monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

...The deliberations illustrate how the highest ranks of the Republican Party are grappling with the uncertainty the coronavirus crisis has injected into the race — and how best to prepare for a general election that looks nothing like what they'd been anticipating.

There are indications that Trump’s response to the crisis is taking a toll. His campaign’s internal polling shows that the president’s initial bump in managing the virus has dissipated, according to a person familiar with the results. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released over the weekend revealed that voters thought Biden would do a better job than Trump in managing the virus by a 9-point margin, and new surveys show Trump trailing Biden in Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Alarm about Trump’s standing is trickling to down-ballot races. A Fox News poll released earlier this week showed the GOP candidate trailing 10 percentage points in the Michigan Senate race, a contest the party has been targeting aggressively.

On Monday, Trump told the public the pandemic death toll could be as low as 50,000. We crossed the 50,000 threshold today, and the total keeps climbing.

There are competing sets of data on the precise number of coronavirus infections and fatalities in the United States, but NBC News' tally pointed this morning to a grim milestone for the nation: more than 50,000 Americans have now died as a result of the pandemic.

If that number sounds familiar, it may be because Donald Trump used it in an unusual way during Monday's White House press briefing:

Quote:

"[W]e did the right thing, because if we didn't do it, you would have had a million people, a million and a half people, maybe 2 million people dead. Now, we're going toward 50, I'm hearing, or 60,000 people. One is too many. I always say it: One is too many. But we're going toward 50- or 60,000 people."

Even at the time, it was difficult to understand why the president was making such a projection. As of Monday, roughly 42,000 Americans had died from COVID-19. By suggesting the overall death toll could be as low as 50,000, Trump was effectively raising the possibility of a miraculous collapse in coronavirus fatalities.

So why in the world would the president tell the public that a death toll of 50,000 to 60,000 would be as bad as the crisis gets? Could he not see where the trajectory was headed?

Brian Beutler
@brianbeutler
3h
To those arguing Trump’s comments were stupid but harmless, the GOP governor of Maryland, and his spox—who came up through John Boehner and Paul Ryan’s speakership team—have issued emergency guidance after scores of people called to ask about ingesting or injecting disinfectants.

He's gotten a long way by just constantly lying whether in business or in politics.

The Coronavirus Is Spreading Into Trump Country

Biden Accuser Tells Us New Video Evidence Proves Her Allegations Are True

New video evidence proves that accuser Tara Reade was forced out of her job as a senate staffer for 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden, Reade told the Daily Caller News Foundation Friday.

The 56-year-old Reade had previously told The Intercept that her mother called into “Larry King Live” on CNN regarding Biden’s alleged assault. A transcript obtained by The Intercept, as well as a video uncovered by the Media Research Center, show that someone from her mother’s city did indeed call into CNN in 1993 and asked for advice about her daughter’s problems with a “prominent senator.”

NEW: Tara Reade told mer her mother called the Larry King Live show in the ’90s and discussed her daughter’s problems with Biden’s office, referring to him only as a “prominent senator.”

The call exists, and here’s a transcript: https://t.co/KHpqDlrpOG https://t.co/5c7YIUdJ4f

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) April 24, 2020

Dear Coldjoint, I think you are nuts, kindly go soak your disturbed head in salt water.

Twitter Censors Another Joe Biden Meme, Locks Accounts that Posted It

Clorox, he needs to soak it in Clorox.

actually HEs not the one looking the fool in your attempt to b clever.