Trump is using the national stockpile as a ventilator slush fund to help Republicans get re-elected

For the second time this week, President Donald Trump granted a vulnerable Republican lawmaker’s request to provide their state with ventilators, leading critics to attribute political motivations to the president’s allocation of scarce life-saving medical resources.

Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey on Friday declared that the state had secured 100 ventilators from the federal government’s Strategic National Stockpile to help the state respond to an expected spike in COVID-19 coronavirus cases. In announcing the acquisition of the lifesaving equipment, Gov. Ducey specifically thanked President Trump for providing the machines and thanks Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) for lobbying the president on the issue.

“Huge news for Arizona! I spoke with [President Trump] on Wednesday afternoon to request additional ventilators from the Strategic National Stockpile,” McSally wrote. “Today, POTUS delivers with 100 ventilators headed to AZ. Thank you to President Trump and [Vice President Mike Pence] for hearing our call.”

As previously reported by Law&Crime this week, the Trump administration stopped Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis from privately purchasing 500 ventilators, claiming them for the National Stockpile. Trump then announced on Wednesday that he was sending Colorado 100 of the ventilators, but in doing so, the president made it clear that he was doing so at the request of Republican Sen. Cory Gardner.

Both Colorado and Arizona are considered swing states in the upcoming 2020 election and Sens. McSally and Gardner are both in toss-up elections that hold the Senate majority in the balance.


https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/critics-say-trump-is-using-stockpile-as-ventilator-slush-fund-for-republican-lawmakers/

It's no coincidence that the United States now leads the world in COVID-19 deaths and infections

The country leading the world in COVID-19 deaths and infections is the one country being led by a six-time bankrupt failed frozen steak salesman and reality tv gameshow host who ran a fraudulent university and cheated on his third wife with a porn star.

This is not a coincidence.

Fox & Friends Host Tests POSITIVE for Covid-19

One of the co-hosts of the weekend edition of President Donald Trump’s favorite morning show, “Fox & Friends,” revealed Thursday on Instagram that she had tested positive for COVID-19.

“I know I’ve been a little MIA,” Jedediah Bila wrote. “I’m actually at home recovering from Covid-19. I’m very much on the mend, so please don’t worry. My husband is also recovering well at home and Hartley luckily did not get sick (Thank you, God, I am forever grateful.) This is a crazy time in the world, full of so much anxiety and fear. I’ve learned so much this past week and done so much thinking.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/fox-and-friends-co-host-tests-positive-for-covid-19/

Mike Luckovich: Voting Danger

Covid-19 is killing off the myth that we are the greatest country on earth.

The Ideas That Won’t Survive the Coronavirus
Covid-19 is killing off the myth that we are the greatest country on earth.

By Viet Thanh Nguyen

<...>

If anything good emerges out of this period, it might be an awakening to the pre-existing conditions of our body politic. We were not as healthy as we thought we were. The biological virus afflicting individuals is also a social virus. Its symptoms — inequality, callousness, selfishness and a profit motive that undervalues human life and overvalues commodities — were for too long masked by the hearty good cheer of American exceptionalism, the ruddiness of someone a few steps away from a heart attack.

Even if America as we know it survives the coronavirus, it can hardly emerge unscathed. If the illusion of invincibility is shredded for any patient who survives a near-fatal experience, then what might die after Covid-19 is the myth that we are the best country on earth, a belief common even among the poor, the marginal, the precariat, who must believe in their own Americanness if in nothing else.

Perhaps the sensation of imprisonment during quarantine might make us imagine what real imprisonment feels like. There are, of course, actual prisons where we have warehoused human beings who have no relief from the threat of the coronavirus. There are refugee camps and detention centers that are de facto prisons. There is the economic imprisonment of poverty and precariousness, where a missing paycheck can mean homelessness, where illness without health insurance can mean death.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/opinion/coronavirus-america.html

Rudy Giuliani casts himself in a new role: personal science adviser to Trump

“Rudy Giuliani has cast himself in a new role: as personal science adviser to a president eager to find ways to short circuit the coronavirus epidemic,” the Washington Post reports.

“In one-on-one phone calls with Trump, Giuliani said, he has been touting the use of an anti-malarial drug cocktail that has shown some early promise in treating covid-19, but whose effectiveness has not yet been proved. He said he now spends his days on the phone with doctors, coronavirus patients and hospital executives promoting the treatment, which Trump has also publicly lauded.”

https://politicalwire.com/2020/04/05/giuliani-also-pushing-use-of-anti-malaria-drug/

He sounded extra crazy today (video)

Like a drug pusher.

Also, what’s up with the creepy whispering?

Trump administration ended pandemic early-warning program to detect coronaviruses

Source: Los Angeles Times

Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.

The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September, and organizations that worked on the PREDICT program laid off dozens of scientists and analysts, said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a key player in the program.



Read more: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-trump-pandemic-program-viruses-detection

Four Americans died in the Benghazi attack in 2012 and Republicans had hearings for 4 years.

That's 1 year for every person who died.

We're probably going to see at least 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 and maybe even 2 million.

How long should the Dem hearings go on for?

Why won't Bernie drop out?

I've seen quite a few primary campaigns on both sides of the aisle since 2000, the year I started following politics.

Pretty much every time a candidate is getting crushed or has no chance, they drop out.

However, the two exceptions I can think of are Bernie 2016 and Bernie 2020.

Why won't he just leave so we can focus fire on Trump and the GOP?

Why is he still here?!?!!?

This is insane.