Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Rumor has it Benedict Donald made a private visit to Walter Reed today. Check out the bruise on his right hand. That comes from an IV. He was slurring his words more than normal today and was dragging his right leg while walking.

[Tom Scully]

Responding to Rick's post on another thread.:

Kushner's axed coronavirus team shied away from a national strategy, believing that the virus was hitting Democratic states hardest and that they could blame governors, report says

https://www.businessinsider.com/kushner-covid-19-plan-maybe-axed-for-political-reasons-report-2020-7


How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”

This spring, a team working under the president's son-in-law produced a plan for an aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response that could have brought the pandemic under control. So why did the White House spike it in favor of a shambolic 50-state response?

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air

Nepotism? What harm could it do? I trust my son-in-law, he thinks like me!

Remember Dr. Birx shilling for these monsters, holding up a diagram presenting how the faked google subsidiary covid-19 testing website would qualify visitors and direct them to the nearest available testing location? Not only she did not resign when it proved to be a lie, she doubled down on flattering Trump and misleading the public!

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/27/21197074/deborah-birx-praised-trump-scientific-literature-coronavirus
March 14, 2020 :

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air

How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”
This spring, a team working under the president's son-in-law produced a plan for an aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response that could have brought the pandemic under control. So why did the White House spike it in favor of a shambolic 50-state response?
BY KATHERINE EBAN - JULY 30, 2020

On March 31, three weeks after the World Health Organization designated the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, a DHL truck rattled up to the gray stone embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington, D.C., delivering precious cargo: 1 million Chinese-made diagnostic tests for COVID-19, ordered at the behest of the Trump administration.

Normally, federal government purchases come with detailed contracts, replete with acronyms and identifying codes. They require sign-off from an authorized contract officer and are typically made public in a U.S. government procurement database, under a system intended as a hedge against waste, fraud, and abuse.

This purchase did not appear in any government database. Nor was there any contract officer involved. Instead, it was documented in an invoice obtained by Vanity Fair, from a company, Cogna Technology Solutions (its own name misspelled as “Tecnology” on the bill), which noted a total order of 3.5 million tests for an amount owed of $52 million. The “client name” simply noted “WH.”

Over the next three months, the tests’ mysterious provenance would spark confusion and finger-pointing. An Abu Dhabi–based artificial intelligence company, Group 42, with close ties to the UAE’s ruling family, identified itself as the seller of 3.5 million tests and demanded payment. Its requests were routed through various divisions within Health and Human Services, whose lawyers sought in vain for a bona fide contracting officer....

......But the million tests, some of which were distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to several states, were of no help. According to documents obtained by Vanity Fair, they were examined in two separate government laboratories and found to be “contaminated and unusable.”

Group 42 representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Though Kushner’s outsized role has been widely reported, the procurement of Chinese-made test kits is being disclosed here for the first time. So is an even more extraordinary effort that Kushner oversaw: a secret project to devise a comprehensive plan that would have massively ramped up and coordinated testing for COVID-19 at the federal level.

Six months into the pandemic, the United States continues to suffer the worst outbreak of COVID-19 in the developed world. Considerable blame belongs to a federal response that offloaded responsibility for the crucial task of testing to the states. The irony is that, after assembling the team that came up with an aggressive and ambitious national testing plan, Kushner then appears to have decided, for reasons that remain murky, to scrap its proposal. Today, as governors and mayors scramble to stamp out epidemics plaguing their populations, philanthropists at the Rockefeller Foundation are working to fill the void and organize enough testing to bring the nationwide epidemic under control.

Inside the White House, over much of March and early April, Kushner’s handpicked group of young business associates, which included a former college roommate, teamed up with several top experts from the diagnostic-testing industry. Together, they hammered out the outline of a national testing strategy. The group—working night and day, using the encrypted platform WhatsApp—emerged with a detailed plan obtained by Vanity Fair.

Rather than have states fight each other for scarce diagnostic tests and limited lab capacity, the plan would have set up a system of national oversight and coordination to surge supplies, allocate test kits, lift regulatory and contractual roadblocks, and establish a widespread virus surveillance system by the fall, to help pinpoint subsequent outbreaks.

The solutions it proposed weren’t rocket science—or even comparable to the dauntingly complex undertaking of developing a new vaccine. Any national plan to address testing deficits would likely be more on the level of “replicating UPS for an industry,” said Dr. Mike Pellini, the managing partner of Section 32, a technology and health care venture capital fund. “Imagine if UPS or FedEx didn’t have infrastructure to connect all the dots. It would be complete chaos.”

The plan crafted at the White House, then, set out to connect the dots. Some of those who worked on the plan were told that it would be presented to President Trump and likely announced in the Rose Garden in early April. “I was beyond optimistic,” said one participant. “My understanding was that the final document would make its way to the president over that weekend” and would result in a “significant announcement.”

