One of the issues Donald Trump can’t keep straight is when he and his administration began to take the coronavirus threat seriously. His story keeps changing, and whenever anyone points that out, he throws an orange tantrum. By most accounts, Trump and the White House basically did nothing in February besides send some people out to lie on news shows and say that the coronavirus was all one big hoax and that it will disappear in a month. But what was happening behind the scenes?
U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials. The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.
For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences. But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.
This reminds me of the Bush-era PDB dated August 6, 2001: “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.” Once again, experts could see the warning signs, they could see the upcoming loss of life and another Republican president sat on his hands and did nothing. And much like the Bush administration tried to blame the Clinton administration, Trump is trying desperately to blame this pandemic on Obama.
this man is truly unhinged pic.twitter.com/GZmwMcs0cL
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) April 27, 2020
He’s talking about Obama, right? He really is… I don’t know, childlike? When I was a toddler, my family always had cats and whenever I did anything bad, I would say “the kitty did it.” That’s what Trump is doing. It’s not a wise abdication of responsibility, it’s just an ignorant, childlike inability to understand consequences and how obvious his lies are.
Oh, and he’s also Hector Projector. The Trump Administration wants to permanently defund the World Health Organization… for reasons unknown. I think in their little pea brains, they think they can effortlessly blame WHO for the pandemic.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
We all know this pathetic excuse for a man should not be in office. He and his supporters have been repeating the same lies over and over and over again since January and they are still repeating them. 54,000 Americans are dead because he did not do his job but the GOP endlessly repeats the same tired lies that he saved lies by stopping entry from China. Except he didn’t. And the virus did not come to the US from China. He spent three years destroying the CDC and our ability to respond to a crisis. He spent the money intended for the CDC elsewhere on his wall and his daughter’s endless lavish vacations. He disbanded the pandemic units here and elsewhere. He did not maintain the stockpile. He listened to the blithering idiot Ivanka instead of actual experts. He is stealing medical equipment that the states purchase. And the GOP stands by him every single step of the way and lies for him. Reporters need to start asking Pence at every briefing why he has not invoked the 25th Amendment.
He definitely has tried to blame President OBama, but I don’t know who he’s trying to blame in that video. This dude rarely makes sense, I personally believe he’s not only severely mentally ill but also a druggie, so his “train of thought” (and that is a grandiose phrase for what is going on in that head) can be very difficult to follow. Sometimes, it’s not possible.
But white America took one look and fell in love! Amazing isn’t it?
Train wreck of thought is more accurate.
https://www.history.com/specials/nazis-on-drugs-hitler-and-the-blitzkrieg
He’s simply throwing mashed potatoes at the great wall in his tremendously small brain to see what sticks. It’s the only way this nematode can carry on. He has to cycle through blame recipients every day and many times daily in order to sustain confusion.
Nematode!!! LOL!
Please explain to me…other Americans online say they did not vote for him and we should not judge these bizarre supporters as reflective of all Americans. And there are way more normal Americans out there. Please…will this be the time more normal Americans vote him out? What will make the difference if your voting system is the same?
The problem is the almost 50% of eligible voters that can’t be bothered. Yes for some it’s inconvenient and for a tiny minority it’s impossible. But for millions it’s just not on their radar. If every eligible voter registered and went the polls all the GOP’s voter suppression tactics would be for naught. Hopefully vote by mail will be allowed but I know for some even mailing an envelope will be too much bother. “It doesn’t matter anyway” or “ they are all crooks” will be the excuse.
Yes, our electoral college system is broken. It effectively renders one Wyoming voter equal to 75 voters from California in presidential elections. And Wyoming gets 2 Senators, same as California, despite being almost 80 times smaller. The minority is holding power and will kill us all to hold onto it. If seeing 75k people DIE in this country doesn’t break Trump’s cult, I don’t know what ever will. These Republicans who know better and still continue to support this profoundly stupid and mentally ill man all have blood on their hands.
We have a few swing states that super-narrowly went for Trump in 2016 (with a little help from Russia, of course). Over the last 4 years, he has lost most of his support from independents who realized any economic benefit they might get from him has either been lost, or not worth all the other idiocy. So his support is definitely eroding in the swing states. It’s mind boggling that the election still might be close though! The party of Trump is a cult, cut and dried.
It is a cult and the implications of that is really scary.
Well Obama did in fact instruct fauci to donate $3.4 m to a lab in Wuhan in 2015. So there is that. But we can let the investigation speak for itself. Can’t say I’ve seen him at the briefings lately.
Tsk tsk, Natasha, tsk tsk.
Here are the facts: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-admin-wuhan-lab-grant/
Darla, awesome zinger!
