Patterico's Pontifications

7/23/2020

Interlude

Filed under: General — Dana @ 5:13 pm



[guest post by Dana]

It’s not like the mask debate is going away anytime soon. But no matter where you fall, don’t be like these Karens:

(Apologies to any rational women out there named Karen.)

–Dana

Trump Cancels RNC Convention Events In Jacksonville Due To Covid Concerns

Filed under: General — Dana @ 2:58 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Unexpected, but sure makes sense:

President Donald Trump said Thursday he is cancelling the Jacksonville portion of the Republican National Convention that had been planned next month because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The timing for this event is not right,” Trump said. “There’s nothing more important than keeping our people safe.”

Trump said that he would hold a speech of some kind to formally accept his party’s nomination for president.

Trump said convention delegates will still gather in North Carolina and formally nominate him for re-election.

“We will still do a convention speech in a different form, but we won’t do a big crowded convention, per se,” Trump said. “I care deeply about the people of Florida and everywhere else, frankly, in this country and even in the world who would be coming into the state. And I don’t want to do anything to upset it. They will be doing very well very shortly.”

It was not only the right decision for Trump to make, but it’s also the decision that a majority of Floridians would prefer:

A Thursday Quinnipiac University opinion poll of Florida voters shows that 62% of respondents thought it would be unsafe to hold a convention in the state, compared to 34% who thought that it could be managed safely.

–Dana

Trump: I Don’t Need Health Care Professionals At Coronavirus Briefings

Filed under: General — Dana @ 11:08 am



[guest post by Dana]

With the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings abruptly stopping in April, President Trump made the decision to resume them this week. One can safely assume that he made the decision because of his sagging poll numbers and he now understands that Americans disapprove of the way he has handled the pandemic thus far:

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Friday President Donald Trump should resume his coronavirus press briefings, as polls show growing American disapproval of the president’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conway said her opinion was different from that of other White House staff but told “Fox and Friends” Trump’s approval ratings were “much higher when he was out there briefing everybody on a day-by-day basis, just giving people the information.”

“I think the president should be doing that,” she said.

Noticeably absent from the pandemic updates, however, are any health care experts. Instead, infectious disease specialist Dr. Trump explained why he is flying solo at the briefings:

President Trump said Wednesday that the reason health experts like Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci no longer attend his coronavirus press briefings is because they brief him on “everything they know as of this point in time” and he passes the information on to the public.

Before they were canceled in April, Trump’s daily briefings grew infamous for being rife with misinformation, which his health experts would be forced to carefully contradict.

Here is part of the president’s exchange with a reporter:

REPORTER: “I don’t think we really got an explanation yesterday on why the health experts are no longer joining you these briefings. Can you explain why?”

TRUMP: “Because they are briefing me. I am meeting with them. I just spoke to Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx is right outside. And they are giving me everything they know as of this point in time and I’m giving the information to you and I think it’s probably a very concise way of doing it. It seems to be working out very well. And they are very much involved, the relationships they are all very good.”

Hours before Trump’s first coronavirus briefing, Dr. Fauci was still unclear on whether he was going to be asked to participate:

Are you going to be at the press briefing this afternoon?

To be honest with you, I don’t know. They haven’t really said who’s going to be there. I would assume, but I don’t know as a fact if I am going to be there.

Have you spoken with the White House about it?

No. But that’s not unlike them all of a sudden, middle of the day, to say, “Be down there at five o’clock.” So I’m not too — what’s the right word? — surprised that I haven’t heard anything yet.

Interesting. That means you weren’t involved in the discussions about relaunching them.

No.

Do you think they’re a good idea?

You know, it depends on how it goes. If they stick to public health and don’t get diverted into other types of discussions, I think it could be productive.

Disagreeing with Trump’s description of him as an “alarmist” during an interview with Chris Wallace last weekend, Fauci instead characterized himself as a “realist”. With that, after having repeatedly cautioned Americans about the “fundamentals” (wearing a mask, social distancing, and closing the bars, which he claims are the hot spots), Fauci recognized the tricky position he is in if he offers a professional opinion that differs from the president:

But Americans have already been told this, right? And we still don’t do those things. If you were an executive for the day, what lever would you pull?

But Jennifer, would you want me to say something that’s directly contrary to what the president is doing? That’s not helpful. Then all of a sudden you don’t hear from me for a while…I’ve just been doing this for so long, and I’m trying to do my best to get the message across without being overtly at odds…

Meanwhile, here is Trump praising Dr. Birx, who was notably absent from his coronavirus briefing:

As a reminder, this is the same Dr. Trump who suggested that people take hydroxychloroquine, echoed claims that everyone is lying about Covid, pushed a drug that Fauci said there was no evidence that it worked on coronavirus, and even mused about zapping patients with light or injecting disinfectant into the lungs as a potential cure for the coronavirus, and so forth. If you are the President of the United States, you have at your disposal an immense stable of health care experts from which to select to directly convey the latest data and relevant information to the American people. Trump is not that individual. Nor should he try to simply “relay” what he’s been told because we all know how reliable he is to relay information with any level of accuracy. This is just ridiculous. This is just another political ploy to make it “appear” as if this is about public health when we know it’s about goosing his slumping poll numbers. Americans have been clear that they want to know what is happening on the Covid front, and want to have current information readily provided to them by health care experts. This is but a way for Trump to get in front of the cameras, and gain some lost ground in the runup to the election.

We are in a pandemic. America deserves better than this.

–Dana

BREAKING: Judge Orders Michael Cohen Back to Home Confinement, Citing Government’s Attempts to Suppress His Book

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:43 am



Breaking now:

I’m sure people will post links and further developments in the comments but I wanted to open a thread for you.

UPDATE: Changing the headline because this is correct:

Biden: Trump Is America’s First Racist President (Um, About That…)

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:29 am



A reminder that while Joe Biden is comparatively normal compared to Donald J. Trump, he’s still a racial panderer:

Joe Biden said Wednesday that President Donald Trump was the country’s “first” racist president…. “We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed. They’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has.”

ORLY? Let’s put to the side the ones who owned slaves, way back in the day. What about just last century?

President Woodrow Wilson, the country’s 28th president, is having his name removed from Princeton University’s public policy school after recent protests against institutional racism and police brutality. Wilson, who served in the early 20th century, supported segregation and imposed it on several federal agencies.

These quotes are from Vox, to be sure, but they’re quotes:

Elsewhere in the book, Wilson attacked Reconstruction on the grounds that “the dominance of an ignorant and inferior race was justly dreaded.” He was strongly against black suffrage: “It was a menace to society itself that the negroes should thus of a sudden be set free and left without tutelage or restraint.” He praised those freed slaves who “stayed very quietly by their old masters and gave no trouble” but bemoaned that they were the exception, the being “vagrants, looking for pleasure and gratuitous fortune” who inevitably “turned thieves or importunate beggars. The tasks of ordinary labor stood untouched; the idlers grew insolent; dangerous nights went anxiously by, for fear of riot and incendiary fire.”

At the end of Reconstruction, “Negro rule under unscrupulous adventurers had been finally put an end to in the South, and the natural, inevitable ascendancy of the whites, the responsible class, established.” In a 1881 article that went unpublished, Wilson defended the South’s suppression of black voters, saying that they were being denied the vote not because their skin was dark but because their minds were dark (yes, really).

Frankly, Lincoln said some similar things about blacks, but he did a lot for them. Wilson did nothing and was particularly racist even for his time.

Biden’s tendency to weaponized race (“you ain’t black”) is one of the least attractive things about the man and his candidacy.


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