMED sources? They were recently thrown out of China like dogs, and obviously want back in. Sad!
This is a lie. Here's what the Times piece found...
Quote:
New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly from Europe, not Asia.
“The majority is clearly European,” said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study awaiting peer review.
A separate team at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine came to strikingly similar conclusions, despite studying a different group of cases. Both teams analyzed genomes from coronaviruses taken from New Yorkers starting in mid-March.
The research revealed a previously hidden spread of the virus that might have been detected if aggressive testing programs had been put in place.
...The deepest branches of the [coronoa-virus family] tree all belong to lineages from China.
Trump and Fox and GOP voices are now working overtime to try and convince citizens that the administration's virus handling has been some sort of success rather than the obvious failure it has been. Lies like the one Trump pushes in that tweet will become more frequent and yelled more loudly.
And this is why the oft-raised defense about Trump restricting entries from China is sort of beside the point.
Quote:
[Dr. Anthony Fauci] continued, “Europe became the epicenter pretty quickly after China really exploded with their cases. We cut off the travel from China relatively early and we were seeded with a relatively few number of cases from China but very quickly the epicenter switched to Europe, particularly northern Italy.
“Given the travel and the air traffic from anywhere in Italy, but also particularly northern Italy, it's just not surprising that unfortunately and inadvertently New York was seeded before they really knew what was going on,” Fauci explained. “And that's why they're in the difficult situation that they're in right now—a very unfortunate situation.”
US's global reputation hits rock-bottom over Trump's coronavirus response
Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he once dismissed as a hoax, has been fiercely criticised at home as woefully inadequate to the point of irresponsibility.
Yet also thanks largely to Trump, a parallel disaster is unfolding across the world: the ruination of America’s reputation as a safe, trustworthy, competent international leader and partner.
Call it the Trump double-whammy. Diplomatically speaking, the US is on life support.
“The Trump administration’s self-centred, haphazard, and tone-deaf response [to Covid-19] will end up costing Americans trillions of dollars and thousands of otherwise preventable deaths,” wrote Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard.
“But that’s not the only damage the United States will suffer. Far from ‘making America great again’, this epic policy failure will further tarnish [its] reputation as a country that knows how to do things effectively.”...
Do I hate Donald Trump? Yes. Now answer my question.
Not yet, you hate his supporters too. You need to get that off your chest.
0 Replies
Brand X
1
Sun 12 Apr, 2020 02:26 pm
Matt Stoller
@matthewstoller
·
14m
If the Post Office had used 96% of its cash flow to buy back stock instead of deliver mail to rural areas it would have been bailed out by the Fed in March.
0 Replies
blatham
2
Sun 12 Apr, 2020 02:33 pm
@hightor,
Yes. Though it does have the advantage of a racist us/them framing popular on the right.
0 Replies
bobsal u1553115
2
Sun 12 Apr, 2020 02:39 pm
@snood,
No, he can't, at least not honestly. He thinks he's wit. He's half right.
White House’s Answer To Helping Farmers Is Cutting Farmworkers’ Pay: Report
At the same time, the president is pushing $16 billion in taxpayer subsides for farm owners.
headshot
By Mary Papenfuss
The Trump administration’s remedy for America’s farmers — flattened by tariffs and struggling during the coronavirus pandemic — is to slash farmworker pay, according to NPR.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is huddling with new White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to figure how to slice wages for foreign guest workers on U.S. farms, sources told NPR.
As the White House plots to cut wages, President Donald Trump is pushing $16 billion in taxpayer subsidies to farm owners. The subsidies apparently would be in addition to the nearly $28 billion the administration has spent or set aside for farmers to mitigate the devastating impact of the president’s ongoing trade war.
I have directed @SecretarySonny to expedite help to our farmers, especially to the smaller farmers who are hurting right now. I expect Secretary Purdue to use all of the funds and authorities at his disposal to make sure that our food supply is stable, strong, and safe....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2020
“The administration is considering all policy options during this unprecedented crisis to ensure our great farmers are protected,” a White House official told NPR when asked about the strategy.
Critics charge that farmworker pay cuts will hurt workers who are already risking their lives to get food on Americans’ tables.
Some 2.5 million agricultural workers have been declared “essential workers,” NPR reported. Foreign workers in the nation on the H-2A seasonal guest-worker program make up a significant 10% of all farmworkers.