But no nationally coordinated testing strategy was ever announced. The plan, according to the participant, “just went poof into thin air.”

In a statement, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “The premise of this article is completely false.”

This summer has illustrated in devastating detail the human and economic cost of not launching a system of national testing, which most every other industrialized nation has done. South Korea serves as the gold standard, with innovative “phone booth” and drive-through testing sites, results that get returned within 24 hours, and supportive isolation for those who test positive, including food drop-offs.

In the U.S., by contrast, cable news and front pages have been dominated by images of miles-long lines of cars in scorching Arizona and Texas heat, their drivers waiting hours for scarce diagnostic tests, and desperate Sunbelt mayors pleading in vain for federal help to expand testing capacity. In short, a “freaking debacle,” as one top public health expert put it.

AN ABORTED PLAN
Countries that have successfully contained their outbreaks have empowered scientists to lead the response. But when Jared Kushner set out in March to solve the diagnostic-testing crisis, his efforts began not with public health experts but with bankers and billionaires. They saw themselves as the “A-team of people who get shit done,” as one participant proclaimed in a March Politico article.

Kushner’s brain trust included Adam Boehler, his summer college roommate who now serves as chief executive officer of the newly created U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, a government development bank that makes loans overseas. Other group members included Nat Turner, the cofounder and CEO of Flatiron Health, which works to improve cancer treatment and research.

A Morgan Stanley banker with no notable health care experience, Jason Yeung took a leave of absence to join the task force. Along the way, the group reached out for advice to billionaires, such as Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen.

The group’s collective lack of relevant experience was far from the only challenge it faced. The obstacles arrayed against any effective national testing effort included: limited laboratory capacity, supply shortages, huge discrepancies in employers’ abilities to cover testing costs for their employees, an enormous number of uninsured Americans, and a fragmented diagnostic-testing marketplace.

According to one participant, the group did not coordinate its work with a diagnostic-testing team at Health and Human Services, working under Admiral Brett Giroir, who was appointed as the nation’s “testing czar” on March 12. Kushner’s group was “in their own bubble,” said the participant. “Other agencies were in their own bubbles. The circles never overlapped.”

In the White House statement, McEnany responded, “Jared and his team worked hand-in-hand with Admiral Giroir. The public-private teams were embedded with Giroir and represented a single and united administration effort that succeeded in rapidly expanding our robust testing regime and making America number one in testing.”
........
According to one participant, the group did not coordinate its work with a diagnostic-testing team at Health and Human Services, working under Admiral Brett Giroir, who was appointed as the nation’s “testing czar” on March 12. Kushner’s group was “in their own bubble,” said the participant. “Other agencies were in their own bubbles. The circles never overlapped.”

In the White House statement, McEnany responded, “Jared and his team worked hand-in-hand with Admiral Giroir. The public-private teams were embedded with Giroir and represented a single and united administration effort that succeeded in rapidly expanding our robust testing regime and making America number one in testing.”

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As it evolved, Kushner’s group called on the help of several top diagnostic-testing experts. Together, they worked around the clock, and through a forest of WhatsApp messages. The effort of the White House team was “apolitical,” said the participant, and undertaken “with the nation’s best interests in mind.”

Kushner’s team hammered out a detailed plan, which Vanity Fair obtained. It stated, “Current challenges that need to be resolved include uneven testing capacity and supplies throughout the US, both between and within regions, significant delays in reporting results (4-11 days), and national supply chain constraints, such as PPE, swabs, and certain testing reagents.”

The plan called for the federal government to coordinate distribution of test kits, so they could be surged to heavily affected areas, and oversee a national contact-tracing infrastructure. It also proposed lifting contract restrictions on where doctors and hospitals send tests, allowing any laboratory with capacity to test any sample. It proposed a massive scale-up of antibody testing to facilitate a return to work. It called for mandating that all COVID-19 test results from any kind of testing, taken anywhere, be reported to a national repository as well as to state and local health departments.

And it proposed establishing “a national Sentinel Surveillance System” with “real-time intelligence capabilities to understand leading indicators where hot spots are arising and where the risks are high vs. where people can get back to work.”

By early April, some who worked on the plan were given the strong impression that it would soon be shared with President Trump and announced by the White House. The plan, though imperfect, was a starting point. Simply working together as a nation on it “would have put us in a fundamentally different place,” said the participant.

But the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.

Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.

In her statement, McEnany said, “The article is completely incorrect in its assertion that any plan was stopped for political or other reasons. Our testing strategy has one goal in mind—delivering for the American people—and is being executed and modified daily to incorporate new facts on the ground.”

On April 27, Trump stepped to a podium in the Rose Garden, flanked by members of his coronavirus task force and leaders of America’s big commercial testing laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and finally announced a testing plan: It bore almost no resemblance to the one that had been forged in late March, and shifted the problem of diagnostic testing almost entirely to individual states.
......