Thank you Darla (aka Voice of Reason).
wasn’t the funding part of the plan to train scientists how to ID pathogens of special concern, etc. (also part of the plans of the pandemic team that the Trump administration disbanded)
Investigations like Bengazi? Or the search for Obama’s “real” Kenyan birth certificate? Sure Jan, good luck with that.
And now he’s suing China for billions for their “damage to the US economy”
Moron, you’re setting dangerous precedent cause while the rest of the world is locking this down, the US is bungling and you don’t want to encourage other countries to come after US for keeping this thing alive!
Quarantine edition of the definition of irony:
A country damaging itself by not locking down properly suing another country for causing damage by not locking down.
See also: people too weak to go a couple months without a haircut, golf game, beach trip or bowling night… thinking they’re strong enough to fight government tyranny by dining at the Waffle House and the Olive Garden.
Or: people who can’t wash their hands right thinking they know more than the medical experts about killing this novel virus with sunlight and vitamin C.
Or as I like to call them…”Awful House” and “Olive Garbage.”
Btw, to say he’s childlike is not accurate…childlike implies innocence. And cuteness. Trump is neither
He’s childish. Different connotation. Childish means behaving like a child when you should know better.
It’s childlike to be in awe of an eclipse. It’s childish to foolishly stare at it when you’re in your 70s.
It’s childlike to be amazed at how fast bleach kills viruses. It’s childish to muse about whether scientists could inject that in people…especially in public, in your 70s, as President of a country, with medical experts that you should be letting speak instead.
All I can think about when I look at this guy is that if he gets back in, I have to get out of this country. I just absolutely refuse to live in a place so stupidly self-sabotaging it would put this idiot in twice after he literally mishandled the biggest health crisis of the last twenty years.
Sigh. I feel the same way.
This started when he had been president for almost 3 years. How on earth can you blame the previous administration for that? Even if Obama had been awful and made a mess of the response team (ha) in three years time he could’ve certainly put it back together in preparation. Instead the opposite is true, we were fairly well prepared for something like this, and then he took office and basically took a big crap on everything.
Yesterday or the day before he tried to delete a bunch of tweets, but they are part of the presidential record, so he broke the law there.
Also he’s been asking why all the state should help the hardest hit states, never mind that New York and New Jersey pay way more into the federal system then they get back. So if states are going to stop subsidizing each other, great, we’ll keep our money and spend it here in New Jersey!
There’s a long way to go until the November election. It’ll be interesting to see how things are looking then. Anyone who thinks they know what the outcome is going to be is kidding themselves.
Kamala- things likely won’t be good by November. The virus will continue to get worse as lockdowns end prematurely and we’ll see the swells from that by June/July. Those swells may be worse than the first wave. Meanwhile food supply chains are stretched to the point of breaking and food shortages will start occurring. And the worse it gets, the more Trump will dig in that it’s not his fault, cause it’s never his fault. Which will tank him because only the kool aid drinkers will buy it. He’s already turning on Fox News and Piers Morgan is even calling him batshit crazy. And once Fox News starts a convincing spin against him and starts spinning the stories of his ineptitude, the supporters will dwindle. Only the most stupid bleach injecting ones will be left and they aren’t enough.
He’s most likely toast in November unless a miracle occurs. But I don’t expect that right now. I think it’s a safe prediction right now to say he’s done.
I’m not so sure. With covid19 around there’s going to be plenty of opportunities for voting ‘irregularities’. To name but one factor.
I try not to think about it because there are far too many terrifying possibilities for short term voter memory, Biden f*cking up some way, some how, and the absolute potential for the Republican party to use this crisis to throw a literal government coup.
Oh it’s possible he’ll get reelected, so we definitely still need to be vigilant. Sorry if I wasn’t clear- I’m not trying to day it’s a forgone conclusion he’s out. I’m just saying for the first time since he was elected, I feel like it’s become likelier than it’s ever been. And I honestly don’t think it is gonna change for him. This virus is the one enemy Trump can’t just tweet away or twist into capitulation. I honestly think Trump has met his match in COVID-19, not any Democrat.
Glad to see that the leaks continue in his White House.. but we all assumed this was the case.
My firm was discussing the Chinese pandemic in early and mid Feb., looking at the impact on the supply chain given what was happening and discussing what happens to our economy if it comes here .. At the time we considered whether China could be underreporting…
And we don’t have access to CIA briefings…
Did you guys hear? You know how Trump was upset those with Direct Deposit didn’t receive a physical check with his name printed on it (showing the money was “from” him)? Well, now the White House s is mailing a letter (signed by Trump) to those with DD stating they will be receiving their stimulus via DD. Because this administration is so competent, these letters are being mailed fifteen days after the $1200 was deposited for most people. SMDH
https://www.hollywoodlanews.com/trump-letter-irs-notice-1444-en-sp-economic-stimulus-payment/
The narcissism of this guy….