About 16.6 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past few weeks due to the pandemic.
0 Replies
Setanta
3
Sun 12 Apr, 2020 02:52 pm
@blatham,
There's another potential problem there, too. The American dollar has long been the currency of refuge in uncertain times, and that would go a long way to mitigate the effect of the two trillion dollar aid bill. But if international investors and currency traders lose confidence in the American dollar, that will just make the effect of that aid bill (with its $450,000,000,000 corporate bail-out provision) that much more severe in the United States.
0 Replies
bobsal u1553115
6
Sun 12 Apr, 2020 03:09 pm
Jeff Tiedrich
@itsJeffTiedrich
·
7h
Happy Easter to the twice-divorced thrice-married degenerate who cheated on every wife, paid hush money and lied about it, who has caged babies and mocked the weak and bullied the helpless, who is every deadly sin personified and who right now wishes he could be cheating at golf
Oh the hilarious irony of CJ calling anyone a "hater."
The hilarious stupidity of you saying that. Find a post where I say something hateful. Facts are not hateful. My posts are available on my profile page.
I'll wait.
0 Replies
bobsal u1553115
3
Sun 12 Apr, 2020 06:32 pm
'Maybe we'll give that a shot': Donald Trump praises Xi Jinping's power grab
US president says it is ‘great’ that the Chinese premier has paved the way to become president for life
Tom Phillips in Beijing
Sat 3 Mar 2018 21.12 EST
Last modified on Sun 4 Mar 2018 12.05 EST
Trump praises Xi's dictatorship plans saying 'maybe we'll give that a shot' –
Donald Trump has celebrated Xi Jinping’s bid to shepherd China back into an era of one-man dictatorship, suggesting the United States might one day “give that a shot”.
China’s authoritarian leader took power in 2012 and had been expected to rule until 2023. However, last week it emerged that Xi would attempt to use an annual meeting of China’s parliament, which kicks off on Monday morning, to abolish presidential term limits by changing the Chinese constitution.
Xi Jinping’s power play: from president to China’s new dictator?
Read more
Liberals have condemned the power grab, which will almost certainly be approved by members of the National People’s Congress who have flocked to Beijing for the two-week summit. Experts say the amendment paves the way for Xi to be China’s ruler-for-life. “This is a critical moment in China’s history,” Cheng Li, a prominent expert in elite Chinese politics who has criticised the move, told AP.
However, Trump offered a more positive assessment during a fundraising event at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he hosted Xi last April. “He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great,” the US president reportedly told Republican donors.
“And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot some day,” Trump added, according to CNN which obtained a recording of what it described as an upbeat, joke-filled speech.
Even before Trump’s controversial remarks Chinese activists and dissidents had voiced disappointment over the lack of criticism from western governments and leaders.
“This kind of reaction is very short-sighted,” said Zhou Fengsuo, a democracy activist who has lived in exile since fleeing the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
Eight signs that Xi Jinping was planning to cement his grip on China
Read more
“This kind of permanent leadership never ends well … history tells us it will not just be a Chinese issue, it will have a deep and profound influence on the world ... [China] will see a lot of uncertainty and likely conflict because of this.”
The topic of Xi’s power grab is so politically sensitive within China that nearly all of the academics approached by the Guardian for comment in the lead-up to Monday’s congress declined to talk.
Xing Hua, the only Chinese scholar who agreed to be interviewed, claimed foreign journalists were “over-interpreting” and “over-emphasising” the move. “I hope western media can view this proposal in a comprehensive and objective manner,” said Xing, from the China Institute of International Studies, a state-run think tank.
However, western experts say they are convinced Xi’s plan is to rule for many years to come.
“He’s now 64. So he has got at least 20 years [left in him] … that would take him almost to the centenary of the establishment of the People’s Republic [in 2049],” said Roderick MacFarquhar, a Harvard University China expert.
MacFarquhar said China’s “supreme ruler” was seeking to change China’s constitution rather than simply ignoring it, so as to avoid looking like “some sort of Banana Republic”. But the effect was the same: “He’s signalling: ‘I’m going to stay on forever.’”
“Dictators are always arrogant,” said Qiao Mu, a journalism professor who moved into exile in response to Xi’s reign. “It’s a disaster for political civilization.”
