monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

The editing was crucial to the scam.

That's why you don't like it.

BBC have been doing bad things for decades.

I watched the whole context. He said it and it did not sound in the least sarcastic. It sounded precisely like he sounds when he's being serious. Of course he is usually talking nonsense when he's being serious too. [/quot

It was at a midday briefing last month that President Trump first used the White House telecast to promote two antimalarial drugs in the fight against the coronavirus.

“I think it could be something really incredible,” Mr. Trump said on March 19, noting that while more study was needed, the two drugs had shown “very, very encouraging results” in treating the virus.

By that evening, first-time prescriptions of the drugs — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — poured into retail pharmacies at more than 46 times the rate of the average weekday, according to an analysis of prescription data by The New York Times. And the nearly 32,000 prescriptions came from across the spectrum — rheumatologists, cardiologists, dermatologists, psychiatrists and even podiatrists, the data shows.



While medical experts have since stepped up warnings about the drugs’ possibly dangerous side effects, they were still being prescribed at more than six times the normal rate during the second week of April, the analysis shows. All the while, Mr. Trump continued to extol their use. “It’s having some very good results, I’ll tell you,” he said in a White House briefing on April 13.

The extraordinary change in prescribing patterns reflects, at least in part, the outsize reach of the Trump megaphone, even when his pronouncements distort scientific evidence or run counter to the recommendations of experts in his own administration. It also offers the clearest evidence yet of the perils of a president willing to push unproven and potentially dangerous remedies to a public desperate for relief from the pandemic.

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration warned against using the drugs outside a hospital setting or clinical trial because they could lead to serious heart rhythm problems in some coronavirus patients. Days earlier, the federal agency led by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci — one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers on the pandemic — issued cautionary advice on the drugs, and stated that there was no proven medication to treat the virus.

As the prescriptions surged in the second half of March, the largest volumes per capita included states hit hardest by coronavirus, like New York and New Jersey. Georgia, Arkansas and Kentucky were other states with relatively high per-capita figures. In absolute numbers, California and Washington, the earliest-hit states, were among the largest. The biggest number in either category was in Florida, where nearly one prescription was written for every thousand residents.

Carmen Catizone, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, said the surge created shortages that “put patients at risk who depend on these medications” to treat other illnesses.

“The fact that people reacted to what the White House said in such a way — in the 35 years I’ve been in pharmacy and pharmacy regulation, I’ve never seen that before,” he said.

Last year, President Donald Trump in a speech stated that America's revolutionary army back in the 1770s "took over the airports" from the British.

So in this light, his tweet on Wednesday that called on US Navy commanders to "shoot down" Iranian gunboats that harass US warships was only a minor mis-statement.

But it was certainly the strongest threat of direct military action from the US since earlier this year, in the wake of the US killing in Iraq of a top Iranian Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, General Qasem Soleimani.

That brought the US and Iran close to a significant conflict. So what prompted President Trump's warning now? And why, with both Iran and the US struggling to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic, has there been this return to stoking tensions?

The immediate reason for President Trump's terse message was an episode last week, when several armed speedboats operated by the IRGC Navy, harassed - the US says - a passing flotilla of US warships in the Gulf.

These vessels included the USS Lewis B Puller, an expeditionary mobile base vessel, and the destroyer, the USS Paul Hamilton.

The US Navy says that in one incident an Iranian gunboat crossed some 10 yards (9m) in front of a US Coast Guard cutter at high speed.

The IRGC admitted that there had been an encounter, but blamed the Americans.

Its commander-in-chief, Gen Hossein Salami, said on Thursday that he had ordered Iran's naval forces "to destroy any American terrorist force in the Persian Gulf", as he put it, "that threatens the security of Iran's military or civilian shipping".

The fear now is that hostile manoeuvring and a war of words could turn into actions.

Nonetheless, President Trump's "order" on Twitter changes little.

The commanders of US warships in the Gulf already have the ability to take whatever measures they believe are necessary to protect the lives of their crews and the safety of their vessels.

They are well used to the swarming tactics of small Iranian boats.

But this episode shows that for all the global attention on the pandemic, pre-existing international tensions have not gone away. They may even have been exacerbated.

That is because the US and Iran have consistent strategic goals with regard to each other which have not changed. Iran wants to reduce US influence in the region and to expand its own footprint.

A recent uptick in Israeli air strikes in Syria, for example, suggests that Iran and its allies are still actively pursuing this goal there.

Some of Iran's leaders - and there is a danger that the chaos and uncertainty prompted by the Covid-19 crisis will simply strengthen hardliners - may feel that the US, given its own struggles at home, will have little enthusiasm for a set-to in the Gulf.

Equally, the Trump administration is doubling down on its policy of "maximum pressure" on Iran, seemingly in the belief - not shared by the vast majority of regional experts that I have listened to - that the pandemic could ultimately prompt the collapse of the Islamic regime in Tehran.

Meanwhile, Iran is continuing to make advances on other fronts.

Its launch on Wednesday of what the IRGC claimed to be a military satellite, using a rocket that appears to rely upon North Korean technology, indicates that its missile programme is continuing to improve.

And while Iran nominally remains within a 2015 agreement with world powers that limited its nuclear activities, it is in breach of many of its terms.

Indeed, experts worry that, while many of the steps taken by Tehran are reversible, it may be moving to a position where it can manufacture carbon fibre centrifuges - the essential machinery for uranium enrichment - in a clandestine way, beyond international inspection.

The US-Iran tensions might matter less if they had been temporarily put on the back-burner. But they clearly have not.

And the risk of an accidental conflict erupting remains as great as ever; perhaps more so given that each may be misunderstanding the impact of the coronavirus pandemic upon the other's capacity for action.

What, indeed, is the purpose of a press briefing where reporters can ask unfiltered questions about the single most urgent problem that the country has faced in decades? Well, its purpose is, presumably, to provide information to the press and, by extension, the public. It is not to serve as a substitute platform for a politician used to regular adrenaline jolts from rallies of cheering supporters.
[...]
The answer to Trump’s question is simple. The reason the government should have briefings about the coronavirus is to share information, updates and guidance from a centralized resource in a dangerous moment. The obstruction to that outcome may lie less with the reporters seeking to clarify what was offered and more with the source of 60 percent of the offerings.

To accommodate Trump’s sudden decision to speak at West Point, cadets will be called back, tested off campus, then isolated for 14 days in rooms with masks. They’ll eat in segregated groups. No decision on whether family members may attend.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-west-point.html

I suppose, if any of the cadets gets sick, they can just be considered collateral damage in service of Trump’s mission - to be re-elected.