Yes, I just got mine day before yesterday. Happily trashed it.
I got mine yesterday and you could have heard my “OH F*CK ME” three states away. I got my deposit almost immediately and one of the best things about it was not having to see his f*cking name anywhere. Glad to see he has time to waste on this.
I don’t know why I read it but I did and it was pretty much what you would expect – one big, lie filled, self aggrandizing bullshit fest.
I got a chuckle out of it being double sided in English and Spanish. You know it’s gotta kill Trump to have his name signed to palabras de espanol.
I got my letter yesterday, almost two weeks after I got my money direct deposited. It was good for a laugh, and then I couldn’t throw it away fast enough. I’m going to shred it, I don’t even want it in the recycling where someone else might accidentally be exposed to it, lol!
I don’t know, might be worth a museum exhibit some day. Propaganda has a place being acknowledged in history to try to innoculate future generations against falling for it.
Good point. If China confirmed the very first case of COVID-19 November 18, 2019, it seems likely we knew about something before the official intelligence briefings in January 2020. We have diplomats and intelligence officers in China, along with assets who feed raw information to those people, so we probably knew something was happening in December 2019. As for the first official case being tracked back to November 17, 2019, this probably started showing up in the population as far back as September. Once the first wave is over, I suspect tracking will enable more of this type of information to become known.
I personally think Covid-19 has been circulating slowly since end of last summer. I really think we are currently in the second wave of it right now. I mean, I could be wrong.
I agree. I think it probably showed up in China back towards the end of August (possibly even July) and slowly moved into September. It takes some time to identify a new disease. Doctors have to begin noticing enough people getting sick, then realizing they have the same symptoms, then DNA testing on the virus in their blood. China might be on their second wave, but the rest of the world is likely nearing the end of the first cycle. We’ll never really know the exact numbers because we aren’t doing post-mortem testing. If we had, we’d probably be closer to 100k deaths in the U.S. alone.
I don’t know when it started but NY and CA are finding a much larger % have antibodies than anticipated. Is that because it’s been around longer than we knew ?
Based on our manufacturing/supplier relationships with China, it wouldn’t surprise me if one or two chinese business people brought it over on a trip in early summer before the chinese authorities had a handle on it. If we consider international flight patterns, that would explain California, Washington state and New York. We’ll never really know the exact dates because we are not doing post-mortem testing, which is probably what the White House wants. I”m not a conspiracy theorist, but there is no rational reason more testing is not available. Widespread testing will confirm the enormity of exposure, which will lead to polls showing Americans will not want to re-open the economy, which will lead to a staggering loss for Trump this fall. In the coming months, the Republican party may start to publicly distance itself from him. They are already doing it behing closed doors because the down ballot races look bad.
Is it really Obama? Let’s be real, he could be blaming anyone here. A long time ago? He could be talking about Clinton or frickin’ Jimmy Carter for all we know. It’s just word salad with him.
At times the discussion in my country (Germany) gets out of hand. Like today, when the mayor of a mid-sized city complained that we’re saving people who “would be dead in 6 months anyway, due to other health issues” or their age, I imagine. To the detriment of the economy. I hope it ends his political career. But at least we have enough people in our government who are trying their damn best. Who knows if it’s the right thing. But I appreciate the effort. THIS guy … my god. I think his press conferences alone will be responsible for increased rates of depression and anxiety. I don’t even know what to say.
He golfed and scarfed fries and yelled at the TV. People died and he didn’t give a shit because they weren’t in his precious US of A. Now his own are dying and he still doesn’t care. How can people continue to support him?
Because Fox news tells them it is someone else’s fault – immigrants, the Chinese, anyone else.
And most importantly, Fox News assures them it isn’t THEIR fault. For how they voted. For how the neoconservative capitalist model they support failed. For everything this administration is screwing up as we continue to move forward. Everybody’s fault but their own.
Yeah. And the other answer is, they’re in a cult.
Well, they are calling hotlines to see if they can drink disinfectant.
No longer do I need to wonder how Jim Jones got those people to drink poison.
He’s criminally negligent for ignoring this threat. It was more obvious and explicit and predictable because you can determine the progression of a virus through science than even a terrorist threat, which you can never determine with certainty. But with a virus you can and so may people still don’t understand that.
Any president who has killed more Americans in two months than the entire decade long Vietnam War needs to be removed. It is insane that he still has any support at this point. And it’s not going to stop at 56k. With states like Georgia reopening way too soon, the numbers are going to cross 100k and likely 200k. If it wasn’t for his deranged ego Americans would be in a far better position than they are.
Trump was going to run his re-election campaign on the great, booming economy but now that’s gone down the toilet and there is no way it will get back to what it was (if ever) by November 2020. So what else has he got? Thousands of dead Americans that his inaction helped kill.