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1289397528639791104
AND https://twitter.com/Polyboyinoz11/status/1289469719146201091
AND https://twitter.com/murray_nyc/status/1289399895141437440

[Paul May]

The man is a walking contagion....to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

A day after Trump encounters yet another tiny crowd in Florida, RNC announces convention press ban.

The latest modification to the ever-changing Republican National Convention is one that seems to cater to the incumbent seeking re-election, and his endless war on the media: The entire four-day event will be closed to members of the press, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Conveniently blaming the novel coronavirus, which a near-endless stream of Republicans have continued to minimize, an unnamed Grand Old Party spokesperson attempted to shift responsibility for the decision to the government of North Carolina. "[W]e are planning for all of the Charlotte activities to be closed press: Friday, August 21—Monday, 24th given the health restrictions and limitations in place in the state," the email read, adding that "we are working within the parameters set before us by state and local guidelines regarding the number of people who can attend events."

Press will also be unwelcome in “the room when the Republican National Committee meets to conduct official party business,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. Unless Republicans change their plans, this rejection of the Fourth Estate from the convention is a pretty big deal. In fact, it’s the first time journalists have been barred from a Republican presidential nominating convention, ever. Donald Trump—also known as the guy getting the Republican nomination—has declared the press to be an “enemy” of the American people, and for months has minimized the dangers of the novel coronavirus. He’s also the guy who hasn’t been drawing huge adoring crowds, long considered more essential to his survival than even Big Macs. Balloons and streamers dropping on an all-but-empty arena—and caught on camera for the world to see, and share, and replay—would likely be more than Trump can take. Even before the ban on reporters, the RNC reduced the amount of delegates welcome to just 336, down from over 2,400 in 2016.

[Paul May]

Lt. Col. Vidmin I salute you.

Impeachment Witness Alexander Vindman Just Wrote a Scathing Indictment of Trump

Marianne Szegedy-Maszak

Former Army Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, who was fired by President Donald Trump in February from his position in the National Security Council in apparent retaliation for Vindman’s crucial testimony in the House impeachment trial, has written a searing op-ed for the Washington Post. Vindman’s promotion to full colonel was sabotaged by the White House, so he retired from the military. On Saturday, Vindman marked his first day as a civilian by publishing an extraordinary editorial.

After 21 years, six months and 10 days of active military service, I am now a civilian. I made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation by President Trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career.

He goes on to describe his decision a year ago to raise concerns about the president’s fateful July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump warned of withholding military aid unless Ukrainian officials investigated Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden, and his son Hunter, for corruption. Vindman was three-years-old when his family escaped from Ukraine.

At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving.

Our citizens are being subjected to the same kinds of attacks tyrants launch against their critics and political opponents. Those who choose loyalty to American values and allegiance to the Constitution over devotion to a mendacious president and his enablers are punished. The president recklessly downplayed the threat of the pandemic even as it swept through our country. The economic collapse that followed highlighted the growing income disparities in our society. Millions are grieving the loss of loved ones and many more have lost their livelihoods while the president publicly bemoans his approval ratings.

[D]uring a rambling, venting speech, Trump brought up Vindman and his twin brother Yevgeny, who works as a lawyer for the National Security Council. And then earlier during the day Friday before Vindman had been dismissed, Trump told reporters he was “not happy” with Vindman, adding: “You think I’m supposed to be happy with him? I’m not.” The New York Times reported that Yevgeny was also fired.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested that the ousting of “patriots & whistleblowers like LTC Vindman” was an “extension of President Trump’s cover-up” in the Ukraine scandal.

Vindman recalls reassuring his father after the impeachment hearings that despite concerns about Trump, he remained optimistic about the United States:

The 23-year-old me who was commissioned in December 1998 could never have imagined the opportunities and experiences I have had. I joined the military to serve the country that sheltered my family’s escape from authoritarianism, and yet the privilege has been all mine.

When I was asked why I had the confidence to tell my father not to worry about my testimony, my response was, “Congressman, because this is America. This is the country I have served and defended, that all my brothers have served, and here, right matters.”

To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to believe in the American Dream. I believe that in America, right matters. I want to help ensure that right matters for all Americans.

[Rick Plant]

Wake Up

[Rick Plant]

I said months ago, that by Labor Day the death total from COVID-19 will be 200,000 and with these new projections that appears to be the case, thanks to failed and a lack of GOP leadership. Horrible new numbers being projected.   

More Than 40,000 Will Die This Month from Coronavirus
August 2, 2020 at 9:10 pm

The CDC predicts that up to 11,000 people will die every week this month from the coronavirus, CBS News reports.

[Martin Weidmann]

Victor Davis Hanson on “The Case For Trump”

Great, another guy who wants to sell a book....